The Vortex: Rectification

Chapter Three.

Chapter Forty-Three.

The scratch of fabric against my ears, wrapped around my body is the first thing I recognise as the darkness starts to recede, the cloak of blackness that has kept me sheltered since my hallucinations has a rush of nerves spiking through my tired body.

As everything gets louder, I wish for that darkness to come back and protect me again. What's real and what isn't hasn't had the chance to separate and all my memories have mushed together and now I'm thinking that all the people I have ever loved in my life are in one place.

I guess if I am being honest with myself then I cannot deny that being together with everyone again would be my ideal situation in whatever comes after living. Even if they aren't all there and I can't watch over them from wherever I am now, I still love the idea of being surrounded by them.

What feels the most shocking out of all of it was seeing Jamie, he looked so real as he stared down at me. It was like one look at him and all the pain and terror that I was battling didn't mean anything at all, I guess my brain latched onto something that would calm me down.

It's just that I feel like I should have seen Alexander too, Jamie was so long ago, and Alexander was everything to me and being kept captive didn't change that. I guess it is easy to ignore the guilt when I don't have to see them both at the same time.

The feeling of hot flames licking up my arm, the scorching feeling traveling up my arm disrupts the comfortable way my body lays. The desire to move finally shoots through me, my eyes snapping open despite the pain of every movement, an arm latched around my waist and pulls me back down.

Now that I am willing to be aware of my surroundings it occurs to me that I have been leant against somebody, with my face pressed into their upper arm. My eyes slide closed immediately, the bright lights above me send another pang of searing pain through my eyes and into the throbbing headache that roars to life as I move.

"You're fine Aurora" A soft voice whispers, and I can tell immediately that they are the one holding onto me but when I take a second chance at peeling open my eyes there's no Jamie this time.

She looks the same as she had before, when I had seen her, and we were running through our crumbling home and her wild brown hair was messy and tied back away from her face. The forties don't look bad on her, and she feels more like my family than she ever has before, maybe it's the age crinkling around her eyes or the way she smiles down at me with her arms tight around my waist, but it makes me feel safe for a moment.

The second thing I notice is my house, the one we had all lived in back in the seventies when the war was growing and the St. Wicher's attack had never happened. The walls are still that off-white colour, but the sofa's around me are all deep grey with coloured pillows strewn about; some familiar, most not.

In all the wild ideas of what would come in the afterlife it was never this, and vaguely I know that I'm alive in this moment, but I could have never dreamed up this either. It feels like home and a hallucination all at once, I feel amazed and frightened at the same time.

But I don't feel fine Nessa. I don't. Not even a little bit and I couldn't lie to myself and pretend I am okay enough to make up for this agonising hole in my heart and chest where everything I know should be. Nessa and Harry can look wonderful aged, and it still doesn't make sense, Emma can be assisting Harry with healing me, and I still don't trust her intentions.

"Don't try and move your arm too much okay, A?" Harry's voice has my eyes refocusing on him, darting away from the pale skin of my stomach that is on show as they work around my bruises. His blue eyes never waver, they don't flinch away when I meet them head on, "Your break started healing together in the place it was broken, we did the painful stuff while you were still unconscious but that does mean it won't be fully healed until tomorrow"