Restless Heart Syndrome

Chapter 3 Your Nickel Ain't Worth My Dime

"Tears are words the heart can't express"

~Gerard Way

Chapter 3 Your Nickel Ain't Worth My Dime

A fog of white and apathy invades Alec's mind, and he finds himself not caring about his surroundings as his every nerve is soothed. He can't see more than light noise, an abyss of white that he knows it would be easy to lose himself in, but it seems irrelevant. He's too numb right now, he can hardly feel the presence of his own body. He should be alarmed, any good shadowhunter would be... But those are fucks not worth giving. He's just... floating. Maybe there's a sweet demon blood pumping through his veins, burning through his mind in this bitterly beautiful way. Bitter because there's no emotion behind any of his thoughts, and beautiful for the same reason. But it doesn't matter. It's nice here, wherever his mind has taken him. He's calm, he doesn't feel overwhelming emptiness, he's not worrying. He's not even sure what it is he should be worrying about. Magnus, maybe? It doesn't really matter, does it? If he can stay here, on this blood or drug.

After what seems like a nice stay in a land without emotions, a paradise of sorts, Alec eventually begins to wake back up into his hell. It's rather annoying, losing the light feeling as his body weighs him down. He's just a clunky shadowhunter again.

Alec's eyes opens his eyes to a room curtained by bluish curtains. There's a silver metal pole next to him, with a plastic bag filled with something Alec hasn't identified that is leaking down a plastic cord and under a white gauze bandage on his outer wrist. It's a rather disconcerting feeling, actually. It doesn't help that he still doesn't know where he is.

He sits up, only for passive white and blue blankets to tumble off his lap and onto his (conveniently existent) lap.

He can't honestly feel anything, and as he pulls the gauze and tube off his whist he's surprised to see a long needle following it. He didn't feel so much as a pinch, hear so much as the ripping of tape. He can see as a light next to him begins to flash red as he climbs out of the bed slowly, his haywire limbs being impossible to control. He tries to grab something for support, but finds himself as white shoes appear from behind the curtain, running towards him. The world goes away.

Alec snaps his eyes open, his mouth stealing air like a criminal as pain assaults his body. His body is burning, both on the inside and out. He shoots up and slumps into a sitting position as his body is wracked with coughs, his hands covering his crimson lips as blood splatters out unforgivingly. His throat is slick with blood, and he can feel that blood heating up as his skin catches alight in his mind and his nerves are burned, and by the Angel, it hurts so much.

Alec rips off the sheets and pulls out the annoying needle that's back in his arm as he struggles to get away. To jump out of his skin and this damned heat. His feet hit a floor that feels like ice, and he drops to it, not being able to stand up even as adrenaline pumps through his veins. He's been set on fire before, and that isn't an experience he's eager to repeat, but this is worse than the awful feeling, the smell of your own skin melting away. He's not actually burning as he illusions himself into horrible pain. It's worse than when the Greater Demon nearly killed him. This is the pain meant only for a worst nightmare, a nightmare put under a microscope and magnified by an incalculable amount. This is beyond torture, this is beyond what his numbing mind can process.

A hand squeezes onto his arm and he whimpers, the pressure and cold of it all turning whatever affliction he's suffering worse by a ten-fold. Before he can try to even fight back against whatever it is that's gripping him, a freezing needle is plunged into his upper arm and something equally chilling trickles through his system, and his body loses its purpose, and it fails him, spiraling into a state of half-consciousness and immobility. He's not burning anymore, or he can't feel it. It's nice, and words slither through his ears but he makes little effort to process them.