A/N: This was something that I wrote off of a Tumblr prompt, and I'm really excited to post it here on ! This does contain mild CoHF spoilers (mostly because it's set in CoHF) so read at your own risk! :)
"If you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again."
-C.S. Lewis
It was four-thirty in the morning when the tears finally stopped falling. Emma Carstairs stared out the window at the dark sky, watching the moonlight bounce off the demon towers of Alicante. The skin over her collarbone and wrist still throbbed with pain from when she had clutched Cortanna to her chest earlier the previous day, but the twelve-year-old didn't care. She didn't really care about anything anymore, actually. Not eating, not sleeping, not the Mortal War, and (surprisingly) not even her pride.
She padded closer to the window, moving in the deflated way one does when they're so worn out they can't be bothered to carry themselves with dignity. Her knee joints popped and shifted as she knelt to the floor by the windowsill, the joints worn from hours in the same curled position. Emma caught a glimpse of herself in the glass- tangled blonde hair, blood-stained shirt and tear tracks on her tan skin that she never bothered to wipe away. She looked like a shell- like someone had scooped out her insides but kept her animated for some cruel purpose. At this point, it didn't bother Emma that she didn't look strong. It didn't matter. No one was there to see her cry anyway. No one cared. For the first time in her life, Emma felt what it was to be completely alone, and she hated it. She felt like she was suspended in an endless cycle of anger, pain and sorrow, and worse, she felt like nothing good would ever happen again. She supposed it was a natural part of grieving, but she'd never known grief like this and had no idea what to do. So she sat there, staring out at the dark city, letting her mind go blank.
The sound of the door creaking open made her jump. Footsteps entered the room and Emma scowled faintly as she turned around, prepared to tell Helen off for bothering her. Instead of being met with a tall, blonde Shadowhunter like she expected, she saw a skinny brown-haired boy with green-blue eyes and a tired yet worried expression.
"Emmy," Julian said, using the nickname he had for her when they were small, "you're not asleep." He said it as a question. Emma shrugged. "You need sleep, you know." Jules said.
"Does it matter?" She asked, her voice sounding apathetic and tinny to her own ears. Julian sat on the bed and held out his hand.
"Yeah, it does." He said gently. "Come here." He laid back on the bed on top of the coverlet and Emma reluctantly laid down next to him. He slid his arm under her neck and pulled her head so it was resting on his shoulder. She wrapped one arm around his stomach and buried her face in his worn grey shirt, breathing deeply the scent of the sea, chalk, and paint, of home. She wanted to go home so much, wanted to sit on Julian's bed watching him paint, wanted to train with Mark and Helen, wanted to tease the twins and try to help Tavvy walk. She wanted normalcy again.
But this is war, she reminded herself, knotting her fingers in Julian's shirt. In war, you don't always get what you want.
"Are you all cried out?" Julian asked knowingly, running his fingers through her tangled hair. Emma nodded, looking up into his face, noting the dark circles under his eyes and the paleness of his skin. She grabbed his hand and began to trace with her finger. Y-O-U N-E-E-D T-O S-L-E-E-P.
I C-A-N-T, he wrote back on her shoulder. N-O-T U-N-T-I-L Y-O-U-R-E O-K-A-Y. Emma sat up, propping herself on her elbow, and stared at Julian.
W-H-Y D-O Y-O-U C-A-R-E S-O M-U-C-H-? she asked. Julian blinked.
"I'm your best friend, Emmy." He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. If Emma had more tears to cry, they would've welled up in her eyes.
"But you've got the kids to take care of, a-and Helen's falling apart and Mark's not even here and I-I'm…." just another orphaned Shadowhunter.
Julian shook his head. "I'm your best friend." He repeated. "I'm not leaving you. I want to make you feel better." He looked down at the blanket, worrying a stray thread with his hands. "I just don't know how." Emma's heart ached, piercing through her self-imposed numbness.
"Just stay with me, please." She said quietly, laying down again. Julian squeezed her hand. They fell asleep like that, Julian protectively holding Emma and Emma's head buried in Julian's neck, and when morning came, the adolescents woke slowly and blinked sleepily at one another before Emma offered Julian a smile- her first real one in days.
Y-O-U M-A-K-E M-E F-E-E-L B-E-T-T-E-R, she traced on his arm before running downstairs for breakfast.