I fly after Elijah, screaming like a berserker. He turns around but doesn't react in time, and gets bowled over. I kneel over him, pinning him to the ground while I punch him over and over, yelling unintelligibly obscene gibberish as I whale on him. Every inch of me is filled with rage, running on primal energy at this point. I can't even feel the pain of the few punches Elijah's able to land on me.
He and I lock eyes for just a moment - and then something happens. I'm suddenly the one on the ground getting punched - by myself.
I'm...I'm in Elijah's body? But how...?
You can project too? This thought is faint, but judging from the accent, it's got to be Elijah. He sounds just as surprised as I am.
I look down at Elijah's hands, clenching his fists. If this projection/possession thing works the way I think it does...
I form an ice blade with Elijah's right hand, and wiggle out from underneath my own frozen body just a little bit.
Hey, what are y'all...no! NO!
Too late, motherfucker. You asked for it.
I make Elijah use his ice blade to cut off his own left hand. I still feel the pain of muscles and tendons being severed even after I'm pushed back into my own body.
Still on my back, I scoot away as quickly as I can. Elijah looks at the bleeding stump of his arm in shock. Then, with a roar of rage, he runs after me. I roll over and get to my feet - but can I outrun him?
"Stop! Police! Put your hands up!"
The orders come through a megaphone held by one officer. His partner, to his left, has his gun out, trained on Elijah.
I comply with the cop's demand.
Elijah doesn't.
One of us gets shot and killed right on the spot.
Three guesses who, and the first two don't count.
The one cop holsters his weapon and ushers me forward, where Gabe is waiting by an idling Crown Vic.
I take one look at him and see the horror-struck look in his eyes - which then flicker over to the spot where Fionna's body lies on the ground, another cop gently laying a white sheet over her.
"Dude," Gabe says faintly, pointing at my side. "You got cut."
I look down and raise my arm, seeing my shirt sliced open, blood dripping slowly from the cut underneath. When did that happen? I must have been high on adrenaline and didn't feel it.
But then the stinging pain strikes, and I'm finally overwhelmed. Making almost identical strangled cries of grief, Gabe and I fall into each other's arms.
After a paramedic treats my surprisingly superficial wound, we spend the rest of the night - or early Sunday morning, I guess I should say - in the station house.
They don't question us or anything like that - not in the state we're in.
Instead, they do their best to make us comfortable. They get us blankets, hot chocolate, dry clothes that read "Coldfire Creek P.D. Athletic Dept."
It's a nice gesture, but it's still not enough.
I keep pinching myself, hoping to wake up from whatever nightmare I've been living in for the last 24 hours. When Gabe tries to tell me to stop, I lash out at him.
"This isn't real!" I yell. "None of this is real!"
"Please, just stop," Gabe says, his voice shaking as he struggles to keep himself from crying all over again. "Alex, i-it's not helping."
"Shut up!" I scream, pushing away from Gabe and sitting on the other side of the break room where they've got us holed up.
I stare up at the ceiling, imagining God looking down at me from the other side, watching to see how I handle this life change. Probably He's looking at me with indifference. Like it was part of His plan that Fionna had to die.
I'm reminded of our thirteenth birthday, the way Gabe and I both cry ourselves to sleep on the break-room benches.
As soon as they've given us some breakfast - bagels, not donuts, surprisingly - the cops take our statements. There's not much to say, really - except that the Aqua Killer summoned us to Hell, attacked us when things started deviating from his plan, and the girl we were trying to save ended up losing her life.
When we're done, they keep us in the break room just a little longer, telling us we have visitors.
Paul, Dani, and Aron enter the room, all with somber faces. They stand awkwardly by the door until I come forward and hug Dani. Soon, we're all sandwiched together in a big group hug.
"Steve told us Fionna was being fixed up in the Terminal," Paul says. "We couldn't stay behind anymore, knowing she was dead. What happened?"
With tears threatening again, I tell Paul and the others the story. Then I remember something else I'd heard from the souls the first time we'd met. "Didn't they say you can still come back if you still got viable remains or something?"
"I dunno," Aron says. "The way you made it sound, there's no way Fionna could come back to her body like that."
Dani shakes her head. "Freddie said you'd ask about that. He said...he said there's no way they can heal her soul fast enough. Demons cremate their dead within thirty-six hours, and Freddie said...to fix that kind of damage...it'd take at least forty-eight."
I sink back onto the leather bench, my shoulders shaking as I start crying again.
I'm later told Dani said "I'm so sorry," taking my hand and Gabe's - he was crying too as he sat next to me. In the moment, though, Dani's words didn't really penetrate. I heard nothing around me.
I've never felt so devastated, broken, and helpless in my life. It doesn't matter that Elijah is dead - he had to take another victim with him, the one I'd been so bound and determined to save.
They finally let us go ten minutes later. Outside the police station, Gabe gives us all goodbye hugs before taking flight back to Castledown. In the distance, I see repairmen working on the damaged cable car. I stop in front of the Bridge, watching them until Dani calls my name and beckons me forward, back to Heaven.
I walk across the Bridge with my arms around my chest, trying to make myself as small as possible. Nobody talks, nobody looks at anything but their own feet.
At Balthazar, we walk through the lounge, which is nearly deserted. I guess the news hasn't spread yet. Just as well. I don't want to be in the spotlight right now.
I watch as Dani splits off and goes back to the girls' dorms, while Paul, Aron, and I continue down the other hall. They keep going while I stop and enter my room.
But I don't stay there. Instead, I turn around and make my way downstairs to the basement. On the other side of the basement from the secret passageway entrance is a small chapel, a place I've heard of but never actually visited. Because it's on the southern side of the building, directly under the lounge and the cafeteria, the sun shines brilliantly through the chapel's twin stained glass windows.
I feel like the beautiful display is mocking me as I kneel in one of the pews, then stare up tearfully at the cross mounted between the windows. Unlike the one I remember from the Catholic church Gabe and I used to attend with Mom when we were kids, this one is plain metal, without a sculpture of Jesus nailed into place.
It's been so bloody long since I've actually prayed for anything. But I came here for a reason.
Please, God, if you're there where they say you are, don't be indifferent. Prove to me that you care. Let her come back. Please let her come back. Please...I'll never use that possession power again. It's so scary to do that...I don't ever wanna be that angry again...
I expect and receive no response of any kind. The stained glass continues to glow steadily in the sun. Nothing happens in the room. No change of lighting. No sound, except for me crying.
I love you, Fionna. I love you. I love you I love you I love you...
The cruelest part of it all is that it took Fionna dying - in my arms, too - for me to realize just how much that was true. Sure, I was right about us not having been together for very long. But the way I feel right now...it might as well have been my heart that got carved out of its body.
The only possible way I could feel worse would be if I lost Mom, or Gabe.
With the chapel all to myself, I spend a good long while crying to the walls. And when my vocal chords and tear ducts give out, I continue to stay put, holding on to the pew with a death grip as my body is racked with dry sobs.