I love writing about Simon. What happened at the end of CoHF killed me, and I had an itching feeling to start a fic about his mental state after the memory loss. I know there are a lot of references to the guys but I just feel like the people he loved that much couldn't have been that easy to wipe away from his memory completely. This will consist of a few chapters, not sure how many yet, and will bring us all the way up to the wedding.

Simon woke, gasping. He tried desperately to cling to the images that had just been spiraling through his dreams. He caught a flash of flame red hair and blue sparks, the crack of a whip and a pair of devastated black-brown eyes. He remembered a fierce, desperate need to protect the people that had stood beside him, but he simply couldn't remember why they needed saving or even conjure the faces of those he was so prepared to die for.

Groggily, he sat up. His hands were shaking, and he felt nauseous. Just a dream. He told himself. He couldn't fathom why it had him so shaken, all he knew was that he felt ... Wrong. Empty.

Pull yourself together, Lewis. Don't be such a crybaby.

He hauled himself out of bed and got dressed. His Made In Brooklyn t-shirt was strewn over a chair, looking at it brought back the nausea. He remembered buying it with... again a flash of red curls clouded the memory, green eyes laughing at him as he showed her ... him. Eric. He knew it was Eric because he distinctly remembered going to one of his terrible poetry readings after buying it. He sighed. Weird.

You're stressed, that's all. School's a drag, and you still haven't found a lead singer for the band.. let alone a half decent name.

For some reason these typical teenage dilemmas weren't really daunting to him at all... to be honest they seemed, well, pretty mundane.

This'll pass, Simon.

It didn't.

He felt a bit punch drunk for days. Occasionally he would get flashes of something, some murky memory that he passed off as a dream. Once he even demanded from his mother where the painting that used to hang above the fireplace went. He was sure it had been a gift from an old friend ... She had looked at him like he was mad and told him that the huge gilt mirror had always been there.

Every time he managed to get through a day in a normal fashion, he would be side swept by that horrible empty feeling, like something huge was missing from his life. He accidentally ordered two coffees while at another vile poetry reading in Java Jones, and even turned to make a hilarious comment about Eric's use of the word 'loins' again, before realising with a jolt that, of course, no one was sat beside him.

Familiar figures still haunted his dreams. A beautiful, fierce girl with a curtain of black hair demanded that he "remember." A golden haired boy sneered at him "come on mundane, she needs you."

For some reason the word mundane grated him. He would wake in a cold sweat, a desperate longing to be somewhere else, but for the life of him, he had no clue where that might be.

He started to wonder if this is what going mad felt like.