He takes his time as he makes his way through the graveyard towards his final destination, taking time to pause as he always does at his best friend's grave. Whilst he sets down a bunch of flowers on her grave, as he does every time he's in the neighbourhood, he doesn't linger; today's all about Isabelle.
Looking at some of the headstones on the way, Simon realises he recognises far too many of the names on carved into the marble—then again, he shouldn't be surprised. He's lived a long life, seen everyone he knows and loves die—almost—and with that comes an almost ability to name every single dead person along this row. But these aren't his priority today, and whilst each name stabs at his heart, it does nothing in comparison to the feeling the name Isabelle Lightwood causes within him.
By the time he's reached her gravestone, the flowers in his hand are already partially crushed, and he has to have a moment to credit himself for this; he's gotten better. The very first time he came to her grave, the flowers were smushed before he had even entered the graveyard. Today, at least there's something to place upon her grave.
"Hey, Iz," he says to the ground, even though he knows it's futile; Isabelle isn't here, not really. She, like all the others around here, is dust in the Silent City, and this is just a memorial for those who knew her to visit, to remember her, to have somewhere to pay their respects to the girl who touched everyone's hearts.
Now, though, it's just him who comes. No-one alive now has ever met Isabelle Lightwood—well, no-one but him and Magnus Bane. But he's got his own lost love to mourn on this day.
"How's it going in the Shadowhunter afterlife?" Simon asks, dropping to his knees before her gravestone. "Bet you're making the world a safer place, right? That's what you were always going to do; it's your mandate." In the last few words, his accent changes to a Shadowhunter one, deliberately mimicking the precise clipped tones.
He takes a moment, waiting for a reply that he knows will never come, closing his eyes and imagining as though she's sitting in front of him. She isn't, he knows that, she's been dead and gone for one hundred years now, but that doesn't matter to him. He can remember every plane of her face, every detail about her personality, everything that made her Isabelle.
He can also remember how she looked that last time he ever saw her.
Not being a Shadowhunter, he wasn't invited to the funeral for the two remaining Lightwood children but he still wore the colour of mourning anyway, and waited in the graveyard until the procession headed towards it, Magnus by his side. They never spoke, but they knew that whatever closeness they had had in the past, it wouldn't be replicated for many dozens of years later; whatever pain they had gone through in the great war against Valentine and Sebastian, it was nothing compared to losing the love of their lives—and all they did was remind the other of their lost love.
Magnus and he see one another every so often now; Magnus is in Barcelona and Simon's wandering throughout Europe, though he comes back to New York a good six or seven times per year to visit the graves of his friends and his family. Nostalgia brings him back, but the pain of the city drives him away again soon after; the few years he had with Isabelle after the war was over and the happiness they brought aren't enough to wipe out the memory of her death with her brother at the hands of one of the Greater Demons. Nothing could ever wipe the memory of seeing her with no expression on her face, her eyes closed, the runes on her body in such stark contrast with the pallor of her skin that death brought with it. It's possible to remember only the positives of their lives together, to remember her beauty when she smiled at him, when he's out of New York. Back in this city, however, it's impossible to forget.
He sits and talks to her for a while, telling her everything that's happened in the months since he last saw her: a werewolf tried to kill him; the new Consul asked him to take a place on the Council in Idris as the only Daylighter in existence; he went and got as drunk as possible with Magnus in Barcelona to forget his birthday and the promise Isabelle made that is now broken.
(She promised to take him to her favourite place in the city on his birthday…she just died five months too early for that to occur.)
Simon sits and talks to Isabelle, telling her everything that he can think of that's relevant; about his life, yes, but also about the memories they shared, about the promises that he's kept for her and that he always will…and even about the ring that he carries in his top pocket, a constant reminder of the fact that he lost the woman he would have married too soon to ask her the most important question.
Before long, it's dark and whilst that doesn't matter to Simon, he wants to leave the city before midnight. He's had a long and troubled history with the vampire clans here—yet another reason why New York will never be his permanent home again—and whilst they accept his return on occasion, he can't stay beyond that one day. Otherwise, he'd be sparking a war he can't win.
So he presses his lips against Isabelle's name, a hand digging into the empty dirt, and he wipes away the last of the tears that have dripped down his cheeks since his arrival with a slight smile on his face.
"I promised you that you'd never be forgotten," he whispers, as though she's standing before him—and maybe she is. Maybe she's there but he can't see her. He stops himself thinking like this, though; that sort of thinking is dangerous and only leads to him wandering down the path of self-destruction again. "And I will keep that promise until the day I die, Isabelle Lightwood. I hope you know that."
At the gate to enter the graveyard, he meets Magnus, as he knew he would, and they exchanged smiles before Magnus asks if he wants to go and get drunk to forget with him.
Simon agrees. But he doesn't drink to forget. He drinks to remember.
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