If you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born, then it's time to go.
I.
He is Jewish. It feels like he doesn't belong at the Institute the moment he walks inside. Devout or not, he belongs in synagogues, not churches. Clary seems to like it here, but at least she's walking next to him instead of Jace, who's apparently under the delusion that cats can hold conversations.
The girl in the kitchen is gorgeous, despite her attempts at cooking. His best friend is still hanging on to Jace's every word and he has an illogical hope that being petty will make her snap out of it.
So he says, "I want soup." Isabelle brightens and serves him a bowl that he eats—or more like drinks, it's so watery—without really tasting, because Clary's vanished somewhere with Jace and he's pretty miserable.
You're so stupid, Clary.
He storms out of her room half angry, half embarrassed that she didn't know at all. The Institute is dark and confusing and he'd rather be anywhere but here, wandering through its hallways. Isabelle appears out of nowhere and offers, "Elevator's that way." He mutters thanks, and she doesn't say you're welcome back.
"Sure you don't want to stay?" Isabelle says in the elevator. "I promise you won't get turned into a rat again."
There's a fresh Mark on her shoulder and he wonders what it means. Simon replies, "Pretty sure."
She kisses him and laughs afterward, and on the whole, he's relieved to leave her for the taxi. He's mundane in both the adjective and their noun, and this might be Clary's life, but it's not his.
When he comes back, he's bleeding all over the doorstep, half undead, and that pretty much solidifies his relationship with their Institute.
II.
He says, hesitantly, "Can I have your frosting?" because she's mutilated her cupcake, pastel-blue smeared on a yellow napkin. She says, "Sure," and he gives her a first-grade grin, two teeth missing. They're sitting at low tables in blue chairs and their names are carefully printed on their desks.
Her hair is in curly copper pigtails, and he's already in love.
Nine grades later, they share the rug at his house, controllers in their fingers, laughs escaping. She dreams of princes and he dreams of her, and it's almost as simple as when they were seven. Simon is half-glad of her constant daydreaming; it gives him time to memorize her freckles.
Eric or Kirk or Matt laughs and informs him, you're an idiot, just tell her.
He starts to. Eric's awful poetry is in the background, and she's just pointed out a random girl, no trace of jealousy in her voice at all. It's the completely wrong time but he's tired of waiting for her.
"So who is it, then?" she asks, an eyebrow raised. He thinks would have laughed if he didn't feel like he was going to throw up.
Clary isn't even looking at him anymore, she'd turned around to stare at something behind her, her coffee half-finished. She gets up with an I'll be right back and runs away, and he's left with two cups and half a declaration of love. He drinks the rest of her lukewarm coffee; it's bitter and it matches him perfectly right now.
But he finds her again and they've fallen into one of their video games plus her fairytales, complete with a knight-in-shining-armor, but she fights vampires for him, so maybe all hope isn't lost. Being scared shitless and a rat for a few hours wasn't so bad if the result was that, right?
Simon apparently has the best timing ever, because he opens the door and they're locked together like they've already thrown away the key. So he knew she had a thing for Jace, but it doesn't feel real until he sees that and her drawings.
Wings, sprouting from his back. They even look like they belong there. Simon thinks he might as well have a halo.
Because I've been in love with you for ten years, so I thought it seemed like time to find out whether you felt the same about me. Which, I guess, you don't. She doesn't say anything close to I love you, too and never in those ten years has he ever seriously expected her to.
A few weeks later, after he saved all their asses and she half rescued her mother and everyone found out Jace and Clary were related, he thinks he's going crazy, and Dracula makes it worse. "Do I seem different to you?" he asks her hesitantly.
"You're still Simon," Clary says, and it's the best answer she could've given him. He kisses her and she kisses him back and the best part of it is that he isn't dreaming.
He's about to turn into ashes and she hugs him hard and he thinks this is exactly how he'd want to die, except he isn't burning.
He knows he could drag this out, hold her longer, because at least this is allowed, not like her and Jace. He even properly belongs in her world. The first and only vampire who can't be burned in sunlight, but still a vampire.
But he lets her go. She walks away from him and he's relieved. Because she is still his best friend and that's all he had for ten years and that's all he'll have until she dies and he doesn't.
"Maybe I could love you someday," Clary says.
Simon doubts it, a lot, but he answers, "If you ever do, come and let me know."
She smiles a little and takes the comic he'd been reading and says, "I can't believe you started without me." The sky's a flat azure, the sun perfectly bright, and it feels nostalgic, like frosting smeared on a napkin.
III.
She's pretty; he never expected werewolves to be pretty.
Somewhere in between meeting one through two and meeting three, he turned into a vampire. Clawed himself out of a grave and drank blood and everything. Later, she'll laugh and admit she overreacted at that, but he still feels guilty that she was on her way to apologize to him when Valentine kidnapped her. And then him.
They're supposed to be enemies. He thinks that a lot of these people are a lot of things they're not supposed to be, recently. Maia says, "I hope you know what I mean when I say I'm sorry you're here, but I'm glad you're with me."
He smiles at that, says thanks with a dry throat that gets sliced open minutes later, the prayer he'd choked on flowing out with the blood.
Sh'ma Yisrael…
She appears on his doorstep with a grin, a week after the end in Alicante. Peace feels good. "Have you noticed we've never actually spent a lot of time together, you know, normally?"
"Normally?" Simon says, raising his eyebrows. "Being kidnapped for our blood and fighting a war weren't normal, you mean?"
Maia laughs and proceeds to look through his disorderly stack of video games. He sits next to her on his sofa and it's so easy to pretend they're human, easy to forget they're not. Kissing her is natural, for the next six weeks, when Halo gets boring. Which is pretty often.
She stops by with fresh comic books and waits for him to finish reading so they can discuss the plot over potato chips, salt dusting her fingers. Once, he reaches for a chip before he realizes he can't eat, not anymore.
The faded Mark of Cain surprises him when he looks in the mirror. With her, he feels normal, but he isn't and he might as well accept it.
Kyle turns out to be Jordan and he clearly still loves her, so it isn't terribly difficult for Simon to let her go, to not deny it when she says, but those are friend things, and give up the space next to her, even in that dress.
IV.
"You know what I need, Simon?" He never expected to end up on Isabelle Lightwood's bed. Didn't even consider it as a possibility. But somehow he does, and she answers herself. "A distraction."
"Isabelle," he says, only half of a protest but at least he's objecting at all. "Do you really think this will make you feel better?"
"Trust me." She smiles, brittle, but still gorgeous. "I feel better already." So maybe he needs a distraction, too, he decides.
They wake up in unison and she yawns and proposes, "Pancakes?" To which Simon, amused, answers, "I wish." That doesn't stop her from stacking pancake after pancake on plates that aren't hers in a kitchen that isn't hers either. Apparently her cooking skills have improved, with Amatis' help. It's a real shame that he can't eat any of it now, he thinks, remembering a so-called soup.
A hugely important battle (and ensuing victory), six weeks of dating two girls, and a fight with the mother of demons later, Simon ends up being simultaneously hugged and called an asshole in a variety of imaginative ways. Somewhere along the way, it stopped being a distraction, or maybe it had never really been one to begin with.
He hugs her back.
It's the real beginning of them, six weeks late, but the end is pretty inevitable and Isabelle must know that. She isn't stupid, but she isn't letting him go and that makes it worse.
A month. Two—She tells him she loves him with beseeching eyes the size of silver-dollar pancakes. He believes her.
But Simon replies with the words he knows he has to say, cuts his ties and hopes she had enough sense to bring a second parachute. He's sixteen forever, she won't be. He rehearsed the words and it seemed simple.
"Did you really think this could be permanent, Izzy?" Because he called her bluff months earlier, not realizing he'd have to throw it in her face in the same Sanctuary.
It isn't like breaking up with Clary.
The Mark of Cain shifts above his eyes, and he curses himself for not doing this sooner; he never meant to add another scar to the collection on her skin. Isabelle screams at him like he imagined she would—because even though she's sweet as sugar sometimes, she knows how to be cruel, too—and they break so easily it's almost depressing.
"I'm allergic to flowers, by the way," she throws over her shoulder.
Simon watches her go. The deflating air mattress might as well have a vacancy sign and he thinks, what now?
The answer comes, straightforward and obvious. Wander.
V.
It's a kind of restlessness that invades him, makes him yearn for a different skyline underneath the same sky.
He loves New York. He thinks he would have stayed here his whole life, maybe going to college and getting a shitty cubicle job afterwards, while Clary made masterpieces and opened a gallery and realized she was crazy in love with him. He never seriously thought about what he wanted to do with his life, and maybe that's a good thing.
Clary begs him to stay, and he looks at her corkscrew curls and the lead stains on her fingers and the less familiar Marks all over her skin.
Simon tells the truth and says, "I can't." Refrains from adding, because of you, because he doesn't blame her, he can't.
A last-minute stop. Maia rolls her eyes. "I can't believe you were actually going to leave without saying goodbye, Simon." He gives her a sheepish smile and she gives him a present, wrapped and everything. An expensive-looking camera, heavy in his surprised fingers.
"You know, I figured if you live forever, there are some things you're going to want to remember."
[ Picture one—a girl with curly hair and amber eyes, goodbye frozen in her forced smile. The space next to her is empty now that he's behind the camera. ]
So he finally leaves and it's pretty easy to fall asleep before the state line and wake up in the capital, a vague letter for his mom and sister lying on their kitchen counter. He wanders all over the country and feels a kind of liberation from it; he'd never have seen this much if the hardest decision he ever had to make was what to name his band.
But he comes back once.
He actually expects glossy black boxes the same color as her eyes. But no, Isabelle is burned, along with her brother, and it takes what feels like forever. He remembers the Lightwood family ring, and thinks that this suits them more than a coffin would, but still. It's fairly horrible to watch. Her hair is on fire—charring it even darker. They will go to the Silent City—another reason Simon is glad he'll never have a reason to go there and stand on a girl compressed into a pile of ashes.
He looks away. The Mark of Cain spins under his bangs, urges him to move, you don't belong here or anywhere, while he wipes soot and stale memories from his eyes.
Simon doesn't stay long, even though Clary grips his fingers hard. She looks unbelievably pretty—there was a time when that was all he'd care about—the white of her dress highlighting her apricot-colored freckles. She half smiles when he tells her that and whispers, I've missed you so much, Simon.
I'm pretty sure I missed you more, he says back.
He manages to slip away, hands curled up in his pockets, until someone calls his name. He turns and hopes that his argument is convincing, because he's hungry and irritable and it doesn't feel like he's home. Not that he really expected it to.
But he should've known Magnus isn't trying to make him stay. He looks at him—no glitter anywhere in sight—and asks, "Ever been to London, vampire?" and to Simon, the tickets might as well already be theirs, even though it automatically equals jetlag. More wandering. Less money in his savings.
At least he won't be checking any bags.
[ Picture three-hundred-twelve—there's a boy and a girl burning into dust, and everyone else looks like they're having a wedding. ]
Simon says, count me in.