Move On

by pigsinspaaace

My HC in which Simon had never really lost his magic, but he was traumatized by what his magic had done, and so he pushed it so far away that it disappeared. Here's the whole story in one place. It originally was split into 10 parts. I apologize for any discrepancies. This is too long to summarize, so I'll just say: enjoy! (I hope)

1. At Watford

Baz
We bring the sandwiches back up to our room. I sit on my bed, suddenly self-conscious after having the room to myself for so long. Snow grabs a sandwich and sits down on his old bed. We sat like this for seven years, and now the room fills with the ghosts of all the Simons I watched, all the Simons who watched me, all the Simons I never touched. Simon's face is flickering like a reflection in moving water. We haven't spoken since we walked in. We were never this quiet even when we were enemies.

Simon
When it gets too still, I get up and stretch. I'm still in Agatha's dad's suit, my hair still stiffly parted. I move through the room, avoiding Baz automatically, muscle memory taking over. Not thinking. I grab my school pyjamas and head into the bathroom to shower and change. The insidious habits of seven years together taking over.

Baz
Simon won't even look at me. He walks around the room as if I'm not here, and my stomach twists with a familiar sour pang that stretches up to my heart. I didn't know he could still make me feel like this. He comes out of the bathroom, a towel around his shoulders, and I'm 15 again, sick with wishing and hating and wanting.

Simon
I walk out of the bathroom and see Baz staring at me with a familiar sneer on his sculpted face. The bitterness of his derision is almost a relief. At least I don't have to wait any longer for him to realize I'm not worth fighting, let alone loving.

Baz
I see his face crumple. Crowley, we're a mess. This is stupid. I make myself stand up, though I let my face retain its mask. I make myself walk over to Simon and put my cold hand on his warm shoulder. And then I wait.

Simon
The cold of Baz's hand on the heat of my shoulder breaks the past into the present. Baz raises his eyebrow and then his mouth is on mine and my hands are in his hair and his hands are slipping under my shirt and every movement heals every ghost the room throws at us until we're the only ones left.

Baz
I can't stop smiling as the rest of the world falls away and the smell of the tower and the walls mix with the smell of Simon's hair and skin and breath and time collapses and we collapse with it.

Simon
We end up on the floor between our beds, fingers laced together. Baz is smiling the smile from the photograph in the Mage's office a lifetime ago, and my heart breaks and fills and I lift our hands and bury my face in them and then I lick my own tears off each of his fingers. Slowly.

Baz
I didn't know there were that many places to kiss. I didn't know anything could feel like this.

Simon
Neither of us realizes until the next day that my wings and tail are gone.

Simon

We stay holed up for a few sweet days. Seems like being back here is what got rid of my wings and my tail, though I don't really know why. One day I'll ask Penny.

I might be a little scared to leave. Every summer, I've left Watford and gone straight to hell for three months. Three months of starving and fighting, of being pushed back down into the special misery reserved for kids abandoned to state care. Three months of losing myself, until I don't know which is real, that world or this one.

It doesn't seem possible for both worlds to exist side by side. The summer world took it as given that I was to be cast aside, that I deserved every institutionalized humiliation I was subjected to. In the Watford world I was the most powerful mage ever to walk the earth, destined to save Magickind. I always suspected that only by being the Chosen One could I sneak into this alternate universe, that otherwise I was trapped as a citizen of the world of hunger and loss.

But now I'm a villain, my magic gone, and so maybe the world of the orphanage is the real one after all. The thought chills me with a helpless terror I though had passed with age.

Baz

Simon has started disappearing again. Inside himself I mean. He kind of disappears and becomes angry, like a scared child. He gives off a pathetic fear that in the past would have made me trip him on the stairs or get him blamed for letting a dozen bats loose in the senior common room.

I had let myself believe he was back for good. We had two delicious days of mapping the constellations of his moles and smiling stupidly at each other. I annoyed myself with my absurd rosy-cheeked happiness. (And that's another thing. My cheeks are approaching something like rosy. And I haven't hunted since the dance and I hardly notice. I have to ask Bunce about that.) I suppose I should ask Bunce about Simon too. I can't watch him fade like this again.

Penelope

I'm not surprised to find Simon's wings missing when I arrive at Watford. I've known for a while now that his magic isn't actually gone. I've been waiting for him to realize it too. I'm surprised at how long it's taken Baz to catch on. Simon's been punishing himself by having no magic, looking like a devil, never letting himself smile. Punishing himself for killing the Mage, punishing himself for helping the Mage. Punishing himself for everything.

The fact that he must still have some magic dawned on me soon after we were cleared of all charges in the Mage's death. Simon's words could only have killed the Mage if they were said with magic. And the Mage is certainly dead, and all of it happened after the humdrum was gone, so his magic couldn't have disappeared with the humdrum. Simon's wings and tail and magic-less-ness are all of a part. And now that the wings and tail are gone, maybe the magic can come back.

It's almost not strange anymore when Baz calls me. As almost-not-strange as the fact that he's calling because he's worried about Simon (though he still calls him Snow to me. As in: 'Snow's in a funk. It makes me want to play nasty tricks on him. You might want to put your talent for interfering to some use here.')

The look on Baz's face is so unfamiliar when I arrive that I stop short. Usually his face is a controlled mask, his feelings revealed only by the shape and degree of the sneer he wears. But now his face is open and raw, and I find myself scared for the first time at what I'll find when I see Simon.

Baz

I'm surprised at how relieved I am to see Bunce. I let myself hand her some of the fear that's been creeping up on me since yesterday when Simon started staring bleakly again. I've been having a recurring dream about that night after we found Nicodemus, but in the nightmare it's Snow who's trying to off himself and I'm too proud to kiss him and I don't stop him before he puts his head in his hands and disappears. Night after night, in every dream, I fail to save him the way he saved me.

I take the chance to hunt while Bunce goes up to see Simon. I still don't know how she gets through the wards. Fearsome, frizzy-haired mage.

Penelope

It hurts to see Simon so lost in his room. He never looked like that at Watford before. Maybe the very first day or so after he'd return each fall, his eyes haunted and skin chapped and ribs showing through his shirt. Which gets me thinking.

Simon

It's so good to see Penny that I let her drag me out of the room and into the gardens. I blink stupidly in the sun and find myself shaking. Penny pretends not to notice. I walk beside her along the paths and up the ramparts until we have a view of the whole castle and the hills behind it. The air is colder up here and I start to feel calmer. She rests her head on my shoulder and I hold her so she can't see my eyes. I've never heard her go this long without explaining something.

Penelope

The cooler air calms him, and my thoughts start to fall together. As I start understanding, I wonder if I should start explaining but decide to wait. What we need is a whiteboard. And Baz.

Baz

I find them on the ramparts when I emerge from the catacombs. Oddly, there's a whiteboard on the ramparts with them. I never knew I'd be so happy to see a whiteboard. Bunce is a genius. They'll solve the mystery of Simon the same way they've solved every other mystery together. I let myself smile as I see her write the column headings: What we know. What we don't know.

Simon

I vaguely register that I'm hungry when someone puts a sandwich in my hand as I turn to face the whiteboard. I eat it absentmindedly and stare at the headings. What we know. What we don't know. I try to fill them mentally and wonder how I'm supposed to narrow it down.

What I know: I know I've lost the only thing that ever made me anything. It's only a matter of time before everyone else sees it too. A matter of time before they leave me. What I don't know: what's supposed to happen next. I watch curiously as Penny starts to write. What we know: the air is warmer, the birds are singing, the trees are green and the students are leaving. It's a strange list. Why not: we live on an island, the sky is blue, and Americans like to eat peanut butter.

Baz

I'm as confused as Simon usually is. Lately, Bunce and I have been thinking along the same lines. So I make myself take her seriously and read the list again. Warm air, singing birds, no students. Summer. She stops writing and turns to look at me. And then I know. And it breaks my heart all over again.

Penelope

I see understanding settle in Baz's eyes, and I take a deep breath and turn back to the whiteboard.

Baz

Summer. Simon Snow is scared of the summer.

I think about the fact that when Simon left Watford every summer, he left powerful, glorious. And when he returned every fall, he came back gaunt. Depleted. I never gave a thought to what wrought that transformation every year without fail. Not a single moment of my summer was spent wondering where he was while I played my violin, feeling sorry for all the things I would never have. I feel it like a punch to the gut, the realization that I didn't really see him all those years I was watching him. All I noticed each fall was that I had to wrestle again with the emptiness and fullness of being his roommate.

I didn't think I could hate the Mage more than I already did. I think about the cold cruelty of sending Simon again and again summer after summer to go through whatever it was that changed him, that crushed him. Presumably life in the orphanage, or maybe it was somewhere else. Wherever the Normals put him. I don't really know anything at all about where he went every year, or where he spent all those years before he showed up at Watford and the cauldron made him my roommate. I sink to the ground next to Simon. I'm back in my nightmare, tears flowing down my cheeks and dripping off my jaw unchecked.

Simon

Baz is crying and I have no idea why. I look at what Penny has written under: What we don't know. Why the Mage died. Where the Humdrum went.

But we do know. I killed him. I killed them both. Penny usually knows what she's doing, so I force myself to take her seriously. I read the words again. Why did the Mage die? Because I killed him. I killed him by telling him to stop hurting me. Usually I can't think past this point, the curtain closes over my mind and I start to lose time. I force myself through the curtain this time. What is Bunce getting at? She keeps writing. Where did the Humdrum go? Where did Simon's wings go?

Ok, stick with the first one. She must mean, why did my words kill the Mage. But she can't mean for me to twist in the rack of figuring out why not hurting me meant he had to die. She's too good a friend. And when it finally hits me, I stand up so fast that Baz is knocked over and he looks kind of funny and surprised and I find I can smile again. He looks angry so I crouch down and take his hand and say it out loud as I pull him up with me.

My magic isn't gone after all.

Penelope

We're on the football pitch. Leave it to Simon to find such a literal use for The game is afoot. I glare at him half-heartedly and smile despite myself when he laughs. Baz gets this look in his eye and starts to kick the ball viciously around us, prompting Simon to jump into action. Neither of them expects it when I trounce them both. Boys.

Then Simon and I explain it together to Baz, about Simon's magic. It's not the same, and that's probably for the best, but it's not gone. Any minute now, Simon's going to realize that this conversation only covers half the whiteboard. I decide to sneak off and let Baz handle the What-we-know side.

Baz

Simon and I are drinking lemonade in the grass near the field. Bunce excused herself to go up to her mum's office. Strange how the three of us have all had claim to the headmaster's rooms at one point or another. I think she left to give us some space. I wonder if Snow's ever had lemonade, since it's a summer drink. I wonder what else I can give him that he's never had. I wonder if I'm going to be this sappy forever.

He must catch something of the look on my face because he turns to me with a small frown. "I still don't really know what happened this afternoon," he admits.

"Not too surprising," I respond idly, "you've always been rather thick." But I regret it immediately when I see his eyes cloud over and flit away. I have no idea how to be this person. But I have no idea how to be anyone else, either, so I press on.

"Why didn't you ever tell me about the summers?" I ask quietly. He looks confused and I realize he really doesn't know what happened on the whiteboard, on the ramparts. It makes me wonder what he thinks Bunce was up to if not that. Bunce isn't here to translate, so I try again.

"That's what Penelope was getting at," I explain. "The column of what we know. The heat, the birds. It's summer. That's what's happening to you."

I can see Snow's eyes change with understanding, but outwardly he just shrugs. I smile despite myself; I can speak Snow now. He lies back again, his curls falling ridiculously among the grass and clover, the late-day sun playing across his cheeks and throat, the shadows dancing as he swallows. I am still transfixed by the theater that is Simon's swallow. "Why didn't you ever tell me?" I repeat.

Simon

It reminds me of this one time at Agatha's in sixth year. I was staying with her family over some school break and they had a bunch of people over and everyone was sitting around and telling stories and laughing and I was having fun and someone asked me what it's like to grow up around Normals. I told some story about this kid who got a roach stuck in his ear last summer and everyone laughed and the conversation moved on.

But later, when it was just me and Agatha, she asked why I told a story about the summer, not about growing up. I shrugged (it's my favorite gesture, I highly recommend it). And she looked at me softly and she said, "I guess I can see not talking about it in front of all those people. But you know you can talk to me, right? I'm always here to listen."

"Talk about what?" I asked (stupidly, as it turned out). And she said, holding my hand so softly,

"Growing up. You know. Like, your whole life before I met you. You can tell me. You can trust me."

And she flat out didn't believe me when I said that I don't remember anything that happened before Watford. I mean, I remember waking up when I was 11 after blowing up the orphanage, I remember the Mage coming for me, I remember him taking me to Watford.

And I remember the things that happened at Watford. I can remember little snippets of things from earlier, like the gray and brown of the bunks we slept in, or that I was the tallest kid in class in first grade, or that I once had this shirt I really liked. But none of that counts as a story. Agatha thought I was lying, that I wasn't telling her because I didn't really trust her. She was so upset, and I just wanted to make her feel better, I wanted to tell her whatever it was she wanted to hear, but that just upset her more.

That's how I found out that most people remember more stuff than I do. I always assumed everyone was like me. That it's all just kind of blank until you get to be a teenager. But everyone else can remember much farther back. Like back to when they were 4 or even 3. The idea was so bizarre to me that I think Agatha finally believed that I was telling her the truth, and we never talked about it again.

But that's not why I don't talk about the summers. I can remember the summers perfectly.

Every summer was the same. I'd head back to some juvenile holding center, and as I checked myself in (voluntarily, every fucking year) two guards would stand in a room with me while they made me strip off my clothes and shoes and put on these things that were halfway between a hospital gown and a prison uniform.

One year they confiscated some biscuits I'd brought back with me from Watford (I had extra from a thank-you stash I'd gotten after saving the kitchen elf from a jealous sprink), and they made a point of eating them out in the plexiglass vestibule where I would be sure to see. They didn't finish them all, and one of them showily threw the leftover biscuits in the bin while staring at me through the glass.

Baz

After a few minutes, he finally speaks. "It's embarrassing, yeah? I didn't really want you to know. And. I don't. I don't know really. And I don't know what you want to know." Snow's not great with words.

I lean across him and smooth his hair out of his eyes, resting my hand on his face and leaning my forehead on his. "Everything. Anything. Whatever." I whisper.

His face softens and he moves his mouth to meet mine. But I want him to talk, so I don't let him linger there. I think about what he's just said, then ask, "What do you mean, embarrassing?"

He takes a deep breath and tries again. "I mean," he says. "It's just that. It's. The way. And..." I open my mouth but before I can even speak he groans and says, "Don't. Say it. Don't tell me to use my words."

So I wait in silence instead, and am rewarded when he tries again. "It just hurt. It hurts." he finally manages. "And, and I don't know. Hurting is embarrassing."

I actually do know exactly what he means, so I don't make him keep trying to explain. "I know," I say.

"I know," he says back. "I know you know. Because of the numpties." And I'm so surprised that he laughs and opens one eye and says "Not bad for a halfwit, eh?"

Simon

He doesn't think that I know, but I know. I've known since Christmas Eve. Six weeks in a fucking coffin. It still makes me shudder when I remember the words coming out of his mouth, the sandwich falling from my hands. Six weeks. In a coffin. It made me want to smash things, still does. I wanted to shake him for not telling me, all that time. But I knew why couldn't tell me. I wished he had, but I knew I wouldn't have either. Why is suffering so embarrassing? I look over at him without moving my head (a move I learned from him, I think.) He freezes. I swear, he can hear my eyeballs swivel. Never date a vampire.

Baz

I hear him looking at me. My eyes are closed and all I can see is Simon back in the foyer of the house in Hampshire, covered in mud and rain and rolling his eyes at me. He came back. He came back for me. He'd left with Bunce and Wellbelove and I'd been trying to pretend it didn't hurt, until he came back covered in mud looking like he'd been running in the rain for hours. He probably had done, if the girls were already halfway to London when he showed up dripping on the rug. But it had hurt, before that. And I never knew if that's why he came back. If he knew that it hurt.

Now that I think about it, the way I disappeared in the dark and pain and clotted air and blood of that coffin with its fucking bendy straws isn't that different from what's been happening to Simon these past weeks. And when I was slipping too far away, I held onto him, even though I didn't even have him then. His eyes, his hair, the moles on his neck and the lips I would never kiss.

I want to tell him all of this, but I don't know how. I can cast spells in four languages and six dialects but I can't find the words for this. So I reach down for his hand instead and feel his magic dancing across my skin and I know that he's really back, and so am I. And I whisper a promise to always come back. So quietly only a vampire could hear. And then I open my eyes and swivel them right back at him.

I spent half of sixth year fantasizing about kissing Snow on the football pitch. So when our eyes meet, I roll over, pinning him below me, and start with his neck, just to show myself I can. I lick the soft spot behind his left ear and prop myself up on my elbow while my right hand traces a line down his chest, stopping occasionally to let my fingers explore each groove and curve, every rise and fall. He makes a quiet noise deep in the back of his throat and I discover that we haven't yet discovered everything about each other.

His arms come up and surround me, one hand resting on the small of my back, a tiny oven, the other trailing sparks (literally) up my spine until it reaches the back of my neck, where it pauses for a moment before his fingers uncurl like vines through my hair. His fingers are so long. Everything about him is long, his throat, his fingers, ... everything.

The thought brings an answering moan to my own throat and it's embarrassing. As embarrassing things go, though, I'll take this over imprisonment in a coffin any day. He brings his chin up and catches my lips in his and I taste his tongue with mine and any lingering regret falls away and all that's left is unlikely miracle of Snow in my arms in the grass in the quiet dark as the summer sun finally sets. And I say his name, because I know he likes when I do. Simon. And again. Simon. Simon.

Simon

We spend one last night in our old room.

As we're falling asleep, I feel surrounded by cold and I shiver. But the cold isn't coming from Baz; if anything, he's warmer than I am these days. The strange cold flows around me like a hug and reminds me of something, but I'm too tired to remember what it is before I drift off to sleep.

When I wake up, I'm finally ready to leave. Something's changed again between me and Baz. Now it doesn't matter so much whether I'm looking at him or he's looking at me but we look anyway. We dress together for the first time in this room. I marvel at the way the muscles in his back tighten and shift as he pulls a t-shirt down over his head, and follow their movements with my fingers before the shirt can hide them away. He grins lazily at me and drops the shirt to the floor. It's not a very efficient way to dress, but we're in no rush.

Baz

I thought I'd cross every line for him, but there's one line I still haven't crossed. Not surprisingly, Snow would be happy to plow ahead without thinking. As usual. But I don't have that luxury.

I never even thought I'd get this far with Simon (with anyone) without slipping and biting him. I'm scared that if we go too far, if I lose control even for a moment, I will destroy it all. I will give in. I'll bite him. I'll drink every drop of blood in his beautiful, forbidden body.

I mean, it's not that I don't want to. Merlin and Morgana and Methuselah, I want it so much, it's like a physical pain alongside the pleasure of kissing him. And I know he would, that he wants to. But I'll never be able to. Not if I don't want to murder the one person I love most in this world.

Simon

"You're blocking the mirror," he says later, leaning over my shoulder to fix the collar of his shirt. I look at his face next to mine in the mirror.

"I guess you can see yourself in the mirror," I say. He rolls his eyes.

"We've lived together for seven years and you just figured that out now?" he asks, stepping back again. I turn around.

"Well, you never let me get that close in the mornings," I said.

"Living with you was hard enough, Snow," he sneers. "There was no reason to spike the punch."

I don't know exactly what that means, but I let him reach over and finish buttoning my shirt. My school shirt. I'm going to need to get some new clothes. I have absolutely no idea how to do that. As if he's read my mind (I have to remember to check once and for all if that is a vampire thing) he says, "Let's take you shopping tomorrow. I'll be in charge," he adds, seeing the panic in my face.

His hands drop after he finishes the last button, and I catch them and lace my fingers through his. "A long time," I say.

"What?" he asks. It's nice to see him confused for once.

"You asked me back in Hampshire, how long it's been that I'd wanted to kiss you. And I've been thinking about it. And being here, watching you dress, watching you stretch and lie on your bed, made me remember all the thoughts I always thought about you without really knowing I was thinking them. And I've wanted to kiss you for a long, long time."

He looks kind of startled, and blushes. I like making Baz blush, it feels like a real accomplishment. He smiles without quite meaning to, squeezes my hands and then turns to face the room.

"All right then," he says, slipping his wand out from his sleeve, "Up, up, and away."

Our trunks lift off the floor and follow us down the stairs from our turret, floating over the grounds and the moat and out the gates, and we're leaving Watford. Hand in hand. Whatever brought us to this point, I suppose it was worth it.