A/N: For Towers of Alicante, the prompt being; "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." - Alfred Lord Tennyson
"It's not a long life, killing demons; one tends to die young, and then they burn your body - dust to dust, in the literal sense. And then we vanish into the shadows of history, nary a mark on the page of a mundane book to remind the world that once we existed at all."
- Clockwork Angel, Cassandra Clare
When Simon was a child, he thought the idea of two people falling in love with each other was an incomprehensible thought.
After all, he reasoned, what were the chances of two people finding someone that was exactly right for them? Weren't there six billion humans strolling he planet; how could two people possibly find each other in all of the muddle?
And more importantly, how could someone possibly find someone that would love them back? The chances seemed impossibly slim.
Those were the thoughts that plagued Simon Lewis when he was young. Of course, that was before he knew about sex and how it drove so many people to be together. It was before he really understood how love worked.
He also used to think that love was a permanent state of being–once you fell into it, one could never get out. That it was infinite, something that would stretch out forever, beyond time, beyond death. It took him a while to realise that love did sometimes end; that the human heart sometimes just lost its passion. He vowed that he would never be someone like that, not be the one to fizzle out. He'd love someone, dammit, until he had no soul to hold that adoration any longer.
And when he met Clary Fray, and he thought he'd never be in love with anyone else after her.
Sometimes people would never fall in love if they knew how things would end – they'd rather avoid the pain than take the risk.
The last day he saw Clary, she helped him untangle his iPod's earphones.
Her fingers were soft and hands warm – much hotter than his cool ones, at least – and once they were done snorting at the ridiculousness of the hopelessly tangled earphones, they watched a movie. She ate chips and he tried to not feel too sick at the smell of human food.
As always, she fell asleep just before the movie ended. He didn't blame her; it was a painfully mediocre film. He knew he'd only start dozing in a couple hours' time, so he flipped through channels and just enjoyed the feeling of Clary being with him. Sure, he'd accepted that Clary was with Jace, but he could appreciate the normalcy of being with his best friend.
So maybe Simon still did still want Clary just a bit. But he was slowly getting over her; he didn't mind just friendship now.
Simon was healing. Things were looking up for him, he thought when he finally fell asleep.
The next morning, she woke up and prodded him gently, telling him that she had to get to training. He smiled sleepily as she left his house, watching her red hair flick out of the room. He couldn't help but notice that finally she had a bit of the Shadowhunter swag – the posture and the controlled, graceful way of walking. She was hardly at the same level as Isabelle or Jace, but the effects of her training were beginning to show.
It unsettled him a little bit. She was changing and he couldn't stop it. Clary was blossoming into a new life, and he was sixteen forever.
Sometimes people think love is being willing to die for their beloved, but in reality it occasionally takes more bravery to keep on living.
She died at one-twenty-two in the morning on a bed a warlock's apartment, with Magnus swearing as her heart flopped uselessly in her chest. It gave one final spasm before finally resting after seventeen years of faithful service.
Simon's ears were designed to listen to heartbeats, it was part of being a vampire. The silence that followed her last one was the loudest one he had known, hammering against his ears and smashing his skull.
Then Magnus swore loudly.
They had all been sitting outside the room, in useless plastic chairs. Jace had been pacing, Isabelle staring off into the distance.
Simon's spine curled in on itself once he realised the implications, his elbows smashing into his knees – not that he felt any pain. A second later, Magnus staggered out of the room and into their hallway.
Simon looked up as Jace leaped to his feet, the question burning in his eyes. Magnus shook his head slowly, his face resigned.
The glitter in his hair lost its sparkle. The bright rainbow posters of Magnus's apartment became dull and faded.
Jace left minutes later, disappearing into the night. He was most likely clearing New York of all its demons while he tried to get killed himself.
Alec helped Magnus recover from his exhaustive spell-casting.
Isabelle wiped the blood off her wound-free arm, apologising for not killing the demon in time.
Simon stayed in his plastic chair.
Sometimes people think of death as something that only happens to the old and forgotten. But it's real and exists in all places where there's life, every single day.
Ten years had always felt like an eternity for Simon. The pair had used to grin and say; 'Ten years! Holy crap! We've known each other way too long!'
But ten years was short, barely a scratch in time. They weren't enough, they would never be. A decade was fragile.
Isabelle stayed next to him, not saying a word. She just rested her head on his shoulder as he started to tremble, eventually putting her arms around him.
She knew words like "It's okay" or "You'll be fine" would mean nothing to him. Reassurances would be ridiculous. This wasn't going to get better anytime soon. Maybe never.
Vampires couldn't cry, but Simon made a valiant effort. When Isabelle leaned closer to kiss him gently, he could smell the salt on her face. It drowned her cheeks in her own humanity, practically punching Simon in the gut with how alive she was, and how dead he and Clary were.
They must've looked so stupid from anyone walking by. A shaking vampire, trying to find tears that would not come, with a Shadowhunter girl that had a discarded whip at her side. Sitting on those stupid flimsy chairs that Simon could break with a twitch of his wrist.
Of course, it took a lot more than a flick of a hand to break Simon himself. And it seemed that Fate had decided to see what exactly it would take to find that point.
Sometimes people die for a good reason – honour, integrity, for loved ones. Other times the death is an easily avoidable accident. There's no glory in that, but so much more pain.
Her funeral was one that followed Shadowhunter tradition – there had actually been two funerals, one for her mundane friends and one for her heritage. Simon didn't attend the mundane one. He wasn't allowed in a church. That's what happens to the God-damned that have been cursed spectacularly well.
The Shadowhunter funeral was beautiful, he couldn't deny that. White was everywhere; hanging from the ceiling, flowering from the floor and seeming to radiate light. It hung from the shoulders of the guests, and was braided into Isabelle's dark hair.
It was a fragile beauty, cold and impersonal.
Simon really hated white.
There were chairs for them to sit on, all plastic with thick white cloth covering their cheapness. They were embroidered with cream-white patterns that meant nothing to someone who wasn't a Shadowhunter.
Clary lay on a slab of highly decorated stone in the front of the room, scorched by flames of previous hunters that lay on the same granite. She was wearing a white dress, one that made her skin looked pasty and wrong. Her face was coated with a fine layer of make-up that wasn't her tone.
Her freckles shone, little tiny beacons on her body. Freckles he had traced, ones that had rolled along with each movement she made, the spots he used to be fascinated by.
They carved the runes into her skin, cutting through those freckles, ruining them. They traced ones for peace and right of passage in the afterlife. Simon wanted to scream at them as they murmured their rituals. She was dead already, decorating her body with tattoos wasn't going to save a soul. It would do nothing for Clary.
She was gone now. Carved pictures meant nothing to the dead.
Then came the fire runes. They were ugly and spiraling, looking like flames before they even served their purpose. He hated every one of them. They didn't belong on her, not a single one.
The sheet was put over her body by some faceless Shadowhunter. A lock of her hair spiraled down gently over the slab, curling down the side of the stone.
For a moment, time seemed to freeze as they held a flame to the white cloth. It flared up, her body bursting into light and colour. Her hair, for once, looked dull and boring compared to the bright flame. Despite that, Simon could only focus on that tiny little piece of Clary.
A breeze changed direction, and for a moment, smoke hit his face. He breathed it in, realising it would be the last time he smelled her.
Well, that was a lie. The real Clary smelled like lavender. Not like a burnt people, not like the end. Clary had never smelled like hopelessness.
Then the last of the flames swallowed her, and the strand of hair disappeared into the flames made by the Shadow-people.
Sometimes people have the fondest desire to just survive. They're the ones that never really live, those who consider death to be the ugliest defeat.
They scattered her ashes over a river. Jocelyn didn't want to bury her, and Clary wasn't qualified to reside with the rest of the Shadowhunters. Simon knew that both ways would be something Clary hated.
She needed to run with the river and in the air and fall in the rain, not be compressed into a brick and be laid to rest with a million other ashes. She didn't deserve to be eaten by maggots while being suffocated by dirt.
This way was better. She'd live in the sky and grow from soil. She'd be in the snow that fell onto the roofs of her favourite buildings. She'd be the breeze that hit peoples' faces as they walked down the same avenues she once did.
He tried not to think too hard as he watched dust float over the river, snatched away by the breeze, scattering and spreading out into the air. Some probably fell into the river, maybe onto trees as well.
That dust used to be a girl. That girl used to be his best friend.
That dust had laughed, it had cried, had fought. The dust sang, danced, grinned, listened, skipped, stared, talked, showered, atekissedbreathedlived.
That dust floating over water had held him, kissed him once, had talked to him at midnight about things that didn't matter.
That dust had been a heart, lungs, a brain, lips, hands, eyes. It used to be delicate fingernails and red, red hair.
It used to be Clary.
Sometimes people choose to only remember, once they realise that looking into the past is so much better than thinking about the future.
On occasion, he'd catch a piece of her. A smell in a store, a shimmer of the right shade of red. A curl on a stranger's lips that looked like hers. A half-forgotten memory of a bad anime. He'd hear her laugh when walking down a street at nighttime.
It was one of these nights that he found Jace Wayland outside a club that was pounding music. Simon approached him, surprised. He hadn't seen the boy in over a month.
"Vampire," Jace greeted.
"Dickhead," he replied, no malice in his voice. There wasn't much of anything in his words. Simon had become unfamiliar with expressing emotions of late.
Jace smiled ruefully. "What are you doing here?"
"Same as you, I guess." Simon shrugged.
"Looking for things to kill?"
Simon sighed. "Only time." He leaned back against the wall, so that they were both looking out onto the busy street. They stood still, drinking in the night.
Finally, Jace broke the silence. "Do you regret knowing her, vampire?"
"Never," he replied. "She made me who I am now."
Jace rubbed the back of his neck. "It would've been so much easier if we hadn't met her," he said after a moment.
"So? She helped me live. I'd rather have several years with her and no more after that, rather than none at all."
"For once, I agree with you. How surprising."
"I'll be sure to write it down in my diary tonight." Simon replied dryly.
They stood, breathing in the muggy air of the city. It was early autumn, but Simon would never feel the cold. They waited until the sky became tinted by streaks of pink and orange before they departed, saying no goodbye.
Sometimes, people move on.