I wrote this… SO long ago. And meant to put it up then. And forgot. But anyways… my contribution to this fandom. :)
Leaving is easier than he thought it would be.
If he wasn't a vampire, he'd be nineteen by now. He graduated high school, like a normal teenager, and now it's only natural that the next step is to go to college. More specifically, the logical next step is for him to leave.
Clary all but begs him not to leave New York. She wants him to stay so badly and all right, maybe he wants to stay too. But he also wants to leave and that part of him is stronger.
"You're going to come back and visit, right?" Clary asks tearfully, eyes looking greener than ever. "You're not just leaving for good?"
"I'll visit. I promise." Simon smiles and prays that she won't be able to see through the facade. He knows she can. He's always been as clear as glass when it comes to her.
Las Vegas is probably the best place for a vampire to go if he wants to stay hidden.
The heat is all but unbearable but Simon doesn't care. All he cares about is that he's far, far away from New York. He won't be able to go back for years now, because there's still that lingering chance that someone will recognize him. So he puts up with the heat and the sunshine and the dust that floats in the wind, and he makes the city his home.
He sends out four postcards: one to Clary, one to Jocelyn and Luke, one to Isabelle, and one to Maia. He writes his address on the back of all of them but nothing more. He hopes it's enough.
It is. Clary writes long letters once a month or so, detailing adventures with demons and things more exciting than what Simon gets to deal with. Clary's mom and Luke don't write to him much, but they do make sure he's okay and not starved of blood or anything. It's sweet in the weirdest way. Maia writes sometimes, mostly asking him if he's found anybody out west. He thinks she worries about him sometimes.
He writes to Isabelle more than anyone else. They keep up a regular correspondence. It's not the same as being there for each other, but it's close enough. He can't be there for her, because one day she's going to die and he'll still be alive. He doesn't want that. He won't be able to take it.
Vegas turn out to be a huge Downworlder hub.
Simon can't honestly say that this surprises him.
There are plenty of dives spread throughout the city that have evolved into hangouts for various Downworlders. He goes to the vampire clubs a lot because the drinks are cheap and they're good. He never asks where the blood is from, though. He doesn't want to know.
Nothing particularly exciting ever happens in Vegas- not compared to New York. Oh, there are demon attacks and he runs into a surprising amount of Shadowhunters, but it's not the same. It's just not.
After a while Simon tries dating various Downworlders, with mixed, mostly negative results. The werewolf nearly rips his head off, the faerie tries to enchant him into being her slave, the vampire is drunk and turns into a gray rat (and there are too many memories for him to be okay with that), but things are going well with the warlock. She's pretty and she's going to be there forever and it's almost enough for him but in the end it's not.
He'd be lying to himself if he said he wasn't thinking of Isabelle every time he saw the warlock's face.
He leaves in the middle of the night and doesn't leave anything behind but a note that says he's sorry. It's a lie but it's something for her to hold onto.
Pittsburgh is a very long way away from Las Vegas but it's also very, very close to New York. Simon's treading dangerous ground in terms of memories and going back, but that's all right.
He sends everyone the postcards again because they deserve to know that he left. Everyone writes and asks what happened, he's been in Vegas for two years and why would he just leave? He reassures them that nothing is wrong, and he just needed a change of scenery.
He's not sure who believes him and who doesn't.
There's a vampire club in Pittsburgh that Simon goes to regularly. Sometimes he hooks up with other vampires. Sometimes they're girls and sometimes they're not, on the nights when he doesn't really care. He's not gay or even bi but it actually sort of feels good to fuck a guy every now and again. In all honesty it feels really good to fuck anyone. It's the closest to being alive that he ever gets to feel. Maybe that's why Magnus does it.
One day he checks his mail and he finds a wedding invitation from Maia and Jordan.
He can't say he's surprised. In fact, he kind of knew it would happen, and he's glad for them both.
It takes every ounce of his courage but he buys the plane ticket to New York.
There seem to be four different groups of people at the wedding.
There's Jordan's people (mostly Praetor Lupus), Maia's family (probably her parents), Maia's pack (he notices Bat, looking more scarred than ever before but still very much alive), and the friends.
Simon knows that he's pretty much in the minority here. He's a vampire at a werewolf wedding and he can feel the way the werewolves look at him- like they want to rip his head off, and it's a perfectly justifiable feeling. But it's actually really, really nice to see everyone again- Luke's there as pack leader, of course, and he sees Jocelyn and Magnus and Alec all out there too.
The wedding is surprisingly hard to watch because all Simon can see is what's changed. He sees that Maia's hair is longer but Jordan's is shorter, and he notices the new scars on both of them. When he sees Clary and Jace he sees almost the same changes.
He doesn't look for Isabelle. If he sees her, he knows that he'll stay, and he can't do that.
As he expected he gets a letter from Isabelle demanding if he was actually there, a letter from Luke demanding why Maia's mad at him for no clear reason, a letter from Maia demanding why he didn't talk to Isabelle, and a letter from Clary that almost exactly matches Maia's.
He packs his bags that night and heads somewhere west.
Colorado is too close to Las Vegas.
At this point Simon is wondering if there's anywhere in the whole country that he'll feel safe staying at. Probably not.
He doesn't send the postcards for a month. It's partly because he forgot and partly because really he doesn't want to write to any of them anymore. He wonders if this is the price of forever. If it is, it's only been eight years of forever and so far it's been hell. He can't understand how any immortal is sane. They're probably not.
He gets a wedding invitation from Clary and Jace. He burns it, sells everything he owns, and buys a plane ticket to Venice.
Simon doesn't know Italian and thus knows that of all the places he could've run to, Venice is definitely not the smartest, but that's okay. He registers at a local school, taking Italian lessons every day. Within a month he's fluent in the language.
The vampires in Venice are all exactly like the vampires in New York, and Vegas, and Pittsburgh, and Colorado. The only difference is that they're Italian and not American.
He never sends a letter saying where he is. It would hurt too much to admit that he ran away.
The funny thing about being immortal is that somehow, you make a web of connections.
It all when Simon stops a pack of werewolves from attacking a vampire, he discovers that the woman he saved specializes in fake papers and offers to set him up with a passport, a visa, and whatever else he needs to go somewhere else.
Forever has lasted for twelve years, four of them have been in Venice, and he agrees.
The locations all pass by in a blur. He goes to Canada, Portugal, Venezuela, Tokyo, Indonesia, Russia, London, and probably more than that without setting foot in the United States even once.
His connections, which he's now sure to make wherever he goes, are growing increasingly complex. Sometimes he saves people and directly gets help; sometimes he saves them and gets friend-of-a-friend kind of help.
It's bizarre how many vampires need saving.
By the time eighty years have passed he's finally ready to go back to New York just once. He sheds every fake name and goes back as Simon Lewis.
He'll never admit that he's hoping against hope that maybe someone will remember him.
It's the hardest thing in the world to look at Clary's grave.
He hadn't realized that it'd been eighty years, not really. All he knew was that time was passing and he still wasn't ready. So he waited.
But looking at the stone he can see so clearly that what felt like nothing to him was actually a very, very long time. Clary had probably been waiting for him at least part of the time, because he'd been eight years into immortality when he left. It's been seventy-two years since he's seen her and he's never going to see her again.
Simon spends the rest of the day finding everyone's graves. He finds Jace and wonders if it was a demon. He finds Alec and wonders if he ever married Magnus. He finds Luke and Jocelyn not far from Clary's. He finds Maia and Jordan together.
After a while he finds a Jewish cemetery and looks for his mother's grave. There's nothing to say to her but sorry and that's all he says. She never saw him again after he left.
His sister's grave is in the same cemetery. He says sorry to her too.
He doesn't look for Isabelle's grave. He doesn't want to.
That's a lie. He spends the whole next day searching for it.
When he finds it he tells her that he's sorry, too.
The Hotel Dumont is still intact, which is a little surprising to Simon. It was old when he was sixteen- well, when he was actually sixteen, not just biologically sixteen and mentally ninety-six like he is now- and it's ancient eighty years later and it's still standing.
"I would've thought it'd be knocked down by now," he says aloud, not quite knowing if he's talking to someone.
"It's come close," a voice agrees. He's not at all surprised when Raphael steps out of the shadows. "Daylighter. You're still alive."
"And so are you," Simon answers, not really knowing what to say. Is this some vampire custom that he hasn't picked up on yet? "Well, as alive as we can be."
Raphael chuckles. "How long have you walked this earth, Daylighter?"
"Would I be whining if I said too long?"
"Yes, you would."
"Ninety-six years. Almost ninety-seven."
"If you think that's too long, I wonder how you'll deal with being two hundred, and three hundred, and even a thousand."
Simon laughs aloud. "Who says I'm going to deal with it? And who said I'm going to live that long?"
The Mark of Cain is something that Simon's forgotten about, for the most part. It's just a part of him, and not even that special of a part, he thinks. All it does is make him want to wander more than the average vampire, and judging by what every other vampire he's met has said, that's a lot of wandering.
The "sevenfold" thing doesn't happen much- most of the time if he's saving someone in an attempt to make a connection; he makes sure that he's never on the receiving end of the danger. It hasn't shown off the ability to turn people to salt in a very long time, which is why he's more or less forgotten that it'll happen when he gets jumped.
It's a back alleyway and he's stupid enough to let his guard down when someone with a knife backs him into a corner. The whole thing is a blur because that's the way everything seems to be now: just one huge blur. The knife is raised and it's going to cut his neck and he's stupid enough to think this is it when it swings down and-
Suddenly the woman is literally falling to pieces right in front of him and for the first time in about sixty years nothing is a blur, everything is painfully clear as she turns to salt.
"Sevenfold," he says aloud, wondering about this woman and if she had family or people who will miss her, and promptly turns around and vomits into a corner.
When all the blood he's had recently-, which really isn't that much-, is finally out, he realizes that there's someone standing at the other end of the alley, just watching him. Someone with a familiar silhouette even after eighty years.
"Magnus?"
"I think you need a Bloody Mary," the warlock answers with a grin and for a minute it feels like Simon never left.
"Eighty years doesn't feel so long when you've lived through it," Simon says gloomily, staring at the drink in his hands.
"Where have you even been for eighty years? Last we heard from you, you lived in Colorado, and then…" Magnus gestures with his hands to indicate his disappearance. "Nothing."
"I've been… anywhere but here." He laughs but it's a bitter sound. "Venice, Montreal, Lisbon… Tokyo… London… just about anywhere." He takes a long drink from the Bloody Mary. It's the best he's had in his life.
"Why'd you come back?"
"Because I was ready. I didn't think… I was so stupid, thinking that I could just come back and say hi after eighty years. Of course they'd be dead."
"Do you wish you weren't here?"
He drinks up the rest of the Bloody Mary to stall for time. It actually feels really, really good to have a real drink. It's the first time in too long. But he doesn't really know how to answer the question.
"Simon." Magnus fixes him with an intense stare. "Do you wish you weren't here?"
"No," he admits, staring at the now-empty glass. "I came back when I was ready."
"Are you leaving again?"
"Probably."
"Why not stay?"
"Because-" well, actually, that's a really good question. He'd expected to be assaulted by hundreds of painful memories going throughout the city, but there was nothing like that, just a dull acceptance that times have changed and he's changed too. "I don't know."
"You could stay with me," Magnus offers.
Simon does his best not to gape at him in confused shock. "What?"
"If you want to stay. And you need somewhere. I just figured- it'd probably be easier, since you know me."
"Yeah." He nods before he can tell himself not too. "All right."
Simon doesn't stay during the day, when Magnus has work to do. He goes out to Central Park, or to a Chinese restaurant, or very occasionally he picks up a werewolf for a cheap fuck or something. It's not healthy and he knows it but it helps and that's what he needs more than anything.
He's pretty sure that Magnus is actually worried about him to some degree. It's nothing huge but it feels great in a selfish way to have someone care about him again.
There's very little awkwardness between them. There are definitely implications of him moving in with Magnus but for the most part neither of them cares.
The first time- and the last- that someone brings it up is one night when they're at a bar and someone makes a comment about how it's been a while since they've seen a vampire and a warlock together. Simon and Magnus take one look at each other, and though they'll never admit it, both of them are imagining getting it on with each other, trying to figure out what it would be like. At exactly the same moment, they turn back to the werewolf who said it in the first place and shake their heads.
"No way in hell," Simon says firmly.
"That's just… no," Magnus laughs.
That's such a solid end to the idea that nobody questions it again.
"Do you miss them?"
"Every single day. It's been eighty-two years and I think about them every day."
"Do you ever wish you came back sooner?"
"No. Never. I don't believe in regret. If I started regretting that I'd regret every choice I made in my life."
"And you've lived such a long time."
"You've lived nine times longer."
"Do you even understand what sarcasm is?"
"Do you ever miss Alec?"
"There's not a moment that I don't."
"Nine hundred years and you can't stop thinking about one Shadowhunter."
"Eighty years and neither can you."
"I think I need to leave soon."
"That's all right. Vampires need to leave sometimes. And I'm sure the Mark helps."
"If I come back-"
"When you come back, just knock and I'll be there."
"Thanks, Magnus."
"That doesn't mean I'm helping pay for your plane ticket to God-knows-where."
It's some kind of routine. Every ten years or so Simon comes back to New York from wherever he was hiding and stays with Magnus for a couple of years. Neither of them will ever admit how comforting it is to have something to rely on.
And nothing goes smoothly; things go wrong in Alicante and there are uprisings of Downworlders and every time something happens they always find each other, because what else is there really to rely on?
Simon's infinitely more grateful than he'll ever admit, because he knows that Magnus has met more people, more warlocks and vampires who will live forever and have lived forever, people more important than he will ever be. And still they always find each other.
"Do you still miss him?"
"I can't stop. And you miss her too?"
"Of course. One day, you're going to die, you know. Something's going to kill you and in whatever version of heaven there is, Alec's going to be waiting for you."
"And that can't happen for you and Isabelle?"
"The only way I can die is if I kill myself. The Mark, remember? Sevenfold."
"Have you ever considered killing yourself? Really considered it?"
"I have. But I won't. Not yet."
"Not yet?"
"I'm not dying until I'm ready to die."
It's a Tuesday and he's six hundred forty-three years old in Beijing when Simon hears that Magnus Bane has been killed and suddenly there's nothing left for him to live for.
The feeling is impossible to explain. It's like the bottom dropped out of his world and he's falling because the one constant thing he's had to go back to is gone. And it's not like how he felt when he stood over Clary's grave for the first time, or over Isabelle's. It's not like losing someone he loves or loved romantically. It's like losing his best friend. His sort-of-kind-of-not-really-but-could-be brother.
He flies back to New York and finds a piece of glass sharp enough to cut through his wrists and his throat. He's tired of living and this is the fastest way to die.
"You know, it took you long enough to get here."
"Shut up, Izzy." He smiles. "Sorry it took so long."
"It's all right. I'm just glad you're here."