Work Text:
It began with Raphael stumbling across a healing Simon in an alley two blocks from the institute. He’s battered and bloody and Raphael can see the moment his broken nose clicks back in to place. It’s grotesque and disgusting and something the vampire has seen before in his long lifetime, but he’s never seen it on Simon, so this time the sight stirs something dark and twisted in his stomach. Because someone had done this to Simon, someone had hurt him so bad that the blood on his face had dried before his bones had healed.
It began with Simon’s choked out ‘Jace’ in reply to Raphael’s broken demands, his thumb brushing gently over a rapidly disappearing bruise on Simon’s chin. For a minute Simon had looked so vulnerable, so human, that the coldness of his skin had shocked Raphael. But the name had broken him out of his daze, awakening a deep and desperate desire beneath his skin.
It began with Raphael’s voice, cold and emotionless. “Jace did this?” He asks, and his tone is so deadly that Simon shivers where he lays in Raphael’s arms, a cold fear running through his exhausted body. But still, he nods. And in response, Raphael tenses and grips Simon closer in his arms. “He’s dead.” Raphael says, flat and emotionless. “Dead.”
“No-Raphael-don’t, I just. I need you to-please.” And Raphael pauses, but doesn’t take back the words. He simply gathers the boy in his arms and takes him back to the hotel where he lays him gently, reverently in his resting space. Simon had fallen asleep on the way back, and he stays asleep even as Raphael arranges his body in the coffin. He’s still covered in dried blood, his mouth slightly ajar, his eyes closed, and to Raphael he looks far too much like he did when he first lifted the boy in his arms before he had awakened as a vampire.
Raphael leaves Simon sleeping, but at the door he turns one last time, for one last look at the pale figure who shouldn’t have been turned in the first place. Who shouldn’t be able to see vampires or warlocks or shadowhunters or fae at all. Who should be happy, living a mundane life where all his dreams came true. Who shouldn’t be hurt and broken and weakened by someone who claimed to love him.
Raphael looks back one last time before he closes the door and keeps on walking until he is on the street again. Then he strolls lazily towards the institute. And there he waits, til he sees an unfortunately familiar head of blond hair. As Jace comes into view and the vampire crouches preparing to pounce, Raphael smiles.
It began when Simon awakens from a deep sleep to see an eerily still body sitting on a chair beside his coffin. It takes a moment for his enhanced senses to detect that the visitor is Raphael, a silent and motionless Raphael with blood coating his hands and mouth. Of course, he knows Simon has awoken, but Raphael doesn’t move, his head facing down, his eyes fixed on the blood painting his hands.
“Raphael.” It’s not a question, it’s simply a name that Simon throws out into the darkness. He’s not a fool, the harsh grip around his heart giving away the fact that he knows. He knows what’s happened. He knows what it means. He knows, yet all he chooses to say is the name. Again, and again, like a mantra. “Raphael. Raphael. Raphael.”
He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, Raphael still and silent, Simon sat up repeating the same words over and over. All he knows is that when the sounds start echoing through the hotel, marching, fighting, running footsteps coming to get them, Raphael looks up. The whites of his teeth clear in the darkness as he smiles.
“He’ll never hurt you again, Simon” Raphael says, like his own prayer. “Simon.”
It’s the last word he says before what seems like half the clave itself bursts through the door, heading directly towards the figure sitting in the darkness. They seize and bind him roughly and he keeps his eyes on Simon the entire time.
“Simon.”
“Raphael.” It’s spoken too late, too softly for the shadowhunters to hear as they march the clan leader out, but it’s the last thing Raphael hears and the one thing he keeps with him as they take him deep underground.
The city of bones is as dark and dismal a place as its name implies, and Simon hates that he feels so afraid walking down the dark hallway accompanied by a monster swathed in robes with a mouth stitched and sunken eyes. He hates that he feels afraid just visiting, just temporarily feeling the cold dampness of the air and only momentarily hearing the broken screams from invisible bodies. He hates himself, because he dares to feel anything selfish when Raphael is locked away inside this hell because of him.
Raphael is pale and white when he turns his face towards the bars, his hands are scarred and shaking. Simon opens his mouth instinctively to ask why he hasn’t healed, but then he hears Clary’s voice in his head as she explained the mortal sword, how it felt like fishhooks gripping your flesh and for a vampire burned like holy water. So Simon closes his mouth and doesn’t ask, instead he reaches his own hands through the bars and hopes that Raphael will receive the unspoken request.
When he does begrudgingly raise himself up and come close to the door, grumpily taking Simon’s hands in his, Simon is pressed to remember who he was planning on helping when he first reached out. Because while it’s true, and his clan leader does look somewhat less broken holding his smooth palms against the others scarred ones, Simon finds himself smiling for the first time in what feels like years.
If he focuses on the slight warmth that comes from their joined hands, Simon can tune out the screams, block out the cold and forget the hell they are in. If he just closes his eyes and feels he can almost imagine himself back at the hotel, almost remember exactly how it felt the first time Raphael held him like this, the first time he woke the whole clan with his nightmare and Raphael was the only one who took the chance to calm him down.
And if he just concentrates on that feeling, that memory, he can forget the times Raphael judged him with a reproachful gaze for sneaking back from his dates with Jace, barely making it under cover before sunrise. He can forget the moments where he’d return depressed and frustrated because Jace was trying, he just didn’t understand. And he can forget the last night together when Simon just broke, asking him again and again why he couldn’t be more like Raphael, to be met again and again by fists against his flesh and nails against his skin.
All he feels is the skin where his hand meets Raphael’s and its far too late to analyse the emotion in his head, in his heart, so he just keeps his eyes locked with Raphael’s and hopes that the older vampire can read there everything he never had a chance to say. Raphael’s own eyes are dull and empty but they’ve still got the flecks Simon can count by heart and they still make him want to do things, go places, be someone. They’re still Raphael’s and Simon desperately needs to commit them to memory so he never for a moment forgets how they look and how the make him feel.
The city of bones has no silence to be broken by Simon’s voice as he asks, broken and uncaring of the audible tears, “How was the trial?”
Raphael scoffs and feels a horrible, instinctual desire to turn away from the too-bright eyes of the boy in front of him. They give him hope, and it’s a deadly, disastrous thing that Raphael can’t afford to have.
“The trial?” He repeats with a voice, while dry and cracked still reeks of sarcasm. “It was…” And what is he going to say? What word fully wraps up the hell that the farce for a trial was? What term could describe the pain that racked through his dead body even as he held the holy instrument and watched Victor pace in front of him, awaiting the questions? And then what questions they were.
“Do you admit to the cold-blooded murder of Jace Wayland?” Victors voice is self-assured, confident. Lazy and arrogant and Raphael longs to leap over the podium and tear the confidence from the shadowhunters oh-so-poised body.
Instead he is forced to stand, trembling from pain like a wet dog and answer his questions mechanically. “Yes.” He says, the words torn out of him and taking with them the last of his freedom.
“You are aware that by doing this you were breaking the accords?” Aldertree is grinning, not even trying to hide his enjoyment.
“Yes.” Raphael shudders out, hating how weak his voice sounds.
“And you killed this man without a prior battle?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you claim that it was not without reason?”
“Yes.”
“What reason could have persuaded you to willingly break the accords and take the life of a highly respected shadowhunter, knowing the punishment for such an act?”
Raphael didn’t even try to fight the words as they are ripped from his body, yet they still hurt as if they are being broken from his very bones. “He hurt Simon. Even though he was supposed to take care of him. And love him.”
Victor looks smug as he continues with his questions. “And why should this affect you? Simon is, after all, a vampire who can quickly heal. Did you sire him?”
“No, Camille sired him,” And, dammit, Aldertree knows the answer, it must be written on his face for the entire world to read. “I did it because I loved him. And no one should ever be able to hurt him if I can stop it.”
“The trial was fine.” Raphael finishes, the lie evident in the way Simon grimaces and closes his eyes as if the words hurt him as much as the trial hurt Raphael.
“Liar.” Simon sends a small, halfway smile into the cell and Raphael finds himself smirking back. They’re both pretending, and who knows for who’s benefit it is.
They both know that they’ve got just hours, minutes, seconds left, yet neither of them speak of that. They talk of Lily, of her tentative relationship with the werewolf girl. Well, Simon talks and Raphael inserts grunts periodically, but that’s okay. That’s how it’s supposed to be, how it’s always been. How Simon wants to remember it.
Eventually, Simon stops talking and they both slide to the ground, each on separate sides on the bars yet with their hands and their arms and their foreheads and as much of their bodies as possible touching each other. It doesn’t matter anymore that Simon talks too much and annoys everyone and is generally just clueless and the worst vampire everywhere, or that Raphael is emotionally constipated and silent and sometimes goes a whole day communicating with growls. All that matters is that in the end it is just them, Raphael and Simon, together.
“There’s nothing?” Raphael’s usually the one who doesn’t verbalise his inquiries properly, yet this time its Simon, asking the question without saying the words, yet Raphael understands, like he always has.
“No,” He replies quietly, “I killed a Shadowhunter. There’s nothing we can do.” He tries to smirk, tries to shrug, but its half-hearted at best. It doesn’t convince Simon in the least, but he grins back, pretending.
“The law is the law.” He whispers, and it’s supposed to be mocking, but it falls flat between them even as Raphael repeats it.
“The law is the law.”
It ends when Simon is abruptly awoken, surprised to find that he’d fallen asleep on the stone, his front plastered to Raphael’s against the bars. The men looking like monsters descend down the hall, their destination evident when they stop outside the cell. Their unseeing eyes seem to focus on Simon’s body before they careless lift him and restrain him in their arms, his figure almost hidden in their gaping robes. Raphael fights when they take him from the cell, not to delay his sentence but just wanting to see Simon’s face. One last time.
It ends when the voices echo through Simon’s ears, tearing invasively into his head with their force.
“It’s almost sunrise.” The monsters announce gravely.
“Simon.” Raphael says before they take him around the corner.
“Raphael.” Simon says before the arms holding him finally let him go and he falls to the floor. He immediately rises, already starting to run after the disappearing figures when a hand drops gently upon his shoulder. His eyes follow the hand and subsequent arm until he finds the face of the silent brother restraining him, and if it were possible the scarred face looks at him gently.
“You do not wish to see that, Simon Lewis.” The voice sounded in his head and it hurt, but Simon nodded.
It ends when Simon hears the unearthly yell, echoing around the chamber where he remained with the monstrous man. It should be no different than the ones he’d been hearing all day, yet it is. Because it belongs to Raphael like Simon should have. Like Simon would have if only he’d known what could have happened. The screams belong to Raphael and the salty, warm and incredibly human tears shed belong to Simon. And it’s wrong, so wrong, because there’s Raphael out there, and here’s Simon in here, and they are apart.
And so it ends with a last scream suddenly cut off. And Brother Zachariah removes his hand from Simon and hesitates before studying the shaking body and carefully wiping his tearful face.
“You will be someone great, Simon Lewis.” He speaks, like a prophet, like someone who knows. “You will save lives and be a hero and be happy again. You will be unlike any other downworlder, if you can just hold on to life just a little longer.”
Simon walks away from the silent brother without replying, without looking back. But he hears it repeated in his head anyway. ‘Hold on to life’. It’s impossible, Simon thinks. He’s already dead.
Days later, Victor Aldertree will find a broken Simon Lewis forgotten in a corner of the institute. And when he places a hand on Simon’s where no one else has dared to touch since Raphael and reminds him in a voice designed to be gentle that ‘the law is the law’, Simon won’t stop himself from unsheathing his fangs and sinking them into the dark skin of the man who killed his leader.
And there, it ends, just like it began.