Chapter Text
Simon
Watford didn’t end how I thought it would.
I kept picturing some major battle. Me vs the Humdrum. Me vs the old families. Me vs.... something spectacular. Something major. Something impressive. Something… final.
I didn’t have a life before Watford. Not really. Everything that I was back then had been replaced with everything that I became once I was introduced to the World of Mages. So it stood to reason that I wouldn’t have a life afterwards either. Watford is who I am now. Being a mage is who I am. It doesn’t matter how shit of a mage I’ve always been, it was being a mage that saved me. I don’t know who I would’ve ended up being otherwise.
But life goes on, I guess. And it keeps just going on.
Nothing extraordinary happens.
My final year of Watford was just a year at Watford. I got close to failing a lot of my classes. Baz was stuck-up and annoying. The Humdrum attacked. I went off. I went back to school. The cycle repeated until eventually the end of the year rolled around. Watford was over. My life had to start.
And I was still alive. Just like I had been at the end of any other year. Looking back, it seemed silly that I had believed something big had to happen in the World of Mages just because something in my life was coming to an end. I had assumed that everything would change when Watford ended (before Watford ended, really) right up until Watford ended and nothing changed.
Nothing changed, but at the same time, everything changed.
I was alone.
Agatha broke up with me midway through the year and moved to America to go to university.
Penny has gone to university in London. She wanted me to go with her. We’d always had a plan to move in with each other after Watford. I wanted to move in with her, but the Mage didn’t want me to. He wanted me around, said he needed me to continue fighting, that the World of Mages needed me. So I stayed with the Mage and Penny moved to London and we try to stay in contact but she’s too busy living her life and I’m too busy living mine. I knew people grew apart. I just didn’t think that applied to us.
I even miss Baz.
I never thought I would. I thought that if there would be anyone I would have no issue dropping from my life, it would be Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch. But I had lived with him for years. He had become a constant in my life. Yet another thing that I didn’t know was part of me until it was gone.
They all were, the entire school was, a part of me. And that part has been ripped away. It’s left me behind. A shell of who I once was. Nothing real left. So I just do what is expected of me because what else is there? The Mage is the only person I have left.
Nights are the worst.
I have to relive everything again and again. There really is no escaping who I’ve become. Every kill is repeated the next night. And the night after that. And the night after that. They build and build and merge together. All my worst memories show up at the same time, playing over each other as if layering sheets of tracing paper one above the other.
But I wake up in the morning and push the nights’ memories away and let the Mage give me whatever task he deems necessary for the day.
Today is a day like any other. A brand-new monster to kill.
Today is vampires.
A whole nest of them who've been feeding off humans. Who have been starting to try and feed off mages. That’s how they’ve shown up on our radar. They can’t continue. Of course they can't. We can’t let them. I can’t let them.
So I do what the Mage wants of me and I track down the den. I don’t even try and talk to them anymore. I did once. I used to try and use my words to see if I could stop this endless cycle. I thought of Baz every time I did it. Of Baz and dragons and magic that was mine but had control and a situation that ended without casualties. It never worked. Of course it never would for me. So I do what the Mage wants of me and I stand in the middle of a circle of men waiting for the moment they flash their fangs.
It only feels like a second in between getting that confirmation of what they are before I’m stood surround by a circle of dead bodies.
Job done.
Report to the Mage.
Go home.
The next morning is bad.
I wake up in a cold sweat with flashes pushing their way through my brain. Fangs. Swords. Stakes. Ashes. Eyes. Him.
No.
I can’t think like that. I can’t think of that. He isn’t my life now. None of that is my life now. Nobody from back then is. Even if there’s a body lying at my feet that looks all too much like somebody who sat across from me in Elocution. It doesn’t matter because I don’t have anything else to be doing.
So I get dressed. I eat breakfast. I go to the Mage. It’s goblins today. (Goblins are easier. At least they’re actively trying to kill me.) Go back to the Mage. Go home. Sleep.
Eat. Sleep. Kill. Repeat.
I don’t want this.
Eat. Sleep. Kill. Repeat.
I can't do this.
Eat. Sleep. Kill. Repeat.
Stop.
Eat. Sleep. Kill. Repeat.
Please