Simon Lewis (totalfangboy) wrote in momadness_log, @ 2023-11-05 15:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | dc: oliver queen, shadowhunters: simon lewis |
Who: Simon Lewis and Oliver Queen
Where: The Facility
When: Sunday, November 5, 2020
What: Return of the Vamp!
Rating/Warnings: Low/none - Spoilers for the end of Shadowhunters
Status: Completed via GDocs
"This," Simon announced, "is not the Institute."
He said it to an empty room that decidedly looked nothing like a converted cathedral and more like some pseudo-futuristic space that was all shiny metal and glass. Anxiety prickled across his scalp.
Hand.
He'd been holding Izzy's hand when he stepped through Magnus's portal out of Edom. The burn of heavenly fire continued to sizzle in phantom licks along his nerves. Simon shook out his hand, flexing his fingers around nothing. He'd thought she was about to die. He'd thought they were all about to die. (A little voice in the back of his head whispered that instead they'd committed demon genocide. He ignored it.) Simon glanced back at the aperture that had apparently spat him out, then back out at the room at large. "Uh… hello?"
"Simon! You're back!" Oliver couldn't contain his joy as he jogged across the hangar toward the old-newcomer. Izzy would be stoked to have someone from her world back in this one. It had been a really rough blow to have all of her family disappear at once. He'd been keeping her spirits up as best he could but Simon being back would definitely have a better chance of making her happier.
Stopping a couple of feet from the younger man, he looked him over, noting the slight changes others might not. From the look on his face, the vampire didn't remember being here before, which was probably a blessing in disguise, what with Jace gone now. "Hey, so, this will sound completely wacko, but you've just hopped through the multiverse. You're now in New York, 2020 on a world with real live superheroes. You've also been here before."
Whoever this was, his smile could easily rival the sun, and Simon had to take a step back at the force of his exuberance. You're back. His hand was up between them, moved before he could really think about the action, and he stood there, trying to absorb what the guy was saying and failing spectacularly. "Four years?" He sounded scared and uncertain even to himself, and turned around to look at the machine behind him as much to give himself a moment as to assure himself it was there, that this was real. The heartbeat coming from the man who'd greeted him was real enough. "So, is this… portal magic?"
He almost touched the surface—it looked smooth—but curled his fingers back against his palm and turned again. The dude had the physique for a Shadowhunter, but none of the runes. A human, then. Probably. "Gotta say, you've got me at a disadvantage. How long was I here, if I was here before? Do you… Do you know what I am? What I can do?"
Halting as soon as Simon raised his hand, Oliver watched as his friend (hopefully again) processed the whole time travel aspect of his journey, nodding in confirmation to the mostly rhetorical question. Staying where he was, he looked at the shimmering blue aperture behind Simon and gave a little half shake of his head. "Not sure if it works via magic or science or just sheer cosmic force. But it brings people to this universe from all over."
Simon gave a half blink and a shallow nod. His questions about this weird portal business were currently too multitudinous to even try to voice. Maybe later. Probably. Likely.
"Ah, yeah, I'm Oliver Queen. Not of this world either, but the first time you tumbled through the portal I was close behind you. That was a year and five months ago." The questions were reasonable and he answered them easily, "You're a vampire, but you can go out in daylight, you're fast, strong and musical. You had a minibar of blood in your room but I can't guarantee it'll still be there."
"A year and five months," he parroted back, then felt kind of stupid for it. Clearly Oliver knew him and seemed genuine in that knowing, like they'd been friends. He wouldn't have trusted just anyone with his vampiric background, but especially not a regular mundane. Unfortunately, he had plenty of experience with just how badly that could turn out. The not-knowing made Simon feel bad, which was a bizarre emotion to have on top of everything else. "You really do know me. Gotta admit, though, the minbar of blood is throwing me off. Are there more people like us here? What kind of world did you come from? Did you have a Shadow World too?"
Ollie knew this must be a double shock, being in a whole other world was one thing, but returning with no memory of being here before must be really freaky. It was nothing like those others amongst the portal community who had boomeranged. "You made a lot of friends here who will be stoked to see you. Plus your studio and instruments would have missed you too." He shook his head, "As far as I know, you're the only vampire, but we have a few werewolves, from different worlds to yours. I don't come from a world with a Shadow World… At least I don't think there is, there might be and I just don't know about it."
Puzzling over that for a beat, Oliver produced a tablet for Simon, already set up for his use. "We have meta-humans with various different abilities, like super speed or strength. A friend of mine can breathe underwater, communicate with fish and swim really fast. Then another has heat vision and super strength and speed, he can probably fly too seeing as the older version of him who is here can."
He'd almost forgotten the most important thing, "Izzy's here, from your world. So you'll have one familiar face."
His head, already faintly aching from the combo of angel-magic and angel-fire, gave a painful throb at the sheer amount of information being lobbed at him. Then again, Simon considered, this was probably how he made people feel when he went on a tangent. He kept swinging from being scared and nervous to excited at these fun new things to discover—and the fact that he had a freaking studio here threatened to put him over the moon. Yet any and all of his follow up questions, for he had so, so, so, so many, stalled when presented with the one piece of information that made his heart rise and his stomach plummet.
The data pad nearly fell out of his hand, fingers suddenly going numb. He'd gotten the barest glance at what looked like some kind of welcome letter when his head snapped up at Oliver. Simon could barely breathe. Not that he needed to, but old habits. "Izzy's here?" There went the parrot thing again. "Is she okay? We were just leaving Edom and it was on fire and then I was here. Has she been here long, like me? Or like I was? Had been? Tenses are weird."
"Yeah, she is, we fought a dragon together." Oliver smiled and the expression betrayed the affection he had for the Shadowhunter. What could he say, he was a sucker for bad ass, capable women. Tess, Lois, Dinah… he definitely had a type. "She was fine when I saw her this morning, still a little sad about you leaving. It hasn’t been long." He’d automatically reached to steady Simon’s hand, palm resting against the back so the tablet wouldn’t fall.
"She hasn’t been here as long as you and I, only a year this October." He nodded toward the door which would take them into the facility proper. "Want the tour? I’ll text Iz, I bet she’ll come meet us."
"We just fought a Lilith together," Simon pointed out, although he realized in an instant just how petulant he probably sounded. And stupid.
But he'd seen something in Oliver's face that he'd seen in his own when he was right in the middle of being in love with Clary Fray-then-Fairchild. Also when he'd had a massive crush on Maia. Oliver liked Izzy. With another look at him and the obvious show of genuine kindness, Simon was pretty sure she liked him right back, if she'd been here for a year. "Uh, yeah, a tour would be nice."
"Where would you like to start, Simon?" the device in his hand asked, making him fumble with it in a major way.
"What? Who?"
"I'm FRIDAY," the voice said again, this time coming from the walls and the ceiling as well. Simon looked around wildly. "Mr. Stark left me as a virtual assistant for the Avengers Facility, but I also operate from your data pad. A lot of people missed you, Simon, including me. I missed hearing your music."
At least the AI sounded nice. Simon was assuming she was an AI. A super advanced AI, but still. "Oh, um, cool? Was I doing that a lot? Using the studio?"
There was an uneasiness in his friend's responses which made him think that something major had changed in his life in the time he'd been away from the facility. Ollie hoped it wasn't something bad, but judging from the mentions of Edom, it likely was. "Two of our guys ended up in Edom a while ago, I'm glad you made it out okay. Both of you."
He smothered a laugh as FRIDAY startled Simon, half convinced that the AI enjoyed the reactions she got when suddenly speaking up. "Anything you need, FRIDAY can usually provide. She's definitely the MVP around here."
"You were, I think you were putting demos out, or at least in the process. There was definitely a lot of songwriting going on."
"Oh," Simon said, but about which part he couldn't have really pinned down in that moment. He had questions about the people who went to Edom. He had questions about the months and months he'd spent there. He had questions about the music he'd been recording. He had questions about Oliver and Izzy. They were chipping at the dam of continued shock in his head.
He craned his neck, looking at everything around him, but it was all one more thing for his beleaguered head to take in. Simon had lived here. He'd made music here. He'd had friends here. "You still have my demos?"
"Yes, Simon," FRIDAY returned, and it almost sounded like she was sorry to say it. "I fear it's all that remains of your music here, aside from the few composition notes and lyrics you put into your device. All of your handwritten songs disappeared when you did, as happens with the people who leave us."
Simon chewed this over as they approached a pair of double doors he could only assume led to an elevator. "It'll be like listening to something someone else wrote and performed, but knowing it came from me. Talk about an existential crisis, y'know?" He paused and considered something. "Was it just me and Izzy all this time? Did I ever say when I was from? What was happening in my life?"
They'd left the hangar behind, but evidently FRIDAY had followed them into the corridor. Oliver sent a grateful smile toward one of the security cameras, knowing she monitored everything, thankful for her interjection. He hadn't known the answer to Simon's question, but there was a little crumb of information he could share. "Dick has one of your guitars. He was with you when you vanished, and is one of your friends here."
Ollie was lucky, there hadn't been another version of him here before, so he didn't have that following in someone else's footsteps thing that Simon did now. "Yeah," he offered weakly, "I bet it feels like one." And there was the question he was hoping wouldn't crop up, but he answered, deciding not to elaborate too much on the Jace of it all. "Magnus and Alec were here with their little girl. Jace was here too. You all disappeared on the same day, leaving Izzy behind. It was really weird. You hadn't been a vampire for long, you mentioned what happened with Valentine. I'm glad he didn't succeed, by the way."
Simon frowned. He touched the side of his neck. It'd been weeks since Valentine, which was a lot to wrap his brain around. He'd blown through two relationships and thought he killed his best friend. Jace had been possessed. Malec came together, fell apart, then came together again. Magnus almost sacrificed himself, and a whole bunch of other shit went down. How had it only been a couple of months? It didn't seem possible. Yet it had all happened. He had nodded in a vague way about his guitar, even though his brain kind of tripped over knowing someone who unironically went by "Dick". Maybe it would feel more real if he could hold it. "He got what was coming to him. Valentine. The rest of us? Guess it depends on the day. It kind of seemed to be working out. Sort of."
A tightness gripped his throat before he swallowed. It lessened, but only somewhat. He didn't know what to do with the tension in his chest. Never did. "Hey, um, Oliver? Can we start with the studio?"
"Yeah, life has a way of working out, kinda." Oliver smiled at the request, hitting a button in the elevator to stop them at the correct floor. "Of course."