Chapter Text
The timing of Simon’s forgiveness is, in hindsight, somehow both perfect and the worst, which pretty much also sums up her brother’s relationship with things like “luck” and “fate,” from what she’s heard from both Maia and Clary.
It’s only a couple days after Bubbe comes to visit that Rebecca gets the text message. Initially, she thinks nothing of the buzzing in her back pocket, elbow-deep in soapsuds and dirty dishes, but the ring tone that follows (the one specifically set for Simon that their mother has asked vomit-inducing "are-you-seeing-someone" questions about) has her jerking away from the sink so fast that Bubbe startles and nearly drops the plate she was drying.
“Rebecca,” Bubbe exhales – and the lack of endearment suggests she's about to get a tongue-lashing about "heart attacks" and "respecting your elders' fragile health."
Rebecca rushes out her obligatory “sorries” and “my bads” as she wipes her arms dry on the dishrag hanging from the oven handle, scrambling out of the kitchen and around the corner toward the landing at the bottom of the stairs – safely away from grandmotherly eyes and ears.
Cn we talk?
Rebecca squints down at her phone. Simon is texting her for the first time in ages and thinks it’s A-OK to just say “cn we talk.” She wants to make an oven mitt out of holy water and slap him with it.
The fuming doesn't last long because, apparently, once Simon is ready to talk he’s ready to talk. She barely has the chance to open up the messenger app, hasn't even typed a message yet, before her phone lights up with an incoming call.
Rebecca fumbles her phone, nearly drops it, and swears violently under her breath. Bubbe Helen is puttering around the kitchen just one room away. They got Mom out of the house today, thank God, but if Bubbe gets suspicious that Rebecca’s up to something, she’s never going to hear the end of it. She's going to have awkward questions to answer. She's going to be interrogated about if she's dating (again, barf). She's already worried that Bubbe has psychic powers and knows things she shouldn't.
Making a mad dash up the stairs, she hits the little green “answer” button on the last ring and pulls the phone up to her ear.
“What the fuck, Simon?” Rebecca hisses in a poor attempt at juggling both quiet and maximum rage.
The sound of Simon clearing his throat crackles across the line. “Uh, hey, Becks.”
“Don’t you ‘hey, Becks’ me, you ghosting little butthole,” Rebecca snarls into the receiver, hoping she can exude venom without getting to a volume level that will alert Bubbe Helen.
“Look, Becky…” Simon trails off before he even attempts an explanation, sighing through his nose like he can’t believe he has to do this, right now. “There was…a lot going on. Besides what happened with you that night. I’m sorry for not…talking to you sooner, okay? It was kind of literally life or death stuff."
It’s not okay, not really. She’s hurt that he was ignoring her and then went off to do something important, probably, and never even considered that his own sister would be sitting around thinking he hated her forever. She's pissed that if it was "life or death" stuff, that he may not have come back at all. She's livid that he keeps putting his health and safety at risk, because damn it, hasn't he given more than enough of himself to this Downworld?
Staying mad at him is even less okay, though. What a waste of time and energy, to cling to her own hurt. They’re never going to agree about what the right call would have been that night. She’s Mundane, she can’t understand what bloodlust is like, or what calls to arms can and cannot be ignored. And Simon is the younger sibling. He doesn’t have the same frame of reference that she does, as the patented Big Sister – he’s just a baby, no matter how many sharp edges he’s grown.
Everything feels heavy and she might be having a little meltdown, so she drops down on the top step butt-first and presses her fingers hard against closed eyelids, setting off sparks in the black of her vision.
“I…all I wanted to do was apologize. For hurting you. Not for the saving your life bit.”
A breathy laugh ghosts through the line, soft and short. “Yeah, Becks,” Simon says dryly, “I figured you wouldn’t be sorry about saving my life. I…thank you. ‘Mean it. Seriously.”
Her fingers begin to twist into the bottom button of her shirt, testing how threadbare it’s become and wondering if she’ll have to resew it soon. “So,” she says, dragging out the ‘o’ for dramatic effect.
“Is Mom home?”
“No, she’s – she’s at work. She’s…uh…you know, giving her two weeks’ notice.”
Simon is quiet for a long time, then, “I…yeah, I got your text. Florida’s…probably a really good idea.”
There’s pain in his voice, just barely, and if she knew him any less she’d have missed it. Guilt curdles in her stomach like spoiled milk. She wants to retch. She has verbal diarrhea instead.
“Mom’s so messed up, Si, I didn’t know what else to do. Bubbe offered, so I got Mom on board because otherwise I think she's just going to waste away in this house and I'm going to watch it and can't do anything, and –”
“Becks,” Simon interjects gently. “I’m not…seriously, no, I’m not mad. Or-or hurt, or whatever. It’s good. I think it’s a good thing.”
Rebecca hesitates, before admitting, “…I think so, too.”
It feels a bit like betraying him, but it’s not forever. Rebecca doesn’t want to live in Florida for the long-term. She’s sticking to her plan: get Mom settled, get Mom distracted with her career, put Bubbe Helen on surveillance, and move back to New York to finish school. She’s only taking a one-semester sabbatical from her program. Four months, if she doesn’t count the school break. Then, she can be there for Simon.
Maybe she’ll even be able to give him a home to come back to, one where he doesn’t get looked down on by Shadowhunters for what he is or hated by his own kind because he couldn’t let go of his human connections.
“I’m coming over,” Simon says suddenly.
“Oh, yeah, I mean, wait, no –”
“Be there in a sec.”
He hangs up on her. Moving faster than she can keep up with seems to have become his modus operandi since his head-first collision into vampirism.
“Bubelah, who are you talking to up there?”
Rebecca pockets her phone and stands back up in the stairwell. “No one, Bubbe –”
Bubbe Helen.
Bubbe Helen.
Simon is coming over.
“Oh my God,” Rebecca breathes, and nearly vaults down the entire flight of stairs. The sound of a key unlocking the front door is like a dirge in Rebecca’s mind. A death knell. She’s so completely, utterly screwed.
No, no, no, no, no!
“Becky?” Simon calls as he closes the door behind himself.
A plate shatters in the kitchen.
Rebecca skids into the front foyer just as Simon’s entire body jerks toward the sound. He sees her coming from the opposite direction from the noise and in horrified, wide-eyed silence, the two of them realize the magnitude of this miscalculation.
Simon’s eyes dart back to the front door and – oh, hell no.
Rebecca grabs Simon by his unbuttoned plaid overshirt and slams her other hand against the door (as if that could keep him inside if he really wanted out). Simon somehow sounds like he’s having a panic attack, even though he doesn’t actually need to breathe. The psychology of it would be more interesting in literally any other scenario.
Simon balks. “I need to –” get out of here, he doesn’t say, but the intent is clear enough in his tone and body language.
Which, again, hell no.
“Don’t you dare leave me here to deal with this,” Rebecca warns. They’re in this together, for worse or for even more worse. There’s no ‘better’, here – they’re definitely in for varying shades of ‘worse.’
“Oh,” whispers a ragged, heartbroken voice, “Oh.”
They both turn to where Bubbe Helen stands in the hallway, hands held up to her lips. She leans against the wall for support. Her face is ashen with the shock of her dead grandson standing before her – clearly not dead (or at least not in the conventional sense).
“Oh,” Bubbe whispers again. “Simon.”
When it’s clear that Bubbe’s legs are giving out, both of the Lewis siblings lurch forwards at the same time. Rebecca doesn’t even get the chance to take a step before Simon’s sped to Bubbe’s side where, frantically, Simon begins the impossible task of trying to hold her up and avoid touching her at the exact same time.
Simon face says he’s about to go into complete anxiety-attack-slash-shutdown-mode. There will probably be crying. If he still could, there would definitely be puking. Everything that happened with Mom is bubbling back up the surface. She can see the way that his desire to help Bubbe is warring against the abject terror of imminent rejection.
Rebecca jumps into action and slips an arm around Bubbe’s thin waist. She’s opening her mouth to provide some kind of explanation for Simon being alive, because the truth is going to be impossible to explain, and –
– and, in standard Bubbe operating procedure, the older woman gets it together before either of them do. Bubbe takes in one, shuddering breath and pushes herself away from the wall. Gently, she bats Rebecca’s helping hands away before directing all attention on Simon. Bubbe’s fingers reach outward to touch, and connect with, Simon’s cheek.
Miraculously, she doesn’t even flinch at the coldness of his skin. Even Rebecca had flinched, that first time. After she’d flushed Simon’s blood supply down the toilet, their fingers had brushed for a second when she’d given the metal water bottle back to her furious brother. She had been surprised, even worried, but Simon had passed it off with a joke about poor circulation. God, what an idiot she’d been.
In the present, Simon is the one flinching away from Bubbe’s touch. He’s scared he’ll hurt her, just by existing in proximity. Bubbe, undeterred, follows the momentum of Simon’s backward movement to take each side of Simon’s face in her deceptively strong grasp.
“Oh, sweet boy,” Bubbe whispers, her eyes shining with pain. “What happened to you?”
Simon says nothing, trapped in wide-eyed terror, spiraling through every possibility, every outcome, every expectation of another loved one lost. Rebecca thinks one more rejection will break him. It will break him. She's going to lose him forever over this.
Her heart is pounding. She wonders if Simon can hear it.
Bubbe is quiet. Her expression betrays nothing. She's still touching him, though - her thumb brushes across the apple of his cheek and across his lips, which makes Simon jerk back so hard that both Bubbe and Rebecca jump. Shamefaced, Simon’s head snaps down and away so that he doesn’t have to face anyone, shoulders hunching. It’s heartbreaking to see her brother trying to make himself as small as possible.
“Si,” Rebecca whispers.
Bubbe is apparently having none of it. “Simon, look at me.”
It takes a long, stubborn moment before Simon relinquishes himself to Bubbe’s command. He straightens a little, but his head is still bent. Rebecca can see the way his jaw is working around his teeth because his fangs have dropped.
Rebecca has learned, by now, that it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s hungry – it happens from surprise, or if he’s under threat, or even when he becomes too emotional. The fangs are a part of him, like an arm or a leg. Still, they’re…pretty freaky, the first few times one sees them. Rebecca had found his fangs really disconcerting for a couple of weeks after she’d strong-armed him into reconnecting with her after the whole Heidi incident. So, she thinks she’ll understand if they surprise or scare Bubbe.
Simon won’t. Simon will take it exactly the wrong way. He’ll head back down that path he sometimes ventures, where he sees himself as a monster. And that just won’t do.
Please, Bubbe, Rebecca thinks (prays), please, get this right.
Bubbe presses both thumbs gently at the edges of Simon’s mouth. Obligingly, probably because he figures it’s safer to just get it over with than to keep resisting, Simon lets his lips part slightly to reveal twin points of needle-sharp bone.
Bubbe takes a sharp breath and lets both hands drop to Simon’s shoulders.
Simon’s head immediately snaps downward again, and he whispers, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”
Rebecca moves on instinct to comfort him, sliding her arms around his waist and resting her cheek on his shoulder, right beside Bubbe’s hand. She looks to her grandmother, hoping to see understanding there, even if it may be too early to expect acceptance, even if it might be too much to ask of an elderly woman who has seen and lost so much in her lifetime.
The supernatural? For a woman who has lived through, has seen, has known, the worst of what humanity has to offer?
Against all odds and expectations, Bubbe moves right in. No hesitation. She slips under one of each of Simon and Rebecca’s arms, forcing them into the classic Lewis three-way hug. It makes Rebecca feel like a little kid again, surrounded by the warmth and smell of her grandmother.
"I missed you," Bubbe whispers, her voice breaking. "I love you both so much."
Bubbe used to do this at the front door every time they left her house when they were kids. “Hugs are for sharing, little ones,” she used to say as she wrangled them together. They could have been fighting all day like cats and dogs, but it never really mattered by the time that Bubbe corralled them into goodbye hugs.
The relief is instant, overwhelming. Bubbe Helen isn't afraid, isn't running, isn't calling Simon a monster.
Droplets hit her forehead from above, and – “What are you crying for, you big baby?” she teases, reaching up to wipe her palm down his face. “It’s just a family hug.”
Simon groans, craning his neck away for the sake of obligatory sibling dramatics, and proceeds to complain that she, too, is crying, so shut up, Rebecca.
When they all step out of the embrace, Bubbe insists on leading them to the living room. She demands a cup of tea of Rebecca, very pointedly. As Rebecca scurries away to fill and turn on the electric kettle, she catches Bubbe leaning in toward Simon, whispering softs words and cradling his hands between hers.
By the time the water is boiled and Rebecca is handling two cups of tea back into the living room, both Bubbe and Simon appear more settled, although Bubbe’s gaze is sharp.
“Bubbe,” Rebecca says as she hands off the one cup to her grandmother, “you’re taking this…like you know more than I did, when I found out.”
Bubbe’s fingers slide along the patterns decorating the mug. “There were always stories,” she says quietly, more unsure than Rebecca’s ever heard her before, “back in the old country. We always knew what was out there, beyond what we could see. It’s you younger generations who’ve forgotten.”
She turns to Simon, who is gaping (thankfully, now with his fangs retracted back into wherever they come from), and pats his knee to comfort him. “In Hebrew, they are alukah. I had wondered, based on the phone call I received from your mother at the hospital.” Tears are shining in her eyes when she corrects herself to say, “I had hoped, selfishly, if only because it meant you were still here in some way. I hope you can forgive me, my little love.”
Simon’s a bit beyond words, but nods frantically. He’s ramrod straight, which means he wants to hug their grandmother but is too terrified to break her to actually do anything about it.
“Wait, Bubbe,” Rebecca says, setting down her own tea, “Mom called you?”
Bubbe turns toward Rebecca, her expression solemn. “She did. About how you had been attacked by something wearing your brother’s face.” Without taking her eyes off of Rebecca, she reached to grasp Simon’s sleeve. “She was searching, in the chapel, for a passage from the Book of Proverbs. There is mention, there, of Alukah.”
Rebecca had wondered, a little, why their mother had sought out the chapel, that day in the hospital. It had seemed out-of-character, at the time, but the whole day had been so shocking, so strange, she had basically forgotten about it.
Bubbe, apparently, had not.
“All this time,” Rebecca says, “you…what, suspected that Simon was still…?” Her voice catches before she can say the word “alive,” which generally offends Simon these days, “…Simon was still here?”
A small smile, like sharing a secret. “I suspected because of you, more than anything. The way you mourned.”
How badly she’d played off being in mourning, then, was the true culprit.
Bubbe is apparently not going to expand upon that, though. She has turned back to Simon, having never lost her grip upon his shirtsleeve. “Your mother stopped talking about the alukah that same day. When I spoke to her the next morning, she hardly remembered the hospital at all.”
“It was my idea,” Rebecca says immediately.
Simon jerks at that. “Becks –”
“It was.”
“But I did it.”
“Yeah, because you were under duress, doofus.”
“I wasn’t –”
Bubbe clears her throat pointedly, which stops their budding argument in its tracks.
Rebecca sighs, feels the tension in her neck referring itself up her skull, threatening a headache. With everything these last several days, she’s tired of reliving the ifs of that day in the hospital. Despite her exhaustion, she knows that they’re in for a long, long discussion.
“We have much to talk about,” Bubbe says, as if agreeing with Rebecca’s own thoughts, “and your mother isn’t due back until tonight. We had better start at the beginning.”