Sed Lex Dura Lex

A/N- This takes place AFTER CoHF! If you're avoiding spoilers, don't read!

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The process always gave Simon that feeling of jumpy excitement in his stomach, like when he rode roller coasters every summer with Clary and they rocketed down a hill, adrenaline making them dizzy.

He hated that feeling.

"Ready?" Magnus's voice was scarily soothing, like a trained psychologist.

"Yeah." He confirmed, trying to brace himself. Every other day for the past two weeks he'd come to Magnus's apartment, only staying for about an hour because that's all he could take before he was too exhausted to keep going. Getting your old memories forced back into your mind at the glittering hand of a warlock wasn't easy.

Still, he knew he had to do it. Even if it hurt like hell, which it totally did. He remembered once, when he was ten, he'd fallen off his bike and given himself a minor concussion. Later he'd told Clary with faux toughness that it had pretty much felt like someone pulling screws from his skull.

It was like that in reverse now, like someone was pounding his memories back into his brain with a very heavy hammer. Once they were there, he had to decipher them. Like staring at splashes of color and trying to see an image.

In the midst of his musings, Simon was caught off guard when Magnus began. It was like a sudden, pounding hit. Every day he underestimated it, because really there was no clear way to accurately remember the pain.

A vision of blue struck him, blue and white with a very extreme light pushing against his eyelids. There were people there, maybe two or three, and a hard surface beneath him.

There was something warming his skin. It couldn't be the sun, he thought vaguely, he'd been a vampire. Someone had said something to him. A girl's voice...Clary...

Suddenly, like a light switch, the memories stopped and Magnus had pulled his hand away.

Simon blinked, trying to get himself out of the half-aware, half-trance state he was in. He let his eyes focus just in time to see Jace standing in front of him, looking down with a smirk on his face.

"I don't even get a hello, Lewis?"

Without enough energy to respond, Simon merely made a "mmn" noise and leaned back against the couch, closing his eyes again.

"What's wrong with him?" Jace asked Magnus, who was talking down an extremely upset Alec.

"We were doing memory reconditioning." Magnus explained. "He's exhausted."

"Oh. I didn't mean to interrupt." Alec said, sounding stressed. "I just...they just..."

"The Clave wants to get rid of Robert." Jace announced for him, dropping down beside Simon and taking his water bottle to drink from.

"What? Why?"

"The affair." Alec seemed to recover from his state of hesitance. "They think it makes him unreliable."

Magnus took Alec by the hand and led him to sit across from Jace and Simon, the coffee table in between them. Magnus disappeared into the kitchen to get drinks, leaving Jace to watch his parabatai with worry.

He'd been, basically, in a state of mental breakdown ever since the Clave's verdict. Jace could tell. Alec had little habits to pull on the sleeves of his sweater and push his hand through his hair until it looked like he'd never even attempted to brush it that morning.

But Alec would never admit his own internal conflict, so he focused on something else instead.

"Do you think he's always like this after getting his memories back?" Alec gestured at Simon, whose eyes were still shut and shoulder still slumped.