Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy

by Cassandra Clare

People said things like that, without thinking of potential nightmare scenarios or horrific conditions, the whole world changing and love slipping away. None of them ever dreamed love would be tested, and fail.

He could not stay here, caught between two worlds and two sets of memories. He had to escape. He had to go and become a hero, the way he had been once. Then all of this would make sense, all of this would mean something. Surely it would not hurt anymore.

Every time they saw him, they recognized him and knew him and expected things of him. And every time he came up blank. It was like watching someone digging where they knew they’d buried something precious, digging and digging and realizing that whatever it was—was gone. But they kept digging just the same, because the idea of losing it was so terrible and because maybe. Maybe. He was that lost treasure. He was that maybe. And he hated it. That was the secret he was trying to keep from them, the one he was always fearing he would betray.

Clary didn’t need to be protected, but somewhere within Simon was the ghost of a boy who had always wanted to be the one to protect her, and he was only hurting her by staying around unable to be that guy.

I don’t remember much, but I remember enough. I remember I was a person back then, just as much as I am now. Becoming a Shadowhunter won’t change that, if I ever do become a Shadowhunter. I’ve forgotten enough. I will not forget that.”

“The thing is, the advanced course is actually pretty hard,” George said, as Simon started to smile. “And you may have heard: Lovelaces are quitters.”

guy who was your boyfriend. That guy you want.” He almost said: I wish I could be. He had wished he could be. That was why he had come to the Academy, to learn how to be that guy they all wanted back. He’d wanted to be that way, be an awesome hero like in a game or a movie. He’d been so sure, at first, that was what he wanted. Except wishing he could be that guy was like wishing to obliterate the guy he was now: the normal, happy guy in a band, who could still love his mother, who did not wake up in the coldest, darkest hour of the night weeping for dead friends. And he did not know if he could be that guy she wanted, whether he wished it or not.

“I’m not,” Simon told her. “I don’t—I don’t know how to be, that’s what I’ve been realizing all this time. I thought I could learn to be him, but since I got to the Academy I learned that I can’t. I can’t experience everything we did over again. I’m never going to be the guy who did all that. I’m going to do different things. I’m going to be a different guy.”

But, Isabelle, Isabelle, it isn’t fair of me to take advantage of your belief. It isn’t fair to keep you waiting for him, when he isn’t ever coming back.”

“I wanted to be that guy again,” he said. “That hero that you all remember … and this seems like a training school for heroes.” “It’s not,” Isabelle said flatly. “It’s a training school for Shadowhunters. And yeah, I think that’s a pretty cool thing, and yeah, I think protecting the world is pretty heroic. But there are cowardly Shadowhunters and evil Shadowhunters and hopeless Shadowhunters. If you’re going to get through the Academy, you have to figure out why you want to be a Shadowhunter and what that means to you, Simon. Not just why you want to be special.” He winced, but it was true. “You’re right. I don’t know. I know that I want to be here. I know I need to be here. Believe me, if you’d seen the bathrooms, you’d know I didn’t make this decision lightly.” She gave him a withering look. “But,” he said, “I don’t know why. I don’t know myself well enough yet. I know what I said to you, at first, and I know what you hoped. That I could turn back into who I was before. I was really wrong and I am really sorry.” “Sorry?” Isabelle demanded. “Do you know what a big deal it was for me to come here, to make a fool of myself in front of all these people? Do you know—of course you don’t. You don’t want me to believe in you? You don’t want me to choose you?” Isabelle pulled her hands away from him, turned her face away as she had in the garden of the Institute that was her home. This time Simon knew it was absolutely his fault. She was already leaving as she said: “Have it your...

“I chased away the most amazing girl I have ever met, because I’m too much of a loser to manage being myself. That’s my secret: I want to be a hero, but I’m not one. Everybody thinks I’m some amazing warrior who summoned angels and rescued Shadowhunters and saved the world, but it’s a joke. I can’t even remember what I did. I can’t imagine how I did it. I’m no one special, and no one’s going to be fooled for long, and I don’t even know what I’m doing here. So. You have a secret that can beat that?”

So stop talking about what a loser you are, because I wouldn’t follow a loser into a slime-covered bedroom or a slime-covered bathroom, and I’ve followed you into both.”

“Everybody in this academy, Shadowhunters and mundanes, people with the Sight and without it, every one of them is looking to be a hero. We are all hoping for it, and trying for it, and soon we will be bleeding for it. You’re just like the rest of us, Si. Except there’s one thing about you that’s different: We all want to be heroes, but you know you can be one. You know in another life, in an alternate universe, however you want to think of it, you were a hero. You can be one again. Maybe not the same hero, but you have it in you to make the right choices, to make the big sacrifices. That’s a lot of pressure. But it’s a lot more hope than any of the rest of us have. Think about it that way, Simon Lewis, and I think you’re pretty lucky.” Simon

He was starting to believe it would all be cutting himself with a sword and having his horse run away with him, eating terrible soup and scraping slime off the walls, and figuring out slowly and awkwardly who he really wanted to be, this time around.

Sometimes, Simon thought he would do anything to get back the memories that had been taken from him—but there were moments when he wondered whether some things were better left forgotten.

smoldering in the Tatooine ruins, and thought he understood grief. “There are some things you can’t understand unless you’ve been through them yourself.”

“We all have our own story of the Dark War. All of us lost something. Some of us lost everything.”

“The worst thing any Shadowhunter can do is betray his fellows in the heat of battle,” he intoned. “The worst thing any Shadowhunter can be is a coward.”