Hey guys! This is Miki here, one of the people behind this fic and profile ^.^ I'd just like to point out before anyone starts reading that this story is in fact another "What if Mortal Instrument but OCs" story, but we do hope that the OCs we've included and the plot we've incorporated fit well enough to work! Most importantly, that you all enjoy this fic of ours. A name is still pending, so for now it is "Skeletons in the Closet", and will remain so until we can come up with a new name - or if we get a fitting suggestion via PM, which would be much appreciated!

Now, without further ado, here's our prologue!

00

"Remind me again how you know the siblings here," she muttered.

"Cousins," her parabatai replied, just as quietly.

"I see…"

The two gazed up at the building, admiring the Gothic style and the sheer size of it. Neither wanted to point it out, but it appeared to look more "doomy-gloomy" than their own Institute. Then again, it was possibly the combination of darkened sky, little to no light outside of the stars, and lack of mundanes wandering past that drove the feeling home.

The taller of the two sighed and fidgeted on her feet. "This is going to be interesting," she said. The smaller, tanned girl beside her chuckled.

"At least we'll have some funny stories to tell when we get home," she pointed out. Blue eyes were rolled at the girl's remark, a thought of, You would say that, passing her mind. Instead of actually replying, however, the raven-haired girl took her first step forward and adjusted her grip on her bag. It'd been some time since she'd actually seen her cousins, if Idris even counted, and she was more than certain that they'd never even met her parabatai. It was bound to be interesting, as she had stated aloud just a moment earlier, but also somewhat hectic.

As long as nothing bad happened, she told herself, they'd have a peaceful stay in New York.

She turned back to her parabatai, who was already busying herself with playing with her hair. "Just try not to stand out too much," she advised. The smaller girl released the ginger plait and gave a mock salute. "I'm serious, Rose."

Rose rolled her own eyes in response, lowered her hand. "That's all well and good, but do please remember that, with my ginger hair, absurd accent, and all around socially awkward tendencies, you're asking for a lot on my end."

She hadn't considered their accents or the ginger hair, actually. Nevertheless, she stood her ground on her rule and frowned at her parabatai. "Rose…" she warned. Rose finally grinned at her, shoulders slumping as she laughed guiltily, and agreed to her terms.

On that note, she turned back around and began to walk towards the gates of the New York Institute. She actually felt rather excited about seeing her cousins again, and the young Shadowhunter who'd been taken into the family a few years back. She was fairly certain she'd only met him once, prior to becoming Rose's parabatai, which meant that there was another person for the smaller girl to be introduced to.

The great doors opened when she pushed them, closed behind Rose, and soon the two were standing quietly in the elevator and waiting to reach the main floor. Rose squatted in the back corner, humming the tune that Canberra Institute's elevator would play to fill the silence, and she couldn't help but bob her head every second or so to the beat her parabatai was creating. When the elevator stopped, she was relieved to find that the signature ding sound was not required of Rose; the smaller still formed the noise anyway, jogging ahead with her bags haphazardly slung over her shoulders.

"You'll break your hourglass," she reminded Rose. It was enough to make the girl to stop altogether, a reaction she worried was a bit drastic. Considering Rose's condition, though, she could understand why the ginger girl would halt so quickly and check the contents of her smaller bag cautiously. She passed Rose by and patted her shoulder, throwing her a good-natured chuckle. "Rose, mate, calm down. I was joking."

The pout she received in response suggested that the hourglass was not something to joke about. Naturally, she agreed.

It hadn't taken them very long to find a room with people in it – all of the Institute's residents, actually. Almost immediately she'd been screeched at in shock by the younger of her cousins, brought into a hug that forced her to drop her bag at the sheer impact. The entrance to the dining room was cut off by the two girls embracing, and Rose was quick to become shy and take a few nervous steps back from the spectacle.

Isabelle held her at an arm's length once they finished their hug, dark brown eyes giving the other girl an approving once-over.

"You've changed so much," she noted. "I barely even recognise you!"

"Same to you, Izzy," she laughed. If she were to be honest, it was almost like looking in a mirror, except for the minor differences, of course – Isabelle's dark brown eyes contrasted by her own pale blue, her cousin's long ink-black hair in a silky curtain while her own raven waves laid delicately over her shoulder. The two stood at equal heights now, much to her added amusement.

It wasn't long until Rose was squatting by the wall on her own, just a small ways away from the doorway and leaving her parabatai as the centre of attention. Soon following Isabelle's reunion with her was Alec's – and goodness, had he changed since he was twelve. He was still taller than her, she noted as he gave an awkward hug, having grown into a rather wiry build over the years.

"Max isn't here?" she asked under her breath. Alec shook his head and informed her that Max was with their parents, to which she sighed and nodded. She'd been hoping to introduce Max to Rose, listen to the smaller girl make jokes about the name the younger Lightwood shared with her father.

Soon after Alec was done saying his hellos, she turned to the blonde resident – Jace, if she remembered correctly. Much like Alec, he'd changed quite a bit since the last time she'd seen him. They shook hands and reintroduced themselves, noting how long it had been since they'd last seen each other. He seemed to have assimilated nicely into the Lightwood family, and was apparently the parabatai to Alec.

As they'd shook hands, she couldn't help but give him a once-over, the initial thought of, Damn, springing to mind. He certainly had changed – what used to be that quiet, shy boy that trusted only the Lightwoods and clung to Maryse every time she tried to start a conversation was now a rather handsome young man, whose first response to her obvious observation of him was a proud smirk.

A rather attractive smirk, too.

She was quick to dispel such thoughts and return to her reunion.

It took a good five minutes more before she remembered Rose sitting outside the dining room, having gone unnoticed since the cousins' exchanges began. She called her parabatai into the room, only to be demanded of the time, otherwise ignored of her request. She reported that it was twelve-thirty-two, according to her watch, which seemed to satisfy the ginger girl. Not even a moment later, she appeared in the dining room doorway, bags left just outside and a grin on her sun-kissed face.

"You must be Eleanor's cousins," she greeted, hands tucked into her jacket pockets. "Pleasure to meet you."

So far so good, she thought, and turned to gesture to her parabatai whilst addressing her cousins. "Guys, this is Rosalind–"

"Rose."

Eleanor rolled her eyes for a second time that afternoon. "Rose Redhood. She's my parabatai, and lived with me in the Canberra Institute."

"That's in Australia, for the geometrically challenged," Rose added with a nod.

Good Lord.

It wasn't long until the group jumped into conversation, getting to know each other and learning about what's been happening over the past few years. Jace was quick to ask how Eleanor and the Lightwoods were related, and to Rose's visible surprise, Eleanor was much more detailed in her reply than before.

"My father is Maryse's brother, but he left the Shadowhunter life behind to live a mundie's life." Eleanor fiddled with her hair absently as she explained this. "I sort of ran off to the nearest Institute, which was Canberra, and changed my surname – I never knew his real family name up until just last year." She shrugged. "Kind of like Silvertree, to be honest."

There was a somewhat awkward silence after that, Rose fixing the raven-haired girl with a pout and a mumble that she'd never told her that about her family. Eleanor waved her off, telling her that it wasn't really important; she only received a yawn in response, and the ginger girl was back to fiddling with her plait once more. The attention was soon turned to Eleanor once again afterwards, asking what life was like in Canberra, if she'd always had such a ridiculous accent – to which Rose had retorted that she was a kettle and the young Wayland was a pot. The answers she gave were less than stunning, as she claimed that it was just hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and demon slaying was a normal occurrence alongside Rose's brother, Erin.

It soon became apparent that Rose was becoming bored with waiting – for what, Eleanor was unsure. The Institute's head? Perhaps the stories of the Lightwoods' upbringing were tiring her out? Again, Eleanor remained unsure. Perhaps she was just tired, she reasoned. Rose had a tendency of falling asleep without a set amount of food in her, and neither had eaten since breakfast – at least, breakfast according to Canberra's time.

Eleanor was rather busy contemplating her parabatai's exhaustion, to the point where neither actually noticed when Isabelle aimed a question at Rose. The ginger girl snapped her head up with a comical, "Ha-wha—?" sound, prompting Eleanor to zone back in and Isabelle to repeat her question.

"I said, did you grow up in the Institute, or were you raised in Idris?" The dark-haired girl looked somewhat annoyed at having to repeat herself. Thankfully, Rose was quick to answer – coherently, to Eleanor's relief.

"Uh, Institute," she reported. "Dad runs the place and Erin's looking to take over sometime soon – so Mum and Dad can go back to Idris and relax a bit, I guess." Rose thought for a moment longer, then nodded in agreement with herself. "I'm fairly certain I wasn't even born in Idris, actually. So, yeah; Institute kid, though and through."

Soon after she answered the question, Rose admitted to being exhausted and feeling a slight headache coming on; she quietly asked if there were any specific rooms she needed to avoid that belonged to others, which prompted Isabelle to ask Jace to show her the way to a spare room. Jace seemed reluctant, Eleanor noticed, and wondered if there was something he was waiting for in the dining room. There was also the option that he was just lazy, which wasn't out of the question, judging by the way he held himself in the past hour of friendly interrogation. Eventually, after Rose claimed she could find her way and Isabelle insisting that Jace at least help carry her things, the blonde boy stood and begrudgingly escorted Rose out of the room. Neither seemed too happy with the decision.

Jace returned within minutes, saying that Rose pretty much made herself at home when she picked out a room, shooing him away insistently so she could have her peace. He made a point to mutter about Eleanor having a weird parabatai, to which she replied, "I could say the same about Alec's choice of parabatai."

The look of sheer and utter offence the young Wayland gave her was priceless.

It only took three days for Rosalind Redhood to become familiar with the New York Institute, to the point of recognising whose room was whose, where she could find Hodge – the head of the glorious place – and comfortably make her way from the kitchen to the training room. Despite the exterior looking somewhat more off-putting than Canberra's Institute, the interior was extremely nostalgic, and it was almost as though she'd never left home.

Which, in her opinion, was a good thing – especially when she desperately needed a glass of water at bugger all in the morning.

The Institute was eerily quiet at this time of night, she thought idly to herself as she waddled along the wall; her hand was glued to the wall beside her, feeling her way from her room to the kitchen. Her eyes hadn't entirely adjusted to the darkness, and she didn't feel the need to apply a Mark that would allow night vision for something as petty as a glass of water. Rose counted the doors as she passed them – six, seven, eight – and still felt her thoughts wander as the sound of her bare feet padding along the floor hit her ears. Despite hearing about a cat living in the Institute, she hadn't seen hide nor hair of the thing; which, in a way, was a good thing. Allergies, however mild or severe, were a pain to deal with. It was just a damn shame that Rose so happened to be allergic to cats.

Perhaps not entirely allergic, she mused. All she ever did was sneeze when their fur got caught on her skin and up her nose, never to the point of breaking out in a rash or suddenly needing medical attention – well, there was that one time, but demonic cats didn't count! And her breaking out with hives upon cuddling with that stray could've been for any silly old reason, she reasoned to herself.

She froze when she heard the sound of claws, small and sharp, scraping against the floor – coming closer and closer to her. Rose felt her heart miss a beat in her momentary panic, soon replaced by relief when she remembered that, yes, there was indeed a cat in the Institute, and that it was about the closest thing to deadly she'd run into in these halls.

Taking a few steps further, she called out to the cat in a hushed tone. No meow came in reply, and the scratching footsteps of the feline continued to pitter-patter past her. Rose frowned, mumbled to herself that the cat – Church, Jace had proclaimed yesterday – was rather rude.

The cat's footsteps hurried past her, a small trill escaping it as it plodded on. Rose frowned even more, grumbled to herself about cats being as rude as people claimed they could be. With a tired roll of her hazel eyes, she sighed and continued forward, hand still glued to the wall.

She was almost certain she'd made it to the kitchen when she froze one more, her fingers running over a sticky, warm substance smeared before her. Her toes were dipped in it, a squelching sound hitting her, and immediately her blood turned cold.

Rose had felt the stuff hundreds of times before, always running to Erin's room for safety and reminders that it was never real, none of it could ever be real.

She cursed her eyes as she began to adjust to the darkness, the smelly, warm pool of red slowly becoming visible. She could see something prominent in the middle of the pool, jutting out like a broken bone; her blood ran cold, her chest heaving and her nail scraping along the blood-soaked wall. She'd left her hourglass back in the room – how was she going to comfort herself and remind herself that it was all fake?

The object in the middle of the room twisted with a sickening crack, the sound of bones snapping as it twirled to face her. She heard them exhale, an unfamiliar, but still fresh in her mind voice mumbling to her, whispering hurriedly. The words were uttered too fast for her to hear, although she was secretly glad – the last time she had ever truly heard their words, all she heard was blame and pain, doom and despair; words no five-year-old should've heard as they tried to go to sleep.

She was seventeen, now, she thought, and still she was afraid; so much unlike Erin, whose own terrors plagued him relentlessly throughout the day and night.

The body fell forward, inching towards her with a broken, mutilated hand outstretched to her. She flinched, took a step back, only to collide with a body behind her. All at once, the blood disappeared and the twisting and breaking of bones ceased. The blood she'd adjusted to seeing soon turned to a dim light, warm and familiar. Witchlight.

Rose whirled around, finding herself face-to-face with Alec Lightwood. He looked as though he'd just rolled out of bed, dark hair all over the place and blue eyes lined with bags. In his hand he held a witchlight, a disgruntled look on his face. If she were expressing her shock from her little ordeal just before, Alec wasn't paying much attention to it.

"What're you doing up?" he demanded. His tone sounded slurred. Had he been trying to get to sleep just now?

Rose nearly faltered when she remembered just why she'd gotten up in the first place. "Water," she spluttered. "I needed a glass of water."

He sighed tiredly, rubbed the bridge of his nose in annoyance. "And you were planning to walk to the kitchen in the dark?" Alec then paused, only to add, "But not before standing in the middle of the hall and staring at—" He peeked over her shoulder, shone the witchlight past her. "—nothing?"

It sounded absolutely ridiculous when he put it that way, even if she was just getting a glass of water. Nevertheless, she tried to play it cool. Act natural. "Yeah," she said. Just as she replied, Church waddled on past again, purring and looking rather satisfied with himself. "I got distracted by Church – thought I heard him a little further down."

Well, it seemed that Alec was accepting of that answer. "He tends to disappear and reappear wherever," he advised her. "Try not to think too hard about where he might be, and you should be fine. Won't even step on him."

She nodded, acted relieved. After a moment of consideration, Alec gave her the witchlight and told her to be quick with getting her water; she did as told, meeting him back at the very spot, and then he walked her back to her room to make sure she got back without being distracted again. Rose thanked Alec and immediately shut her door so he couldn't see into her room. She downed the contents of her glass frantically, coughing on the last gulp, and dove for the hourglass on display at the dresser across from her bed.

The sand fell from upper to lower half, a reminder that she wasn't hallucinating anymore.

Regardless of what Alec had said the previous night, Rose still managed to sit on Church the next morning.

It hadn't really been a spectacular incident. Rose had been rather fatigued, having stayed up late into the night in order to confirm she was done with her hallucination, and hadn't really known where the small things was at the time. Jace was lounging in a seat across from Church, watching in a somewhat lazy way, only to suddenly shout when Rose moved to plant herself right on top of the cat.

She'd let out an almighty screech while the cat fled to the blonde boy's side, and within minutes the two were arguing. Eleanor and her cousins had walked in at what they guessed was the halfway point of their argument, which by then had nothing to do with Rose failing to notice an important resident of the Institute.

Jace was busily standing on his chair, posing in a mockingly feminine way. "'Aye'm Rose,'" he announced in a high-pitched voice, clearly trying to mimic the girl's accent. "'Aye park me arse on poor, defenceless cats. Don't come in me room, or Aye'll suck the life outta ya with the rage of a thousand convict ancestors!'"

Rose was also standing on a chair, offense clearly on her face. She dramatically swept her long ginger plait over her shoulder, flicking her fringe along with it. "'I'm Jace,'" she said in a ridiculously deep voice, mimicking the boy's own accent, "'and I think cats are the rulers of the free world. I also think I'm hot shit and manscape the hell out of my hair so I can impress my non-existent horde of fans.'"

"I'll have you know I've met quite a number of my fans, you fiend!" Jace was wagging his finger at her, refusing to give up on his end of the argument. Whatever it was at this point.

"Well Christ on a trike," Rose announced, throwing her hands into the air dramatically as she pulled a face that suggested she was too tired and cranky to deal with Jace's ridiculousness. "I forgot that you count your little fantasies in the elevator. Shall I recount based on how much you wink at yourself in the reflection?"

Eleanor was sure that Jace would've had a brilliant comeback, if not for Hodge arriving at that moment and ordering them to stop acting like children, to get of their damn chairs and get over their argument. Rose groaned in exasperation, climbed off of her chair, while Jace grinned in a way that suggested he would call this a win by default – Rose had stepped down first, leaving him victorious.

The ginger joined her parabatai wordlessly, hands tucked into her jacket pockets and shoulders hunched in discontentment. Eleanor patted her shoulder, told her she'd get him next time, and inwardly sighed. So much for Rose not standing out so much.