AN: Okay, so this idea popped into my head a couple weeks or so ago, and I started writing it, and then my friend Billy Jay showed me this awesome website called Canva that is PERFECT for making FF story covers, and I experimented with it by making one for this story, and then I decided that hey, I'd already made a cover for it, so why not publish it and actually put that cover to use? lol, so, yeah, here you go. Hope you enjoy it! Also, I'll be giving you certain info at the end of the chapter to help make things a bit more clear. Anyway, yeah, I'll do my disclaimer and then shut up so you can read, lmao.
I OWN NOTHING (except Rory, Thad, and Lissie) AND DENY EVERYTHING!
Thirteen-year-old Rory Baythrush stared up at the huge Gothic cathedral in front of her. She had a knot in the pit of her stomach that refused to go away and had been there for weeks, ever since she'd been told she would be coming to live here. The young Shadowhunter had spent her entire life living in Idris with her parents up until now, but with both of them dead and no next-of-kin to take her in, someone else had needed to be found, and the people who ran the New York Institute had volunteered, so that was where she'd been sent.
She'd heard about these people. They were pretty famous in the Shadowhunter world for stuff they had done when they were teenagers. Their names were Clary and Jace Herondale, and the way she understood it was that the person who had previously run the Institute, Maryse Lightwood, had passed it to her son, who had, in turn, passed it to Jace, his parabatai, so that he could move in with his boyfriend, and his sister still lived at the Institute with the Herondales.
"Come on, Rory," Aline Penhallow said. She was the one who had been tasked with taking Rory from Idris to New York and making sure she reached her destination safely. Rory sighed and followed Aline up the front walk to the doors. Aline rang the bell, and after a moment or so, one of the doors opened to reveal a shorter woman with red hair, green eyes, and a smattering of freckles across her face, her bare arms covered in Marks.
"Aline, hi!" the woman said, stepping outside to hug Aline. "It's good to see you again, it's been way too long! How's Helen?"
"Nice to see you, too, Clary," Aline replied. "Helen's great, she said to tell you and Jace hi."
"Tell her we said hi back."
"I will. This is Rory, by the way. Rory, this is Clary Herondale."
"Hi, Rory," Clary said.
"Hello," Rory replied.
"Come on in, both of you."
"Oh, no, I can't stay," Aline said. "I'd love to, but I have to Portal back to Idris to take care of something else."
"Some other time, then," Clary said. "It was great seeing you."
"You, too, Clary. Rory, remember to take your meds, alright?"
"I know, I know," Rory said with a sigh.
"Well, I better get going. Bye, guys!"
"Bye, Aline!" Clary said.
After Aline had gone, the redhead turned to Rory. "You hungry?" she asked. "I was just finishing up with getting lunch ready."
"Okay," Rory said.
"Come on. We can leave your suitcase out in the hallway for now, I'll show you your room after we eat, alright?"
She lead Rory inside and showed her a good spot to set her suitcase down, then took her into the kitchen. "Church!" she said to the cat that was sitting on one of the counters. "Get down from there right now, you know you're not allowed on the counters!" She went over and picked the cat up, which earned a meow of protest, then set it down on the ground. As the cat trotted out of the room, a man with blond hair, gold eyes, high cheekbones, a silver hoop in one ear, and a lean frame came into the room followed by two children, a boy and a girl, the girl with hair the same color as Clary's and the same gold eyes and general facial structure as the man, and the boy with messy blond hair, green eyes, and freckles. The man had Marks, but the kids didn't, and Rory figured they must not be old enough to have their first runes yet.
The man went over to Clary and gave her a kiss on the cheek as she went about putting food on paper plates.
"Ah!" Clary said, swatting the boy's hand away from one of the plates. "Go wash your hands first. You know how this works, we do it every day."
"Yeah, Thad," the girl said. "Don't be such a dummy-dolt."
"Don't call your brother names, Lissie," the man said.
"Where's Izzy?" Clary asked.
"She said she's going out to lunch with Simon," the man replied.
"Then I guess we'll have leftovers. Okay, everybody, this is Rory, the girl that we agreed to take in. Rory, this is my husband Jace, that's our daughter Lissie, and our son Thad."
"Nice to meet you, Rory," Jace said. "I'm sorry about your parents. How are you holding up?"
Rory shrugged. "I'm okay, I guess," she said. "This all just so weird for me. I've never left Idris until now."
"I know what that's like. I lived in Idris until I was ten, then I came to live here. It took some getting used to."
"Is Rory a nickname for something?" Clary asked.
"Yeah, it's short for Victoria. My mom gave it to me when I was a baby, and it just sort of stuck."
"My name's a nickname, too," Lissie said. "My name's actually Felicity."
"Mine's Thaddeus," Thad said sulkily. "It's the stupidest name ever."
"Oh, please, you want stupid?" Clary said. "Your dad once decided he wanted us to call him Baron Hotschaft von Hugenstein."
The kids burst into laughter, and Jace grinned. "Ah, yes," he said, "my distinguished alter ego. How could I ever forget him?"
Clary rolled her eyes and shook her head. "'Distinguished' my ass," she muttered. "Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you, Mom and Luke are coming over for dinner tomorrow."
"Oh, alright," Jace replied, nodding as he took a bite of his food.
"When are Uncle Magnus and Uncle Alec coming over?" Thad asked.
"They can't come over right now, they're out of town, remember?" Clary said.
"Oh yeah...Where'd they go again?"
"To...Where was it, Jace? Belgium or something?"
"No, Scotland. Magnus wanted to take Alec to Loch Ness, I think."
"Knowing him, he wanted to do it so he could prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster."
Jace nodded in agreement with this. "You're probably right," he said.
"Who are these people we're talking about?" Rory asked.
"Uncle Alec is Dad's parabatai," Lissie said, "and Uncle Magnus is his husband."
"Magnus is also the High Warlock of Brooklyn," Clary added. "Speaking of Magnus, someone has to go and feed Chairman Meow tomorrow."
"I'm not doing it," Jace said quickly, shaking his head. "Last time I did, I got scratched. Badly, too. It drew blood, I had to put an iratze on it."
"Don't be such a baby, Dad," Lissie said.
"Yeah, Jace, don't be such a baby," Clary teased.
"Who's Chairman Meow and why are we feeding him? Can't he feed himself?"
"Chairman Meow is Uncle Magnus's cat, so no, he can't feed himself," Thad said.
"He named his cat Chairman Meow?" Rory asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Hey, it's better than our cat's name. Ours is just named Church. That's a dumb name," Lissie said.
"I'm sure Church would disagree with you on that," Jace said. "You know who else would disagree with it? My great-great-great-grandfather and his parabatai. My understanding is that it was one of them who named that cat. Church is actually short for Church Cat, and the only reason I know any of this is because a warlock who knew them told me about it. Same warlock who gave me the Herondale ring. Tessa, I think her name is."
"Church is that old?" Clary asked, her eyebrows going up in disbelief. "Wow. He is really long-lived for a cat."
"Bye, guys!" a female voice called from the hallway. "I'm leaving to go meet Simon at Taki's, I'll see you later!"
The sound of high heels clicking against the floor could be heard, then the sound faded, and a moment later, there was the sound of the front door closing.
"Who was that?" Rory asked.
"That was Isabelle, Alec's sister," Jace said. "You'll meet her later."
"And who's Simon?"
"Her boyfriend. Also Clary's parabatai. He used to be a mundie, then he was a vampire, then he was a mundie again, and then he went through Ascension to become a Shadowhunter and help him regain his lost memories."
"How does one go from a vampire back to a mundie?"
"Long story," Jace and Clary chorused.
"Mom, can I be excused?" Lissie asked.
"Put what's left in the fridge and throw your plate away, then you can," Clary said. "And I want you to go and work on that lesson we were doing the other day, alright?"
Lissie sighed heavily. "Yes, ma'am," she said, and then got up and did as she had been told with her leftover food and the plate before leaving the room.
One by one, everyone began to finish their food, and after they were all done, Clary and Rory went to get the young teenager's suitcase, then Clary took her through the halls of the Institute, stopping at a door that was near a tapestry depicting Raziel rising out of Lake Lyn with the Mortal Cup and Sword, an image that Rory had seen probably a gazillion times throughout the course of her life in various places. The redhead opened the door to reveal a standard Institute bedroom.
"This will be your room," she said. "You can customize it however you want later on. Put posters up, whatever you feel like. I'll be in the library with Lissie, and Jace went to the training room, so come and find one of us if you need to. And I think that's everything for now, so...welcome to New York."
Okay, so here's that info I promised!
First of all, in my head, Jace and Clary got married when he was nineteen and she was eighteen, and they were married for two years before Lissie was born. This story takes place in the year 2022. I did the math based on everyone's ages in the books, and here's what I determined as far as ages go:
Jace, Isabelle, and Simon are all 31.
Clary is 30.
Alec is 32.
Also, just a fun fact about the way I came up with Rory's name:
I've noticed that most Shadowhunters have more old-fashioned sounding names (Clarissa, Helen, Aline, Amatis, Lucian, Jocelyn, etc., etc.), and the younger generation (Clary and Jace's generation, that is) in particular all seem to have nicknames that are a little unusual. Hence, the nickname Rory for the name Victoria (also, Lissie for Felicity and the obvious choice of Thad for Thaddeus). Now, her last name, Baythrush. As we all know, Shadowhunter surnames are, by tradition, what the Codex refers to as being "compound," such as, for example, Jonathon Shadowhunter's being shadow+hunter. The Codex provides a list of, and I quote, "appropriate English words that can be combined to make names." So I looked at the list and played around with a few things until I managed to come up with Baythrush, which was better than anything else I'd mashed together up until then, so that was what I decided on. And thus, I ended up naming my OC Victoria "Rory" Baythrush. :)
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this first chapter (I know it was short, but I just kind of needed to introduce Rory and get the ball rolling, so things are going to pick up more in the near future, I promise), I should have the next one up soon since I've already got the first three or so finished and am working on what I'm pretty sure is the fourth (I'm not sure, tbh, but I'm pretty sure that's what it is, lol), and in the meantime, please remember to review! :)