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2021-09-30
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sail a rainbow away

Summary:

Because weird shit definitely happens in Pandemonium, but the weird shit isn’t limited to just one club in Brooklyn. Weird shit happens all over New York. In retrospect, its maybe the fact that Ellory is a born and raised New Yorker that had her thinking that the Alicante kids back in Cornell hadn’t actually been all that weird.

(This is what the Shadow World looks like to a mundane who happens to be in all the right places. The 'right place' is New York.)

Notes:

based off laws' wonderful promt in the malec discor server:
What if Shadowhunters can shapeshift into specific animal forms, but it's not wolves/dogs/cats/etc like we normally think about?
Angels are associated with certain animals (for real btw): rabbits, doves, deer, squirrels, and hedgehogs, to name the common ones. Given that these animals are a little less ... lethal ... than Shadowhunters typically prefer to be viewed, they almost never change into their animal forms in public. Transitioning, which needs to be done regularly, is only done in front of those trusted as family because of the issues with the vulnerability of their forms.

i never intended to write this fic but the bunnies made me do it.

(i barely understood how australian university worked when i was a student there, i have less of a clue of how american college works.)

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

As weird as shit gets in the weeks after Ellory gets attacked on her way home from her parents place one otherwise average Wednesday morning, it also marks the day that a lot of things start to make sense.

Arguably it starts when Ellory is eleven and realises that her childhood dream of becoming President of Jupiter is entirely unfeasible. From there the dream turns into the slightly more realistic goal of becoming an astronaut. That gets nipped in the bud only a few years later thanks to a minor heart defect.

So Ellory turns to Option B; veterinarian school. (Actually, Option B was to be a wedding planner, but it turns out she finds weddings somewhat awkward and uncomfortable. Becoming a veterinarian comes in at D behind becoming an author.) And at age 23 Ellory moves to Ithaca on a partial scholarship, one of the newest students studying for a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell.

And that is where things take a minor detour into the odd.

Her roommate, Josie, is also enrolled in the doctorate, hoping to go into conservationism; it’s a far nobler cause than Ellory, who just wants to help heal animals. O-Week ends with a lazy party and that’s when she and Josie learn about the Annual Cornell Vet Cryptids.

Every year, without fail, for as long as anyone can remember there have been at least three, but never more than six, students who enrol in the Doctorate program from a University of Alicante.

There’s three in their cohort, and for the most part they’re pretty normal. Sure, they all know each other and share a tonne of in-jokes, even with the ones not in their year, but Ellory puts that down to this Alicante University that they have come from being pretty small. The fact that they all dress in near excessive amounts of black and leather is odder, but nowhere near as odd as the students who wear onesies or pyjamas to class. Besides, Ellory has basically lived in band shirts and jeans for the last decade, she really can’t talk shit about anyone else’s stagnant clothing choices.

But it turns out that, leather and in-jokes aside, 90% of the reason they’re the campus cryptids is largely down to the fact that no one knows anything about any of them or any of the ones who have graduated. In fact, as far as anyone is concerned, they graduate and promptly disappear off into the void.

Tyler, Josie’s older brother’s friend, swears over a dinner of pizza and brownies that three years ago one of them saved him from some kind of monster while he was walking back to his dorm from the library. According to him the ‘monster’ had been seven feet long lizard like thing that had teeth on its head. It had swiped at Tyler with its tail and would have gotten him if the guy from Alicante hadn’t gotten between them, a giant glowing sword in his hand. The ‘monster’ had exploded into black goo upon being stabbed by the guy’s glowing sword and then the guy had disappeared, leaving Tyler alone in the dark with nothing but his memory of the event.

Ellory tries to not let Tyler’s story affect her, but combined with seeing them all beating the absolute shit out of each other early one morning in one of the campus gyms has her keeping her distance from them.

Until her fourth semester, at least, when she ends up being paired with one of them for labs in two of her courses.

Noah Boneflower is a thin guy that speaks with a vaguely European accent, the type that can’t really be placed. But all Ellory cares about is the fact that he does his part of the course work to a high standard and, that one write-up aside, isn’t rushing it at the last minute. They work well together and that is what matters.

The first time she goes to his dorm room so they can work on their end of semester report, she arrives back at her own dorm to face an interrogation from Josie; who, in Ellory’s opinion, is far too invested in the Alicante kids than anyone should be.

“So,” Josie demands. Barely letting Ellory put down her bags and take off her shoes before starting with the questions. “Tell me everything.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Ellory shrugs, flopping back on her bed. “They don’t have weird shit hanging on the walls, they don’t have any suspicious chests filled with equally suspicious things, they do have a cat, we ate lasagne that Blackthorn made for dinner –it was delicious, fyi– and we chatted about coursework, that shitty Game of Thrones ending and how we hope to get Rogic next year. Blackthorn’s older sister had her a few years ago and, apparently, she’s the best.”

She holds up a finger for every point as she lists it, already knowing the questions she knows Josie is going to answer because she’d already listed them over a dozen times since Ellory and Noah had agreed to meet a week earlier.

The fact that he’d shyly asked to kiss her, Ellory keeps to herself.

And that is more or less the end of it. She and Noah have a fun-filled college love, they graduate and he, as expected, disappears off to wherever the hell the Alicante students always have and probably always will and Ellory moves on with her life. After getting stupid drunk and spilling all the details to Josie who is furiously indignant of her behalf. Ellory just wishes knowing he was always going to leave and that they were never going to go anywhere would have softened the hurt now that he has actually left.

In the end, Ellory follows Josie into the conservation path and together they travel to various places around America and occasionally internationally to aid with the rescue and recovery of injured animals. But regardless of how far she travels, she always returns home to New York.

Three years after graduating, Ellory and Josie return home from another trip and celebrate a hard day of sleeping off the jetlag and not unpacking by going out clubbing.

Weird shit happens at Pandemonium, it’s a well-known fact and accounts for about three-quarters of the reason they pick the club as their destination for the night.

“Is that… a hedgehog?” Josie asks slowly, shot glass hovering halfway to her mouth as she stares over Ellory’s shoulder to the far side of the club. Lowering her own shot, Ellory turns around following Josie’s gaze to the raised VIP area where, yes, there is indeed a gorgeous looking man sitting on the lounge, a drink in one hand and his other hand resting on the back of the honest to God hedgehog that’s resting on his lap. Ellory downs her shot, squeezing her eyes shut as it burns a path down her throat, hoping that when she opens her them she’ll see something different.

The hedgehog is still there and is now being fed something by the man it’s using as a seat. There’s also a very white dove perched on the wooden frame of the lounge at the man’s shoulder, a squirrel and a rabbit curled up together on their own cushion and, when a pair of tall clubbers dance to one side, she sees a fawn lying at the man’s feet.

This is not the kind of weird shit they’d heard about. Impossible drinks that were perfectly suited to the drinker’s tastes and weren’t what had been ordered were practically common place in Pandemonium. People with odd coloured skin or not quite human features and tattoos that moved and other such mysterious things were silently accepted and not mentioned by any of the parties as per some unacknowledged agreement.

Woodland creatures were not part of any deal.

Something cool and wet nudges her fingers and Ellory turns away from the VIP area to see the bartender nudging a tall glass filled with pink liquid at her.

“First time?” he asks, a kind sort of amusement curling his lips.

Ellory nods.

“He’s Magnus Bane, the club’s owner,” the bartender says.

“Mr Disney Princess?”

Ellory can’t help her smile, Josie’s nickname really is too perfect as the bartender nods in assent.

“What’s with the animals?” Josie asks.

The bartender just grins and says, “Welcome to Pandemonium, ladies,” before going off to serve some other clubbers.

Ellory sips at her drink after Josie abandons her for a pretty purple haired woman and the dance floor. It tastes like the cardamom tea, sugar sweet with a spiciness that burns in her throat, that Noah would make for them when they studied together and after all these years, the memory is a warm and welcome reminder of some wonderful afternoons spent in good company.

Turning down an offer to dance, Ellory gazes over the club’s floor, her attention grabbed by a man stalking across the large room to the VIP area and despite being not completely sober, Ellory will swear on anything anyone asks her to, that as the man jumps up the stairs, his hand glowing, the hedgehog on Magnus Bane’s lap turns into an equally gorgeous man wielding a bow and arrow.

The music thuds in time with the strobe lights and when Ellory blinks, the entire VIP section goes dark and stays that way.

Weird shit happens at Pandemonium, but that doesn’t stop it becoming a favourite of Ellory and Josie’s.

The bartender who’d welcomed them that first night becomes something of a friend, as much as one can become friends with a bartender that they never meet outside the club they only frequent a couple times a year.

And the weird shit continues to happen.

Especially of the woodland creature kind. The hedgehog is almost always there and the rare times it isn’t the other gorgeous guy Ellory had seen for a moment, the one with the bow, is there instead; sitting next to Magnus Bane with a drink in his hand and their bodies pressed together.

One of those times, when there’s a man and not a hedgehog; Ellory’s dancing, not too far from the VIP area, eyes closed and just loosing herself to the chest thumping music when someone bumps heavily into her. Her eyes fly open as she steadies herself on another clubber and she sees a panicked woman rush past, a rabbit cradled in her arms as she dodges and weaves her way through the clubbers to get the rest of the way to the VIP area.

“Lightwood. Bane.” Ellory hears her gasp as the woman comes to stop in front of Magnus Bane and his pretty companion.

Both men are sitting relaxed in each other’s arms, lips red and hair ruffled in that tell-tale way, but as soon as the woman approaches, they straighten up.

“Mr Lightwood, I found one of your Shadowhunters,” she pants; the hell is a Shadowhunter? , Ellory wonders. “I think they’re too injured to turn back,” she continues worriedly, lifting the rabbit in her arms ever so slightly.

Ellory watches in complete bafflement as Lightwood, a confused look on his face, reaches out to gently take the rabbit from the woman, setting it in his lap as he carefully looks it over. Even from here, Ellory can see the way it shudders in pain and what she had initially assumed was dark fur seems to actually be blood.

The club lights pulse, but Ellory is certain that Bane twists his fingers and a moment later a bowl of raw, cut up vegetables appears on one of the tables.

As Bane feeds the rabbit, Lightwood looks up, his mouth curled up just a little bit. “Thank you, Natalie. But this is just an ordinary rabbit.”

The woman, Natalie, freezes. “That’s not a Shadowhunter,” she states pointing at the rabbit.

“No,” Lightwood confirms. “But don’t worry, we’ll take care of the little guy. He’s lucky you found him, these weren’t accidental injuries,” he says darkly.

Ellory’s blood boils at the thought of someone deliberately injuring an animal and it’s enough for her to miss when Bane, Lightwood and the rabbit disappear from the VIP area.

Six years out of Cornell and walking back to her parent’s house because even though she has her own place –well, she still has her place with Josie– Ellory still ends up spending at least one night a week at her childhood home, making up the time lost while away from New York.

And that’s about the time that things take a turn into the truly downright bizarre.

New York is a dangerous place but it isn’t as if Ellory can’t take care of herself, especially after over a year’s worth of lessons from Noah. But maybe Tyler was onto something about the monsters in the dark because all Ellory remembers is the sound of heavy breathing, something scraping on the concrete and a searing pain as something stabs into her hip.

She tells all this, upon waking up in a hospital bed, to the nurse, the doctor and then to the police officer. The latter of which gives her his card with the instructions to call if she remembers anything more or if she notices anything weird.

Apart from the wound on her hip that becomes just an angry purple scar in a matter of days, nothing really stands out as truly weird.

And maybe along with the sudden uptick in cosplayers in the street, Ellory should have said something, but this is New York. Besides, what would she say. I healed really fast, Officer. And there’s people dressed up in the streets. Yeah, that would have gone over fantastically. It absolutely would not have won her a one way ticket to the loony bin.

Because weird shit definitely happens in Pandemonium, but the weird shit isn’t limited to just one club in Brooklyn. Weird shit happens all over New York. In retrospect, its maybe the fact that Ellory is a born and raised New Yorker that had her thinking that the Alicante kids back in Cornell hadn’t actually been all that weird.

And then not even a week later Ellory wakes up butt naked, sore all over and in what appears to be a park.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Ellory returns slowly, pushing up onto an arm and finds that someone has thrown a blanket over her.

“Hungry?”

And that’s how Ellory finds herself being taken to a restaurant on the docks at eight in the morning in a borrowed sundress. Over an obnoxiously early breakfast of really great Chinese food Ellory learns that she hadn’t been attacked by a monster, but rather a werewolf. And that now she’s a werewolf. Also, monsters do exist, only they’re not monsters. They’re demons.

Vampires, warlocks, fairies and Nephilim also exist. The last lot especially can be assholes and racists, Maia, the person who’d been there when she’d woken up, tells her; but the ones in New York generally aren’t.

Ellory’s on her second plate when the door swings open and Ellory is pretty sure it’s that Lightwood guy from Pandemonium that walks in; only he’s got a whole bunch of tattoos and… Ellory was right, there’s a bow and quiver slung over his shoulder and a curiously empty holster strapped to his thigh that only makes him look a lot hotter than before.

That damn dove is perched on his shoulder.

And when Lightwood joins her and Maia in the booth, thankfully sliding in next to Maia, unslinging his quiver and setting it on the floor, the rabbit climbs out and onto Lightwood’s lap. Lightwood scowls, but sets a hand on the rabbit’s back, scritching gently.

“What is with the woodland animals,” Ellory blurts out. “Does this mean Bane really is a Disney princess?”

Lightwood raises an eyebrow at her, smirking; not unkindly, but just as if she’s said something amusing.

Maia laughs and so begins Ellory’s education into Shadowhunters, finally, and how they are shapeshifters. Partway through the conversation Lightwood’s phone rings and after a moment the rabbit turns into a very pretty, very tiny redhead and the dove turns into a less pretty but still good-looking fake blond dude, both of whom snark at Lightwood and Maia before leaving, their own weapons attached to various body parts.

Which turns them back around to why Lightwood is here; apparently there’s rather strict laws around turning muggles –mundanes– as Lightwood and Maia call them, apparently what Ellory no longer is; and that the guy who attacked Ellory a week ago is some kind of asshole werewolf that’s going around turning people on his own accord. And Lightwood’s here to get her account of events because apart from going around killing demons, these Shadowhunters are the supernatural police.

Instinct tells her that she can trust this Lightwood guy, the memory of his fury over someone hurting an animal also wins points in his favour; which is why several hours later Ellory finds herself standing outside a no longer abandoned church in Manhattan. Ellory specifically remembers this church being abandoned because it had been one of the stops on a ghost tour she and Josie had taken for shits and giggles a couple years back. But no, Lightwood very kindly explains that the magic they use only makes it seem abandoned because the better part of the Shadow World technically doesn’t actually exist as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

Lightwood leads her through the actually very beautiful and modernised church and into an open room filled with some very advanced technology. They only get a couple steps in when one of the black and leather clad people gathered around a table looks over and gasps her name.

Noah.

Huh.

Did he always have the tattoos? is Ellory’s first thought.

Her second thought is does the University of Alicante even exist?

Her last thought before she’s being swept up in Noah’s embrace is that, even with only the bare minimum of information Maia and Lightwood have managed to tell her in the last couple of hours, so many things finally make somewhat more sense.

Notes:

Feel free to stalk me on tumblr.

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