Chapter Text
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,” he answered, laughing.
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
―
Ty figures out he’s in love with Kit outside his room at the London Institute, body still buzzing with adrenaline from their trip to Blackthorn Hall.
The realisation is less of an epiphany and more of the final piece of a puzzle he’s been trying to solve since the moment he jammed his knife up against Kit’s throat and watched his blue eyes (like where the ocean meets the sky in the afternoon, Ty had thought) widen.
He likes Kit, of course, trusts him innately, but it’s more than that — Ty feels like the north pole of a magnet, pulled towards Kit by every part of his being. At first it had been intrigue and curiosity, interest that the famed Lost Herondale was a boy his age, but then — Kit makes him laugh.
After that, the thoughts come like waterfalls: he wants Kit to stay, to listen to Kit’s bad jokes, to teach him about the history of Shadowhunters. He wants to hear Kit laugh — wants to make Kit laugh and hear the sound of his voice. How Ty can tell Kit about his headphones and the words he whispers to himself when the rest of the world is too much, and how Kit feels like someone Ty can focus on, a point of stability in the recent chaos, and Kit doesn’t just accept it, he embraces it.
Other things, too: the freckle on Kit’s cheekbone and the golden waves of his hair. The curve of his lips as they stop outside Kit’s room that night, the journey home silent — not so much for the fear of getting caught than because the silence feels comfortable, warm.
It’s another thing Ty likes about Kit — he doesn’t talk just to fill silence, like so many people tend to do. Kit has one hand on the worn brass handle of his door, turning the knob, and Ty is seized by a feeling of franticness, a head rush that starts in his brain and seems to go all the way to his toes.
“Kit.” He just wants to say his name, instead of calling him Watson, but Kit turns, a crooked smile on his face that sets off a swooping sensation in Ty’s chest. Ty swallows, fists his hands in the fabric of his sweater. “Goodnight, Kit.”
“Goodnight, Ty,” Kit says, softly, and he disappears into his room, the door shutting with a click behind him. The feeling in Ty’s chest — like he’d just dropped ten feet and landed with a jolt — stays, until he’s in his bed, and he thinks, staring at the spiderweb cracks in the ceiling, I love him. I love Kit Herondale.
Once he realises it, he can’t believe he didn’t piece it together before. The evidence points to one conclusion. He’d just overlooked it, the facts of the situation easier to deal with than the flurry of emotions he can’t help feeling whenever he’s around Kit.
The thing is — Ty isn’t good at emotions. Deducing them. Displaying them. Emotions are an enigma to him, especially when Ty knows that he’s feeling something so intensely it verges on physical pain, but he can’t place words to it, and he can’t find a logical progression that can give him the answer.
Emotions are just — overwhelming, intangible; Ty needs to channel feeling into action. He’s heard people say they feel anger in their hands, fear in their stomach, love in their heart. Ty feels with his whole body.
Ty doesn’t even know if Kit is going to stay with them.
He could ask Livvy for advice. Livvy would know what to do, he thinks, and he’s outside the door of her room, hand poised to knock before he remembers Kit and Livvy kissing on the beach. And yesterday — when Livvy confronted Kit about something outside the magic shop — something to do with him, probably — and the thought passes, replaced by a trembling, frenetic energy in his hands and a dull ache somewhere in the pit of his stomach. Not quite anger. Not quite resentment. Ty doesn’t know what it is, exactly, but it’s strange and unpleasant.
It’s the feeling that Livvy’s stepping in to protect him again, like Ty doesn’t notice everything around him, like Livvy’s older than him by more than two minutes. Like Livvy’s growing up without him, and leaving Ty behind.
Ty knocks, anyways. He’d felt bad, briefly, about leaving her out of their escapade last night. It had been an on-the-spot epiphany, and Ty had found himself outside Kit’s door instead of Livvy’s. I should protect her too, he’d thought, too shaken from the freshness of her injury.
Maybe there was more to it. Maybe Livvy isn’t the only one who can keep secrets.
When he opens the door, Livvy’s running a brush through her hair. She grins when she sees him. “Ready for Hypatia Vex again?” she chirps.
Ty leans against the door frame, one hand propped up against the other side. Weight of the doorframe, weathered by years of opening and closing, hands against the wood. Maybe Ty just needs to know. He takes a breath.
“Why didn’t you tell me you kissed Kit on the beach?” Ty asks.
Livvy’s hand stills for a breath, and then picks up again.
“I’ve never kissed anyone before,” Livvy says. She looks at him, tilts her head. “I just wanted to know what it feels like.”
“That’s not the question I asked,” Ty points out. So much of the time, people don’t listen to words. They listen to the meaning behind them. Ty thinks the world would be a lot less confusing if people just say what they mean. “You told me why you kissed him. I asked you why you didn’t tell me.”
Livvy bites her lip. “I didn’t think you would care,” she says. This time she doesn’t look at him. Most people don’t look others in the eyes when they want to hide something. Ty had to train himself to do it to show that he’s being sincere.
The conclusion as to what Livvy’s hiding, then, isn’t a difficult one to draw. Livvy tells Ty most things about her life. Livvy didn’t tell Ty she kissed Kit. Livvy likes Kit, then — and it’s easy to see why.
“I care about what you do, Livvy,” he says. “I love you.”
She’s dragging her brush through a particularly difficult tangle. “I know, Ty. I love you too.”
Ty walks into her room and holds out his hand for the brush, and Livvy gives it to him. He likes brushing Livvy’s hair, has always found it calming. He doesn’t have to focus on anything but his hands and her chestnut strands, and Livvy gets frustrated with the tangles, anyways.
“Is he good at kissing?” he asks, genuinely curious. Livvy bursts into laughter, and despite himself, Ty grins too.
“Yeah,” Livvy says, between giggles. “He’s good at kissing.”
Ty imagines himself in Livvy’s place, Kit’s steady arm around his shoulders and soft lips on his. It’s startling how much Ty likes the idea, as much as it scares him. He’s never thought of kissing as something that could be pleasant before, but with Kit, it could be different. With Kit, everything’s different.
He meets her eyes in the mirror. “Livvy,” he says, “you aren’t the only one of us who thinks about kissing boys.”
Ty has never told anyone he’s gay, even though he’d figured it out sometime last year. It just hasn’t been relevant information so far, just a thought in the back of his mind to revisit if he ever needed to. If Livvy’s surprised by it, she doesn’t show it. “And kissing Kit?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
He shouldn’t be surprised at her lack of reaction. She’s always known him as well as he knows himself. Ty ducks down, focuses on Livvy’s hair, the bristles of the brush breaking through the tangles. “Maybe.”
—
They get attacked by the Riders of Mannon on the way back from Hypatia Vex’s, and Kit collapses as soon as they reach the Institute, Alec catching him and lifting Kit in his arms, and they’ve disappeared into the Institute before Ty can force his limbs to move.
Kit pale and white and unconscious. It’s the second time in as many days that this has happened to someone he cares about deeply.
A sense of deja vu overcomes him, the world tilting on its axis and making Ty feel like he’s seeing double. The sounds of the city, rushing of cars and the painful sharp sound of honking horns in the streets below. Voices around him, muddling together and clamouring for attention, and Ty tries to pinpoint one of them but he can’t because everyone is talking at once and it makes Ty feel like his brain is being prodded by seraph blades.
“Is Kit going to be okay?” he says, to no one in particular. He touches his hands to his side, fingers to his palms, one two three four five, one two three four five, but his mind is on Kit and it’s not helping and everyone is still talking and Ty wants to throw up or collapse or both. “Are they going to the infirmary?” he asks, but he can’t remember who’s injured this time, Kit or Livvy.
It’s Livvy that answers, taking one of his hands. He almost jerks away reflexively before his brain remembers that this is Livvy and she’s safe and she’s pressing her fingers into his palm in a way that somehow shields him from the chaos on the rooftop.
“Let’s go see him,” she says, quietly, and she’s leading him to the door.
“Okay,” Ty manages, and he puts one foot in front of the other because that’s all he can think about doing right now. One foot in front of the other and Livvy’s arm around his shoulders and her hand on his palm.
As soon as the door to the rooftop closes, Ty lets out a shaky breath and squeezes Livvy’s hand back. Shutting out the noise is immediately relieving, and Livvy by his side too. She doesn’t say anything, knowing that Ty needs the silence and the shadows, and the two of them make their way to the infirmary, where Kit is lying in one of the beds. Magnus is beside him, a blue spark of magic disappearing back into his skin. He’s still unconscious, but there’s more colour in his face, and he looks less in pain and more like he’s only sleeping.
“Is he okay?” Livvy asks.
Magnus looks up at the two of them. “He’ll be fine — probably has a concussion, though, so he needs rest. You two can come back later — one at a time, or you might overwhelm him when he wakes up.” Ty can’t look at Magnus’s face, but he takes in how Magnus is sitting — casual, one foot kicked up on the iron frame of the foot of the bed, the tone of his voice — stern, yet gentle. Magnus is less tense than when he and Kit had brought Livvy back, and Kit doesn’t look as pale and sick as Livvy did yesterday.
“Okay,” Ty says.
“I think the others are meeting in the library,” suggests Magnus. “Why don’t you do some research on what might have happened and why you three keep landing yourself in trouble?”
Research. Ty can do that, solve mysteries. He can focus on the research and why the Riders of Mannon may be looking for them.
He breathes in, touches his fingers to his palms, one two three four five, and this time the action feels like it settles him a bit, so he does it again, lets his hands repeat the movement until some of the nervous energy dissipates. “When can we come back to see him?”
Magnus just looks tired. “I’ll let you know,” he says, and then narrows his cat eyes at Ty. “You keep yourself safe, Tiberius.” Ty hastily agrees, and Magnus’s gaze turns to Livvy. “You too. Don’t make me wrap you three in bubble wrap until we can Portal to Idris.”
“I think he means it,” Livvy murmurs to him, and Ty tugs on her arm, eager to avoid Magnus’s bubble wrap threat. They’re halfway to the library when Ty feels everything beginning to cave in again, and he grabs onto Livvy, just to make sure she’s here.
“Ty?” she asks. He thinks he’s shaking, like he’s getting thrown about on the sea.
He needs his sister, when almost everything else familiar has been thrown into chaos. A new Institute. A new city. New feelings and new people, and it scares him, even if it’s a good change. When Kit Herondale had come into the Institute, he had not expected to be so intrigued by this sarcastic, gentle, golden-haired boy. He certainly hadn’t expected love.
Ty doesn’t need to tell Livvy to hold onto him until the world stops closing in on him. She just does.
—
Ty can compartmentalise, most of the time, when he has ways to deal with the too-muchness of the world. He can throw his focus entirely into solving mysteries, figuring out Malcolm Fade and Annabel Blackthorn and what that has to do with the Riders of Mannon, and how to get the Los Angeles Institute back from the Centurions. He’ll ask Livvy about it when they get back to their Institute. Ty thinks that Kit is going to stay — thinks it when Kit tells Ty that he would miss Ty, and Ty knows that he would miss Kit too.
He likes the way they are now, anyways, Ty-and-Livvy becoming Ty-and-Livvy-and-Kit. They can solve mysteries in Los Angeles and Ty can talk about the animals on the beach. Kit can show them all the movies they don’t know and that modern-day adaptation of Sherlock Holmes that Ty’s sure is inferior to the books. Livvy can train Kit and Ty can tell him about all the types of demons there are.
There’s something about being wedged between the two of them that makes him feel like he’s been slotted neatly into his place in the world. His twin sister on one side and a boy he loves on the other. There’s no other place Ty would rather be.
They’re only fifteen; they have all the time in the world.
—
He doesn’t so much see the blade go through Livvy’s chest as much as he feels it, a sick violent ripping sensation through his body as he absorbs the blood, the blade, the stunned, still look on her face, the noise and lights and people around him going silent and unmoving for once as his brain absorbs the image. A thousandth of a second, but he knows he’ll be seeing it forever.
—
When Ty looks back at the days and weeks after Livvy’s death, it’s a blur in his mind, almost like he’d seen the scenes happen in a movie rather than experiencing them himself.
He’d been so focused on bringing Livvy back that everything else had seemed like a faint echo around him; even the broken-glass noise of crowds and sunshine glare of lights had felt dulled and muffled. He’d felt Livvy’s absence as if the space where she should have been was weighed down with it, a solid heaviness where she should have been leaning against him, silence nearly audible where she should have been making jokes and laughing. He was hyper-aware of her presence — or rather the lack of it — at breakfast, on the beach, at night, when he woke up in a blind panic sweating and shivering, his unconscious guiding him to Livvy’s closed door before he’d fully woken, knuckles red and raw and the taste of blood in his mouth. His body had forgotten she was not behind her door and sought out her presence, but Ty’s brain had remembered every time, staring at the flaking red paint; She’s gone, he had thought, cloudy with exhaustion, She’s gone.
The faint slivers of good in those weeks he recalls in brief, disconnected flashes: Julian hugging him, tightly, strong hands around Ty’s shoulders in the way Julian knows Ty likes. Dru for once interested in hearing Ty talk about the small animals on the beach near the Institute, asking about the types of starfish and if the crabs bite.
A lot of the good had involved Kit, too. Kit at the Shadow Market, giving the finger to the phouka, making Ty laugh, startled and surprised that happiness was still a possibility. Brushing Kit’s golden hair out of his face, Ty’s thumb skimming the freckle near his eye, comfort in the sensation of being around him, touching him, his voice. Memories that became an ever-present ache with each passing day of Kit’s silence, an ocean and a continent and thousands of words unspoken separating them. Kit was wrong — Ty had wanted Livvy back not just for himself but for Kit too, so Kit would have a reason to stay, so even if Kit would never love Ty back the way Ty loved Kit, at least — at least he could have him near.
Ty’s world had upended itself on a fundamental level, everything he’d known shattered into such infinitesimally small pieces that the easiest choice was to piece it back together through stubbornness and willpower rather than build everything anew.
He had risked everything on a razor’s edge chance, and his overconfidence and sheer determination had not stopped him from failure, everything he’d imagined in those last days in London slipping inexorably from his grasp. If, perhaps, he’d trusted someone other than himself — if he had not been so consumed by what he’d thought he knew was best —
Ty cannot dwell on what-ifs. The possibilities are infinite, but there is only one reality.
Livvy will not be coming back as she used to be. Kit will not be coming back. The inevitable conclusion, then, and perhaps one that Ty deserves entirely: he will have to navigate this strange lost world without either of the two people he most wants near him. So Ty sorts his life into before and after. Livvy pressing his hands to calm him down and Kit Herondale’s blue eyes are before. Preparations for the Scholomance, Livvy walking through walls, and true crime documentaries with Dru are after. He shuts off the before when he can and focuses on the after.
Ty discovers that it is possible to grieve Livvy when she is next to him, perched — as always — on the side of his desk, watching and protecting. He misses her warmth most. She tries to reassure him, sometimes, and her voice helps, but Livvy doesn’t always stay for long. When she disappears without warning and he can’t call her back, it feels like losing her all over again.
He spends more time with Dru in the two months before he leaves for the Scholomance, but Dru’s changed too; she’s on edge just as much as he is these days. Dru’s growing up, just as he is. Faster, maybe. Sometimes Dru panics, her face going pale and her breath stuttering, and Ty can rub his fingers against her palms and tell her how to breathe in and out and focus on something hard enough to drive everything else away. Sometimes Dru has to do the same for Ty. Dru isn’t Livvy, but she’s still Ty’s sister, and Ty still needs to protect her.
The Scholomance becomes a relief, after everything. Ty throws himself into the work and into finding more about what he’s done to Livvy. It’s better that way.
Despite his reassurances to Julian, the first few weeks at the Scholomance are nothing short of excruciating. It’s as if the fog that descended over his brain for the past two months has suddenly cleared, and the world is shoving itself upon him twice as hard in retaliation. Noises are louder, colours are brighter, smells more intense, the slightest touch almost painful.
The guilt comes, too, without Julian and Dru and Tavvy around, so intense that it feels like the weight of it will knock him over. It hits him out of nowhere and leaves him breathless and shaking, like he’s seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, like his hands aren’t his hands.
What have I done? he thinks; the question in his brain at all hours of the day. What have I done?
For the first few days he’s at the Scholomance, he can barely speak unless it’s alone in his room, to Livvy, and even then it’s like his tongue has been paralyzed. He runs back to his room after classes with his ears ringing and his head hurting and curls up in the corner with his head in his hands and rocks back and forth and murmurs to himself until the rhythmic motion and sound eases him enough to focus on his tasks for the day. He can’t eat in the cafeteria, can’t put himself into that cacophony of noise and voices, so he doesn’t eat for two days, until Caterina Loss brings him toast and potatoes, which might be the only things he can actually stomach.
Things get easier, slowly. For the first couple weeks, he manages his work, but he’s unable to look at anyone’s faces, most of whom he doesn’t recognize. He finds the quietest corner of the cafeteria and makes sure to eat three meals a day and always the same thing — plain toast and butter, chicken noodle soup, and the potatoes they serve on the side for dinner. They give him second helpings of potatoes when they notice he doesn’t touch anything else on the plate. One day, he realises he’s starving and goes back for thirds.
He learns to avoid the hallway just before lunch because the group of older boys hooting and joking makes his head throb. He writes down his schedule and makes sure he sticks to it. He manages to meet Anush Joshi’s eyes when he asks Ty for an extra pencil. He tries the chocolate pastry they serve for dessert sometimes and likes how it melts on his tongue. He tries the olive loaf and spits it out.
The routine of the Scholomance is orderly and exact. He has six classes a day, three in the morning and three in the afternoon, with an hour’s break for lunch. Of course, there’s still weapons training for two hours after classes every day and in the morning on Saturday, but it’s focused more on stealth and theory as much as it is on fighting, which is a lot more manageable for Ty. Breakfast is at seven o’clock, lunch at twelve o’clock, and dinner at six o’clock on the dot. Ty goes to bed at eleven o’clock and wakes up at six o’clock. Most of the time in between is spent studying. Ty doesn’t feel like talking to anyone, anyways. All the people he wants to talk to are scattered across the world — Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Cornwall.
He runs tests with Livvy, experimenting with the parameters of her ghostly state, writing each and every one of his findings down. He stops worrying so much that when she leaves she won’t come back. He gets used to letting the sound of her voice relax him. He still misses her being alive. He tells her. She misses being alive, too. Ty wants to hug her, and he doesn’t know if it’s her he wants to reassure or himself.
On Saturdays after lunch he writes a letter to Julian; he tells his older brother about his week, and asks him how his travel year is going. On Sundays, the Scholomance students are free to go into the surrounding towns. It’s a push, at first; Ty hates new surroundings and new cities, especially if he’s alone — but Livvy is curious about the area, and Ty can’t deny her the few sensations Livvy has now, so he sets out to explore town by town. Ty gets postcards for the rest of his siblings — Bran Castle for Dru, flower gardens for Helen, the animals at the zoo for Tavvy.
“Don’t you want to get one for Kit?” Livvy suggests while he’s standing in a gift shop in Brasov, sometime in February. The question startles Ty. It’s quiet enough in the city on Sunday that Ty has his headphones around his neck instead of over his ears, but Ty’s reaching for the cord, winding it around his fingers.
“No,” Ty says. “Kit doesn’t want to hear from me.”
“I’m sure he’ll be pleased to know what you’re doing,” Livvy begins, but Ty reaches to slip his headphone over his ears. He buys the postcards and spends the rest of his lei on a Dracula mug and cookies, for good measure.
He doesn’t want to think about Kit, the memories still painful in his chest. I wish I’d never known you. Livvy hadn’t heard Kit say that, and the guilt and shame he feels when he thinks about Kit makes it impossible for Ty to speak the words, even to her. He sends Dru the Dracula mug and counts out his lei next time he goes into town so he isn’t tempted to try to contact Kit. He knows Livvy disapproves, wants him to reach out, but this, he can’t bring himself to do.
Of course, there are surprises that throw Ty off his routine. In March, Livvy finds Irene — a small Carpathian lynx kitten — and to Ty’s surprise, the Scholomance lets him keep her, provided he can take care of her and that she doesn’t hurt any of the students. Ty takes out all the books on domesticating wild creatures from the library and studies them religiously.
“She’s like an emotional support lynx,” Livvy says, as Ty watches Irene chase Livvy around his room. Irene is one of the few people (creatures?) who can see Livvy, and Ty can’t help laughing whenever Livvy jumps out of the way and Irene mewls in protest. She sends him a grin as Irene paws, frustrated, at Livvy’s ghostly ankles, and Ty has the rare thought that maybe things will be okay, in the end.
There’s also the necklace that Magnus brings from Kit and the promise he makes to Livvy to write Kit, at least a thank-you postcard. When he puts the necklace on, dangling next to Livvy’s Blackthorn necklace, Ty feels a choking feeling in his throat that doesn’t have anything to do with the added weight of the necklace.
It’s guilt, he realises, and maybe hope. Why would Kit give him something to protect him if Kit hates him? And the Herondale pendant at that. Shadowhunters take great pride in their family names and crests. They don’t just give up their symbols for no reason.
Ty holds the two charms at the end of their chains, feels their weight in his palm. Livvy and Kit. Two of the people he loves most in the world and both of them are so far away from him. But maybe if he can keep their necklaces close to his heart, he’ll always have a bit of them with him, too.
There’s a knock on his door, and Livvy startles and sits on his desk, shushing Irene, who is hopping up and pawing at Livvy’s ankles and meeting only air. Ty rubs her head, murmuring words to her, and Irene purrs, calming enough to lie down, licking her paws.
When Ty opens the door, he’s surprised to find Anush Joshi standing outside it.
“My friends and I are playing a game in the common room,” he says. “I was wondering if you wanted to join. It’s a mystery game — I saw the Sherlock Holmes books on your desk when I was taking care of your cat and I thought you might be interested.”
“She’s a Carpathian lynx,” Ty corrects him, but the mention of Sherlock Holmes has him interested. “Do I get to solve mysteries?”
“Yeah. You team up to find clues and evidence and all that jazz.” Anush shrugs. “I’m not very good at it. Haven’t won yet, but I might if you’re on my team.”
Ty glances behind him at Livvy, and Irene, who seems to have given up on trying to claw at Livvy’s ankles and is pacing his room. She yawns hugely and curls up underneath his desk, and Livvy gives him two thumbs up. “Go ahead,” she says. “I’ll watch over her.” When Ty hesitates, she makes a shooing motion with her hands. “Go!” she says, smiling at him.
He turns to Anush. “We’ll win,” he says, and he follows Anush out the door.
—
Anush introduces him to Ji-young, a wide-eyed Korean girl, Sean, who’s from Dublin and has a crooked smile; Paula, a tall Brazilian girl who’s apparently a “board game fiend,” as Anush had put it, and Dylan, a stocky blond from New York that reminds him a bit too much of Kit for Ty to be able to look at his face past a perfunctory polite glance. He recognizes some of them from his classes — they’re all in his year — and they all look friendly enough.
Anush explains the objective of the game to him. They’re solving in pairs, making three teams, racing to solve murder mysteries by finding and trading clues, evidence, and intelligence. “It’s kind of complicated, though,” he says, shuffling the cards, “so don’t feel bad if we don’t win today.”
Ty wins. He wins the next game, too. To his surprise, it’s fun. It’s the kind of fun that Ty hadn’t thought he could have, sitting in a group of people his own age just hanging out. Well, the others are hanging out, if Ty has to be specific; halfway through the first game, Ty puts on his headphones so he can focus more on the game. Paula gives him a curious look, and Sean smiles at him.
“How was it?” Livvy asks, when he gets back to his room, and the guilt crashes in, pressing in on him on all sides. Ty shouldn’t be having fun and leaving Livvy alone. He should be with her. He brought her back. He should have to live with the consequences and isolation of breaking one of the laws of the universe and disturbing his sister’s rest.
“I’m sorry, Livvy,” he says. His voice cracks. He flutters his hands at his sides, fingers to palm, one two three four five, rocks himself up to his toes and back down. He can’t meet her eyes. “I shouldn’t have left you alone. I’m sorry.”
When she looks at him, it’s with an expression that Ty can’t place. When Livvy was alive Ty could look at her and know if she was happy, or angry, or sad; now, he looks at her, and a lot of the time, he can’t tell anymore what she’s feeling, like her death had severed a connection and even though he’s anchoring her to the world, the connection has been gone forever. She drifts closer to him and puts both hands on either side of his face, but he can’t feel her touch, the weight of her fingers against his skin. He just feels emptiness.
“Ty, listen to me,” Livvy says. He can’t meet her gaze for more than a split second, so he closes his eyes and listens instead. “I want this for you, Ty-Ty. I want to see you grow up and make new friends and kiss cute boys, when you’re ready to. I want to see you have fun and play games and learn new things. I don’t — I don’t want you to sacrifice your life just because I sacrificed mine.”
He reaches for her, hand on hers, only the slightest pushback of air to signify that there’s something there. Ty can’t feel her warmth under his fingers, wants to so badly that almost it hurts him physically. “I don’t want to leave you,” he says. “I don’t want you to leave me.”
Livvy presses a hand over his heart where her necklace rests and pushes down. He feels the weight of it settle on his chest; this, they both can feel. “I’m never going to leave you, Ty-Ty,” she says, and Ty recognizes the sadness in the tone of her voice this time. “Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.”
The words of the parabatai oath, the one thing Ty had not conceded to her, when she was alive. But the is bound to him now, and he to her, through life and death. “The Angel do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.”
It’s the least he can do for her, now.
—
So on Thursdays, between dinner and lights out, he plays detective games with Anush and his friends. Anush says they focus on the game more when he’s around, and Ty notices a month into the game nights that everyone else has been so quiet he hasn’t had to wear his headphones. He starts joining them at meals, sometimes. Anush also invites him to their Saturday night games, but the common room on Saturday is such a ruckus that Ty turns it down. He’s still not used to being around so many people, all the time.
One night, he opens his door to see the five of them outside his room, the rather large box of board games Paula owns carried between Anush and Dylan. It disrupts him him enough that he can only get out a “I don’t want to play on Saturdays,” before he bolts the door behind him and slides down to the floor to spend fifteen minutes fluttering his hands and winding his hands in Irene’s soft fur while she mewls and burrows into his chest.
On Thursday, Paula comes to him after class, both of them looking at the budding of the trees outside the window instead of at each other’s eyes. Ty’s noticed that Paula doesn’t look at people’s eyes, either. “We’re going to have our Saturday night in my room,” she says. “Sorry for surprising you last week. I told the others you might not like it, but they insisted.”
“I don’t like surprises,” Ty agrees.
“I don't either.”
“Thanks,” Ty says. “For telling me.”
“We’d all be happy if you came,” Paula tells him cheerfully. “Board game nights are different with you around. They’re more intense.”
And yet Ty finds himself hesitating. It’s not that he doesn't like Anush and Paula and their friends. He does. It’s just — Ty’s always been hesitant around new people. For his whole life, he’s had his siblings, and that’s been enough, because his siblings understand his idiosyncrasies and quirks. When Ty doesn’t look at people’s eyes when he speaks, or lets his hands flutter by his sides so he can observe instead of becoming overwhelmed; when he can list the titles of all fifty-six short stories and four novels in the Sherlock Holmes literary canon from memory but can’t adjust to the time-honoured tradition of Shadowhunter sarcasm. Ty doesn’t take chances on new people.
Well, that’s a lie. Ty had taken a chance on one person. He’d trusted Kit, and Kit had left.
He doesn’t go that Saturday either, but after careful consideration of his workload and his schedule, he blocks off the time for the Saturday afterwards and worries about it for the next week.
“What if they’re lying to me that they want me there?” Ty frets to Livvy.
Livvy shrugs. “Then you come back here, and I’ll haunt them for the rest of their days.”
Ty analyses her face for any hint that she’s exaggerating or making a hyperbolic statement, and decides that she must be one hundred percent serious.
When he knocks on Paula’s door, they all smile and welcome him inside, and when Paula notices him starting to get overwhelmed by the unfamiliar surroundings, she tosses him a keychain-like ring. “So your hands keep busy,” she says, and raises her other hand to show him that she’s holding something similar. “You can keep it. I have loads.”
Ty stays afterwards to help Paula put her games away because they’d ended early, and as they’re working the pieces back into the box, she says, “It’s good to meet another autistic Shadowhunter.”
He’s never heard the word before. “Autistic?” he asks.
“It’s a word that mundanes have,” Paula says, “for people who experience the world unlike others. You know, like you and me. We think the world is too loud and too bright, and we need to know how things work and how to solve problems, or we need things to do with our hands.”
Ty holds up the keychain, turns it over in his hand. “Like this,” he says, turning the keychain over. It has a pleasant weight to it, and it’s unobtrusive enough that Ty can hold it in one hand with the other free, spin the beads on it, rotate them around the central ring. “My brother had the same idea. He gave me pipe cleaners and seashells to keep my hands busy. Is it hard for you to figure out that people don’t say what they mean, sometimes?”
“Yes,” says Paula. “I think the world would be a lot simpler if people just said what they meant to say instead of trying to avoid the direct way of speaking. Does fighting suck for you too? Like, not the killing demons part, but just how it sounds, trying to keep track of everything at once?”
“I have to wear headphones when I fight demons,” Ty says, fingering the white band that hangs around his neck. “I can still fight without them, but it feels bad, like there’s glass shattering in my head and I’m the only one who can hear it.”
“Ooh, that’s a good idea,” Paula says. “I used to wear earplugs, but then I just get snuck up on faster. You know, next time I have an Internet connection, I’ll get a pair.”
Something like relief washes over Ty at the knowledge that he’s not the only Shadowhunter out there that gets overwhelmed by the sounds of fighting, who needs a routine in place to eat and sleep and do work and laundry, who gets misunderstood even when he knows he’s being direct in a way that everyone else isn’t. That there are enough mundanes out there that there’s a word for people like him.
Most Shadowhunters don’t understand that even though Ty might be different, it doesn’t make him lesser. His family understands. Kit had understood, too. Shadowhunters have a tendency to fear the unknown — people who are unlike them. It’s why the Cohort exists, and Ty thinks that the evidence of where they are now is enough to demonstrate the flaws of homogeneity.
They finish putting the pieces and cards away in silence. He tells Paula good night, and as the door clicks shut he lets out a long breath, and a grin breaks out across his face. He has friends now.
—
June creeps closer, and with it, his and Livvy’s sixteenth birthday. He supposes it’s just his now, but the thought is so painful that he can’t call it anything but their birthday, even in his head. He’d always liked their birthday, but this time it fills him with dread.
Ty stops being able to sleep well. He starts biting his knuckles in his sleep again and wakes up disoriented from nightmares and disjointed half-sleep. He can’t stomach anything except plain toast at breakfast. He doesn’t go to the Saturday game nights. He still has Thursday nights on his schedule blocked off, so he has to go to them, but puts his headphones on during them and doesn’t speak or look at anyone.
He still hasn’t written Kit, and the postcard he’d bought for Kit is sitting untouched on his desk even though it’s been two months since he’d wandered into a shop and seen some funny vampire cartoons and had thought, Kit would like them. He finds himself missing Julian, Mark, Dru, and Tavvy more as the days creep closer to his and Livvy’s birthday. Most of all he misses Livvy. Ty’s grown three inches since he started at the Scholomance, which means he’s three inches taller than Livvy now. They’d always been the same height, until. Well, until.
Livvy seems just as fraught with tension as Ty. She disappears more often and doesn’t come back, even when Ty feels the stretching sensation in his chest that means she’s getting farther away. They had tested, with the necklace, how far Livvy can go now: outside of the Scholomance grounds and all the way down the road to the edge of the nearest town — about a ten kilometre radius. The Carpathians are vast and sparsely populated, and Ty starts worrying that she’ll never come back, even though she always does.
She forgets what she’s saying in the middle of her sentence and doesn’t remember things that happened when she was alive, even when Ty prods at her memories. He writes in his notebook: Ghostly state affected by emotions, possibly. Anniversary dates may be difficult (birthdays, for example). Test in September?
It makes Ty feel even worse, more lonely and more guilty than ever.
Jules sends a letter to Ty a week before and tells them they’ll be visiting the Scholomance for a week, arriving the day before their birthday, which sends relief and gratitude coursing through Ty. The exhaustion and dread doesn’t disappear, but it’s something to look forward to. On the day they’re set to arrive, Ty waits anxiously in the foyer after classes end, pacing back and forth and twisting his hands until Julian comes through the door. As soon as he sees his brother again, he runs to him and holds onto him, tight.
“You’ve gotten so tall, Ty,” Julian says. His voice sounds choked, and when Ty pulls back, Julian’s eyes are rimmed red, like he’d been crying before he’d come to meet Ty. He’s even more tan than he had been when Ty had left in November; after they’d left Paris in May they’d travelled through Greece and Italy before coming up to Romania to see Ty. “You’re so handsome now.”
“I missed you,” Ty says. Livvy’s beside him, open-mouthed, staring at Julian both helpless and devastated at the same time. She can’t join in the hug. She can’t even talk to Julian. Julian wouldn’t be able to see Livvy; even Dru couldn’t see her, and Dru is the only one of Ty’s family who knows about her. He wants to tell Jules that Livvy missed him too, but he can’t.
Instead, he says, “I miss when we were all together.”
Ty can feel Julian shaking, so he holds his brother closer.
—
Ty makes all his introductions to Julian and Emma: first Irene, who hisses at Emma (who hisses back, to no avail), then Anush, Paula, and the rest of his friends, and it makes Julian happy to know that he’s doing well at the Scholomance. Telling Julian everything he’s learned about his friends briefly makes him feel better, especially when Livvy’s injecting her own funny comments about them to Ty. Telling his friends about Julian and Emma helps too. They all seem awed at Julian and Emma and keep asking them questions.
Ty doesn’t know why they’re treating them like celebrities — like people usually treat Jace Herondale and Clary Fairchild. Julian’s just his brother.
But even knowing that Julian and Emma are in a room at the Scholomance, even having said goodnight to Livvy before he’d gone to sleep, he wakes up on their birthday feeling sick and feverish and a deep sense of loss.
“Livvy?” he whispers, blearily, the fog of nightmares still clinging to his brain. “Livvy, is that you?”
“Ty,” says her voice. “Ty, I’m here.”
He fumbles for the witchlight he keeps next to him. Livvy’s already sitting on his desk, legs curled up to her chin. Livvy doesn’t need to sleep anymore. Ty can feel that sometimes when she disappears she’s resting, but she isn’t physically far from him. She’s just gone. He’s never asked her where she goes when she’s resting, even though he’s explored everything else he can think of. Maybe he’s too scared to know in case she disappears for good, and Ty can’t follow her into the unknown.
“Happy birthday, Ty,” she says, smiling at him, but when he looks at her eyes they look sad, brows furrowed and lip trembling.
“Happy birthday, Livvy,” Ty returns. His mouth feels dry and there’s a rushing in his head and a squeezing sensation in his chest. Ty is sixteen years old and Livvy is still fifteen and three months old. Next year Ty will be seventeen and Livvy will still be fifteen and three months old. When he’s thirty years and seven months old, he will have lived more than half his life without his twin sister. The thought makes him nauseous. He fists his hands into his blankets as if they can steady him. Irene, as if she senses his distress, hops up onto his bed and curls against him.
Last year, Livvy had given him an Adventures of Sherlock Holmes t-shirt, and Ty had given her a necklace he’d made from coral and seashells he’d picked up at the beach. This year, Ty pulls from his pocket a small, squishy bee toy Livvy had given him a few years ago that Ty had been attached to for a year. From his research, he’d discovered that Livvy is more likely to be able to touch and feel things if they’re sentimental to her or Ty. He’d also written Magnus, just to make sure.
“You should be able to feel this,” he says, giving it to Livvy. “I’m sorry — it’s not much.”
She takes it, and is astonished to see that the bee toy holds its position, cupped in her palm. If anyone else saw it, it would look like it was flying. “I can,” she says. “Thank you, Ty.” Livvy tosses it up into the air, and catches it, and a smile breaks across her face. Ty smiles too, despite everything.
Livvy squeezes the bee, and suddenly she looks sad again. “I wish I could get you something, Ty.”
“You’re here,” Ty tells her. He runs his fingers down the chains hanging around his neck to the pendant dangling at the bottom. “You got me this. I know it’s not a birthday gift. But it’s still from you, and that’s what matters most.”
The day is like any other. He goes to his classes. Emma helps teach combat that afternoon. He has dinner with Julian.
No one tells him happy birthday, even Julian and Emma, and Ty’s glad. He can’t imagine a happy birthday without Livvy. He doesn’t think he can bear getting presents or cake, because it would just remind him that Livvy will never have any of that again. Celebrating would feel like they’re ignoring that Livvy’s gone, like they’re happy she isn’t here. Julian and Emma coming here might be a kind of present, but today, Ty suspects that Julian needs Ty just as much as Ty needs Jules.