Disclaimer: Victorious belongs to Dan Schneider and Nickelodeon. Anything in this story that isn't part of the canon universe either belongs to Tsubasa K. Kruger or to someone else who will be appropriately credited in the corresponding chapter.
About the timeline: As the author doesn't think there was any actual timeline in the series, Tori Vega's transfer to Hollywood Arts will be set to have happened on January; certain canon events will be implicitly or explicitly referred to in the story, while others (like Tori's love interests and her kissing Beck) can be deduced to not have happened at all. "War of the Immortals" begins the summer before the gang's senior year at Hollywood Arts, and every event from then on will be given a specific date; some events from the series will be vaguely mentioned to have happened during the course of this story.
Note: This is the rewrite of "About a War", a fanfic which has been declared eternally unfinished. Grammar and spelling have improved, the POV was changed, minor plotlines may be altered and certain holes in the plot have been filled; other than that, the general lineup of the story remains the same. It should be noted that "War of the Immortals" will follow its mother fic as closely as possible.
Note 2: As this is a rewrite, the updates should be fairly frequent due to the fact that AW, the base from which this new version is being constructed, was almost complete by the time it was irreparably abandoned. There is also, however, the fact that the author is a fourth-year college student who is currently working on the weekends, so updates may not be as fast as the average reader would want.
Note 3: Reviews politely requesting updates will be appreciated as a show of the reader liking the story and being mildly anxious to see it continue, while rude demands of the same will be glanced at and filed away under the "things not to do" category. Please do remember that fanfic writers have lives outside of this website.
Note 4: Polite commentary of the negative and constructive criticism kind will be evaluated accordingly; as the author is an amateur writer who has English as a second language, the latter will be seen as the reader's attempt to help the author grow, and therefore much more appreciated. Flames will be ignored.
Chapter 1 – Truth of birth
July 22, 2012. Florida, USA.
Jade runs, barely managing to stay upright as her feet trip over themselves and multiple unseen obstacles on the ground. Even if she could see farther than a few feet, she wouldn't be able to see anything other than woods surrounding her in all directions. It's a new moon, so it's a miracle she can even see.
She's being hunted, she knows it, and it feels chillingly terrifying to be in a position she'd so often laughed at, when characters in horror and slasher movies stupidly run in circles, trying to escape the inevitable. She still has hope that her position isn't completely like that, and silently vows to stop mocking those characters if she makes it out of this.
Whoever is following her, chasing her, lets out a laugh that echoes from all directions. Her breath catches in her throat as a cold sweat runs down her spine and goosebumps almost distract her, and she nearly meets the ground when she trips this time.
Aside from that thing's laugh, her own harsh breathing and her clumsy steps, everything is dead silent in a wide area around her. Jade's heartbeat pounds loudly in her ears, almost drowning any other sound, terrified tears cloud her eyes and make her race even more difficult, and even though she can't hear her pursuer running she knows they are close behind.
She doesn't know how long she's been running away – all she knows is the hurt in her limbs and the terror in her heart and the burn of her lungs... and it certainly isn't good for people to run with their abdomen dripping blood like hers is doing.
"Why are you still running?" the question echoes from all directions at once. "Not that I am complaining, mind, but... you must know how pointless it is to run."
The voice now comes as a low whisper right next to her ear, and Jade can't help but to jump and whirl away from it and the sickeningly sweet smell of cold blood their breath exudes.
"I won't give up" she swears, sounding a lot more confident than she is actually feeling.
The monster chuckles coldly in response. "Is that so? What a pleasure. There is little I love more than a good hunt."
She's resumed her frenetic pace by then, returning to the desperate race against death she's been trapped in for what feels like years. She can't die. Not here, not now. There are still many things she wants to do, things she needs to do.
Jade cannot afford to be killed right now, least of all by a psychopath who swore to be a demon, sent from Hell to end her life under orders from Lucifer himself.
I knew I shouldn't have come. I should be hanging out with the gang in LA, not... running for my life wherever this is, she thinks desperately right before she narrowly avoids a low-hanging branch she swears wasn't there a second before.
"Yes, Jade, keep running. You are certainly fun to play with" the bastard laughs.
She isn't having fun and they know it. But it's clear that, to them, her fear and growing desperation are hilarious. She tries not to think about what the obviously insane person could have done before – is she the first victim of a new serial killer, or just a new entry in a growing list no one has managed to figure out?
All of a sudden, she slams against something small, warm and a bit familiar. Tiny, delicate hands wrap around her forearms to keep her upright, and a pair of– unnatural light blue eyes look at her in concern from the well-known face of her childhood friend.
Jade stares at the Cat-lookalike in wide-eyed wonder for a few seconds before the situation catches up with her, and she tugs on her forearms in an attempt to get her moving. "You have to run!" she gasps, desperate.
The shorter girl just smiles. "Everything's going to be fine, Jade. Don't worry."
"H-how do you know my name?" she asks, growing scared again at the possibility of this seemingly innocent girl being friends with her pursuer, or perhaps another after her life.
The girl's smile grows, eerily similar to that of Cat's when she thinks someone's said something unbelievably stupid – it doesn't happen often, which makes it remarkable enough that Jade has this expression memorized. "I–"
"Well, well, well" the hunter's voice comes out of nowhere. Both Jade and the other girl tense up, and the dark-haired teen slowly turns around to properly look at her pursuer for the first time.
He is a tall man, perhaps in his mid-thirties, with dark hair and pasty skin covered in a strange pattern of tattoos, his cocky smirk and haughty step complemented by a pair of arrogant ruby red eyes. He stops relatively away from them, hands confidently inside the pockets of his black cargo pants, and he tilts his head to the side as the smaller girl moves around Jade to stand between them.
"You must be Catherine Valentine, then. Are you not a bit young to be out on the woods this late, pretty girl?" he asks mockingly.
A hand on Jade's left shoulder makes her look to the side, where she is met by a guy creepily similar to Robbie Shapiro but with different eyes, a pair of light blue that glance at her softly before they harden as they stare at the man.
"I'd ask what you want with her but – it's a bit obvious" the redheaded girl says sharply.
"Then you must know this is nothing personal, just a man doing his job."
"And you must know that we have jobs to do too" the teen boy answers, his hand tightening on Jade's shoulder. She thinks maybe she should feel more, but she can only faintly note that he sounds a lot more confident than the Robbie she knows – proof, in her mind, that (eyes aside) this can't be the same guy. "You won't touch her."
"Oh? And I suppose you will stop me, Robert? Certainly you should know you are not strong enough to stop me even if I was... fighting fair."
"Yes, but that's why we brought backup" another voice chimes in, just as a hand comes to rest on Jade's free shoulder and two figures circle the growing group to stand in front of them.
She's too numb (with the shocks of the night and her steady blood loss) to feel surprised when she realizes that the three newcomers look like the rest of the gang, with the duo that look like Tori and Andre standing before them while the last, Beck, stays by her right.
The man's face twists with a wild mix of emotions (recognition, annoyance, hesitation, a touch of fear) when he looks at the Tori doppelganger. "So low have you sunk since we last met that you are working with their kind now, Rivot? It is a shame to see that you insist on seriously insulting a name you were beginning to be worthy of."
Tori's voice, when she answers, is harsh. "I left that behind, Idvke."
The man snarls. "So be it, then, Zkhoerjae."
Tori tenses and, for a heartbeat, no one moves; then, Tori and Andre rush forward to meet Jade's pursuer head on. Just as they clash, Cat tugs Jade to make her sit on the ground, leaning against her body, which is fortunate because the combination between her injury and everything else is making her lightheaded.
"What the fuck is going on?" she asks hoarsely, eyes travelling to the fighting group.
"It's us, Jade," Beck answers. "I know we look different, but everything has an explanation. We'll tell you later. Just trust us for now, okay?"
She looks into his eyes, displaying the same honest emotion as always in all their dark brown glory, and faintly wonders why his eyes haven't changed. But she nods, in part because she doesn't have much of a chance to make them talk before they want to.
(Also in part because they are protecting her from that psychopath, so she isn't going to complain any time soon.)
"Great" he smiles faintly and looks at Robbie – and Jade is finally starting to believe that they all may actually be her friends. "Robs, you're up."
He rolls his eyes, but kneels beside the girls as Beck stands again, vanishing something that looks suspiciously like a flamethrower with a grunt and a wave of his arm. Cat gently pries her hands away from the increasingly worrying wound and the normally awkward boy leans closer, frowning at her half-open stomach.
"Great, a sadist" he says in disgust.
Then, Jade's attention wavers back to the fight at the sound of a scream of frustration – and it's very obvious that the one who yelled was Idvke, because he jumps back and tries to regain his footing before Tori is in front of him again, a sword of what looks like black smoke on her hand, and Andre gestures with his hands as a tree appears out of nowhere against the man's back and he has to duck in order to avoid losing his head.
"Aren't you going to help her?" Jade manages to ask, looking back to see Robbie searching his pockets and Cat staring intently at her.
Beck snorts. "We'd only get in her way."
"Found it!" Robbie exclaims, pulling a small beaded bracelet with a number of charms hanging from it. It's too dark to see them clearly and, when the fight produces another burst of fire, he already has most of the bracelet inside his fist. "Alright then, stay still please" he says, fist hovering above her midsection before he mutters something under his breath. He frowns. "Well, that's not good. Beck! Do you know how to deal with poison yet?"
"Poison?!" Jade definitely-not-yelps.
"I don't, sorry" her ex-boyfriend answers, without taking his eyes away from the conflict. "Keep her steady for a couple more minutes, Tori will be done by then."
Robbie nods with a grimace. He turns back to her then, returning his hand to her stomach and starting to mutter again.
Soon losing interest, Jade looks at the fight again, barely managing to contain her surprise when she notices that Tori, sweet, harmless Tori, is winning.
"She's the best fighter between all of us" Cat says when she notices where her attention lays. "I'm pretty sure she could easily take us all together with her eyes closed and both hands behind her back while making sure nothing happens to you."
"Seriously?" Jade asks, not really able to see that girl being good at anything that involves violence. Except perhaps self-defense, but even then she'd be skeptical. "Is this the same Tori Vega we're talking about?"
Cat gives a strained smile, which she only sees through the corner of her eye. "She hides it well."
Jade's retort dies in her throat when she becomes a witness to the truth behind her best friend's words – because right in that moment, Tori vanishes from one place and appears in front of her opponent with a burst of inhumane speed, Idvke's eyes widening just a split second before the smoky blade separates his head from his shoulders.
The girl that Jade could have sworn was the most harmless of their little group stays in her half-crouched position for five seconds as the body falls to the ground. In the silence that follows, her quiet snarl is just as audible as the vacuum sound of her sword dissipating, and she sighs and rubs the back of her neck before turning around.
Jade can't keep herself from gasping when ruby red eyes meet hers. Tori looks away first, directing her attention at Beck and Andre, who step forward in anticipation.
"Burn the body" she says, lowering her hand. "Discreetly."
They both nod and move towards the corpse, while Tori comes to kneel next to the extremely shocked actress. She smiles (nervously) and it would feel as if everything was back on track if it wasn't for all the reasons this whole night feels like a nightmare.
"She's been poisoned" Robbie says, breaking the atmosphere. "I can't heal her."
Tori nods at him and requests both he and Cat move back. When they do, Jade is lying completely on the ground, teeth firmly together to keep a yelp of pain from leaving her when the movement pulls at the edges of the cut.
"Okay, Jade, this is going to sting a little, but soon you'll be all new" Tori says, gently posing the fingers of her right hand around the injury, thumb brushing against one end. "Now, breathe."
She places the middle and heart fingers of her left hand on the other end of the injury and speaks in gibberish, a low cadence of words that continues even as she slowly draws her left hand away and a trail of liquid leaves Jade's body in its effort to follow. It does sting, but the pale teenager doesn't see what's so bad about it until the last drop separates from her blood and suddenly she feels the wound burn.
Tori twists her hand to form a sphere with the liquid, reacting to her curses with only a roll of her eyes as she freezes the sphere solid. Robbie kneels again, repeating his actions from minutes before and sighing in apparent relief when the cut seems to answer to his commands.
"There we go. How are you feeling, Jade?" he asks.
"Confused as fuck, how else do you think? What the hell is going on?"
"We'll talk once we're safe" Tori interrupts, standing up to throw the ball to the ongoing fire nearby, which is oddly blue and devoid of heat, smell and smoke. "This place is too open."
"She's right" Andre agrees from his position next to the fire. "We have to get you out of here first. Robbie, is she safe for teleporting?"
"Probably" the bespectacled teen answers as he helps the girls up. "But there's a chance of it reopening if we put too much pressure on it. I wouldn't really feel comfortable with her putting any strain on her stomach for a day or so."
"Well, if the doc says so..." Andre sighs. "Wings out, everyone, we're flying."
"Wings– Flying?!" Jade asks, her voice more of a yelp.
She does yelp when Andre, light blue eyes sparkling mischievously, picks her up and in one fluid motion launches himself to the air. The others are around them, but she's too distracted by the brilliant white feather wings sprouting from his back to notice when they get above the clouds.
"Where are we?" she asks in a quiet voice, lower than she'd intended. She's almost sure no one heard her when Andre answers, not looking at her.
"Still in Florida. It seems he knew you wouldn't be with us tonight."
"But– how? I didn't even... Wait, what?"
He frowns lightly. "We've been protecting you for years, Jade. It's been a while since anyone came after you, so we probably slacked off a little– not a mistake we're going to make again, that's for sure."
Cat appears to Andre's right, making Jade's eyes widen at the equally white wings holding her several feet off the ground. "How did he get you out in the woods? Weren't you supposed to be in the hotel? Did you go out?"
"... No, I didn't" Jade answers, trying not to think that the others probably have wings too. "I don't know what happened. I went to sleep and then I woke up in the middle of nowhere."
Andre looks at someone over Jade's head, frown displaying something between concern and confusion. Robbie speaks up from behind her, Andre's left.
"We should probably get you to a Sanctuary as soon as possible, then. No offense, guys," he adds, speaking to the two outside her range of vision, "but I'm not confident we could handle a big group even with Tori on our side."
"None taken" Beck answers from beneath them. "I'm not sure myself, either. The sooner we get to safety, the better."
"We're too vulnerable here" Tori adds from above. "This place isn't safe to begin with, but adding what just happened? I'm surprised no one has attacked us yet."
"Are we going to your place, Tori?" Robbie asks. "It's the closest to here, right?"
"It is" she answers. "But I don't care where we go so long as we get there soon."
The silence lasts a bit longer then, before Jade gathers the confidence to speak up again. "We're going back to LA?" Cat nods. "What about my dad?"
"We already took care of that. He thinks we'll stay at Tori's until he comes back– of course, we still might do just that. Tori had to convince him to let you go back, so that's why she was late."
"Excuse you, I wasn't late" Tori grumbles.
"Also, your dad isn't a target, so he'll be fine" Cat continues, ignoring their friend.
"What? So I'm a target?"
Beck interrupts before anyone can think to answer. "Hurry up guys, we're entering California."
"So soon?" Jade asks, surprised, because she can swear not ten minutes have passed since they launched to the air.
None of her friends make it seem as if they heard her, which she takes as a sign to shut up and study her best friend, pointedly not looking down – she's not normally afraid of heights, but they're so high up that even she is feeling a bit shaken up.
(Not to mention... wings. She can't trust those yet.)
All too quickly, they slow down until they're merely hovering above the clouds, and then they're suddenly plummeting down to the ground.
They land softly in the backyard of the very well-known Vega house, where the gang has practically established their base, before she can manage to emit the scream lodged in her throat. As soon as her feet shakily touch the ground, the back door is yanked open and Trina runs outside.
"Oh, thank the Lord you guys are fine!" she exclaims, launching a tight hug at a suddenly uncomfortable Tori.
"Fine? Fine?!" Jade retorts, almost as a shriek. "That bastard sliced my guts open!"
"I'm sure, but now you're healed and if you just go inside you'll be safe" Trina cuts her upcoming meltdown, gently pushing her past the glass doors. "Come on, quickly."
The rest of the gang, all of them with their eyes back to normal and no wings in sight, follow at a slightly more sedate pace. As soon as the glass door closes behind Tori's back, everyone seems to relax.
"Go to Tori's room and take a shower," Trina says, ushering Jade to the stairs. "You'll have your questions answered later – no offense, but you look terrible."
Frowning, the still confused girl moves to the second floor and to the room she's sneaked into more times than she cares to count. She enters the bathroom and looks to the mirror, swallowing a scream when her reflection proves the truth behind Trina's words.
She's a sight right out of a horror movie – her overall appearance making it seem as if she's spent a few days (or even weeks) living in the woods with no camping commodity, with leaves, mud and blood splattered all over her body. Her shirt also sports a large diagonal cut where she was wounded, along with several dozen rips that are more often than not matched by little cuts inflicted both by Idvke and the trees.
Jade grimaces at her reflection and quickly turns away, stripping as fast as she can before she steps into the shower to allow the how water to clean away as much of the dirt as she can without her moving. When it becomes obvious that nothing else will be removed, she layers a sponge in soap to thoroughly scrub her body, ignoring the sting from her remaining injuries – if she ran with an open stomach, she can manage to clean herself now.
She's a little mystified at the thin line, a few shades paler than her skin, that marks the place where she was cut open. It's... interesting that her friends can heal grave injuries so quickly, to say the least, but she's very curious as to how they can even do that.
When she finally closes the water and opens the curtain, she's met with a fluffy towel and a change of clothes resting folded on the sink, her own ruined attire nowhere to be seen. She stays still for a moment before she dries off and dresses quickly, suddenly reminded that she was promised some very much needed answers – some of which might explain why she didn't realize someone coming in.
Walking down the stairs mere four minutes later, she finds the gang plus Trina sitting silently on the couches, some random movie being ignored on the TV. She feels a bit self-conscious at the stares directed at her (she's wearing sweatpants and an oversized HA jersey, both belonging to Tori and not the kind of clothes anyone has ever seen her in), but she crushes the feeling and sweeps her eyes over her friends.
She perches herself on the edge of the couch that's closest to the door, directly across from the Vega sisters and Beck, with the remaining trio sitting between them. There's a full two minutes of silence before she gathers her wits, takes a deep breath and tucks her bare feet under her body.
"Okay, so... What's going on? Who the hell was that psycho?"
"That was Idvke Groumnhold – coincidentally, an assassin from Hell," Tori answers. "A damn good one, at that" she adds grumpily, as if the admission physically pained her.
"Excuse me? An assassin from where?"
"Hell" Tori repeats, looking as if she expects Jade to jump up and run away – which she might just do, if only to escape all this oddness.
"He was a Demon" Andre speaks up, glancing at Tori and back at Jade. "I'm curious, though – didn't he tell you?"
"You mean, when he was trying to kill me?" the girl retorts dryly. "He did. I assumed he was insane."
"Well, he was a Demon" Robbie pipes up. "It's part of the package."
The group snorts at that, as if sharing some sort of inner joke.
"So... what does that have to do with you guys?" Jade asks, a bit afraid of hearing the answer.
"We–" Andre points to Cat, Robbie and himself– "are angels. Your Guardian Angels, more specifically. We're supposed to protect you from Demons – it's a full time job, if you must know."
Jade looks at the other three.
"We're Fallen Demons" Beck answers, half-smiling, before she can ask about their involvement. "I was kicked out of Hell when I was five. My parents found me in Egypt, where I landed after being expelled, and then took me to Canada – so I'm not actually Canadian, only, y'know, raised there."
"So you're adopted?"
"No, no. My parents were kicked out when they were little, too, and I was... claimed by Hell when I was born." He shrugs. "I was lucky, since I had family on Earth already – my parents, aunt Holly and uncle David had no one."
Jade frowns. "You have an aunt and– aren't those the names of the Vegas?" she asks, suddenly getting a sinking feeling that she knows nothing about her friends.
(The fact that none of them is human is almost as important as the fact that the demons of the group are apparently all closely related to each other – because the latter implies that there was absolutely no reason at all for her to be jealous about anything happening between Tori and Beck, which... kind of makes her feel stupid.)
"Uhm, yeah. Aunt Holly is my dad's older sister."
"So Tori and Trina are actually your cousins?"
"... Yeah?"
Jade presses her temples to hold off a headache. "We're going to come back to this later, when I'm a little less confused and there are no more important things to discuss, but first – how can a– a Demon even be kicked out of Hell? What did you even do, be nice to an old lady?"
A smile tugs at the corners of Beck's mouth. "Kinda. I refused to kill one. She was the only family her little grandson had, so I flatly refused to touch her and Lucifer threw me out."
The girl looks at the Vega sisters. "And what about you?"
Trina shrugs. "Kicked out when I was five, too, after refusing to kill a baby. I landed in some random South American island, I don't even remember the name anymore. My parents are also Fallen Demons, as you probably deduced, kicked out when they were kids."
Tori hesitates for a moment before she answers in a slow, quiet voice. "I was expelled the summer before freshman year. Landed in Russia."
Jade can't help but to gape at the younger Vega. "I thought that you would've been the first to be kicked out, not them – but you were fifteen?"
Tori shrugs uneasily, but Beck is the one to speak up. "Well, Trina and I didn't even get to complete our first missions, so there's no way she could have been the first to leave seeing as she's younger than us." He manages a half-smile. "I swear that she's the strongest Fallen Demon in the world. You should be glad that she's helping protect you."
"Most Fallen Demons are kicked out before they're seven years old." Trina explains. "I don't think that a lot of Demons are expelled when they're older."
"Seventeen in the last five hundred years," Tori agrees, "including me. I doubt any after I left." She hesitates. "The older you grow, the darker your soul becomes. It's... almost impossible to be kicked out once you enter your teens."
"Yet you were" Jade comment, and Tori smiles something that doesn't quite reach her eyes and seems almost bitter.
"Well, of course. My crime was the worst a Demon can commit."
"What did you do? Pray to God?"
She lets out a mocking smile as Beck and Trina, followed by the angels, start laughing hysterically, which makes Jade suppress a smile. The tension is finally relieved, although Jade still feels nervous and scared and she knows her friends are aware of that.
She hopes they know she's not scared of them.
They watch the lame movie currently on TV for a moment, allowing the mindless comedy to ease them a bit more into their usual dynamics. Soon, however, Jade can't take it anymore and lets out an exploding breath.
"Okay, what the hell is going on? Why did that... Idvke guy try to kill me?"
The six exchange uneasy glances, the movie once again forgotten, before Andre shifts nervously and scratches the back of his head.
"Andre?"
"It's kind of complicated," he says. "You see, Lucifer has wanted you dead since even before you were born because... well, because you weren't actually supposed to be born."
"Excuse me?"
"It's to do with your parents," Cat explains. "Your dad is a Lost Demon and your mother is a Lost Angel – those are the immortals without memories, who fell out of Heaven or Hell by mistake and can't be retrieved by their people."
"It's actually a bit more complicated than that," Tori interjects, "but that's the gist of it. The point is, your parents weren't even supposed to meet each other and you weren't supposed to exist – but they did, and you do. You're a one-of-a-kind half-blood, Jade, so no one has any clue about how your powers will turn out to be... if they do appear at some point, that is, which no one is sure if they will."
Jade frowns, desperately trying to wrap her mind around the concept that apparently she's not human at all and she has assassins after her head due to some unfortunate circumstance of her birth. "So, the Devil wants me dead and keeps sending Demons to kill me because I'm the only half-blood in history?"
"Angel-Demon half-blood," Beck corrects. "There are quite a lot of Human half-bloods – take Robbie, for example, and Andre's a quarter-Human as well. You're special because you're the result of the mix between both immortal races, something that hasn't happened before. You're new and unpredictable, and Lucifer doesn't like new and unpredictable."
"We aren't just protecting you because we consider you our friend, though we'd still do it if it was the only reason – we're actually also doing our jobs, since God wants you alive." Robbie looks at the Demons and back at the newly revealed half-blood. "I can't speak for all of us, of course."
Trina shrugs. "Well, I was bored, and trying to keep a half-blood alive is entertaining."
Beck chuckles at that and smiles at his ex-girlfriend. "Turns out I really liked you. And I just love to piss off any and all Demons that come trying to kill you."
"Well, thank you." Jade snaps. "It's nice to know you care."
The others laugh, even Tori (who's been almost brooding the whole night) cracking a smile at the usual easy banter displayed among their group's members.
Jade barely manages to bite back a yawn, though she can't contain the one that follows immediately, and she's suddenly hyperaware of how deeply exhausted the chase, the return to safety and the subsequent explanations left her. She wonders why the adrenaline didn't abandon her earlier, but dismisses it as a proof of how uneasy she was about ignoring her friends' stance in the whole affair.
Not that she's not going to insist on more explanations later.
"Come on," Tori says, standing up, "you need to sleep. We can talk more tomorrow."
Jade nods and stands to follow, waving goodbye to the others without words or even looking at them.
She knows they're still a bit worried, maybe thinking that she'll be nervous about being alone with Tori because she was the last Demon to leave Lucifer's clutches just around two years ago, but she's not. She knows she should probably be mildly wary about the seemingly harmless girl that's actually the mean one, but she honestly doesn't care.
She can't care, in a way, because even having ignored that Tori is a Fallen Demon she still probably knows her better than she does any of the others, because they've been together as a couple for a while – something that their friends don't know only because they'd decided to keep it a secret until they felt ready to come out.
(Jade's always thought that they might, at least, suspect there's something going on. At most, she used to think, they might've picked up on the fact that they had growing feelings for one another.
But knowing what she does now, she wonders if their friends are really as clueless about their relationship as she's thought they are.)
Tori opens the door and allows Jade in before she also enters and closes the door behind her back. "They don't know for sure," she says softly, displaying her usual uncanny ability to know what she's thinking, "but I think they suspect something. I cannot blame them for it, though."
"You've been talking weird" Jade comments as she takes a seat on the bed. "Why's that?"
Tori blinks, looking for all the world like she hadn't taken notice of her own speech pattern. "Weird how, exactly?"
Jade shrugs. "It's... you have a bit of an accent, at times, and you get almost too formal. It's not like you've been doing it all the time, but you've slipped a few times there. I'm just curious."
The newly revealed Demon shrugs uneasily. "It's just... the way I'm used to speaking. You'd never pick up on someone being from Heaven just by the way they speak, since they're very close to Humans that way, but us... Demons are more... old-fashioned, in a way. It's not like we speak English like old high-class Brits, but we don't speak like the common American either. It's... in between, very formal, and since all of us live in Hell we have a distinctive accent too."
"But Beck, Trina and..."
"All of them were kicked out more than ten years ago, if you remember. I haven't even been here for half that time, so I just fall back on old habits sometimes. I make it a point to never do that anywhere near mortals or people that don't know about me, so..."
Slowly and carefully, Tori sits on her desk chair and stares at Jade as if fully expecting her to get up and run downstairs to the relative safety of the rest of the gang. It's not a look Jade is used to seeing on her girlfriend, and not one that's ever been directed at herself, so it's not even a minute until she sighs and stands up to walk closer.
She doesn't stop until Tori has to crane her neck up to look at her face, and even then she nudges her knees apart to step even closer – a position she takes advantage of by cradling her face to make sure she can't look away.
"You don't have to keep fearing I'll leave" she says softly. "This is a bit much to take all of a sudden, but I'm not going to run away from you, okay? I just need some time to adjust, but I want you to be near while I get comfortable."
Tori releases a long sigh and finally allows her hands to gently grip Jade's hips, resting her forehead against her stomach briefly.
"I'm not sure you'll think the same if you ever learn of everything I've done" she murmurs. "But... I'll accept this, for now. I'll tell you, one day."
Jade bites the inside of her cheek to keep from arguing, well aware that her stubborn girlfriend isn't going to budge on this, and chooses to change the topic.
"What did you do that was so terrible to be kicked out at fifteen? Can I know that now?"
Tori chuckles and pulls away, looking up at her with loving brown eyes that suddenly look too wrong on her face. Jade would almost prefer to see the bright red from before, if only because she now knows those are her real eyes – even if just thinking about the red makes her a bit uncomfortable still.
The Demon smiles, a small but sincere thing that makes her almost look like her usual Miss Sunshine persona, and Jade makes a note to ask about that too – later.
"It was because of you."
Brought out of her musings, Jade blinks. "You don't mean..."
Tori shakes her head. "I'd been kicked out already when I was invited to HA, remember? No, I was... one of many Demons commanded to kill you."
"Obviously you failed," Jade comments, ignoring the pounding in her chest at hearing that her girlfriend was supposed to end her life.
"I'm a prodigy in the arts of magic and assassination, Jade," she says seriously. "Andre, Robbie and Cat are good, but two years ago they were nowhere near good enough to get in my way. I sneaked past them easily and entered your parents' house, making it all the way into your room, but when the right moment came... I couldn't do it. Next thing I know, Lucifer is judging me and kicking me out of the only home I'd ever known.
"Of course, I didn't realize until much later why I couldn't complete my mission. It's a downside of being raised in Hell, you know? We're not too good with our emotions."
Jade smiles, catching the happy playful tone she's more used to. She leans down to connect their lips briefly, swallowing a chuckle when Tori's hands sneak a few centimeters to the back, and pulls back to lock her eyes with her girlfriend's.
Tired as she is, it doesn't take the Demon too long to convince her it'd be a good idea to lay down, and she falls asleep as soon as her head touches the pillow.