Tory was the middle child in every sense of the title: both protected and protected, nurturer and nurtured, yet usually she played the part of the wise sibling with Louis, while she in turn looked up to Eliza. But seeing her sister, half colapsed on the floor of a lesser crowded street, sunlight stretching across her limbs as the icy blue coloring receded from her elbow, to her palm, to her fingertips, Tory knew it was time for her to step up.
"Come on, 'Liza, let's get you a cup of coffee, we'll figure this out, together." She held out her hand and after a shaky breathe, Eliza took it and rose to her feet. Tory wrapped an arm around her sister's waist, gently guiding her towards a small cafe where they sat down in direct sunlight at Eliza's insistence.
She leaned back in her seat and put her hands in her pocket, only to feel the cool wood of the salmon charm that their mother had carved. "Here Eliza, mom wanted you to have this, anyways." She pressed the wood into ELiza's shaking hand, Tory almost jumped at cold her sister's hand was but what worried her most was how warm it became once the wood touched her flesh.
"I should have never insisted on coming." The words were a whisper but Tory still frowned upon hearing them. "I mean….vampires? Werewolves? What the fuck?" Eliza shook her head, tears welling her eyes. Tory reached across the table and squeezed her sister's hand.
"Technically shapeshifters who traditionally take the form of wolves...but, yeah." Tory tried to sound comforting and was relieved to hear her sister laugh. "It's okay, it's gonna be okay."
"Always a stickler for the facts, Tor." Eliza deadpanned with a ghost of a smile. She opened her mouth to say more but a man dressed as a waiter appeared at the table. He spoke in rapid fire Italian and they both smiled sheepishly. "Caffelatte?"
The man smiled in a patronizing way, realizing then that they were foreigners and turned to Tory, who just held up two fingers, "Um...same?" He didn't write it down, simply nodded and walked away. When he was far enough out of ear shot, Tory leaned in and whispered, "So...what did we just order?"
Eliza laughed, grinning, "I made myself a cheat sheet of Italian words a while back, although I'm probably pronouncing them all wrong. He's going to bring us coffee with milk….shit, I don't know how to say sugar, though." It was Tory's turn to laugh. In more touristy areas, the servers usually spoke just enough English to understand what they wanted, or had menus with the items listed in English underneath the description in Italian, so they had been able to simply point at what they wanted. But
Tory had been chasing after her sister and now she wasn't sure where they were, it seemed to be a more historic, lesser visited part of Volterra.
It was beautiful though, the buildings looking older than anything she had seen in America, all clustered together down winding streets of cobbled stone. "It's really pretty here, Eliza, I'm sure you'll be happy here." Eliza looked at her with a wary gaze, "And hey, I got an email back from that lady with the apartment! We can look at it in an hour!"
"That's good." Eliza replied softly, not looking up from her hands.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Tory asked. Eliza looked up then, biting her lip as if in fear of what the response would be if she spoke.
"So, you know how you were telling me about how a mating bond is similar to imprinting?" There was hesitance soaked in every word. "How did Seth tell you?"
That made Tory laugh, a deep, belly laugh. "Well...we'd been dating for around...six months? And he basically said he was thinking of not continuing with college, he just wanted to 'do his own thing' and I told him he needed to at least be working and he was all angsty and riled up but wouldn't tell me why, so I told him if he wanted to do his own thing, he could do it without me. And he freaked out, like, biblical freak out."
"Really?" Eliza leaned in, surprise coating her face. "What'd you do?"
Tory shrugged, it wasn't her best moment, "I told him if we were going to be together he needed to have his shit together and I wasn't about to be with a guy who lived at home and did nothing with his life. Turns out...it was when the whole thing happened with Bella giving birth and the Volturi thinking they had created an eternal child."
"Wait...Bella gave birth? When, where's the baby?" Eliza was wide eyed and Tory realized then just how out of the loop she had truly been. When her sister was at school, it was easy to gloss over the supernatural aspects of life on the Rez, only now it seemed like such a huge piece of missing information.
"Um...Nessie?" Tory said with a shrug. She tried to explain how children born of human women and male vampires grew rather rapidly, though Eliza simply sat, slack jawed.
"So our cousin is dating a child in the body of an adult?" She shook her head, "What...the...fuck?" To Tory, it had simply been fate, a path to happiness for Jacob, a chance for him to both stay young forever and be with his imprint, yet to Eliza, it was just weird.
"She matured to fit her body's appearance if that helps?" Tory informed feebly. She had forgotten that to Eliza, Nessie was Bella's cousin, since they looked so similar in age it was the easiest excuse to give.
"And what's an immortal child?" Eliza pressed.
"So all vampires are the same age forever once they're turned, down to their personality and maturity. It's sort of like those stories in the news of kids who find their parent's gun and use it because they don't know any better. Imagine a five-year-old with a machine gun he uses out of instincts during a tantrum, scary dangerous. The Volturi uphold vampire law and no immortal children is a biggie. Both the kid and it's maker are killed if discovered, as well as anyone who helps them."
"Wait, so the Volturi came to kill the Cullens and Jake?" Eliza's head was spinning, she was about to ask more questions when the server appeared again and placed two cups of foaming coffee with sugar and a plate of cookies.
"Gratzi!" Tory said, half sure that was thank you in Italian. She waited until the waiter disappeared back into the resteraunt before she continued. "Well, the whole pack really, an imprint bond is a decree of protection, it makes them part of the family. The Cullens got a bunch of vampires together and the pack stood with them, they almost killed each other. If Alice hadn't been able to prove that Nessie was half vampire, they'd have slaughtered eachother."
"Damn...so what happened with you and Seth?" Eliza asked. Tory wanted to laugh, her sister had a habit of compartmentalizationing things, ignoring the fact that there was almost a war to focus on Tory's relationship.
"He told me I couldn't leave him because I was his imprint, his whole world and then he shifted into a wolf right in front of me for the first time. I freaked out and took off and he turned back into a human and came running after me. And I...I punched him in the face." Tory smiled sheepishly when Eliza burst into a fit of giggles. "What? You can't drop a bomb on that to save a relationship!"
"You find out Seth can turn into a wolf so you punch him in the face? At least you waited until he didn't have fur." Eliza laughed more as she stirred sugar into her coffee. "You felt bad scolding the dog for peeing on the carpet but your furry lover, you'll sucker punch."
"Hey, he's not a furry, he's a shapeshifter!" They both laughed at Tory's joke, "I flat put told him that imprint or not, I had to want to be with him, we had to be worthy of each other and work on our relationship if we were going to last."
"So you told the cosmos to go fuck itself, you wanted to want to be with him." Eliza's gaze turned thoughtful, the gears turning in her head.
"Basically. And ever since, we've been like a normal couple, we fight, we makeup, we work through our issues and spend time together because we want to, not because he can turn into a wolf." Tory leaned forward, knowing that no one could understand her but Eliza yet still wanting to seem supportive. "If you don't want to be with the kings, then you can come home, it's okay. We can figure out the whole turning blue thing on our own."
Pain flashed across Eliza's face the moment Tory mentioned leaving and she realized how stupid she sounded. Even when they fought, there was a tether connecting her to Seth, one her sister no doubt felt three fold.
"I...want to try to be with them but I can't live in the castle, too many people hearing every little thing. I mean, I can't even pee without a hundred vampires hearing it, makes a girl self conscious. And…" She continued in a whisper, more out of embarrassment than anything, "What if they can smell when I'm on my period? Gross!"
They both laughed at that, sipping on their coffees with mirthful smiles. "So we'll find you an apartment and you can try dating three guys at once. It'll be like the Bachellorette, only less staged!"
"Yeah," Eliza agreed, "And wayyyy hotter guys."
Tory grinned at that, the worry she felt for sister slowly disappearing.