Disclaimer;

Victorious doesn't belong to me. If it did. . . Well, the show would be very different.

Warnings;

This fanfiction contains the lesbian pairing of Jade and Tori. It's rated M, and it's rated thusly for a reason; so if you're not into girl-love and possible adult content, it's all good, but I'd advise you not to read this.

Author's Note;

Two months later, part nine's here.

The series, Victorious, is over, and that sucks; but one thing that I can look forward to for quite a while is the fandom. While some people are already rather inactive, I can still catch up on the fanfictions that were written during the series and the ones that are still ongoing. I'll still be writing about these characters until the stories are complete, and while I'll still dabble in fanfiction, I do plan to start taking my own personal ideas more seriously.

This is a rougher chapter in some ways, although you could also call it exciting in other ways. Regardless, things sort of pick up here. I actually just came to realize that this fanfiction was started just over a year ago - in the writing process. I didn't post the first chapter until sometime in April. Things have kind of gotten a little intense since then, both in the storyline and in my life. 2012 was a weird year for me, but I hope 2013 will start looking up.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy part nine.

Can't Stop

Part Nine

Somehow, the two of them had ended up in Jade's bed - this time, with all their clothes on, (including Tori's sneakers.)

Tori sat up against the headboard of the bed, looking down at the sleeping dark-haired girl's tear-stained cheeks in what little light filtered from the gap between the bathroom door and the wall a few feet in the opposite direction. The brunette noticed that the girl's breaths were still shaking, her lips quivering even after she'd long since fallen asleep, her hair spread wildly across the pillow beneath her head and her hands holding Tori's arm to her chest, as if in some sort of need for the contact even in slumber.

While the position she sat in was incredibly uncomfortable, Tori couldn't bring herself to leave the bed and - and what? She'd decided about an hour ago that she was staying the night, as it was half past ten already. It was a Friday night, and if her mother cared enough to ask where she was, she'd simply say she was at a friend's. The girl couldn't help but grin weakly at the novel idea of her mother being all too curious about anything that didn't revolve around herself, and she was probably "out with the girls" anyway. At that thought, she couldn't help but silently laugh, as "out with the girls" always meant that her mother was out with the coworker of the girl's father; the guy named Gary.

She never understood how a person could cheat on someone else. Although Tori hadn't really been in a steady relationship before, she had been cheated on herself, and obviously, it had hurt and insulted her. How someone could do that to someone else was beyond her, and as she felt her arm falling asleep in the grasp of Jade's clutching fingers, her mind was left to dwell on the subject more than it should.

Of all the words one close to Tori could come up with to describe the girl, there was one that would very rarely be used; thoughtful. Tori was energetic, upbeat, even eccentric at times - but the trait most people can't see in another person is their mind's ways of turning. And while the brunette wouldn't ever claim to be as smart as the girl lying next to herself, (although in some ways, she undoubtedly smarter,) she still had a head on her shoulders that didn't let anything inside go to waste - the thoughts that crossed her mind were all deliberately studied and analyzed.

Tori tried to be logical in the way she let her mind go to work, but there were times that she couldn't help the way she felt, because that's just the way she felt. It would take a lot of work to undo the negative feelings that would often plague her, (though not so often as they did Jade,) and it would take only the simplest of words to undo all the feelings of happiness and peace. It was like that with everyone, she knew - but in this business of music and money and a million different voices trying to make their way to the top, she'd long ago realized that she needed to grow a thicker skin if she wanted to get anywhere in her career.

And still, little thoughts like a broken marriage could unbalance the state of equilibrium in her mind.

It had been eating at her, hearing Beck's words, and Cat's voice, and the absolute violence in the way Jade's tears had finally escaped her. It had stolen the girl's ability to breathe, and even as Tori did all she could to soothe her, it had taken her more than an hour to calm her enough to persuade her into getting beneath her covers and simply resting.

Jade had asked Tori if she would leave once she fell asleep, and Tori had replied, "I'll be here when you wake up."

And she fully intended to stay true to her words.

In the silence of the girl's bedroom, Tori couldn't help but feel as though she was going to go insane. No music; no television for white noise; the walls of the house were sound-proofed well enough to keep any hint of life in the night outside from leaking its way into her room. The only sound that was significant enough to capture her attention was the light whine in Jade's voice as she murmured unintelligibly in her sleep.

As gently as she could manage, she lowered herself so that she was lying on her side, her right arm still captured in the other girl's grasp. Slowly, she pulled it from her, and Jade unconsciously adjusted so that her arms hugged her own chest. Tori moved closer, placing her hands on Jade's wrists and closing her eyes, enjoying the feeling of warmth that emanated from the girl laying beside her.

Almost silently, Jade sleepily murmured something in her sleep that caused Tori's stomach to turn over itself. They hadn't been meant for her, Tori was sure, but the way the words had so easily escaped Jade's lips in her sleep caused a heat to grow within the brunette's chest.

As though testing them herself, Tori repeated what Jade had said. "I love you."

x-x-x

Jade stirred around four o'clock that morning only to find that Tori was still asleep beside her. She realized her eyes were still swollen from tears, and in her breath, she still felt a hitch. As she sleepily stretched her back, she was careful not to wake the brunette beside her; she couldn't stand the idea of the girl to seeing her looking so weak twice in one night.

The blue-eyed girl wanted to stay there, curled up next to the other. She was warm, and her breathing was so even and effortless that it had some sort of calming effect, much like that of a metronome keeping her heart beating in time. But even so, she knew she wanted to get herself cleaned up before Tori could wake, and with slight hesitation, she pulled herself away from the girl, quietly and cautiously shifting her way out from under her comforter.

It was dark in the room, all for the bathroom light that she'd mistakenly left on, and as she groggily shuffled toward it, her foot hit something on the ground. Looking down, she realized that Tori's purse had been left on the ground at the end of the bed, the same place she'd left it the night before. Jade's brows pressed as she stared there, her eyes not so much seeing so much as her mind reeling in thought.

Something about last night had felt good. The crying was awful; the look of hurt on Tori's face was cutting; and the memory of Cat's hand on her skin was beginning to make her sore, (although it had felt absolutely fantastic to begin with.) But aside from all of that, she realized that she had finally gotten what she'd been wanting for so long. Tori had helped her - she'd stayed the night, and she was probably unable sleep half the time, (as evidenced by one of the girl's sneakers then sticking out from under her blanket.) And when she'd said she'd stay, she'd meant it, and there she was, lying just where she'd been last night, just as she'd said she would be.

With a small, melancholy smile playing on her lips, Jade sidestepped the purse and made her way the rest of the distance to the bathroom, where she'd decided she'd assess the damage done on her complexion from the few hours earlier.

x-x-x

She'd decided she'd settle for only brushing her teeth and washing her face rather than turning on the shower and possibly waking up the girl in her bed. Jade knew Tori was a lighter sleeper than most others, and so she'd shut the door most of the way to block out the noise of running water in the sink. At first, she was unsure exactly why she didn't want to wake the other girl, but as she ran her hands under the cool water pouring from the faucet, she decided it was so that Tori wouldn't have to see her in such an awful state.

She also decided it was because she didn't want Tori to leave as soon as she did.

As she splashed some of the water over her face, she heard a tentative knock at the bathroom door. Immediately, she grasped for the hand towel on the left side of the mirror, beginning to dab at the water running over her cheeks and forehead.

"Hold on," she said, looking herself over in the mirror.

Jade's eyes were still puffy, although not as red as they'd probably been the night before, and her cheeks looked incredibly hot. But as even as she made a face at herself in the mirror, she realized she wouldn't be able to fix it by the time Tori saw her. With a sigh, she went to the door and opened it the rest of the way, hoping that the light source from behind her would block out most of the imperfections she felt so disgusted by in looking at herself only moments prior.

Tori realized that Jade wasn't meeting her eyes, and as she looked from the girl to the sink behind her, she said, "Sorry, I didn't mean to bother you."

"It's fine," Jade said (too quickly.) "I was just. . . cleaning up."

The two looked to each other for a moment before Tori reached forward and took one of Jade's hands in her own, wrapping her fingers with hers. The dark-haired girl couldn't help but react, her fingers gripping the other girl's, and as she looked to the brunette, Jade found that she couldn't meet her eyes again.

Crying was something of a weakness. While she'd done it in front of Tori before - both acting and completely genuinely - she found that when it had been as violent as her sobbing the night before, it was thoroughly embarrassing. But before she could tell Tori to stop looking at her, the brown-eyed girl smiled softly, pulling herself closer to Jade and placing a light, tender kiss on her lips.

Jade responded, her eyes lidding and her mouth beginning to move against Tori's. It was soft and easy, and as they stood there, the brunette's hands finding their way up to the other girl's hips, and Jade's hands reaching up to cup the sides of Tori's face, the two found that this was the first kiss they could remember sharing that was nothing more than simple and loving between both of them.

Tori retracted, opening her eyes to find that Jade looked almost pained. For a moment, the brunette could only stare in bewilderment, wondering what she had done to cause her any harm. She backed away slightly, slowly allowing Jade the space she'd assumed she was needing, but Jade's arms immediately reached for her and pulled the girl back to her. Her hands clenched onto the back of Tori's shirt, grasping her closer as she hid her face in the side of Tori's neck, the scent of her hair permeating her senses and (somehow) calming her welling emotions once more.

Immediately, Tori returned the gesture with a warm, steady embrace. For once, she felt stronger than Jade - and to her, that was unsettling.

She had never known Jade to be so weak. After the past few weeks, Tori had only seen just how devastatingly, intimidatingly strong Jade could be. Physically, she was frightening, but what had truly fascinated Tori was the power she wielded psychologically. The fact that Jade could make her submit so easily without so much as the slight of her hand, and the way that some words (so simple) could cause her chest to ache - it enticed her, as if her strong, dark, and sometimes borderline-criminal ways of working were playing on the keys of her curious mind.

But this Jade, whose eyes threatened tears and whose voice was choking on her own words, was nothing she would have ever been able to expect based on her previous behavior. But somehow over the time that Tori had come to know the girl she was now holding so tightly to her chest, she'd known that she couldn't always be so strong. Nobody could.

Tori could vaguely empathize. Her world had begun to come apart at the seams, though she was sure that her own issues were miniscule in comparison to Jade's. But like Jade, her home was broken, and like Jade, she sometimes found that she had nobody to turn to. . . And in knowing that she could be that person for Jade, Tori took all the comfort she could.

And there was solace in knowing that Jade was just as pathetically human as she was herself.

"Please don't leave," she murmured to the brunette, her voice shaking and her body trembling.

On whether that was a request for her to physically stay the rest of the night or whether it was a request far more demanding, Tori didn't stop to ponder.

Rather, she simply responded, "I promise I won't."

x-x-x

It was half-past-five in the morning when they decided they couldn't stay in Jade's room any longer. The two set at the small, round table in the kitchen, around which there only sat enough chairs for the both of them, and they ate whatever food Jade's mother had bothered to buy for her the day before she left for the trip she'd just embarked on two nights prior.

"Where's she going?" Tori asked through a spoonful of sugary cereal.

"Chicago, I think," Jade replied, shaking her head. "She wasn't really clear about the details."

Tori hardly considered her mother's whereabouts to be a minor detail, but she nodded, taking another bite.

"What does she do?"

Jade's brows pressed slightly, looking almost frustrated with the question. She paused for a moment, setting her spoon down and looking down at the table before her.

"I'm not really sure," she said hesitantly. "I think she's an administrator of sales or. . . I don't know. Something like that."

The brunette couldn't help but think how painfully unaware Jade and her mother were of each other. They seemed so detached from any sort of interpersonal family life, almost as if there had never been a relationship there in the first place. For some reason, it stirred a feeling of discomfort in the pit of her stomach that she couldn't quite shake.

The thought crossed her mind that she could feel that way quite possibly due to the similar nature of her own relationship with her mother, (although she could never claim to feel quite so distant as Jade seemed to be from her mother.)

She swallowed the lump in her throat and finished the last bite of her cereal.

Jade looked out the window above the sink. The streetlamps were still on outside, and although there were lights on in the kitchen as well, she could tell that the sun still hadn't come up. Fall had begun, and she'd started to realize that the days were growing shorter - and still, it felt as though it was still summer.

She felt lost. Time was a concept that she couldn't bring herself to even try to understand. One moment, it stood still - as it seemed to when she had kissed Tori - and other moments, it moved by too fast - when she spent nights wasted trying (in vain) to catch a good night's sleep. Jade felt as though she couldn't keep track of the way the world was moving around her when she seemed to only revolve around something that shouldn't have been such a big deal in her life.

And as she looked from the window to Tori, she had a feeling that the brunette could have quite possibly shared her sentiments.

"Is your mom going to get worried?" Jade asked, and the question sounded almost quick and abrupt compared to the soft silence of some brief understanding the two had just shared.

"I don't think so," Tori replied quietly. "And last night, I think she was out with - with someone."

Jade arched a brow, already understanding where Tori was going with her sentence. She sighed, shaking her head before half-asking, half-stating, "Gary?"

"Yeah."

The dark-haired girl nodded, trying to convey some sort of sympathy, (something she'd always found she had a hard time with.) Something similar had happened in her family before; although it had been her father getting a little too friendly with some other woman, it had quietly and underhandedly undone their family, hence why it was currently only Jade and her mother living in the big, empty house.

And things seemed unchanged, almost as if her father still lived there; there will still pictures of the three of them all hanging on the walls, sitting on the dressers and the side tables. Jade never really tried to notice it, but the images of her family (that had honestly never truly been whole) always caused her a tinge of pain to burst through her. So as to avoid them, and all the thoughts and regrets from her childhood and early-teenage years, she had spent many of her nights wherever else she could, though primarily at Beck's and at Cat's.

She wanted out again. Desperately, she wanted a new safe haven - a place where she didn't have to feel so entrapped and smothered by the sadness of a childhood she never truly felt she'd had. There were a few places scattered around the city that she called her 'second homes,' (the coffee shop, a cafe a few blocks down, even the school she spent so much time at,) but it had been more than just a while that she'd had some place to try to sleep off a bad day.

Tori wouldn't have been able to know why Jade slept so hard. Of all the people who had seen Jade sleep before, only Beck really understood the reasons behind it. Jade could sleep through a nuclear war - that much was evident - but the only way she found herself able to do it was by going several nights at a time without sleep.

Sleep was a scarce and readily-accepted thing for Jade. On the nights she could catch even an hour's rest, she was thankful - and for the nights when she actually dreamed of something, she felt nothing less than blessed. However, on the nights when sleep didn't come, she would simply lie quietly and tell herself that simply closing her eyes for a while would get her through the day that would soon be upon her.

Those were the times that time passed too excruciatingly slowly and too incredibly rapidly all at the same time.

She found that it was easier to find slumber with someone else in her bed. They didn't even have to be touching her, but the feeling of someone warm and breathing lying beside her offered her enough peace to put her to sleep, even in her roughest of times.

That had been evident the night before. She'd sobbed for over an hour, and somehow, she'd managed to fall asleep. Crying was a painful and tiring thing, of course, but had she done that in solitude, she wouldn't have caught even a moment's worth of rest.

Jade was still slightly embarrassed about that, and as she looked up at Tori, she couldn't help but feel as though she was weaker in the eyes of the other girl.

And Jade had decided that she was not to be the weak one in this relationship.

Relationship.

"Do you want to go to your place for a while?" Jade asked, her eyes looking off to the cabinets as she swirled around what was left in her bowl with her spoon. "I just - I really want to get out of the house."

Tori was taken aback, but without hesitation, she replied, "Sure, that's fine."

x-x-x

"I should really warn you about Trina," Tori said tentatively.

She was sitting in the front passenger seat of Jade's car, and the two of them had been listening to Ginger Fox on the radio. Jade's eyes left the road for only a moment to glance over at Tori, her face looking rather amused by the statement.

"What about her?" she asked, a small laugh threatening in her voice.

Trina had been suspecting some sort of thing between Tori and Beck, and the girl desperately wanted to make sure Jade understood that what she had told her the night before was completely and totally honest. Trina had a way of making everything worse, and if there was still any trace of doubt left in Jade's mind about her ex-boyfriend and her current girlfriend, Tori wanted to be able to put it to an end before they walked through her front door of her home.

"Well," Tori began, her thumbs twiddling with one another. Trina's been kind of a -"

"Pain in the ass?" Jade interrupted. Amused and smiling, she continued, "A talentless bitch?"

"That's my sister," Tori said, trying to sound as though she was actually upset.

Jade arched a brow, and the brunette immediately realized that there was a small and suppressed smile on her own face.

"Okay, yes," she admitted, and Jade gave quiet laugh.

Tori paused a moment, thinking over her words. She wanted to make sure that nothing she said sounded suspicious - as Jade was already suspicious enough (about everything) - and that everything she said made complete and total sense the first time, (as she did have a way of messing up her own words when she felt nervous.)

"But seriously, Jade," Tori said, and she watched as the smile faded away from the blue-eyed girl's features. "You know how Trina is. She hasn't figured out about - about us, but she thinks I'm up to something."

"Did she see you with Beck?" Jade questioned calmly, (although her words still managed to cause a heaviness in Tori's chest.)

"Yeah." Tori then murmured quietly, "That, and she saw the hickey you gave me before that."

"Oh God," Jade said, and while she sounded completely angry, there was a strange, foreign grin on her face. "How hard is it to hide a freaking hickey?"

"You gave me one on my neck," Tori retorted, trying not to smile at Jade's expression. "And it's just now going away."

"Alright, alright," the dark haired girl laughed. "I won't do that again. Not on your neck, anyway."

Tori looked back to the road, her hands finally relaxing, (as her fingers had been gripping for her pants legs.) Then, she quietly asked, "And about Trina thinking -"

"Don't worry about it," Jade replied, cutting her off. "I believe you."

x-x-x

Jade sat on the couch, absently flipping from channel to channel on the Vegas' television. Tori had gone up to her bathroom to get a shower and put on a new set of clothes, and seeing as it was only a quarter until seven on a Saturday, Jade sat alone on the large, empty couch. She could hear the water running upstairs, as the television was nearly muted, and by the sound of a muffled tumbling sound, Tori had quite possibly managed to trip over something upstairs.

As she absently flipped through the channels, she decided that there was simply nothing on worth watching, (and why would there be at that time of morning?) She put the television on the Travel Channel and let the infomercials run on the screen for some sort of distraction from the stillness around her.

Up in her bathroom, Tori had just brushed her teeth and was toweling her hair dry. She tried her best to stay quiet - Trina was only a room away, and if she awoke to find Tori coming home this early in the morning, it would be a damning contribution to Trina's collection of evidence supporting Tori's and Beck's supposed relationship.

For a moment, the brunette looked at herself in the mirror, appalled that she'd just thought like Trina would.

After she'd dried her hair enough to keep it from dripping, she quickly ran a brush through it before walking out of her bathroom and toward her room in her towel. She treaded quietly, afraid to wake anyone up, as no one in the Vega house would be up until at least seven-thirty - and even then, it would only be her father getting ready for work, (as he usually ended up working Saturdays, regardless of whether or not he was supposed to go in on the weekends.)

As she gently opened the door to her room, she froze. Beneath her own covers was her sister, lying with her limbs haphazardly sprawled across the bed as though she'd been struck by a car. She looked as though she had passed out there sometime last night by the way her hair was strewn about her face and the pillows beneath her, and her makeup had been taken off before lying down there.

Tori half-panicked as she stood in the doorway, looking at the girl lying there. She had hoped that Trina had passed out after Tori had gone to Trina's - and perhaps she had, but she had on Tori's own bed.

The younger sister slipped her way inside her room, silently edging her way toward her closet. She would just grab a shirt and some shorts and be out of there, she told herself, but as she approached the closet and the dresser beside it, she heard a rustling behind her. Trina shifted beneath her sheets, still sleeping, but the fact that he had actually moved told Tori that she was closer to waking up than she had been hoping.

Carefully, she took one of her shirts off the hanger, and to her dismay, the metal rattled and rang against the two others to the left and right of it. Without much hesitation, she quickly moved to grab a folded pair of sweatpants that had been set on her chest of drawers before heading straight to the door.

She didn't look behind her as she swiftly made her way down the stairs and to the couch where Jade sat, still wearing only the towel wrapped around her.

"Why are you -"

"Trina's in my room," Tori shouted in a whisper. "She was waiting for me last night!"

Jade gave her a look that said she was beginning to hate Trina more than she had before, (and that in itself would be a noteworthy accomplishment.)

"I want to freaking kill your stupid sister," she growled. "And pull up your towel; it's distracting me."

Tori immediately realized that her right breast was almost completely exposed, and with her face burning again, turned away from Jade and adjusted her towel before straightening out the shirt she was about to put on.

She briskly pulled the thing over her shoulders and the top of her towel, glancing up to the stairway to make sure Trina wasn't watching. Then, as quickly as she could manage, she stepped into her sweatpants, and her towel dropped as she pulled them the rest of the way up.

"God, Tori - what are you trying to do to me?" Jade asked half-jokingly, although her eyes were settled on the tightly-fitting sweatpants that seemed to grip her ass so nicely.

Tori took one last look toward the stairs before she picked up the towel and placed it over her shoulders. She took a seat beside Jade, subconsciously sitting only inches away from her. The dark-haired girl turned to face her, her brow arched, and as Tori realized she was almost on top of the girl beside her, she immediately moved to sit on the other section of the couch.

The brunette couldn't help but feel the coolness of sitting alone, and with her hair still slightly wet, she wanted desperately to run up to her room and take her blanket off her bed. She wanted to curl up with Jade beneath it and watch Saturday morning cartoons, (although she was honestly unsure if Jade would ever watch anything of the like.) However, when she looked to Jade, the pair of blue eyes she caught with her own looked away rather quickly, dispersing her wishful thinking.

She'd risk waking Trina anyway, even if she grabbed one of the fleece throws out of the closet upstairs. Sighing, she leaned back on the couch, crossing her arms over her chest and placing her legs beneath herself to try to get some sort of warmth.

"Why are we watching a Pajelehoocho commercial?" Tori asked.

"Because it's not even seven in the morning," Jade replied, placing her arms over her chest, (as Tori's warm skin had caused something in the pit of her stomach to stir.) "But seriously - who would buy one of these stupid things?"

x-x-x

Putting two and two together wasn't something Trina Vega was all too good at. She told herself that she was the type of person who read between the lines - that she could tell that there was always something more than what the naked eye could see. Nothing was ever as simple as it seemed, no matter what the case.

So as she walked into the living room that morning, her hair tangled and falling over her shoulders and the large, oversized shirt hanging halfway off her body, she was both completely oblivious to an ultimate reality and completely aware of an absolute fabrication of her mind's strange and awkward workings.

Trina saw the two of them sitting there, watching Spongebob on the television - and at first, it completely baffled her. The ex-girlfriend hanging out with the current girlfriend simply didn't make any sense. Of course, nothing would make sense if she allowed herself to only see what was before her; obviously, one of the two girls on the couch had some sort of ulterior motive, and the other girl was simply being betrayed into thinking they were only just hanging out together.

As she quietly slipped into the kitchen, believing herself to be unnoticed by the two in the living room, she allowed herself to sink down below the height of the cabinet enough so that she could only just barely see what was happening in the other room.

It must have been Tori, she told herself - Tori was hanging out with Jade to throw her off the tracks of her love affair with the demon's ex-boyfriend.

It all made sense to Trina, whereas to most anyone else, the situation would be plain as day; two frenemies sitting together. Nothing more, nothing less.

The older Vega sister watched the two girls, trying her best to make out as much of their conversation as she could. Their voices were hushed, and even as she held her breath to catch even a snippet of their words, she simply could not hear what they were saying.

Then, without warning, Jade called out rather loudly, "Just come out here, idiot."

Trina stifled a swear before standing and shuffling her way out into the living room, the two girls' eyes following her.

"What are you doing?" Tori asked. "And why are you wearing my shirt?"

The older girl looked down at what she was wearing then back to her sister. "I didn't know it was yours."

"I wear that thing to bed all the time," Tori said, her brow arching as she watched Trina fidget beneath her scrutinizing gaze.

Jade cast her glance over to Tori for only a brief second, and immediately, she saw the faint remainder of the mark she'd left there on her neck. Quickly, she returned her stare to Trina, who in turn settled her eyes on the mark just an inch below Tori's jawline.

"You're acting weird - even for you," Tori said slowly.

"Where'd you get that hickey?" she demanded quickly, changing the subject.

Tori froze.

The blue-eyed girl watched quietly, her expression looking only slightly annoyed. She could pass for simply being irritated by the presence of the girl she absolutely couldn't stand, but inside her head, she was bordering a panic attack. Her mind raced, and as her stare cast over the younger of the two sisters, she began to think to the girl, Say something, Tori. Don't just sit there.

"What are you talking about?" Tori asked, her body shifting slightly so that she felt the mark on her skin couldn't be seen quite so easily.

Jade could have slapped herself in the face. Tori was quite possibly the worst liar she'd ever met.

"Why don't you just tell me, Tori?" Trina asked. "I'm your sister."

The younger brunette felt as though it would be much simpler to just drop dead on the spot before any more questions could be asked. Try as she might, she couldn't quite manage to stop her heartbeat, and as she tried to speak any of the words that would come to her mind, Jade quickly and sharply cut her off.

"Don't remind her how unfortunate she is," she growled.

Trina didn't quite catch the insult, but she did notice the defensiveness with which Jade had spoken. She moved closer to the couch, causing Jade to grow rigid. Trina's eyes met hers for a moment, and although Jade's expression stayed rather plain, there was a furious heat growing within her, made evident by the slight twitching of her left brow.

Then, without much warning, Trina tackled Tori, casting her backward and onto the couch. Immediately, the two sisters were scrambling against each other, Trina trying to get a look at Tori's neck and Tori trying desperately to throw her older (heavier) sister off of her. The two screamed at each other as their hands pulled at each other's hair, and one of their knees went into the other's stomach.

However, as Trina had almost managed to pin Tori down, two hands grabbed her shoulders. As soon as the older sister turned to look behind her, Jade hurled her off of Tori and onto the floor between the couch and the coffee table. She groaned, rolling over onto her back.

"What the hell?!" Trina spat.

As Jade moved to loom over the girl on the floor, there came a sequence of footsteps. They made their way closer, and when Jade looked to the stairway, she found Tori's father standing at the bottom, followed closely by his wife.

"What's going on?" Mr. Vega asked quickly, concern in his tone.

Trina pulled herself up from off the floor, and as Jade cast her a hard glare, she quickly backed away.

"Trina tackled me!" Tori said. "We were just sitting here, and -"

"Jade punched me!" Trina cried, placing a hand over the right side of her forehead.

Immediately, the dark-haired girl looked to her. There was blood rising to the skin beneath the cover of Trina's hand, and she could only guess that the girl had smacked her head on either the floor or the table.

"Jade," Tori's mother began tentatively, moving toward the three girls along with her husband.

"She didn't punch her!" Tori yelled. "She pulled her off of me! Trina was - she was on top of me and hurting me!"

"It wasn't my fault!" Trina whined, her head beginning to pulsate with pain.

The girls' father made his way to Trina, pulling her hand away from her forehead to reveal a bruise that had been left there. The older sister immediately yelped as his fingers brushed across the area, and although it was a blatantly melodramatic response, the discoloration did already look quite severe.

Tori's mother moved over to Jade, and quickly, Tori made her way between them.

"I think it would be best if you just go -"

"She didn't do anything," Tori interjected. "Jade, tell her!"

A million thoughts were going through Jade's head as she looked over the woman she had come to truly despise. There were bags under her alarmed and widened eyes - had she not slept? The dark-haired girl recalled Tori having said she was out with someone the night before, and although she was two feet off, the smell of something foreign, (something alcoholic,) still lingered on her, telling her that the woman hadn't had the decency or the common sense to shower and brush her teeth before returning to her husband, (whenever she had.)

Holly Vega was an awful woman and a truly despicable mother, and although Jade could have listed a thousand justifications for Tori's mother to simply be struck dead, she simply shook her head.

"I didn't punch Trina," she began, her words almost drowned out by Trina's incessant wailing. "But I think she's right. I'll talk to you later, Tori."

Tori turned to grasp for Jade, but the blue-eyed girl shrugged her hand off her shoulder, making her way around the coffee table. As she passed Trina, she kept her eyes down, even as the girl screamed something at her. Mr. Vega gave Jade a look, contemplating the truth in Trina's claims against her, but as Jade opened the door, he couldn't bring himself to think on it any further and instead returned his attention back to his daughter.

"Jade," Tori called pleadingly, but Jade silently closed the door behind her.

Tori wanted to follow her, to go with her. She wanted to tell the girl to just drive her as far away as the car could take her - out to the desert, if not farther. Tori didn't want to be here with the family she felt she didn't even truly know, and if she had to exist in the first place in that moment, she wanted to exist only with Jade.

But the spell of shock and dismay evanesced with the sound of her mother's voice.

"Why do you two have to fight all the time?" the woman asked from behind her, sounding more inconvenienced than concerned.

A burst of anger welled up within Tori, and with her hands curled into fists and her eyes burning, she snarled, "Why don't you just go back to Gary?"

Mrs. Vega's face was askew in shock as Tori boldly held her gaze, even as her eyes began to flood with tears.

x-x-x

After her door slammed shut, Jade fastened her seatbelt and jammed her key in the ignition all at the same time. Her engine roared to life, and within a few seconds, she was squealing out into the street, leaving tire marks on the pavement as she shifted into drive without even touching the brakes. Within the blink of an eye, Tori's driveway was growing smaller in her rearview mirror.

The girl knew that Tori's parents wouldn't pursue any legal actions against her. Either Trina would break and tell the truth or Tori would make a good enough case in Jade's defense.

Aside from that, Jade doubted that they'd ever believe Trina based solely on her own testimony. They knew she was dramatic and insufferable, as they'd openly displayed their outright distaste for her on several occasions - but if Jade had stayed to try to fight for her innocence, she knew that it would only make her look guilty. And still, somehow, she couldn't help but feel a sharp, stabbing pain in her chest from having left Tori to fight a battle for her.

Although she wanted nothing more than to turn back and get the girl, her foot pressed harder against the gas pedal as she drove away.

If Jade's intuition was correct, the whole incident would blow over in the Vega house by the time noon came around.

And Jade's instincts were very rarely wrong.