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.

Note: Lateness can be atributed to a number of reasons that still don't excuse it. Part of it is that the author didn't quite get around to writing a lot of chapters before this story began.

Chapter 3 – Marks of hate

July 24, 2012. California, USA

Jade wakes up thanks to a solitary ray of sunshine reaching past the curtains to tease her eyes, something she can't manage to get away from before it's just bothersome enough that she has to open her eyelids.

Instantly, the slight annoyance felt by the sun dissipates, replaced by a mix of overwhelming feelings that threaten to swallow her as she gazes at her girlfriend's sleeping face, resting on the pillow just inches away from her.

Tori's right arm circles around Jade's naked waist, somehow lovingly tight even in sleep, and their legs are intertwined in a way that before (when she was with Beck) made her supremely uncomfortable but now (with Tori) feels natural.

Jade is almost unsurprised to see that her girlfriend's body is still covered with the deep black tattoos that Tori had almost spat on, ashamed of the meaning behind them. She saw them for the first time last night, when they were looking at each other laying on this very bed and Jade leant in to kiss her and the passion they'd been repressing for so long finally burst out of their control.

Tori had hesitated, panting as she looked down at an equally flustered Jade, both of them semi-naked with only their underwear giving any semblance of cover, but she'd finally closed her brown eyes and scrunched her eyebrows in something that looked like concentration and defeat – and when she looked at Jade again, eyes an inhuman red, her skin had rippled and shimmered, the illusion dispelled to show marks that had been hidden for who knows how long.

Memories bubble to the forefront of Jade's mind, and she recalls the insecurity in Tori's eyes, her disbelief and happiness when Jade flipped them over and began to trace those tattoos with her lips and fingers. She can almost still taste the feel of Tori's skin, her tremors when she caressed some of the tattoos and her sighs when lips brushed against previously hidden scars.

Even knowing what the tattoos mean, Jade can't help but to find them strangely fitting – because they are proof of her girlfriend's past, of the life that made her into the person she fell in love with.

She can't say that she doesn't completely mind, that she's comfortable with them, but she doesn't dislike the marks. Even when they're invading her skin and it feels as it shouldn't be as smooth as it is, they don't disgust her the way Tori expected them to.

(Part of that, Jade knows, has to do with the fact that Tori isn't the same person that committed those unspeakable acts of evil. That was Rivot von Gieri, an unrepentantly cold Demon who killed at the command of the Devil and never would've been caught dead singing on a stage to raise funds for orphans.

This, the girl sleeping next to her, is Victoria Vega, a kind and welcoming Fallen Demon who regrets every breath she took during the first fifteen years of her life and would never kill a fly, never mind a person, if not in defense of those she loves.

Rivot and Tori are one, but they're not the same, and Jade thinks that there's an important difference, there.)

Jade lightly caresses her girlfriend's right arm, fingers tracing the tattoos from wrist to elbow to shoulder and down her neck until they reach her chest. Tori tightens her grip as she brushes lower, and her eyes (almost the exact same shade of red as Idvke Groumnhold, and yet completely different) flutter open just seconds after Jade's touch stops its path on the underside of her breast.

"Hey" the Fallen Demon greets groggily, shuffling closer to nuzzle Jade's nose with her own.

The older girl half-smiles. "Hey. Slept well?"

"Like you have no idea" Tori breathes. She hesitates for a moment, clearly unsure if she should explain herself (if she wants to, to begin with), before she continues. "I... I haven't released the illusion covering my skin for over fifteen months, not even to sleep. It's just... it's weird. I'd forgotten how well it was possible to sleep."

"You should do it more often, then," Jade comments.

Tori frowns. "I'm not sure..."

"I thought we were beyond the point where you felt the need to be ashamed of your body?"

She sighs and relaxes. "Sorry. It just seems strange that seeing me like this, seeing the marks from my past, you still want to be with me – and it's even more unbelievable that you're actually encouraging me to stop hiding them as much as I'm used to."

"Well, can you blame me?" Jade asks.

Tori chuckles throatily at the playful tone, clearly remembering Jade's attraction to tattoos (particularly on Tori) – something they discovered just the previous night due to the increasing attention she paid to the pitch black designs, making it one of the few things they're most unlikely to ever forget about their first time together.

"Does your family also hide their tattoos?" she asks after a long moment of silent contemplation of each other.

Tori blinks, probably surprised at Jade's interest on Demons – an interest that, oddly, surpasses that which she feels towards the race that isn't trying to kill her.

(In Jade's defense, the girl she's in love with isn't an Angel – she's in love with a Demon, and if things go like she hopes they will she's going to be around a family of Demons for the rest of her life. It's only natural that she wants to know more about them.)

"Well, not exactly. We're born with our wing marks, so they have those, but only Demons in the class system earn more tattoos. There's the Master-Apprentice mark, which they wouldn't have because teachers tend to disinherit their Fallen students and that makes the mark fade away with time.

"Other than that, it depends on the class. Assassins, for example, earn marks for completed missions. My dad, Trina, Beck and his mom were assigned as Assassins too, but since none of them completed even their first mission they don't have anything other than their wing marks now."

Jade hears what's not being said – that Assassins are tattooed as a sort of reward for successfully killing a target. Just seeing how heavily inked her girlfriend's skin is, it's easy to deduce that she was not only really good at her job, but also a rather... prolific killer.

It's a bit unsettling to once again hear that Tori had already reached that stage by the time she was fifteen, but she doesn't comment on it.

"My mom and Beck's dad were Puppeteers – the class supposed to guide Humans to do things that could be harmful to others, like, I don't know, selling drugs or killing or even getting behind a wheel when they're blind drunk. They can't work when there's no potential, though, so they're only partly responsible for this world being worth shit. Also, there are more than enough Humans who don't need any prompting to do those things, so it's not entirely our fault." She blinks. "No offense."

Jade shrugs carelessly. She'd be the first to admit that there's more than some fucked up shit in the world, so she doesn't really care about the comment.

... Besides, it's not as if she's human anyway, even if she spent her whole life thus far believing herself to be one. She can't be offended by a comment disparaging the human race's general character.

"Just out of curiosity, Assassins are the ones responsible for weird deaths? Like the cold cases?"

Tori shakes her head.

"Not necessarily. Assassins are behind a lot of deaths, true, but not only those that appear as murders – accidents, natural deaths, suicides, illnesses... the only limit to what scenario we– they can set up is their abilities.

"For the obvious murders, resolved or not, Assassins take credit for several, but there's also two other options – cases where the murderer was simply a Human, with or without influence from a Puppeteer, and cases where it was an Assassin and everything was manipulated by the Handlers to make it seem as if it'd been a Human."

Jade frowns. "So some people found guilty for murder are actually innocent?"

"Yeah."

"That's..."

"Disgusting, I know. But too many unresolved deaths create things like the monsters from legend and characters like Jack the Ripper." She shrugs at Jade's surprise. "Some stupid Assassin got excited and started killing just because she wanted to. As far as I know, Lucifer was so pissed off He extended her life just to still have her in the Abyss –that's the second highest level prison of Hell– being tortured for creating yet another unnecessary legend... as if we didn't have enough of those."

Jade blinks, but decides to let that go. "So, what did your mom and Beck's dad not do to be kicked out?"

"I'm not sure, no one ever really talks about Tartarus around here. But I think uncle Dave had to nudge some guy to shoot an elementary school."

Jade tries (and fails) to suppress a shudder. "Is there any Human doing those things by themselves or is there always a Demon involved?"

Tori grimaces. "To be completely honest, Demons are guilty of a lot, but... the evil in this world isn't entirely on us – that's some idea that God and his Angels gave Humans to make them think they weren't a really fucked up race."

"That's a bit unfair. I thought that God of all... beings would be more honest about that kind of thing."

The Demon shrugs. "Well, he's God, the ultimate enemy of Lucifer. Don't expect him to be fair to anything even remotely related to Him – I know I don't."

"That's why you are so sure that he won't send any more Angels to help protect me, right? Because your family and Beck's are Demons..."

"It's even worse" Tori interrupts. "I was a Kalaus, remember? I'm not anywhere near proud of the number of Angels, Humans and even Demons who met death by my hand, but... I was powerful, arrogant and proud when I was still down there, and I had more than enough reason to be. So long as you're around us, and particularly me, Heaven won't give you more protection."

Jade sighs. "I'm not sure I can like Heaven if they, the supposed good guys, can get so caught up in prejudice."

Tori shrugs and rolls on her back. "Well, much as I dislike saying anything remotely in their favor, it's not only Heaven – Demons have our own fair share of prejudices too... which admittedly is part of the reason why it took me so long to be halfway comfortable here. Angels are generally self-righteous bastards, though, so I'm sure I wouldn't like them even if I wasn't a Demon. At least we admit we're assholes."

Jade chuckles darkly and leans on her elbows to hover above her girlfriend. "I can appreciate that honesty, but you don't seem all that bad to me."

The corner of the Demon's lips twitch in response. "Well, that just goes to show that you don't know how I was before" she says, before sobering up. "If you did, you'd know that in some aspects I was worse."

"Oh, really?" Jade asks. Tori hums lightly in response. "Like what aspects, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Well, as I said, I'm really powerful and very confident in my own strength. And, well, quite frankly, we tend to be attracted to two things above all – power and acknowledgement of our power. So really, it's no surprise that strong Demons tend to... ah, sleep around."

Jade raises an eyebrow at her girlfriend's wince. She can't fault the younger girl for that, as she's been known to be rather jealous even of her current partner's past lovers (it's one of the reasons she and Beck didn't work out) – but she can't even begin to get jealous, too busy trying to wrap her head around the fact that she even managed to have multiple partners.

"But you were fifteen when you were kicked out."

Tori grimaces. "I told you I was worse. Demons mature faster than Humans to begin with, but Assassins... And we don't have any age restrictions, so I was attracting a lot of attention since I was twelve or so – not that I accepted anyone until I was nearly fourteen, but still.

"A strong Demon can easily crush a weaker lover's will – it's almost expected of us– of them to do so. That kind of power is... addicting at best," she muses in a low voice, twining her fingers with Jade's in an obvious avoidance of her girlfriend's face. "I had that power. I was strong, young, physically attractive and extremely arrogant – so, obviously, a lot of Demons of all classes were attracted to me." She shrugs weakly. "I don't know how many, but I only had two 'regular' partners and otherwise rarely repeated a choice.

"Powerful Demons tend to pick a few regulars and take someone new only when they want to make them regulars or are looking to take another," she continues after a moment of silently contemplating her own words, "but, the way things are back there, my behavior was seen as nothing but completely acceptable from a Demon of my age, power and status. That kind of implicit recognition of my strength... it got to my head and fueled a vicious circle."

Jade can only blink in confusion, totally bemused by the fact that her girlfriend has had a lot more experience (and partners, but she doesn't want to go there) than she has – admittedly, Jade's only had sex with Beck before, but considering that she used to think that Tori was a virgin...

"And you began to change... when?" she asks, more hoping than assuming that it happened.

Her girlfriend grimaces. "That would be when I came to Earth. I admit it wasn't really voluntary, at first – between having to hide my tattoos from Humans, being fifteen at the time and lacking the usual thrill of the power play that comes with sex between Demons, I didn't really have any options for the kind of partner I was used to. Besides, my parents, Trina and the gang kind of kept a close eye on me, since no one really trusted me, so I wouldn't have had any freedom to look around had I wanted to."

"Did it ever become voluntary?"

"Yeah." Tori purses her lips and looks up at her briefly before glancing away again. "By the time I was in a position where I could've gotten something at least somewhat similar, I realized I was in love with you. I've only slept with someone once after that and... well, I didn't enjoy it as much as I used to, so I decided to not do it again. It got complicated when we started to date, because I wanted to, with you, but I couldn't without exposing the truth – and we'd agreed not to tell you until graduation at the soonest."

"So you were going to tell me about... all this?" Jade asks expectantly.

Tori shrugs, looking uneasy.

"In theory, maybe. The guys say that it's sort of an unwritten rule that the Guarded aren't told about the supernatural at all if their Guardians can help it, and before you and Beck got together they hadn't contemplated ever telling you. A week or so before I started at Sherwood they agreed that they wouldn't tell you unless your relationship got more serious, then around half a year ago they realized it'd be harder to keep you safe once we didn't have school and they resigned themselves to telling you sometime after we graduated regardless of your relationship with Beck – which was fortunate for you, because that would also be around the time you broke up.

"As for me, I just went along with them, at first, because I really didn't care one way or the other. After I started to care, my reason for keeping quiet was that it wasn't my place to tell your Guardians how to do their jobs – even if I had almost left them without one.

"When we got together..." she hesitates and looks to the side, away from Jade's expectant look, thus missing the light frown that appears on her girlfriend's face. "Well, my reasons were more selfish. I didn't imagine that you'd still want to be with me after you knew, because the guys were going to tell you eventually, so I was still debating between breaking up with you and moving as far away as Earth would let me before they did, or making the most of any time we'd get together until you found out and inevitably dumped me because you hated what I was and what I'd done."

"Then Idvke caught me and it didn't matter anymore" Jade continues, not wanting to hear what option was sounding more attractive to her girlfriend until that night.

Tori grimaces. "Yeah. We'd already discussed the possibility of something like this happening, that you'd find out when someone tried to kill you again and you saw us fight them off, but we couldn't agree on what we were going to do."

"What did you think?"

"That if we didn't manage to keep things a secret and you found out in one of the worst ways possible, then there was no reason why we shouldn't come clean. I... was fully prepared for you to dump me as soon as you gathered yourself again."

Jade sighs. "We really need to work on your low expectations. You do know I love you, right? I'm not going to leave you."

"Jade..."

"Not now, Tori. Tell me someday if you want, but only when you're ready and when you trust that I'll stay with you."

The Fallen Demon looks up at her girlfriend's face, searching carefully for any hint of hesitation, the slightest sign that what she says could not be true, but she only sees fierce determination and a glint that only now she's accepting that might be love.

She smiles and nods.

That's something she doesn't mind hoping for.

–o–

The couple wanders downstairs almost half an hour later, after showering and dressing for a lazy day at home (neither feels too much like leaving the house, even if it hadn't been unsafe to do so), and find both Cat and Trina already lounging on the couch, watching some boring drama repeats, while Beck flutters around the kitchen – not surprising, since out of the five of them Jade is the only one who wouldn't burn anything she tried to cook, which doesn't necessarily mean the results would be edible.

"Hey there!" Trina greets them cheerfully. "Had fun last night?"

They stop almost at the bottom of the stairs, both equally confused, until Jade's eyes narrow at the expression on the trio's faces.

"What."

Tori's voice is flat and almost tired, in that it's-too-early-for-this-crap tone she takes sometimes when someone (most often the gang) is being particularly annoying, and Jade feels a rush of affection that would be unexplainable if she didn't know herself so deeply in love with her girlfriend.

Trina smiles innocently – then she opens her mouth. "Please, a blind idiot could tell something happened between you two."

"Also, Beck went to your room when he got here a couple hours ago and decided to let you sleep" Cat pipes in.

Jade closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. She doesn't need to ask to know what exactly he saw when he opened that door, and it's not as if she's ashamed of what she does with her girlfriend but she really wishes he hadn't – the fact that Beck is both Tori's cousin and Jade's ex makes it all kinds of awkward.

"What are you even doing here this early, Beckett?" she asks instead.

"I was trying to let you both know that Andre and Robbie are dropping by after lunch. They're freaking out now that they processed the level of the threat and want to go over a few thousand contingencies for every possible situation. It's ridiculous, really – the house could be surrounded by every Assassin alive and as long as you kept within the walls you'd be perfectly safe."

"Well, we're her Guardians," Cat says, not sounding very convinced about her own argument, "it's kind of our job to be overprotective. Not to be mean, but there's no way a trio of Demons could understand."

None of the three cousins takes offense, and Tori shrugs as she plops down on the couch and tugs Jade down with her.

"Of course we wouldn't understand – me especially. The closest to protective a Demon gets is with the young, and then it's mostly about magical and physical wellbeing. Unless we're training, then all bets are off."

"Damn, all this cheery talk is making me hungry" Beck interrupts, gently dropping a loaded tray on the coffee table. "Now, why don't we break a better subject? Like, I don't know, how long have you two been together and when exactly were you planning on telling us?"

"Aw, did it take you by surprise?" Trina mocks him.

"Didn't it surprise you?"

"Of course not. Well, maybe just a little bit – I did know she was dating someone, with how long she was spending out of the house, and I thought it could be Jade with how often she was dropping by alone. Not to mention that Tori's had a crush on her since like forever."

"Please, it's not like we were being obvious" Tori complains. "I could have been seeing someone else, you know, and Jade coming over might've been just us becoming closer friends."

Trina gives her a completely flat Look the likes of which all elder siblings everywhere have perfected, and Tori fidgets under the stare for a moment until she grudgingly admits to the last part of her sister's words.

"Officially, it's been three months today. Unofficially," Jade pauses, frowning in thought, "three and a half?"

"Four" Tori automatically corrects. "It was a few days after that parade that Sikowitz made us help him with."

"Four" Jade agrees. Then she frowns. "How did you even get those thugs to help us out?"

Tori shrugs lightly. "I'd met one of them before, in Tartarus. We weren't friends, but we got along well enough. He convinced his guys to help out and hung back when I told him I was with several other immortals."

Trina frowns. "There are more Fallen Demons around?"

"Not anymore. They didn't have Sanctuaries," she explains at the confused looks sent her way, slowly chewing on a piece of toast, "so they were easy prey. Naelis, the guy that helped us, died a few months ago – Jharis, the other Fallen in the area, said an old enemy found them by chance and decided Naelis would be a good first kill for his Apprentice before the kid was taken up by a clan."

"And what about this other guy?" the older Vega sister asks, her face clearly showing she's not really comfortable with her younger sister being in contact with Demons of questionable morals.

"He freaked out and fled south. Jharis didn't exactly have a good relationship with Janlei either and didn't want to stick around after what happened to Naelis. I don't blame him – Janlei has always been a sick son of a–"

"And if he came after you?" Jade interrupts.

Tori looks at her, face serious and harsh and unforgiving and confident, and it strikes Jade that she's never seen such an expression on her girlfriend before.

When she speaks, her voice holds the very same emotion, and (even hadn't they known of her past, of what she's done, what she's capable of doing again if only to protect herself and those she cares about) no one feels capable of feeling the tiniest bit of doubt.

"Oh, I hope he does."

That's all it takes for Jade to know that there's some serious bad blood between the two. She wonders if it would be enough for Tori to forget everything she's been trying so hard to become.