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.
Chapter 4 – Memories of class
July 25 through August 29, 2012. California, USA
A month passes by in nearly complete silence.
Jade manages to get permission from her dad to stay "at a friend's" for the remainder of the holidays, in no small part because he isn't set to return to Los Angeles until mid-September and thus doesn't care – of course, she still has to omit the fact that she is staying with the Vegas, since his indifference wouldn't survive the revelation. Everyone chooses to ignore why he allowed her to not stay at the West household, being instead supremely glad that she can even stay at the Sanctuary without having issues with her parents.
With things being calmer than they'd been for the weeks leading up to Idvke Groumnhold's attack on Jade, the gang can afford to go out from time to time in order to keep up the human charade, but always to places where they feel confident protecting her.
(Which isn't saying a lot, not after Tori points out that there's a reason some "natural" deaths were in fact caused by Assassins. It's difficult to protect from that sort of attack, but it's doable, and they are lucky enough that Tori scoffs at the idea of being incapable of blocking those.
And if Tori being the only one of their group who can currently block sneak attacks also means that Jade has to be close to her every time they leave the Sanctuary, well, that's just a happy coincidence – one that they're trying to get rid of, what with Tori teaching the others how to do it.)
Everyone is taken aback the first time Tori starts to show some of her tattoos, particularly a set around her upper left arm, a simpler one around her right wrist and an almost minimalist mark on the inside of her left wrist. Even though they feel uncomfortable the first few days of seeing those every time they look at their friend, they grudgingly admit that they do look good.
Part of it, Jade knows, is because humans don't seem to dislike the designs, and those who do appear to feel that way do so because they dislike the concept of tattoos in general. That only the people who know Tori's a Demon would know what the marks actually are helps, too.
Eventually, they get used to it, and no one even thinks of calling attention to them or asking Tori what any of them means.
Cat stays in the Vega Sanctuary even after her parents return from Heaven, a still not-completely-recovered Callum in tow, and the Vegas just shrug and go along with it – none of them even cares that she doesn't seem to be leaving anytime soon. She's given the guest room across the hall from Tori's room, where Jade stays with her girlfriend, and everyone acts as if she's been living there all along.
(The fact that she can't use her powers inside the house helps, as an untrained half-blood living there is very different from housing a professional Guardian. Cat being effectively rendered powerless helps them forget that she could most likely kill all of them –except from Tori, but then again she's always an exception– effortlessly.)
Everyone is on edge the day when Callum Valentine returns from Heaven and presents himself in the Sanctuary after a call for help from his sister, enough that the three older Vegas excuse themselves – Cat doesn't make them nervous, but her brother? That's another story entirely. They don't know him like they know Cat, and they don't trust the older Guardian at all.
(Not when they've spent their entire lives on Earth being monitored carefully and distrustfully by Guardians and Archangels alike, often looked down on because they're Demons despite the fact that they were all kicked out from Tartarus.
That's something that Jade learns the first time she goes out with just Trina and Tori and they encounter a Guardian Angel doing some tourism with her Guarded and she sneers at them and obviously moves her unaware companion as far from them as she can, glaring until the Fallen sisters feel uncomfortable enough to leave.
Jade can't believe she never noticed, but Trina just shrugs and mutters that they get used to it when she asks, and tries to defend that the Holy aren't quite as obviously rude too often. Cat denies it strongly, seeming offended on her friends' behalf, and Trina looks away when the other Guardians join in.
If Trina goes out of her way to be nicer to the trio after that episode, well, that's just a coincidence.)
Callum himself doesn't seem too bothered about the fact that he's sitting in a Demon household across from a very powerful Fallen, though it's obvious that he knows who exactly she is (was), and he's actually very eager to explain what little he remembers of the attack.
Tori is quiet while he recounts that morning, expression becoming more somber by the second until he stops talking and she declares, in a voice that reflects the same emotion as her face, that she does in fact know the attackers. They were just two, but that's enough to make her worry seeing as they'd been in the same clan together before she was kicked out of Hell and neither seems to have been demoted.
"Kramlov van Groumn and Aarash Gieri" she announces darkly. "Aarash specializes in traps, especially those activated by immortal auras, and Kramlov follows a millenary tradition of magical poisons undetectable by mortal means. They had the same Master a decade apart and worked together when they were in low and middle rank clans. Kramlov in particular has killed entire households without seeming to lift a finger – if you're alive, that probably means Aarash's calculations were made on the scenario of Cat being the target and left no room for mistakes. Foolish of her, but then again she's always relied too much in her traps."
Callum nods, entirely unworried about his own welfare and more concerned about the fact that his baby sister was targeted by two Kalaus, and offers his help were anything to happen. Tori is reluctant but accepts after sizing him up.
Partnership established, Callum hands over his phone number and a second, emergency-only way to contact him and sees himself out after fussing over Cat for a minute or ten.
She's exasperated, they can see it, but also deeply touched and grateful that her brother is willing to work with her Demon friends – that he doesn't demand she stop hanging out with them, now that he knows Jade isn't the only of her friends with a Demonic heritage, now that he knows she's hanging out daily with one of the most prolific teen Assassins that Tartarus has ever produced.
It's a good day, all things considered, even if Tori seems a little bit more on edge after knowing who exactly tried to kill Cat.
Things don't go nearly as well when Andre asks for an audience with God in which he intends to ask for help, nearly two weeks after they talk to Callum.
While the Demons (especially Tori) are indeed completely unsurprised that their race's greatest enemy doesn't even bother to receive the strongest Guardian of their little group, all three Angels are more than a little shaken up – enough that none of them talks about it, pretending instead that they never tried to approach the Holy Father they look up to so much.
"They're trying to digest the fact that God flatly refuses to consider the idea of any Demon, even a Fallen, being... not good, necessarily, but at least not completely evil" Tori confides a few days before they start school again, when Jade finally decides to ask her girlfriend.
"Why?" the half-blood asks, making as if she doesn't notice Tori ogling her from the bed as she changes into her pajama shirt. "Because God's supposed to be this all understanding and compassionate and forgiving being and all that?"
Tori shrugs, showing that she doesn't really care. "Kind of, I guess. They were raised a bit like kids from really Catholic families, you know, that 'God loves everyone and forgives everyone and Lucifer is the source of all bad things in the world' kind of speech. Befriending Beck and Trina was one thing and befriending me pushed the line, but it will take a lot of work for them to accept that I wasn't kidding when I said God actually hates Lucifer and every one of His Demons, no matter their status or deeds."
"But he's protecting me," Jade points out, "and my dad's a Lost Demon."
"But your mom's a Lost Angel" Tori retorts. "No matter what your father is, you have the kind of blood that God values the most. Plus, they just love to oppose every single step the other takes."
"Oh? So if Lucifer suddenly wanted to recruit me, God would try to have me killed?"
Tori's lips twitch in an amused smile. "Well, aside from the fact that recruiting you would declare you officially as a Demon and Lucifer would declare his eternal loyalty to God before accepting even a quarter-Human in Tartarus, Heaven's Law doesn't allow God to order someone killed unless they attack a Holy first under certain circumstances.
"Still, even in the impossible scenario of Lucifer accepting a half-Angel in Tartarus, He would never give God the chance of killing you if He even suspected he wanted to – He'd probably send you to one of the classes that stay down there."
Jade snaps her fingers, startling her girlfriend. "I knew I was forgetting something. I've wanted to know about the classes since you mentioned them but I never got around to it, what with the guys being around all the time."
She doesn't have to say that their friends are supremely uncomfortable talking about anything related to Tartarus – it's the reason Tori only mentions something about her former home when it's strictly needed.
"What do you want to know?" the Fallen asks, looking distinctly amused as Jade sits straddling her, resting her hands on smooth thighs she's traced innumerable times by now.
Jade places her own hands atop her girlfriend's and rolls her eyes. "Everything you'll tell me. I'm more interested in your class, of course."
Tori's lips twitch in something like pleased surprise, delighted as she always is whenever Jade somehow shows she's mostly okay with Tori's past – or at least trying to be.
"Well, we're divided in four spheres –primordial, first, second and third– and then there's the outcasts. When we're born, anyone at least moderately strong is sorted into one of the classes of the first sphere and the mediocre and weak are sent to a third-sphere class – classes tend to run in a bloodline, since our magic generally has the same characteristics as our ancestors'.
"Assassins are the top class of the first sphere, and only us– they can be eligible for the primordial or second spheres. Their job is to kill and, in case of war, they're the soldiers that fight against Heaven.
"The other first-sphere classes are Puppeteers, Muses and Handlers, and their jobs are to manipulate, inspire and cover up respectively. They're mostly seen as the Assassins' sidekicks, which... isn't far off the truth, actually.
"The primordial sphere can only have thirteen members at most, divided in three classes, but for decades there's only been the six of the second class. The second sphere has all the classes that keep the peace and protects Tartarus in one way or another – Praetors guard the frontiers of Tartarus, Enforcers are basically a military police, Quaestors judge any crime short of treason, Prefects are a more common police, and Custodians are the jailors.
"Then there's the third sphere, which is more of a mishmash – the two upper classes are actually retired Demons from other spheres, and the other four are administration and production workers sent there because they were too weak to make it in the first sphere."
"Back up a little – there's a police?"
"Well, yeah. Someone has to enforce the law, right?"
"There are laws other than 'don't betray the Devil'?"
Tori rolls her eyes. "Of course there are, what do you think they are, barbarians? There's actually a really long Code ruling the lives of Demons, I swear it's longer than all American laws together – and I mean America as in the continent, not just this country. Even Lucifer has to stick to that Code."
"Ah, so that's why you're such a Goody-Two-Shoes. I was wondering" Jade mocks, receiving a small, startled laugh from her girlfriend.
"That'd explain it, yeah" she says, red eyes twinkling warmly. "Demons also police each other's behaviors and the punishments can be very harsh, so going against the rules is really hard after you've lived there."
"And the worst punishment is being kicked out?"
"At the moment you're expelled, yes. But there are others – torture is common, and the lucky ones are executed in short time. The worst punishments are actually given to the Traitors, not to people like me."
Jade vaguely remembers Tori being very disturbed about the word that reflects her exact criminal status, so she doesn't ask what she means about people like her – she can easily guess she means the Oathbreakers.
"And those punishments would be..."
Tori's expression becomes somber, more so than when she heard Callum Valentine describe his attackers. She hesitates.
"That's... something really, really delicate. No Demon wants to talk about it, see, because being labeled a Traitor means that the Quaestors judge you've become undeserving of Lucifer's trust – mostly by killing or seriously injuring a fellow Demon outside of training, but there's also the chance of..." she shudders visibly.
"Tori?"
"People like me, the Demons who acted against Lucifer or helped God, we're judged by Him and mostly labeled like I was, but sometimes they're labeled as... as High Traitors. Those who're labeled like me don't really have it bad, at most we're executed after being expelled, and sure Traitors are given corporal punishments, but the others..."
Jade hesitates, not sure if she should really voice the question brewing in her mind, because Tori seems absolutely terrified at the mere mention of High Treason, and it's worse than her reaction to Oathbreakers – she'd been uncomfortable and disgusted by that word, personally offended even, but there hadn't been an ounce of fear.
This... this is fear, panic, a primal terror that runs deep enough to paralyze even the bravest being. She wants to know what could cause such a reaction from her girlfriend and yet, at the same time, she can't bear the thought of making her girlfriend voice that fear.
Tori, however, speaks before she can decide whether or not she should ask.
"It's disgusting," she says softly, "even for professional murderers and torturers like us. And it's painful, too, a pain even worse than having holy power coursing through your veins. I've been told that even the most sadistic Enforcers feel sick the first several years they have to apply it."
There's a long pause as Tori seems to lose herself in her memories, and before Jade can change the topic she voices the punishment that terrifies her so much.
"High Traitors are sent to Gehenna," the Demon explains in a whisper, "our worst prison, the nightmare not even the rowdiest children are threatened with to behave, the true Hell humans speak about in their religions, the only place in the entire world where time has no meaning, where screams are little more than background music. If I had my whole life to do it I wouldn't come close to describing the horrors of that place.
"Demons are tortured there. Day and night, with barely any breaks, for however long their sentence was decided to last, until their time has been served and they've compensated Him for their betrayal, and only then they're granted the mercy of death. The tortures used by humanity in medieval times are barely more than a papercut compared to what's been happening daily in Gehenna for thousands of years.
"But the worst thing..." she hesitates, looking scared and pale, and Jade grips her girlfriend's hands tightly in an effort to ground her just a little bit. "The worst thing is the jhavdya, the slow and painful destruction of a Demon's wings until they've been completely ripped off, only for them to be healed and the torture to start over and over and over again."
Despite Jade not having wings of her own, some part of her instinctively knows how terrible that must feel and recoils at the echo of a genetic fear of threatened pain, sickened at the idea of someone voluntarily inflicting that kind of torture and terrified by the knowledge that she doesn't have the promise of the jhavdya hanging over her head if she steps out of line only because her mother isn't a Demon.
"That sounds..." Jade trails off, not knowing how to sum up everything that's wrong with that in one word.
Tori grimaces, as if knowing what's going through her mind. "Yeah. I saw the Enforcers throwing out the corpse of a condemned once, just a few weeks before I was expelled, and it was enough to give me nightmares. I'm really, really, really glad that I'm as far away from Gehenna as a Demon can get – and impossibly happy that I was expelled instead of sent there."
"Not that I'm complaining, but why weren't you sent to Gehenna if what you did was so bad?"
Tori sighs, beginning to lightly brush her thumbs against naked thighs and studiously avoiding Jade's gaze. "That's because I didn't actually do anything against Him, not until I'd been here for almost a year and a half – but He keeps a close eye on the Kalaus, since they're His best Assassins, and He knew there was something wrong the moment I hesitated. I was retrieved by Enforcers so quickly I didn't even have time to understand why I hadn't killed you yet, let alone to think of betraying Him."
"Would you have?" Jade asks, treading her fingers through dark brown locks until Tori looks at her, then leaning in to kiss her lightly.
The Demon smiles, sadly, and tightens her grip. "To be brutally honest? Had I been in your room for one more minute, I probably would've completed my mission."
She raises her left hand and brushes Jade's cheekbone with her thumb, before moving lower to rest it next to her lips. Her gaze is adoring and regretful, shining with love for Jade and disgust for herself, deep red warm and sad.
"But it doesn't matter, now, not since He judged I was guilty of breaking my oaths and banished me. I won't go back to Tartarus, I wouldn't even if He personally gave me the chance, so it's irrelevant."
She pauses.
"The only thing I worry about now, other than you, my family and our friends, is that maybe my punishment wasn't only the expulsion, that one day an Assassin will be sent after me to execute me, or worse, drag me to Gehenna."
"Tori–"
"It happens" the Demon interrupts. "I've been given missions like that in the past, and it was always in situations like mine."
Jade frowns. "What do you mean?"
Tori sighs and leans forward to nuzzle Jade's neck, turning a little to press a light kiss against pale skin and smiling faintly when her girlfriend's pulse quickens.
"I was the leader of a middle-rank clan," she murmurs, "and one of my subordinates... he fell in love with his target's Guardian. He warned her that her Guarded was in the kill list, and she upped the defenses so much that a high-ranking Assassin had to be called to break them. Lucifer was so angry that he ordered my clan to set up an ambush with him as bait, capture the Angel, torture and kill her and deliver him to Gehenna..."
"Where he will be subjected to the jhavdya until Lucifer thinks he's paid for his treason" Jade finishes, shaking her head and sighing as she curls the fingers of her right hand on the hair at the nape of Tori's neck. She presses a kiss to her girlfriend's temple. "Is that why you didn't want us to be together even after you believed me when I said I liked you?" she asks softly.
Tori takes her time to answer, breath steady against Jade's neck and fingers tracing patterns on her skin. "Part of the reason, I guess" she says finally. "I never understood why he'd betrayed our King, why he'd thrown a decent career to the trash for an Angel, a natural enemy of our people. Why would he give up his life to help God? It just... it didn't make sense."
"Past tense?"
Tori huffs. "Little bit. It still doesn't make sense, but I kind of understand why he'd surrender his life – he was in love, after all, which is... really strange for us Assassins, but then again he came from a Handler line. What I don't understand is why he did that while he was still Lucifer's subject. He must've known he was risking her life, too."
The Demon sighs deeply as her hands begin to wander, and she kisses Jade's neck slowly. "Still, my situation is a bit similar to his, so I can't really judge. Except that I'm unlikely to be making your situation any worse."
A part of Jade realizes that, in light of that event, it really makes a lot of sense that Tori was so unsettled the first few times Jade confessed, before she believed Jade was truthful, and why she never seemed to completely relax the first few weeks (before Tori asked her to be her girlfriend) unless they were in the Sanctuary. Not only she would've believed she was unworthy of Jade feeling affection for her (she wouldn't have dared imagine there could've been love, though Jade's pretty sure she was at least a little bit in love with Tori before she even broke up with Beck), but she would've been very scared of her past catching up with her and getting Jade killed – probably more than she maybe was about a too strong Assassin coming around with Jade as their target like she was Tori's, only that the new enemy wouldn't hesitate to kill her.
She can't imagine living with that fear, but her girlfriend endured it silently for months and still lives with it bubbling quietly in the back of her mind, and that, for her, is just another proof that no matter how evil Tori thinks she is she's loving and protective and regretful.
She'll just have to keep trying to make her see that.
In the meantime...
"On another cheery topic," she begins, "what about that... primordial sphere you mentioned? You didn't say what they did."
Tori pulls back and rests her back against the cushions, gently bringing Jade with her until the half-blood rests her forearms on the pillow to the sides of her face. She bites her lip when she feels the reason for that change of position, as Tori's hands brush lower down her back.
"That's three categories – the Paladin, six Knights and six Esquires. All originally Assassins, all former Kalaus, all extremely powerful. For some reason, though, there's been only Knights since our last war against Heaven, centuries ago.
"All things considered, the highest rank is Knighthood, but the chances of becoming one are so slim that no one really thinks about it, so the most ambitious Assassins barely aim to become Praetors. The Knights also the only ones, other than the Paladin, who can see Him face to face without needing Him to give express permission."
"So you didn't actually see him when you were expelled?"
"Of course not, I was only a Kalaus. I don't even think He was paying all that much attention to me, though it gave me the impression that half the Knights wanted to kill me right there."
"What exactly do they do?"
"Well, apparently the Esquires are supposed to be apprentices to the Knights, successors to their seats if you will, but the others?" Tori shrugs. "Your guess is as good as mine. No one really knows what do Knights do, and Paladins are almost a myth since the death of Paladin Iekann von Gieri in 1283."
"And hasn't anyone thought to just ask one of them?" Jade asks, part of her thinking that maybe most Demons are just downright dumb.
"Well, it's not as if we can talk to them" she protests. "They're mostly always in the Palace and almost every time they leave it means trouble to someone – and no one wants to get in the way of a Knight."
Jade studies her girlfriend's face and smiles a little. "You wanted to be one of them," she states, doesn't ask, because there's something in Tori's whole demeanor that makes her think that, if she had a life goal before coming to Earth, it was rising to the highest rank of Assassins.
Tori lets out a startled laugh. "That obvious?" she asks, a tiny smile pulling at the corner of her lips. Jade nods, playing with the ends of Tori's hair. "Yeah, it was my life goal. I... I was six years and a half when I decided I wanted to be a Knight. It wasn't so much about the status, back then."
"What was it about?"
The Demon sighs, caressing her lower back.
"My mentor was expelled," she begins, "and I... I had to cut all contact with someone I cared deeply about, someone who cared about me more than he cared about anything or anyone else, because he was a Knight and wouldn't have been allowed to be in contact with the student of a Fallen. I made it my goal to become a Knight so that I would see him again before he died – he was the last I had left, and I the last he had, and I saw him little enough already. I'd be able to spend more time with him if I was a Knight, I thought."
Tori takes a shaky breath and drops her hands, tapping Jade's knees absentmindedly.
"It was stupid, really" she continues. "There wasn't much of a chance that I'd get that far, not with the stigma of my mentor's status hanging over me, but... it was a nice dream, a lofty and dignified goal for a lonely six-year-old Assassin who only knew how to kill on command."
Jade's heart breaks a little at the vulnerability buried beneath all the confidence and carefully leashed violence she'd gotten used to on Tori, the shadow of a tiny girl who most likely couldn't even admit to herself that she felt lonely, that she wanted something more than the life traced in front of her.
She wonders if that's the root of the hesitation that saw Tori expelled.
"Who was that Knight to you?" she asks, brushing Tori's hair away from her face and lightly caressing her forehead.
Tori furrows her eyebrows. "I'm... not entirely sure. He was important, that much I know, and he was... a role model, an idol almost. I don't even remember his name anymore."
"Because you were too young?"
"No, that can't be it. I still remember the name of most of the other kids at the orphanage, and I left that place the day before I turned four."
"... Orphanage?"
Tori blinks. "Huh?"
"Nothing, it's just... You've never told me you lived at an orphanage" Jade comments, as she lays her body flush against her girlfriend's for a much needed cuddle.
The Demon looks down at their intertwined hands. "Well, both my parents were Fallens. I guess I just didn't have any other relatives to take care of me, or maybe nobody wanted to."
"... Do you want to talk about it?"
"About the orphanage?" Jade nods and Tori smiles faintly. "It wasn't bad, if that's what you want to know. We value the young far too much to mistreat even a bunch of kids without any blood kin. My orphanage's Grandparents, that's the Demons in charge of the children, always treated us as if we were their actual descent, and all of us would've considered the others siblings if we'd had any concept of that."
She stays silent for a long moment, playing with Jade's fingers, and kisses her softly on the lips before continuing.
"I lived at the Paladin Iekann von Gieri Home, in the Northern Mountains. It's... sort of an elite orphanage, mostly kids from Assassin bloodlines and noble lineages. Large, cozy, maybe twenty-five kids tops at any given time with maybe seven caretakers, everyone has their own room and there's enough left over for playrooms and things like that. The area is cold half the year and downright freezing the other half, but you wouldn't know it from inside the perimeter. We could even play outside sometimes, when the weather wasn't too bad.
"It's a good place," she continues after a pause, "filled with good people, too – well, as much as former and future Assassins can be, anyway. It made us feel like we belonged, like we weren't forgotten by those who had living kin. They taught us the basic skills that kin teaches their children, like how to read and write, the history of our people, how to properly pronounce Ancient so that our spells were effective, they made us memorize and practice the handseals and taught us exercises to keep out hands from cramping if we had to cast a lot of magic, and they helped us learn how to access our magic and how to call our wings. It's... in no small part thanks to the Grandparents there that I was deemed ready to start my apprenticeship before I even turned four."
"And the people?" Jade asks, because nice as that sounds she doesn't think she can get a picture until she knows how the other Demons of that orphanage were (both young and old).
Tori smiles –actually smiles!– at that question. "They were great. Never treated anyone differently because of their name, and the older kids were great with the younger ones. The elder of us at the time I left, Raikai van Groumn, treated me as an equal from the moment he realized I wasn't quite like other kids my age. He wasn't surprised when they learnt that I succeeded in calling my wings."
"You miss him" Jade states, looking up at her girlfriend's face.
The Demon blinks at that, seemingly surprised. "I... sort of? He would've been one of my best friends, I think, if Assassins understood the concept of friendship. We were..."
She purses her lips and looks away, briefly, and then back at Jade, who frowns a little in confusion.
"He was... my more regular partner" she says slowly. "Our... arrangement was actually set to us eventually bonding, but I was expelled."
"Bonding. That's like marriage?" Jade questions, not entirely sure if she should feel jealous – Tori speaks of this Raikai with almost-fondness, and knowing that they were intimate frequently doesn't sit completely well with her, never mind the fact that she knows Tori is in love with her.
Still, by her own admission Tori wasn't good with emotions before she left Tartarus, so there's a chance of her having loved the guy but being unable to put a word to it, and that's what bothers her a little.
At least she knows she was never in love with Beck, just liked him a lot, but Tori?
Her girlfriend just shakes her head. "Not exactly. Assassins tend to be polygamous, remember? All classes of Demons see bonding differently, but for our kind it's just the ceremony performed between two Assassins who will have descent together. In those circles it's seen badly if a child is born from a non-bonded couple, especially if at least one of the parents is bonded to someone else – the kid isn't looked at any differently, of course, since it's not their fault, but the parents get backlash for it.
"Still, that doesn't mean that a bonded Assassin can't have other partners, just that they can't have kids with them. It'd make it difficult to follow family lines if Assassins could just have children with anyone."
"And... you were engaged to this Raikai guy when you were fifteen?" Jade manages to ask in a neutral voice.
Tori fidgets a little. "Promised, actually, and that would be when I was fourteen and he almost sixteen. It's fairly common for Assassins to end up promised at that age, you know."
"Fine, promised, then. Were you going to tell me?"
Tori huffs. "It's not as if he was my boyfriend, Jade, just a guy I spent a lot of time with. I didn't tell you about Raikai because there was nothing to say."
Jade sighs and just lets it go, knowing that they might well end up fighting over something incredibly stupid if she keeps it up – and it's not as if Tori doesn't have a point.
Besides, a sort-of friend with benefits isn't quite that important if she's ever going to see him again.
Fun facts:
1. In Greek mythology, Tartarus was both a primordial deity and a place of the underworld, probably the deepest, where the Titans and other characters are imprisoned. Christian analysis interpret that the Greek would've heard of the punishments for fallen angels, and Tartarus would be their answer.
2. In Hebrew tradition, Gehenna was a valley where kings of Judah allegedly sacrificed their children by fire. Later, in Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions, it was considered the afterlife of the wicked.