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 8 – Rise of the fallen

October 01, 2011. California, USA.

It was nearly two in the afternoon when Trina wandered up the stairs searching for her sister, as Tori had failed to answer the five times she'd shouted at her from the first floor asking what she wanted to get for lunch.

The door to her bedroom was closed, as was usual with Tori, and she knocked on the wood lightly, assuming she must've been studying or something – Tori was surprisingly responsible for someone who frequently claimed not to care about school, but Trina supposed it was just another quirk leftover from her time in Hell.

For a long minute there was no answer, and when she knocked more resolutely and still didn't hear her sister's voice Trina frowned slightly, confused and admittedly a bit worried.

Well, worried enough to twist the doorknob without having been allowed to first, which went against anything that the other Vegas had been doing since Tori came to live with them. Trina felt just a little guilty for disregarding Tori's privacy for all of five seconds – the time it took her to spot Tori sitting at the foot of her bed, staring at her phone with unseeing eyes.

"Tori?" Trina called, frown deepening.

Her younger sister blinked and twisted her head just slightly, eyes flickering to her and back at the phone in her hands. "Hey, Trina."

"Are you okay?"

Tori opened her mouth, probably to answer in the affirmative as she most often did whenever presented with that question, but snapped it closed again after a moment and pursed her lips before shaking her head.

"I don't know."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

The younger Fallen hesitated, as she always did when Trina asked her that. She was a little predictable, sometimes.

"It's... It's about Jade."

"Ah."

Tori's lips quirked upwards in a gesture that wasn't quite a smile, being a little too bitter and sad to qualify as that. "Yeah."

"What did she do now?"

"What? She didn't– Why must you always assume that she's done something?" Tori complained.

"Because she usually does. I mean, not exactly, I guess, but you have a completely unexplainable crush on her so you're always more affected by whatever mean thing she's said or done."

Perhaps Trina's first red light should've been that Tori didn't loudly deny that she had a crush on Hollywood Art's resident Queen Bitch, but she was entirely too worried about the uncharacteristically withdrawn attitude her sister was projecting to notice.

Tori sighed deeply and carefully deposited her phone on the bed next to her.

"She didn't do anything. It's... it's just me."

"Okay? What... Oh Lord. Please tell me you didn't..."

Trina's voice trailed off, part of her desperately wishing that what she feared wasn't true – because, no matter how much she teased Tori about it, she didn't want her to have any kind of feelings for Jade West. Not when Jade was unapologetically rude and mean to her and literally almost everyone else, not when she was in a relationship with their cousin and especially not when it was obvious that she was never going to reciprocate Tori's feelings, that she was more likely to cruelly make fun of her than she was to pretend she didn't know if she ever found out.

Every time Trina teased her sister about it, it was mostly her being annoying about Tori's obvious physical attraction to Jade, but... she'd never wanted that attraction to be anything other than physical.

Tori let out a short, bitter laugh. "Yeah, I wish I could. I just– It doesn't matter, anyway. She's with Beck and– and she hates me."

"Hate's a strong word."

Tori shrugged, one hand instinctively reaching up to toy with the choker she'd worn every day for who knows how long.

"Maybe," she said softly, "but not entirely inaccurate, I think. It would be justified, anyway, since I... I did try to kill her."

"You were ordered to."

"Does it matter why I did it?"

Trina shook her head. "That's– I'm not going to argue with you about this now, Tori. But Jade– she doesn't hate you."

"Maybe not now, but she will. What I... Whatever I feel for her doesn't matter" Tori took a shuddering breath. "It never matters how I feel."

Trina frowned. "What do you mean?"

Tori's hand tightened where it rested on her bed, while the other pressed against her throat. They were quiet while Trina finally entered the room, closing the door behind her, and took post in Tori's desk chair to look directly at her sister. It took her a long moment to speak, but when she did, her voice was the softest that Trina had ever heard from her.

"I never told you about this necklace, did I?"

"No, but... it's a bit obvious that it means something important to you – I mean, you always touch it when you feel uncomfortable."

Tori looked at Trina and gave a tremulous smile. "Yeah, it's... it was important. It's... tangible proof of my most significant relationship before coming here."

"A lover?"

Tori hummed. "This necklace is... sort of like an engagement ring. We would've bonded next month. I..." she trailed off, hesitated, and finally spoke so weakly that Trina had difficulty to catch her words. "Our relationship was very physical, you know?, but it still meant the world to us. We were each other's first time with– with everything. It was... sort of an open relationship – he had his items on the side and I had mine, but still we gravitated to each other most of the time.

"Raikai was– he was everything to me" she murmured, looking down. "He made me feel normal, like there was nothing wrong with me, because there couldn't be if someone cared about me after all, and I... I made him feel like he was important, like someone cared about him, like it didn't matter that everyone else from his bloodline ignored him."

"You loved him."

Tori laughed bitterly, and fuck, it was the most heartbreaking sound Trina had ever heard. "I wouldn't know about that. Love isn't exactly the kind of emotion that registers anywhere on an Assassin's vocabulary. No, regardless of what we meant to each other, what we had was... it was physical comfort and power plays. Of all the people I interacted with that way, he was the closest to my level, and I lived for the satisfaction of knowing I was superior in every way that mattered and the thrill of proving myself better. The fact that we would've been friends or possibly more if we understood emotions and relationships doesn't matter."

Trina didn't think that was completely true – the way she spoke of her ex-fiancé dripped with affection, even if later it was filled with bitterness and distance, and she doubted someone could speak of a lover like that and claim they hadn't felt anything for them.

But Tori didn't need to hear that, not when she was already facing heartbreak over her feelings for Jade, not when acknowledging that she'd likely loved this Raikai guy would only add to her pain.

"Besides," Tori added, her tone turning even more bitter and eyes turning down, "I'm sure he burned his own necklace as soon as he heard I'd been expelled."

"And why haven't you?"

"Because... because up until last night I wasn't sure if I was even on the way to getting over things, him included. It's kind of fucking hard to let go if I was still trying to figure out what I was actually letting go of in the first place."

Trina narrowed her eyes. "Last night? What did you do, Tori?"

The younger sister winced, as if just realizing what she'd said. That, or she'd hoped that Trina wouldn't pick up on that particular wording. "I... wasn't entirely honest when I said I was going out with the gang yesterday."

Tori winced again at Trina's unimpressed stare, rushing to explain herself in a truly messy jumble of words nearly impossible to break down into actual coherent speech.

If Trina was understanding correctly, the previous afternoon, after leaving school, Tori had teleported all the way to Barcelona, changed her clothes to appropriately party-like for the Spanish night scene, conjured a perfectly accurate fake ID claiming her to be twenty-two and lightly confounded a bouncer to waltz into a top-notch club settled smack in the middle of the city like she owned the damn place, managing to pick up a stranger to take back to a hotel room she'd procured earlier that night.

Tori sullenly informed her that she'd obviously established herself as the dominant party easily, even though the stranger was a half-Demon (part of the reason they'd instinctively gravitated to each other, even if only Tori knew about the immortal side of the world – and anyway, what were the odds of two completely unrelated people of Demonic heritage finding themselves in the same Barcelonan club at the same time?), but it hadn't really been satisfying.

"It wasn't a lack of power play – there's always power play when Demons–"

"Don't you dare say the word" Trina interrupted her, not wanting to ever hear the word 'sex' spoken in context to what her little sister had been getting up to – even if she'd already heard far more about Tori's sex life than she cared to know. "What was the problem, then?"

"The problem was that it felt wrong. I don't mean the act itself, I did enjoy that, it's just..."

"Who you were with?"

Tori sighed and gripped her hands together between her knees, as if the mere idea of touching her necklace hurt but knowing that she wouldn't be strong enough to avoid the reflex without some outer incentive.

"Yeah. And it's not– it's not even that she was a– a half-blood, I can sort of deal with humanity now so it wouldn't make sense. But..." she sighed again. "I don't know. I guess... I guess part of me wished it was someone else, and... and that person not being Raikai... it made me realize I really feel something for Jade, which... annoys the fuck out of me, I mean, you have met her."

"You don't really think that" Trina said softly, looking at her sister as she closed her eyes.

"Does it matter?" she asked, sounding impossibly tired.

"Of course it does – Tori, just because you've done horrible things in the past it doesn't mean that your feelings aren't valid."

"But that's the problem, Trina. I didn't just do horrible things, I reveled in it, in the power that came with doing those things, with murdering countless people just because someone ordered me to. I'm... not the kind of person whose feelings can ever be valid."

"Tori..."

The younger Vega shook her head and shot to her feet, moving to her window. "I'm going to train you and Beck, help you have at least a fighting chance if you're ever attacked. I'll help the guys keep Jade alive, and I'm going to try and make sure that what I did to other people doesn't ever happen to her. I will keep hanging out with them because you know that the Archangel assigned to this area won't tolerate it if I don't have close supervision – ineffective as it may be. But... things can't go on the same way they've been so far."

"Tori, please don't do that to yourself."

"Do what? It's not as if we're all friends like Jade believes. Beck is the only one who actually likes me, and that's just because we're cousins. Neither of us will be losing anything, and you know that Jade will be happier that I'm not around as often as I have" she concluded bitterly.

Trina tried to find something to say, something that would stop her sister from basically sabotaging the few non-familial relationships she was slowly forming, but before she could reach the words she saw her sister's hands reach behind her neck and unclasp the choker she'd worn every day for years, the proof of her former engagement to an Assassin and the one thing that, unbeknownst to anyone else, had been proof that part of her was still clinging to her life in Tartarus.

Tori stared at the choker in her hands for a long moment, breathing almost unsteadily, and then she sighed, closed her eyes and brought the odd leather band to her lips.

"In blood may you find victory, in victory may you find honor, in honor may you find the immortality of a name. I free you from the future you promised, so that you may bring honor to your bloodline. Live well, my soul" she whispered.

Trina, understandably shocked about her sister's words and the way her voice broke at the end, was a little too distracted to really process that the words had been spoken in Ancient, a language she hadn't even heard since her own expulsion ages ago. Then, she was further taken from any possible musings when Tori took a deep, shuddering breath, closing her eyes tightly as if that would make the pain go away.

Several minutes (hours, days? What did time matter then, anyway?) passed by without either teen moving. Trina was almost afraid to even twitch, part of her breaking at her sister's pain even though it meant she was slowly getting used to the idea of belonging to Earth, but any choice was taken from her when Tori moved again.

Her sister straightened and lowered her hands to chest level, and without looking folded the choker with a strange mix of fear, fondness, bitterness and love, depositing it carefully on a hand-carved wooden box (one of the first things she'd done, when she'd just been expelled and was getting used to doing precise work with her hands despite the sickening press of Earth on her weakened aura) which she then tucked into her closet.

Both of them paused before Tori fully closed the door, eyes closed and head down, and neither spoke even when the older sister finally gathered her wits enough to stand up and hug Tori as tightly as she could, the younger Vega standing stiffly for a full minute before she slumped against her body, boneless and shaking with dry, silent sobs.

Later, if asked to pinpoint the exact moment their relationship shifted from forcefully familiar to fiercely sisterly, both would be hard-pressed to come up with an episode that marked them more than this one.

–o–

October 02, 2011. California, USA.

We need to talk. Have a Valentine watch over West for a couple hours.

The text would've been cryptic no matter who had sent it, but from this particular person it was also more than a bit worrying. Beck frowned at his phone even as he typed a reply confirming that he'd be over at the Vega Sanctuary soon, trying to understand why she'd send such a text at a time like this, now that she was beginning to really get used to human life and was growing more comfortable and open, now that she was warmer and closer even to the Guardians of their group.

He'd just hit sent when his phone lit up with an incoming call from the one Guardian who'd never seemed to even dislike Tori, and he answered thinking that Cat had surely thought the same.

"Do you have any idea why she wants to see us?" she asked before even greeting him.

Cat was like that when Tori was involved – she always worried, always tried to help Tori feel even a little bit comfortable, never even hinted at her past or at all the reasons why they really shouldn't be friends. Cat was the only Guardian who Beck could truthfully say didn't care that some of her friends were Demons, which was a really weird but welcome change from the way most Angels treated them.

(Beck had lost count of the strangers who glared at him for no reason other than his blood before he'd even turned seven. His parents and his aunt and uncle acted as if they didn't notice anymore, but he knew that couldn't be more wrong. Trina simply ignored them as if they were beneath her notice. Tori glared back, allowing her eyes to flash red if no one was around and simply scowling menacingly otherwise.

For all of them, and he was willing to bet it was the same for all other Fallen Demons, the main reason why they would never be able to completely grow used to Earthly life wasn't the diversity of races or the fact that they had to keep quiet about their immortal heritage or that they could only use magic to hide the physical traits common to Demons, but rather the mindless hatred they'd always receive for sole reason of their birth.)

But Tori was also more comfortable with Cat, at times even more than with their family, often acting as if Cat was the only person aware of her heritage who made her feel normal, like she belonged, like she hadn't spent the majority of her life serving Lucifer and killing people at his say-so. Cat had been the first person to make her smile and laugh and just act like a normal teenager, and to date she was the only one who could initiate physical contact at all times without Tori growing defensive, the only one who could pull her out of one of her moods with nothing more than a hug and an honest smile.

If Cat didn't know why Tori was acting strange now, then no one did.

"I have no idea" he confessed, grabbing his car keys. "I was hoping you'd know. You're kind of Tori's best friend."

"As much as she can have a friend, you mean?"

"I'm not the guys."

Cat remained quiet for a moment. "I know. I meant that she wouldn't admit to having friends at all, let alone to being friends with an Angel. Not that Andre or Robbie help."

He grunted his agreement, thinking of the many times either of the male Guardians had demonstrated the bigotry he'd come to expect from all Angels except Cat. Really, the only reason he only considered them loose friends was because he knew they despised all Demons, including those in his position, even though they pretended they didn't care about his ancestry.

He knew it was more that they ignored it most of the time, which was proven by the fact that whenever they were reminded of his race they acted odd around him, uncomfortable, and later acted as if none of that had happened. It was further proven by the way they behaved around Tori, which really didn't need an explanation.

The whole thing was Holy bigotry at its finest.

Cat... Cat really didn't care. She never pretended the Vega-Oliver clan weren't Demons, never ignored it whenever any of them somehow showed their true nature, never changed the way she was around them even when Tori was at her grumpiest (which was often the way she more obviously reminded everyone that she was, in fact, a Demon). She knew what they were, but she also knew who they were, and never let their race be a defining factor in who they were and who they were to her.

Cat couldn't care less that most of her friends had Demonic blood, and though she never hid that she felt uncomfortable by the knowledge of all the things Tori had done before they met she also made sure to remind his cousin that Tori was first and foremost one of Cat's dearest friends.

Such a friend was priceless, and likely born partly of being best friends with a half-Demon her whole life and mostly through being a genuinely good person.

That was probably one of the things that was more prominent in helping Tori feel at home, and the whole reason he knew that Cat was actually Tori's best friend regardless of her own acceptance of even having friends in the first place.

(Though, to be fair, considering how the rest of the group was and how Tori didn't hang out with anyone outside their little group, Cat was also probably the only friend Tori had – if one discounted Beck and Trina, who were also family.)

Beck sighed, deciding to change topic before he got into a mood. "Who's watching Jade?"

"Andre was on shift right now. I asked my brother and he's agreed to cover for a few hours, he should be by soon."

"That should make them manage to be away from Jade for a while without freaking out. Do you need me to come pick you up?"

"Please? I really don't want to deal with the guys right now."

Cat's words might've surprised Beck before Tori came around, but it was actually expected since she'd met the Vegas – because Cat had begun to realize how blindly prejudiced her fellow Angels truly were, and she didn't like it one bit. Sometimes, she just needed to take a step away from them, breathe deeply and remind herself why she liked them.

Beck was sure that Cat's frequent subtle defense of Tori and the other Demons, how she didn't even have to go out of her way to be nice but she did anyway, was the main reason why his cousin felt more or less comfortable around her, no matter how much she tried to hide it.

He finished the conversation by telling her he'd be by in fifteen minutes as he got inside his car, smiling a little at her happy "kay kay!" and wishing he was the kind of person who could bounce back from a negative mood as quickly as Cat seemed to sometimes.

Almost too soon he and Cat were walking into the Vega Sanctuary, where Robbie and Andre were already on their usual seats and Tori was waiting by the door, which she closed while Beck and Cat moved to the couch.

There was something off about her, not only her behavior (she was taking longer than necessary to turn around), though Beck couldn't quite put his finger on what. Thankfully, Cat was observant enough to need less than a second to pinpoint the issue as soon as Tori was facing them again.

"Are you okay, Tori?" Cat asked, genuinely concerned.

The other girl blinked, seeming confused. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Where's your necklace?"

Ah, that was it. The leathery choker that Tori had worn every day since he met her was nowhere to be found, its absence almost glaringly obvious from her bare neck. He'd never managed to find out what it meant, but still he thought that the fact that she'd taken it off meant something.

Tori's reaction (a slight twitch, almost imperceptible) was confirmation enough that the necklace was somehow related to why she'd called them here today.

"That's not important" she answered, very obviously avoiding the topic. "What matters is that I called you to tell you guys that... I've decided to help you. With West" she added when they failed to understand.

"Why?" Andre asked. "Not that I mind, it's just that..."

"You're wondering why I'm volunteering to protect her now when I was supposed to kill her and ended up losing everything" she said, with nothing short of absolute certainty. He nodded, looking uncomfortable, and she shrugged. "That's for me to know and for you to never figure out. My reasons are my own."

"How are you going to help us?" Cat asked.

From anyone else that might've sounded wrong, doubtful of the value of the offered help, but from Cat it was simply innocent curiosity. Even Tori knew that, which was most likely why she actually managed a brief, downright amused smile.

"Well, no offense, but you are simply too disorganized to be too much of a challenge to some Demons. They wouldn't even need to be as strong as I am to break into her house at night without any of you noticing a thing – and if whoever was sent to kill her wasn't ordered to avoid collateral damage like I was..."

She allowed her words to trail off, but they didn't need her to complete the sentence to know what she meant – if Lucifer wasn't for some reason interested in leaving them alive, this would be long over.

(They would've certainly died when Tori was the one ordered to kill Jade.)

The Guardians agreed with her assessment (grudgingly in Andre's case, much to Beck's absolute delight), to which she simply raised an eyebrow before turning her gaze to her cousin, who straightened under the unimpressed stare.

"And you are too weak" she said slowly. "Fallen Demons generally are, and tend to be happy spending their whole lives that way, but seeing as you want to protect someone who's been on Tartarus' kill list her whole life that's nothing but an obstacle. You can't protect West if you can't even protect yourself."

"I was kicked out when I was a kid, though" he pointed out. "It's not as if I could know anything about spellcasting."

"No, which is why I'm going to teach you. The basics first, then teleportation, invisibility and shields, and once you've mastered all that we'll start with offensive."

Beck blinked. "Uh... why not offensive magic first?" he asked.

She sighed, and for a moment she exuded the sort of exasperation that came from long familiarity with a particular brand of stupid. It kind of made Beck feel a two inches tall baby Demon who still hasn't managed to get their wings, which... was probably fair, considering who he was talking to.

"Seriously, Beck. Do you honestly think you'd be able to stand two seconds against a fully grown medium-rank without even knowing how to cast a shield? I'm not teaching you anything about how to fight before you've learnt how to protect."

He opened his mouth, realized he couldn't even begin to refute that, then closed it. "You have a point."

Tori shook her head, and Beck was pleased to notice there was an amused glint in her eyes for a brief second before she was serious again.

"I'll be working with you most of the time, but you guys–" she added, looking at the Guardians "–need a lot of help too. If you have some hands-on experience in facing the kind of Demon who could fight an Archangel to a standstill, few Assassins that come after West will pose much of a challenge."

Translation: Tori was going to fight the Guardians until they could last half a minute against her. Beck kind of pitied them.

"You don't mean just straightforward fights, right?" Andre asked. "I mean, no offense, but considering how you didn't attack us head on..."

Tori rolled her eyes. "Well, of course I didn't – it wasn't part of my mission. But yeah, I don't mean only fights, though we'll start with that. Once you've progressed a little, I'll teach you how Assassins think, so you can be prepared to counter whatever bullshit they throw at you."

She hesitated for a moment, took a seat, ran a hand through her hair and sighed.

"Look, let me give you an example. An Assassin has been ordered to kill West. They have a week to do it, and they also have a blanket permission to cause collateral damage so long as no one unrelated to her results affected – that includes her parents, her Guardians, the family of her Guardians and the people she more often spends her time with. The Assassin is part of a middle-rank clan, comes from a fairly unremarkable line and has focused their career to mastering assassinations that can be easily covered as accidents caused by a careless victim. How could they attack, and what could you do to counter them?"

Everyone stared blankly at her for a moment, at first taken aback by the sudden hypothetical and later confused at what she even meant.

Then, Cat paled.

"Do you have something to say, Cat?" Tori asked.

"Uhm... The Assassin could stage a gas explosion, take out her whole family" she answered, looking uncomfortable. "But... I'm not sure how we could prevent something like that."

"Another scenario – no collateral forbidden, average Assassin with a penchant for mechanical tampering." At the blank looks she received, Tori sighed and leaned back, crossing her arms. "Come on, that one's easier. All it would take would be to cut the brakes of a truck just when West's crossing the street and casting a mild wide-area freezing spell to ensure no one can move to avoid an accident – she can't move, no one can push her, the driver can't swerve."

"You speak like you have firsthand experience" Andre commented.

Beck looked back at his cousin just in time to register the dark look that momentarily took over her eyes, as if she was remembering something she wasn't particularly proud of.

"I was an Assassin for over ten years" she reminded them dryly. "Do you think there's anything I haven't done in name of a mission? The point is, the only reason West managed to live long enough to turn seventeen was just dumb luck. My objective is to help you make sure dumb luck isn't the only reason why she turns twenty.

"Of course," she added, her voice taking a light tone that was nowhere in line with the faint frown she'd adopted, "that's assuming you lot can even accept a former Assassin's help."

Beck winced even as he shuffled closer to her and away from the Guardians. That was the first time she referred to Andre and Robbie's obvious prejudice and general attitude when it came to Demons, and he didn't want to be anywhere close to them if Tori was in just the right mood to pretend she didn't care.

Cat frowned at the other Guardians, showing exactly how much she appreciated being dumped in the same category as them when all she wanted was for Tori to consider her a close friend.

Much to Beck's delight, the duo shuffled a bit, seemingly uncomfortable at the negative attention, and were quick to assure her that they'd be honored to have help from a talented former Assassin in protecting their charge.

Personally, he thought that they were laying it on a bit too thick, especially considering that Beck, Cat and Tori were very much aware of what they really thought about Demons, but he wasn't complaining – because it was obvious that they were uncomfortable about the whole thing, and if having to compliment a Fallen Demon was making it worse for them, well... he wasn't the one who told them to have a stick up their respective behinds.

Besides, it amused Tori just enough for her to smirk for a few seconds, which was a definite plus in his eyes.

She was a skilled enough actress that no one suspected she was anything more than an American teenager who was ridiculously good at being a future pop star, but... singing was the only thing she truly enjoyed, the only thing that made her happy which she didn't bother to hide anywhere – and true that part of that was because it went along with the character she'd begun to build for herself the moment she was enrolled in Sherwood, but there was a reason she'd chosen to sing above anything else.

Tori showing some honest emotion whenever she wasn't singing was always a positive thing for the Vega-Oliver clan. Not that they'd ever tell her – she would probably close herself off again just on principle.

But here she was, opening up to their little group of friends, volunteering to protect the girl who'd once been the reason she lost everything, offering to work with a trio of Guardian Angels and a Fallen Demon, willing to grow even closer to them through what she understood best – changing of her own free will.

She was finally leaving behind the Demon she'd been, embracing the girl she'd chosen to become.

What could possibly go wrong?

To clarify: Each scene is narrated from only a particular character's point of view. Therefore, just because one character thinks things are one way doesn't mean it's true or that others think the same. Which is why Andre can swear he's open and accepting while others see him as an unrepentant bigot, or why everyone can think Tori begins to grow closer to the others at this point when really she's even more emotionally distant than she was before.