Chapter 9 – Echoes of times past
December 14, 2012. Kalaus Manor, Tartarus.
Rivot von Gieri's return to Tartarus more than three years after her abrupt departure is received with an unprecedentedly active rumor mill, the news of her sudden reappearance commented by all Demon classes with equal energy after she's seen in the halls of Shaytan by a particularly loose-tongued Assassin.
Therefore, there is little surprise when the square on the Vaihe district's main town activates and its light dies down to show the now-seventeen-year-old Demon, looking for everyone like time is the only change she's gone through – little surprise, but still plenty of amazement at the return of the young prodigy.
Rivot barely spares her surroundings a cursory glance before she calls her wings and launches to the skies, setting course to the Manor she used to live in.
With Tartarus' inhabitants having magic at their disposal, it's inevitable that the Kalaus know of her return to Vaihe before she has the Manor within sight, and she knows this, which is why she fully expects the welcoming committee standing on the front lawn.
She recognizes most of the Demons there – some were her partners before she left, some others she met while she was part of other clans, a few are completely unknown. Laneit el Gourae is still the matriarch and Kramlov van Groumn still stands at her right, but Rivot's place at her left was taken by Rhas el Svairnz, Idvke Groumnhold is no longer hovering in the back of the group and one face almost breaks through her mask – Raikai van Groum, her longtime lover, stands behind his distant uncle, peering at her with seemingly emotionless eyes which still fail to mislead her.
She looks away, unwilling to allow his deep gaze to throw her into thoughts of her suspiciously missing promise necklace. His own necklace is gone, but she doesn't want to think about what that might mean. Not yet.
They do need to talk, though, and they will – as soon as they can find themselves alone. It'll be easier, now that he's a Kalaus and they live in the same Manor.
Her reintroduction goes swiftly, and no one questions where she has been or what she's been doing all this time. It's common knowledge that she was on Earth, the Knights told her while catching her up, but the exact reason why she was missing is as much a mystery to the common Demon as it is to Rivot herself. No official statement was ever given regarding her sudden disappearance, and no one will dare question it now that's she's back.
Soon enough, she finds herself in her old quarters, which are still just as she left them years ago but for a thick layer of dust – she doesn't know how to react to the rather obvious proof that the Kalaus missed her, even if none would say it.
She's barely just finished cleaning up the main room (the dust was such that one spell wasn't enough to vanish it, and she doesn't look forward to cleaning up the bedchamber) when she hears a firm yet hesitant knock on her door. Automatically, she looks to the sensor chart on her desk, furrowing her eyebrows when it fails to give her the identity of her visitor – she has to reactivate it for it to show that Raikai wants to see her, which is nothing short of puzzling.
(Not that Raikai is at her door, she expected that. But, well, a correctly spelled sensor chart is supposed to last for well over half a decade before its caster needs to take a look at it, and she could've sworn she had that particular spell perfected before she was twelve.
It's strange, but nothing she can't study later.)
"Rivot" he greets as soon as he sees her. It's only because she knows him so well (despite the years that have gone by without seeing each other) that she can notice his eyes softening as they almost greedily drink her in.
"Raikai" she answers, opening her door wider and returning to the other side of the room, intent of checking what else has fallen in her absence, leaving him to make his own way inside quarters he already knows intimately.
He doesn't ask where she's been, what she's done, who she's met. He used to, back then, when they laid in bed tangled and sweating and tired but full of a deep satisfaction they never felt with anyone else or even when they sat in the shadows after countless hours of training – he liked to hear about her missions, about her growing power and prestige, about how no one could hold a candle against her. He liked knowing that no matter who she sought pleasure with she only ever bared herself to him – that he was the only one she saw as worthy of her trust.
It hurts that he doesn't ask.
"You look good" he says softly, and hesitates before striding up to her and gathering her in his arms, breathing her in. "I missed you" he admits in a whisper.
She closes her eyes and returns the quiet show of affection, that hesitant show of emotion they only ever allow with each other, nuzzling against his chest and reacquainting herself with that smell that is so uniquely him.
After a long moment of silence, he pulls away to cradle her face between his hands, eyes running over her face just as hers travel over his, her own hands gripping his waist.
"What happened to your necklace?" he asks.
Rivot sighs through her nose. "I don't know" she admits, refusing to speak in a higher volume than him in a subconscious effort to not break this quiet bubble they're in. "I... I don't remember much of the last three years."
He nods. "Mine is in a box inside my trunk" he says when he recognizes the question in her eyes. "I didn't want to break our promise, but I couldn't keep wearing it when I didn't even know what had happened to you."
She nods back, because she can still feel the bond between them, growing stronger the longer they touch, and in the back of her mind she thinks she hears Tartarus' whispered encouragement for closer intimacy, both signs which she takes to mean she didn't break their promise either – not that she could see herself ever doing that.
"I still want to bond with you" he whispers. "Will you allow me to give you another promise?"
It's just a formality, Rivot knows – they didn't break their promise before, when she was gone, so they must bond regardless of whatever they do now. His question is more along the lines of telling her that he still wants her just as much as he wanted her three years ago, of asking whether she still feels the same.
She leans up to kiss him (not the kind that usually led to their sexual encounters, but rather the sort that came more rarely, more filled with emotion Assassins don't know how to voice) and breathes him in, feeling her life slot back into place. "Promise me."
He smiles.
–o–
December 16, 2012. California, USA.
The room that they used to share in the Vega Sanctuary is dark and completely empty when Jade wakes up, breath difficult and heartbeat too quick to be healthy, shaken by a nightmare that's been haunting her for the past week even when awake, always different but never failing to feature lack of recognition in bright red eyes.
She doesn't like to feel weak, physically or emotionally, but these nightmares (twists on her memories, replayed time and again and made more painful every night by her brain conjuring increasingly worse scenarios) makes her feel weaker than ever – even more than when she was running for her life in Florida, only to be saved by the friends who for years hid their true nature from her.
The memory of the girl she loves disappearing, the monster she used to be taking her place, refuses to leave her alone no matter what she does.
Her friends notice, of course, they aren't idiots. They instinctively see more than any human could, and as if that wasn't enough her Guardians can feel echoes of any strong emotion she feels by virtue of being assigned as her personal protectors – dead useful when Idvke was trying to kill her, inconvenient when she's being crushed by despair every second of every day.
She sighs and sits up on the bed, their bed, too cold and too big without Tori curled up right next to Jade. Even though Tori had been almost paranoid and a little cold lately, Jade still got to see the old Tori whenever they were alone, and she was never as loving and warm as when they laid next to each other in their bed.
Now she's alone. Now she doesn't have that safe point to return to, that place where she could seek comfort whenever the situation she'd been thrusted into threatened to overwhelm her.
Jade fights the urge to picture Tori with her, because she's not sure if she could keep going if she did. She doesn't know for sure how she would react, but she's certain it would crush her even more – it's why she's been avoiding those thoughts since Tartarus claimed her back.
The glowing red numbers of the clock sitting innocently on Tori's nightstand tell Jade that it's just past eight o'clock. It's a Sunday, but Holly should be up already, making a quick breakfast before she heads out to the store. Trina, David and Cat will be still sound asleep for a few more hours – both David and Cat were out late, the former working and the latter training with her brother, so she doesn't expect either to wake up before Trina does.
Jade sighs again and gets up, knowing that there's no chance of her going back to sleep now. She takes a shower simply out of habit and dresses in a mix of Tori's and her own clothes (as she's done practically since she came to live with the Vegas) before she walks down the stairs.
Holly's already in the kitchen, as Jade knew she would be, and clearly had expected her to come down seeing as she places a mug of coffee for her just as Jade takes a seat. They exchange quiet greetings and begin to eat, the silence pressing and tense – it's been that way since Tori disappeared.
Eventually, the silence becomes too much for Jade, and a thought that's been haunting her for the past week finally makes its way past her lips.
"It's my fault."
"What?"
Jade exhales. "It's just... Tori and I were arguing, before everything went to shit. If we hadn't been, she wouldn't have had her defenses down and this wouldn't have happened."
Holly stares deeply into her cup for a long moment. "Who told you that?"
"Beck" she admits. "Well, he actually said that Tori got used to having all sorts of shields up all the time, even mental ones, but I just thought... maybe, if we hadn't been fighting, she wouldn't have..."
She trails off when Holly sighs, looking at her with calm eyes and a sad smile.
"It's true that she might've been distracted and that that's why Tartarus could reclaim her, but my daughter was too strong and too experienced to allow a fight with her girlfriend to make the kind of difference you think it made."
"It's my fault she's gone."
"No, it's not. Jade, I don't think you understand how powerful Lucifer truly is – you won't hear any Angel admit it, but God himself fears the King of Tartarus."
"He what?"
"I'm not sure how it works, exactly, but humans have some sort of power too – they can't use it, not the way we do, so their power is entrusted to Heaven or Tartarus depending on what they believe in and how they actually behave. I think that these days they distribute it evenly."
"Right. But you said that Lucifer is so powerful that God fears him, so..." Jade frowns. "Wait, is that why the people from Heaven badmouth Demons all the time?"
"It's our best guess. There's also a history full of wrongdoings on both sides, of course, that's reason enough even without considering all the other factors that add to the hatred between our peoples."
"I don't see your point."
"The point is that Lucifer was more likely than not strong enough to reclaim Tori even if she had her full power focused on her shields – she's powerful, yes, but he's still the King of Tartarus."
"Did she... did she know that?"
"If she didn't, then she strongly suspected it. After she started to help protect you, she mentioned that, since she'd been a Demon for far longer than all of us combined and a Fallen for so little time, she was still too attached to Tartarus, even if it didn't have any true hold over her anymore. She had a long way ahead before it fully stopped influencing her and she worried that it might cause her to... lose it."
Jade's hands tighten around her mug. "That's... why didn't she tell me?"
Holly sighs. "I can't be sure, but I'm guessing the same reason she didn't want you to know about her past. Shame is a powerful force, especially to someone who's trying to become everything they used to despise."
"I don't understand."
"Because you never saw how she was when she first came to Earth, so distant and emotionless and just... cold. She couldn't be that person around those who didn't know what she was, so she created a persona, a mask for her to hide behind. We hoped for the best, of course, but we didn't think there was a chance that her true self would gain any aspect of her Tori Vega image for at least a few more decades. Then you came along, and what we'd thought impossible began to happen – both parts of her began to blend."
Jade frowns, unable to see how she could've made that kind of difference. "Why? What would make me so special?"
Holly gives her a long, slightly puzzled look, as if wondering how she doesn't already know the answer. Jade's sort of had to get used to being on the receiving end of that kind of stare since the whole Idvke debacle, as she's always the only one who's guaranteed to not understand a thing when the others talk about immortal stuff, though it's still weird to get it from Holly or David.
After a moment, the woman's eyes soften and she leans forward to cover Jade's hand with her own.
"She was terrible at emotions when she first got here," she begins quietly. "Even with her illusions covering up her tattoos and eyes, and even when her hair returned to its natural color, you would've known immediately she wasn't normal just from the way she acted. She spent a lot of time sitting in front of a screen, learning how to act like a human by molding herself after fictional characters, picking different traits from various sources to create the persona she wanted to use as a cover. But all along, it was just that – a cover.
"However, she was genuinely different with some people almost from the start. For example, did you know that Cat was the first person who could make her show any emotion at all in private?"
She didn't, but her first thought is that it makes sense, given that by all accounts Tori was closest to Cat than to anyone else before Jade was told about the supernatural world, and so she nods shortly.
"It was a work in progress, made faster by her support system, but we all knew that even then she wouldn't change enough to stop needing to hide for a long while more. Then you happened.
"We didn't know, back then, of course – it's only looking back after knowing about you two that we could see the difference. Because when she met you, the line that separated Rivot from Tori stopped blurring and began to actually disappear. Not too obviously, at first, but..."
"But?" Jade prompts when it doesn't look as if Holly is going to continue.
"It took her some time to understand deeper emotions" the woman says in an almost inaudible voice. "Feelings. As far as we've been able to determine, Assassins are notoriously bad with emotions, but feelings are non-entities to them – their opinion seems to be that you can learn to work around emotions once you're strong enough, but that feelings are nothing but a weapon that will only turn against you. She thought both useless, but, well, at least she was open to emotion after her first few weeks here.
"And then she met you.
"I don't think she'd even thought about you at all since she arrived, but once she saw you at school for the first time – she was different. She probably began to fall in love with you right then."
"You said Assassins don't do feelings, though."
"They don't, and that was the problem – she didn't understand what she was going through. Apparently, just determining that she was physically attracted to you was a source of frustration.
"But when she understood what she was feeling, when she could put a word to it, she completely broke down – she thought herself too evil to ever be loved by anyone, let alone the one she loved, and to make matters worse you were dating Beck at the time."
Jade winces and looks deep into her cup.
"I'm not trying to make you feel guilty, that's just the way it was. She seemed to think that even the slightest form of attraction to you was an absolute betrayal of his trust, so she decided to do the only thing she believed she could do for you."
"Protect me."
"From the sidelines."
Jade frowns, because even if Holly hasn't said it directly she is almost certain that she can pinpoint the moment this change of heart happened – the turn from Miss Sunshine to distant, standoffish politeness was as strange as it was sudden.
But for Jade, that wasn't the most confusing part – no, the worst part was that, even though Tori still hung around the gang, she just... stopped truly interacting with them, and whenever she did, it was with distance and fake smiles.
The first time she used a vague excuse to get out of helping out with one of their usual shenanigans was the day Jade realized that there was something seriously wrong with the girl. That realization came with Jade finally dropping the denial she'd fiercely held about her growing crush on Tori for the past several months.
She broke up with Beck in late January, when she came to the conclusion that at some point she'd stopped liking him – that her feelings for Tori refused to go away, only growing as time passed.
And it all started the first and only time Tori left school early.
"So that's what happened" she says quietly. "I was wondering..."
An Assassin voluntarily in the way to rehabilitation realizing that she held strong romantic feelings for the lover of someone she held strong familial affections for. That was sure to mess with her.
It also explains why she hadn't believed Jade when she confessed, why it took Jade over two weeks to get a date and why it took another five weeks for her to ask Jade to make it official – and why they'd been together for more than four months before Tori was willing to let their friends know.
(True the gang had walked in on them, but Tori had enough talent in the magical arts to have avoided that had she truly wanted to.)
"It was" Holly says softly, sadly. "It was meeting you, falling for you, what helped her get closer to the... humanity within her. Even then, I'm almost certain she knew she couldn't take this life for granted."
"But the Code..."
"No Demon knows it completely. There's a reason why we didn't have much to forget – we were barely apprentices, and access to knowledge is limited to your rank much like in human society. Lucifer would be the only one who can know it all."
"So it's actually possible that Lucifer can easily reclaim a Fallen?"
"I don't know if easily, but yes, seeing what happened it's obvious that he can do it even years after expulsion. I'm pretty sure the rest of us are safe, since we can't... feel Tartarus anymore, while Tori openly admitted to still having a bond to it."
"I thought you guys never spoke of it."
"We didn't– we don't. But she vaguely mentioned some things from time to time, always small pieces of almost useless information that explained why she got confused by whatever was happening. She tried harder and harder to avoid it as time passed, but she never fully stopped."
Jade looks down. "I don't think she wanted to" she murmurs. "It was her whole life, her world. She hated it, but she still missed some parts of it – the people, mostly, and the respect and freedom her status granted her. Being here was the closest to torture she ever got."
Holly sighs. "I didn't want to assume, but... I figured. Even from the day she arrived it was obvious she hated being here. She grew to tolerate and even like some parts of it, but..."
There is a long moment of pause, and it takes all the acting skill Jade has to avoid fidgeting at how uncomfortable she grows.
"The thing is," Holly says after a long while, "we didn't think we'd ever see her again after her tenth birthday passed without us feeling her fall. We already knew it was extremely unlikely when she turned seven, but we didn't lose hope until she was ten. We mourned her for so long, but then she turned fifteen and we got to meet her, to know the girl she'd become without any input from us, to see how she began to truly be human... And, Jade?"
The teen, who'd looked down feeling terribly uncomfortable by the topic at hand, looks up again when Holly reaches for her hand and gives it a gentle squeeze.
"All of it was a gift we never could've hoped for, and you gave it to us. You have no idea how much that means to us."
–o–
December 16, 2012. Shaytan Palace, Tartarus.
The Knight of Second steps into the council chamber on silent feet, cold eyes cataloguing everything in the room within a fraction of a second with the ease of long practice. It helps that he's held his post for decades, the longest-serving Knight since one of his own ancestors several centuries back, making him grow used to there being only two things unchanging when it comes to his immediate world – the semi-public areas of the Palace, and its Lord and Master being the only living being that's never changed.
It's what causes him to show absolutely no reaction when he spots the high-backed chair across his own not only empty but with its normally shifting carvings stilled. So the Knight of First office is once more open, forcing his King to find a replacement for the sixth time since his bonded retired to care for the newborn heir to his House.
It's slightly disappointing, that this one didn't last a full year, but he won't pass any silent judgement until he finds out what happened to his colleague.
The rest of the Knights are already there, and they make an aborted attempt to stand up at his entrance before he gestures for them to remain in their seats.
It's not long before the King of Tartarus storms into the chamber, already worked into a foul mood by the prospect of having to go over the records of all the Kalaus after only eight months of last having reviewed His most powerful Assassins. He doesn't even acknowledge the five Knights standing from their chairs, absently motioning for them to sit back down as He seamlessly transitions into agitated pacing.
"What happened."
It's a demand, a coldly enraged one the likes of which screams that someone better have answers or else.
"Betrayed, Your Majesty" the Knight of Fourth answers promptly. "His firstborn lured him away from the Palace under false pretenses and murdered him. The traitor's already been apprehended and awaits Your judgement."
Well, that fate isn't terribly surprising. The Second had always known that the boy would cause trouble, what with his sense of inadequacy over being constantly overshadowed by the accomplishments of his immediate kin, and had already warned the late First and informed the King of his observations – seeing his sire be named a Knight when the boy was struggling in the middle ranks was obviously enough to push him over the edge and cause him to do something stupid. Clearly the boy had inherited his intelligence from his sire, otherwise the man wouldn't have gone to meet his firstborn alone.
The King snarls and stops by His seat at the head of the table. "We don't care for a mockery of a trial at the moment, it had already been informed that he was capable of murdering his sire and the fool didn't listen. Send that disgrace to Gehenna."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Mias, you had business to discuss with Us and this council?" the Lord Eternal asks after appearing to calm down.
Lord Mias von Gieri, Knight of Second, inclines his head. "House business, Your Majesty, pertaining my heir. It's been reminded to me that she had promised herself before her time on Earth."
Lord Ikrel van Groumn, Knight of Fifth, leans forward in eager interest, and Mias isn't surprised that the man can easily recall the identity of her promised – the young Assassin is, after all, a member of his Noble House. "Yes, to young Raikai, the latest member of the Kalaus. I'm assuming that the promise was never broken by either of the young ones, then?"
"You assume correctly."
Ikrel sits up straight, smugness radiating off him at the confirmation that a van Groumn is once again bonding to a von Gieri. "Quite a pair, those two, the only Assassins in history to be inducted into the Kalaus clan as teenagers if I'm not mistaken. Their offspring will be something to be reckoned with. "
"Indeed," the King speaks, contemplative. "The timing of the ritual is surprising, given that she's only just returned from her temporary exile. We'd expected her to need more time before her magic stabilized enough to bond with another, but she's clearly more resilient than previously thought."
It's only through his decades of experience that the Second manages to keep from showing his discomfort at the reminder of the punishment suffered by his heir – a punishment that Mias himself had suggested, in a moment of uncontrolled despair at the mere thought of permanently losing his girl.
Nine hundred and thirty-nine days of complete exile to Earth, cut off from the aura of Tartarus except for the link that would allow her return when the sentence was over, so heavily suppressed that it was impossible for anyone but Tartarus itself to feel, forcing her to believe she'd been expelled. Nine hundred and thirty-nine days of constant pain at being exposed to the aura of a realm not her own without Tartarus' protection, unable to adapt due to the temporary nature of her sentence and forced to live with the pain.
He'd suggested that punishment for his darling heir, never realizing (perhaps because that particular sentence had never been applied) that her progenitors would be able to feel her aura as if she'd been really expelled, never thinking that they'd take her to live with them, that she'd end up surrounded by filth and Children of Heaven and the target that had prompted her punishment.
He'd never imagined that the torture and the belief of her expulsion and the company she was forced to keep would end up with his heir brainwashed, never imagined what her altered state of mind would push her into.
Yet he can't regret his impulsive proposal what felt like an eternity ago, not when the King was merciful and took her actions not as a betrayal but as the acts of a twisted mind. Even killing fellow Assassins and actively working against the King was forgiven in light of her mental state, not in the least because the trauma of her link to Tartarus being in full again almost destroyed what remained of her sanity and her magic, in an effort to protect her, slammed a block in the memories of the years she spent on Earth.
Oh, she remembers what she learnt and her hatred of Heaven has grown, but she doesn't know how or why she acquired new knowledge and skills – and none of the two people aware are going to give her that answer.
"You are bringing this up because they plan to bond soon, aren't you?" the King continues, oblivious to Mias' inner conflict.
"Four days from now, Your Majesty."
"Have them bring the records of the current clan members when they come for the registry. We will begin the search for a new Knight of First then."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
The meetings draws to a close soon after, when no one reports any ideas on how to kill the most persistent thorn in the King's side and He storms off in a rage – something that doesn't surprise Mias at all, having been alongside Him since long before the sire of said thorn was even conceived.
The continued existence of that disgusting half-breed had, at first, been through the efforts of her personal Guardian, the general-area Guardians and even a couple of Archangels, with every failure causing the ranking of the mission to go up and up until it finally got the King's interest, something that usually ended up with the target dead within the year. But the half-breed simply refused to die, failing to notice that there'd been any danger to her life even when her survival should've been impossible, and slowly she earned the questionable honor of being the first target to enrage the King of Tartarus in over a century.
Then the whole mess with Rivot happened and the Lord Eternal was, to put it bluntly, sent over the edge.
It was one thing for dozens of Assassins to fail in killing the worst kind of half-breed there had ever been. It was entirely another for it to cause the last von Gieri in active duty, one of the most ruthless Kalaus to ever exist, to hesitate for the first time in a career filled with thousands of kill marks.
Every failure after Rivot's sentence contributed to that rage, and Mias still believes it nothing short of a miracle that his heir wasn't punished for getting in the way of so many missions – regardless of whether those Assassins had a fraction of a chance of being successful.
Convincing the King that to keep sending Demons while Rivot had the target under her wing was hard, but now she's out of the picture and He is back with a single-minded focus. Sending Assassins, even Kalaus, was obviously not the answer – so they need a sure way of killing the mark. Soon.
The Second allows himself to sigh when the door to his quarters clicks shuts behind him, tired beyond belief and not at all looking forward to all the research he put on hold for the duration of the meeting.
There's still much work to do.
Apologies for the delay. There is no excuse.
There is now another work related to this universe, Lives of the Immortals, which contains snippets that didn't make it into the main story. Some happen before it began and others are set during its timeline; some are the author's way of indulging on the Worldbuilding tag and others will be thrown there simply because they wouldn't serve any purpose to the main story other than as filler.
Check it out for the first two snippets, set in December 1993 and February 1995: the birth of the Vega sisters.