Voodoo Curse

Disclaimer: Don't own Victorious

A/N:

Chapter 11 (Sister Connection)

Jade played with her thumbs in her lap while sitting on the couch in the Holly's living room. Her sister was beside her, staring at her with a silent and suspicious expression.

She looked over her right shoulder, staring at the closed door into David's study. "What do you think they're talking about?" The question was almost a rhetorical one; David stopped them from leaving and ushered Beck into the study just after the fight with Andre, there was no doubt in her mind it had to do with that situation.

"First I've seen your husband get so angry," Holly said in a quiet tone. The woman pushed her hands down her thighs and exhaled. "Not that I blame him or don't understand, I was close to doing the same."

"So was I, but I could see Beck getting hot under the collar." She crossed her arms and slanted her eyes. "What do you expect, though? He's a father who just saw his little girl go from infant to teenager in the blink of an eye."

"I know." Jade rolled her eyes and shook her head. Her right foot bounced in the air as she tensed her muscles. "Jade…I don't know how you and your husband are here. Time magic is something that only high powered practitioners have access to."

"I'm less focused with how we got here and how to get back."

"What if you can't? What if you're stuck like this?"

Her heart was clutched by fear the moment those words hit her ears. Though softly said they felt like an explosion ripping off directly beside her. "I'd not thought of that…" If she had, it was only brief. She hunched forward and raised her clasped hands to her chin. "I-You'd let us be near our daughters at least?"

"Yeah. I mean, at the very least you're a part of their lives, even if they don't realize it." While pondering what this woman's motives were, Jade couldn't help but to feel something was amiss with her sister. At first she thought Holly would have fought to keep them away from their daughters, but now it seemed like their presence wasn't a true issue.

"What would you have done if your ritual didn't go wrong?" She lowered her hands and watched with a heavy heart as her sister closed her eyes and drew a long exhale. "Holly? If David didn't mess up."

"I don't know." Holly ran her hand through her hair and looked up towards the ceiling. "I thought about it for years, thinking 'I just killed my little sister'. I wonder if the anger would have passed and I would have woken you up at some point."

"Are you still angry?"

Holly fell quiet and looked into Jade's eyes. The woman's brow furrowed and the corners of her mouth embedded themselves into her cheeks as her frown lines grew deep and noticeable.

"No," she said finally, "No that went away when you and Beck exploded in front of me." Her heart sank and she moved back into the couch, sighing as her arms fell over her abdomen. "You know, at first, David wanted me to give up the girls. At first he was worried I wouldn't be able to take care of them, but I knew you probably would have killed me if gave them up."

Horror flashed in her for a moment and a gasp fell from her lips. The thought of her children going into an adoption center or anywhere out of the family was too much for her to bear. "Probably. So it's a good thing you decided to take care of them."

"Even if I hadn't, dad would have taken them in. He thought about it, but felt it would be better if they had both a mother figure and a father figure."

"I agree. I would prefer my daughters have some semblance of a normal life." Her chest started to ache and her eyes began to sting. Jade looked at her lap for several seconds, gently tapping her fingertips together. "I…I appreciate you raising them, giving them that chance for a normal life."

She couldn't help but to wonder if the custody issue ever came up; it likely did. She and Beck discussed when their first child was born that her sister would be the one to take care of their children if something ever happened to them, and they named her as guardian in their will, so the kids would have gone to Holly regardless.

"I understand you were upset with me Holly, and I know what you did was just anger in the moment, and you couldn't have known what the results were going to be." Her voice was shattering to hear and she could hardly breathe while gasping to hold back her tears. "I want to forgive you, but I'm too angry with you to even think of forgiveness right now."

"I know."

"I want to hate you, but I can't do that either."

Holly bowed her head. She gently clutched the bottom of her shirt, squeezing it between her fingers. "I-" Jade looked to her sister, watching the woman's face twist with pain and stress. "I never hated you, Jade. I just wanted you to leave me alone. I was jealous, I was angry and tired of living in the shadow."

Holly raised her head up, gasping aloud as fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. "You had everything: A husband, two beautiful children, a bachelor's degree in Music and a master's in education." Jade's stomach filled with emptiness as a note of sorrow shook through her body. She could feel the pain in Holly's voice, and no longer could she hear anger within.

Holly scoffed and smacked the air with her hand. "Your husband was a teacher, looking for work as a principal somewhere. You had a fantastic life." Jade curled her lips into a faint smile and raised her eyes up to her sibling. Holly pushed ah and through her hair. "You know Erwin? Beck's friend? I haven't talked to him much, though Trina is dating his nephew."

"What?" She jerked back sharply, but shook the thought away and cut Holly off before she could explain. "Nevermind that, continue with what you were saying."

"Well, Erwin partly owns Hollywood Arts. The whole idea for that school was a brainstorm between him and your husband so long ago." She squinted while thinking back. She remembered Beck mentioning the possibility of a school like Hollywood Arts, but it wasn't something he cared to achieve, just something he and Sikowitz came up with for laughs.

"I think it was something they were joking about over beer."

"Well either way, when you and Beck died, Erwin spent years coming up with the concept-a way to remember the two of you." Jade brought her hand up to her chest and inhaled as tears dripped from the corners of her eyes. "And well, he finally found someone back in 2004, 2005 that was willing to put his blueprint into action. Hollywood Arts opened up in late 2006."

"I'm impressed." It was nice that Erwin would do that, but it did make her wonder just how much he missed the pair. Had he never moved on? From what Beck mentioned to her about Jason's 'uncle' briefly gaining an interest in witchcraft, she now wondered if Erwin might have tried to do something. "Did he ever get over what happened to us? I know it must have been pretty hard."

Holly's shoulders rose and she slowly shook her head. "No, I don't think so. I've seen him going by your old home many times over the years. Sometimes he'd just be standing on the front lawn, tears in his eyes and his hands would be closed so tightly that I was always afraid to go up to him. Maybe he blamed himself, I don't know why."

"Simple." She shrugged. "He invited us to a Christmas party that day, but we turned him down. He probably thought it was something to do with him, but it wasn't. We stayed because you wanted to come visit…"

Holly curled her fingers around her bangs and pulled them away from her eyes. "Back then I never thought about the effect my ritual would have on anyone else. My nieces, our father, Beck's family…Erwin, coworkers, friends. None of it mattered at the time, save for the anger I had."

"Was I wrong, though?"

"Wrong?" Holly thought about it for a minute, tapping her index finger on her chin and squinting her eyes. "No. No you were right. I was just so angry that you-someone that had all these great things you were into-telling me to stop doing the one thing I had any interest in…I was blind to the consequences, until I saw my own sister die because of it."

Jade raised an eyebrow. "We're not dead." Holly glanced at her for a few minutes, then looked away.

"I thought you were. For the longest time I couldn't stop telling myself that I killed my sister. I was a murderer as far as I was concerned, so the least I could do was give your daughters a normal life…as if that would make up for what I did."

Jade remained silent, trying to piece together everything she was hearing. It was hard to hear, and much harder to swallow than if Holly had hated her. Knowing Holly was only acting out of anger and not hatred wasn't easy for her to cope with.

If anything, it only meant she couldn't hate her sister back.

"Hey Holly?"

Holly wiped her eyes with the end of her shirt sleeve and her sniffing echoed in the air. "What?" She had to approach the subject carefully because she was unsure how her sibling would react, but she needed to know if the main issue they had all those years back was still in play.

"Whatever happened to Gary?"

Holly's face went blank and her mouth shut like a trap. A lump swelled in Jade's throat and she raised a trembling hand over her mouth as Holly averted her gaze.

"He's still 'alive', I guess. I can't get rid of him, so he's David's partner at work."

She sank in the couch and threw her hand over her forehead while emitting a mournful groan. "Oh Holly, no…" Gary Malone had been a friend of David's and Holly's, having met both of them in college.

In 1995, the two dated for several months until he discovered Holly was into witchcraft and the like. She was in the middle of learning a spell for youth, but it went wrong when he walked into the room and nearly died as a result.

What transpired after that was Holly using her spells to try and save Gary's life. She transferred a part of her soul into his, which connected her to him. This was the big secret that Holly told Jade about, and what Beck ended up telling Sikowitz, who blabbed it to a few coworkers that wanted to go after Holly for witchcraft.

"He's nothing but a puppet now," Holly responded with a shattering breath. "He doesn't have a soul, and he's forever connected to me." The woman whisked her hand into the air, huffing out angrily. "I didn't realize the spell that I used on him was essentially only going to keep him alive as some sort of zombie or whatever. It would have been better if I just…let him go…"

"You don't know how?"

"No. I don't. David talked about maybe shooting the guy, but I can't bring myself to do that. Even if killing him would be merciful, I don't want to have to live with another death on my hands."

She furrowed her brow and looked away with a sigh of disappointment. "You might not have a choice."

"The girls think I'm having an affair with him, you know." Jade whistled and Holly rolled her head towards her. "You know how that would look if David shot him?"

"Not good." She tried to think of something that could be done; but there was nothing. "I don't know anything about magic, or curses, or rituals or anything of the sort…but I do know someone that does. Or, I don't know them personally. Cat's grandmother."

"Cat?" Holly tilted her head and squinted her eyes. Her eyebrows closed together and her mouth seemed to shrink.

"Yeah, the red haired girl?"

"Oh!"

"Maybe she knows how to help Gary? You have to release him somehow." Jade crossed her arms and shrugged. "Who knew it was so easy to keep the dead alive with those rituals."

"Sis, an idiot could raise the dead even if they don't know what they're doing." Holly waved her hand in a circle and relaxed in the seat. "Take puppet spell, for instance. All you have to do is collect the ashes or the remains of the deceased you want to revive, say the ritual spell, and boom you've connected what you hope-if you've done it right-the spirit of the deceased to their body."

"You've never done that?"

"I wouldn't. The consequences of doing something like that…I don't know. You've essentially trapped the memories or soul of a person to a corpse, over time that soul is going to become so irreparably damaged that they'll just go insane."

It sounded like the spell, or a variation of one, that was used on Gary. "You know, it sounds like what happened to Malone." Holly raised an eyebrow and began shuddering as she brought her fingers to her forehead.

"God it probably was. There are so many different variations, so many ways to work with the dead and with corpses. All an idiot has to do is pick one and do it. Of course, if you're not careful, you risk attaching a demon to the corpse or yourself."

She didn't have much time to think on it as David and Beck announced themselves as they reentered the room. She jumped from the couch and ran to her husband, throwing her arms around him. "Everything okay?" She asked. He smiled back and nodded.

"Yeah, Dave just wanted to make sure I was who Holly thought. Evidently he still didn't know whether to take her ritual stuff seriously or not. He thought we were dead."

"So did Holly."

Holly walked up behind her, putting her hands to her hips and narrowing her eyes. "You guys have been gone for fifteen damn years. You think we're not going to believe you to be dead?"

"She's right," David muttered, "I'm still trying to come to terms with you both actually being here." The man looked up and pointed to Holly. "Did you do anything?"

"Of course not, David. I haven't touched a spellbook in ages. I don't know how they're here, or why…"

So what are your thoughts reading this?