Yet again, she stands in an airport, checking her watch and wishing her phone was charged. Tory taps her foot impatiently. The loudspeaker had announced complications in the unloading of luggage from her flight, but she'd only flown up from Charleston. A slight delay had lengthened her flight by an hour, but it almost looks as though the extra time will double. Double, while she's standing here, waiting for a suitcase. She only plans to be here for a week and a half. Must she stand around? She's not expected anywhere for a while yet, but there's nowhere to sit except the floor, and she wants to just walk. Tory's sick of staring at her watch and the wall and the screen and that old man over there subtly picking his nose. She didn't know she was so keen to see her childhood hometown until she boarded the plane here, and the butterflies kicked in.

Will it be different?

Of course it will. She knows that. She's been gone for eight years - time didn't pause while she was away. Massachusetts must have been growing, evolving. Without her. Tory doesn't like the thought.

What she really wants is to drag her suitcase out of the airport and back in time - eight years ago, when her apartment block smelled of coffee and there was construction tape constantly tangled around the building across the road that nobody did anything about. Eight years ago, when a challenge was that last maths problem on a revision sheet instead of a kidnapped classmate or possibly worse, a uni transfer application to fill out. Eight years ago when her mother was there to welcome her home.

There's a rattle and the sound of machinery slowly coming to life as the baggage claim gets into gear. Tory straightens up eagerly as the first case begins to poke through the curtain around the corner.

The first bag isn't hers, and neither is the second, but lo and behold, the third item that trundles along in that infuriatingly slow manner is a battered black case with BRENNAN scrawled over the side in red texta. Tory smiles, because that's Shelton's sloppy handwriting. She pushes forward, even though she's really at the front of the crowd, and yanks her suitcase off the conveyor belt. The wheels snag against someone's stroller but Tory manages to pull it free without breaking anything. It's with great relief that she sets off through the terminal.

By the time the exit of the airport is in sight, the sky outside is darkening. Tory feels the difference in society slam against her like a brick wall. Here, the stars are hidden behind a heavy coating of smog, the air is thick and people don't smile at each other as they pass. Back on Morris, the sound of the sea was inescapable, spacious and mature was the norm and everyone spoke in those Southern accents that have grown on her, although she knows she'd never admit it. Here, where her old life was, the washing of the waves is replaced by traffic noises, the drawling accents are more regimented and tighter, and the entire city has a modern, almost cramped mood. Tory knows which she prefers, although there's something comforting about returning to the culture she grew up in. She's been away for eight years, but she's lived here for fourteen, and she knows her way around this place backwards.

Even though she's certain she could walk to a bus stop in less than three minutes, Tory hefts her suitcase and hails a cab. Expertly - a practice she's rusty on, but she has almost two weeks to freshen up her city skills. Unpractised or no, a cab stops for her almost immediately. She's enough of a city girl to know that she just needs to check the driver's really a cab driver before she allows him to take her somewhere, but there seem to be no issues, and in no time her bag is stowed and she's reaching for her purse.

Tory hesitates for a moment. She has a hotel room to retreat to, a Skype call to make, and some extra revision to squeeze in before bed. Sitting in a cab, though, she has a burning desire to visit home - her old home, the last one she lived in with Colleen before uprooting to Charleston. Tory makes up her mind and gives the driver the address of her old home. After paying, she requests that they take a scenic route. His answer is gruff, and his voice makes her aware of how her own accent has adjusted over the years in South Carolina. The thought makes Tory sad, like another little part of her old life is gone forever.

Back ramrod straight, purse clutched in her lap, Tory directs the driver around. She reckons he's probably annoyed by her know-it-all attitude, but he can deal with it. He'll have plenty of more manageable customers, whereas she's only here for a week and a bit. This is her time now, and besides, she's paying him, so he better suck it up, as Hi might say.

Before she really knows where they're going, the cab pulls up outside a wire link fence, and Tory tells the driver to wait as she gets out and moves closer. With each step towards the familiar boundary, Tory feels the age melting off her, and before she knows it she's a twelve-year-old girl again, staring at her last elementary school.

God, she remembers so clearly. Tory ventured out a little more during her uni studies, but before she moved to SC, she was most definitely a loner, and she's just realising now how lonesome elementary school was. She had all of two friends - a dork named Adam who was two grades above her, and an autistic kid called Shae in third grade. She sat by herself during class, and they huddled under a tree in the lunch hour. If Tory stands on her tiptoes and cranes her neck now, she can see over the fence and down the hill, to where she spent many a lunchtime with her small group of rejects - just Tory and Shae, once Adam moved up to the middle school.

When she's looked her fill, fingers tracing over imperfections on the fence (long ago, she had those imperfections memorised, but from inside the boundaries), Tory turns back to the cab. She slides in and buckles up, giving the address of the apartment block she lived in before her transfer to Charleston. A quick Google map search proves that her hotel is within reasonable walking distance of the apartment. A thrill sparks inside Tory. She's going home.

At least, somewhere that used to be home. For the first part of her life, home was wherever her mother was, because they moved around so often. Then, home became the four-storey house she shared with Kit.

Now? Tory smiles at the thought. Now she shares a small house near CU with the other Virals, where the bills and the duties are shared around like a packet of unwelcome popcorn, but at least they have separate rooms and take it in turns to sleep on the couch. Tory loves it there. Small, cramped and without a beach-front view, the house offers independence from adults (even though they're all grown up now) without the loneliness. The bills are manageable and nobody complains when there's a general lack of enthusiasm for cooking on Wednesday nights, and so they order pizza. Tory's pretty sure the pizza guy knows all four of them by name, and probably has their usual preferences memorised by now. It wouldn't surprise her if the guy knows Cooper's name, Kit and Whitney's car, and what courses the four of them are taking at which uni. Pizza isn't reserved for Wednesdays only.

The car turns right and they're on a street that's oh-so-familiar, and the memory opens up before Tory like a blossoming flower. She sees her mother's old Corolla parked across the road, that bratty kid - what's his name, William - from one of the flats in her block throwing pebbles in a gutter, the bright yellow construction tape tangled around that one mysterious building. Tory blinks, and reality shows up - William's probably flown and wed by now, the corolla is either melted down or lying in a heap in a junk metal yard, and the yellow tape... well, the yellow tape is still there. Tory's almost surprised it hasn't been dealt with, but not quite. The tape's always been up - she'd have been shocked by its absence.

Tory points to her old apartment block, even though the driver knows exactly which one she meant. Once again, Tory tells the man to wait.

"Trip down memory lane, Miss?" he asks, sounding awfully bored.

"Something like that," she murmurs, closing the door and cutting off his reply comment, if there is one. Maybe he's asleep. Meh, Tory's inner teenager supplies. She doesn't care much anyway. She's enthralled by the plain, unassuming building in front of her.

Twelve stories high, Tory and Colleen's old place houses twenty families, with two small flats per floor. As she remembers it, the ground level is a lobby and the top floor is home to a common area, rarely used. Tory remembers thinking it was an attic, utilized to store useless junk nobody wanted any more. When she mentioned it to her mother, Colleen had laughed and said the statement was actually quite accurate - the common room was a collection of armchairs and broken heaters that sat there gathering dust, like Christmas ornaments in July.

She takes a small, hesitant step towards the building, then all in a rush she scurries forward. Before Tory knows she's even moved, she's through the door and standing in the lobby.

Still reeks of coffee, she thinks dumbly as she stares. The furniture is a tad different - the old grey couch with the rip in the fabric has been replaced by one of black, shining leather (probably fake), the desk looks unfamiliar, and that irritating bell has been removed from the door, replaced by lightly tinkling wind chimes that are no less annoying. The door still squeaks, though, and the wallpaper and dark carpet have remained the same. Tory's breath catches. She hasn't been here since her mother's funeral, and she's an adult now.

It's out of habit that she moves to the elevator, presses the up button, and leans against the wall, crossing one ankle over the other. She grins slightly, because that's an old habit that didn't die with childhood.

Faster than she expected, the doors open for her, and Tory walks in in a daze. Her thumb jabs the eight button, and she resumes her position against the wall. Tory's eyes close, and her rational mind protests. This is a really stupid thing she's doing. Someone might call the police on her, and the boys will kill her if they have to come all the way up to testify with her, or worse, pay for bail. Still, though. Still. She has to do this, somehow.

At floor five (and Tory just knows which floor they're on, even with her eyes shut), the wall holding her up slides to the side, and deposits Tory heavily at the feet of a grey-haired woman. Tory flushes dark red. She hadn't remembered that the lift had 2 doors, and they both opened.

"Well, this is awkward," Tory mumbles to herself. She props herself up on an elbow and begins the long ascent to her feet. "Sorry," she tells the old lady, who mutely glares. They both move to go into the elevator at the same time, and the opening of the elevator won't allow for two abreast to enter. Tory steps back for the elderly woman to enter first, but treads on the lady's shoe, which elicits a cry of indignation from the woman and Tory's second dropping to the ground in as many minutes.

Just as group of young men appear around the corner. They're not bad-looking, either.

Absolutely humiliated, Tory offers numerous apologies to the elderly lady and silently presses herself against the wall of an elevator when she knows it won't disappear from behind her at a moment's notice. The three young men look amused, and she can just tell one of them is shaking with silent laughter. Tory's ears burn and she turns away, noting that the only other button that has been pressed is floor twelve.

When the doors slide open at the eighth floor, Tory's old level, she scurries out as fast as her feet will allow and ducks around a corner to hide and possibly find a spot to hibernate in. Tory smoothes her hair and takes a deep breath, telling herself she'll never see those people again, and they don't matter. What does matter is what to do now.

She's standing just outside her old home, and she'll probably never come here again. On one hand, she desperately wants to go inside, revive old memories and see the place one last time before she dies. On the other, someone else lives here now and she'd be intruding. Also, it'd be weird. What if they do call the police on her?

Tory stands and debates internally, but in the end, there's really no question. She's come this far. She may as well, but more than that, she has to. Marching up to the door of apartment 8A, Tory gives a firm knock and steps back. That's when she realises that someone's added a doorbell, so she rings that too.

It takes a few moments, but the door opens wide, revealing a middle-aged woman in a pink bathrobe. Tory blinks, and so does the woman. "Can I help you?" she asks uncertainly.

Tory clears her throat. "Um, hello. My name is Tory Brennan, I used to live here..." she trails off, not knowing how to phrase her request. The woman's expression is blank, with a hint of confusion, or is that suspicion? Tory rushes to keep talking. "I hope I haven't come at a bad time for you -"

The woman waves her concern off. "Not at all. I use this as a dressing gown. Did you want something?"

"It sounds odd, I know, but I was wondering if I could come in and have a look around?" Tory puts on her hopeful eyes, well-practised from her constant imploring to borrow Ben's car.

The woman's eyebrows raise. "I'm Grace Anders." She doesn't say more, and Tory picks up the talking.

"My middle name's Grace. Victoria Grace."

Grace smiles a little. "My middle name is Victoria. Grace Victoria. Interesting, isn't it?"

Tory nods. "Quite."

Grace stands to the side a little. "Would you like to come in, then?"

"Thank you," Tory says gratefully, stepping through the doorway and into the house that made her.

Immediately, her mind reels and suddenly she's eleven years old, slamming the door too quickly and painfully catching (and breaking) her pinky finger. At the same time she's ten years old, tripping over the rough edge of the carpet and flying into a battered hat-stand, and now she's ten, helping her mother rip up said carpet to replace it with polished floorboards as they sing along to Abba records with the volume far too high. Tory takes another step forward and is ambushed by more long-forgotten scenes; the spot she stands now was exactly where her mother spilled wine on their first night in the new apartment, there used to be a poster taped to the wall just there, she stood right here when the policeman informed her of Colleen's death...

Blinking rapidly, Tory turns to Grace. "Thanks for letting me in," she says shakily. Her eyes alight on something in the corner. "You kept our lamp," she says in surprise. Tory sold the apartment as soon as she came of age - maybe to Grace's family, or maybe it's changed hands more than once. Either way, the old silver lamp with Tory and Colleen's handmade nightshade stands exactly where Tory left it eight years ago.

Grace shrugs. "My husband and I liked the design." The shade features Colleen's stitching and Tory's sequinning, creating a colourful pattern of shapes that hoods the warm yellow glow of the light itself.

"My mother and I made it when I was eight," Tory admits. "I wanted dinosaurs, but my mother convinced me otherwise."

"I'm surprised you didn't take it with you when you moved," Grace says, closing the door. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

Tory is about to refuse, but thinks better of it. What better way to see the kitchen? "Yes, please, if it's not too much trouble." She follows Grace around the dining room - a small area tucked away that used to be an extension of the living room. The kitchen has been redone - white tiling rather than the wooden floorboards, the bench has a new countertop, and the fridge has swapped places with the microwave and the oven. Grace pulls a set of mugs from a new overhead cupboard and the teabags from the pantry, setting the kettle on the way. Tory leans against the counter, making sure her hands are visible. She doesn't want Grace to get the wrong idea about her.

In no time, the tea is boiled and brewing, and Grace asks Tory what additives she'd like. Tory requests milk and sugar, while Grace has a strong black. The take a seat in the living room to sip the hot beverages.

"So how long have you lived here?" Tory asks, looking around, almost trying to memorise the place's new look.

"About a year," Grace tells her. "My husband and I wanted a smaller place after our daughter Cassidy moved out."

Tory nods. "I sold the place about... two years ago now? Three? I think three."

The conversation dies awkwardly, but Grace comes to the rescue. "What brings you back, Ms Brennan?"

"I'm in Massachusetts for a week and a half, but I just wanted to have a look around here before I went to the hotel. I just ended up outside your door, I guess. There's a taxi waiting outside for me."

"I hope he charges by the mile, not the hour," Grace laughs. "Otherwise he's eating up your cash as we speak."

"Good point," Tory frowns. She downs the rest of her tea and places the mug on the table. "I had better get going, I suppose. Could I just use your toilet quickly before I leave?"

"Of course," Grace says. "It's.. oh, I suppose you know where it is."

Heading for the kitchen, Tory deposits her mug in the sink and then goes a little down the hallway before reaching the bathroom. It's almost exactly the same as when she lived here, but with a different combination of towels, toothbrushes in the sink and soaps in the shower.

When she's done, Tory heads out to the lounge, where Grace waits, still in that pink bathrobe. "Thanks for everything," she tells the older woman, shaking hands politely.

"Pleasure. It was lovely meeting you, Victoria Grace."

"You too, Grace Victoria. I promise I didn't steal anything. Just a memory."

Grace laughs and shows her out. As the door closes behind her, Tory reflects that she didn't see much of the place, but it's refreshed her memory enough. It's time now to get to the hotel, where she can relax and maybe do some cramming for her Biology course at CU. They don't offer biology online, but she has her laptop and can look over her notes.

Tory makes it to the ground floor of the building without running into the people from her earlier embarrassment. She walks outside and takes one last look at her old place, counting up the floors and finding her old bedroom window. She lifts a hand in goodbye, then turns and heads to the cab. It's been a long day.