Disclaimer: Victorious is not mine, and soon it shan't be anyone's.

/

You're quiet in class. Cat's kisses have silenced you, rattled you out of character. Now you're not sure who you are. What you are. But it stings. It burns like salt on an open wound, and you thought you were all scars by now. You're starting to think you never really expected her to care. You never really considered it a possibility. Just some faint dream that kept you going, that let you kill your heart and bury it deep. And now Cat's unearthed it, brushed it off, and found a faint pulse still there. She cares. She does. She has to. The thought doesn't bring you a feeling of victory, of triumph. All it brings is fear.

Your hands are folded in your lap, entwined neatly. You're pulled together, spine straight, knees together. But you feel like a puppet that's just had its strings cut. What do you do now? What do you do if she cares? How do you nurture it, make it grow? Is that even what you want? But oh, the way she kissed you. You want that. You want more of her beating heart, her fluttering fingers, and you don't want them inside of you. You want to hold them, because she's scared to touch you. You want her feeling the same fear you felt with her, but not for vengeance, not for retribution. Why then? What do you do now?

You jump when the bell rings, startled. You look around, the other students starting to stand, slinging their bags over their shoulders. Among the students' colourful clothes, Jade stands out from her very lack of colour. She's perched forward in her seat, chin propped on a hand. She's watching you, but you wonder what she's seeing. Which Tori. The spider? The fish? Or just a girl, confused? Maybe she's just seeing what she couldn't be, what she couldn't turn herself into. You wonder if she's jealous of you, part of her is, you know. For simply doing something she couldn't. For tearing yourself to pieces when she couldn't bear to. For pulling those hooks out, where they still rust in her.

She's not your concern. And she hasn't been Cat's concern for a long time. Cat cut those fine threads that connected them a long time ago, as soon as love was put on her lines. Jade's love. She's a cautionary tale, a reminder of what Cat is, of how easily Cat can cut you free. You're not even tied to her anymore. A puff of her breath is all it would take. It's why you keep her gasping. You're not done with her yet. You're not ready for her to be done with you.

Your chair squeaks as you stand, bag banging into your ribs as you shrug it on. Jade passes you with a glance, a hand wrapped tight on the strap of her backpack. You've never noticed how small she looks in black. How her long sleeves cling to her arms, her black jeans stick to her legs. Her limbs are like those of an insect, thin and bent, held close. Cat's already caught her, wrapped her up, sucked her dry. She's just a husk, desiccated remains. She's what you are, without your armour.

You don't know what class you have next. Practical concerns have been shaken out of your head, replaced with question marks. But these questions dangle upside down, in the shape of hooks, and you're loathe to bite any for an answer yet. You follow behind Jade. You share most of your classes with her. There's only one you don't, and you think you had that one this morning. Cat's in barely any of your classes. Your interests are different.

You remember when the lights came back on. When Cat opened the door and let the light flood in again. You don't know what you expected to see. Blood, perhaps. Something to show what she'd done. It felt like something had broken, or something had been mended. Snapped apart and then stuck back together, unevenly. She'd only kissed you. That's all she did. Her hand never even slipped between your legs, and it was the first time you've wanted it to in a while. You haven't ached for her, throbbed for her, since the first time her tongue flicked over you. You wonder how it would've felt if her touch was the same as her kiss.

You're walking blindly, just following Jade's boots, your gaze fixed on the ground where they tread. Your eyes widen slightly as a realisation hits you. Cat's kiss... it was her. It was the girl she is in public, the innocent, naive, cheerful girl. It was how she would kiss. Her lips were made of all the sweetness in her, all the laughter that escapes them. She was the Cat you miss, your friend, and maybe for a little while, you were the Tori she misses. Is that the girl she misses? Her friend? Is that why she's doing this? Was it a kiss between friends, between the dead and amputated parts of you? An embrace between ghosts. You're not sure how that makes you feel. You haven't thought of Cat as anything for a long time. Certainly not a friend. A lover in act alone.

The thought of kissing Cat, of kissing that girl you first met, that girl you first befriended... it sends a tickle shivering through your stomach. You liked that girl. If you'd met Cat as she is now, with her brusque words and cruel smile, you never would've kissed her. The Cat you loved first was just bait to lure you in. But... what if she wasn't? What if that girl was real, was more than just a bright bobbing lure? She felt real, in that kiss.

It takes you a moment to realise that you've stopped walking, Jade's heavy boots unmoving, pointed towards you. You raise your eyes, Jade scowling at you. Your eyebrows dip down as you take in your surroundings. "Where are we?" You're certainly not in any class you're supposed to be in. This classroom is silent. Empty easels are stacked to the side of the room, a paint-speckled stool sitting atop a stage, a thin layer of dust across it. An art room that's become a storeroom.

"We're somewhere we can talk."

You shift your backpack. "Look, I've got to get to class."

Jade's eyebrows jump. "Oh? Really?" Her mouth twists. "What class is it?"

You chew your lower lip. "It's... um... it's-"

Jade laughs, the sound sharp and bitter. A cough of a noise. "So what did she make you do this time?"

You lick your lips. There's still a trace of her there, sweet. "She didn't-"

"Did you have to get on your knees? Push her up against the wall? Beg her for the pleasure to do so?"

There's a spurt of hot anger in you, that Jade can talk like this to you. That she can talk to you in a way that even Cat doesn't anymore. You're not that fish anymore, flopping about helplessly. No one gets to treat you like that, especially not a fellow flounder. "She didn't make me do anything. All she did was kiss me."

Jade's eyebrows dip down for a moment, a retort starting, stopped as your words sink in. She was expecting the words, but not the order they came out in. Her eyes widen, jaw setting. "She... she kissed you?" Her tone is soft, a mixture of emotions that she tries to stamp down, that she tries to harden with a sneering edge. She fails. You can hear the confusion and pain in her voice. She knew you were different, Cat was different, she suspected and sensed. You've just confirmed it for her, realised a fear she didn't know she had until it sent her heart pounding.

You don't answer, regretting your outburst, your refutation that you're still scaled, still gasping on Cat's line. That you're anything like Jade now.

A muscle in Jade's cheek twitches, her arms coming up to wrap around herself. "It's not fair." She shakes her head. "Why you? Why does-" She clamps her mouth shut, trying to stem the vitriol that's pouring forth, the pus and dead cells that've accumulated in all of her old wounds, the ones that never healed. The ones that still have hooks inside of them, flaking rust. "Why does she care about you?" Jade spits, her arms squeezing tighter around herself. "When I- when I said-" She swallows hard, almost choking on the poisoned words. "When I said I loved her, do you know what she did?"

You shake your head. You don't know this story, but you know it could've been yours. It almost was. One more hook in your sieve of a heart, and your love would've poured forth, an unstoppable deluge.

"She-" Jade throat convulses in an effort to expel the word, to spit out the barb of metal that's dug deepest in her heart. "She laughed." Her voice chokes on the word, a cry of pain reluctantly given. A memory she's tried to make mean nothing. "She told me to leave, with a smile on her face. Like she was happy, like I'd said just what she wanted to hear. Like that whole thing with her was just some big joke and I'd finally told her the punchline." Jade's shoulders are tight, square, pulled in as much as she can, her figure made of harsh angles and held muscles. "Why you? It's not fair, it's just not- why does she care about you?"

You wish you could tell her why. Give her some peace of mind, some concrete reason. You could tell her it's because you don't care about Cat. You could tell her it's because you give Cat what only someone who doesn't love her could give. You could postulate any number of reasons, and you'd have no idea if you were right. Changing yourself didn't make Cat care. It brought your name to her tongue and her fingers inside your panties, but Jade knows just as well as you that fucking doesn't equal affection. The caring in Cat's lips is something recent, and it's not from your coldness, your manipulation. It's from something else, some deeper place, some side of Cat you thought was fiction. A story told to warm the heart, to protect it from the harshness of reality. The cruelty of it. But there's a grain of truth to every story, isn't there?

"I don't know."

Jade makes a sound somewhere between laughter and disgust. "Of course you don't." Her arms slip away from her, loosened, like she's only just remembered she'd locked her muscles tight in an effort to keep from falling apart. A softness edges her face, her gaze falling. Anger is something she's proud of, something to direct at you. She feels righteous in it, but this is something else. This is something she's ashamed to ask, ashamed to wonder. "What was it like? To have her kiss you?" She licks her lips, and you want to tell her... you want to lie to her. To say that Cat kissing you wasn't any different from the way Beck kisses Jade. And maybe it isn't in sensation, but you're sure it is in feeling. Beck might have a hold on Jade's heart, but Cat got to it first, and her grip is still tight. His hand is just covering hers. Jade gives her head a quick shake. "No. Don't tell me. Just forget about it." She rolls her shoulders, drawing them in tight again. Her black top only emphasises their narrowness, their fragility, and you wonder how there was ever a time you thought she was dangerous. She's just a wounded animal, striking out in desperation. Cat's turned out to be the predator here.

Jade pushes past you, footsteps echoing in the empty. She's almost to the door when you say it. "It hurts."

You toss the words over your shoulder to her, an answer to her retracted question. Her hand flexes on the doorframe, a humourless chuckle escaping her. "Of course it does."

And then she's gone.

You're still not sure where you're supposed to be.

/

A/N: We, as a society, have corrupted the idea of love.

Perhaps we knew once. Perhaps a caveperson looked at another caveperson and knew they never wanted to be in another cave ever again. That if they were going to die after a short lifespan, they wanted it to be with this caveperson, in that cave, probably from a cave-in.

But these days. Oh, these days. You try to ask someone what is love, and the only answer they have is baby don't hurt me, no more.

And that isn't love. That's a request for a restraining order.

Personally, I think love is something much simpler. Love is a review, for me from you.