Disclaimer: The show Victorious, its characters and other associated trademarks are property of someone else and not me.

It will be rated M for Language and Violence.

Notes: The majority of this story will take place in 2020 several years after they have all graduated from Hollywood Arts high. Not sure how close I nailed Beck's character but I did smarten up Cat a bit. I figured she's grown and matured a bit since high school.

Chapter 1 – Only a memory.

New York City, Friday November 6th, 2020

No One's POV

The theatre itself was one of Broadway's smaller venues, it was the Rill theatre. Its current play was a comic mystery called "The Murder of Mr. Nobody". It had been running for almost 5 months and was still doing quite well with good notices. On stage this particular night was Beck Oliver in the roll of Detective Adderly. Across the stage was one of his dearest friends, Tori Vega who was playing the role of Andrea. Tori owed a lot to her friends for their help and support the last few years and when she got a chance to work with Beck, she jumped at it.

In the third and final act, Tori's character of Andrea was supposed to be drunk. She spent most of the act sitting at a bar on the left side of the stage making occasional rude, nasty & snarky comments.

Tonight it happened to be going as it always had, flowing seamlessly. About 2/3's of the way through the 3rd and final act, Tori glanced into the audience. She looked at the people in the front row near where she was on stage.

Mr. Sikowitz her teacher at Hollywood art's high all those years ago always told them to never ever look at the audience.

"They're not there, never ever look at them" he would constantly remind his students.

This night she happened to glance at a woman in the front row.

She appeared to be a woman, in her mid 20's. She was wearing a casual dark blue women's business suit with skirt and matching shoes. Her hair was straight and blonde running into a nice compact ponytail. She was wearing stylish glasses. In fact she looked like any of the thousands of professional women who worked in New York every day.

But, something in Tori's mind screamed at her that the woman was simply "Wrong". She heard her que and said her two lines and took a second glance at the woman.

"Why is she Wrong?" Tori thought as she waited for her next Que. As Tori looked again the woman seemed to look away as if she didn't want Tori to look at her. She was puzzled; something about that blonde seemed familiar. Tori was breaking a cardinal rule by paying attention to someone in the audience but her gaze was drawn to the woman like a magnet and she didn't know why.

Each time Tori glanced, the woman looked away to the other side of the stage. Eventually the woman even began to shift nervously in her seat about the 4th time she glanced over.

"Why doesn't she want me to look at her" Tori pondered.

As the seconds passed, Tori kept getting more obsessed with the mysterious woman in the front row. She became certain that there was defiantly something familiar with her and it was beginning to drive her crazy.

After a few seconds the woman moved her leg's forward probably just to stretch them.

.

It was then Tori saw it. Even though it was several feet away and covered over by pantyhose she saw it. Above the woman's left ankle was a tattoo. It was the Yin half of a Yin/Yang symbol. An ancient Chinese symbol, Yin/Yang symbolizes essentially seemingly two polar opposite forces that are interconnected and interdependent on each other.

Tori Froze as stunning realization suddenly crashed through her mind. That woman's tattoo was the counterpart of the Yang tattoo she had above her right ankle.

It was then, for a split second, the woman looked at Tori and their eyes locked. Utterly shocked, Tori Vega playing the part of Andrea instantly realized exactly who she was looking at.

"Oh my god" she said softly but audibly, breaking character.

Beck's POV

I had just said a line when I heard Tori break character. She had never so much as goofed up a single line on stage with this play, but suddenly she just broke character and blurted out "Oh my God"

I heard her cough to cover it up as I looked across the stage to see what was wrong.

She was sitting there at the bar as she should be. But Andrea is supposed to be drunk and kind of swaying as drunken people usually do.

Instead Tori was sitting there almost like a statue. I could only see half her face from where I was standing but it had gone almost white.

I delivered a few more lines now suspecting that Tori for some reason had frozen on stage, which happens sometimes to actors.

Fortunately she only has about 3 lines left in the play and in a few seconds my fear was confirmed as she missed one.

It was then I noticed that her attention seemed to be focused on a young professional type blonde woman in the front row.

"Do I know her?" I thought to myself as I waited for my next Que. In any case the blonde woman seemed to be extremely nervous and kept shifting in her seat. Even seeing her from this distance something about that blonde bothered me. "Why?"

Me and the other actors worked around Tori's last two lines both of which she missed.

I was now starting to get very worried.

A few minutes later the play ended and the curtain fell. The cast quickly gathered on stage for the curtain call. I rushed to Tori's side as the curtain was about to rise again.

.

"What's Wrong Tori?" I said quietly.

"She's here" is all that she muttered, half in a daze.

A few seconds later the curtain rose and too my surprise the seat which the blonde woman was sitting in was now empty. I looked to Tori who saw the same thing. She had a look on her face like she had just been punched in the stomach.

I looked to my wife Cat, who happened to be in the 3rd row. She looked as puzzled as I was and simply shrugged.

As soon as the curtain fell again, Tori looked to me. I could see tears starting to form in her eyes. She blurted out "I'm sorry" and then ran off to her dressing room.

Cat quickly joined me backstage, I told the other actors that Cat and I would speak to her and find out what was wrong.

Cat and I quickly ran backstage and entered Tori's dressing room. She was just sitting there in front of the mirror crying.

.

"What happened Tori, you looked like you saw a ghost or something?" I said as I rushed to her side.

Cat did likewise "What's the matter sweetie?"

"Did you see that blonde woman in the front row?" said Tori just starring into the mirror.

"Yes, but I didn't recognize her, though something about her seemed familiar" Beck mused.

"Did you see her Cat?" Tori asked.

"Yeah I did, as soon as the curtain dropped she bolted out of the theatre like the place was on fire. It was very strange."

"Why" I said raising an eyebrow.

"Neither of you recognized her didn't you?" Said Tori, tears were now streaming down her face slowly taking her make up with it.

Cat and I both knew something was horribly wrong. In the back of my mind suspicions began to form as to why.

"You should have both recognized her."

"Who was she?" I finally asked

Tori wiped the tears from her face and swallowed the lump in her throat..

"It was Jade." She said softly as even more tears began to flow from her eyes.

I looked over to Cat. She was speechless and kneeling by Tori with a shocked expression on her face, one probably very similar to mine.

You'd be shocked too, especially if the person you saw disappeared more than seven years ago.

End of Chapter 1.

I do hope you found it enjoyable. I wanted to do something different with a bit of mystery. I had an idea one day, so I figured what heck. I'll start writing and see if I can write a decent and interesting story.

I listen to music a lot, so I like to use song titles as Chapter titles. This chapter's title "Only A memory" is a song by The Smithereens. It echoes Tori's state of mind.

I do have some good news. I am sure is littered with multi-chapter stories that never got finished. The story is finished, but to build up suspense and mystery I will be releasing the chapters one at a time. One chapter every couple of days.