Futility is an art. That feeling of striving towards an impossible goal, knowing in your heart that you'll never succeed but trying nonetheless. Something burns inside you, driving you on and on and on beyond all hope of return. Maybe it's hope, or love, or sheer stubborn will, but nothing could sway your course, not even the knowledge that your quest was doomed before it began. That persistence had always perplexed Lauren. She had lived her entire life shrouded in science, which at its core was cold, sheer certainty. She knew what would succeed and what would fail, and could avoid wasting her time and energy on a futile goal. Throughout her entire childhood, she watched as others fought and hurt and cried over things they had no hope of achieving in the first place, and wondered why they hadn't seen it coming. The thought that maybe they had and continued forward anyway was examined and discarded as ludicrous. All the young Lauren knew was that those unfortunate children couldn't see the inevitable close to their actions. She didn't see a reason to tell them, though, so she spent her early years on the sidelines observing, never getting involved. It entertained her to watch so closely. If she felt especially interested she would make predictions, trying to figure out what would happen before it actually occurred. As the years went on and she grew older, her observations grew more astute and her predictions more accurate. Sometimes she even hypothesized on the person's reasons for acting the way they did, but she soon stopped, disliking the uncertainty and never able to reach a definitive conclusion.
High school was when things changed. Up to then, all the young Lauren had done was observe and predict, and always, always from a distance. Her first science class flipped a switch inside her, and soon she wasn't just observing anymore. She inserted herself into scenarios, and turned them from observatory to experimental. She flourished academically, the pride and joy of her teachers and later, professors. The only catch was that the more time she spent observing her classmates, the more she realized she disliked them. They were simple and predictable and just plain boring. Even as she graduated med school at the top of her class, entering her residency at one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country, she found herself dissatisfied. She would catch herself staring into space blindly, wondering if this was all that life had to offer. It never got beyond idle speculation, but when a girl with more stab wounds than any normal human could survive walked herself into the ER, Lauren was only halfway surprised. The tail did shock her, though.
She might only have been halfway surprised, but she was still completely terrified the first time she met the Ash. There was no way for her to prepare, to steel herself to his simple inhumanity. He looked and sounded human, but there was an aura of complete and total otherness that surrounded him. Lauren didn't know how else to phrase it; alien was wrong, because she could just feel the connection to the earth that he held, and to say unnatural was equally incorrect. So she went with otherness, and focussed back on how she could survive their meeting unscathed. The threats she expected, requiring her complete and utter silence on pain of her life and those of her family, but the job offer blindsided her. The Ash told her that she was possibly the best human doctor he had ever seen, and that her services would be invaluable to him and his clan. The only catch, he said, was that she must swear fealty to him, and that as a human it would mean near-enslavement and the death of all hope of ever having a normal life.
She accepted without hesitation. She had known for a long time that a normal life was not something she wanted, and her limited experience with the Fae she had met told her that humans were immensely overrated. Her one compunction was that it was likely she would never meet someone who would sweep her off her feet, but within an instant that was forgotten. It didn't matter much anyway; she had resigned herself to a lonely life years before, the first time she had treated an abuse victim and saw the pain in their eyes - not just the pain, but the fear and resignation, put there by the person supposed to love them more than anyone in the world. She built herself a shell, a Fae mask to conceal her innate humanity. It protected her from pain, physical and emotional. To the Fae, her humanity was something to scorn and victimize, an excuse to hurt her. The less human she appeared, the less the Fae (vicious whether light or dark, she found) would harm her. Her icy shell also protected her from emotional attachments that would only fall to ruin. She did have sex, with many different people, but she was never there once morning came. It was easier that way. She might have been a slave, but she could still control some aspects of her life.
She thought that, and then she met Bo.
The succubus shattered her all her illusions. She couldn't control her reactions to the other woman, neither physical nor mental. It frustrated her, but at the same time it thrilled her, exciting her in a way she hadn't felt in years, if ever. As much as she wanted to hate the Fae for upsetting her carefully balanced worldview, she was drawn to her. It only took a few moments in Bo's presence for Lauren to give in to the feelings she caused, and revel in the unexpected happiness the succubus brought to her life. She couldn't lie to herself, and she knew it was bound to happen - fighting it would be futile, and the one thing Lauren had spent her life avoiding was futility. She fell, and she fell hard, and because of that, herjudgment was compromised. Badly. When the succubus came to her asking for help in controlling her powers, the rational side of Lauren screamed its protest, knowledge of protocol and the Ash's harsh punishments combining to form a thoroughly convincing argument against her heart's desire to help the woman she felt so strongly for.
Her heart bypassed her brain entirely, and before she knew it she was violating every rule the Ash had laid down for her with a smile on her face. It alarmed her how much work it took to care. She knew it was only a matter of time until the entire thing blew up (possibly quite literally) in both of their faces, but she wanted to hold on to Bo for as long as possible before then. The simple fact was, she made Lauren happy, and dispelled the loneliness she hadn't even known she had been feeling. It was the first thing the doctor ever did for no reason other than she wanted to, and it was so, so worth the risk. She thought that right up until the Ash told her he knew about her illicit help, and the feeling of utter terror that had been suppressed by Bo swelled up through her chest again. The relief she felt when he offered her a convenient excuse nauseated her, but she took it anyway. His next words sickened and elated her in equal measure, confirming that to him she was nothing more than property but still offering her the chance to do what she had been longing for for months.
Before that day, Lauren had never been truly conflicted. She had been unsure, momentarily, before choosing the logical path and following it with a clear conscience with no regrets. This was something completely different. Her heart and head warred furiously, both wanting the same thing but neither able to accept the reasons behind it. It beat at her skull, going round and round in circles until all she could hear were those terrible words the Ash had uttered. All she knew was that Bo would die if she didn't do something, and Bo had somehow become everything to her when she wasn't looking.
Fifteen minutes and seven broken traffic laws later, Lauren found herself at Bo's door. From there it was a blur to her, up to the moment the doctor kissed Bo. The rest played out in perfect clarity - Lauren could feel, with a certainty that shocked her, that she would see Bo's broken, betrayed face every time she closed her eyes for the rest of her life. She honestly hadn't done what she had done because the Ash had ordered it. Lauren was fairly sure that at this point in her life she would defy any power she had to to keep Bo safe and happy, even if that meant forfeiting her life. All she remembered was knowing in her heart that Bo would go after the Mesmer, and needing to stop her from getting herself killed. That she had chosen to sleep with the succubus was completely understandable; not only was it a certain distraction, Lauren had been craving the contact for months. The second she saw Bo she had been ensnared in a net of want, and it finally broke free when Bo was in the greatest danger she'd ever known. Lauren had known, and admitted to herself just how much she loved the succubus.
In the days that followed, though, Lauren finally learned just why people persisted in impossible tasks. Bo wouldn't even look at her, not even when a case forced them into working together. No matter how many times Lauren tried to get her talking, she was shut down cold. The irony wasn't lost on her - the woman who had spent most of her life scorning those who toiled in futility was now stuck in the same vicious cycle. Hers was even worse, as she was forced to see Bo absolutely fawning over the wolf, and Dyson was not hesitating to flaunt that relationship in her face.
It hurt. She had to concede that much. It hurt worse than anything she'd felt before in her life, even more than the 'training' she'd been forced to endure in her early days with the Ash. It hurt all the worse for the knowledge that it had been her own actions, her own decisions, that had created the situation she found herself in. That was new to her. She wasn't quite sure how to deal with it, but she was certain that the spiral of depression and self-loathing she was falling into wasn't the right way. It was too hard to stop herself, though, so she turned into herself, only coming out when Bo was around. She was positive that it was beyond pathetic, her constant attempts to explain or apologize. Her mental count of how many times she had been rejected was discarded after it hit thirty. She couldn't help it, though - the thought of giving up, of allowing Bo to forget her, it physically hurt. A sharp, stabbing, aching pain she felt in what she could only call her heart. The doctor in her dismissed the thought that she could be physically heartbroken, knowing it was only a psychosomatic manifestation of her emotional pain and feelings of guilt, but the lover in her was certain. Bo had broken her, utterly and completely, beyond repair, and Lauren wouldn't have it any other way.
The buzz of her phone snapped her out of her thoughts. Shaking her head at how easily she'd fallen into herself, Lauren glanced around the lab to make sure one of her techs hadn't seen her spacing before swiping her finger across the screen distractedly. She figured it was likely a new corpse being delivered. The senior techs were considerate like that, alerting her of incoming bodies. Absently she noted that she hadn't actually left the lab in several days, and that the lack of sleep would likely begin to affect her performance soon. She resolved to, at the very least, lie down on the cot in her office after she dealt with the incoming body, figuring it would be far more efficient to stay. In case of emergency, of course. She was in no way willing to acknowledge that her reluctance to leave the lab had anything at all to do with a certain succubus. She glanced down to confirm the arrival of the corpse, but stiffened when she saw the name at the top of the screen. Bo.Short, concise, and able to conjure a myriad of emotions in milliseconds. Lauren tapped the name tentatively, hesitant to actually open it and see what it said. The message itself was just as concise as the person who sent it. Body. Need your help. Meet at the Dal.
Lauren smiled sadly. If this was all she could give Bo, she would do so in a heartbeat. When Bo was ready, Lauren would be there, waiting. After all, Lauren was a perfectionist. If she was going to partake in an exercise in futility, then she was going to give it everything she had.
And she was not willing to give that fucking wolf the satisfaction of winning.