Breathe

Tamsin wasn't sure when she started crying-during sex with Dyson or afterwards, when it was over and she turned her head away so he couldn't see, and she stayed curled up in his covers, back turned to him, staring into nothingness. The tears were icy cold and came one by one, slowly, clear drops of the sorrow that wracked her body, waves too powerful to be snuffed by temporary pleasure. She wasn't even aware of the tears at first. She had learned how to put up a wall between her and her pain. Because it was too much to deal with. She had gotten good at it. Until Dyson turned and looked at her afterwards, confused and concerned.

"Something wrong?" His voice was quiet, more rustic than usual, like his own sorrow had turned into scorching fire and trickled into his vocal cords. "Usually the reception is more positive."

"What?" she asked almost angrily, her voice a low hiss on the verge of cracking. She reached up and wiped them away. "It's nothing. I'm fine. Never better."

"Are you lying to me?"

She looked up into his eyes, eyes solemn with concern. "Look, can I stay here tonight?"

"Sure," he said quietly. Somehow it was like he knew. Like he knew that the sorrow wracking her body was the same sorrow that was killing him. She turned away and as she listened to Dyson fall asleep, she held her breath and tried to stop the tears from coming. She was in too deep, in too deep and there was no way out. She didn't know how to put her feelings into words. There was one word, one word that came close, but how could she be? She was still asking herself that question. It didn't make any sense on paper, a horrid, desecrated valkyrie and an impossible woman from out of the ether, from out of time itself. This was sick. Insane. Tamsin just wanted to fuck Dyson, over and over again, until she could fuck the Bo out of her. Because drowning in alcohol hadn't worked last time.

She wanted someone to fuck her brains out, so she could stay convinced it would work until she wasn't and it didn't. Until she realized with frustrated despair that she couldn't get Bo out of her even if she wanted to. Bo was in her veins, she could feel her in her bloodstream. Bo was alive in her cells, was caught in the breath in her lungs. She was in every fiber of her being. And it was sick, and Tamsin wanted her out. And she wanted her in. She wanted to breathe the same breath. Every time she stood near her in a room, Tamsin's chest rose and fell so heavily and she had the overpowering urge to draw nearer, like there were magnets vibrating on the ends of Bo's nerves and her nerves. It couldn't be love. It was too painful. It was too maddening, too inexplicable. Love was stupid. So stupid. And she wouldn't be that stupid and fall in love with somebody like Bo, somebody so utterly unattainable, somebody fate had deemed she was supposed to hate and who was supposed to hate her. There was no logical explanation for the way she wanted to be close to Bo, to crawl inside her being, the way she shed pointless tears now in Dyson's bed because she would never be close to her like she wanted.

Bo would never love her. And it was so stupid, so foolish that Tamsin would even long for such a thing. They were from different worlds. Bo was a hero, a good person, pure of heart. Bo might not believe it of herself, and no one else in the world might believe it, but Tamsin knew. She saw the good in Bo. Even with all the bad. And to her, even the most hideous parts were beautiful. But Tamsin was a rotten soul. Ruined, desecrated, fallen glory, discarded trash. On the path to redemption (because of her, all because of her) but still bearing the weight of broken wings. Hideous. A vulture. A shadow. Tamsin's love for Bo-if that's what it was-was a burden that would never do anything but cause her pain. She needed to let it go. It was no good. No good.

"No, it's not your fault. It's my problem."

She could imagine the conversation going something like that.

"So I guess I'll see you around. It was nice meeting you, Bo."

And then they would both recall that moment in the shack that started everything so inexplicably, so unassumingly, when fate had thrown them together. "So you're the Bo I've heard so much about." So sure, so sure she had Bo down to a T, so sure she knew exactly what category Bo fell under, and it was only a matter of proving it. So ready to dismiss her.

"Yeah. Who the hell are you?"

They would remember the initial moments when they clashed, rubbed against each other the wrong way, made each other furious. In the interrogation room. "What am I gonna tell the Morrigan?"

"How about you tell her to shove it?"

The first moment when Tamsin's visage cracked a little. Remembering when mere hours later, Bo escaped from the division not once, but twice, in a show of balls that made Tamsin chuckle, made her heart stir just a little, though she wouldn't have known it then. That Tamsin wouldn't understand why Bo rubbed her the wrong way, why her presence was so infuriating, why the sheer size of her balls and the purity of her intentions and most of all, the size of her heart made Tamsin so unsettled. Because even then, it was already beginning. If only she had pulled out then. If only Tamsin had done something Bo would do, and told the Morrigan to shove it, and pulled away from her partnership with Dyson. Maybe then the Wanderer never would have found Bo, and Tamsin never would have fallen for her, and she wouldn't be lying here imagining how to say goodbye. And it wouldn't hurt like this. Like this...

She had to try not to feel. She had to try not to love. Because the battle wasn't over, not by a long shot, and so many people were trying to hurt Bo, that Tamsin couldn't begin to fathom leaving her, not like this. Not when Bo needed a friend. Someone to stand by her side. So the only thing to do was to drown in the alcohol and fuck Dyson's brains out and play pretend. Just like those summer days in the early light of Valhalla, so many lifetimes ago. Back when she didn't know the beautiful dark hair, the brown and blue eyes that stirred her heart like wind. Before she couldn't breathe, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't breathe. Before it hurt.

Just like this.