Title: Into the Darkness They Go, the Wise and the Lovely
Author: h-bomba
Rating: T
Words: 930 (complete)
A/N: Title taken from the poem Dirge Without Music by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
On a moonless night, Bo stood in front of Lauren's bedroom window. She surveyed the city, its lights dancing in the darkness. She had come there to be with Lauren, to forget, to revive herself. They had grown apart in the weeks following Kenzi's kidnapping. Bo was stubbornly holding onto her anger because she couldn't deal with Lauren's betrayal but she couldn't deny her love for her either.
Lauren had called her at two a.m. The line was silent when Bo had answered and then Lauren's voice wavered when she spoke.
"Bo," she said. "I need you."
Bo's mouth opened but she couldn't find the words. She tried to ignore the pang of regret she felt and sighed into the phone. "Lauren, I-" She stopped. She didn't know what the end of that sentence was.
"Please," she said quietly.
"I'll be there soon," Bo relented, ending the call.
The entire drive, Bo tried to reconcile her emotions. At the compound, she sat in the parking lot for what seemed like an hour before she could muster the nerve to go inside.
Lauren had left the door open as she usually did when she was expecting Bo and was reorganizing her slides to pass the time when Bo knocked on the open door.
"Bo," Lauren stood and approached her carefully.
It had been a week since they last talked and it looked to Bo that their time apart had taken its toll on Lauren. Her eyes were red and Bo couldn't rule out that she might have been crying before she called, her hair was messed and the expression she wore as she looked at Bo was haunting. She looked broken. Had Bo done that?
When Lauren stood in front of her, Bo felt uneasy. Queasy, even. And when her eyes brimmed with tears Bo felt remorse for every awful thing she had ever said to her. Stripped down, her vulnerability was palpable. She smiled an awkward smile and Bo tried to reciprocate. Why had she come here?
"Bo," she said again, grazing her cheek with a cool hand before withdrawing self-consciously. "I didn't think you'd come."Apparently, Bo had been sitting in the parking lot for over an hour. "What's wrong, Lauren?" she said softly.
"Nothing," she shook her head.
Unconvinced, Bo pressed her. "You don't call someone at two in the morning for nothing."
Lauren's eyes raked across Bo's face, daring to meet her own only briefly. "I needed to see you," she said finally with a sad shrug.
"Well, here I am." She didn't mean for it to sound as uncaring as it did in that moment and quickly righted the wrong. "Look at you," Bo ran a hand through Lauren's hair, smoothing it as she went. Lauren closed her eyes at Bo's touch, a sad expression crossed her features. "Hey," she said, "I'm here now."
Lauren shook her head. "'I'm sorry," she said.
Bo was unsure if Lauren was apologizing for calling her over in the middle of the night or not believing her when she needed her most. Either way, Bo had a hard time dismissing the pain on Lauren's face when she did so. "I know," she whispered, barely audible in the silence of Lauren's quarters.
She could tell Lauren hadn't been sleeping. There was an untouched plate of cookies in her kitchen, she had been baking again. Her desk was full of unfinished projects, another clue that she was filling her time when she should have been sleeping. Bo finally moved from the threshold and into the loft, dropping her coat on the sofa and making her way to the cookies that sat temptingly on the kitchen's island. She lifted a cookie to her mouth and took a bite. Lauren's insomnia cookies were top notch. She returned to Lauren who stood beside her desk. "Come on," Bo said, tugging Lauren's hand until she followed her upstairs.
In the darkness of Lauren's bedroom, Bo pulled back the top sheet and crawled beneath the duvet, wrapping Lauren up in her arms. It was an innocent embrace, one of comfort, one of forgiveness and love. Bo pulled aside Lauren's hair and kissed her neck from behind. Lauren sighed. The simple comfort of her touch was more than any words could match in that moment. She smelled of lavender and Bo relaxed into her. When Lauren's breathing slowed, Bo let herself began to drift off, too. She slept for an hour, maybe two, and woke suddenly. Another bad dream. She carefully removed herself from the embrace and walked to the window.
It was a moonless night and Bo had come to realize that things were different shrouded in darkness. Lauren had been absolved by this darkness, though she would never know that was the reason. The city twinkled like a magical place, but even Bo knew better. There was no magic in the city she called home, just a lot of Fae who carried on as selfishly as Bo had in the weeks prior. But what Bo had taken away from this situation was that the darkness was not insurmountable unless she allowed it to be. Unless she let doubt undermine all that she had built with Lauren. And when she stepped away from the window and crawled back into the warmth of Lauren's embrace she found that the darkness enveloped them like a lover and she held on tighter. As her eyes drifted shut, she felt the weight of the anger she had been carrying lifted and absolution was Bo's, too.
Fin.