'Babe, wake up.'

Bo's mouth tastes funny; some odd concoction of sweet and acidic with a side of cheap, dusty cat litter. She runs her dry tongue along the back of her teeth, seeking much needed moisture but finding only more regret. And is that...cherry?

'Come on, please, just open your eyes, talk to me.'

Warmth - like the sun on starved skin at the beginning of a tardy summer - hums below the hand that coasts up her arm, and she leans into it reflexively, murmuring words even she doesn't understand. Her head hurts, her neck is stiff, and she's pretty sure she's wearing a dress and missing a shoe, but the feel of this hand - now resting on her shoulder - is overriding all of it.

'Lauren?' Bo smiles, eyes still closed against the inevitable onslaught of the hangover from hell. She may not have had one for a while – Succubus perk – but she remembers the teen years not too fondly.

'Yeah it's me, I'm here now,' Lauren coos softly. 'I'm so sorry; I never should have let you go into that alone. After everything that's happened, I should have been there with you, but I promise, whatever it takes, we'll find a way to work this out.' Her voice carries a delicate optimism, reminiscent of youth - hopeful and pleading, unbroken.

Bo's smile widens. There's a chance she's still drunk, though now that she considers it, she doesn't actually remember drinking at all, and she doesn't buy into the whole idea of amnesia being the sign of a good night despite there being more than a few she'd pay a small fortune to forget. Still, whatever happened, Lauren is with her; all that stuff with The Dark and the mystery train and Karen and being loved - past tense – means nothing, because Lauren is here and she's never going to leave her again.

'I love you so much.' The gushed words precede a dreamy, soporific grin that makes Bo feel like a swooning schoolgirl, but she doesn't care; she's wasted and in love, and the rest of the world – human and Fae - can suck it if they don't like it.

'I love you too. I'm so sorry you had to deal with that alone, that I pushed you to go. But drinking isn't the answer, babe, anything could have happened to you in this state.'

Bo tries to raise her head and open her eyes but ends up face-planting on whatever wooden torture device she'd been passed out on. Probably the Dal bar. Again. She wonders briefly if Kenz is KO'd on the other side, her tiny frame wedged between the barrels with deadly heels poking out like the wicked witch of...whoever Trick had said that tale was based on, but then Lauren's words come back to her, like the spinning in her head brought them around again in a weird and refracted disco ball echo.

'What are you talking about?' Bo frowns, or at least, she thinks she does; her skin feels tight and the bar is pretty sticky against her forehead. 'What happened last night?'

'Last night? It's barely after ten.'

'You're kidding? Passed out and coming to before midnight? That's got to be a new record…or a new low.' She wriggles her fingers in between the polished wood and her stinging eyes, groaning and heaving slightly against the fresh wave of nausea. 'And what is that frickin' taste? It's like Baba Yiga's human-broth breath and a pack of dirty street dogs rocked up for a party in my mouth, drank a shitload of fruity cocktails then died and rotted on my tongue.'

'Ever the lady, my lady,' Lauren murmurs, tickling a flurry of warmth across the back of her neck. 'Do you really not remember?'

'Well I know I can't have fed because I would not be feeling like this right now. And I know I need to feed before Kenzi sees me like this and disowns me; she has quite the stringent standards when it comes to this stuff.'

'Well…' Lauren sounds unsure, perplexed, entirely un-Lauren. '…we can get you something to eat. We'll go to Dinah's and get coffee and pancakes before I take you home.'

'Not exactly what I meant,' Bo purrs, a small yet certain spark of energy kindling at the prospect. 'But if there's extra syrup, I'm in. Let's just get them here though; I don't think I can move yet and it sounds quiet enough to convince Trick to rustle some up. Besides, I don't wanna leave Kenzi, and if we eat without her, I'll be stuck in Grouchville for days and it'll likely cost me another week of pizza to get out. Food really is the key to that girl's heart…'

Bo's entire body clenches against the threat of implosion, fleshy fragments suspended in agony inside her. She doesn't breathe, maybe can't, definitely doesn't want to, because if she does then everything will continue; her body will crumple and the well of memory she's on the precipice of falling into will reach up and swallow her whole. It feels like her heart is truly breaking for the first and last irreparable time, as though every other hurt had been a mere dress rehearsal for the real thing. But how can it be breaking when it's already gone?

She remembers it now. She'd watched her walk away and then she'd walked away too. From everything; anything that held any kind of connection. From the one person who had any hope of helping her bear this, because she could still make some part of her happy and grateful when she had no right to those things anymore. From a true friend who vowed to repair it, from her grandfather who refused to, and from one who'd already tried to do her part and failed. And she had been drinking, of course she had; drinking and so much more to lose the little that was left of herself, to forget what she'd already lost. The unlikeliest of allies had once again proven contradictory and come through with the substitute goods, sharing his own particular brand of ignoring for a time. And so, for a while, she'd managed it; she'd switched her life off and somehow continued to breathe. But now Lauren has found her, and she realises that even in her shutdown state some part of her always knew she would.

'What are you talking about?' The sunshine hands cup Bo's cheeks tenderly, turning her face gently back on its side. 'Kenzi wasn't even out today; you know she hates all this stuff. Hale took her into town to see some band. And who is - '

'She's…?' Bo chokes, her body convulsing back into being, tears spilling over the bridge of her nose and collecting in a puddle between Lauren's palm and her own skin.

It can't be true; she'd seen them for herself, touched their cooling skin, visited their graves. She'd seen that indescribable look in Kenzi's eye's both times; she'd held her fighting body in her arms and then fought the arms that held her own to stop her from...stopping her. She'd felt all the fight in both of them slip right through her fingers and shatter around her feet. She'd felt it all end.

But she's also spent years learning Lauren's tells, the inflection in her voice, the nuances of a lie told through choice, force or necessity. This is none of them.

'Sshhh…Oh baby, don't cry, it's okay. Sshhh…'

Bo feels soft, trembling lips press against her temple and the combination of such sweet, familiar reassurance and the muddled memories she's still trying to sort through make her sob even harder. She's so torn between joyous relief and fearful confusion; the worst may not have been real but where does that leave them with the rest of the bad? How much of it has actually happened? She needs to know where her life is.

She allows herself a minute to bask in Lauren's comfort, to find some sense of stillness, and calm her blood and breathing before forcing herself forward. There's so much – too much – to cover, so she starts where she first got lost.

'Is Rayner still on the train?'

'Who's Rayner? What train?' Lauren's mouth is gone but instantly replaced by a hand smoothing damp hair away from Bo's face.

'The train the black smoke took me to when I disappeared, when you ran away and the dark took you and – '

'Babe, you must have been having a bad dream; nothing took us, we're okay, I promise.'

'Am I dark?' Bo sniffs, the tears temporarily abated but her voice still weak and weighted with them. 'Are you?'

'Shit, they really did a number on you.' Lauren exhales heavily but cannot expel the bitterness from her tone. 'We are not dark; we are not bad. We're just us.'

'And we're okay?'

'We will be.' Her thumb tenderly wipes wet remnants from Bo's cheekbone.

'And Kenzi and Hale?'

'Both fine too.'

'I need to see them, right now.' Bo attempts to push upwards again but she's so disoriented that she slumps against Lauren's waiting arm and allows her to lower her head back down without protest.

'Woah, I'm not sure what would be more dangerous right now – you trying to get into town in this state, or the state Kenzi will leave you in if you interrupt her hot date.'

Bo's chest swells with the spreading warmth. None of it was real. She still doesn't know where she is in time or place – and she still can't sit up or open her eyes – but none of it was real and the people she loves are okay. And although some things still aren't adding up, her sobering senses are too flooded with emotion to focus on much of anything beyond Lauren's lingering touch. None of it was real. They're not gone. She feels alive and reconnected in the most joyous and overwhelming of ways and she needs to channel it somewhere. She holds Lauren's hand against her face, turning her mouth to kiss each of her fingers in turn.

'Sweetie, we really need to get you sorted out; you're not going to make it up to your room and into bed like this.'

'Mmm, then I suppose you better come with me, Doctor. Help me out of these clothes, make me feel all better. Who needs coffee and carbs when - '

'That's not funny.' The sun is covered by thunderous clouds and no longer heats her skin. 'I'm sorry I said what I did and that I pushed you to stand up for us, to tell them, but that doesn't mean this is a joke to me.'

'Lauren -' Bo is once again adrift and confused, terrified that she's done something terrible, that Lauren has just been trying to protect her from her own inner-monster as she always has and now the walls are slipping. So much so that she battles through the whirling nausea and throbbing temples to sit up - albeit braced heavily against her makeshift wooden pillow - and open her eyes. It's the sight taking shape from the blur that really knocks her sideways.

'Look,' Lauren sighs, swallowing down her anger as she checks around to see if they've drawn an audience. 'I don't want to argue with you again. I get that things are harder for you; we grew up in two completely different worlds and your situation is way more complicated than mine. I understand that and I accept it, and I'm trying really hard to be patient about it, but I don't think I'll ever really be able to laugh about it. This is our life. Our future.'

Bo doesn't need to glance around at the place she thought she'd left more than a decade ago, at the trees and the clear night skies and the hand-painted signs, because none of it has changed. She recognises every single part, senses it without moving from her stool at the wine samples stall; she knows every landmark and scent, every shortcut and unlit field, every person still milling or stumbling around Grimley's Annual Cherry Festival. Everyone except the beautiful, blonde teenager standing before her.

'Lauren?' Her lips shape the name but the whisper is lost on its way out.

'I want the life we both dream of – medical school and travelling and family – and I can't see myself ever wanting it with anyone but you. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me and I wish you could see yourself the way I do instead of suffocating in their vision of what you should be.'

Young Lauren - hair braided across the base of her neck and curving around her sun-kissed shoulder, sleeveless white shirt with the top button undone and fabric corners turned down by her collarbone like a puppy's floppy ears, denim shorts topping long legs that still have maybe an inch or two to grow – steps towards her again and takes her shaking hands. Bo is too mesmerised to do anything but watch with a strange sense of having done all of this before stirring somewhere inside her like a slow to wake déjà vu.

'We can't carry on like this forever,' Lauren continues tenderly. 'They might never accept us but we can choose to accept them, be okay with them not being okay. Because it really doesn't matter if we're sure of what we are. And I'm sure. I love you Beth; I choose you and our dream; it's the way things are meant to be. I'm just waiting for you to wake up and see it.'