Tamsin's lost track of time, not that time matters any more.
There's a humming in her ears- she's not sure if it's just regular quiet murmuring of the patrons in the bar, or just the alcohol blurring sounds as well as her vision.
Tamsin hasn't seen anything other than the bottom of her glass for… well quite a while now. Her routine is cyclical-never ending- sort of like her. She'll stay at a bar until they kick her out- either because they're closing or because Tamsin's out stayed her welcome all on her own. Each time she's put out, she walks the streets until she can find the next place that will serve her. Drink, walk, repeat- she's more than happy to move along to that rhythm.
Tamsin studies her hand. It's clutching her glass firmly. Not just to keep it from shaking, but because she needs to something to hold on to. She's lost too much lately.
She takes a long draw of the amber liquid and lets her mind wander, smiling a bit as it falls on a particular topic. That's appropriate I suppose, she hums to herself.
The objects she's thinking about had different names, both over the years and from Valkyrie to Valkyrie. Acacia called hers "Talismans". Tamsin didn't care for that name though- it implied that the item had some power onto itself, independent of the person that held it.
Decades ago, in what she can admit was one of her lower points, she found herself flipping through some random Good Housekeeping type magazine. The doctor in the article was talking about children and their toys. He talked about "transitional objects."
A transitional object is something that has emotional value. They hold an emotional value to us that is hard to put into words and far exceeds the physical nature of the object itself, the guest had wrote.
The doctor was talking about children with their teddy bears and blankets. Things scared little kids had to keep their imaginary monsters at bay. Tamsin's no child but she had her own monsters. Life as a Valkyrie more often than not, a very isolating one. Singular and alone. You can go mad if you don't have something to keep you grounded. So she also had objects over the years, that helped keep those internal demons from devouring her whole.
Tamsin's had one of these objects in every lifetime. In her first lifecycles they were weapons, which made sense. As a warrior you become attached and your weapon becomes like an extension of you. You sleep with it, you eat with it, that's how it goes. And then you die with it. That's how it goes.
A few times, in the beginning, she'd try to go back after she was reborn to find that same weapon but it proved impossible.
It wasn't just the logistics of finding it that made recapturing that attachment impossible-though tracking something like that down was definitely a challenge. The one time when she did manage to locate that special weapon again, it seemed it just... wasn't the same. It didn't have the same significance from one lifecycle to the next. Eventually, she realized it was less to do with the object itself and more because she wasn't the same in this life as in the last. Circumstances change. Places, people, time period- all that she was born back into shaped who she was each time she came back.
Nature verses nurture at its finest.
As the centuries passed, she found that these transitional objects started shifting away from being weapons. Maybe it was societal changes or her own occupational shift to mercenary work, but for whatever reason carrying a gold-encrusted dagger for example, just didn't seem to jive anymore.
So her attachments shifted away from weapons and on to… well other things. She never chose these things intentionally or looked for them, she just sort of picked them up along the way. Moving around a lot, the things she wanted to keep seemed to naturally stick to her as she went.
Sometimes they would be items that made perfect sense. Clothing or jewelry were always logical- they're easy to keep on you and take with you. One of her most memorable and cherished objects over her many lifetimes was a necklace. She had found it by the side of the road one day. It was simple, a small silver disk with a round grey and black stone in the middle of it. It wasn't worth anything, but something about it appealed to her and she picked it up and put it on.
Whether it was laziness or that she just didn't think about it, she ended up keeping it on. She's not exactly sure when it turned the corner, but soon she wouldn't take it off. It was always there. She would feel it on her chest in the heat of battle- cool on her skin serving as a reminder to stay in the present moment. She would fiddle with it, running her hands over the smooth backing when she was thinking or planning her next move. In the middle of the night, she would wake up from her nightmares and grasp for it. A reminder of where and when she was. A reminder that she was real, and here, and okay. It did what it should, it grounded her. It was nice to have a constant, at least for a while. It was nice to have something outside of herself to hang on to.
Sometimes, the objects make perfect sense, Tamsin thinks, chuckling into her glass and taking another sip. And sometimes they reeeeeally don't.
Like her object in the life right before this one- a cassette tape. A cassette tape? She shakes her head. Who even has cassettes anymore?
Technically, it wasn't a cassette at the onset. It was a phrase, an idea really. Something that she hadn't realized she had been feeling for a long time, until this time around. It was only much later that the phrase seemed to manifest itself into something tangible. Into music. Into that tape.
Tamsin smiles wanly into her glass, and thinks of the day she found it. Or it found me.
She had been in the middle of nowhere. Quite literally, she had somehow ended up in a dust-speck of a town on the plains. Fields and farms stretched out flat towards the horizon in every direction. Tamsin doesn't remember how she got there or why, all she knows is that at the end of the day a rather impolite Underfae's head had connected with the business end of her beer bottle. Consequently, she was asked to leave that fine establishment and set foot down the road to find someplace to stay for the night.
She cut through the field across the street. The moon was a waning crescent, offering little light as she wove through the sea of tall stalks surrounding her. Having had more than her fair share of alcohol, she only remembers thinking she'd been wandering for days. Finally she emerged on the other side, and onto another main road where she spotted a truck. The film of dirt and grime hinted that it was abandoned, so shrugged she stumbled her way over and climbed in. Inside, the seats were worn, but comfortable, and she didn't think twice to sprawl and pass out right there in the cab.
The next morning she woke up and rooted around the interior. She was hoping for more booze but instead, under the seat, past the gum wrappers and abandoned pens, she found the cassette tape.
As she began to drive, her gaze returned to the tape. With a shrug she'd popped it in the tape deck. It started up near the end of the song and the lyrics began repeating over and over and over.
And it was like it was speaking directly to her.
She slammed on the breaks and pulled over, stabbing the 'eject' button with her finger.
She was rattled and whipped her head around, looking to see if anyone's around. If it was some sort of magic or set up. To see if someone is playing this song for her to hear it. No one was around. She waited a beat, and breathed. The innocuous white cassette was still there, protruding a mocking tongue out at her from the face of the stereo.
It's just a tape. And it's a just a song...She thought. A song that cuts a bit close to the bone.
The lyrics hurt. They spoke what she had felt for centuries now. What she hadn't even realized she had been feeling for centuries now. It made her shudder.
...And at the same time, it was helpful. She wouldn't say comforting- Valkyries shouldn't need to be comforted- but it was helpful to know that someone else felt that way too. That maybe she wasn't so alone after all.
As a Valkyrie, Tamsin always valued her ability to steel her heart and to be above emotion, because that's what you needed to get the job done. At the same time she could recognize that if you don't give yourself that moment, even just once in a while, to rest and be comf- and take care of yourself , rather- that you can snap right in two. Thick iron can deflect bullets, but if you neglect it and leave it outside, even the softest of rain can cause it to rust.
So she kept that tape close and on nights when the loneliness would slip in her truck like fog, she would put the tape in and rest. Rest, and know that this is just one moment, in an endless string of moments, and that she was not completely alone in feeling that way.
Transitional objects. That's what they were for. Normally, her relationship with these objects ended naturally- she'd die. Tamsin would die and the object would be lost to her. Circle of life, and crap.
But not this time. Not this, her last life cycle, and not the last time with the tape either. These two times, something went horribly wrong, and the object disappeared before she did.
Stupid tape… Tamsin squeezes the glass, feeling it crack a bit under her grip.
Losing the tape was her fault entirely that time. In a rare fit of drunken self-loathing and frustration, she had more or less forcibly loaned it to Dyson.
It was just after Bo's dawning, after she realized Bo was the mark she'd been looking for centuries- and worse yet when she realized that she had developed enough caring for the succubus and friends to make it complicated. She hated herself for that- for caring. She hated herself for letting something as ridiculous as feelings get in the way of a job. So she tried to get rid of anything that might encourage more emoting, everything that hinted at that weakness. This included the tape- the one thing that had brought her solace. So she gave it away.
At one point she'd mentioned it off handedly to Dyson. She wasn't about to ask for it back- that would have been way too compromising and would have meant it had way too much control over her. She didn't need it.
In the end it didn't matter. It turned out, he'd lost it. She couldn't even be angry at him, because she knew it wasn't his fault. Those things, her objects, once they were lost and gone they never came back.
A shame too, I really could have used that, Tamsin sighs- pouring the last of the bottle into her glass. Would have been nice to have gone over that cliff listening to something other than that fucking Wanderer song...
Parting with the tape had sucked, sure, but losing her transitional object this lifetime- her LAST lifetime... is unbearable.
Tamsin grits her teeth and presses her eyes closes tightly forcing the next words through her mind. Words she's avoided thinking about for a while now.
Correction- losing Kenzi is unbearable.
The sound of shattering glass snaps her eyes back open to the present. Thin red drops start to blossom where the shards from what was previously her whiskey glass have embedded themselves in her palm.
Tamsin doesn't bother to pluck them out, instead she watches the red bloom, and even flexes her hand a bit, helping it along. Maybe if I'm lucky it'll get infected. Maybe drinking really will be the death of me after all, she muses digging her wallet out with the other hand, moving to pay the tab.
She makes her way on unsteady feet out the door and into the night. Vision still fuzzy, she doesn't make it far, instead choosing the lean against the brick wall of a nearby alley, sliding down until she's sitting.
Drunk, defenseless and bleeding. Vulnerable to attack . She sneers inwardly, as she finally attends to picking the glass from her palm. Acacia would have a field day.
But Acacia was dead. She'd died about a month ago.
Tamsin grins into the darkness. The kind of grin that's blood and fangs. Everything dies. Including me. Over, and over and over... Everything disappears except me. I'm the only thing that comes back. Why should this one THING, this HUMAN, why should this one death hurt so much?
Because it's Kenzi.
Kenzi was family. Tamsin's never had family die. She's never had family at all.
And she's never wanted someone that died to come back. Never, because the next life- especially if you die a warrior- is paradise. To wish someone back is purely selfish and Tamsin's never wanted that sort of thing, never had a need for it.
But it's Kenzi...
Kenzi was more than a transitional object. More than something that grounded her. More than solace, more than strength, Kenzi gave her love. And Tamsin loved her back. Because she was her family. Mother, sister and friend all rolled into one small, Goth package. And now Kenzi was gone. If there was anything or anyone Tamsin ever wanted... needed to come back, it was Kenzi.
Tamsin rips a piece of cloth from the bottom of her shirt and wraps her hand with it, even though the blood is already slowing on its own.
She doesn't want to think about the other family she has. She doesn't want to think about Bo. Bo- who's been looking for Tamsin every day for the last 3 months, since Kenzi's death.
Not that she's doing a very effective job, Tamsin thinks. Up to this point she's eluded Bo with minimal effort and only slight inconvenience to her 24 hour drinking schedule. Tamsin knows Bo is looking for her because Bo wants her help getting Kenzi back.
But Bo doesn't know that things that disappear don't come back. Once you're gone, you're gone...
Except Tamsin. And now- since this is her last life- even she won't be an exception to that rule.
Tamsin's tired though. She's tired of running. She's tired of being strong and surviving. She's tired of returning and remaining and continuing on alone. She's just so tired of it all. And maybe that's why she lets it happen.
Even drunk out of her mind, half starved, and exhausted she registers the sound of Bo's yellow succ-mobile from 3 blocks away. She has more than enough time to move, to hide, but she doesn't. That's how she knows she's broken. That's how she knows she's desperate. She lets it happen, she doesn't move and it's not long until Bo finds her.
"Oh my God- Tamsin!" Bo moves towards her quickly but cautiously. It's been 3 months since Kenzi's death, since they'd seen each other on that battlefield, and Bo's smart enough to be a bit guarded. Especially when I look like shit, Tamsin thinks.
"Hey Succubitch. What up?" Tamsin's intention is levity, but her voice is coarse like sandpaper. She realizes this is the first time in weeks that she's actually spoken, out loud, to another person.
Her appearance seem to garner pity and concern rather than revulsion or fear and Bo kneels down next to the Valkyrie. "You're hurt," she says, holding Tamsin's freshly wrapped hand lightly, inspecting it.
"I'm drunk," Tamsin shrugs, as if that explains it all.
Bo purses her lips, pausing only a moment before draping the hand and arm around her shoulders and moving to help the blonde woman to her feet. "Come on. Let's get you home."
"Home." Tamsin licks her lips, the word tasting more bitter than she remembered. Still, she doesn't resist, and even lets Bo pour her into the passenger seat next to her, and buckle the seat belt around her.
"I've been looking for you forever. I was so worried..." Bo begins. She starts the car, the radio coming to quietly life as they begin to make their way down the street. Tamsin lolls her head back against the seat in an attempt to relax and closes her eyes.
... and then snaps them open again as she recognizes what's happening.
"What the fuck!" Tamsin lunges forward towards the radio so quickly the seatbelt locks her back. She fumbles with the belt uselessly for a moment before growling in frustration and slicing it with her knife. Finally free, she stabs at the radio buttons until finally, with a dull click, the tape ejects.
"Tamsin what the hell?" Bo's pulled the car over as the Valkyrie gapes in horror at the cassette peeking out from the stereo between them.
"Where the fuck did you get that..."
"What? The tape? I-"
Tamsin swipes the cassette out from the player and begins waving it in Bo's face. "I SAID WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GET THIS BO!?! I'm not fucking around! Do you think this is fucking funny? Where did this come from?"
Tamsin is wild-eyed and panting- no, she's hyperventilating- because what she's holding in her hand, her Wilco bootleg, should NOT be here. It should not be in here, in her hand, because it was gone.
Shit like this does not just come back.
Bo looks from Tamsin to the tape and back, her face only registering confusion. "I found it. It was in a box of Kenzi's stuff..."
Kenzi's stuff.
Dyson had it, and then somehow apparently Kenzi and now Bo. And now it has found its way back to her. It's the same tape yet different. Even from that small segment of the song, Tamsin can tell that it... well, she's not sure. Before, the song was like her echo in a cave, repeating the same sense of singularity, the isolation and hollowness that she's always known, back to her. But right now... the words seemed more hallow than she was.
And then it dawns- this is the first time that has changed. In many ways, that was her constant- that feeling of loneliness. It's always been there, following her through death and rebirth in each life time. Except this one.
Something inside her is fuller now. She'll never be quite as empty- because Kenzi changed that. Before Tamsin met Kenzi and the rest of the gang, she was a ghost. Barely corporeal, she would die and return, slipping through the world unnoticed and untouched, never leaving an impression. But now... now she was in it. She'd been engulfed by love and family, the feelings indelibly seared within her. Now, Tamsin's had a family- and still does if she's honest- and that's something not even her friend's death could change. The tape won't echo back because she will never truly be that alone again.
The tape. "Oh." That's all Tamsin can say. She sits back in her seat, staring down at the cassette in her palm. The tape: It's a ghost, it's a figment, it can't be but it is. It's back. I lost it and it came back.
"Tamsin?..."
I lost it and it came back?
"Tamsin are you okay?"
I lost it and it came back.
"Tamsin, we'll find her. We'll find Kenzi together," Bo reaches, over, and gives Tamsin's shoulder a small squeeze, returning the Valkyrie to the moment.
Tamsin squeezes the tape in her hand. The plastic is hard, and the edges are scuffed, but it's real. And so is the warm hand on her shoulder. Both assure her that she's real too. And still here. She's real and still here.
"She can come back..." Tamsin mumbles, more to herself than to Bo. It's not a question nor a comment. It's a possibility. One she never though could happen. Never has something that's been lost to her come back before. Until now.
"Yeah. We'll find a way Tamsin. I won't give up. I didn't give up and I found you, and now we'll find her..." Bo starts the car again, but pauses before heading back on the road. "Are you sure you're okay?"
Tamsin, finally breaks her gaze from the cassette in hand, and looks to Bo. "Yeah, just thought I saw a ghost..."
Bo still looks concerned, but significantly less so. She nods, and puts the car in gear, and both women continue on together, moving forward.