Lauren had had to be persuaded to let the technicians at the Fae labs to run tests on Charlotte to confirm whether or not she had fully Fae genetics. It wasn't that she was against the tests, she had undergone the specific concoction of treatments before getting pregnant not just to be able to carry a half-Fae child to term, but because she was hoping not to bring a human child into the Fae world which had gotten better, largely due to Bo and her inner circle, was still rife with prejudices against humans. It was because she didn't trust anyone to run any kind of medical test on someone she cared about at all and that feeling had grown to an exponential degree she didn't know was possible the second she was told the month old infant could be tested.
She was out of the labs completely until Charlotte got a little older, although she did often do light jobs and research at her work station in the living room whenever the baby fell asleep during the day, wishing she had the equipment to run the tests herself at the house. She began to worry when the first test came back inconclusive. The baby had almost non-existent cellular deterioration, but it could have been attributed to the treatments Lauren had been taking in the sixteen months before and during the pregnancy. Naturally, this had stressed the blonde out and she fretted about it constantly. It wasn't that she would care for her daughter less, if she were human, but she wanted to be able to prepare her child for what being human in the Fae world was like. Naturally, things had changed since the time she was considered a slave (humans still had to have a fealty oath to a Fae in order to operate in Fae society but the contractual slavery system by and large didn't exist. Lauren even got paid livable wages for her work now, and even had, with influence from Bo and Dyson, had been paid a large lump sum as compensation for her ten years as a slave) but it's not like it was still going to be easy. She just wanted to be ready.
Tamsin tried to distract her from her anxiety about the issue, trying to keep her wife's focus on the amazing amalgamation of the two of them they had made. How the chubby baby already had Lauren's angled jaw and rich expressive brown eyes but her lips, chin and lighter hair, how it wouldn't matter if Charlotte was human because she was theirs. And it would work for the duration, but when it was just her and the baby in an empty house and the littlest member of their family was fast asleep, worry would creep back in. Knowing what she knew now about Valkyrie behaviors and biology, she would study Charlotte while she played with her or while Tamsin was interacting with her, looking for outward quirks of inheritable Valkyrie traits, but she was only a month old, she hardly did anything but eat and cry. Although Lauren guilty admitted that she did feel some small amount of relief that their daughter had odd sleeping habits. Valkyrie by nature, didn't need much sleep and Lauren had learnt that a lot of them slept just because they could and not because they needed to. Tamsin had told her that she could stay awake for nearly a week and still run at mostly optimal level, which was part of what made them such good trackers, but she didn't like to because it made her "cranky."
Charlotte slept very little when compared to the minimal amount of fifteen hours a day Lauren was familiar with in typical human babies and even when she did sleep, rather than falling asleep at small intervals, she would "power down" as Tamsing called it and go into long sleep for usually eight or nine hours and then take at least one nap during the day, sometimes for as long as an hour. That, and she had adjusted to a natural awake during the day and sleep at night cycle preternaturally quickly, which Lauren was delighted about as she had been anticipating being awake and woken up at all hours though Tamsin seemed almost disappointed that she would be deprived of the experience of griping about being woken up in the dead of night by a crying baby.
Still, she could tell Tamsin was worried about the results as well and after the third time they had come back inconclusive, Lauren was sitting on the couch reading a book, listening to the white noise of Charlotte's nursery from the baby monitor on the coffee table and waiting for her wife to get home from a later shift. She had just fallen into a light sleep after convincing herself she was only going to rest her eyes for a second when the sound of keys being fitted into the lock pulled her out of it. Generally when Tamsin worked a late shift, she'd already eaten whatever passed for dinner for her so whenever she found Lauren on the couch waiting for her (which was more often than not), the Valkyrie would shed her shoes and jacket immediately on entering and flop over on the couch and they'd just spend time together. Sometimes talking about any number of things, sometimes things that required mouths but no talking, and occasionally, Tamsin would stretch out on the couch with her head in Lauren's lap and request the human sing something to her, which she would oblige while gently twisting her fingers through the Fae's hair but this night, Tamsin left her shoes and jacket on and crossed the room to plant a kiss on her wife's lips before telling her to grab a jacket and go collect the baby.
Lauren let herself be pulled off the couch while confusedly pointing out that it was after midnight and Charlotte was sleeping but did as she was told when her wife insisted. They'd taken Lauren's car since the car seat was already in it and while she had been fiddling with fitting the fussing baby into the seat, Tamsin had slipped into the driver side. Having worked there nearly three years since signing formal fealty to her wife, Lauren knew almost immediately that they were headed to the newest Fae owned medical lab which was the first and so far only joint-Fae lab as per the efforts to make the renewed treaties between the Light and Dark more of an allegiance than a grudging acceptance. The real reasoning for going there in the middle of the night hadn't immediately occurred to the doctor for some reason. She was under the full assumption that something had happened at work that needed her immediate attention and wasn't easily explainable in a way that she could go and leave Tamsin home with the baby.
But when they entered the main lab, it was completely deserted which was odd in any case. Lauren stared at her wife questioningly, cradling Charlotte in her arms who had calmed down and had one fist tangled in the doctor's hair and the other half crammed into her toothless mouth. Tamsin had rolled her eyes and spread her arms as if trying to emphasize they were in the medical lab.
"C'mon, doc." She'd said, moving to gesticulate towards the station she normally occupied when she was at work. "I didn't just marry you for your looks, yanno."
Suddenly completely understanding, Lauren nodded once in a manner particular to her that meant she was just now understanding something obvious and crossed the short distance between them to hand their daughter to the Valkyrie and press their lips together briefly before crossing the room to the appropriate spot. Like the other times she'd had her blood drawn, Charlotte was utterly ambivalent about being stuck with a needle and burbled happy nonsense noises at Tamsin while she held the baby up and murmured soothing encouragements that the baby obviously didn't need.
While Lauren went into doctor mode and was making the necessary preparations for the tests for certain genetic markers she wanted to check, she refrained from telling her wife how bouncing the baby on her hip and occasionally spinning her around or jerking her upwards suddenly to give the baby the illusion she was being tossed in the air wasn't a good thing to do if they expected her to get back to sleep after they got home and focused intently on extraction processes.
Half an hour later, she announced she'd done everything she could do and now they just had to wait for the results from the tests that took longer. She could see why the techs were having a hard time. Even with her highly specialized knowledge of Fae genetics which was largely better than most Fae in the medical field, she couldn't say for sure one way or the other with the results from the generic tests the techs had run. As far as Lauren knew, there had been no documented Fae hybrid who had inherited non-human related biological traits like Charlotte had. Although, to be fair, as far as she knew, no Fae hybrid had ever been conceived like Charlotte had either.
Somehow, conducting the tests herself had set her mind almost totally at ease and after labeling the tests as having been performed by an intern (they turned over at the lab so quickly, no one would ask about it) and making sure to fudge enough of the labeling to make it seem like the results had a 'sensitive' classification and needed to go to Tamsin for a case. It wasn't really that they had done anything wrong by running tests on Charlotte, but Tamsin was ultra protective of the specifics of Valkyrie biology and while there was some information on them in the Fae leaders' archives, it was restricted information and none of the techs would have known what specifically to look for, which was fairly common with Fae species who were highly sought after for some quality or another. Partly out of deference to her wife's preference for upholding the limited access to knowledge of Valkyries and partly because she didn't want someone she didn't consider family to be the first to know, Lauren didn't feel guilty in the slightest as they drove home and she could tell from just the absence of quiet tension in Tamsin's body language and speech that the other blonde was less stressed out about the situation as well.
Lauren had had so much of a burden lifted from her shoulders by running the tests herself that she had almost completely lost track of when the results should be available. When she came home from having lunch with Bo and Kenzi one afternoon, she found Tamsin on the living room couch, carefully polishing her most prized material possession, an ornate Ulfberht from the early ninth century. All Valkyrie had one; the most prized ones, like Tamsin's, were ones that had been passed onto them by famed warriors. While in the past they had been on the functional end of the cultural item spectrum, since the late 18th century they had moved toward the far end of the sentimental cultural item scale. As such, Lauren had only seen the sword twice. She'd only even first heard mention of the three-foot weapon was when they'd moved in together and Tamsin had pointed out that while she unreservedly trusted the doctor, she didn't want the case it came in opened under any circumstances only briefly glossing over what was inside the case to quell any curiosity.
The first time she had actually seen it was when Tamsin first told her she loved her. Lauren had known for some time before that that the Valkyrie loved her, but though she had spoken the words herself, the phrase was never returned to her, which hadn't particularly bothered the doctor, she knew through Tamsin's actions that she did and had no intention of pressing her on the subject. They had been in the middle of having a rare weekend off at the same time and had spent nearly all of it unclothed. They were tangled around each other, still covered in sweat and breathing heavily, Lauren feeling like she was the one being protected despite being mostly on top of the Valkyrie, feeling the Fae's heart beat hard against the skin on her cheek which was pressed against the older woman's chest.
The human had started to drift off, lulled by Tamsin's steadying heartbeat but was pulled back to being fully conscious when Tamsin started moving in a manner that indicated she was trying to get up.
"I wanna show you something." The Valkyrie explained in a quiet but confident voice as Lauren scooted off of her girlfriend so she could get up.
The doctor pulled herself up into a sitting position, leaning her back against the cool metal bars of their headboard and watched the lithe woman gracefully slide off the bed but smiled self-satisfactorily as she noted the unsteadiness to Tamsin's gait in her stride to the closet. Her smile disappeared as the gravity of the situation dawned on her as the taller slid open the door and pulled the plain black case from the top shelf where it had sat since they'd moved in several months ago. Tamsin moved back to the bed with deliberate steps, purposely holding the human's gaze with sureness, which given the dim light of the bedside table lamp, she could see clearly. She sucked in a breath as the Valkyrie sat across from her and laid the long rectangular box on the bed in between them, only breaking eye contact to smooth her hands along the top of the case before flipping the latches on the sides simultaneously and lifting the lid away from the base.
Lauren wasn't terribly sure what she was expecting, having only ever seen pictures of decayed museum pieces and replicas of Ulfberhts before, but it wasn't what was nestled in the blue silk confines of the box next to a dark leather scabbard. For something well over a millennium old, it looked like it had been forged yesterday and was so finely crafted and cared for, that it showed none of the nicks or wear of use that the doctor was aware the blade had. Along the length of the blade were a series of engraved runes. Tamsin had told her once, that the original terminology for the swords had been given up in favor of Ulfberht which was a human naming convention given to a collection of swords with a similar prestigious history but made for and by humans. This had obviously been made out of materials known only to those who operated within the Fae world. It looked freshly polished and knowing that Tamsin sometimes opted out of communal dinner engagements with their friends to stay home, it likely had been.
She marveled at its simple but intense beauty for a long moment before finally feeling able to look up, finding that the Valkyrie had been watching her the whole time, her expression still confident but a noticeable air of vulnerability about her. Lauren knew Tamsin was sensitive about the sword's violent history. She was fond of telling the exploits it had been involved in before it came into her possession but Lauren knew next to nothing aside from how it handled of the nearly three centuries the Valkyrie had owned it and she had never asked. In fact, Lauren often forgot about the sword entirely except the times Tamsin's reasoning for skipping out on social things was that she just needed to do "some things" so she needed to ask, to make sure the Fae didn't think she tacitly or even unintentionally wanted to invade parts of her life she didn't want to talk about.
"Why are you showing me this?" she asked, her voice careful as she searched for any kind of reluctance in her girlfriends face but only finding sureness in her intense gaze.
"Because I love you." Tamsin said without hesitation, inadvertently proving to Lauren that she had been wrong about thinking she didn't need to hear her say the words.
The only other time she had seen it before walking through the door that day was on their wedding day. They had agreed that the one thing they would keep a secret from each other was what they were wearing until they were ready to get in the towncar that would take them to the hall they'd rented. Lauren had chosen a simple sleeveless empire waist dress with a short train after feeling like she'd tried on every dress in North America, only settling on that dress when Bo and Kenzi had been struck mute when she exited the dressing room. It had been a relief to be done with that part of the wedding but Tamsin seemed like she never left to go dress shopping at all.
Lauren had been intensely surprised when she asked about it and the Valkyrie had said she was planning on wearing something "more traditional" and had already picked something out early on as she couldn't picture Tamsin in a fluffy white dress covered in tulle for the life of her. Bo, Kenzi and even Dyson had tried to prod her into saying something more about it, but the Dark Fae would just smirk. She'd almost physically smacked herself in the forehead when the Valkyrie had entered their bedroom after they'd gotten ready separately. Tamsin, her hair loose, was wearing an ankle length deep red dress, which was ornately embroidered at the hem of the belled sleeves, the edges of the squared collar and the hem of the dress. They stared at each other from across the room and Lauren knew that people often described what she was feeling as being similar to the first time they'd laid eyes on their partner, but neither of them liked the other on first (or twentieth) meeting. If pressed, Lauren would have to describe it as similar to the moment Tamsin was crossing the room that night she'd confessed her love. Something simultaneously broke and swelled in her watching the Valkyrie move confidently across their shared space, completely comfortable in her metaphorical and physical nakedness.
"Do I look okay?" Tamsin asked suddenly, breaking their long gaze to smooth her hands down the sides of her hips and looking down. Despite the nature of her question, her tone had been completely cocksure.
Lauren almost choked at the unexpected laughter that escaped her and she swiftly crossed the room to cup the Valkyrie's face in her hands and kissed her soundly. "You look good for your age" the doctor teased, pulling away when Tamsin pulled her closer roughly by her hips before things got out of control.
The taller woman crinkled her nose and dropped her hands away from the human's waist and crossed the room to their closet. "You look good for my age too, doc." She retorted while sliding open the door and pulling the case holding her Ulfberht off the shelf. Lauren smiled but didn't say anything, watching with curiosity as Tamsin set the case on the bed and casually opened it, setting about securing the scabbard around her waist with the type of easy deftness that displayed her familiarity with the action. She pulled the sword from its confines almost reverently, holding its weight in one hand for a moment before looking up and smiling warmly at Lauren and slipping the sword into its sheath knowing the only people at the wedding who would truly understand the weapon at her hip was the two of them.
Lauren had been rendered motionless for a moment on walking into the living room and finding her wife focused so wholly on polishing the blade and speaking quietly, that she hadn't noticed the human come in. The doctor felt as if she were intruding. She knew that Tamsin would do blade maintenance while she was watching Charlotte and the baby was asleep in the playpen, but this was the first time she'd seen Tamsin work on the blade, around the baby or otherwise and wasn't sure if the Norse words the Fae were gently weaving together were an important part of taking care of the weapon or what would happen if she were interrupted. She did know that while Tamsin had the habit of muttering any number of languages in her sleep when she was having bad dreams, especially Scandinavian ones, she also knew that the Valkyrie largely didn't like speaking any language that had fell out of popular use past the late eighteenth century. When Lauren had been excited about the possibilities of discussing linguistic norms of dead languages with someone who had had an ancient North Germanic language as a first language, Tamsin had said the old languages reminded her too much of bad things and she didn't care to speak any of them.
Lauren was trying to find some way to interrupt as gently as possible but also not wanting to intrude when Tamsin stopped herself, having just registered a presence in the room that wasn't hers or the sleeping baby and stopped talking in what seemed to be mid sentence, Lauren couldn't be sure. The broad smile the Fae gave her on meeting her gaze told her she wasn't feeling intruded upon and she set the sword carefully down on the wide coffee table and stood up, tossing the polishing cloth indelicately on top of the sword and half-sauntered over to her, hooking her fingers through the belt loops on the front of the doctor's jeans and jerked her forward, causing their lips to crash together roughly but the resulting kiss was gentle.
"How was lunch?" Tamsin inquired brightly, releasing the denim between her fingers and resting her hands lightly on Lauren's hips.
Lauren smiled, grateful she hadn't made the Valkyrie uncomfortable and slid her hands along Tamsin's arms, stopping at the crooks of her elbows. "It was okay. Bo told me to tell you that she's got a date and isn't sure if she'll make it to the next poker night, but it's still at the clubhouse and Kenzi, Hale and Dyson will still be there."
Tamsin rolled her eyes but there was mirth behind them. "She probably needs a break from being reminded that there's something she's the literal worst at every week. It's starting to get embarrassing."
Lauren laughed lightly in agreement. Bo had been steadily losing money, alcohol, junk food or whatever they were betting with at what had been dubbed "Constabulary Card Night," named in honor of their statuses (or unofficial status in Bo and Kenzi's case) as detectives on the inaugural game night four months ago. The doctor leaned into the taller woman and set her chin on Tamsin's shoulder and looked over at the playpen, making out the shape of their daughter who had that whole space to sleep in and had squashed herself against the mesh, fast asleep with one chubby fist shoved in her mouth.
Closing her eyes briefly, she breathed in deeply. She could always tell when Tamsin had been working on her sword because she always smelled faintly of cloves the whole day. She turned her head and planted a kiss on the side of Tamsin's neck in one fluid motion, pulling back far enough so she could speak. "I've got a new book from Trick I haven't read yet, I can go upstairs and read while you finish." She offered.
Tamsin shrugged, her body language nonchalant but her face illuminated. "Nah, it's alright, I was just telling Charlie about the sword history is all."
"In Norse?" Lauren asked, her tone half confused and half skeptical.
The Valkyrie smiled broadly, she rarely gave genuinely warm wide smiles and Lauren smiled back automatically on seeing it without knowing what they were smiling about. "Well, yeah." She replied, sounding like she was going to laugh at any minute. "I figured if I'm gonna give the thing to her, she should learn about it in the original language, yanno?"
Lauren nodded immediately before suddenly processing what had just been said. Only Valkyrie could only handle Valkyrie swords. They were near impossible to even pick up let alone swing without being one. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?" she asked, her words coming out in an excited rush.
"I'm saying that we've just made the first Valkyrie in recorded history who won't be the size of grown woman in three weeks." Tamsin replied, her smile never leaving her face.
The noise that escaped Lauren's throat before she could even think about attempting to stop it was half relief and half excitement. She raised her hands to rest on either side of her wife's face and pulled her face closer, too excited to kiss her properly so she planted as many kisses as she could in rapid succession until Tamsin caught the shorter blonde's lower lip between her teeth with practiced ease and gently ran her tongue along her lip causing the doctor to immediately let her hands fall to the Fae's shoulders and melt into her until they were kissing unhurriedly. Lauren's hands had just started to slip down Tamsin's arms while Tamsin's hands slid up from Lauren's waist along her ribcage when Charlotte, who really only cried after waking up when no one was paying attention to her, loud cry stopped the progression of their hands.
"Alright, alright." Tamsin complained halfheartedly, lightly kissing her wife once more before they disengaged themselves and both crossed the room, Tamsin scooping the child out of the pen and gave the child an exaggeratedly loud kiss on one dry pudgy cheek. "You're not even crying, ya big faker." She chided her daughter, swinging her quickly into Lauren's waiting arms so she could flop back onto the couch to resume polishing her sword.
Lauren rested her cheek against the crown of the baby's head who had stopped crying almost immediately on being picked up and was making wet motorboat noises with her mouth and extending her arm towards Tamsin, opening and closing her hand. "You only just found out you're a Valkyrie and you want a sword already?" Lauren murmured lowly, sitting on the couch and leaning back, lifting Charlotte up to eye level. "Maybe when you graduate." She said firmly and half-seriously, smiling brightly at their chubby faced Fae daughter who was still a perfect mix of the two of them as Tamsin started reciting sword history again but in English so Lauren could understand.