Chapter 2

Once again, I own many things – but the characters and show of Lost Girl belong to Showcase. Just playing in their sandbox.

The first forty-five minutes of the flight found Lauren gripping Kenzi's hand so tightly until fear bleached the skin around her knuckles white. The thunderous rumble of the jet engines during take off and landing threatened her the most. An inexplicable fear of flying, another reason Dr. Lewis stayed away from airplanes unless absolutely necessary. Funny, she could face down slimy, spiny human reptiles with yellow eyes and horns or green-skinned soothsayers with mist for hair with nary a heartbeat out of rhythm, but she couldn't steel her nerves on a plane, a simple, every day human invention. Earlier, when the idea of leaving came to her, she had thought of trains (limited distances, couldn't take them far away enough) and ships (mostly pleasure cruises, and besides, the point of leaving was to put as much distance between her and Bo and the whole lot of them as quickly as possible. Booking passage on a ship required too much paperwork for a spontaneous departure.) These ideas began to pepper her thoughts even before she closed the last buttonhole of her blouse in Evony's bedroom. Looking around the art deco suite, reveling in The Morrigan's attempts to hold her panic at bay, Lauren felt a growing claustrophobia—not just in Evony's compound but also in the Fae world in general. Anything and everything could be taken away from her in a moment's notice. Dignity? She didn't even know if she had any left. Fear? Her experiences with it varied, each time escalating the bar of what was defined as scary and delaying the point at which her body would begin to react—the accelerated heartbeat, a tingle on her spine, a cold sweat—it took more and more to get that response. Fear never stopped the fearful thing from coming. It would come anyway, ready or not, just as it did with Bo, the worst of her fears, when Bo chose Rainer over herself, over Dyson, over friendship itself. Bo's words rattled at her even as she pleasured every inch of Evony. I chose you and you broke my heart.

You broke my heart. Bo had flung the words at her, her voice ringing with anger and hate. You broke my heart, the memory of it louder than Evony's moans and demands for more. As Evony sank between her thighs, Lauren held her hand down, pumping her sex into her mouth, angrily, wanting her to choke and suck her broken heart away. She felt Evony smile between her legs, perhaps thinking that it was pleasure she was pulling from Lauren's core. You broke my heart, the words stuck in Lauren's throat as she came, wet heat spilling into Evony's mouth as she arched her back, no other sound but Lauren's labored breath and the triumphant coo of The Morrigan. I'm doing this for you Bo, everything I do has been for you. Even this.

"Hey Hotpants, ya think I can have my hand back?" The sound of Kenzi's voice brought her mind back to the cool, sour air of the first class cabin.

"Sorry, Kenzi." Slowly, Lauren released her grip and reached for the flute on the table in front of her. A bottle of Veuve-Cliquot chilled in an ice bucket between them. Kenzi's eyes were ringed red not only from crying but also from the effects of her third glass of bubbly. At least the intervals between Kenzi's breakdowns grew from every five minutes to every twenty. "Metallic, cold, and mind-numbing," had been Lauren's response to the flight attendant's inquiry regarding her drink of choice, earning her a prolonged and confused stare. "Champagne," she sighed and the flight attendant turned quickly but not before Lauren spied what she thought was an annoyed eye roll.

Kenzi had wasted no time in acquainting herself with said bottle, no small feat since she had maneuvered the bottle to her glass with one hand, as the other had been in Lauren's death grip until a few moments ago. Lauren turned in Kenzi's direction. She appeared smaller, elfin even, dwarfed by the generously proportioned leather seat—her eyes closed and gripping the champagne flute the way a baby clings to its binky.

"You okay in there?" Lauren asked.

Kenzi's eyes remained closed as she nodded and sniffed back her tears. "This is the most impulsive thing you've ever done, huh Doc."

"One could say that," Lauren smirked. "It's amazing what one can do with an hour and a credit card."

"An hour and the Russian mafia," Kenzi toasted her glass into the air.

"An hour and the Internet."

"An hour and a pile of laundry." Kenzi lowered her nose to her shoulder and sniffed her sleeve, then shrugged looking at Lauren. "Clean. We're clean."

Lauren looked upward, "An hour and the Morrigan."

Kenzi froze. "What did you just say?"

"I think I might have killed her."

"Who her?"

"Evony," Lauren took a long, slow sip. Kenzi reached for the bottle and filled her glass to the brim, gulping its contents the way that fish gulp for water when plucked from the sea.

"You just killed my buzz, doc."

"Easy there, tiger," Lauren gently glided Kenzi's hand—the one holding the flute, back down to the tray table. She leaned into her, "Without getting all sciencey, I used her DNA to create a serum which, if it works, will either turn the Morrigan into a bonafide, death-becomes-her human, or—"

"She'll die from said serum?"

Lauren tapped her nose with the tip of one her long, slender fingers. She was just beginning to feel the effects of the champagne that Kenzi was already showing. "Score one for Team Human."

"And Team Smarty Pants," Kenzi smiled. "But what if she doesn't die?"

"She won't be able to hurt Bo. No powers. No threat. Just Bo and her destiny." There was sadness in her voice and a reminder to both of them why they had left so abruptly. One hour. One credit card. Two one way tickets to far far away.

"I don't get it, Lauren—and I don't even want to know what you had to do to get her to drink it. Or did you give the Morrigan one of your famous needles?"

"Nope, no needles. No toys. No spare parts. Allll Dr. Lewis," she said patting the inside of her thigh.

Kenzi tilted her head. Did her cheeks pink up like roses? "No, nope, no details. I don't want any kinda nasty of you and that she-devil in my mind."

"The 'how' of how I gave it to her doesn't matter, Kenzi. She's through. No more Fae powers. No evil agenda."

"And you did this for…" she hesitated and dropped her voice, "Bo?"

"Yup," now it was Lauren reaching for the bottle and signaling to the Flight Attendant to send over another. "A good-bye gift she'll never even know about. That either makes me the biggest buffoon this side of…I don't know, this side of funky faetown or—"

"—the best girlfriend Bo will never deserve." Just hearing Kenzi say those words closed up Lauren's throat, and she felt tears begin to build up in her eyes in spite of the fury with which she was trying to blink them away.

Kenzi, it seems, wasn't particularly fond of public emotional outbursts either and spiritedly, almost spilling champagne on herself, emptied the last puddles of bubbly into Lauren's glass—she steadied Lauren's hand with her own and didn't let go even after she had finished pouring. "One hour. One dead Morrigan. And to you, oh brilliant one." When Kenzi laughed Lauren noticed her ice blue eyes misting over with tears, too. Kenzi continued, "And to the most brave, dangerous—"

"and stupid—"

"—and selfless thing you've ever done." From afar, the pair looked like they were in the throes of something intimate, a lover's reconciliation, maybe even a marriage proposal. In reality, what they shared was loss and the physical exhaustion of constantly having to fight the urge to sob and break into a million pieces.

Lauren coughed and shifted deep into in her seat. "I'm glad you came, Kenzi."

"I'm glad you called."

Lauren wrinkled one corner of her lips and allowed her mind to reach for Bo for a few seconds. Even that was too much. Her tongue was heavy with alcohol and she could hear her words slurring, "I'm sorry about Hale and not being there for you today."

"You're here for me now." Kenzi clinked her glass to Lauren's then gave her an unexpected peck to her cheek, earning Kenzi a look of surprise. "What? I lurve me some first class."

The flight attendant arrived with a second bottle. "Thank you," Kenzi's smile didn't reach her eyes, "and keep 'em comin', lady, keep 'em comin'."


Midnight. One o'clock. Two, then three. Bo resisted the thought. Don't I have enough on my plate? God! Dyson had taken off, shifting into his wolf and sprinting at full speed immediately following Hale's funeral service. He's surely baying at the moon, mourning his best friend, and possibly for weeks if his state of mind was anywhere near the way it had been when he gave his love to the Norn. Tamsin was still in residency in the attic—not much had changed upstairs, physically, except for the absence of her best friend. Almost four o'clock and Rainier had finally fallen asleep by her side. Did all the phones in the world stop working, or just hers and Kenzi's? Lauren hadn't picked up either and Bo sensed it, knew it, for she had been a runaway most of her life, too. Her pulse quickened and for a moment she could see them, shoulder to shoulder, sleeping, blonde hair mixing with hair as dark as night. No, she thought angrily, Kenzi is my bestie. Then, How could they leave me? How could they all leave me now?

"Are you all right," his dark, honeyed voice cut through the worries of her mind and the silence of the living room.

She was about to tell Rainer about the ache ripping her chest, the pull in her heart. That she had a glimpse of Kenzi and Lauren together but she couldn't see where. But that was impossible. She was a succubus not a psychic. She missed his strength but Dyson needed the time, and he could take care of himself. Kenzi, ninety pounds if that, knew her way around a katana and the streets but without Bo's protection, well, the thought of where Kenzi would lay her head at night, or the relentless punishment the Fae would dole upon an unclaimed human—her human—if they found her, she had to stop those thoughts as her mind began to play the screams of a human being tortured. And then Lauren going behind her back to dig up dirt on Rainer, throwing her feelings into Bo's face! I didn't ask her to do anything for me. She wanted the break, not me. Now I'm the bad guy here? Bo had to laugh at herself. This is rich, isn't it—my three best friends are gone. Except Rainer. She observed him, his proud walk, his graceful strides, clad only in pajama bottoms, his smooth, slender and muscular chest an invitation, a distraction during the loneliest hour on the loneliest street and in the heaviest heart in all of faedom.

"Are you all right," he asked again. She wanted to ramble and curl herself up into a ball as she told him of the dandelions of worry tickling against her sanity. She wanted whatever war that was coming to be over. She wanted her family here. She wanted to finish the conversation she started with Lauren before Rainer walked in on them yesterday afternoon. She wanted to tell him these things and more but thought better of it. So she lied.

"I'm fine. Just couldn't sleep is all." She lowered her eyes at Rainer, took his hand and led him back upstairs to the bedroom thinking of Kenzi, thinking of Dyson, longing for her.


AN: okay, it's foggy over here. Not sure where this is going. Let the fates decide. I'm still thinking this is going to be short only bc I care more about the relationships than world building. Thanks for the encouragement, the reviews, and the follows. Your ideas are welcome, and seriously, THANK YOU. Wow!