Chapter Three: Respiring

A/N Thank you for waiting patiently for this chapter – or maybe not so patiently, I don't know, but I am more than grateful you waited.

A/N I know Toronto unfortunately was not a host city for the 2015 Women's World Cup. I know that, again unfortunately, neither the Canadian Women's National Team nor the German one made it to the final. I know they never even played against against each other in the tournament. But for personal reasons, I liked the thought... So here's the disclaimer: the football game described herein, including the teams, scores, moves, venue, attendance and weather, are entirely a figment of my imagination.

PS: when I say football, I refer to European football; in some parts of the world, that game is known as soccer… ;)

"So your little makeshift council decided – with your permission, I might add – that we should go to Athens, climb the Acropolis, find the hidden vault some obscure parchment roll describes as the hiding place of the One True Writ regarding the Glaukes, and before we do that, we need to wake up Tamsin because otherwise we'd be hopelessly understaffed against the Ancients, but instead of the clinic or even the airport, you bring me – here?"

Faithfully, Bo followed Lauren to her car when she had said there was something they had to check before they could leave for Greece, but when she pulled into the parking lot of the Rogers Centre, Bo was flummoxed.

The fact that Lauren merely nodded and looked as if she was about to burst into a very un-Lauren-like giggle fit didn't help.

"You take me to a football game?"

"Hm-hm." More vigorous nodding, and a mile-wide grin.

"Who are you and what have you done with my girlfriend?"

If the sound of Lauren's full-blown, side-splitting laughter hadn't been so intoxicating, Bo would have been tempted to snap at her. Instead, she merely closed her eyes and shook her head in wonderment before leaning back against the headrest. A sudden wisp of Lauren's breath on her cheeks startled her, but whatever she was about to say got lost in the slow tease of a kiss, in the taste of Lauren's lips that moved away an eighth of an inch whenever Bo leaned into them and then came back to smooth the pout.

"Soon," the lips promised. "Just trust me." With a gentle hand, Lauren turned Bo's face towards her and led their eyes into a silent dance. "Trust me?" The specks that sparkled in each light brown iris held a promise way beyond a simple postponed kiss. Earnest and happy with more than just a hint of desire, they puzzled Bo. She didn't think she had ever seen that look in Lauren's eyes before. Her reaction to it on the other hand was both instinctual and inevitable: she melted.

"Of course I trust you," she whispered.

"Excellent!" Now the specks were back to being mischievous. Lauren skipped to the passenger side of the car and opened it with an exaggerated bow, tugging at Bo's hand like a seven-year-old in an ice cream parlour. Lost in a slight daze, she followed the doctor towards the stadium. She looked up at the oversized posters of a catcher, framed by two pitchers, on the façade. The CN Tower ruled the sky over the stadium. She could hear the crowd cheer. She dimly remembered that there was a World Cup going on. Canada against Germany. The final. If the noise was anything to go by, Canada was doing well.

An unexpected but familiar shiver spread from Bo's chest over her shoulders and down to her hands. A few steps later, another roar rose from the bleachers. Lauren turned to flash her a smile, and Bo felt the muscles underneath her navel clench involuntarily. She tightened her grip on Lauren's hand.

"Um, babe..." Huskily. She cleared her throat and while she was still busy collecting her wits about her, Lauren had somehow managed to get them past the security guards and into the stadium. Through deserted hallways, they made their way to one of the mid-field stairways. Bo could sense the excitement in the air, the heady rush of almost 50,000 people pulsing with the energy of the game.

"Are you okay?" Lauren's concern, evident in her eyes and the warm hand placed on Bo's arm, cleared the fog that had gathered around Bo's head.

"Yeah, I'm … fine, but there's something really weird about this place. What are we doing here?"

Lauren had unearthed her tablet computer from the depth of her spacious handbag. "Well, it's just a little test that we have to get out of the way before we leave."

Bo smiled. "I can hear the doctor is in the house tonight," she said. "Alright, I'm game – speaking of, can we take a look at what's actually happening on the field?"

"What?" The thought obviously hadn't occurred to Lauren. "Yes, yes, of course."

They climbed the last remaining steps until they had a clear view of the playing field. Bo tried to make sense of what was going on. Ten women in uniform red and ten women in white jerseys and black shorts were, to her eyes, aimlessly running back and forth. To Bo, a confirmed hockey-and-baseball woman, this made no sense at all.

"Do you have any idea what this game is about?" she asked Lauren who was still busy with her tablet.

"An English player once said that football is a simple game: twenty-two people chase a ball for ninety minutes, and at the end, Germany always wins," Lauren smiled. "Can you give me the fit-bit?"

Bo unbuckled the leather strap. "Well, not this time." She pointed to the score board that proclaimed a proud "1" for Canada and "0" for Germany.

"With almost half an hour left, that's not saying much", Lauren sighed.

"This looks silly," Bo proclaimed after a while. "All they do is kick the ball around in the middle of the field. Aren't they supposed to go for the goal?" She swept her hand around the now rather quiet bleachers. "Looks like they're bored, too."

Lauren briefly looked up from the two devices in her hand. "Strategy," she said. "Ball possession and control are important factors." She handed the wristband back to Bo. "I've set up a wireless link. It's weak, I haven't got around to fully developing it for proper range, so you need to stay close to the tablet, okay?"

Fastening the strap around her wrist, Bo nodded and stood behind Lauren, pulling her in and resting her chin on the doctor's shoulder. "Close enough?"

"Hm..." She turned her head for a brief peck on Bo's cheek and settled into the warmth surrounding her. Every now and then, she cast a surreptitious glance at the screen in her hand. If the results of this test turned out the way she hoped, her theory would be proven beyond doubt and -

"Whoa!" Bo tightened her grip around Lauren's waist. "Nice steal! Or whatever they call it in this game..." A red player had snatched the ball during a failed pass, and now the entire field was rushing towards the German goal. The crowd went wild.

In Bo's ears, however, the cheers faded to a whisper, and the bright green of the turf, the players, the bleachers with their waving Maple Leaf flags faded to a blur. She felt dizzy, almost nauseous, and only Lauren's semi-playful slap woke her to the fact that she had been about to slip her hands under the doctor's button-down with the undeniable goal of reaching her breasts. She hastily retreated.

"Bo!"

"Lau-Lauren, I…", she heard herself stammering. "I, I'm sorry, but…" Her hands were roaming again, and through the haze, she watched them as if they were someone else's. She groaned and gritted her teeth, but to no avail. "I. Want. You. Now."

There was more than just need and desire in her voice. Lauren shivered. She held back a moan that threatened to escape, knowing it would send Bo over the edge. Holding on to the last shred of reason and frantically looking around, Lauren managed to drag her lover down the stairs in a weird kind of frog-march because Bo wouldn't let go, unbuttoning the shirt as they went, peppering her neck with heated kisses and small bites.

"Bo, please… Let's… A broom closet, wash room, anything, just don't..."

"Door. Left." The words burst out like bullets. Lauren made for the narrow door, joggling the handle, praying it would be open which it miraculously was. Her relief in finding this sanctuary came through with the release of the breath she didn't realize she was holding.

The darkness in the tiny room was broken only by the piercing blue of the Succubus' eyes. Somewhere in the fog of her desire, Lauren began to get an idea of what unleashed Bo's ravenous need, and groaned slightly at having overlooked something so obvious. Her insight was blown away in the gust that ripped through her with her lover's first touch.

And she surrendered. Even if resisting one of the most powerful Fae who was apparently overcome by passion would be an option for a mere human, Lauren had long before realised that she wasn't succumbing to Bo; she was liberating herself, letting go of restraints and doubts and wounds and her all-pervasive need to think and control, to regulate and rationalise. In the tempest that was Bo's desire, Lauren was free. Free to be whirled around in a tornado of touches, a hurricane of kisses, shaken and raised by an untameable force. Torn apart and shredded, falling apart and restored, and safe every single second, because at the centre of the storm, there was the unearthly calm of being cared for, of being truly loved.

###

"What the hell was that?" Bo leaned against what she could only assume was a shelf, holding Lauren close who was still breathing hard. Slightly damp tresses were tickling her nose. In the deep darkness that surrounded them, she heard her lover chuckle lightly. "Lauren Lewis, are you laughing at me?"

"I would never!"

"Hm. Sounded a lot like you did..." Sighing contentedly, she turned Lauren around for a kiss, missing her lips by an inch and hitting her nose instead. "And why do I get this feeling that you know what happened just now?"

"Well, what happened is that one very greedy Succubus had her beautiful way with a certain human doctor-"

"Lauren..."

"I'm sorry."

"No, you're not."

A small square of light appeared in Lauren's hand, confirming that Bo was indeed leaning against a shelf and that the narrow room probably served as a janitor's closet in real life.

"You'll never cease to amaze me, Doc – how did you manage to hold onto that tablet?"

"I honestly don't know. When falling, humans – and probably Fae, too – tend to either let go of everything in their hands or cling to it for dear life. An instinctual reaction to-"

"You're geeking out on me – oh, and by the way, you didn't fall, so your point is moot."

"You're right; it felt more like flying..."

"You're stalling."

"Your observational skills are finely honed, my Love..."

"Lauren! I'm serious. I really have no idea what happened just now. I mean, as a Succubus, I'm quite used to, um, urges, but this…?"

"This, Bo, was what I can only term an overdose."

"An overdose? What, I OD'd on sex? Is that even possible?"

"No, you had an overdose of Chi. Come on, let's get out of this closet and find somewhere to sit."

By the dim light of the tablet's screen, they made sure that Lauren was presentable again, then walked hand in hand to a set of rickety plastic furniture bolted to the ground in front of a concession stand. The arena was empty, discarded paper cups and sandwich wrappers the only sign of recent activity. In the distance, they heard someone sing drunkenly. It sounded like "shland".

"Where is everybody?" Bo asked. "Shouldn't they be celebrating?"

"I guess we've been in the closet longer than I thought..." Lauren grinned. "But we have something to celebrate."

"We do?"

Lauren nodded and handed the tablet to Bo. "My initial premise was correct: you had a Chi overdose."

Bo stared at the endless lines of numbers, and graphs that looked like the recordings of a devastating earthquake, then pushed the tablet back. "Look, this is all geek to me – can you explain it in English?"

A group of boisterous women in white jerseys, with streaks of black, gold and red paint on their faces, sauntered past them, drunk more on victory than on alcohol, singing "We are the champions" in at least four different keys. Bo and Lauren exchanged looks, and the doctor just sighed a silent "I told you so" when one woman slapped her on the back and said "Awesome match, my friend. Sorry you didn't make it!" and rejoined her companions.

"...and at the end, Germany always wins, huh?"

Lauren shrugged. "Some things apparently don't change." She pushed the tablet back towards Bo. "But you have changed. Remember the times when you sucked the Chi out of a room full of people?" Bo shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and Lauren laid a calming hand on her arm. "This is much more powerful, and at the same time entirely harmless. Well, apart from certain side effects that may turn out to be detrimental to my wardrobe… Anyway, I don't know how and when and why, but the English translation of this geek is: you are breathing everyone's Chi, all the time, in tiny doses. That's why you don't feel the need to feed any more: you're feeding all the time. Chi is life force, right? It's energy. Now, everyone who's alive is constantly giving away some of that life force. Humans, Fae – we're all exuding energy. My theory was that when tens of thousands of people are excited about something, a football match, for example, that life force would be strong enough to register."

"And, boy, did it ever..."

Lauren grinned. "Smug suits you, you know?"

"You look way more smug than I ever could, Doctor Lewis!" Bo chuckled.

"Well, the discovery that you ingest and metabolise Chi the same way you ingest and metabolise oxygen can be considered quite a break-through. Unless I'm very much mistaken, a crowd like this could probably generate enough Chi to heal whatever injuries you might sustain, and-" Lauren frowned. "Not that I ever want to test that."

"No, but I'm afraid chances are we might have to."

They sat in silence for a while, then Bo straightened up. "Let's just hope it won't be anything a college basketball game with a less-than-four-figure attendance won't fix, okay?" She jumped up and grabbed Lauren's hand. "And now that the biology test is over, I think there's something we need to do."

###

"Ysabeau – and in this very moment I wish you had a middle name – Dennis!" Even in her close-to-fainting state, barely keeping herself on her feet and feeling like she had just run three marathons in a row, Bo could tell that Lauren was angry. Livid, actually. And even though she couldn't help thinking she had done quite well, Bo had to admit that Lauren had a point.

"But it worked, didn't it?"

That the Succubus' voice barely managed to hit a whisper scared Lauren into action. She nodded to her resident to keep monitoring the EEG, then rushed to Bo's side grabbing a water bottle from a nearby cart as she went.

"Here, drink this," she grumbled. "And yes, the preliminary results indicate that your impudent intervention generated the desired effect."

Bo smiled weakly. "Don't be mad at me, doc. You're way too attractive when you're mad."

"It's not funny, Bo. I haven't seen you this wasted since the time when you refused to feed."

"Have you checked the local college sports schedule? A few shot clock countdowns will, as you once put it so nicely, ramp me up to randy."

"I never said that. And you – you are going to the cafeteria. Now." Lauren's voice was stern, but behind the faint blush, Bo could already detect a tiny smile. "There are always plenty of people there. Have a coffee. Sit tight on that sexy rear end of yours. Breathe. Don't even think about moving. And don't even think about doing something silly again. Are we clear?"

Bo gave a mock salute. "Yes, ma'am."

It reminded Lauren so much of the case they worked together at the then infamous Hecuba prison that she had to laugh in spite of herself. "Get out of here, Succubus," she chuckled.

Bo needed the strong arm of a nurse, but she called "you'll check me out, I mean, check in on me later, doc, won't you?" over her shoulder as she wobbled out of the room.

"Nothing ever changes, huh, doc?" The words were spoken in a voice even weaker than Bo's.

"At least she doesn't, much." Lauren looked at the woman on the bed, the electrical wires binding her now hopefully useless. "Welcome back, Tamsin."

"Just don't ask me 'how are we feeling today', doc."

"That would be pointless as I know the answer: dizzy, hungry, glad to be alive, and slightly irate."

"I would add 'like shit', but other than that, it's a pretty good summary." Tamsin sat up and gave her neck a tentative roll. "So what'd Bo do this time to get your panties all twisted up?"

Lauren reached for her stethoscope. "She brought you back."

"Ha. Of course that would upset you," Tamsin snorted.

"You know, if the doc was making a habit of letting Bo's lovers, ex or current, bite the dust, I wouldn't even be here." Dyson nodded to Lauren. "I heard the news and came as fast as I could."

"At least now I know I'm not in Kansas any more, hooray – the Wolfman and his knight-in-white-armour complex are out in full force."

"She could have left you on Zee's balcony, but she didn't. She could have risked waking you to a state where your brain would be best compared to boiled broccoli, but she didn't. In fact, she could have done plenty of things but spend hours on trying to find a cure for you." He laid a hand on her shoulder. "And it's good to see you too, partner."

Tamsin eyed the doctor warily. "So you want me to thank you, is that it?"

"Actually, you should thank Bo. She breathed enough Chi into you to bring half an army back to life, and it nearly drained her."

"Where is she now?" Dyson asked.

"In the unlikely event that she for once followed my advice, she's in the cafeteria, recharging."

"What? Feeding?"

"Don't worry, Dyson, she's only having coffee, with a little Chi on the side." Lauren briefly explained Bo's new-found abilities.

"Wow. I seriously wonder what happened when she was gone..." Dyson mused.

"Me too. But I'm not sure I'm hoping for her to remember, or if I'd rather she didn't."

"Listen, guys, and sorry to interrupt your little heart-to-heart, but can anyone tell me what the fuck you're talking about?"

Lauren left that task to Dyson and pretended to busy herself with rearranging the items on the counter top in alphanumerical order. She had hoped that by now, Tamsin's clumsy barbs wouldn't find their mark so easily any more, but she found that competing with the Valkyrie was even worse than competing with the Wolf. Dyson had at least been a worthy opponent.

"So," Tamsin concluded, turning to Lauren, "while you and Bo are honeymooning in Greece, you want me to babysit the Motley Sunshine Crew."

"Actually, if anyone was looking for a babysitter, I would have recommended someone slightly more mature." Lauren kept her voice level.

The snarky return died on Tamsin's tongue when she met the disdain in the doctor's eyes. The Valkyrie topped the human by a handful of inches in height, not to mention a few centuries in age, but suddenly, she felt small. In the warm brown depth, she saw all the losses Lauren had suffered, and the self-respect that helped her survive every one of them. She turned to Dyson and realised that he, too, had lost Bo, and even worse, Ciara. Lauren had to carry Nadia to her grave and was still carrying the feeling of guilt. Kenzi had seen Hale's life bleed from him. Human or Fae, grief, defeat and sacrifice were constant companions to all of them, she had seen them cry and curse and rage, yet they had recovered from each blow their dignity intact. She didn't like facing it, but remembering how she had enjoyed watching Lauren stumble, how gleefully she had rubbed salt into her wounds when she was certain of Bo's affection was anything but dignified. And now Lauren was looking at her like the brat she felt she was, and she had to turn her head away.

Dyson noted the small nod Lauren gave in acknowledgement of Tamsin's unspoken apology and broke the uncomfortable silence. "We simply need every hand we can get," he said. "Doc, how long will it take for her to get her full strength back?"

Lauren shrugged. "From what I can tell, she should be good to go in a day or two. After her little stunt, Bo needs some rest as well, and somewhere crowded, if possible. Can you call the council and take Tamsin to the Dal? And don't be secretive about; in fact, be as blatant as possible."

"You want every spy the Ancients employ to know that she's back."

"Exactly. Bo and I will take a more surreptitious route. Actually, I'm thinking of taking the subway – it's rush hour, so a trip all the way from Downsview to Finch should be enough to get her back on track, so to speak." And without any side effects unsuitable for public places, Lauren added secretly.

###

"Evony excuses herself." Vex yawned. "She says she has more urgent matters to attend to. I believe that translates into she's either riding one of her horses or one of her grooms. One didn't want to go into the particulars."

Tamsin caught herself rolling her eyes in a way that even to her felt like an imitation of Lauren's signature expression and quickly changed her face into her own smirk. "You'll surely relay the good news to her like a faithful lap dog."

"Moving on..." Trick cleared his throat. "It seems that our task, while my granddaughter and Doctor Lewis are searching for information on the Glaukes, is to find Iris."

"Last known whereabouts, the party," Dyson added.

"You mean, the park," Trick said. Five puzzled faces turned towards him. "Bo, you saw her in the park. Don't you recall?"

Confused, Bo shook her head.

"You were..."

"Hang on, Trick." Dyson held up his hand. "Are you sure that was after the party?"

"Absolutely. I came here to, well, to be frank, I wanted to look for a recipe for clam dip, like the one they had there, and then Bo rushed in, and..."

"Wait a minute," Dyson interrupted again. "On the force, we had a seminar once on memory loss, and they said that you should try to guide the witness towards recovering their own memories instead of providing what you know. Bo, what is the last thing you clearly remember?"

"You guys going off to look for Mark."

"Okay, picture the scene."

A faint smile played around Bo's lips as she glanced at Lauren. "Done." Even in a dress that looked like a pregnant curtain with ball bearing shoulder straps and matching belt, Lauren had been radiantly beautiful.

"What did you do next? Take it step by step – literally."

Bo closed her eyes to concentrate. She tried to work Iris' face and the park together into one image. "She was… I did find her..." She frowned. "On a bench. We talked. She was upset, crying. Then everything went black..." A sentence came back: "She said she was a murderer."

"She killed the father of the girl whose body she took over," Dyson said.

"I said, or maybe I only thought, that I was the same when I was her age, but that I didn't know who I was, what I was, that I didn't know what I was doing." She looked at Lauren. "I think I wanted her to know that things can change, that power can be controlled, but she kept crying and saying that I shouldn't touch her. I only wanted to calm her down."

"You said everything went black?" Trick asked. "Is that when you lost your memory?"

"No, I mean literally, everything turned black, the whole park, trees, flowers, grass, everything."

"Like in our vision..."

"Vision?"

"We drank the Coquetel, the drink of prophesy," Trick explained.

Tamsin snorted. "Wow, now that was smart..."

"Well, we didn't actually believe it was the real thing," Bo shuddered. "I remember that vision. So many lives lost."

"Obliterated by a vast nothingness," Trick nodded. "And that's what happened in the park?"

"No… I'm not sure… I thinking I'm mixing something up here..."

She turned to Lauren who took her hand and said: "Easy, Bo. Let it come to you."

"If you're trying too hard, you might lose the thread," Dyson said.

Bo stared at her hand in Lauren's. "My arm went black. Almost up to my elbow. As if I had dipped it into an ink well."

"That's it!" Trick slapped the table top. "That's how you came into the Dal that day!"

"I got it now!" Bo seemed almost ecstatic. "You told me Iris was really Nyx – the night, darkness personified, so powerful that even Zeus fears her."

The Blood King nodded vigorously. "Born from Chaos, one of the original Ancients, mother of Death and Doom, of Pain and Rage."

Tamsin cleared her throat. "Lovely girl," she quipped. "So glad you remembered her."

"We figured that the only way to stop her was by using the metal box my father gave me for my birthday."

An uneasy silence settled over the bar room. Finally, Lauren found her voice: "And did you?"

Bo's chest tightened as she remembered coming home to search for the box, only to find that Zee was already looking for it. Fighting Zee and turning the crank on the box. Being blinded by a searing white light. "I think I did. But I may have unleashed something far more evil than Nyx."

TBC