AN: I am truly, truly going out on a limb here. I somewhat wrote this in haste and with guilt, guilt over taking so long to get to this update. Once again, I can't tell you when I'll be able to update again. In the spirit of striking while it's hot (or is it get while it's hot?), anyway, it's hot off the presses. A rough draft of an even rougher idea. Be kind.
And hey - just in case we forget, Lost Girl and it's characters belong to its creators, producers, and ShowCase. I'm just here for the fun, the practice, and all the pretty dresses.
Thanks to Kravn for your faith and to you, kind readers, for the follows, reviews, and favorites. Now, everyone: get out your passports and chewing gum because we're going on a trip. Hope it's not too bumpy.
Only by sheer will did Lauren buttress herself against Kenzi's body, blocking her from charging up the few steps and across the small landing that separated her dagger from the Mesmer's throat. They were rams locking horns, and this small space, their alpine battlefield. Lauren gripped Kenzi's shoulders and struggled to get Kenzi to stand down. "Please," Lauren pleaded, "just let me handle this."
Kenzi continued to surge toward the front door almost toppling Lauren over. Her eyes moistened with anger and her voice rasped with rage. "He needs to bleed."
"Kenzi, Kenzi!" Lauren tightened her grip to shift Kenzi's focus away from the Mesmer. Kenzi relented and touched her forehead against Lauren's shoulders—perhaps to regain her balance, catch her breath, or, as they might possibly argue in years to come, to tame the storm threatening to burst from the back of her throat. Lauren spoke in a low voice for Kenzi and Kenzi alone to hear, "God knows I want to rip his throat out—but that could get one or both of us killed. You're all I have left. We're all we have. Please." Her voice was firm and caring. She watched Kenzi's energy recede and her dagger return to the holster hidden at the back of her pants. "Thank you," Lauren whispered and turned back to Vex.
Vex bit into an apple he'd been holding, smiled, genuflected with a flourish with his arms wide open, then stepped aside to let them enter.
The trio encircled each other within the cramped Serengeti of their living room. Vex found the chill of suspicion and unease entertaining, unsurprising, and it didn't take long for their obvious enmity towards him to become tedious. All pleasantries aside, there was business to attend to. On his third or fourth pass around the furniture he plopped down onto the couch and relaxed deep into the cushions of their sofa. Kenzi kicked at his legs just as he was about to perch the scuffed heels of his boots on the pirate's chest that doubled as a coffee table. Kenzi paced the open living room, restless and feral.
"No need for you to get comfortable. You're not staying long." Kenzi rooted herself a few feet away from him, glaring. He eyed her intently: she exuded winter, a knobby, leafless, irritable tree whose exposed joints clawed toward Vex in anticipation of any provocation—a word, a twitch, an arrhythmic beat of his heart—anything to justify a mad swing of her limbs to mash his self-satisfied face.
"Yeah." He smirked. "Missed you, too."
She crossed her arms and shrugged, unmoved.
Lauren sat across from him. "What do you want?"
"He dies. That's what I want." Kenzi's eyes shone luminous, loathing, unflinching as a full moon.
"Death, death is so boring." Vex sighed and offered a silky response. "I didn't come here to upset your apple cart, darlings. I saw you in London and then you disappeared before we had a chance to even have a proper tea…and you two really missed a performance, might I add, scooting out before the big reveal in the final act. I was brilliant…I was nominated for an Olivier!"
"Go on." Lauren tapped the tip of her tongue against the back of her teeth, her anger visible in the corners of her eyes.
Vex laced his fingers together on his lap, composing himself as a penitent might seconds before entering a confessional. "There isn't a day goes by when I don't think about what I've done. There are laws and I gave my blood oath but now my debt has been paid."
"Massive fail. Didn't hear the word sorry in any of that. I'm done," Kenzi said quickly, turning away and storming toward the kitchen.
"Wait!" Vex stood and thrust his arm in her direction forcing Kenzi to freeze mid-step, spin, and face him.
"Stop it!" Lauren shouted, bolting towards him.
Kenzi flailed under his power. "You're a shit hole in need of a deeper shit hole."
Vex controlled Kenzi like a marionette and like a puppeteer, he pulled her across the living room and lowered her to sit on the side chair beside the sofa, nearer to him. Invisible straps forced and trapped her there. Misery etched deeply across the Mesmer's face as he loosened his hold on her. Whatever wickedness may have brought Vex to their door kept Lauren and Kenzi on high alert, even as the Mesmer's emotions shifted back and forth between depraved and depressed.
"Massimo is dead." He forced Kenzi to look directly at him before slowly releasing his hold over her. "He suffered greatly, if that helps. And I am sorry, Kenzi."
Kenzi absorbed his sadness and, with a sympathetic expression, pushed herself up from the side chair and approached him, hesitation in her steps. Leaning forward as if to offer comfort, she surprised Vex and slugged his jaw cold and hard with her fist, his head snapping sideways under the force of the punch. Peering up at her while rubbing the reddening spot, he didn't retaliate.
Vex sneered. "Once again with feeling, why don't you."
"God that felt good." Kenzi brushed past Lauren and stood behind her.
"Now that we got that out of the way, let me guess why you're really here."
"Not interested in playing twenty questions so I'll save you the trouble…it's Tamsin, all right?" Vex flexed his jaw side to side.
"What?" Kenzi and Lauren answered in tandem.
"She misses her mom. A bit crazy and pathetic to think of you that way, but there it is." He nodded at Kenzi.
Oh, Lauren's mind raced. So it wasn't Bo. She's with Rainer, why would she want either of us back. Disillusioned once again, Lauren struggled to regain some apathy, without it she might succumb to feelings of nostalgia, waxing sentimental, or worse—self-pity. Of course Tamsin would want Kenzi back. We weren't friends but they are. The notion that no one was looking for her, even a Mesmer with something to gain, rang as clear as a church bell in the night, unequivocal in its tolling that Lauren was now, as she had always been with the Fae, on her own. She had disappeared and no one cared.
"Tamsin, huh. She sent you to find me." Kenzi jammed her hands onto her hips, elbows wide.
"Unusual choice," Lauren added.
"It's complicated," Vex continued.
"Everything about you Fae is complicated," Kenzi huffed.
"Let me take you back."
"Oh hell, no." Kenzi chafed. "We're not going anywhere with you."
"Fine, I'll stay."
Kenzi shifted her weight from one boot to the other. "What about hell no is unclear to you?"
Lauren eyed the ceiling. "What's the going price for a human doctor, Vex."
"Stop right there. I'm not a bounty hunter, not that it's beneath me. I've done worse for money. But it's not what you think, trust me," he mumbled.
Kenzi laughed. "What was that? Speak up. So you're doing this from the bottom of your bottomless heart?"
"Sarcasm, nice. Haven't you met your quota for today? If you'd just give me a chance to explain..."
Kenzi dismissed him. "Yeah, right. Like there isn't a thing you can say that doesn't have 'I'm a liar' written all over it, under it, through it. I'd be able to smell the stink of your lies in the middle of a fish market." She strode across the living room and opened the front door.
"Massimo was my last link to Evony." Vex took the jibe. Then, looking at Lauren. "The Morrigan's out of the picture too, but you knew that already didn't you, darling?"
"Don't call me that," she glared.
Vex could almost taste the bitterness as the words dripped from Lauren's lips.
"You still haven't said what you want with us." Lauren pointed at the space between herself and Kenzi.
"Friendship? Forgiveness? A port in a storm?" Vex peered at her sideways.
"I can't think of one reason to say yes to any of that." Lauren yanked on Vex's collar to get him to his feet, tugging him towards the door.
"Look at me!" He threw his hands up and waved them a bit. "Think of it. We can make the world our pearl! The Three Amigos?" He shrugged off Lauren's hold on him as they neared the door.
"No, amigo." Kenzi pushed the door open even wider, and shoved him under the doorway. Vex gripped the doorjamb and dug in.
"C'mon," he grinned, "we were a great team, once. A few laughs we had, yeah?"
"You forget one thing…" Lauren stepped next to Kenzi.
Kenzi nodded at her friend. "We don't trust you. And we never will. Ever."
Vex hopped back into the flat with ease just missing a grab by Kenzi. "You gravely misunderstand me." He reentered the living space, encircling the room again. This time he took a few seconds to survey the flat and its potential as a den, a resting place, his new Jerusalem and a chance to set his conscience right—a conscience, he chided himself, when did that happen? He took notice of the utter absence of any personal effects that might translate into home décor: no artwork, personal photographs—the furniture sat discolored and mismatched, lonely. This was a place that could be abandoned with ease. His eyes searched for something personal and he needed to find it before he was ejected, which, based on the angry whispering happening behind him, was seconds away. Then, he saw it. He pretended to check for dust with the point of his index finger then, quickly, Vex swiped a carelessly tossed scarf sitting on a side table and stuffed it into his sleeve. He spied a set of keys and at the last minute decided not to take them. Just in time. The whispering stopped and he heard the low growl of an angry Kenzi at his neck.
"You know what? I think we're done here."
Vex spun towards her and took slow steps back to the threshold of the flat, coming within inches of her body. "It's not what you're thinking, love," he insisted.
She bared her teeth, snapping. "Don't you touch me, ever."
Vex stepped into the landing but not before Lauren grasped his elbow.
"What are you doing?! This rat needs to leave!" Kenzi didn't expect this.
Lauren mouthed to Kenzi, "I said to trust me." Turning to Vex, "I want to know why you're really here."
Vex stood still, glanced at Kenzi then back at Lauren.
"Answer me, Vex." Lauren's impatience punctured the silence.
"Invite me for brunch and I'll tell you the whole sordid tale, all right? Every little smidgen," he smiled. "Okay, pigeon?"
Kenzi narrowed her eyes at Lauren before storming out of the living room. They watched her go. Vex smirked, "Lover's quarrel?"
Lauren shoved Vex not-so-gently past the landing onto the top steps. "Don't mistake any of what I'm about to say to you as friendship…but if you hurt Kenzi another inch, so help me I will find a way to kill you. If I can take down the Morrigan, you'll be a cake walk."
The coldness in her voice humbled him immediately, and Vex nodded.
Lauren continued. "Good. Tomorrow. Two o'clock. No one wakes for breakfast around here. So do not show up a second sooner or later." Without waiting for an answer, she slammed it with such force she half expected the door to fall off its hinges.
Kenzi and Lauren shared the same first impressions of their flat in Barcelona: it was a few fleas and a couple of threads shy of being a dump. The building tilted at a slight angle on an alley within the shadow of another shadow, forgotten by time, maybe, but alive and well and haunted by dreams. This became evident when Kenzi and Lauren discovered a yellowing door at the rear of the galley kitchen, a doorway that led, literally, to the stars. Up a creaky stairwell and through a second door, it opened to a private terrace with a cushioned ledge that wrapped around the square perimeter of the roof. Kenzi and Lauren had found a rusty bistro table on the street and hauled it up the five flights plus the one more, just to get it up here. When not touring the city by foot, they often rushed back in spite of any fatigue just to sit in their private aerie and allow time to pass them by as the streets of Barcelona rumbled and sang and pulsed below. They did not speak of the future or the past. They simply marveled at the quiet and how, when one squinted rightly, the twinkling lights of the ships anchored in the harbor shimmered against the rippling sea and shone like constellations to rival the ones floating against the velvet sky above. It had been on this very roof that Kenzi introduced Lauren to dime store romance novels (which became an obsession for Lauren and her mission to find in English when they strolled the book stalls of Els Encants) and the same roof where Kenzi—to Lauren's surprise—won their inaugural backgammon tournament and enabled Kenzi to reclaim the good mattress, the one without the sagging middle and the angry springs.
Of course Kenzi would be up here after Vex left. Lauren did not follow unarmed; she brought with her a pair of shot glasses adorned with the FCB football logo and a bottle of tequila.
Kenzi lay flat on the cushions and heard Lauren step onto the roof. She didn't bother getting up or looking at her. She heard the clink of glasses and a bottle placed on the table.
"I'm not liking you right now. Don't bother buttering me up with alcohol." Kenzi turned her head and spied the label on the bottle, and glared upside down at Lauren, who was doing her best to appear contrite. It was the good stuff. Kenzi returned to her original position and rested her forearm over her eyes. "Okay, butter me up with alcohol."
Lauren poured and nudged Kenzi with the shot glass.
"You know what," Kenzi sat up, "I seem to remember that the last time I listened to someone say trust me I was force fed a guilt sandwich with shit au jus. Massimo not only got away but also got away with murder…thanks to Vex the douche bag. Lauren, that thing let him get away and now, you, after all this—you just invite him back for brunch!" She swallowed the tequila in one gulp, slammed the glass in demand of a second, which Lauren obliged. The second shot followed the first down her throat in record time. Kenzi closed her eyes and wheezed a short, angry sigh.
Lauren winced after downing her first. "Kenzi, I had to find out what he was up to…and to buy us some time!" She sensed Kenzi's steam was not abating even after the two shots, so she loaded up a third in the hope it would tamp down her anger. In a single motion, not anything new for Lauren to see but always a marvel to witness, Kenzi swiped the shot glass with the grace of a cat toying with its food, and in a single motion brought it to her lips, vacuumed the amber liquid, and returned the glass to the table with hardly a sound.
Lauren poured herself a second shot and waited for the courage, like the heat of the tequila, to rise in her chest. "I know of no one else that I trust with my life more than you." Lauren was suddenly self-aware and looked everywhere but at Kenzi. "I never told you what it was like to be a slave, have I?"
Kenzi sat up with her hands on the cushions and her knees pulled tightly together. She shook her head.
"It was flawless," Lauren contemplated.
"Huh, not a word that I associate with slavery."
"The Fae had no feelings for me whatsoever. In that, they were flawless and pure. They never felt pangs of guilt or remorse when it came to my life. They never ran hot or cold. Their estimation of me didn't change whether I was healthy or covered in welts."
"That actually happened?"
"More often than you think, Kenzi."
Lauren's honesty sent a chill through Kenzi, and she filled their glasses to the brim. Kenzi swallowed hard. "Lauren, our friends are Fae. Did they know about this?"
Lauren nodded. "It's their way. Has been since time was invented. Nothing about my life as a slave was a secret."
Kenzi pictured the worst and multiplied that image by the largest number she could imagine, and still she sensed that the depth of whatever pain Lauren must have experienced could not be sufficiently articulated by any equation conjured by anyone Fae or human. She read the sorrow on Lauren's face and how, just below the surface, she must constantly relive the worst of her slavery, Lauren's gaze wandering beyond the horizon and concentrating on the tendrils of painful memory, long extended, and able still to weaken the heart of one of the strongest person's Kenzi ever had the privilege of knowing. Her urge was to say I'm sorry or to offer a consoling touch but Kenzi felt that such a gesture would come across as trite or pandering, especially in the middle of an argument; so she waited for Lauren to come back from wherever her mind had taken her.
"And yet, the funny thing Kenzi, I couldn't bring myself to hate the Fae even though I probably had every right," Lauren continued. "They ruined my life…but there was always somehow just one, just one…" Her voice trailed before picking up again, "…one Fae that would see me and throw me off with a kindness that I, a human slave, could never repay." She peeked her brown eyes at Kenzi's wild blue orbs, and smiled. "It would take so little. I'm a sap," she seemed to apologize.
"No, Lauren, you're human." It was then that Kenzi reached for Lauren's hand and held it.
"And that's why I know, I mean, I really know Kenzi that you have choices. Pick revenge and what will it get you or us?" Lauren's energy brightened. The squall had passed.
"A feel good ending?"
Lauren squeezed Kenzi's hand and then poured more shots, which they downed as quickly as the earlier ones.
"Kenzi, Vex once came between Bo and I." They both winced at the sound of her name said aloud. "And it stopped us for a long time from…" Her voice trailed and just as quickly, she regained it. "I don't want Vex to come between you and I, our friendship."
Kenzi lowered her eyes, a thief caught with a bag full of jewels mid-heist and without an alibi. Her friend's honesty made her feel ashamed and uneasy.
"Kenzi look at me, please," Lauren whispered. Then, when at last, Kenzi braced herself and raised her eyes, Lauren beamed with admiration. "You know what Vex can do…we both do. But I also know what you are made of and you are more capable than any one I've ever met, human or Fae. If you—if we—choose revenge, it will only destroy us in the end. And," she smiled, "I'm not ready for this story to be over."
"Lauren, after all they've done to you, how can you say that? How can you be so sure?"
As she contemplated her answer, Lauren stood and walked the few paces to the edge of the roof, the side that gave way to the horizon of the Barceloneta and the bay crowded with a dozen cruise ships and then, as if on cue, a steamer's horn bellowed from the port reaching across their rooftops and rolling upward toward the hills.
Turning, she found her answer. "I don't know, Kenzi. Maybe it's my one weakness, optimism. I rely on science to give me answers and I can think of no science or research that can fully explain why I cannot hate them. I hate the things they did to me but I cannot bring myself to hate them."
"Not once? You've never hated ever in your life? "
"Okay, once. But that hate was reserved for myself and maybe one day I'll tell you about it." Lauren reminisced on her younger self, the one who had mistakenly murdered innocents through idealism and trust, the one whose sins she could never recover and for whom she would forever strive to repent. "I have no right to make choices for you, Kenz, but I hope you can find it in your heart to trust me."
Once again a horn yawned wide and long into the night. In a few hours it would be morning. The urgings of dawn never arrived late.
Lauren spun around the roof deck with her arms wide open. "This is the most alive I've felt in years, even with the Fae chasing us. I want you to live, I want to live…to make my own choices. Set my own course. Listen to me," she advanced toward the sitting Kenzi, dropped to her knees, and planted her hands on Kenzi's lap, shaking her head, which was full of moths thanks to the tequila. "I don't know how Vex found us and I don't really care. We're still here and I'll be damned if I let him be the reason for us having to go back. If, or when, we go back it'll be because we want to…because you want to. Now, you can make whatever choices you want, Kenzi, but I am hoping you'll still choose Team Human."
Lauren studied Kenzi's blue eyes, hoping but not knowing what her answer would be. She searched for empathy, tenderness, but instead regarded Kenzi's features as a valley of anxiety, void of mischief and mirth. What she saw was grave, as if Kenzi's fate rested on this one answer and fear or uncertainty held her back, from tripping over the edge of the roof and ruining whatever slim chance at happiness Kenzi might have left to her. Lauren's leg muscles strained beneath her weight and she moved to stand. Kenzi pulled her into a hug so quickly and abruptly that at first Lauren's arms dangled by her side before making their way around her friend.
"There's no other team for me," Kenzi assured her before pushing Lauren backwards onto her ass. "Fight's over. Now what's your plan?"
Lauren stood and brushed the dust off the seat of her pants. She held her hand out for Kenzi to take. Lauren guided her to the edge of the roof and draped her arm around Kenzi's shoulder. With her free hand she pointed toward the horizon.
"What'll it take to get onto one of those?"
Kenzi looked seaward and the small fleet of cruise ships in the harbor. Kenzi smiled at the challenge. "As stowaways or crew?"
When Vex realized that no one was going to open the door he reached for the doorknob of the flat and discovered it unlocked. Everything was in place and undisturbed including the keys he had stopped himself from stealing the day before. Immediately, he took out his mobile.
"I don't know where they could have gone. They were here last night, only a few hours ago!" He went from room to room, not expecting to see anyone and yet it agitated him all the more. "They're like the Incas, gone!" He stormed into the galley kitchen and palmed the side of the coffee maker. "Food is still warm. Maybe it's an alien abduction…What? Can't you bring her here?...then make her believe you…I've been on this chase for you for months, get her fucking arse over…fine! Fine! Send the plane ticket to my hotel. And make it at least business class then, will you love?...No, no," Vex argued to the person on the other end. "I gave you my blood oath to find Kenzi not to bring her back…shut it, just shut it, Tamsin. I'm a mesmer not a magician so no, I can't just blink and have them-poof-reappear...the Queen? She's your nut job, not mine…by the way, I got a cherry for you. Bo's going to love this: she's alive…who do you think? Lauren!..yeah, that one. The human doctor…yeah, I can prove it...and I've changed my mind. Fly me first class. Chow, love." Vex hung up and surveyed the room, realizing for the first time and in the raw daylight, just how cramped and weather beaten their flat was. He could see how humans could find it quaint or inviting. Squalor appealed to him when he had been a young man, the romance of Bohemia and all that drivel, but the thrill of suffering unnecessarily faded centuries ago. He flung himself on the couch and stretched his body to its fullest. He made an attempt to keep Kenzi and Lauren there and they had been the wiser. His part had been well played but why the remorse? This fidelity to human souls caught him off guard. After centuries of living, how could the happiness of another soul even begin to matter—but it did, enough for him to track down the not-so-helpless humans to this city by the sea. He laughed at himself. He envied their pluck and missed their friendship. He worried about the Queen and wondered, as he pulled Lauren's scarf from his pocket, if their scent would be enough to resurrect Bo's sanity. Vex heard the sounds of a ship leaving shore, rolled over on the couch, and closed his eyes to sleep.
Lauren had barely dropped her bags and just finished looping the top button of her white uniform when she heard the call for the sail away party. She had only a few minutes to get on deck. The door of her compartment burst open; no surprise, it was Kenzi. Without turning away from the mirror, she finished with the stubborn button and pulled her blonde hair into a tight and high ponytail.
"Really?" she directed Kenzi toward the passport and transit papers strewn on her desk. "And you get riled at me for being unimaginative."
"Sorry! I panicked. You said quick and that's," she pointed at the papers, "quick. Quick style. Quick me up…I got us on the boat, didn't I?"
"Okay, stop. It's a ship not a boat." Lauren clipped on her name tag. Scully.
"You're still a doc, Doc." Kenzi faked a Vaudevillian guffaw.
Lauren turned toward Kenzi, who was also in uniform, a decidedly non-seafaring uniform. Unlike Lauren, her uniform was simple, loose, and lacked officer's bars. A large black SLR camera hung from her neck. Lauren stepped closer and straightened Kenzi's name tag: Mulder. Lauren brushed Kenzi's long black hair with her fingers before resting her palms on Kenzi's shoulders. "You should let me cut this for you."
Kenzi smiled. "You're a surgeon not a stylist, no way."
"It's time to shove off," Lauren sighed.
"Aye, aye doctor."
They hurried down the passageway, climbing higher and higher until they reached topside and the gathering on the sun-drenched deck of the ship. The band was in full swing. Passengers in sun dresses and flowery aloha shirts skirted by, drinks in hand. A final blast from the ship's horn bellowed its good-bye. Lauren and Kenzi stood portside, watching the shore recede and the city-by-the-sea—that had sheltered them from their past and shielded them up until yesterday, from a wayward Mesmer—pull further and further from view until the only clear thing about Barcelona was the fading memory of it and the realization that not once during their entire encounter with Vex did either one of them ask him about Bo.
Thank you for reading. Reviews and thoughts are welcome.
