The sun had long set, shadows flickered where candles were lit and light glowed steadily where lamps stood on tables or hung from the ceilings. Bo wrestled with her geometry homework, tired and irritated by it already, though she'd only gotten through the first three problems on a long, double-sided sheet of them. Math would be the end of her, she thought, if Kenzi didn't finish her off first.
Kenzi nibbled on another cookie, her shoulder pressed against Bo's and her long black hair brushing over the homework Bo was trying so hard to get done. Cookie crumbs scattered across the table and under Bo's pencil, leaving grease-stains everywhere if Bo wasn't quick enough to brush them away. And Kenzi had been nattering on for ages now about the newest styles in fashion, the 'mean girls' in her class and her conviction that the mystery meat served at lunch on Tuesdays was actually just tofu, boiled in pig fat.
"I mean, come on, it's not even the right texture," Kenzi's voice was a sharp whine in Bo's ear, and she tried again to shrug it off and focus on the equation she needed to find the length of the hypotenuse on this stupid, ugly triangle. "It tastes like pork, but it's way too squishy, even for processed meat…"
The clock ticked loudly in time with Kenzi's voice, a reminder that it was already past ten o'clock at night, well past time Kenzi went home, and Bo still had her English assignment to read and analyze. Bo was usually late on assignments, and sometimes, she never did them at all. But she'd promised her Gramps that this quarter, it would be different, and she would get back on the honor roll. Even if it killed her.
And at this rate, it probably would.
"Kenzi, it's getting late," Bo interrupted through clenched teeth. Her shoulders were still hunched over her binder and textbook, and her pencil tapped impatiently over her dirty sheet of paper, stained with eraser marks and smeared lead and cookie crumbs. She tilted her head to glare at her best friend, who raised her eyebrows back at her.
"So?" Kenzi's mouth was full of cookie when she spoke, and Bo and her homework were once again battered by the cookie crumbs that flew from Kenzi's mouth straight at them.
"God, say it, don't spray it!" Bo's voice was growing sharper and sharper with her impatience. She tossed her pencil away from her, frustration and anxiety rising in a wave through her belly to her chest, and she angrily swiped away the crumbs that had landed on her face and stuck there.
"Well, aren't you gonna at least walk me home?"
At least Kenzi had swallowed her mouthful before asking. The petite adolescent dropped the rest of her cookie on the kitchen island and rose with Bo. The stools they sat on scraped irritatingly against the tile flooring, and Kenzi's impossibly high stilettos snapped against the floor when she followed Bo out of the kitchen and down the narrow hallway that led to the front door. Bo grabbed Kenzi's jacket from the hook, and with her face a stormy mask of annoyance and frustration, shoved it at her.
"I have homework to finish, Kenz. I love you, but you have to go," Bo had at least finally managed to control the tone of her voice. It was no longer sharp and cutting, but it was still a little cold. Kenzi's expression turned first frightened, then beseeching, and she didn't pull her jacket on around her.
"But Bo, those girls at school, I told you –"
"You'll be fine, Kenzi," Bo sighed, exasperated and at the end of her rope, "they didn't follow you here, they won't follow you home. You're a big girl, you can handle a couple of bullies."
Kenzi only stood and stared at Bo for a moment. Her pale, periwinkle eyes bored through Bo with an expression of mixed hurt and betrayal, and Bo almost regretted her earlier harshness. But Bo had faith in Kenzi, she was a tough kid and could handle herself. Right now, Bo needed to handle her homework. And Gramps wasn't around tonight to babysit, or to take Kenzi home; he had work to do too, at the pub he'd worked so hard to get open.
Mischief flashed in Kenzi's eyes. She straightened a little, her shoulders stiffened and her fingers tightened around her jacket.
"I'll help you with your homework," she offered, and stood her ground.
Bo almost laughed. Even if Kenzi really could help her with her homework – the subject matter for which she wouldn't learn for another year – she'd most likely get sidetracked within a minute of just reading it and start talking again about boys and shoes and how everyone at school was so jealous over the jacket she'd just 'acquired'. So Bo only crossed her arms over her chest and raised one eyebrow skeptically at her best friend.
"No, you won't." Bo's voice was decisive. She'd already made up her mind, and her mind was already on the mountain of homework she still had to get done, and it was already almost ten thirty. That stupid clock in the hall just kept ticking those far-too-short minutes away.
"But Bo, I keep trying to tell you – "
"You've been telling me, Kenzi," Bo almost growled out her frustration this time. Her hands fell on Kenzi's shoulders and she bodily moved Kenzi closer to the front door. Its paint was beginning to peel, and Gramps had been going on for weeks now about how Bo should help out around the house and repaint it for him one of those weekends. "You've walked home alone before, you can do it again. You'll be fine, okay?"
Kenzi stared back at her doubtfully, but knew she wasn't going to get any help out of Bo that night. Bo hated the insecurity and anxiety that frayed the edges of Kenzi's face and paled her cheeks just a little. But Kenzi finally drew her fancy new black leather jacket on around her shoulders and shrugged well into it. It was finally spring, but it was definitely still cold out, especially at night. Kenzi's hand was cold when it settled over one of Bo's on the doorknob, and a sharp edge of worry speared through Bo for an instant before she remembered the thirty problems left of her geometry homework and the three chapters she hadn't yet read in "The Scarlet Letter" and shoved that worry away. Kenzi would get home just fine, and Bo would finish her homework once she'd gone, even if it took her all night.
"Okay," Kenzi said uncertainly, and twisted the doorknob. The door opened with a long, laborious creak and cold air rushed in to replace the warmth of Bo's run-down little home. Bo watched her best friend carefully zip up her jacket, the zipper flashed cheerfully in the dim lamplight of the hallway, and the petite, ballerina girl shuffled across the threshold. Yellow lamplight mingled with clear, crisp, white moonlight on the smooth lines of Kenzi's new jacket, and made the black material glow a little. The shiny buttons on its front pockets glinted, the little skulls etched into them grinned eerily at Bo, but Bo only stared at Kenzi's dismayed face across the threshold of her home.
"I'll see you tomorrow then," Bo prompted. It was cold, standing in the doorway. She shivered against it, and watched while Kenzi gave her a tight smile and slowly turned away. Bo heard a mutter in response, but Kenzi's words were so softly spoken, she couldn't make them out. Kenzi's heeled boots snapped on the pavement. Bo didn't wait for Kenzi to disappear into the deep, cold shadows of night before pulling the door shut and turning back to the math and English homework that had put her in such a foul mood all day to begin with.
Tamsin had taken Bo out to a Dark bar for lunch. Aside from it being literally a bit darker than the other Light Fae bars Bo had frequented over the last couple of years, it really was no different from any other bar Bo had ever been in. And it was certainly lighter than the dance club Vex had owned, once upon a time.
Bo didn't really know what she'd expected from a Dark Fae bar. Maybe peanut shells on the floor and smoke in the air, or more fist-fighting and brawls next to the bar area, shattered glass on every surface, and bigger, burlier men and cruel-faced women. There was certainly an air of bad attitude, and the looks that Bo got from almost every patron was scathing, condescending, or downright hateful. But Bo wasn't here for the other patrons, and didn't care if they wore those glares until wrinkles scarred their faces and their expressions were frozen into masks of anger and hatred. She was here because Tamsin had looked at her with such frank concern at the Dal and told her that everyone she knew, everyone she loved and trusted to tell her the truth, had been lying to her.
And the Dawning was close, Bo could feel it marching like ants under skin, and it made her itchy, and anxious.
When Tamsin finally settled into the seat opposite hers, two cold bloody Caesars in hand, and passed one over to her, Bo offered her a questioning stare in return and leaned back into her own chair. Tamsin was already sipping at her drink and made no move to explain herself.
"What am I doing here?" Bo's voice was sharp with her impatience. She'd already suffered through a long, grueling day, and she was missing her enormous king-sized bed and the blonde she wished she could wrap her arms around. She wanted to get this over with, quickly.
Tamsin sighed. It was deep, and long, and heavy, and it set Bo on edge. Carefully, Tamsin put her drink down on the wooden table between them, her fingers lingered on the stalk of celery that rose from the edge, and finally looked Bo straight in the eye. The expression she conveyed sent a shiver of anxiety down Bo's spine and made the Succubus sit up straighter.
"There's a good chance you won't make it through the Dawning," Tamsin's voice didn't hold its usual dark, witty sarcasm. It was naked in its honesty, and Bo felt herself tense with the worry that gnawed at her, prompted by Tamsin's frankness and undecorated words.
"That's not what Trick said," Bo retorted, "or Hale. Or Dyson."
Dammit, they wouldn't lie to her! Not about this, not about something as important, as life or death, as Bo's Dawning. Would they?
Tamsin leaned forward, her voice took a turn for the aggressive and a scowl flowered across her face.
"I have listened to them bullshit you all week," her anger was clearly evident in her voice, "the Dawning –," Tamsin hesitated. The anger that had knit her brows and tightened the lines around her mouth softened, and Bo thought she looked almost frightened. Tamsin's lips pressed together, and those faded green eyes, bright in the dim light of the bar, flashed with an expression that Bo could not read. "The Dawning is the most brutal thing you will ever go through, times infinity."
"Are you trying to throw me off my game?" Resentment, sharpened by the bitter pangs of fear Bo could not suppress whenever anyone mentioned the Dawning, bloomed through Bo's chest, hot and burning, "Because this is my life we're talking about here!"
Tamsin only stared at her for a long moment, her gaze intense and unwavering. It was unsettling, and Bo couldn't decide now who to believe: the Valkyrie that had tried to sabotage and ruin her ever since they'd met until only a few weeks ago, or the family she'd found, who loved her, who'd saved her time and again from others and from herself.
Finally, when Tamsin spoke, her words were softer and calmer, "I'm trying to help you."
And then Bo understood the expression she'd seen flashing across Tamsin's face only seconds ago. Rarely had Tamsin ever been unguarded around her. She'd always been on top of her game, always held her cards close. She was sharp, and witty, and scathing in her remarks and accusations, and she only ever had insults and indictments to offer, especially where Bo was concerned.
But ever since Bo had faced down O'Meara a little more than a week ago, Tamsin had seemed different. From the moment she'd helped her find Lauren deep in the Fomor's dungeon, up until the next day, when she'd broken into his mansion to break her and Lauren out, Bo had only ever seen Tamsin's hard, cold exterior. And she'd thought that there was nothing more to Tamsin than exactly that. But the way Tamsin had knelt by Seth's side, had kissed and comforted her, the way Tamsin had defied the woman she'd sworn her fealty to in order to protect a lost, frightened girl… Bo had begun to learn to see Tamsin in a different light.
The expression Bo had seen tear across Tamsin's face in the grainy, flickering light of the bar had been one of unguarded worry.
"Why?" Bo's voice was sharp and suspicious. Perhaps Tamsin did have a gentler side to her. Perhaps Tamsin was capable of caring about someone, even loving them. But why on earth would the battle-hardened Valkyrie feel anything like that toward her, when they'd been nothing but enemies since the day they met?
Frustration ripped Tamsin away from the table she leaned on. She leaned back in her chair and scowled heavily at Bo, and her eyes danced on every surface in the bar except Bo's face. "Why what?" she snapped, and her hands slapped onto her thighs before Tamsin finally looked Bo in the eye again.
And Bo could see there the insecurity that Tamsin struggled so hard to hide.
"Why do you care?" Bo's voice was soft now. The rough sounds of people laughing, of silverware snapping against plates, of loud metal music thrashing through the thick air and intense ambient conversation almost drowned out her words, but Bo knew that Tamsin had heard her. Her green eyes fell for a moment before meeting Bo's again, and Tamsin's lips were pressed so tightly together they were a thin line of white against her pale face.
Bo almost thought that Tamsin would respond with indignant indifference, or a hotly-spoken denial. Perhaps the Valkyrie would just up and leave, give up on this strange, strained heart-to-heart the conversation, or argument, had turned to. But Tamsin stood her ground, sat solidly, tensely, in her seat and leaned forward again. Her arms crossed over each other on the table, they pushed away the bloody Caesar she'd forgotten in the thick of their messy squabble, and cool, faded green eyes, saturated with frustrated worry, held Bo's own.
"Because it's not right," Tamsin's words were quietly spoken, but Bo could feel the edge of steel that underlay them. "Because everyone should stand a chance against their own Dawning, and their placatory bullshit is sabotaging you."
"Is that why you helped us two weeks ago, when I was bat-shit crazy and Kenzi was lost and Lauren was kidnapped?" Bo's words were sharper than she'd intended, but her heart was pounding in her chest with the realization that Tamsin wasn't the hard, arrogant bitch Bo had made her out to be. The expression of anger and resentment that had pulled her mouth into a frown and knit her eyebrows together softened, though, into one of interest and consideration.
Tamsin's lips pressed together again, momentarily, before she breathed out another heavy sigh.
"Because it was right?" Bo pressed on when Tamsin didn't respond, and her tone was softer than it had been. She leaned in closer to Tamsin, trying to hold the eye-contact Tamsin looked like she wanted to break, and to hold on to this odd truce that seemed to have sprung up between them out of nowhere.
"Because he was wrong," Tamsin finally answered. She licked her lips and leaned back a little, though now her shoulders were hunched with resignation and she looked tired and old.
Maybe Bo had been wrong too, all along, about Tamsin. Bo considered the woman sitting hunched in front of her, and really thought about everything she thought she knew about her: the tall, tough, vindictive detective, who'd allied herself with the Dark and worked alongside the Light – even if it was a peace-project cooked up by the Elders to promote goodwill and amity between the two sides. She'd been dogged in her investigation into the Fae that Bo had drained almost dry right outside the Dal – so long ago now Bo felt it had been years since it happened. She'd pursued Bo like a dog after a bone, had been itching to get Bo into the custody of the Dark, and for what?
For justice. She'd gone against the Morrigan's orders to leave Seth's investigation alone for the same reason. Had claimed Maia, a human, against her own nature, for the same reason. She'd even come to Bo's side, had risked her life to get Lauren and Kenzi out of that horrible place, to get Bo away from that horrible man, for the same reason. For justice.
Maybe Tamsin's song and dance hadn't been about getting Bo killed. Maybe it had been about getting justice for the man that Bo had almost killed. And maybe Tamsin's sudden change of heart, and her concern over Bo and Bo's Dawning was true.
And that meant that the Dawning really was some terrible, terrifying experience that Bo might not get through in one piece. And Tamsin really wasn't the black-hearted enemy Bo had chalked her up to be.
Author's Note:
Leader: Haha, yeah, I guess the college AU gets done a lot, by fans of just about every -dom. I intended this to be more of a high school thing, so I was thinking it was closer along the lines of that other episode in S2, 'Confaegion'. But with less silliness, unfortunately. I think Tamsin might once have been a lot like Bo, and for me, at least, as I was watching those first few episodes with baby/teen/"adult" Tamsin, I felt like she really kind of reminded me of Bo, just a lot younger and more innocent. She's afraid of hurting people, when Massimo tells her that she's killed so many and will kill so many more, she just looks so devastated, and like she'd rather do anything than hurt anyone, and I saw a little of S1 Bo in that. I'll kind of lead you closer to that in the next couple of chapters, because I think this quality in her is overlooked, it's never spoken about out loud or otherwise, but you can kind of see what things are important to her in her behavior in a few episodes in S3. And yes, I'm sorry, Bo does miss Lauren's awards ceremony. I was sad-face about it in the show, and sad-face about it in my story, but that's who Bo's been, and she did miss it for kind of an important reason. I just hated that she lied to Lauren about it. A lot of what you're not seeing in my story parallels the events of S3, and I did take that scene directly from 'Fae-ge Against The Machine'. I added it for a little lightness, to show how much my story is paralleling some of the events in the show, and because Lauren was just so darn 'adorbs' (to steal a word from Kenzi) in that scene. Sometimes I watch it when I'm feeling down, because it cheers me up. ;)
Gogobolo: Yay, you're back! I missed you. ;) I have to admit, Tamsin is perhaps one of my favorite characters on the show. She's so interesting and complex, and there are times I find myself relating a whole lot to her. Not that the way in which I relate to her has much to do with her part in the four chapters of which she stars, but still. She's intriguing, and towards the end of S3, I found myself seeing qualities in her that I felt were understated and somehow missed, by some of the characters of the show and also by my fellow viewers. Maybe it was because I was projecting, and because I like her so much I wanted to give reason for her behavior, but I think what I saw in her makes a lot of sense. So hopefully, when I reveal what I see in her, it'll make sense to you too. Maia is my OC, and so also my baby. So yes, she'll have a big part to play, but it won't be evident until book 3. Tamsin also has a big part to play, in my opinion, but in my mind, she always has. They introduced her as a regular on the show for a reason, and considering the manner in which she was introduced, for her to not have a bigger part to play would seem a bit of a letdown to me. Young Doccubus was fun for me to write, and young Bo/Kenzi was enormous fun for me to write too. I'm so glad you enjoy reading it, because writing it was such a pleasure for me!