"So? Lady Tamsin...", Lauren says slowly as they enter Tamsin's apartment. The taxi ride here was silent and uncomfortable, Lauren having too many questions to ask and Tamsin filled with just as many answers. As they stumbled up the steps to the valkyrie's spacious loft (it was closer than Lauren's, and both woman were drunk and exhausted), Lauren's rational mind (admittedly clouded a little by the alcohol she consumed at the bar) decided that there was no better place to start than at the beginning. "Why Lady Tamsin?"
"What do you know about valkyries, Lauren?", Tamsin begins just as cautiously as the doctor did. She unlocks the door, only fumbling with the keys for a moment, and the two woman rush in to escape the cold. "Really. Tell me what you know."
"You already know what I know."
"Tell me anyways."
Tamsin all but trips over the doctor in the doorway as she heads for the kitchen. Lauren shakes her head, already knowing exactly where Tamsin is heading but asking anyways.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to need a nice cold beer to make it through this conversation", she contemplates the liquor she has in the freezer for a second but decides on pulling out the whole 6 pack out of the fridge instead. "Or maybe a few nice cold beers."
She wearily makes her way to the couch, plopping down on it roughly as she opens her first beer. Lauren opens her mouth to speak but Tamsin interrupts her before she can start, leaning forward to catch Lauren's gaze from her spot, still leaning against the front door.
"Just so you know, if any this gets out, I might have to kill you."
Lauren wants to ask her if she's serious, but decides she is too afraid of the answer. She goes to sit down next to Tamsin on her couch.
"Valkyries are the war maidens that serve the Norse God, Odin." She begins slowly, fidgeting with her jacket zipper and avoiding eye contact. Slipping into a comfortable air of professionalism, the doctor starts to recall everything she knows. "They are traditionally women of Scandinavian decent hand chosen to find the heroes of war and bring them to a never ending feast in Valhalla. The hall of heroes."
"What a surprise", Tamsin smiles sadly, "the doctor is well read. What else?"
The doctor thinks for a moment - literature on the valkeryies is hard to come by. They consider themselves a secret order of sorts, and don't like all of their business (regardless of how noble or brave it may seem to others) out in the open - she heard a rumor, years ago when she first started working for the Light, that they once had all the books written on them collected and burned. Even then, Lauren knew that this was a serious bunch. Her relationship with one has just proven that initial notion.
"I know you- well, they use fear and deception to manipulate war. They can instill doubt in someone; it's been thought to be the most potent skill they posses. For a while valkyries offered that skill to armies for a hefty price behind Odin's back."
Tamsin shakes her head grimly, quickly downing the rest of her beer.
"And boy, was he mad."
"Were you one of them, Tamsin? One of those women? Is that why you don't want people to know, because you-"
"Me? Oh fuck no. No way. It was before I was born, but even I had been around I wouldn't have been stupid enough to fuck him over. He's uh", she grabs another beer, "not known for his acts of mercy."
They share an awkward silence, Lauren wondering if she's the first person Tamsin has told all this too - the valkyrie seems tense, scared even, and the doctor wonders what on earth could be effecting her so much. For not the first time tonight, and definitely not the last time, the conversation is filled with too much sour feeling to be continued by either woman. Lauren decides to make her way back to the original question, hoping (and almost praying) that it would involve something a little less heavy. Maybe even something light-hearted.
"Tamsin... Why were they calling you Lady Tamsin? That usually denotes some sort of nobili-"
"Nobility," she mocks, dismissing the word with a wave of her free hand, "yeah yeah yeah."
Finishing off her third beer, the valkyrie fights the urge to throw the bottle at the wall in frustration. She knows she agreed to tell Lauren everything, she knows she has no reason to not trust the doctor with the information... she would almost go as far as to say that she wants to tell Lauren. She just doesn't want to have to tell her everything. She doesn't want Lauren to know who she is. Or what that means. Tamsin drops her head into her hands and lets out a long sigh. Like a band-aid, she thinks, just get it the fuck over with.
"Odin is my father."
"Odin? As in, the Odin?"
"Yeah, the Odin. Good old pops."
"He's your... father. So... so Thor? A-and Loki?"
"Are my idiot brothers, yes. Well, Thor is at least. I never considered Loki a brother. He's always kind of been a prick - someone gave him all cock and no brains."
Tamsin could see the gears working in Lauren's brain; her eyebrows knit together in the way that only happens when she's thinking way too hard about something, her eyes scanning to floor as if it will give her the answers, her lips pulled into a tight line, as if she opened them any comprehension she did attain would slip out through them.
"So are you... a... goddess?"
"Goddess? Oh wow Lauren. No way, not me." She picks up her fourth beer, casually tossing the cap behind her to clatter under a shelf or cabinet, never to be seen again. "I enjoy drinking and women and fighting way too much to be of much use to people looking for their prayers answered."
Lauren's gears begin spinning again. Tamsin smiles despite the situation, always loving to watch the doctor think. On any other day, she would brush the cliché lock of hair out of her face, whisper sweet (and not-so-sweet) nothings in her ear, kiss her neck until she was too distracted to think anymore, practically drag the begging doctor to her bedroom – but not today. (Later she would let out strangled sobs in the shower as Lauren slept in the valkyrie's bed peacefully, thinking how she finally got this far in a relationship only to have what should have been an amazing night ruined by something like her past – something she never wanted to have to let Lauren in to.)
"That woman. Natasha." Lauren looks up at Tamsin; she nods. "Tell me about her."
"She's my sister. Well, half sister. One of many."
"But... she's not a valkyrie? I mean she can't be. Her skin, a-and her hair..."
"She's not a valkyrie, not anymore. Those valkyrie's that were selling they're skills? She was one of them."
"And Odin didn't", Lauren gulps at the idea, "uh, he didn't kill her?"
"He stripped her of her powers. Made her immortal but powerless." Tamsin sips her beer as she shakes her head grimly. "Honestly? I'd rather die."
"What did she mean when she said that some of those women used to be valkyries? Did they do the same-?" Lauren paused, thinking about each of the women she saw at the bar tonight - they all were all still blonde, still statuesque, still surrounded in that air of power that Tamsin herself always emitted. "No. They are still valkyries... Right?"
Tamsin nodded with her eyebrow raised, surprised that Lauren caught on. Not that she should be - it is Lauren, after all. If that woman got her gears spinning, she could figure anything out. This is the part Tamsin was dreading. (As much as she hates to admit it, she was hoping Lauren wouldn't catch that little fact so that she didn't have to explain it, so she wouldn't have to tell her the twisted loopholes daddy dearest created to his little rule.)
"Annicka was my friend. Still is. We fought together more times than I could honestly count. But she fell in love with a human...
"Lauren's shoulders slump. What else could it have possibly been – it is the fae they're talking about. "A human..."
"What the books don't tell you is that being a valkyrie means you can only devote yourself to two things. To war, and to Odin. Falling in love is a deadly business for us. When he found out that she had fallen in love, that she told this stupid boy she loved him... Well, he gave her a choice."
Still dumbfounded, and feeling more defeated than she should, Lauren simply repeats 'a choice'.
"She could either kill him", Tamsin gulps, dropping her head, "or erase his memory of her. He'll never know her again. He'll never know that they were once stupid in love."
"That's ridiculous. A-and cruel! Why would he-"
Cruel? You think that's cruel?" Tamsin stands to pace around the room. "Frieda, he forced Frieda to kill her love. With her hands, he made her kill him. Lara was made human. But her love was a shifter. He had to watch her grow old and die like all the other humans while he lived forever."
The couple fell into an eerie silence, not sure of where to go from there. Tamsin still her crooked pacing to lean against the kitchen counter. She looked at Lauren; the doctor was looking at everything she possibly could but the valkyrie. She knew what she wanted to ask – hell, she knew what she wanted to say. What she wanted to spill to the beautiful blonde standing just feet from here, what she wanted to cry and scream and shout at her as if it would make a difference, but she knew now more than ever that it wouldn't. Sighing, Tamsin walks back over to the couch and plops down roughly, dropping her head just as roughly onto Lauren's shoulder. The doctor places a gentle kiss on to the top of her head.
"And what of his own daughter?", Lauren asked, just above a whisper, "His own child? What would he do to yo- well, if he had a daughter that fell in love... Hypothetically. What would happen to her?"
Tamsin smiles sadly, tapping her now empty beer against her knee.
"Hypothetically? I mean he didn't kill Natasha. But I'm already the least favorite. Even hypothetically", Tamsin raises her eyes to look at Lauren, fighting back the tears that threaten to spill over, "I don't even want to think about it."