Well I don't think I failed my test so in celebration here's another chapter! Yay non-failure!
"Look at what the Meow Meow dragged in", Kenzi says happily as her and Tamsin finally make their way back in to Tamsin's old bedroom, where Bo and Dyson have brought Lauren. It took them longer than it should have, the first 15 minutes of their hour now wasted between Tamsin's angry maiming of the tree and her trying to find something to drink on the way to her room (Kenzi decided that alcohol was definitely not going to be of any good to anyone right now – except herself, of course, as she took the large glass of mead from Tamsin's hand as soon as she found one and downed it before Tamsin even had the chance to argue). Bo looks up from Lauren, still in the bloodied and shredded t-shirt and underwear that she was dragged from the house in, and offers the valkyrie a sheepish smile.
"Are you ready Tamsin?"
The blonde sighs, handing her helmet to Kenzi (who is ecstatic to receive it, immediately putting it on her head) and sheathing her sword.
"As ready as I'm gonna be."
Bo nods at Dyson, who takes her place next to Lauren as she gets up. The succubus places her hands on either of Tamsin's shoulders, and slowly starts to lean forward.
"Before we do this", Tamsin spurts out as she pulls back suddenly, "I just want everyone in here to know that I hate this."
Dyson and Kenzi swallow their chuckles and Bo smiles at the valkyrie.
"Just shut up and kiss me, Tamsin."
Tamsin groans as Bo closes the distance between them. Bo's lips are soft, Tamsin thinks, and as the kiss deepens so do the blonde's thoughts on where she would rather those lips be. Feeling the spike in Tamsin's energy as her touch does it's job, Bo pulls back and gently starts to feed. She doesn't take much chi before she tries to break the kiss, but is stopped as Tamsin grabs the back of Bo's head and pulls her in for more heated contact. The succubus is confused, but is finding it difficult to resist the blonde's lips, the way her energy is off the charts, or the taste of her chi.
"Bo. I'm not going to break", Tamsin growls at her when the succubus pulls back gasping for air. "Take more. Take whatever you need to heal Lauren."
Nodding, Bo starts to feed from Tamsin again - this time much more insistently. She doesn't stop until she herself feels like she is going to burst from all the extra chi. When she pulls back, Tamsin has a goofy grin on her face and Dyson and Kenzi are awkwardly trying to look at anything but the sexually charged pair in the center of the room.
"Wow", Bo breathes, bring a hand up to touch her tingling lips. "Wow."
Bo takes a stumbling step backwards; her body is absolutely buzzing with the extra power that is coursing in her veins, making it impossible for her to stand still. Without the succubus holding her up, Tamsin's eyes roll back and she slumps to the ground. Kenzi rushes over, but is swatted away by the valkyrie as she gets close. She is panting, and exhausted, but still alive. That's all that matters.
"I'm fine. Go... Go help Lauren."
Bo immediately goes to the bed once she knows Tamsin is okay; she is hesitant at first, thinking that kissing Lauren (whether chi was involved or not, life or death circumstances be damned) was a good idea. Knowing how high Lauren holds her duty and morality, Bo wonders for a second if she would be upset about the way this is playing out – especially considering Tamsin is standing no less than 10 feet away, not daring to take her eyes off the two. Knowing that she had no choice, Bo sat down on the bed next to the doctor and cautiously brought her lips to Lauren's. Slowly, she starting cycling the chi into her. Tamsin, who had sat up with a little help from Kenzi, watched from the floor as Lauren's large lacerations faded to small cuts, watched as the bruise on her arm faded to pale yellow, and as her bones seemed to magically reset themselves. She never thought she would be happy to see someone else kissing Lauren, but as she watched her heal right before her eyes, she couldn't imagine being anything but. Bo pulled back, swallowing air.
"I can't give her any more", she resigned sadly through her gasps, eying what she was able to heal and deciding that she did a pretty good job, considering the fact that she herself felt light headed – she definitely gave Lauren more than Tamsin had given her, dipping into her own energy, but that didn't matter. Not right now. She could recuperate later.
Again with Kenzi's help, Tamsin stood and made her way to the bed. Dyson moved aside so she could sit, which she did a little rougher than she intended, her legs still wobbling to support her. Tamsin leaned forward, gently caressing Lauren's face as she coo'd her name. The longest minute passed, all four of them holding their breath, but finally Lauren's caring brown eyes flickered open. Tamsin wrapped her arms around the doctor's neck, and immediately began to sob into her shoulder. Lauren, who was more than just a little disoriented from the whole ordeal, gave Bo (who was also a sobbing mess by this point) a questioning look before bringing her hands up to soothingly rub her girlfriend's back.
"Tamsin?", Lauren questioned innocently. "What did I miss?"
Dyson offered her a small smile as well, carefully slapping his hand on her knee.
"We can catch up later. For right now, we're just happy you're okay."
Tamsin pulled back, sniffling, and smiled at Lauren through her tears.
"It's about damn time you woke up, doc."
Not wanting to waste any time, the group quickly went over the details with Lauren. Her eyebrows were knit close together as she tried to process everything that they had all told her and patch together everything that had happened to her, only remembering snippets of the past 36 hours.
"So...", Lauren shook her head as if she was trying to clear away troubling thoughts. "What you're telling me is that I have to somehow pass some ancient valkyrie rite of passage or else Odin is going to...?"
"We don't know what", Bo says quietly, "but we know it won't be good. If you pass this test, whatever it is, we all get to leave here. Together. Alive. And we know you can do it. You're stronger than we give you credit for."
Tamsin, who had been too busy rummaging around her old room to find something for Lauren to wear to really take part in all of the explaining, finally returned to the bed with an arm full of clothes and a worried expression on her face.
"It won't be easy", she says as she hands the clothes to a very gracious Lauren. The doctor sighs as she gets up, faltering a little (luckily Dyson was there to catch her around the elbow before she fell – Tamsin started to rush to her side, but Lauren reminded her for the thousandth time since she had woken up that she was okay, just sore), and heads behind the room separator to change.
"What exactly does this test entail? I've never read anything about it."
Tamsin sighs as she looks in the direction of the voice. She didn't even know where to begin explaining it.
"It's different for everyone," she starts, "like The Dawning. It's a test that's personalized to each sorry sap that has to pass it. That's why it's going to be so hard. I can't really help you prepare because I only know what mine was like."
"What was your's like, Tam?" Kenzi quips as she looks up from the chest she was going through.
"Hard."
Lauren emerges from behind the screen with a pair of boots in hand (the laces are intricate and confusing, and in her super focused state she can't be bothered to tie them up properly – Tamsin will later happily agree to do it for her), the leather pants Tamsin grabbed her clinging tightly to her form and the soft woven shirt just barely long enough to cover her stomach.
"Whoa, doc", Kenzi says, the hidden treasures she might find now completely forgotten, "that outfit is terrible."
Lauren rolls her eyes, but Tamsin crosses her arms in front of her defensively as she eyes the human girl seriously.
"They're not terrible, Kenzi, they're old. Plus, a few hundreds of years ago, those pants were the coolest thing around."
With Lauren now dressed (badly, as Kenzi keeps pointing out to her), the group nervously makes their way through the snow storm and back to the feasting hall. The dismembered bodies of Tamsin's fallen sisters in arms have yet to be removed from the entrance, and she is glad that Lauren is too focused to asked how they got there. Odin hadn't moved from his spot on the throne, and was now joined by several other women in regalia very similar to Tamsin's.
"Oh shit", the blonde mutters as they get close enough to the throne to make out who the women are. Bo doesn't let that go unnoticed, and gives her a questioning look.
"Those are my sisters" she all but groans at the succubus as she places a defensive arm around Lauren's hips. Tamsin notices Bo's confusion at the word 'sisters' – it is used rather loosely here after all – before rolling her eyes. "My actual sisters."
Odin laughs as the mock army nears him and Tamsin falls to a kneel. Everyone begrudgingly follows suit, save for Bo, but Dyson grabs her hand and pulls her down to join them. She stares daggers at him as they stand up again, but he steels his jaw at her before speaking in a hushed tone.
"Of all the times to be stubborn, Bo, now is not one of them. This is Lauren's life we're playing with."
"Father", Tamsin regards him with a slight bow of her head as she steps forward, her arm returned to Lauren's hip as the doctor joins her at the front of the group, "Sisters."
"Welcome, Tamsin. Lauren. And friends. I believe this is the first time I have seen you arrive on time for anything, child."
"Yeah, well. If I knew we were going to be having a family reunion I might have just stayed home."
"Daughters", Odin says gruffly as he sends a sickeningly sweet smile in the group's direction, "please introduce yourselves to our guests."
The first steps forward, looking no older than 10, her heavy helmet falling down over her eyes as she moves. Her grin is large and happy, a few teeth missing in the front; she waves happily at the group.
"Hi! I am Hanna!"
The second looks older than Tamsin, and is larger than any of the others – her gaze is determined, her exposed skin covered in skars, and those who don't know any better can correctly assume that she is a warrior of epic proportions. As she steps forward, she places her hand on the hilt of her sword and offers the group a curt nod.
"Brynja."
The last sister's expression could be described as no other than bored – she is about Tamsin's height, though even thinner than their valkyrie, and appears to be the oldest of the sisters. She lazily tips her helmet to them in a very nonchalant way.
"Eisa."
The tallest, Brynja, walks down the steps fiercely after Eisa introduces herself and stops mere inches between herself and Tamsin.
"I never thought you this foolish, Tamsin – this is stupid, even by your standards."
Tamsin laughs bitterly in her face. Lauren, feeling an unbearable tension between the two, takes a step back out of Tamsin's grasp – the valkyrie is too busy eying her sister to notice. They share heated eye contact but eventually Brynja let's out a frustrated breath through her nose before storming past Tamsin, roughly smacking the shoulder of her own armor against Tamsin as she goes.
"She's right, you know", Eisa drawls lazily as she sits down on the steps at their father's feet and begins braiding her hair. "Falling for humans, dear sister? Tsk tsk."
The youngest sister offers the group another large, toothy grin as she pushes her helmet back up to rest on the crown of her head.
"I think she's pretty!"
Tamsin smiles at her, happy for the distraction from Eisa's challenging glare or the soreness in her shoulder from where Brynja had hit her.
"I always knew you were going to be the smart one, Hanna."
She laughs at this, but all joy is sucked from the room as Odin clears his throat. Eisa immediately stands the three remaining sisters straighten themselves, as if by reflex.
"Tamsin, it is time. Lauren, come with me."
He stands and very slowly makes his way to a corridor to the left of the throne. Lauren looks at Tamsin with worried eyes, suddenly feeling very ill prepared for the biggest test of her life (and she thought the MCAT was hard – she would give anything to do that instead).
"Any last minute advice?", she chokes out.
"You have to want to survive, okay? You have to want to live."
Lauren raised her eyebrow at the valkyrie, not sure exactly what she could mean – of course Lauren wants to live. She has experiments to attend to, patients to see, papers to write and awards to win. Maybe someday a family; if she closes her eyes she sees smiling little faces, a happy and bubbly Charlotte or Ethan bundled up in her arms, a dog playing in the yard, a white picket fence and everything. She wants nothing more than to go back to her apartment and curl up with her girlfriend and just pick up where they left off. She just wants to go home.
"I don't understand, Tamsin."
"Listen", Tamsin places her hands on either of the doctor's shoulders firmly. "It's going to seem real, okay? So real that you'll think this is all just a dream, that you're waking up in your real life and none of this ever happened. And then a lot of shit is going to go down. You have to remember, okay? You have to remember me. And Bo, and Dyson, and Kenzi, and Hale, and everyone else. You remember us and you fight like hell. As long as you remember how loved you are out here, you'll make your way back."
Lauren pulls Tamsin in for a searing kiss, too terrified to say anything. Not that she needs to - Tamsin loves her. And Lauren loves Tamsin. That's all the reassurance and motive she needs to make it through this, even if she is afraid of what is going to happen. Tamsin gently removes her prized helmet from her own head and places it careful atop Lauren's. She then unclasps the sheath containing her sword from her armor and extends it to the doctor. Lauren takes it with shaking hands, and Tamsin helps her fasten it around her own midsection. Taking a step back, the valkyrie offers her girlfriend a half smile before once again closing the distance between them. She kisses her once, softly, fighting the tears that once again try to take her, before catching Lauren's gaze with her fierce green eyes.
"You take this helmet, and you take this sword, and you come back to me Lauren. Do you hear me? You. Come. Back."