Chapter 2

"You know, it's gonna take them a while to select a new Ash. Now might be your best chance."

"To do what?"

"Run. Be free. I know how much that means to you."

"Well, I appreciate you looking out for me."

Lauren woke up abruptly with Dyson's words still lingering from her dream. For a second, it felt like she was back and that they had just returned from defeating the Garuda. For a terrifying second, it felt like nothing changed.

And then she blinked and realized that the crack in the ceiling was a particular feature of her new apartment, not her old rooms in the compound. She groaned a little, before hitting her alarm clock and staggering to the bathroom.

She turned on the faucet and gritted her teeth at the feel of the cold water on her hands and her face. She grabbed her toothbrush and the toothpaste but was distracted by the image in the mirror.

Four, almost five, months now and she was still surprised by her reflection. Gone were the long, yellow locks replaced by a lighter blonde colour in a shorter, boyish cut. The new hairstyle brought attention to her shoulders, making them looking broader and to her formerly smooth jaw, that was now slightly grizzly with facial hair. All of these new features had changed her face to a more rugged, masculine version.

And then there were her brown eyes. It felt a little weird to see them that way now and Lauren took a second to identify the sensation: she felt naked without the bright blue contact lenses.

She dropped her toothbrush back and instead took the lens holder, expertly popping her contacts in mere seconds.

There.

Lauren Lewis was gone (hidden) and replaced by Lewis Aidan.

"Hmm," she said, completing the transformation as she heard the deeper, husky timbre come out of her throat.

Lauren was certain that this wasn't what Dyson had in mind when he had urged her to escape.

This wasn't what she had in mind when she made her escape.

But somehow she - no, he was standing here preparing to go to work.

Staring at the impossibly blue eyes, Lauren (because these were certainly Lauren's deep thoughts, not Lewis') thought back to that fateful day.

She had gone back to the compound (near empty still, as news of their win haven't traveled far yet) after their celebration at the Dal and basically tried to melt on her couch. She had felt so tired and triumphantly happy, but mostly it was the overwhelming relief that made her feel like she would float in the air at any moment.

She was about to fall asleep then when her eyes happened upon the stain on her living room floor (Lauren remembered her tears mixing with the reddish bubbles, scrubbing and scrubbing, until her hands were aching but she couldn't, Nadia's blood wouldn't come off.) and suddenly, all traces of tiredness was gone.

She felt like a popped balloon. She wasn't light and airy, it was only an illusion. She had forgotten that she was actually murkier than mud and heavier than stone. Lauren remembered Dyson's words then and her eyes automatically went to her still-packed suitcase, temporarily abandoned in another corner of her living room when she had answered Lachlan's final summons. With all the rush to synthesize the venom and then save Trick, she just hadn't bothered to unpack.

She had stood up then and automatically took her travel bag, rifling through it until she found her passport. It was like an out of body experience as Lauren's body moved while her mind remained blank. Half of her had time to wonder why she took the blue booklet before her hands automatically started flipping through it. She stopped when she saw the stamp from the Democratic Republic of Congo and stared at it.

The despair she felt just after Nadia died returned with a vengeance, washing over her in waves that threatened to drown her. She remembered that night she had told Bo how tired she was of the fae controlling her life; when she had confessed the overwhelming desire to leave for good.

And the succubus had promised her that whatever she decided they were in it together.

At the time, even though she had still packed her bags, the words had helped her to endure once more and go back to Lachlan. Lauren had kept them in mind to comfort her and give her strength to see the days ahead and finish preparing the Naga venom. But it suddenly made no sense to her. How could they be together if Lauren did leave? Was that a pledge to go with her? To run away together?

It had been confusing.

But it was only a fraction of feeling, compared to her renewed longing to escape. Even as part of her agonized over Bo's words, she was already re-packing her stuff and readying to leave. It didn't take more than an hour to finish and be ready when Lauren finally took a break to sit back down on the couch. This time she had stared at her phone and Bo's phone number, her thumb hovering over the call button.

In the end, Lauren had discarded the phone and hurriedly grabbed a notepad instead, writing a quick note before tearing it out. And then she had left her home of five years without looking back.

The next few days and weeks after that were a blur of activity that had required her utmost concentration. Part of her had already shut down the moment she dropped her note on Bo's doorstep, but parts of her that could still feel (guilt and sadness and pain, always the pain) had been grateful for the distraction. (Not that she could really call escaping from the fae, a mere distraction.)

The thing of it was, when Lauren first came to learn about the fae and serve the Ash, she had still nurtured the hope that things would get better soon. That she would find the cure for whatever alien disease that put her girlfriend into a coma and that they could still have their happy ever after.

Even though she had been devastated and confused and terrified of facing this new world that she had stumbled upon and even though she had basically sold her soul - to the Devil, as she had only found out now - in exchange for her girlfriend's welfare, even so... Lauren had held on to her hope. (God, she had been so... Lauren could cringe at the thought of her younger self: infused with a naive optimism that nothing bad would ever really happen to good people like her and if it did, things would somehow right itself if she just worked hard enough.)

But as the years wore on, Nadia had only continued to sleep while every demand from the Ash had tainted her innocence and damaged her soul. And Lauren was, as everybody had been fond of reminding her, only human in the end.

It had begun with hopeful thoughts of what she and Nadia would do, once her girl was cured. And then, once Lauren realized how heavy her collar really was (excuse me, necklace) and how it had begun to choke her, she started to make idle plans to escape. In her scenario, Nadia somehow wakes up and they manage to sneak away.

Over time, this scenario had become more elaborate as Lauren learned to be more careful and more cunning from the hands of the Ash. So details had been added or removed, tweaked or changed completely. She had thought of logistics: how do they sneak out of the compound? Lauren kept track of the guards and their routines; where do they go next? Lauren mapped different ways out of the city by transportation; what do they do when they escape? Lay low for a while and then completely re-make themselves by adapting disguises and new names so they would never be found.

It was probably paranoia but the more Lauren had learned about the fae, the more resolved she was not to take any chances with their safety. And although she had known that escaping would only result in either harsh punishment or death (the fae was predictable like that - Light or Dark, the policy was the same.), sometimes - in her dark hours - even the thought hadn't been enough of a deterrent.

So by the time she had met Bo, her escape plan was more or less solid.

Except that part of Lauren had also never taken it seriously. She had treated it more as a mental exercise, a way to pass off boredom or a way to feel empowered when she felt more down than usual (the thought that she could "technically" escape whenever she had felt like it was a heady feeling.).

And of course, there had still been Nadia to consider. There was just no way she would leave without her.

So the first time Lauren had "escaped" and ended up on Bo's couch had been a futile gesture from the beginning. She had just panicked over Lachlan's curfew edict and did a very impulsive, foolish thing. (Panicked was such a tame word to express her feelings back then. Lauren had known she was a slave, but she had built mental blocks around that word. She had her work - which was always interesting and something she had been grateful for - and her little liberties that had allowed her the illusion of freedom. Liberties that Lachlan had systematically removed to deliberately provoke a response - not from her even, she had been just a pawn in his game - but from the succubus who befriended her. It was strange how much those starting weeks with Lachlan managed to hammer into her how utterly insignificant she was, than the whole time with the other Ash.)

And while she had remembered to pick up her passport the second time she packed her bags again, it was yet another impulsive move, only this time driven by grief. She had barely even looked at her belongings, throwing them without care into the open suitcase, infused with a manic desire to leave now now leave faster now.

It was only when she was about to go that she had recovered some of her rationality; the fear of the unknown serving as a cold bucket of water against her earlier hysteria. And then Lachlan's text had come and she remembered Bo's words from the night before.

But they said that third's time the charm.

And despite the turmoil of feelings whirling inside her like a tornado, Lauren's head had been clear and she had been determined. This wasn't just a reaction to one thing but a necessary action. Something in her had told her that it was right to leave now; that she needed it if she wanted to stay the same Lauren and not some broken automaton under the thumb of yet another Ash.

It was a bit funny then, looking back at it all now, that one of the first things Lauren had done when she escaped was to change her whole identity.

And it had been actually in the plan.

First step was to lay down some red herrings and Lauren had achieved this easily enough by buying two bus tickets with connecting trips and one airplane ticket, all to different locations. (One was to Quebec - an "obvious" choice if their pursuers bothered to study Nadia's profile and the others to random places.)

Disguise was only the second step because she had needed to make sure that she would be "identifiable" with her fake tickets to make the bait more attractive.

This was the part where she had started to deviate from her plan. Lauren had reasoned out long ago that when she and Nadia escaped, one of them would have to pose as a man for a while even as they both put on a disguise. She had determined that their pursuers would be looking for two women but that they wouldn't expect to look for a hetero-couple instead.

Of course the fae had their unique way of tracking people down but Lauren hadn't been their doctor for five years without having tricks of her own. She had been confident that she would be able to hide their tracks, long enough to make a clean getaway.

Which was the third step: getting out of the city.

But first, the disguises. There was no more Nadia but Lauren had still donned her "guy face" - a brown wig with her blue contacts, a cloth band to bind her breasts and male clothing.

She had been waiting for her real bus when a passing woman in leather jacket caught her eye and Lauren was suddenly reminded of Bo. She had the unpleasant realization that once she left, she would never see the succubus ever again.

The woman she was in love with, despite herself.

The abrupt, stinging pain in her heart had made her wince and a hand involuntarily came up to soothe the injury.

Lauren remembered that the bus driver had honked once, a warning for late stragglers, but she had only stood there as if frozen. It was only when the bus was no longer in sight that she jerked back to herself. Her mind had been quick to give her options: first, she could buy another ticket and leave forever. Or, she could stay.

She had been dead set on leaving, on finally escaping, that the thought otherwise had been such a shocking notion. Lauren felt breathless for a moment. To stay meant what? She couldn't go back to the fae, she knew that much. It would destroy her, slowly but surely. But if she stayed in the city, the chances of bumping into Bo on some random street was high. She could still be "near" the succubus and that would be good... at least it was much better than not seeing her again.

(Never mind that earlier, Lauren had already tried to argue with herself that she was better off without Bo. That a human/fae relationship would never work, especially with a succubus. That leaving would spare both of them pain in the long run because Lauren was done; wrung dry and burned out. The Garuda was dead but Nadia wasn't coming back either and she was just an empty shell now. She had nothing to offer, not even friendship; not when some nights she had dreamed of Bo smiling as she stabbed Nadia or worse - smiling while she stabbed her. How could she face Bo with those doubts plaguing her mind?)

No, she hadn't been ready to be with the succubus but Lauren couldn't let go of her completely either.

And then there was still the question of the fae that was after her.

The dilemma had stumped her for a while before a crazy idea took root in her head. It was outrageous and impossible, Lauren had thought. But she couldn't shake it from her mind either.

Why not continue to disguise herself as a man? It was such a preposterous plan that no one would associate Lauren with it. And no one would believe that she would stay in the city too, right under the Ash's nose.

And so five months later, here he was, standing in front of his bathroom mirror.

Lewis gave an idle glance at his wristwatch and let loose an expletive. He was going to be late.

A/N: Okay, so this has mostly been an information dump chapter. I hope it made sense to you. I'm sure I messed up a lot of the grammar since I kept shifting from simple past perfect tenses to simple past tenses. Or something. I'm not sure either. :) If you have questions, feel free to ask via review button or by PM.

Onwards to chapter 3!