There's been a lot of rain in my area recently that has curtailed my usual outdoor activities, thereby giving me more time to write, so…bonus update! As promised, this one serves as our introduction to where the Lost Girl characters are at this point and sets up the divergence from show canon, kind of like a second prologue even though I'm not labeling it as such. For disclaimer purposes, some dialogue is either directly copied or paraphrased from the episode.
Although Bella and Edward had no way of knowing it, Bo was in no position to give anyone answers about anything at the moment, since she was busy fighting for her life.
When she entered the mansion where Aife had set up her base of operations, she was still clinging to a thin shred of hope that she could find the right words to get through to her mother, persuade her to give up her age-old quest for vengeance… Sadly, that hope was dashed when Aife tried to drain her daughter's life force, only to be prevented from doing so by the koushang amulet Bo wore. The sight of it enraged Aife, no doubt bringing back harrowing memories of her captivity in the Dark king's dungeon, and things went downhill fast.
Now they were battling it out at the top of a spiral staircase that wound up through several stories, and Aife had the upper hand – mainly because both of hers were locked around Bo's throat. As her grip tightened, the edges of Bo's vision grew hazy and began to darken, her world shrinking until all she could see was her mother's face twisted with hatred, her eyes devoid of any hint of mercy or sanity…
Then suddenly, a burst of strength like she'd never known before surged through every fiber of Bo's body, along with an overwhelming sense of a comfortingly familiar presence that she knew very well. Dyson?
Her lycanthropic lover wasn't really there, of course, but she still felt that he was somehow with her as she tore Aife's hands off her throat and lunged forward, on the offensive once more. Aife twisted to avoid her attack…and, to Bo's horror, crashed right through the banister. Bo instinctively reached out to grab her, clutching the broken railing with her other hand to brace herself as she struggled to pull Aife back onto solid ground; the fact that her mother had just tried to kill her never even crossed her mind as she urged her, "Don't let go!"
Unfortunately, Aife hadn't forgotten their conflict quite so easily. "Why would I let go when I can take you with me?" she snarled, her fingers locking around Bo's wrist in a death grip…and Bo's feet started to slide forward, the already damaged railing she was holding on to groaning and bending further under the two women's combined weight.
Kenzi came charging up the stairs at that moment and seized Bo around the waist, temporarily halting her momentum. "Bo, you've gotta let go of your crazy mother!"
"No, I can pull her up – I'm strong enough!"
"The banister isn't!" Kenzi grunted, straining against Aife's downward pull on Bo. "If you don't let her go, we're all taking a swan dive!"
"I am not giving up on her like everyone else!"
Unfortunately, Kenzi did have a point; her slight frame wasn't very useful as a counterweight, the broken railing couldn't provide enough leverage for Bo to successfully fight the force of gravity, and the soles of their fashionable footwear were having trouble finding purchase on the highly polished hardwood floor. The toes of Bo's boots were right at the edge of the precipitous drop when another miracle occurred: a strange symbol that seemed to be written in blood appeared on Aife's forehead for a brief moment before being absorbed into her skin, and the madness faded from her eyes, the harsh lines of her face softening.
"She's right," she said in a different tone than anything Bo had previously heard from her – instead of angry, taunting, or manipulative, she actually sounded kind and sincere. "Honey, you're gonna have to let me go."
"No!"
"There's so much I still need to tell you… Ask Trick; he knows it all. I just need you to promise me one thing." Her voice took on a note of urgency, and her fingers tightened on Bo's wrist again, though she wasn't trying to drag her down anymore. "You have to find her."
"What?" Bo shook her head in confusion at the unexpected request. "Find who?"
"Isabella…your sister."
Bo's entire body went numb with shock, and her nerveless fingers almost released their grip on Aife of their own accord. "Wh-what? I have a…"
"Ask Trick," Aife repeated. "He can tell you everything. Tell him I'm sorry, and if it's not too much to ask…try to forgive me, okay?" With a tearful smile, she reached up with her free hand and took hold of Bo's wrist, using the leverage to twist her other hand out of her daughter's grasp.
"No! Mom, don't-" As soon as she realized what was happening, Bo tried to tighten her grip again…but her borrowed strength deserted her as abruptly as it had come, as did the feeling of Dyson's presence, leaving her powerless to stop Aife from breaking free and then letting go of her, plunging into a seemingly endless fall.
###
Miles away, in a quaint little house on the outskirts of the city, the Norn yanked her hand back from Dyson's chest with a violent jerk, her expression of gloating triumph warping into one of barely contained rage. "The deal is off!"
Reeling from the pain of being touched by her awesome power as well as the shock of its sudden withdrawal, Dyson faltered where he knelt at her feet and nearly toppled over, but managed to keep himself upright. It nevertheless took him a moment to process what she'd said, and when he did, it made no sense.
"What do you mean, 'off'?" he demanded, blinking dazedly up at her. "I didn't realize my love for Bo would be the price of lending her my strength, but if that's what it takes to save her life, I'll gladly pay it!"
"Perhaps you would, but it is not in your power to do so, nor in mine to collect such a debt," the Norn replied sourly, unconsciously rubbing her palm on the knitted wool of her cardigan as if his skin had burned her. "Odin's law forbids Ancients like myself from interfering with the work of our kindred, which unfortunately includes your Wolf Spirit."
Thoroughly bewildered, Dyson clambered somewhat unsteadily to his feet. "What are you talking about? What does the Wolf Spirit have to do with me and Bo?"
The Norn gave her head a despairing shake, her face pinched in displeasure. "Small wonder the world is in the state it is," she lamented, "when you young people are so obtuse, so willfully blind to what is right in front of you."
"Enough of your riddles! Speak plainly for once," Dyson growled.
"Very well. If what is between you and this woman, this 'Bo', was merely an ordinary love given by your own choice, I could indeed take it as the price of your request," she explained with exaggerated patience, as if speaking to a rather dim child. "However, not even I have the power to break the bond of an imprint."
The word hit him with an almost physical force, setting his head spinning again. "Imprint? No, I… That's impossible." Of course he loved Bo, he'd never been more certain of anything in all his life, but the idea that those feelings weren't entirely his own, that they had been influenced by the Wolf Spirit's dubious gift to her children…
The ancient crone's scowl took on a dangerous edge. "Do you doubt my word?"
"I think you must be mistaken. Every wolf I've ever known who has found their mate described the moment when they first recognized them as transformative, life-changing, like being struck by lightning-"
"Ah, the passions of youth," the Norn scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Everything feels that way to the young…and most of your kind find their mates a bit earlier in life, do they not?"
That gave Dyson pause, because she had a point; the vast majority of wolves imprinted in the first century of their lives, or even the first fifty years. He remembered what it was like to be that young – the time when his animalistic instincts were never far beneath the surface, sometimes barely under control, when he was always ready to explode into a mass of fur and claws at the slightest provocation and maul everything in the immediate vicinity – and for the most part he didn't miss it. As he grew older and matured, the volatility and intensity of his emotions cooled, allowing him to exercise greater control over his bestial side, yet he had never stopped to consider whether that inner calm might extend to other things as well, if he might experience imprinting differently than a younger wolf.
Truthfully, he hadn't thought about imprinting at all in a very long time. Before he shifted for the first time, he hadn't liked the idea of it very much – the prospect of being bound for life to someone he didn't choose for himself, of never being able to truly love anyone else even if he wanted to, seemed horrible – but as he watched his peers find their mates one by one and saw how happy they were, the anxiety gradually wore off. Eventually, he even started to anticipate the day when he would find his own special person…only it never happened.
A hundred years turned into two, then three, the ribbing from his pack-mates about how he must be so picky that the Wolf Spirit was having trouble coming up with a suitable match for him turned into pitying whispers and sidelong glances, and at long last he accepted that he must be one of those rare lone wolves who simply didn't have a mate – or if he did, perhaps she had died before he got a chance to meet her. He'd heard of a few tragic cases where that had happened.
At some point he'd decided to simply play the field in hopes of finding love the normal way; even if there was no one out there who was his perfect match in every respect, maybe he could at least find someone he could care for, someone he could be happy with. In fact, there had been a few women he'd formed a genuine emotional attachment to over the centuries, but none of them had ever managed to fully capture his heart. There was always something missing…until Bo. Despite the short time he had known her, he couldn't remember ever feeling happier, more complete, than when he was with her…
Seeing the doubts beginning to take hold in his mind, the Norn pressed on. "Do you really mean to tell me you felt nothing when you first laid eyes on her?"
Her question brought another memory to the surface, one that was indelibly burned into his brain: he was just walking down the street, going about his business…and suddenly, there she was. When their eyes met, time itself seemed to slow down, every other sight and sound fading into the background until all his senses were totally focused on her. Only after she was out of sight did his mind register that her intoxicating scent was the same one he'd picked up at a crime scene the previous night.
When he and Hale brought her in for questioning, his emotions were all over the place in a way they hadn't been in a long time; first he was afraid she would say the wrong thing and get herself in trouble (or worse, executed), then frustrated when she stubbornly stuck to her ludicrous claim of being completely ignorant of all things fae, which wasn't helping her case at all. Much to his chagrin, his inner turmoil – which was compounded by bewilderment at his own irrationally strong feelings, because he didn't even know this woman and therefore shouldn't be so worried about her – had actually boiled over enough that his control had slipped a little, his wolf coming out to show its fangs and growl at her.
Later, when the Ash and the Morrigan decided to initiate her into their world the old-fashioned way, via trial by combat, Dyson found himself unreasonably invested in the outcome, even letting her feed on him to boost her strength. Admittedly, he'd taken a moment while the Elders were arranging everything to call Trick and apprise him of the situation, and Trick had asked him to give Bo whatever help he could, but he was fairly certain that request wasn't meant to extend to sharing his life force with a stranger.
"You're right," he said slowly, much to the Norn's gratification, "I have had…unusually strong feelings for Bo since the moment I met her. Still, I think I would know if I had imprinted on her. Even if the experience wasn't as intense as it would have been seven hundred years ago, the bond would still be there. I would've figured it out eventually."
"No doubt you would have," she replied dismissively, "if not for the spell."
Dyson's ears immediately perked up. "What spell?"
The Norn shrugged. "Someone must have been strongly opposed to your union with this woman, so they cast a spell on you – not to sever your bond with her," she hastened to clarify, not wanting him to entertain the notion that someone else might have the power to do what she couldn't, "but merely to mask it, to lessen the pull you felt toward her. It worked so well that even I failed to recognize what I was dealing with until I broke through the enchantment, else I would have refused to bargain with you."
Her voice turned acidic at the reminder of how their deal had fallen through, but Dyson was too appalled to care about her bruised ego. "Who would do something like that?"
He wasn't really expecting an answer, the question having been more inwardly directed, but she gave him one anyway, accompanied by an exasperated glower. "You should know that better than I. Think of everyone you know, and ask yourself who among them might wish to separate you from your mate."
When Dyson followed her advice, two names instantly came to mind: there was Lauren, of course…and Trick. He barely had to think about it for half a second before eliminating the human doctor as a possible culprit; Lauren had never dabbled in sorcery, nor did she have any magically gifted friends who might have cast such a spell as a favor to her. Besides, although Dyson knew she was attracted to Bo, he wasn't sure if she was invested enough to go to such lengths to win the succubus for herself.
Trick, on the other hand… The former Blood King definitely had contacts who would be more than capable of casting an anti-love spell, and he'd tried to discourage Dyson from getting too deeply involved with Bo from day one. Then there was the timing to consider.
Even if he wasn't aware that he'd imprinted on Bo, it hadn't taken him long to realize he was falling for her, falling hard – the thought had actually crossed his mind that if she wasn't meant to be his mate, he hoped he never found the person who was – and then Trick had warned him to keep his distance. After that, he abruptly pulled away from Bo even though he hadn't wanted to; in fact, before his talk with Trick he would have insisted that nothing short of an explicit rejection from Bo herself could've kept him away from her, but afterward, following Trick's advice suddenly seemed like the right thing to do, no matter how miserable it made him.
The evidence, though largely circumstantial, was still fairly damning, but for once Dyson found himself fervently wishing he could throw his police training and the instincts he'd honed during his years of working as a detective out the window and ignore the evidence – because to do otherwise, to consider the possibility that the man he'd served faithfully for more than a hundred years, who had been his mentor and in some ways more of a father to him than his own had been, could have betrayed his trust in such a way… It hurt almost as much as realizing he might have irreparably damaged his relationship with Bo thanks to Trick's machinations.
"I can't believe it," he mumbled, once more speaking to himself. "How could Trick do this?"
"Enough questions!" the Norn snapped, her patience finally exhausted. The wolf was much too impertinent for her liking (which is to say that he wasn't appropriately intimidated by her), and he had taken up more of her time than she'd planned on. If she didn't get rid of him soon, she was going to miss Wheel of Fortune. "I am not your counselor or confidante. Since you have no trade to offer, I suggest you leave."
Dyson was only too happy to oblige; the confusion and anger over what he'd learned were so intense that he could hardly see straight, so overpowering that he almost felt like he could literally jump out of his skin. As he wrenched the door open and hurried outside, he was surprised (though only faintly, since he didn't have much room left in his head for other emotions) to see that his hands were shaking, the violent tremors spreading through him until it seemed as if his very skeleton was trying to tear itself apart. For the first time in several centuries, he was losing control of his wolf.
He could fight it, could wrestle the beast within him back into submission, but there was no one around that he could accidentally hurt, and the cool darkness of the forest looked so inviting, offering a haven where he could let his animal instincts take over until the tumult died down and his rational mind was able to take over once more. Breaking into a sprint, he leapt into the air as a man and came down as an enormous gray-brown wolf.
After pausing briefly to vent his feelings with a loud howl at the moon, the wolf ran on, vanishing into the shadows of the trees.
###
Back at the mansion, Bo and Kenzi reached the end of their dizzyingly rapid descent down the spiral staircase only to find that Aife, or her body, had disappeared. The only remaining trace of her presence was a sizable pool of blood, with no smears or droplets leading away from it to indicate which way she had gone, or been taken.
"What the hell?" Bo muttered, staring around in confusion, peering into every darkened corner as if expecting Aife to step out of the shadows. "A fall like that had to have broken at least a few bones; even if it didn't kill her, she shouldn't be able to just get up and walk away!"
"Succubus healing?" Kenzi suggested, also scoping out their surroundings, though her darting glances held a hint of unease as well as bafflement. While Aife may have appeared to snap out of her psycho state of mind at the end, Kenzi still wasn't sure whether the possibility of her survival was a good thing or not.
"She wouldn't have had time to heal before we got to the bottom of the stairs; besides, it takes two to tango, and there's nobody else around…right? I mean, she said she'd sent her thralls away…"
"I didn't see any of her hunk-bots when I got here," Kenzi confirmed, "although I was laser-focused on getting to you, so I didn't sweep every room like they do on those cop shows."
She waited for Bo to decide their next move, but even though her best friend was thinking so hard that Kenzi could practically hear the wheels spinning in her head, she didn't seem inclined to share whatever was going on in there. After a long moment of watching her stand there looking indecisive, Kenzi took it on herself to propose what seemed to her the most logical course of action. "Well, since she's gone and I for one do not have the bloodhound nose to sniff out her trail, how about we go home and unwind over a nice cold glass of-"
"No," Bo interrupted, her uncertain expression hardening into one of steely determination. "We're going to see Trick so I can ask him about all these other secrets Aife said he's still keeping from me – starting with why he never thought to mention that I have a sister."
"Ugh, right now?" Kenzi groaned. "I know this is major breaking news in the world of Bo, but we've already had so many bombshells dropped on us today that I'm starting to feel like London during the Blitz here."
Bo's face softened slightly, though her resolve remained unchanged. "I'm sorry, Kenzi; this is too big for me to just shelve it, but if you're maxed out on drama and need a break, I understand. It's been a crazy day."
"Crazy doesn't begin to cover it, but you should know my day doesn't end till yours does; whatever's going down, I'm with you all the way. Lead on, Winston Churchill."
Bo was deeply touched by Kenzi's steadfast support, and more grateful than she knew how to put into words, yet as they left the mansion, she couldn't resist saying, "Winston Churchill? Couldn't you have picked a sexier prime minister to compare me to?"
"I don't know," Kenzi replied thoughtfully. "Have there been any sexy prime ministers in the last fifty years?"
"…Good point."
They got into Bo's car, and she pushed the old heap to its maximum speed, ignoring the decreasing speed limit as they drove back into town. If one of Dyson's colleagues pulled her over, she could easily charm her way out of a ticket – not something she would normally do, seeing as she was generally a fairly law-abiding citizen, but right now her main concern was getting to Trick as fast as possible…and finding out how much he was still hiding from her, even if she didn't like the answer.
Uh-oh, looks like poor old Trick's in everybody's doghouse right now. I guess it's a good thing that the end of 1x13 showed him passing out from blood loss, since he might be glad to be unconscious when Bo shows up.
Also, I hope those of you who live in countries governed by prime ministers don't take offense at Kenzi's joke; I didn't mean to imply that your prime ministers are less sexy than any other heads of state.
