Bo Dennis is not a lost girl anymore (faetedlove) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-09-20 12:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, bo dennis, lara croft |
Who: Lara and Bo
What: Bo's had a troubling and enlightening dream, mixed with information about her biological family and her adoptive parents.
When: After this
Where: Their home
Warnings: Discussion of enthralling someone through blood, mentions of amnesia, taking a punching bag past the critical mass limit, and some language
The dream had been more than enough to bother Bo. The thing with Ryan really got under her skin. It wasn’t exactly his fault, and while it wasn’t hers either, she suddenly felt it could’ve been avoided had Trick been more forthcoming earlier on. She well knew fae genetics and what kind of fae someone was was inherited from the parents. Her mother was a succubus, thus Bo was a succubus. And now knowing her blood could enthrall people, and knowing that Trick’s blood had magical properties, combined with him instantly knowing what had happened? She was more than convinced he was her grandfather, but she didn’t have the courage to ask him that question yet.
On top of that had come Killian telling her what he’d already discovered about her family. She was Irish, which was actually interesting to her. But the part that had upset her further, the part that she didn’t know how to handle, was how her adoptive parents missed her. And they had a shrine to her? It threatened to punch a hole in everything she’d come to believe since she’d run away, and the emotional fallout from that was something she didn’t think she was ready to handle. She wanted to punch something. Repeatedly. While crying at the same time.
After the comments with Lara, Bo tried to sit still in bed, flipping through the channels on the television to try and keep her occupied until Lara came back. She was positively seething and was visibly angry. Though she was also on the verge of just breaking down and sobbing. It was an odd mix.
While Lara didn’t want to encourage Bo to drink overly much, she knew when someone needed a good cathartic hangover. She raided the bar, and headed upstairs to their bedroom. She poked her head in, and held two green bottles aloft. “I figure we should open forty year old brandy, because why not?”
Upon hearing Lara, Bo flipped the television off and set the remote aside. They didn’t need that distracting from the things she needed to talk about with Lara. “Forty year old brandy? That must be some damn good brandy.” Bo hadn’t consumed enough alcohol to have a hangover in a little while, and she felt with everything from her dream, and what Killian had told her, warranted one good hangover. She clenched her jaw, trying to keep herself calm, but it was more than obvious she was upset and angry.
“It probably is.” She didn’t even know how much it was worth. Frankly, she didn’t care. Lara was a little more open to spending money and tapping into her fortune now, thanks to some of her alternate dreams. Necessity also helped. She dealt with her privilege guilt by typically making matching donations to charities.
She sat next to her and put an arm around her. “If you want to cry, or scream, it’s okay.”
Bo knew Lara’s feelings about her fortune, and she tried to avoid asking anything that could poke at it. Mostly because she wanted Lara to come to terms with it and with herself, and partly because Bo didn’t quite feel right asking such things. She was frugal with her money, never spending more than what she needed, lined with the occasional splurge for something nicer. Bo didn’t need a lot of money to live because she’d been used to not having much of it.
She leaned into Lara and drew a breath. “I want to do both at the same time. And I don’t even know where to start aside from what I mentioned on that post. Though the thing about Trick and my thinking he’s my grandfather leads into what I need to tell you about my powers.” She pressed her lips together looking down at her left forearm that had been home to one hell of a nasty gash at the beginning of her dream. “Trick is called the Blood King. His blood has power in it, such as when he writes using his blood, whatever he writes comes to pass. He is the one who forged peace between the Light and the Dark Fae because he wrote it as being so. However, his power comes with a terrible price, of course. As I think I told you before, fae powers are passed through families. My mother is a succubus, thus I am one. And, well, in this dream, I found out my blood has power in it.” She looked up at Lara. “If my blood gets into someone else’s blood stream, they are enthralled to me.”
“Lets start with the crying first maybe,” Lara said, opening one of the bottles and holding it out to Bo. Not the best way to enjoy good Brandy, but these were desperate times. She nearly dropped it when Bo dropped that bomb. “Like your slave?”
“In a way, but I think it’s more complicated than that.” She took the offered bottle before Lara could actually drop it. “My mother, Aife, had a bunch of guys that were enthralled to her when she was trying to reignite the war between the Light and the Dark. At the time, I’d assumed she’d done something with her chi abilities, or some way advanced and powerful form of the enthralling touch I can do. But after this dream? I think her blood had the same properties, and that’s what she used to actually enthrall them. She made them more mindless slaves that did whatever she wanted them to.” Bo explained.
She paused to take a swig of the brandy. Which of course burned the way any good brandy should. “Wow. That’s some brandy,” she croaked out. She gave her head a little shake, then continued. “To backtrack slightly, I had some more dreams while we weren’t talking. In them I got a new boyfriend, Ryan, who was a Dark Fae. He was a total jackass, but he was funny and damn if the sex wasn’t hot. To be honest, pretty certain my dream self only dated him for the sex. And his sense of humor.” She shook her head again. “Anyway, he pulled a dick move on Kenzi’s boyfriend, so I’d tried to end things, but then that sex thing happened and I didn’t exactly break it off completely. The dream I had earlier began with me being quite injured from a fight and I needed healing. I couldn’t call Dyson because he’s with Ciara. Couldn’t call Lauren because she’s got Nadia back. So in the end I called Ryan. During the sex I got a little too into it and I dug my nails in his back and left four bloody scrapes along it. I had an injury on my arm and some of my blood must have gotten into his open wound because he got way utterly cuddly and needy when I was kicking him out. It was weird and very unlike him, but I didn’t really think anything of it. And then Kenzi and I got a job involving some con artist swindling people out of their money. Turns out the creep was a fae who had this really weird water that made people forget everything about themselves. I got hit with it and promptly forgot everything about myself. I ran away from Kenzi because I saw her beat up a guy, and Ryan found me and decided he wanted to marry me. So he kind of kidnapped me, and had that creepy guy come back and put the amnesia whammy on me again when I started remembering some things.”
That part pissed Bo off, but she couldn’t exactly blame Ryan when it was her blood causing him to do it in the first place.
“That sounds really gross, no offense.” Lara opened the other bottle and took a swig. She put her arm around Bo, squeezing lightly. “Your mother I mean. How she must have tried to use her blood to make them her thralls. I can actually imagine it.”
She didn’t like the sound of this new boyfriend, but then Bo’s love life tended to make her just a little angry. She also thought that Bo needed to have some safe person to get to in case Lara wasn’t there. Someone who wouldn’t make her jealous anyway. “But Ryan is even grosser. If I could shoot him for you I will.”
“She tried to do it to me, too, when I didn’t agree to help her. However, I had an amulet that protected me from her power so it didn’t work.” Bo shook her head. Aife was a sore spot for her because while she was her mother and had been through some horrible things, she’d also done some terrible things. “All of them were of course that kind of muscle-bound pretty boy type as well. I guess she had a type.”
But they weren’t there to dwell on her mother. “I’m really angry that he had that asshole give me another dose of the amnesia thing, but I also can’t blame him when it was my blood that was pushing him to do it. So, you know, next time I’m bleeding we need to be careful. I don’t want you to fall under those effects.”
“We’ll have to be careful.” Part of her was angry too, but it was obviously all around everyone’s fault, so she couldn’t be entirely angry. “Is there a way to break it? In case something like that happens? And what about menstrual blood?”
“Yes there is. Kenzi should know what it entails. Trick instantly knew what had happened once I told them I’d called Ryan for healing.” Which got onto the subject of why Bo was currently angry at Trick. She took another swig of brandy. “The fact that Trick knew exactly what had caused Ryan to act the way he did is what really tipped me off that he’s probably my grandfather. Of all the different kinds of fae that I’ve met, Trick is the only one who has magical blood. Clearly my mother had it, and now I have it. That paired with the fact he gave me a sword cane for my birthday with his wife’s name inscribed in it, which obviously had been hers. So. Clearly I was named after her, yet another clue that she’s my grandmother, and that Aife is their daughter.”
Bo pressed her lips together tightly. “I just can’t understand how he could know me for two years, to know I was searching for my family, but never say a god damned thing until something like this happened. I know things regarding Aife are touchy at best, but don’t you think he would’ve wanted to slip in the ‘Hey Bo, you’re my granddaughter’ at some point before I accidentally enthralled someone with my blood?” There was a mix of anger and longing in her voice. Bo wanted to know her family, where she came from, and in her dreams she’d been stymied every time she’d tried to find out about them. And yet Trick had been there every step of the way knowing this and never said anything.
“Do you know why he never told you? That’s a pretty big secret.” Lara understood Bo’s anger but she also kind didn’t know the full story. Sometimes there were good reasons for keeping quiet on something. But in this case she was leaning towards Trick should have told Bo sooner rather than later. “Maybe he was worried about stirring the pot with the dark and light fae balance?”
“I don’t know yet, I didn’t outright ask him. I kind of tip-toed around it, and he asked if there was something I was trying to ask him. To which I said not yet, but when I did ask him, I wanted the truth. He agreed, and that’s where my dream ended. So that’s kind of an affirmation, wouldn’t you say? He obviously knew what I wanted to ask him.” Rationally, Bo knew there were sometimes good reasons to not divulge secrets. Given that Trick had kept his identity as the Blood King secret for so long, it wasn’t a surprise that he wouldn’t have told her right away. But considering the power her blood carried, she felt he should have told her.
“Yes, it seems like he knows what you’re going to ask. Lovely of your dreams to give you a cliffhanger.” Lara took a drink from her bottle and squeezed Bo again. “I still wonder if menstrual blood might be a problem.” It wasn’t too likely but she could come into contact with it on accident, just by virtue of living with Bo and being the kind of attentive partner that gave back and belly rubs and fetched tampons.
“I know. I mean, my dream self wasn’t quite ready to actually ask it. But still, I want answers.” She took a breath, followed by another drink. Oh right, she’d forgotten to respond to that question. “I couldn’t say for certain, but I would assume it is. It’s still blood. It’s just kind of unnerving that my blood can do that without my making it do so. It just happens automatically.” At least she could control how much chi she took from someone, and she could control her enthralling touch. But the blood? She couldn’t control that.
“You can’t even think about it? Is it because you’re half-fae? Or not the full version of whatever Trick is?” It sounded like Trick could control it, but maybe the succubus blood in Bo’s veins meant she couldn’t, or it was much harder. It might be worth finding out if she could, as long as they had ways to break it if the testing failed. But that was Lara’s analytical nature taking charge.
“I highly doubt my blood could be like Trick’s in the whole whatever I write in it would come to pass at a grave cost. Whether it’s because my being a succubus changes how the power of my blood expresses itself is another question I don’t know the answer to. But yeah, I can’t activate it by thinking about it nor can I control it. I didn’t even know I had that ability and I still accidentally enthralled Ryan.” Which was troubling. It made Bo wonder just what other abilities she had that she didn’t know about yet. And this was completely different from the dark power she had within her.
“There’s probably no way to train yourself to control it, not without having access to knowledge or resources that don’t exist in this world.” Lara sounded frustrated at the idea. “I’m not going to know if I’m accidentally enthralled, am I.”
“Not unless Trick showed up here and began dreaming, no.” Bo doubted she’d get the answer in her dreams, but she supposed she would see how that went. She looked at Lara, a pained look on her face. “No, not until the enthrallment is broken. So we should avoid you somehow consuming my blood or swapping blood if we’re both injured.”
Lara nodded. With who they both were and where they lived, that was actually a real danger. They’d never both been injured at the same time before. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Lara set aside her bottle. “Do you still want to hit things?”
It was a possibility that it could happen, which was why Bo wanted to tell Lara about it before it became an issue. At least this way they could be aware of it, and Kenzi could at least help to unbind Lara if it happened. At the question, thoughts of what Killian had told her came to mind, and she worked her jaw. “Yes.”
“Okay. Before we’re too drunk to stand.” Lara got to her feet and held her hands out for Bo. “I already set up a punching bag, you can start there, but if you want we can spar. I can even play the training dummy for you, I have the equipment.” she was a little too tipsy to remember what the special gloves were called.
She took another swig before setting the bottle aside. Bo then scooted out of bed, taking Lara’s hands in the process. “A punching bag is fine. Sparring may need to wait until we are completely sober.” Though Bo was certain Lara could kick her ass. She may have amazing fighting skills, but she believed Lara was worlds better than she was.
“What about those gloves. The ones you .. punch into. That might be fun.” Lara smiled, trying to imagine them doing that drunk. They’d both land on their asses. Instead she just guided Bo into the gym and steered her towards the punching bag.
“Yeah, those could certainly be fun.” Bo said with a smile. It would certainly be a comedy of errors if they did that drunk. But once she was at the punching bag, she took a breath. While she was stronger than she had been, she hadn’t really been up and around much as per Lara’s orders. However, it was rather easy for her to call up the anger towards Ryan, Trick and her adoptive parents and she started punching the bag. She wasn’t a boxer, and paired with the influence of alcohol, she by no means had a fluid form to her punching. But there was a lot of anger behind it. Most of it was directed at her parents, and she was grunting in anger with the punches landed to the punching bag.
Getting back into the swing of things was a good idea anyway, and Lara could make her rest after. They’d both be flat on their asses anyway. “A little more to the left, put more backbone into your punch. Like that. Just envision a face of a bastard you really really dislike.”
She followed Lara’s directions. However, it was difficult to decide on one person’s face she wanted to hit. Several passed through her mind, and her punches became harder. It was entirely possible that the bag would be in danger of ripping out of the ceiling with the force Bo was hitting it with.
And, well, her eyes turned blue as they sometimes did when she was angry.
“This would be hot under other circumstances.” Lara wandered around the gym, watching the punching bag as it started to approach critical mass. She made sure to give her a wide berth, so she didn’t end up with a punching bag to the face. “Really hot.”
With the way Bo was punching the bag, it didn’t take long for it to hit critical mass. Her fist connected squarely with the bag, and it promptly swung away from her with such force that it ripped out of the ceiling. Bo recoiled as the bag flew across the room, hit the wall and landed in a heap on the floor. Some dust and bits of the ceiling fell down on her, and she coughed a bit.
“Holy shit,” she commented, looking up at the ceiling. “I’m so sorry about that. Guess I don’t know my own strength.” She brushed from of the dust and paint chips out of her hair.
The chain hit the ground so hard it left a divot about a foot in front of where Bo had been standing. Lara nearly jumped out of her skin. She smoothed her hands over her arms and came over to Bo. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, it missed me. Are you alright?” She asked, looking over at Lara. That probably did a number on Lara’s nerves and how she didn’t like loud noises like that. Bo instantly felt like she should’ve taken her anger out on something else that wouldn’t have broken.
“I’m fine, I thought this might happen so I was keeping my distance.” She really had time to prepare for the noise, so it hadn’t triggered anything beyond a little sweating. She reached for Bo’s hand. “It’s okay. Do you feel better?”
Bo nodded a little, glad that she hadn’t triggered Lara too badly. She gently squeezed Lara’s hand, momentarily looking down at their hands before she looked back at Lara. “Sort of? I’m just having trouble processing some stuff.” She scratched her head with her free hand. “When I made that post, Killian responded to me under a filter. He, uh, had some information about my family. Both biological and adoptive.”
“Okay.” Lara let out a breath, then pulled Bo over to a bench. “I think we need to sit down for this.” She made Bo sit, then slipped into her lap. Don’t ever tell anyone she does this sort of thing. Ever. Lara Croft knows how to make a man disappear.
When Lara sat on her lap, she slid her arms around her waist. She decided to start with the easier part that didn’t make her angry and dredge up the root of her issues. “For starters, how do you feel about marrying an Irish girl? I’m apparently true blooded Irish.” And considering things tended to be weird between the English and the Irish, it was probably best to get that out in the event Lara had any feelings one way or another for the Irish.
“We don’t tell Roth or Grimm, and it will be fine,” Lara joked. There was a certain rivalry with those two and the irish that was fun to make fun of. “But that’s not something that’s going to bother me. I love you for you, not for whatever properties or DNA is in your blood.”
“Good thing I don’t have an Irish accent, then,” she said. She looked at Lara and smiled briefly. “Good, I hadn’t know if you had anything personal against the Irish or not.” This was definitely a journey for Bo, and it was a highly emotional one. And that was without adding in everything relating to her adoptive parents. “My grandfather’s name is Fitzpatrick McCorrigan, which is such an Irish name it’s not even funny. And according to my adoptive parents, whom Killian had talked to, it was my grandfather who left me at the church, not my mother.” The connotations of that weren’t good ones. Was her mother dead? Had she been abandoned by her mother? Had something terrible happened that caused her grandfather to leave her at the church?
The thought that she was the product of rape was suddenly gaining more traction and creedence, and she didn’t know how to handle that. And considering how life here oddly mirrored the dreams, she was very certain something terrible had happened to her mother here. Perhaps not to the same extent that Aife had suffered in her dreams, but enough that Bo hadn’t been raised by her biological family. She pressed her lips together, feeling some emotions rise within her.
And she had mentioned Killian had spoken to her adoptive parents. So if she tried to shut down on that aspect, Lara at least had heard it and could put two and two together.
Lara took Bo’s hand, squeezing it. That really was the most irish of names, but it was also the most smallest of issues. The rest of it, her grandfather and the mystery of her mother and what that could mean, was much more important. “Are you going to talk to them? If someone’s talk to them about you then they might be suspicious.”
“My adoptive parents? No, I’m not. I’d told Killian he could talk to them, but not to mention personal information about me to them.” Bo was not going to reach out to them. She didn’t think they deserved to know anything about her when they didn’t accept her for who she was. Missing her or not, the fact remained that they hadn’t accepted her twelve years ago, and she didn’t think that would change now. Not just because of her being a succubus, but because she was going to marry a woman.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t talk to them? Or at least think about it. I have a lot of anger towards my father, but if I suddenly learned he was alive? I’d want to talk to him. Clear the air, if nothing else.” People could change.
“I’m not talking to them. Missing me or not doesn’t change what they did. They didn’t accept me then, they sure as hell won’t accept me now. I’m not opening myself up to that again. They know I’m alive, that’s more than enough.” Yes Bo was probably punishing her parents, but she had so much anger towards them, and she was still very hurt by what they’d said and done. She knew that she’d only be opening herself up to more pain and anger, and she had more than enough of that.
“How can you know they won’t accept you?” Lara knew she was walking a tightrope, but she felt very strongly on this, perhaps more strongly than she’d realized. “You’ve grown a lot, changed too. Maybe you can at least find the courage to tell them to their face what they’ve done to you?”
Bo looked at her, anger rising in her again. “Because I know them, Lara. I may have grown and changed, but I am not the pious, heterosexual girl they wanted me to be. And if they knew I was a succubus on top of it all, they’d condemn me to hell all over again.” If Lara wasn’t sitting on her lap, Bo would be pacing right now. Or possibly storming off somewhere.
“Bo.” Lara put her hands on Bo’s shoulders, squeezing hard, trying to rub the tension out of them and calm her down. “Think of how long you’ve been running. You finally have a chance to stop running. Confront them, tell them to their face how they’ve hurt you. Maybe then you can cut them out of your life forever and seal that wound.”
“I have stopped running. I am not giving them the opportunity to see me again, much less try and lecture me. I don’t need that shit.” She huffed. Bo didn’t want to take the chance for them to shoot her down again, and she certainly didn’t want Lara to have to deal with that kind of closed mindedness either. “And you don’t need to deal with that shit either.”
“I love you.” Lara kept up with the shoulder rubbing. “I just … I’m worried. About you. That this might not go away like you want it to.”
“So I should go face their bigotry again? I’ve had more than enough of that.” She sighed, trying to relax under Lara’s touch, but it was difficult. “I don’t want to even think about them.” And yet they both knew she would be thinking about them, about what had happened to cause her to run away. And she could hear her mother’s voice echoing through her head again with the harsh words she’d said to her over a decade before, the ones that Bo had believed about herself and led to her hating herself.
Lara was pushing too hard and she knew it. She leaned in, kissing the side of Bo’s face. “Enough about that. I think we need to find something else to distract you.” She wasn’t making a pass at her, though she would be willing. “Whatever you want.”
For once, Bo didn’t take that as Lara making a pass at her. She wasn’t in the mood at the moment. But something to distract her. Okay. A thought of making a cherry pie crossed her mind. Even if it sort of reminded her of her mother, it shouldn’t be that difficult to steer her attention to other things with conversation. “I got the makings for cherry pie, if you’re in the mood to have some pie.”
Lara laughed. “Isn’t that the only thing you can make? At least you won’t burn the house down. Can I help?”
“Yeah it is. The house should be safe. More or less.” Unless she got really careless, but with Lara there she doubted it would get to that point. “Yes, you can. Hopefully the pie will turn out edible, it’s been a while since I made it.”
“I guess we’ll find out. If it’s terrible, we’ll go to the store. Does that sound fair?” Lara got off of Bo’s lap and pulled her to her feet. She stared into her eyes for a long, intense moment. “You know...you mean a lot to me, right? Usually I’m better at words than this.”
“That sounds fair, yeah.” Hopefully things wouldn’t go badly, but better to have a backup plan. Once on her feet, she looked back into Lara’s eyes. She lifted a hand and pressed it to Lara’s cheek, gently rubbing her thumb against her cheek. “Yes, I do. I love you, and you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Not the super strength or quick healing?” Lara joked. Her eyes, however, were locked on Bo’s and intense with sudden emotion.
“Well, maybe,” she joked back, her eyes not wavering from Lara’s. She saw the emotion there, and her own were filling with emotion. She then leaned in and kissed Lara, pouring the well of emotion into it.
It was somehow the most emotional kiss they’d had in awhile. Somehow beating out their make-up kiss. Lara cupped her face, deepening the kiss with more and more emotion.
The kiss only seemed to become more emotional, and Bo didn’t want it to stop. She drank it up and gave it all right back to Lara. The hand on Lara’s cheek slid to the back of her head while her other arm wrapped around her back and held her close. Her emotions had been running high, and now she was letting the rest of them out. Bo loved this woman deeply, loved how they could communicate and connect on this emotional level.
I love you, Lara seemed to say, in the way she turned her head, in the way her lips moved against Bo’s. You make me want to be better, her hands on Bo’s face also said. For some inexplicable reason she was crying.
The way Lara kissed her was enough to break the dam on her emotions and she started crying as she kissed Lara. Her arm around Lara tightened, pulling her closer against her. Sometimes it took a lot more than this to get Bo to let her emotions out, but it was finally starting to get easier. She trusted Lara, trusted her with her heart and her emotions, trusted that she would never use any of this against her.
And Lara wouldn’t, at least not on purpose. Bo’s feelings were something precious to her, in many ways more important than her own. She would take care of them. She had to.