InsaneJournal

Who: Lara and Bo
What: Lara brings home a Christmas tree, and tells Bo about a Christmas tradition she wants to uphold. Also Bo finally tells Lara some details of her recent dreams.
When: After this
Where: Croft Manor
Warnings: Pretty low



After the talk with Kenzi, Bo knew she couldn’t keep Lara in the dark anymore about certain aspects of her dreams. Even with the talk with Kenzi, she still had some pent up emotions about it, but they weren’t as bad as they were before her bestie had pulled it out of her. And she had come to a decision during that talk as well, one that she was certain Lara would be happy to hear. Bo, however, had intense reservations about it. She felt she’d only go there to say her piece to get rejected again. Or worse yet, turned away before she could even say anything.

Deep down, she still loved her parents and she wanted to be accepted by them. After all, it was the way things had ended that had helped give her that intense self-hatred. Bo was idealistic enough to hope going there would undo that self-hatred. Of course, nothing was that easy. But just as easy as things could go smoothly and she could be accepted by her parents, things could also go horribly wrong. What if her father was dead like in the dreams? What if her mother had dementia like in the dreams? That scenario scared her more because she knew she’d feel guilty for not having gone back earlier when she’d still had the chance.

So with a lot on her mind and decisions made, she went to find Lara. “Lara?” She tried her study first, and if she wasn’t there she’d try the gym.

Lara wasn’t in her study, nor was she in the gym. She was, actually, trying to wrestle a large Christmas tree through the door. She’d gotten this mad idea in her head that she wanted a real Christmas tree. But then she always preferred real trees, and it had been one of those splurge things with Sam. And this was her first Christmas with Bo, for realsy reals and it had to be a real tree, damn it.

Only she’d ended up doing that chopping down a real tree thing and then driven it home and now she needed to get it inside and set up before Bo got home or something. She couldn’t decorate it just yet, no, she had to talk to Bo about the tradition. Lara wasn’t particularly religious but there was still that tradition and she hoped Bo would be okay with it but she needed to get this bloody tree through the door. “Come on you piece of shite!”

Upon not finding Lara in the study or the gym, Bo pursed her lips, trying to figure out where to look next. Though as she came out of the gym, she heard that familiar English lilt cursing, and Bo had to wonder just what she was cursing at. Had one of the cats done something while Bo hadn’t been paying attention? She went to investigate and found Lara apparently fighting both a pine tree and the door of the house. A bemused look crossed her face and she stood there for a few moments just watching.

She might’ve been staring a little bit as well because it was Lara.

“Do you need some help?” She asked, finally, eyes glittering with amusement. “Or shall I wait and see which of you wins?”

“Bo! Shite you weren’t supposed to be home or see this yet.” Lara kicked the door enough to get the tree in, and dropped it unceremoniously on the hardwood. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

She eyed the tree as Lara dropped it to the floor, eyebrows raising in amusement as she looked back up at Lara. “I could leave now and come back later and be surprised then?” She was teasing. Mostly. She would leave and pretend she hadn’t seen this and come back later if Lara wanted her to.

“A little late for that.” Lara pulled off a beanie and shook snow off of it, before coming over to Bo and kissing her sweetly. “I have a thing….a tradition. I’ll tell you about it once the tree is up. How are you?”

Bo smiled into the kiss. “A tradition? I’m all for hearing about it.” Despite having celebrated Christmas last year with Kenzi and then Lara, this was the first year she’d have a Christmas tree up. She was suddenly a little emotional about that. “I’m okay. Kenzi was over and we talked about some things. If you had some time, I had wanted to talk to you about some of what’s gone on with me and my dreams. But you can totally put the tree up first if you want. There’s no rush or anything.”

“It’s about ornaments. Every year, I pick out a new one.” Lara pulled the tree into an upright position and leaned it against the wall. “When I was living with Sam, we’d pick out one each, and then one together, as an us ornament. And I did the same when my parents were alive.”

There was about six years worth of ornaments she’d never picked out, after they’d died. But Sam had convinced her to pick the tradition back up and...well now she was looking at Bo almost eagerly. “I’d like to do that with you. It’s like..building up a story, year after year.”

She pulled her jacket off. “We can talk while putting it up, if you want. Or is this..serious conversation.”

A warm smile crossed her face as Lara explained the tradition. “I love that, and would definitely love to do that with you.” It was so simple, but it was intensely beautiful, and Bo really liked that idea. It was something that they could build up together.

“It’s kind of serious. It’s about my adoptive parents, both in the dreams and here.” Just saying that brought up the multitude of emotions she had on the subject, but she tried to keep the anger to a minimum so that she could talk about it. “During the whole crap with the Dawning in my dreams, the part I haven’t told you about yet was that I...went back home.” It was a sore subject, and she scratched the back of her head a bit uncomfortably. It had been easier talking to Kenzi about it because, well, she’d been there and seen what had gone down in the dreams.

Scratch that off the list. If Bo’s thing wasn’t so serious, Lara would have swept her off her feet. The tradition was surprisingly important to her. Even in her dreams, after the island, her first Christmas had been a little depressing, but they’d still managed to do the ornament thing in an attempt to find a new normal.

She took Bo’s hands instead as she talked. “You went back to visit your parents? How did that go?”

Bo was really taking to the idea of building a home and a family here. The ornament tradition was only intensifying that feeling for her. After all the running she’d done, it was nice to be able to have a place she called home, and that she could build something from it.

“It wasn’t what I expected, in both good and bad ways.” Bo pressed her lips together. “My dad had died some time before. And my mom...my mom had dementia. She didn’t even remember that we’d fought and that I’d run away from home at first.” She choked up a bit at the memory of it. It did hurt that she’d never gotten to see her dad again, and her mom having dementia had been one hell of a blow to her. How could she sit down and talk about the reason she’d run away, about the self-hatred that had been inflicted by her parents when her mother couldn’t really remember the incident to begin with?

Lara squeezed Bo’s hands, then let go and wrapped her arms around her. She couldn’t imagine what that would be like, though she’d know she’d probably have more yelling on her end than Bo did. “I’m so sorry. Are you worried she’s losing her mind here, too? And is your father still alive? When are you going. You should go as soon as possible.”

Parental issues were nothing new to Lara and she felt her heart ache for her fiance. “No matter what happened in the past, you need to find closure while you can.”

Bo leaned into the embrace and wrapped her arms around Lara, hugging her tightly. She closed her eyes, sniffing slightly as she tried to gather herself together. “Yeah, I am. I did finally get to talk to her in the dream about it, but it was a complete one sided conversation. Though I think she did understand what was being said. Before I left, she told me she loved me, and called me Bo instead of Beth.” There was a strangled sob at that admission. How long had she wanted to hear that? And it had packed more of a punch because it had come after Bo had told her she was fae.

The admission of being fae, however, could not happen here otherwise her parents would probably try to ship her off to an asylum like her biological mother.

“I don’t know if my dad’s still alive here or not. I don’t have the guts to try calling them.” Plus it was too easy to hang up a phone or feign dialing a wrong number. It was far more difficult to avoid topics face-to-face. “I don’t know when yet, but Kenzi said she’d go with me, and I want you there as well. Partly for moral support and partly to try and keep me from running away. I kind of ran away and left Kenzi alone in the middle of hicksville after my mom remembered why we’d fought and she kind of hurled the same insults at me that she did then.”

Lara rested her chin on the top of Bo’s head and rubbed her hands around her back. That couldn’t have been easy, but at least it was something. “I’ll go with you, of course I will. As a friend or your fiance, whichever you think is best.” Adding on ‘I’m marrying a woman’ might actually be a problem, Lara realized. While she herself wasn’t closeted she tended to prefer her privacy, so she wasn’t loud about it.

“And I won’t let you run away.”

Bo drank up the comfort from Lara, letting herself calm down while also letting the emotions fall as they may instead of stuffing them deep down inside where they had been until Kenzi had prodded them. “Fiance, I’m not going to lie and I’m not taking off the ring. If there’s any hope of forging a relationship with them again, they have to accept me for who I am, not who they want me to be. And more importantly, they need to accept us.” She was steadfast on that matter. Bo wasn’t one to lie about herself, even if she knew there was a very good chance that her parents would reject her again solely based on the fact she was marrying a woman, she wasn’t going to hide it.

“Thank you. And I’m sure Kenzi appreciates having help in keeping me from running away.” She didn’t know what she’d find upon returning home, but she knew she couldn’t face it alone. “When would be a good time for you to go?” Bo wanted to get it done and over with as soon as possible, but she wasn’t going to force Lara to move her schedule around for it.

An unexpected grin found it’s way to Lara’s face, and she squeezed Bo back tightly. Until Bo had made that firm statement Lara hadn’t realized how much hearing it would mean to her. She didn’t want to hide who she was, or who she loved, in spite of certain political realities in both her birth nation and her adopted one. She was pretty sure their ‘affair’ was all over british tabloids, anyway. Best not tell Bo about that.

“I like being part of this package.” Lara pulled her head back to look at Bo. “Any time you wish to.”

Bo was not one to hide who she was or who she loved either. And she was proud to wear the engagement ring, and it wasn’t going to come off her finger either. She really didn’t care what people in general thought about her being with a woman. Bo was happy, Lara was happy and that was all that mattered.

She looked at Lara, a smile of her own at the comment of being part of this package. “Alright, I’ll talk to Logan and see what I can get off. I’d like to do it before Christmas.”

“That sounds fair.” Lara cupped Bo’s face, rubbing her thumbs along her cheek bones. “I love you, and we’re going to get you through this, okay? No matter what you find, or how they react. I’ll be with you. I’ll always be with you. I can’t imagine a life without you.”

“I love you, too,” she responded, gazing into Lara’s eyes. “I’m scared, but with you and Kenzi there, it’ll be easier to face.” Or so she hoped. It was going back to the source of her demons, but she knew she needed to. While she could already be too late, if she continued to put it off now and later learned there had still been time to talk to her parents, then she’d carry the guilt with her for the rest of her life.

And assuming she wasn’t killed somewhere along the way, that life could stretch on for centuries.

She set a hand on Lara’s arm. “I need you, and I can’t imagine doing this without you.” It was another thing Lara had on Lauren. Lauren had never met Bo’s mother in the dreams. Bo had wanted to take Kenzi instead, knowing she needed to get her mind off of what had happened with Inari.

“You lucked out with a friend like Kenzi. And with me too.” Lara winked at her, hands still on her face. She was reluctant to let go, ever. And she’d had thoughts about Bo being immortal. Lara had only ever considered that from an angle of knowledge or finding something that could heal the injured or bring back the people she’d lost. But what if she could be there for Bo. Always.

“I definitely did. Without both of you, I’d still be lost.” She smiled, slipping both her arms around Lara’s waist and holding her close. She didn’t mind that Lara didn’t want to let go. Her immortality was something she didn’t think about much, if only because she knew Lara wasn’t. And she really didn’t want to think about the prospect of one day watching Lara die and being unable to bring her back by breathing chi into her. It physically pained her to think of a life without Lara in it.

Without Bo, Lara would be lost too. Oh, she had no doubt she’d be busy and she’d find fulfillment, but there’d be an emptiness that would be impossible to fill. Bo had ruined her for that. Lara rested her forehead against Bo’s, closing her eyes and letting the closeness comfort them both. “Did I rob the tomb of your heart?”

She winced. “That was bad, wasn’t it.”

She closed her eyes, just soaking in Lara’s presence. She then couldn’t help but to laugh a bit, a grin on her face as she squeezed Lara in her arms. “Maybe it was, but I love it. But you definitely robbed the tomb of my heart and stole my heart. I am certain that it makes a nice addition to your collection of priceless artifacts?”

“You’re the most priceless,” Lara told her. “Irreplaceable.” She smiled at Bo, eyes crinkling in joy and love. “You belong in the most hallowed of museums.” High praise indeed. Lara pulled Bo into a kiss, tender and gentle.

It was still incredibly moving to Bo that she meant that much to someone. “As long as you’re there with me, you can put me anywhere.” She returned the kiss, her heart swelling in her chest. This was what she’d yearned for her entire life, to love and be loved like this. And she would do anything to protect it.