Lost Girl 1. Chapter 1

Lauren and Tamsin hadn't had the easiest of romances. For one, their relationship had started out all but acerbic which had warped into a physical…thing they refused to name which often bordered on animalistic violence and during the first few months of their stolen moments, its wasn't usual for one or both of them to have cuts, bruises and torn clothing. It was more to their own surprise than anyone else's that their 'strictly physical' relationship had turned into a something serious with deep emotions attached to it. In fact, just how 'secret' their relationship was had been revealed the day they walked into the Dal hand in hand for the first time and Kenzi had made an incredulous noise in the back of her throat and dug in her pocket to shove a crumpled up wad of bills at Bo who looked pleased with herself. The only comment that had been made was a surly remark by Kenzi that if they had waited just three more days to go public, she would have won the pool (which promptly earned the lithe human gentle punch in the arm by the Valkyrie).

Most of the milestones in their relationship were quiet public acknowledgements. Even privately, they would dance around subjects until one of them brought it up seriously. Tamsin had more or less asked the human to marry her one morning when Lauren had awoken to find the Valkyrie's bright gaze trained intently on her, making her feel very self-aware. She wasn't worried, really, the Dark Fae had the same look on her face that she'd had the first time she actually said the words 'I love you' to her but a laugh bubbled in her chest and escaped before she could stop it when Tamsin said in a voice trying too hard to be nonchalant: "So, why don't we get married or something?"

Like everything else, Tamsin hadn't wanted to make a big deal out of it. It wasn't that she was embarrassed; she could be surprisingly possessive in public and highly enjoyed showing off that the doctor was hers when people were making eyes at her, she was just naturally very low key about certain things. Lauren hadn't had to press very hard to get her way with the wedding though, since the unification of the Dark and Light, making it legal in Fae terms was exceedingly simple and they spent more time trying to convince Bo and Kenzi that they weren't going to have the wedding at the clubhouse than they did signing Lauren's formal fealty to Tamsin (with the added clauses that she would still be doing work for the Fae, of course)

The conversation about children had started just as innocuously as the more or less marriage proposal Tamsin had delivered a year prior. Like the proposal, it had seemingly come unprompted. Lauren was carefully bandaging her wife up in their living room after the Valkyrie stubbornly refused to go to the med lab for the sole reason Bo and Dyson hadn't had to, never mind that neither of them had been stabbed in the back with a short sword and had a split lip. Lauren was gently scolding the Valkyrie for not sitting still while she was pulling thick sutures through the laceration in her back when Tamsin had blurted her statement quietly.

Lauren hummed in agreement at first, having not been particularly paying attention, but once she pulled the tiny curved needle through the skin on the Valkyrie's back, she'd looked up and asked the taller blonde to repeat herself. Tamsin rolled her eyes and made a move as if to gnaw her lower lip thoughtfully but winced when she reminded herself of the gash on it. "I _said_," she repeated more clearly. "That you'd make a good mom."

Lauren felt her face warm in spite of herself and she clipped the excess nylon away from the final stitch before applying a clean bandage, more to keep Tamsin from pulling at the loose nylon threads than to keep it clean and moved to the front of the Valkyrie to look at the swollen wound in her lip. "What are you trying to say?" the doctor prodded, pulling a cotton ball out of the medical kit on the table near where the Valkyrie was sitting.

"Just what I said." Tamsin sidestepped, true to form. She jerked her head slightly to one side in evasion as Lauren brought up the cotton ball, now soaked in alcohol near her lip. She hooked her ankles behind Lauren's knees and pulled the doctor forward, dropped her head to the shorter blonde's shoulder. "I just think it'd be, I dunno, cool or something to have little mini us' running around." Lauren had laughed not sure what to say, but Tamsin had murmured "I'm serious" in her ear before kissing her soundly past the pain in her lip.

And that had been the extent of the official conversation, really. The doctor had found out more about Valkyrie physiology in the following year than all of the Fae archives knew combined. Because Valkyrie's weren't really born or gestated in any type of conventional way due to their repeating lifecycles, they had decided Lauren would carry the baby. There were tons of different Fae types that were able to procreate via parents of the same gender, but it had taken nearly four months for Lauren to perfect a treatment that would work for them though after several initial treatments, she found that she stopped aging at a cellular level. Although she was still legally, socially and more or less biologically human, she did take comfort in the fact that not only would their child fit in with Fae society, but also she would be around more than long enough to see it grow into adulthood.

Eight months into all the research, treatment and commandeering of Fae medical labs, Lauren had become pregnant. It was an odd sensation, not just because of another life growing inside her, but a severely maternal switch seemed to be flipped inside Tamsin. Though the Valkyrie was certainly protective of people she loved and could undoubtedly could be described as caring, it was fairly comical the way she flittered about their house daily, fretting about things that might not be acceptable for babies (she had even taken to locking her liquor cabinet even though it was in a cabinet six feet from the floor), she asked Lauren endless questions about human pregnancies, read nearly every medical text Lauren had on pregnancies even when she couldn't understand it and while the doctor would be the first to admit that Tamsin had a nurturing side to her not many got to see, she took only a little guilt in allowing the Valkyrie to wait on her so heavily.

Even before Lauren started showing, she spent most nights drifting off to sleep with Tamsin gently telling what passed as bedtime stories to her to her abdomen (which generally consisted of a lot of battles and stories involving jötnar). After about eight months into her pregnancy, Lauren had woken suddenly with a horrible cramping sensation. Not particularly worried, she eased herself out of bed and started for the hall closet where they kept a heating pad stashed, turned it on and went back to bed only to be woken up several minutes later with a tightening cramping feeling that caused her to involuntarily let out a pained noise.

Tamsin bolted upright in an instant as if she hadn't been sleeping at all, a protective hand over Lauren's stomach and almost fearfully asking if her water had broke. The blonde doctor nearly laughed as her latest contraction died down and reassured her wife that while she was certain her water hadn't broken, they had better get to the hospital as soon as possible. The Valkyrie all but jumped out of bed, sprinting around their bedroom and grabbing clothes for Lauren to wear, helping her into them and easing her down the stairs to collect the overnight bag that had been by the door since Lauren had theorized the pregnancy probably wouldn't be as long as normal human gestation two months ago. Due to it being three in the morning, Tamsin made it to the hospital five minutes before her previous best time when she had insisted on making the run in Lauren's economic, but unfamiliar car.

The doctor wanted to compliment on the Valkyrie's ability to not only make it to the hospital, but get them through the door and state what they needed without yelling or cursing at anyone, but was too busy trying not to concentrate on the feeling of a baby inside her stretching itself out in all directions. Once they were set up in a room, Tamsin made the round of phone calls, having to be manhandled out of the room to do so as per enforcement of the no cellphone policy in the hospital rooms. She stayed in the waiting room just long enough to have a bleary sounding Kenzi repeat the message twice and promise to wake Bo and meet them back at their apartment before practically sprinting back into the delivery room.

If anyone asked Lauren later, she would tell them that it was the longest three hours of her life but if pressed for details, she could hardly remember anything except gripping Tamsin's hand and feeling like every blood vessel in her face was going to burst open. If anyone asked Tamsin, she would say it was the longest three hours of her life too, but she remembered hearing Lauren let loose strings of swears that she wasn't even aware the doctor knew existed and that she would be forever surprised that the death grip Lauren had had on her hand hadn't broken any bones. Both would agree that from the moment Charlotte Freyja Lewis' shrill cry pierced the air, that the newborn with her downy head full of blonde hair was the most beautiful thing either of them had ever seen.


	2. Chapter 2

Lauren had had to be persuaded to let the technicians at the Fae labs to run tests on Charlotte to confirm whether or not she had fully Fae genetics. It wasn't that she was against the tests, she had undergone the specific concoction of treatments before getting pregnant not just to be able to carry a half-Fae child to term, but because she was hoping not to bring a human child into the Fae world which had gotten better, largely due to Bo and her inner circle, was still rife with prejudices against humans. It was because she didn't trust anyone to run any kind of medical test on someone she cared about at all and that feeling had grown to an exponential degree she didn't know was possible the second she was told the month old infant could be tested.

She was out of the labs completely until Charlotte got a little older, although she did often do light jobs and research at her work station in the living room whenever the baby fell asleep during the day, wishing she had the equipment to run the tests herself at the house. She began to worry when the first test came back inconclusive. The baby had almost non-existent cellular deterioration, but it could have been attributed to the treatments Lauren had been taking in the sixteen months before and during the pregnancy. Naturally, this had stressed the blonde out and she fretted about it constantly. It wasn't that she would care for her daughter less, if she were human, but she wanted to be able to prepare her child for what being human in the Fae world was like. Naturally, things had changed since the time she was considered a slave (humans still had to have a fealty oath to a Fae in order to operate in Fae society but the contractual slavery system by and large didn't exist. Lauren even got paid livable wages for her work now, and even had, with influence from Bo and Dyson, had been paid a large lump sum as compensation for her ten years as a slave) but it's not like it was still going to be easy. She just wanted to be ready.

Tamsin tried to distract her from her anxiety about the issue, trying to keep her wife's focus on the amazing amalgamation of the two of them they had made. How the chubby baby already had Lauren's angled jaw and rich expressive brown eyes but her lips, chin and lighter hair, how it wouldn't matter if Charlotte was human because she was theirs. And it would work for the duration, but when it was just her and the baby in an empty house and the littlest member of their family was fast asleep, worry would creep back in. Knowing what she knew now about Valkyrie behaviors and biology, she would study Charlotte while she played with her or while Tamsin was interacting with her, looking for outward quirks of inheritable Valkyrie traits, but she was only a month old, she hardly did anything but eat and cry. Although Lauren guilty admitted that she did feel some small amount of relief that their daughter had odd sleeping habits. Valkyrie by nature, didn't need much sleep and Lauren had learnt that a lot of them slept just because they could and not because they needed to. Tamsin had told her that she could stay awake for nearly a week and still run at mostly optimal level, which was part of what made them such good trackers, but she didn't like to because it made her "cranky."

Charlotte slept very little when compared to the minimal amount of fifteen hours a day Lauren was familiar with in typical human babies and even when she did sleep, rather than falling asleep at small intervals, she would "power down" as Tamsing called it and go into long sleep for usually eight or nine hours and then take at least one nap during the day, sometimes for as long as an hour. That, and she had adjusted to a natural awake during the day and sleep at night cycle preternaturally quickly, which Lauren was delighted about as she had been anticipating being awake and woken up at all hours though Tamsin seemed almost disappointed that she would be deprived of the experience of griping about being woken up in the dead of night by a crying baby.

Still, she could tell Tamsin was worried about the results as well and after the third time they had come back inconclusive, Lauren was sitting on the couch reading a book, listening to the white noise of Charlotte's nursery from the baby monitor on the coffee table and waiting for her wife to get home from a later shift. She had just fallen into a light sleep after convincing herself she was only going to rest her eyes for a second when the sound of keys being fitted into the lock pulled her out of it. Generally when Tamsin worked a late shift, she'd already eaten whatever passed for dinner for her so whenever she found Lauren on the couch waiting for her (which was more often than not), the Valkyrie would shed her shoes and jacket immediately on entering and flop over on the couch and they'd just spend time together. Sometimes talking about any number of things, sometimes things that required mouths but no talking, and occasionally, Tamsin would stretch out on the couch with her head in Lauren's lap and request the human sing something to her, which she would oblige while gently twisting her fingers through the Fae's hair but this night, Tamsin left her shoes and jacket on and crossed the room to plant a kiss on her wife's lips before telling her to grab a jacket and go collect the baby.

Lauren let herself be pulled off the couch while confusedly pointing out that it was after midnight and Charlotte was sleeping but did as she was told when her wife insisted. They'd taken Lauren's car since the car seat was already in it and while she had been fiddling with fitting the fussing baby into the seat, Tamsin had slipped into the driver side. Having worked there nearly three years since signing formal fealty to her wife, Lauren knew almost immediately that they were headed to the newest Fae owned medical lab which was the first and so far only joint-Fae lab as per the efforts to make the renewed treaties between the Light and Dark more of an allegiance than a grudging acceptance. The real reasoning for going there in the middle of the night hadn't immediately occurred to the doctor for some reason. She was under the full assumption that something had happened at work that needed her immediate attention and wasn't easily explainable in a way that she could go and leave Tamsin home with the baby.

But when they entered the main lab, it was completely deserted which was odd in any case. Lauren stared at her wife questioningly, cradling Charlotte in her arms who had calmed down and had one fist tangled in the doctor's hair and the other half crammed into her toothless mouth. Tamsin had rolled her eyes and spread her arms as if trying to emphasize they were in the medical lab.

"C'mon, doc." She'd said, moving to gesticulate towards the station she normally occupied when she was at work. "I didn't just marry you for your looks, yanno."

Suddenly completely understanding, Lauren nodded once in a manner particular to her that meant she was just now understanding something obvious and crossed the short distance between them to hand their daughter to the Valkyrie and press their lips together briefly before crossing the room to the appropriate spot. Like the other times she'd had her blood drawn, Charlotte was utterly ambivalent about being stuck with a needle and burbled happy nonsense noises at Tamsin while she held the baby up and murmured soothing encouragements that the baby obviously didn't need.

While Lauren went into doctor mode and was making the necessary preparations for the tests for certain genetic markers she wanted to check, she refrained from telling her wife how bouncing the baby on her hip and occasionally spinning her around or jerking her upwards suddenly to give the baby the illusion she was being tossed in the air wasn't a good thing to do if they expected her to get back to sleep after they got home and focused intently on extraction processes.

Half an hour later, she announced she'd done everything she could do and now they just had to wait for the results from the tests that took longer. She could see why the techs were having a hard time. Even with her highly specialized knowledge of Fae genetics which was largely better than most Fae in the medical field, she couldn't say for sure one way or the other with the results from the generic tests the techs had run. As far as Lauren knew, there had been no documented Fae hybrid who had inherited non-human related biological traits like Charlotte had. Although, to be fair, as far as she knew, no Fae hybrid had ever been conceived like Charlotte had either.

Somehow, conducting the tests herself had set her mind almost totally at ease and after labeling the tests as having been performed by an intern (they turned over at the lab so quickly, no one would ask about it) and making sure to fudge enough of the labeling to make it seem like the results had a 'sensitive' classification and needed to go to Tamsin for a case. It wasn't really that they had done anything wrong by running tests on Charlotte, but Tamsin was ultra protective of the specifics of Valkyrie biology and while there was some information on them in the Fae leaders' archives, it was restricted information and none of the techs would have known what specifically to look for, which was fairly common with Fae species who were highly sought after for some quality or another. Partly out of deference to her wife's preference for upholding the limited access to knowledge of Valkyries and partly because she didn't want someone she didn't consider family to be the first to know, Lauren didn't feel guilty in the slightest as they drove home and she could tell from just the absence of quiet tension in Tamsin's body language and speech that the other blonde was less stressed out about the situation as well.

Lauren had had so much of a burden lifted from her shoulders by running the tests herself that she had almost completely lost track of when the results should be available. When she came home from having lunch with Bo and Kenzi one afternoon, she found Tamsin on the living room couch, carefully polishing her most prized material possession, an ornate Ulfberht from the early ninth century. All Valkyrie had one; the most prized ones, like Tamsin's, were ones that had been passed onto them by famed warriors. While in the past they had been on the functional end of the cultural item spectrum, since the late 18th century they had moved toward the far end of the sentimental cultural item scale. As such, Lauren had only seen the sword twice. She'd only even first heard mention of the three-foot weapon was when they'd moved in together and Tamsin had pointed out that while she unreservedly trusted the doctor, she didn't want the case it came in opened under any circumstances only briefly glossing over what was inside the case to quell any curiosity.

The first time she had actually seen it was when Tamsin first told her she loved her. Lauren had known for some time before that that the Valkyrie loved her, but though she had spoken the words herself, the phrase was never returned to her, which hadn't particularly bothered the doctor, she knew through Tamsin's actions that she did and had no intention of pressing her on the subject. They had been in the middle of having a rare weekend off at the same time and had spent nearly all of it unclothed. They were tangled around each other, still covered in sweat and breathing heavily, Lauren feeling like she was the one being protected despite being mostly on top of the Valkyrie, feeling the Fae's heart beat hard against the skin on her cheek which was pressed against the older woman's chest.

The human had started to drift off, lulled by Tamsin's steadying heartbeat but was pulled back to being fully conscious when Tamsin started moving in a manner that indicated she was trying to get up.

"I wanna show you something." The Valkyrie explained in a quiet but confident voice as Lauren scooted off of her girlfriend so she could get up.

The doctor pulled herself up into a sitting position, leaning her back against the cool metal bars of their headboard and watched the lithe woman gracefully slide off the bed but smiled self-satisfactorily as she noted the unsteadiness to Tamsin's gait in her stride to the closet. Her smile disappeared as the gravity of the situation dawned on her as the taller slid open the door and pulled the plain black case from the top shelf where it had sat since they'd moved in several months ago. Tamsin moved back to the bed with deliberate steps, purposely holding the human's gaze with sureness, which given the dim light of the bedside table lamp, she could see clearly. She sucked in a breath as the Valkyrie sat across from her and laid the long rectangular box on the bed in between them, only breaking eye contact to smooth her hands along the top of the case before flipping the latches on the sides simultaneously and lifting the lid away from the base.

Lauren wasn't terribly sure what she was expecting, having only ever seen pictures of decayed museum pieces and replicas of Ulfberhts before, but it wasn't what was nestled in the blue silk confines of the box next to a dark leather scabbard. For something well over a millennium old, it looked like it had been forged yesterday and was so finely crafted and cared for, that it showed none of the nicks or wear of use that the doctor was aware the blade had. Along the length of the blade were a series of engraved runes. Tamsin had told her once, that the original terminology for the swords had been given up in favor of Ulfberht which was a human naming convention given to a collection of swords with a similar prestigious history but made for and by humans. This had obviously been made out of materials known only to those who operated within the Fae world. It looked freshly polished and knowing that Tamsin sometimes opted out of communal dinner engagements with their friends to stay home, it likely had been.

She marveled at its simple but intense beauty for a long moment before finally feeling able to look up, finding that the Valkyrie had been watching her the whole time, her expression still confident but a noticeable air of vulnerability about her. Lauren knew Tamsin was sensitive about the sword's violent history. She was fond of telling the exploits it had been involved in before it came into her possession but Lauren knew next to nothing aside from how it handled of the nearly three centuries the Valkyrie had owned it and she had never asked. In fact, Lauren often forgot about the sword entirely except the times Tamsin's reasoning for skipping out on social things was that she just needed to do "some things" so she needed to ask, to make sure the Fae didn't think she tacitly or even unintentionally wanted to invade parts of her life she didn't want to talk about.

"Why are you showing me this?" she asked, her voice careful as she searched for any kind of reluctance in her girlfriends face but only finding sureness in her intense gaze.

"Because I love you." Tamsin said without hesitation, inadvertently proving to Lauren that she had been wrong about thinking she didn't need to hear her say the words.

The only other time she had seen it before walking through the door that day was on their wedding day. They had agreed that the one thing they would keep a secret from each other was what they were wearing until they were ready to get in the towncar that would take them to the hall they'd rented. Lauren had chosen a simple sleeveless empire waist dress with a short train after feeling like she'd tried on every dress in North America, only settling on that dress when Bo and Kenzi had been struck mute when she exited the dressing room. It had been a relief to be done with that part of the wedding but Tamsin seemed like she never left to go dress shopping at all.

Lauren had been intensely surprised when she asked about it and the Valkyrie had said she was planning on wearing something "more traditional" and had already picked something out early on as she couldn't picture Tamsin in a fluffy white dress covered in tulle for the life of her. Bo, Kenzi and even Dyson had tried to prod her into saying something more about it, but the Dark Fae would just smirk. She'd almost physically smacked herself in the forehead when the Valkyrie had entered their bedroom after they'd gotten ready separately. Tamsin, her hair loose, was wearing an ankle length deep red dress, which was ornately embroidered at the hem of the belled sleeves, the edges of the squared collar and the hem of the dress. They stared at each other from across the room and Lauren knew that people often described what she was feeling as being similar to the first time they'd laid eyes on their partner, but neither of them liked the other on first (or twentieth) meeting. If pressed, Lauren would have to describe it as similar to the moment Tamsin was crossing the room that night she'd confessed her love. Something simultaneously broke and swelled in her watching the Valkyrie move confidently across their shared space, completely comfortable in her metaphorical and physical nakedness.

"Do I look okay?" Tamsin asked suddenly, breaking their long gaze to smooth her hands down the sides of her hips and looking down. Despite the nature of her question, her tone had been completely cocksure.

Lauren almost choked at the unexpected laughter that escaped her and she swiftly crossed the room to cup the Valkyrie's face in her hands and kissed her soundly. "You look good for your age" the doctor teased, pulling away when Tamsin pulled her closer roughly by her hips before things got out of control.

The taller woman crinkled her nose and dropped her hands away from the human's waist and crossed the room to their closet. "You look good for my age too, doc." She retorted while sliding open the door and pulling the case holding her Ulfberht off the shelf. Lauren smiled but didn't say anything, watching with curiosity as Tamsin set the case on the bed and casually opened it, setting about securing the scabbard around her waist with the type of easy deftness that displayed her familiarity with the action. She pulled the sword from its confines almost reverently, holding its weight in one hand for a moment before looking up and smiling warmly at Lauren and slipping the sword into its sheath knowing the only people at the wedding who would truly understand the weapon at her hip was the two of them.

Lauren had been rendered motionless for a moment on walking into the living room and finding her wife focused so wholly on polishing the blade and speaking quietly, that she hadn't noticed the human come in. The doctor felt as if she were intruding. She knew that Tamsin would do blade maintenance while she was watching Charlotte and the baby was asleep in the playpen, but this was the first time she'd seen Tamsin work on the blade, around the baby or otherwise and wasn't sure if the Norse words the Fae were gently weaving together were an important part of taking care of the weapon or what would happen if she were interrupted. She did know that while Tamsin had the habit of muttering any number of languages in her sleep when she was having bad dreams, especially Scandinavian ones, she also knew that the Valkyrie largely didn't like speaking any language that had fell out of popular use past the late eighteenth century. When Lauren had been excited about the possibilities of discussing linguistic norms of dead languages with someone who had had an ancient North Germanic language as a first language, Tamsin had said the old languages reminded her too much of bad things and she didn't care to speak any of them.

Lauren was trying to find some way to interrupt as gently as possible but also not wanting to intrude when Tamsin stopped herself, having just registered a presence in the room that wasn't hers or the sleeping baby and stopped talking in what seemed to be mid sentence, Lauren couldn't be sure. The broad smile the Fae gave her on meeting her gaze told her she wasn't feeling intruded upon and she set the sword carefully down on the wide coffee table and stood up, tossing the polishing cloth indelicately on top of the sword and half-sauntered over to her, hooking her fingers through the belt loops on the front of the doctor's jeans and jerked her forward, causing their lips to crash together roughly but the resulting kiss was gentle.

"How was lunch?" Tamsin inquired brightly, releasing the denim between her fingers and resting her hands lightly on Lauren's hips.

Lauren smiled, grateful she hadn't made the Valkyrie uncomfortable and slid her hands along Tamsin's arms, stopping at the crooks of her elbows. "It was okay. Bo told me to tell you that she's got a date and isn't sure if she'll make it to the next poker night, but it's still at the clubhouse and Kenzi, Hale and Dyson will still be there."

Tamsin rolled her eyes but there was mirth behind them. "She probably needs a break from being reminded that there's something she's the literal worst at every week. It's starting to get embarrassing."

Lauren laughed lightly in agreement. Bo had been steadily losing money, alcohol, junk food or whatever they were betting with at what had been dubbed "Constabulary Card Night," named in honor of their statuses (or unofficial status in Bo and Kenzi's case) as detectives on the inaugural game night four months ago. The doctor leaned into the taller woman and set her chin on Tamsin's shoulder and looked over at the playpen, making out the shape of their daughter who had that whole space to sleep in and had squashed herself against the mesh, fast asleep with one chubby fist shoved in her mouth.

Closing her eyes briefly, she breathed in deeply. She could always tell when Tamsin had been working on her sword because she always smelled faintly of cloves the whole day. She turned her head and planted a kiss on the side of Tamsin's neck in one fluid motion, pulling back far enough so she could speak. "I've got a new book from Trick I haven't read yet, I can go upstairs and read while you finish." She offered.

Tamsin shrugged, her body language nonchalant but her face illuminated. "Nah, it's alright, I was just telling Charlie about the sword history is all."

"In Norse?" Lauren asked, her tone half confused and half skeptical.

The Valkyrie smiled broadly, she rarely gave genuinely warm wide smiles and Lauren smiled back automatically on seeing it without knowing what they were smiling about. "Well, yeah." She replied, sounding like she was going to laugh at any minute. "I figured if I'm gonna give the thing to her, she should learn about it in the original language, yanno?"

Lauren nodded immediately before suddenly processing what had just been said. Only Valkyrie could only handle Valkyrie swords. They were near impossible to even pick up let alone swing without being one. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?" she asked, her words coming out in an excited rush.

"I'm saying that we've just made the first Valkyrie in recorded history who won't be the size of grown woman in three weeks." Tamsin replied, her smile never leaving her face.

The noise that escaped Lauren's throat before she could even think about attempting to stop it was half relief and half excitement. She raised her hands to rest on either side of her wife's face and pulled her face closer, too excited to kiss her properly so she planted as many kisses as she could in rapid succession until Tamsin caught the shorter blonde's lower lip between her teeth with practiced ease and gently ran her tongue along her lip causing the doctor to immediately let her hands fall to the Fae's shoulders and melt into her until they were kissing unhurriedly. Lauren's hands had just started to slip down Tamsin's arms while Tamsin's hands slid up from Lauren's waist along her ribcage when Charlotte, who really only cried after waking up when no one was paying attention to her, loud cry stopped the progression of their hands.

"Alright, alright." Tamsin complained halfheartedly, lightly kissing her wife once more before they disengaged themselves and both crossed the room, Tamsin scooping the child out of the pen and gave the child an exaggeratedly loud kiss on one dry pudgy cheek. "You're not even crying, ya big faker." She chided her daughter, swinging her quickly into Lauren's waiting arms so she could flop back onto the couch to resume polishing her sword.

Lauren rested her cheek against the crown of the baby's head who had stopped crying almost immediately on being picked up and was making wet motorboat noises with her mouth and extending her arm towards Tamsin, opening and closing her hand. "You only just found out you're a Valkyrie and you want a sword already?" Lauren murmured lowly, sitting on the couch and leaning back, lifting Charlotte up to eye level. "Maybe when you graduate." She said firmly and half-seriously, smiling brightly at their chubby faced Fae daughter who was still a perfect mix of the two of them as Tamsin started reciting sword history again but in English so Lauren could understand.


	3. Chapter 3

Charlotte wasn't necessarily easier or harder to take care of than a human baby, just different. Very different. She was effectively the first known Valkyrie with the growth rates typically associated with humans and most Fae so everything she did was a discovery. Valkyrie's were generally physically full-grown within the first two to four weeks of a given life cycle and they weren't even sure if Charlotte _had_ life cycles. She was genetically Fae, genetically a Valkyrie yet she was different than either her genus or species classification allowed for. Shortly after the confirmation of her daughter's Fae status, Lauren started keeping detailed journals full of notes on not just the biological nature of the girl, but just little medically unrelated details of raising a child. She told herself it was because this had never happened before and should be documented, but she not only wanted to just have a record she could look back on when Charlotte was grown but at least some small part of her wanted to keep the information in case they had another baby.

Charlotte was measured and weighed once a month and seemed to grow physically in size at the same rate typical to most humans and Fae, but she did a lot of things early. At almost two months, she had started teething, which was an ordeal. She became a constantly fussy blonde ball of tears and drool with as much of her left fist as she could fit firmly lodged in her mouth at all times. Lauren had glared daggers at her wife every time she suggested they apply a little liquor to her gums, which after the first two times was only ever suggested to get a rise out of her. She had come to know pretty quickly after getting into a relationship with Tamsin that her theory that Valkyrie's somehow required alcohol was incorrect. They were heavily culturally reliant on it, even instinctually, and she theorized that it was largely because of the typical nature of a Valkyrie's life and duties but she never brought it up to Tamsin who insisted it was just "a thing." And while Valkyrie's were so evolved towards the habit that alcohol literally did nothing to them physically but make them drunk in large quantities, she wasn't about to put anything that had a proof label on the bottle in the mouth of their infant daughter. Particularly, anything that came out of "Tamsin's side" of the liquor cabinet.

Until she started speaking more than a few words, it was hard to tell when Charlotte was crying or fussing because she was in pain or if she was emotionally uncomfortable. Lauren had always just thought Tamsin was a hardass when it came to pain, but apparently it was partially an instinctual biological construct and partially a cultural one that Valkyrie severely downplayed any kind of pain. Just like she had had to learn with Tamsin, Lauren had to base her knowledge of Charlotte's pain scale off visual cues. Tamsin would usually carry on with things as normal but with a noticeably unchanging passive expression or act like she wanted to be left alone (largely by either picking verbal fights or crawling into a bottle of whatever was within reach) when it came to emotional pain, when it came to physical pain, she would act like there was no wound but the muscles directly under her ears would flex as she tightly clenched and unclenched her jaw, speaking almost entirely past poorly covered hissing breaths through her teeth.

It was hard to read Charlotte before she had more control over her motor functions but luckily, if things were bad enough either way, she'd cry. Generally there were no tears if it was emotional discomfort, which was a big help in trying to figure out why she was upset. When she was older, she tended to react to physical pain in much the same way as her mother although Lauren had noted that when the pain was high and sudden, she would laugh hysterically for several seconds and if she was in emotional pain, she would seemingly absentmindedly smooth a hand over her hair at spaced intervals.

She wasn't much of a crawler, and when she could get away with it, would fuss to be picked up and carried to her preferred location and Lauren had been slightly worried about it, but knew from the regular physicals she insisted on performing herself, everything was in working order. Charlotte surprised both her parents, though, by hauling herself up to her feet by the coffee table one morning shortly after her first birthday and toddling about the room; unsteady, but doing it as if she'd always been doing it. Eight months after that, and not only was she walking masterfully for her age, but she was running, too. Anyone who wasn't convinced Tamsin didn't have maternal instincts had never seen her dash around the house after the girl with no complaints, deftly stopping her from running into hard edges, pulling things down off tables she could reach now that she was standing and instinctually, almost with an air of non-attention, stop her from jumping off of things or nonchalantly catching her before she hit the floor when she did.

Lauren insisted with very little resistance from Tamsin that Charlotte be raised with multiple languages spoken at home. Lauren would speak to her in English, German and French and sometimes in Pashto, but as she hadn't used it really since her time in Afghanistan, she only used the language occasionally. Tamsin would talk to her largely in Norwegian but she would only tell her certain Valkyrie cultural norms and stories in Norse, having explicitly stated she wasn't a fan of the idea of her daughter using it as a conversational language. Tamsin was comfortable enough in French and German to contribute and Lauren was learning Norwegian from her wife. Even "Aunt Kenzi" contributed and when she would babysit (she would deny it, if asked, but she took it as a personal affront if they didn't give her first rights on babysitting), almost exclusively spoke Russian, which she had told Lauren was more for her benefit than Charlotte's. It was nice to talk to someone in the language she grew up with who would eventually have the ability to talk back since she rarely spoke to any of her blood relatives.

Charlotte seemed to develop her speaking abilities below human children her age as she rarely spoke and when she did it was only simple sentences or a few words, but her ability to understand things was well beyond what a child her age would normally grasp, even in a multilingual house. Tamsin liked to attribute it to Lauren's "big brain gene" to which Lauren would quickly point out that Tamsin herself spoke eleven languages fluently including different dialects of some languages, able to effectively get by in half a dozen more languages and she knew enough to get drunk and laid in practically every corner of the world.

There was an unspoken competition among the two mothers and Kenzi as to what language Charlotte's first complex sentence would be in, deciding unanimously that if it was English, it was a tie and it got pretty competitive sometimes. To the point where Kenzi would sometimes go out of her way to find reasons to get the two blondes out of their own house for a while so she could babysit. While Tamsin and Lauren had been entertaining Bo and Kenzi in the living room after a group dinner, they had been arguing about it over glasses of wine, with Bo on Kenzi's side naturally. Eventually, Bo had had an epiphany none of them had ever thought of; what if Charlotte had already said a complete sentence but no one had been around to hear it?

All four heads collectively turned to focus on the toddler who had been blithely humming to herself while sitting on the floor and engaging in her favorite pastime, which was drawing (but only with the purple crayons).

"Hey, Chuck," Tamsin called out, the three year old ceasing her humming to indicate she had heard her but not stopping her doodling. "You haven't been talking behind our backs, have you?" Bo smiled as her theory was proved when Charlotte nodded her head. They waited for a few minutes for her to elaborate but she just kept crafting circular patterns on her drawing pad.

"Well," Kenzi insisted finally. "What did you say?"

Charlotte dragged her crayon to the edge of the page and leaned back to admire the page full of intersecting curlicue designs she had made before turning to the expectant group and simultaneously ending the bet but not resolving it. "I'm not telling, but it wasn't English." She said sweetly, smiling in a manner that completely betrayed that she knew exactly what she had done.

Everything was dead silent for a moment until Bo's loud and sudden belly laugh rips through the silence. And with that, they were fully introduced to Charlotte's sense of humor which relied largely on people underestimating how much she understood, which was easy for a lot of people to do because she still didn't speak very much after that. She largely had Lauren's complicated sense of humor where sometimes something other people didn't understand was only funny to her but she would make the joke anyways. Still, the cocky smirk and biting one-liners she eventually developed were all completely Tamsin's influence.

Lauren had wanted to put Charlotte in school as soon as she could read simple stories unaided, which occurred when she was three but Tamsin had adamantly refused. They had tiffs about it frequently, with Lauren arguing that she herself had started first grade when she was four and the only social problems she ever really had had more to do with the Fae and the largely emotional but sometimes physical abuse she received during her enslavement. She even tested their daughter thinking that once Tamsin realized how smart she was, she'd cave, but when Lauren had excitedly informed her wife that their three year old was operating on a first grade level except her language skills, which were at a second grade level.

Contrary to what she thought she would do when presented with the information, Tamsin, who had been sitting at the table in the dining room going over reports, simply lifted her head from her paperwork and stared at her wife, her expression totally blank and Lauren immediately knew she'd messed up. She slid into the chair at the table next to Tamsin, thankful Charlotte had insisted on invoking the open door policy at Bo and Kenzi had for her on the way home.

"Tamsin, I," Lauren started carefully, trailing off when she realized she didn't understand why the Valkyrie was so upset. Sure, they disagreed on this issue and they'd had little arguments about it, with Tamsin's insistence on her opinion very firm but they'd argued about plenty of things but she hadn't seen that particular expression directed at her since they'd officially became a couple. She reached over and put her hand lightly on top of Tamsin's to get her attention as she had gone back to reading the file between her fingers.

"Nah." The Valkyrie responded, shaking her head and pushing her chair away from the table leaving Lauren to stare after her as she went into the living room.

Sighing dejectedly, the doctor searched for an answer as to why Tamsin was so hurt by her actions. It wasn't like she'd actually gone and enrolled Charlotte without her knowledge, she would never do that. She sat at the empty table for as long as she could stand, knowing that approaching Tamsin in this state wasn't a good idea, especially once Lauren had figured out what that expression meant. Finally deciding to get up, Lauren went into the living room, surprised to find Tamsin hadn't left the house and was staring at the file in her hand but obviously not really reading it, a lowball glass in the other hand half full of something black that Lauren always mispronounced the name of, but never drank because it made her eyes water, her nose burn whenever she brought it close to her face and Tamsin herself waxed poetic about its poteny.

She sat down close enough to Tamsin that she was invading her personal space, but far enough that she could get up and leave without brushing against her. The Valkyrie stayed put, however and took a large drink out of her glass, tilting her head to one side while closing her eyes as it went down. That was as close to a whiskey face as Tamsin ever made and was largely why Lauren had backed out of trying the black liquor in the first place. Lauren allowed the tense silence to persist for a long time while she thought of something to say, long enough that Tamsin finished off the contents of the glass and leaning forward, gently tossed the file onto the coffee table but set the glass down hard enough to make noise.

"It's too much." The Valkyrie said finally, leaning back. Her voice was slightly unsteady, but given the nature of what she'd just drank, Lauren wasn't sure if it was the liquor or her emotions or both.

"Tell me." Lauren insisted earnestly, wishing Tamsin would look at her so she could read what was in her eyes, but the Valkyrie kept her gaze forward, her expression still unreadable. "I can only know if you tell me."

The Dark Fae closed her eyes momentarily and sighed heavily, an action Lauren had come to categorize as meaning she had reached some decision after a hard internal debate, she was uncomfortable with what she was about to say or both.

"It's different when you're human, yanno?" she started, crossing her arms over her chest. "Skipping a couple grades isn't a big deal, then. You hear about those little prepubescent Einstein's taking college and university classes all the time, and if Charlie was human, it wouldn't be a big deal." She glanced over quickly at her wife, long enough to read the attentive but concerned look on her face but short enough to where Lauren couldn't see what was in her eyes. The doctor had gotten really good at reading her emotional state that way. "Not when you're a Valkyrie." She swallowed thickly and wished she'd filled the glass higher.

Lauren bit her lower lip to keep herself from saying anything when Tamsin fell silent to allow her wife to collect herself. Tamsin rarely spoke about the emotional experiences she'd had over her various lives and from the countless nights they'd slept next to each other, Lauren knew dreams about her past haunted her frequently. She reached out a tentative hand and rested it comfortingly on the Valkyrie's leg, fully expecting her to recoil in some way as when she was in a more emotional state, she reverted back to the barely-physical-outside-of-sex relationship they'd initially had but when she uncrossed her arms, it wasn't to move Lauren's hand but rest them in her lap.

"The first couple of cycles, it wasn't that bad, you know? There were more of us, we stuck together… it was hard enough having the body of a grown woman but the mind of a child, even though it doesn't last long, people…. it was just incredibly hard. But once you know things, once you're smart, once you have muscle memory and experiences inherited from all your previous cycles, it's harder. I think… I mean, with everything we do and see, with everything we are, that's why we suppress things. Our first four weeks of our first cycle is our whole childhood. Everything after that is fighting and death." She turned her head to finally meet her wife's gaze with her own slightly watery one. "I want Charlotte to be a kid, Lauren. She grows so slowly compared to the rest of us. I want her to have all the kid things we don't get. I know how smart she is, we all know how smart she is and that means she's going to grow up a lot faster. We can challenge her intellect at home, we can send her to extra classes, if that's what she wants but…" she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment. "I just want her to be around kids closer to her own age, I want her life to be about more than how smart she is."

"Oh, god, Tamsin…" Lauren breathed our painfully. "I'm sorry, I didn't, I didn't think about…"

"You can only know if I tell you, right?" Tamsin mustered as nonchalantly as possible, but looked away when her voice broke slightly.

Lauren surged forward and pressed their lips together before the first tear rolling down the Valkyrie's cheek had time to reach her chin. The Dark Fae responded instantly, recognizing the action as comfort but immediately gripped Lauren by the shoulders and pulling her down as she leaned back against the armrest of the couch, deepening the kiss. The doctor was usually against emotional transference as it wasn't particularly healthy, but by this point, she fully expected physical or sexual transference anytime Tamsin got emotional about her past and it was actually one of her more healthy coping strategies so she responded in kind, taking on a slower more deliberate role to counteract the barely hinged desperateness to the Valkyrie when this happened.

It was an odd dynamic to have in their love life. By and large, the only time they seriously fought, was for dominance during their lovemaking and except for the beginning of their physical relationship, it was all a good natured (and sometimes extremely rough) game of seeing who could make who beg first. But any time they had sex after an emotional revelation from the Valkyrie, especially if it resulted in tears, there was no teasing, there was no spar for dominance and even though Tamsin was usually rough and insistent, she was always the one who pleaded. And Lauren would immediately oblige, murmuring lascivious phrases of encouragement until the Valkyrie would convulse violently against her, gripping her arms hard enough to leave bruises or digging nails sharply into her shoulders while loudly wailing the first syllable of Lauren's name before it disintegrated into nonsense vowels.

This time, they'd ended up on the floor after nearly breaking the coffee table (again). Tamsin was curled into her wife's side, her head resting on the doctors shoulder. Lauren's eyes were closed and she could feel the older woman's breath on her neck as she breathed out of her mouth in slowly steadying breaths. She trailed her fingers gently back and forth on the arm thrown around her midsection, ignoring the soreness in her lower lip from the hard biting and stinging sensation on the backs of her upper arms that indicated Tamsin had likely drawn blood during them. She didn't mind, anyways. She felt a sudden long burst of air against her skin as the Valkyrie sighed out the last of her anxiety and smiled without opening her eyes when she felt her body pulled more tightly towards the other blonde by the arm around her waist.

"You know Marie in dispatch?" Tamsin asked, her voice unsteady as it formed actual words.

Lauren hummed in the affirmative, turning her head slightly so that her cheek could cool down from being pressed to the top of the Valkyrie's sweat dampened hair.

"She takes Alice to this kindergarten near the copshop. Supposed to be pretty good… a special school, you know? For like, nerdy gifted kids and shit."

Lauren laughed lightly and pinched her wife's upper arm only a little gently. "Hey, you helped make a nerdy gifted kid."

"I didn't say it was bad, I mean, I married a nerdy gifted kid, didn't I?" Tamsin tilted her head to kiss the skin on Lauren's neck, darting her tongue out briefly and tasting salt. "I was thinking we could go after Chuck's dentist appointment since we'll be out anyways."

Lauren nodded, feeling the Valkyrie's deceptively soft hair rub against her cheek and chose not to comment on the compromise as she didn't want to lessen the gravity of Tamsin's decision. They lay in silence for a long time until Lauren's breath began to quicken as Tamsin had started gently raking her nails along the doctor's side and trailing her tongue in short lazy patterns across the sensitive areas of her neck.

"How much time do we have?" the Valkyrie asked in a low purr between planting kisses on Lauren during her movement to lay on top of her.

"Fi-um," Lauren tried in a half groan as her body flushed with heat. "Five-thirty." She managed to bite out finally getting a break from Tamsin's ministrations as she squinted at the analog clock on the mantelpiece.

"Gee, doc, let's see if I can't keep you entertained for the next four hours, okay?"

Lauren wasn't sure the noise she made was a word, but Tamsin definitely took it as a yes.


	4. Chapter 4

Once Charlotte started school, she tended towards speaking more readily and for longer periods of time than she used to, much to everyone's delight. She made friends very quickly and tended to gravitate towards and collect outcasts and lonely kids as friends. While she would still get into fights over seemingly trivial things with them, like any other child her age, she was surprisingly empathetic, slow to anger and quick to get over it unless she felt some great wrong had been done to someone she cared about. Tamsin insisted that Charlotte's need to help everyone was an inherited trait from Lauren, but privately, Bo and Lauren often agreed between themselves that given Tamsin's fierce loyalty and protective instinct towards people she cared about (which often crossed the line into reckless endangerment of her own self), that if it was an inheritable trait, she'd gotten it from the Valkyrie.

Tamsin and her wife had a long-standing date night once a week, usually on Wednesdays, but the habit had been slow to get off the ground. It wasn't that they didn't want to go out together; it was that they were both worried that something bad would happen while they were gone. Or even something good that they would miss and they would suggest plans to go out but do nothing to make them come to fruition all the time. Dyson had actually been the one who finally pushed them to go out. Starting late into Charlotte's second month of life, the wolf had taken to good naturedly ribbing Tamsin at work that their core group never saw the Valkyrie and her wife in the same place at the same time without the baby unless poker night was at their house, and even then, Lauren was usually too busy with their daughter to socialize much at an adult level.

He would jokingly tell her that the rest of them were beginning to wonder if the blondes were capable of existing in the same place at the same time without Charlotte's presence. Tamsin would usually scowl at him over the bitter cups of black liquid the district station passed off as coffee or send out an only half-serious jibe, but when he had dropped two movie tickets unceremoniously on her desk one morning, the surprised half-smile she gave him was genuine.

"Baby steps." He'd said simply when she shook her head bemusedly at him. "You go see a movie first, find out that you're able to both be alone for a couple hours and everything will be fine, maybe next time you'll go to dinner too, and" He faked a loud gasp, widening his eyes and Tamsin fought to urge to punch him. "Eventually you'll be able to go out all night with your grown up friends who miss seeing you at the same time."

"Yeah, maybe we'll go." Tamsin conceded reluctantly, putting the tickets into the inside pocket of her leather coat. "Maybe not…she's been pretty particular when we've thought about getting sitters." She added, leaving out the fact that she was just as picky.

The shifter smiled warmly at her and slid into his chair at the desk across from hers, reminding her as he leaned back that Kenzi had been asking to babysit since they'd all been told Lauren was pregnant.

Kenzi had shown up to their house nearly two hours early and managed to talk them out the door shortly thereafter, insisting that movie dates without a meal weren't even platonic dates, let alone dates good enough for a married couple with a baby. So they'd gone to a casual but well rated sushi place near the movie theatre, testing the boundaries of Kenzi's patience as they sent her (separate) text messages every five to fifteen minutes, trying to do it covertly so the other wouldn't think their date was being infringed on. A little more than an hour into dinner, Kenzi had reached her breaking point and sent them each a final text saying that if Charlotte even blinked differently than normal, they'd be the first to know, but until then, not only was she not going to answer any texts from them that had to with checking in on them, but for every baby related text that wasn't already written down in the novella of instructions Lauren had left on the kitchen counter, Tamsin was going to get charged two shots of her best liquor and Lauren was going to be charged ten dollars per text.

When they walked through their front door five hours later, they admitted they had had a good time and would like to do it again, but Kenzi still walked away with an unlabeled fifth half full of pitch black liquor whose very fumes made her head spin a little and a hundred dollars in her pocket. That first night though had been all the push they needed and they'd started going out every Wednesday, leaving Charlotte with Kenzi who Lauren often tried to pay, but the lithe Slavic woman would wave her off, stating that she considered the job as part of her god given visitation rights as Charlotte's aunt. They'd even taken to going out with their friends together eventually, having found a reliable babysitter they both approved of, a sweet, soft spoken cabbit boy who had nine older brothers and sisters and had gone through helping raise twenty younger siblings with two more on the way.

Still, they never usually managed to stay out longer than six hours or so until Charlotte had her first sleepover invitation when she was five. They'd been at the sixth birthday party of her best friend and classmate Alice, daughter of Marie in dispatch, when Alice and Charlotte had run over to where they'd been talking to some of the other parents, clutching each other's hands and practically vibrating from excitement and sugar. They managed to make out through the loud words running together that Marie and her husband had sanctioned invitations for two of Alice's friends to stay the night and go with her the following day to collect on her biggest birthday present which was a trip to a children's amusement park and Alice wanted Charlotte to be one of those friends.

"I dunno, Chuck." Tamsin said skeptically, but teasing her daughter. "Kinda weird that you get presents on someone else's birthday… whaddya think, doc?"

"Well…" Lauren started, her tone light as she played along.

"Mor!" Charlotte interrupted, whining out the Norwegian word for mother to indicate she was pleading with Tamsin and dragging out the O in an exaggerated tone.

"I really like my toy pony set you got," Alice said brightly. "But I can give it back if you let Charlie stay."

"You can't say no, now." Their daughter stated triumphantly.

"You got me there. Sound alright, Marie?" Tamsin asked the curly haired brunette's mom, leaning over slightly so she could see the other woman. "Can you handle Chuck for a while?"

Marie smiled good-naturedly and took a sip from the clear plastic cup full of punch in her hand. "Yeah," she responded, stepping to the side so she would be half behind her husband. "Should be fine since she doesn't act _that_ much like you."

Tamsin scowled in mock offense and joined the several other adults near them as they all winced when the two girls screeched their happiness and scurried off to rejoin the other kids. The Valkyrie obliged her daughter when she'd said that she didn't want to go home and pick up her clothes so she left Lauren at the party and slipped off to drive back to their house and pick up an overnight bag for Charlotte (under explicit instructions to include her purple monster shirt), grinning as she realized that this would be the longest amount of time they'd had to themselves since the baby was born.

"You're totally late." Kenzi pointed out loudly so she could be heard over the music of the club as she sat at a booth in the back, leaning against Hale.

They were only forty minutes late and Tamsin had sworn that their friends probably wouldn't even notice. And the Valkyrie's whispered insistence against her collarbone had sounded really convincing while they were standing on the landing of the stairs, her back pressed against the wall by the taller blonde's body flush against her and both of her hands pinned over her head in one almost painful grip while her wife's other hand expertly unbuttoned her jeans.

"Traffic." Lauren supplied, quickly taking the shot the other human slid across the table to her as they sat down and side-eyeing her wife as she smirked.

"Right." Kenzi nodded, dragging the word out to show how incredulous she was and set about pouring them new shots from the bottle she'd gotten for the table. She did have the good graces to elbow Hale in the ribs when the expression on his face looked like he was about to ask them something stupid.

"Where's everyone else?" Tamsin asked while looking around, annoyed that they could have potentially been later if Hale and Kenzi were the only ones there.

"Bo is… being Bo somewhere." Kenzi said while gesturing to the crowded dance floor, swallowing her shot and Hale's in rapid succession, smiling sweetly and kissing his cheek when he protested. "D-man was supposed to go get a new bottle since we knew Detective Bevingeten can drink like a big Valkyrie tonight and would need one to herself."

Tamsin cringed as her current surname tumbled out of Kenzi's mouth with English sounds and took the shot in front of her so she wouldn't correct the girl's pronunciation for the millionth time. "Did he get lost?" she asked wryly, sliding the glass across the table with a push for the other woman to refill it.

"Nah," Hale supplied, yanking Kenzi's shot out of her hand and taking it himself while she made an incredulous noise. "My man is up at the bar working that charm on Chloe."

The Valkyrie nodded, only half-interested. Chloe was a gorgeous round-faced bartender with a sweet disposition that was almost always working when they came in on Fridays. Tamsin had tried to explain to him that he shouldn't take her flirting seriously because she was likely just trying to get more money out of him, but once he was focused on someone, you couldn't tell him anything. Still, she had only been mildly surprised when the wolf returned to their table with her phone number several weeks ago. When she had gotten home and told Lauren, the doctor had rolled her eyes and hoped out loud that he wouldn't do something to make them relocate to a different bar.

As if on cue, the shifter appeared at the table, setting down an unopened bottle of whiskey in front of his partner who smiled and untwisted the cap, dumping some into a shot glass until it was full and handing it over to her wife before taking a pull directly from the bottle herself. "How much do I owe ya?" she asked as Dyson sat on the edge of the booth bench next to Hale and Kenzi.

"Don't worry about it." He replied, holding up one hand and leaning back comfortably. "Think of it as a present."

"Don't mind if I do." The Valkyrie said, raising the bottle in thanks and taking another drink.

Kenzi leaned her back against the bar counter next to Bo tiredly, glad that Hale had left with Dyson over half an hour ago because she was nine hundred percent sure she had dance-sweated off all her makeup. Once she'd spotted her best friend alone at the bar, Bo had disengaged herself from between a hot person sandwich and had gone to keep her company, which if you asked Kenzi, was real love. The human glanced over at Bo and noticed that look on her face as she stared at something. That look that hovered between desperately horny and dangerously predatory.

The human rolled her eyes and rested her elbows on the edge of the bar top. She'd probably fed off half the dance floor already to be honest, and when they came here, Kenzi almost always either left alone or with Bo and her company for the night making out like teenagers in the backseat. Which got complicated when there were more than two of them back there. "It's like I can't take you anywhere where there's dancing and alcohol living in the same room. Being your friend is a small burden."

"You love me." Bo replied, laughing slightly but the look on her face didn't change.

Letting out a perturbed puff of air, Kenzi tried to follow the line of Bo's gaze to find which person (or persons) was going to require her to drive to Hale's to spend the night after she dropped them off, not that she minded. Her eyes widened slightly when she recognized Lauren and Tamsin half hidden near the edge of the dace floor. She could readily admit that the first time she'd really seen Lauren let loose in public it had been a weird experience bordering on uncomfortable but since the doctor and Tamsin had started dating, she'd gotten more or less used to it. She was still kind of stung that she didn't seem that way when she was with Bo, but realized that when she was with Bo, there were exceedingly complex public decorum rules as per her slavery and back then, she had rarely seen Lauren out in public unless it was the Dal or for work.

Tamsin had one hand on the top of her head, having gathered the bulk of her hair under her it to cool down her neck and the other firmly planted on the curve of where Lauren's neck turned into her shoulder possessively. The human was positioned in such a way that the Valkyrie was forced to half straddle one of her legs and the doctor was gripping the taller blonde's hips, occasionally crudely pulling the Nordic woman closer to her which would cause the older woman to smile in a way Kenzi was pretty sure was illegal if you were under eighteen. Even in the oddly dim multicolored lights of the club, the blue-eyed human could read the looks on their faces clearly and they certainly weren't thinking about how good the music was. She tore her eyes away from the couple, feeling like she was watching her sister get physical and fanned a hand near her face, fully understanding Bo's hungry look. She couldn't even see auras and could read the two blondes from here; it was no wonder the succubus looked like she was about to pop.

"C'mon, Bobo." Kenzi said loudly, pushing herself away from the counter and gripping her friend's elbow. "Let's go find you some people who aren't on final boss level difficulty, kay?" She held back a laugh when the brunette's face fell slightly like she hadn't considered the idea that she wouldn't get what she wanted and pulled her towards the other side of the dance floor. "You can get real dumb when all the blood goes out of your head." She mumbled, squeezing the flesh under her fingers gently to let Bo know she was teasing in case she heard her.

Tamsin and Lauren were out in the cool night air, half-drunk and waiting for their cab when Bo and Kenzi left the club. Tamsin's head was down, huskily murmuring lists of things that were going to happen when they got to their empty home next to Lauren's ear, the Valkyrie's arms around her waist and her front pressed to her back. The doctor waved at them when they exited, but only Kenzi, who was on the phone, returned the wave as Bo, who was confidently strolling between two attractive club patrons, her arms interlinked with theirs walked to her car.

Once in the cab, Tamsin switched to German to continue her list without knowledge of the driver who had spoken slowly and simply on hearing the language, assuming that their English might not be so good. The Valkyrie gave their address in an annoyed tone and Lauren smiled apologetically at the man as he looked in the rearview mirror at them, fighting the urge to say that it wasn't him that was bothering her wife, she was just… bothered. The eighteen-minute ride seemed like hours and she was pretty certain that the driver hadn't needed to understand German to understand Tamsin's intentions, especially when half the words were whispered throatily in the tiny space between the Valkyrie's lips and the side of Lauren's neck whenever she leaned forward. She was sure too that all her involuntary swaying from side to side as her body tried to hold in her desire and the clearing of her throat she did to keep from making any other noise didn't help at all.

To his credit, the cabbie had been less voyeuristic than others they'd had in similar situations in the past and Lauren tipped him well, half on purpose, and half because she absolutely couldn't wait for him to break one of the bills into smaller ones. Tamsin barely had time to take her hand off the lock after she'd secured their front door behind them when Lauren set herself on her wife, raking her teeth down the side of her neck and frantically pulling off her jacket.

The anxious knot she usually felt in her stomach since Charlotte had been born was gone and she briefly thought she should feel guilty before realizing that the knot was just the feeling that she had to be available to her daughter at all times and now that she was gone for the night, that constraint wasn't as immediately pressing. The way Tamsin kissed her as she backed them further into the house showed that she was feeling the same way. Lauren gasped for water, knowing her dry throat was just going to get drier as the night wore on and Tamsin would thank her later.

The Valkyrie had laughed gruffly but obediently switched from steering them towards the stairs to guide them to the kitchen while discarding articles of clothing on the way. She managed to keep her hands off the doctor, who was now only clad in her underwear, until her back slightly arched as she was reaching for a glass and she turned the smaller woman around roughly and kissed her, lifting her up by her hips and groaning when Lauren's legs wrapped around her waist as she moved her hands to support her weight under her thighs.

Tamsin sometimes forgot how loud the doctor could be when she knew she had no reason to keep her volume in check and the reminder spurned her on. Lauren had never gotten the water, and they only made it up the stairs after a few hours, only able to communicate something other than desire several hours after that. Tamsin was laying on her side with her head propped up in her hand, her other tracing light patterns on the doctor's abdomen as she lay in her back. The room had long since started to turn a pale shade of blue as the sun was coming up.

"How's your shoulder?" The Valkyrie asked, her voice cracking at the dryness in her throat. She placed several gentle kisses on the angry skin of the doctor's shoulder, which was already darkening into a bruise in the shape of Tamsin's teeth. "And your back?"

Lauren smiled and lolled her head to one side to study the other woman in the half-light, testing the feeling in her back by wriggling slightly against the mattress beneath her to aggravate the shallow tears into her skin made by the Valkyrie's fingernails. "I've had worse." She replied seriously but her tone playful. "How's your lip?"

Tamsin sucked the swollen lump on one side of her bottom lip into her mouth and ran her tongue around the skin. It stung and she still tasted copper, but it wasn't bleeding anymore. "I've had worse." She retorted in the same tone, leaning down and languidly kissing the human to prove her point. "We should probably sleep." She sighed, putting her head on the doctor's shoulder but not stopping her light tracing on the skin beneath her fingers.

"Probably." Lauren agreed. "But we don't have to pick Charlotte up until after six."

"What're you trying to say, doc?" the Fae asked, starting to inch her way towards the younger blonde's chest with every repeat of the motions she was making with her fingers. She let out a startled noise when Lauren suddenly shoved her lightly so she was flat on her back and straddled her waist in one movement.

"What I'm _saying_, detective," she responded, grabbing the other woman's wrists and pulling them up far enough that Tamsin got the hint and gripped the metal bars of their headboard herself. "Is that there are at least twelve hours between now and then and I heard somewhere that Valkyrie's don't need to sleep." She bit down hard on the skin of Tamsin's neck in a spot where she knew the Valkyrie was sensitive and where she going to have to wear a high collared dress shirt to hide any marks. She smiled when Tamsin sucked in a sharp breath and she heard the distinct semi-groan of her hands tightening their hold on the textured metal. "And I'm not sleepy."


	5. Chapter 5

Chrlotte got suspended from school for three days halfway through fourth grade for fighting. Tamsin had gone to pick up the seven year old from the principal's office, as Lauren wasn't able to get away from the lab. The Nordic woman navigated her truck through the bight afternoon streets silently, occasionally casting glances over at her melancholic daughter who was staring out of the passenger's side window and twisting one of her golden braids around her fingers. The elder Valkyrie shook her head slightly and focused on the road in front of her. Lauren was going to have a fit that Charolotte was riding in her truck because the vehicle didn't have a backseat, but she hadn't exactly had a choice.

"So whaddya wanna tell your mother?" Tamsin aksed. Charlotte had been silent since Tamsin stepped into the principal's office and saw her sitting with her head down in a chair across from the administrator's ornate desk.

"I want to tell her what really happened." The little girl replied, her voice firm.

"Soooo, when your principal told me you beat up three kids, he was lying?" Tamsin asked skeptically as she pulled up to a stoplight. She was about to ask how she intended on explaining the red swollen skin on her cheekbone that indicated she'd been hit by a closed fist when the girl spoke again.

"No, I did." Charlotte admitted, her voice completely devoid of remorse. "But you and maman always tell me to stick up for people, right?"

"Yeah, we do." The elder Valkyrie agreed carefully, moving back into traffic. "Is that what you were doing?"

Charlotte nodded solemnly. "Those guys always pick on Alice since they found out she's adopted."

"And you didn't tell your teachers?" she chided, rolling her eyes slightly as she realized she was channeling her wife.

"I did, mor! Honest! And the teachers said to ignore them and they'll go away but they didn't, they got worse and today at lunch, they pushed her down and were going to beat her up and Alice doesn't know how to fight, so I went to help her and…" she trailed off, knowing her mother had heard the next part of the story in the office. "Mr. Durant said I started it, but we all got in trouble. Except Alice."

Tamsin smiled in spite of herself, she wasn't happy that Charlotte wouldn't be going back to school until Monday, and honestly, she knew Charlotte wasn't happy about it either but she was pleased that her child was so selfless when it came to protecting people. "Do you think what happened today'll make the problem go away?"

Charlotte shrugged and kicked her legs back and forth against the seat. "Yeah. Unless they like getting beat up or something."

"That's my girl." Tamsin chuckled as they turned onto their street. She cut her eyes at the small blonde. "Don't tell your mother I said that." She added hastily, pulling into their driveway. "And if she asks, we had a really stern talk about how to handle bullies through brains and nonviolence or something."

"You think she'll believe that?" Charlotte asked flatly as she jumped down out of her seat once the car was turned off.

Tamsin wrinkled her nose in half in mock annoyance, half because she was right and ruffled the child's hair before unlocking the door. "Hey, if you wanna sit through a lecture about impulsiveness and thinking things through, go ahead, but I gotta warn you, I've heard that one a lot and it's super boring."

"I'm telling maman you called her lectures boring!" Charlotte play threatened loudly as she darted past her mother and into the house.

"You don't scare me, you little urchin." Tamsin called over her shoulder as she locked the door. "_I_ tell her they're boring all the time. Go get started on your homework."

"Mor…" Charlotte whined as she had just flopped over on the couch and was reaching for the television remote. "I don't even have to go to school until Monday."

"You've still got a pile of homework for the next three days plus your mother's birthday is on Saturday and you're not doing it all on Sunday night. This ain't a vacation, kid." She pat Charlotte on the shoulder as she shuffled past her to get her book bag. "Anyways, you know your mom loves it when you do all that work ahead of time. Makes her feel like she's been instilling good values in you or something."

"But I just got suspended." She pointed out, dragging her bag behind her towards the dining room table.

"Yeah, and she'll probably blame that on me." Tamsin replied, smirking.

Lauren had naturally been disappointed at the suspension, but she too was glad Charlotte stood up for her friend. Tamsin and their daughter insisted that the older Valkyrie had given her a stern what for and even though the doctor didn't believe that for a second, she decided against lecturing the girl and instead made her favorite dinner. She would be a little put out at work for having to rotate days off with Tamsin to watch Charlotte, but she didn't mind nearly as much as the lab techs would.

Early Thursday afternoon, during Tamsin's turn stay home with their daughter, the Valkyrie shuffled her only child out the door and drove her (in Lauren's car which the doctor had left in place of Tamsin's truck) to the mall to shop for Lauren's birthday. Charlotte had been begging to go for that purpose for the better part of two weeks, but Tamsin had always hated malls; nevertheless, she had to go out and pick up the gift she'd ordered anyway so she brought the little girl on a last minute excursion to swing by the mall afterwards.

"You better make it an 'I'm sorry I got suspended' present too, just to be on the safe side." Tamsin advised as they wandered past the shops. She frowned slightly at how crowded the huge building was. It was in the middle of the day on a Thursday, didn't people do stuff during the weekday?

"What are _you_ getting maman?" Charlotte asked, tugging her mother's hand when she felt the older Valkyrie was walking too fast.

"What do I need to get her anything for?" Tamsin scoffed playfully, tossing back her hair and slowing her pace. "She's married to me."

Charlotte snorted disgustedly and rolled her eyes. If she hadn't looked like such a perfect balance between her two parents, there'd be no denying she was Tamsin's child from that simple action alone. "How much money can I spend?"

The Valkyrie shrugged and let herself be pulled into a brightly lit bookstore. "Whatever. Just don't get too crazy, I don't make the kind of money your mom does."

They ended up spending more time in the bookstore picking out things for Charlotte to read than looking for a present, but Tamsin didn't mind and let the child get an armful of books, several of which were currently over her head, but she knew Lauren would want to read them to her. They trekked through the rows of shops on each level, stopping any time there was a free sample so Charlotte could taste things and resting their feet at the food court so they could eat. Much to Lauren's chagrin, Charlotte had inherited Tamsin's penchant for largely eating junk food but even though her wife wasn't around, she still insisted their daughter have at least a few bites of salad before she tucked into the pile of bread, grease and cheese in front of her that was supposed to be a slice of pizza.

Charlotte vetoed everything in every store they went in and her frustration was beginning to affect her attitude. Tamsin was about to suggest they take another break before the girl stressed herself out too much when she felt herself being pulled urgently into a jewelry store. It was much quieter inside the store as there were few people there aside from the salesclerks, which Tamsin was grateful for. She let go of her daughter's hand and let her wander around while she followed at a respectable parental distance, humming in agreement whenever Charlotte pointed out something that she liked.

"Mor!" Charlotte said excitedly, bouncing on the balls of her feet and tapping on a display case. "I want to get this one!"

Tamsin slid up behind her daughter and leaned over her to see what she was so enthusiastic about. Resting around the black velvet display bust was a thin, finely crafted silver necklace with a small pendant attached. The pendant itself was a reflective honey brown citrine encircled with silver bands that were reminiscent of wings.

"The brown part is me," Charlotte explained before dropping her voice. "And the wings part is you."

Tamsin smiled gently at her daughter even though her gaze was still fixed on the necklace and racked her brain for a way to approach the child on why it was a thoughtful and touching gift but it probably wasn't a good idea. Once Lauren was no longer required to wear a symbol of her slavery, she had eschewed necklaces altogether and once her slavery had ended permanently, she had found it difficult to wear any kind of jewelry for longer than a night. In fact, when they had gotten married, Tamsin was even reluctant to suggest her wife continue wearing the thin platinum wedding ring she'd gotten except during the wedding and reception, but the doctor insisted. Even though it wasn't a status of slavery, having a piece of jewelry she wore constantly had given her a lot of apprehension the first few months of their union to the point of anguished panic attacks when she felt like she couldn't take it off fast enough whenever her anxiety was rising to unbearable levels.

Tamsin was all for having the doctor not wear it at all; as long as she had it, that was all that mattered, but they had worked through it and excepting for those first several months, Lauren only ever took the band off when she showered or washed her hands. Still, the blonde human had been very nervous about the idea of necklaces, particularly ones made of silver but she wasn't sure how to broach that with their daughter. Charlotte was vaguely aware that things weren't always like they were now in the Fae world just as she was vaguely aware that the reason for that had a lot to do with her Aunt Bo and her little extended family. She was just essentially unaware of the specifics. They really hadn't planned on talking to her about it until she was older but definitely they had planned to have this conversation as a family and not in a mostly empty jewelry store on a Thursday afternoon sans Lauren.

"Don't you think that's kind of fancy?" Tamsin tried. "Maybe we could get earrings like that, you think?"

"You don't think she'll like it." Charlotte said disappointedly, her face falling.

The Valkyrie rested her hand on her daughter's shoulder and pulled her into a slight side hug. "I think she'll love whatever you give her." She responded seriously figuring that they would probably have that talk with Charlotte earlier than anticipated.

They had Lauren's birthday dinner at the Dal. Normally, anyone the young Valkyrie's age wasn't allowed in, but Trick had been a sucker for Charlotte ever since she'd taken to referring to him as 'pépé.' They were all sitting around a wooden table; Lauren, Tamsin, Charlotte, Bo, Kenzi, Hale and Dyson with Trick going back and forth between their table and taking care of bar patrons. Lauren hadn't really wanted to celebrate her birthday with any of their outside friends. "Just family," she had said, which was generally her attitude for her birthdays since she'd started celebrating them again the year after gaining her freedom.

They had eaten well and richly, laughing and joking through the meal and had just gotten to the part where presents were being opened. Trick had given her a small, worn-leather book whose yellowed pages were filled with Medieval French written in careful script in black ink that had long since faded to a purplish brown with the comment 'you didn't get this from me.' Dyson and Hale had pitched in to get her a vintage inverted microscope which she had gushed over, Bo and Kenzi offered any two weekends in the upcoming year in which they would take Charlotte off their hands (which the youngest member of their little family thought was more of a present for her than her mother, but she didn't say so in case they changed their minds) while Tamsin had given her a 1700s edition of _Utopia_ in the original Latin along with softly whispered promises in her ear that made her blush in spite of herself.

"Mine now!" Charlotte crowed happily, having insisted that her present go last since she was sure it was the best.

Lauren smiled warmly at her daughter and leaned down to one side to drop a kiss on her downy blonde head before reaching for the small square box that Tamsin had been more than willing to pay to get wrapped in the store, but Charlotte had insisted on doing herself which ended up being sheets from her ever present drawing pad crowded with (mostly purple) designs of her own making.

The doctor had started to peel away the paper carefully, wanting to save it, but Charlotte insisted on opening it like 'a proper present' and that she'd make her more drawings any time she wanted so Lauren reluctantly tore the paper quickly to get at the silver box inside. Smiling in anticipation, she lifted the lid of the box and cast it on the table to peer at what was nestled on top of the bed of cotton. Her smile faltered and a look of raw nervousness flickered on her face for a moment while there was a collective sharp intake of air from the rest of the table who were watching her carefully for her reaction as she lifted the item from the box.

"I should have listened to mor." Charlotte said after a moment, frowning. "She tried to tell me to get something else."

The comment seemed to break Lauren out of her stupor and the smile that blossomed on her face was genuine. "I'm glad you didn't listen." She said, hugging her daughter tightly who returned the embrace happily. "I love it." She straightened up and handed the necklace to her wife, pulling her hair to one side.

"You want to wear it now?" Tamsin asked, her tone indicating that she had really been asking if Lauren was sure about what she was doing, her eyes saying they could talk to Charlotte about this later.

Lauren glanced around the table at her friends, her family, her smile widening as she rested her gaze on her daughter who seemed to be growing up too fast, even for a Valkyrie and turned back to her wife, nodding firmly. "Absolutely." She replied, rotating her body slightly to make putting the necklace on easier.

Tamsin put the necklace on her carefully, pressing a quick kiss to the nape of her neck as she pulled away. "How does that feel?" she asked, knowing it was a loaded question.

Truthfully, Lauren expected some amount of emotional heaviness when the chain was put around her neck, like she had felt all those years while being forced to constantly wear the symbol of the Ash at literally all times, but she didn't. She just felt a kind of love she couldn't convey in words, so in answer, she linked her hands behind Tamsin's neck and pulled the Valkyrie close, hoping her feelings could be felt in the kiss she gave her. She pulled away from Tamsin with an amused laugh after Charlotte made a loud disgusted noise when she felt her mothers' display of affection had gone on too long and kissed her daughter's check which was slightly puffed out from having shoved huge forkful of cake into her mouth. The celebration resumed and continued into the night, ending with Tamsin collecting their daughter from Trick's downstairs room and carrying the sleeping child to the car while Lauren trailed after her, rolling the pendent of her necklace between two fingers and smiling.


End file.
