Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Lost Girl. No copyright infringement intended.

A/N: This story has been floating around in my head for quite some time and I've finally gotten around to write it down. Feed back is much appreciated. Hope you enjoy!

I.

Lauren is sitting in the second row when she sees her for the first time.

She'll remember it later, and wonder whether she could have noticed anything then, anything that might have changed the course of events later on. But what's telling is, though, is the fact that she can remember it with so much detail.

September has arrived in Boston at last. Even though the last few days have been fairly sunny, the academic year starts with rain, which urges the students earlier than you'd probably expect into the lecture theatre, even for the first real lecture of the term. It's not a regular class, but directed at all new students in the department. The buzzing atmosphere in the room fills it with the sparkling excitement that accompanies every first page of new life chapters. Some people are still trying to find a seat, or just generally up and walking around to say hi to friends. While the rain is drumming softly against the high windows everyone seems to be chatting excitedly.

An obnoxious bloke on her right can't stop talking about his basketball scholarship and really, Lauren wouldn't be surprised if he stripped off his shirt and showed his abs to the whole room, while the girl on her left is too occupied by gossiping with her friend to notice how frustratingly irregular the drumming rhythm of her pen on the wooden bench is. The noise level of the lecture theatre is maddening. Lauren throws another look at her watch, frowning. This talk, aimed at giving students a broad overview of what there are going to do for their next few years after all, is going to begin late.

She crosses her arms, leans her head back, and sighs internally.

Dropping out of the first year of med school to major in psychology instead had seemed like such a good idea after what had happened last winter. She really needs this new start from scratch.

Lauren is determined to double her major by adding anthropology. But she feels out of place already, and this will be more than stressful. She had to wade through the backwaters of academic bureaucracy and battled with the Transfer of Credits committee for months, but somehow Lauren found her way through it, and now she is sitting here exactly where she wants to, ready, more or less, for doing her degree at Tufts university. Once more Lauren frowns, and closes her eyes.

She did biology and chemistry already as prerequisites for med school. So she plans to invest that knowledge further into collecting credits for related classes she should consequently not find that hard anymore. And if she does her best she will be able to finish her degree within the next three years at least, if she can persuade the committee to admit her a few more credits in two and a half. If she's honest, Lauren has set her mind on that aim.

Then the door on left side of the lecture hall opens. Lauren's eyes flutter open again as a chubby man with a striped shirt and a full beard enters to walk up to the desk in the middle of the hall. The audience calms down a bit, everyone staring at him with interest, but the students don't stop talking to each other. The man doesn't encourage them either. He doesn't even glance towards the rest of the lecture hall. Instead he starts hacking furiously at the computer keyboard on the table.

Lauren musters him critically, tilting her head to the side. He surely doesn't look like the professor she's expecting. But then, Lauren has always been bad at judging people from their appearance. Not the best premise to study psychology. Maybe that will change now, though.

Her eyes drop once more down to the paper in front of her. Neatly lying next to carefully, according to length arranged pens and a thermos bottle filled with coffee the introductory leaflet stares up to her. It's written by the department for the first years. It's nothing special, just general information on required books and courses and so forth. And the name of the professor she'll be listening to today, if he or she would be kind enough to show up. Bo Dennis. Lauren is unsure what Bo is short for, but she thinks that she's heard the name before, either in the press or in relation to a book publication. This prof seems to be a big shot in the department, and was probably mentioned once or twice in the newspaper as one of the fastest rising stars within the academia at the east coast at the moment. Apparently, Dennis' books had quite an impact on the status quo of her field. And Lauren is almost sure that Dennis is a woman.

But Lauren isn't really read up on psychology (yet), and even less informed on who her teachers are going to be, so she sits patiently back and waits. Well, with as much patience as she can muster.

Apparently she isn't the only one wondering where Dennis is. Students one row behind her discuss the same topic enthusiastically. Somehow, it sparks her interest. Sort of. So Lauren concentrates on them and tries to listen. Maybe she can learn something by sheer osmosis.

"I mean have you seen her? It's pretty obvious," a guy says suggestively. "You must have heard the rumours."

Chuckling. Lauren groans internally. She had hoped this would be helpful.

"Rumours?" Someone else asks who, like Lauren, seems to be uninformed on college gossip.

"Well," the first voice drawls out, "she's quite famous, actually." Another pause, filled with more laughter. "Apparently she likes to bang students."

"Really?"

"Mhm. Especially freshmen."

They chuckle again, and the discussion shifts to the pro and cons of student teacher relationships. Lauren loses interest. College rumours are usually pretty inaccurate, but they tend to hint in the general direction of some vague truth. She really doesn't know how to place this information.

But at least she was right, Bo Dennis is a woman.

The people around her carry on to talk about god knows what, when the door flies open again. This time the noise level drops abruptly. Lauren looks up. She gets what the students behind her were talking about.

Unmistakably, Bo Dennis, the university's most cherished psychology professor, spilling charisma with every water drop that falls from her clothes – and so obviously female -, rushes into the lecture theatre, her black coat swirling around her knees and her dark hair glistening wet from the rain, while the line of her jaw is set like marble, and Lauren almost expects autumn leaves dancing around her ankles to come with her through the door. Oh. Oh.

…

Bo is having an exceptionally bad day.

For once she trusted the college to have a functioning computer to run her presentation on because she didn't want to go through the rain to her office, only to find out that the computer in the lecture hall won't accept her format. So, after meeting Peter from IT, she did double back into the main building to grab her macbook. This means that now she is late and had to walk through the rain twice.

Not to mention the venomous argument she had this morning with the head of the department. Hale is just so pretentious. She'd have wrapped her fingers around his throat if the office desk hadn't been in the way.

Filling leadership roles my ass. The job description had definitely been different. Bo can almost repeat it by heart. The daily work varies but includes teaching and training students and classes, administration, seeing clients (her main income, after all), running psychological groups, providing consultation to colleagues, supervision to other professionals, conducting research, and filling leadership and management roles.

Nowhere, absolutely nowhere, any mentions of crime profiling.

She is not going to participate in that ridiculous campaign of his. Bo is no police officer. Hale can howl as much as he wants to, she will not have those supervisory special agents in her field of duties, nor will she touch any of those profiling files he dropped on her desk this morning. Bo is not letting him draw her into the political mess he's creating at the moment. She has never heard of anything more stupid than attempting to raise money and prestige by creating a behavioural analysis unit at the college. It's definitely his inflated ego talking. The college doesn't even need more money, it's just . Whoever planted that idea in his head deserves a kick in the face. He's not smart enough to think of that on his own.

She teaches psychology because she's good at reading people and helping them figure their life out, especially in terms of relationships. And because it pays incredibly well compared with what she did before. That doesn't mean that she has to put up with everything her boss wants, though.

With those thoughts in her head Bo storms into the lecture hall. She really hast stop being angry at Hale right now. This is the first talk she's giving to her students after all. Her coat is soaking, and Peter still there to fix the problem with the computer even though she explicitly told him not to. So she clenches her teeth and pulls herself together. After shooing him away the IT guy leaves, reluctantly. Apparently had wanted to fix the problem for her, but Bo doesn't care now that she has her macbook. Finally, she starts the lecture.

Even though she hasn't given it often, it flows easily out of her memory. Her voice is calm and her gesticulations at ease. That gives her mind enough time to wander off and to take in the new faces. She's going to see them a lot, better get acquainted now and avoid as much awkward non-recognition moment as possible.

But because of one of those butterfly effect-esque entanglements she skims the middle and back rows, not seeing the blonde huddling in the front, who, after the initial shock, sets to scribble notes intently down on her sheet of paper.

The lecture doesn't take that long and Bo is relieved when she can leave the lecture hall again, to get back to her battle with Hale. She gives the students one last gracious smile and leaves as quickly as she came.

…

Lauren on the other stays for quite a lot of time in that. There are more talks and introductions to attend, and she is keen on getting to know everything she'll need.

She is happy, though, when she can get home that afternoon. It still feels weird to call the student hall home, but it's the place where her bed is now, so she should probably get used to it. Lauren thanks the gods of socialness from the bottom of her heart for having a single bedroom. She has no idea how she got it, but she suspects that her late entry – it had been unsure whether her credits would be transferred – could play an important role. Quite possibly it was just the last room available.

That doesn't protect her, though, from her neighbour.

Kenzi has a single bedroom as well, but she does seem to have a more active part in obtaining it, as far as Lauren can tell. The bright and bubbly girl with the most intense blue eyes Lauren has seen in a very long time immediately makes friends with her. Lauren has no idea why, at first. It feels unmeasurably good, though. She hasn't talked to someone like that for ages.

They sit in her bedroom on the floor, the cardboard boxes with her belongings still not fully unpacked, and chat endlessly.

After 10 minutes Kenzi has her so far to tell that she was studying medicine for a year, which results in Kenzi calling her doc for an unforeseeable amount of the near future. They chat on and Lauren learns that Kenzi does her weird combination of history and entrepreneurial leadership partly because a small scholarship for students with Russian background pays and partly because she tossed a coin. This leads to Lauren's scholarship and study plans.

Two hours later Kenzi declares Lauren her Hermione – never mind the complete lack of overlap between their subjects. Kenzi is profoundly convinced that Lauren will be able to handle it.

Normally Lauren would have been concerned by the looming undertone of Kenzi's work offloaded on to her shoulders. But the girl laughs so freely and Lauren feels so oddly at ease in her presence that they seal their friendship by agreeing to help each other out, although Kenzi complains that she got the worse part of the deal, since she's not so sure whether Lauren's "psycho experiments" will leave her mentally unharmed from what she gathered so far about that department. Lauren just laughs with her.

Misfits bond, that's a fundamental rule both of them have come to internalize.

They go to dinner not much later, and stick to each other while they try to make the best of the freshmen evening in the student hall. Luckily there is not much going on – relatively speaking. The music is blasting, and Kenzi and her spend a lot of time trying to figure out what subject people are doing based on their dancing style. But in the end Lauren retreats to her room early, trying to avoid the alcohol and the drunken people.

After undressing, she thanks the universe for her single room once more, closes her eyes even before she falls into her bed, and finally gets to sleep.