Work Text:
Carmilla is old. Her life has had countless chapters before the Aurora, and she doesn't always have the hope left to think it won’t have countless afterwards. She is old, and she has changed much over the years, and she has a tendency to forget this.
Sometimes, though, it is so blatantly obvious that her heart breaks all over again over lives long past.
Carmilla is old, and the two things she never grew out of are loneliness and an urge to help anyone who she can, by any price necessary. So when Drumbot Brian floats near the Aurora, only a few heartbeats away from being Jonny’s next frozen meal, he leaves her no choice.
Carmilla is old, and this is a good thing; if she weren’t this old, she wouldn’t know how to make the man (whose heart beats in a jar while she works) such good-working veins and lungs and most importantly, brain: Ivy Alexandria’s patch notes have taught her much she didn’t know a few centuries ago.
Carmilla is old, and she starts to suspect the man is old, too: no mortal’s heart would beat this long on its own. She hurries her work all the same; for all she knows, he might just have an unusual affinity for the magic-infused formaldehyde. Carmilla is old, but compared to the future she is but a newborn baby.
(Jonny D’Ville is not old (barely eighteen in body and a thousand or two in soul) but old enough for the first edges of resentment to start showing within his clockwork heart, so for the first time, he does not help with the process. Carmilla’s seen this many times before, so she knows how the resentment will blossom to hatred and simmer down once again once she is gone. (If, if she’s gone.) Still, he’s young enough to still love her and for violence to be the song his blood sings, so while Carmilla busies herself with a whole clockwork body he pillages and destroys and has a good time.)
(Nastya Rasputina is not old, but she’s never loved the process, and she’s older in mind to see Carmilla for what she really is. Carmilla can only hope she sees how Carmilla is trying, too, but she’s never talked much and there is no way to know. Still, she has Carmilla’s first daughter to love and she still thanks Carmilla with a curt nod when she brings her a blanket, so maybe they could still have peace.)
(Ashes O’Reilly was never much for mechanics, and they say this loudly once they see the remains of the man. Carmilla doesn’t bother trying, and Ashes gives her a grateful smile over breakfast the next day.)
Carmilla is old, and Ivy is so, so young, and together they make a man out of metal who doesn’t have a heart. She spares a single thought to an old story about a tin man searching for a heart to have as she puts the still-beating one in its brass case, then she doesn’t have time to think because the man starts breathing and while she may be old she still gets proud of her work.
Carmilla is old, and when she hears the brass man scream with vocal cords that must sound so wrong (i’msorryi’msorryi’msorry) she pretends not to cry.
Carmilla is old. She is old and the years have twisted her beyond what anyone from her home would recognise as her, and when she looks at the man who doesn’t know his name she sees something she hasn’t seen in a long time.
Carmilla is old, and this man is painfully young, a man both good and true from the single story he can tell, and her heart breaks when she thinks about how this man will grow twisted in time. How she will be the one who caused it.
(Jonny is young, and she knows he won’t, can’t change much; there aren’t many places to go from bloodthirst. He may grow mellower in age, but she doesn’t feel bad about him.)
(Nastya...Nastya was always an old soul, and the shell she puts up for most only disappears when she and Jonny do violence. Carmilla can’t bring herself to regret her.)
(Ivy is so young but somehow the one who feels the oldest of them all, and she has so much to know yet. Carmilla feels glad she could give her this chance, sometimes.)
(Ashes will go far in the world, she knows, once they get used to being immortal. They deserved better than the Sevens, Carmilla knows this, but sometimes she wonders if letting them loose was smart. Then she shrugs and knows that even if it was a mistake, she’ll have front row seats to the chaos.)
(This man, this nameless man...he is something else. He is good .)
“You look like a Brian,” Jonny says, and the man's forehead creases into a small frown, but then he nods. “That’ll work,” he says in a voice that sounds artificial and shiny, then winces and Carmilla already starts planning how to make the voice more...voice-like. She is old, and she can figure something out.
Carmilla is old, and as the man -- Brian -- grows more comfortable in his new existence, she feels older than ever, growing centuries with each second. If only she could make him stay like this forever...
Carmilla is old, she’s seen many people, and she suddenly knows what to do. Once the necessary immediate fixes are done she buries herself in the ways of morality. Ivy is glad someone else uses the library, and provides hundreds of books. Carmilla reads them all.
Carmilla is old, and yet she feels bad in a way she didn’t know she still could when he puts Brian down under once more.
The remorse floats away from her once the small switch is installed, though, and finally she feels she’s done something good.
If she stays on other parts of the ship, she can ignore the screams.