Work Text:
When Laura finally made it to the bedroom, eyes red and ready to fall into another sleepless night of tossing and turning, there was a letter waiting on the pillow.
The calligraphy was familiar, loops and curls that could only belong to a hand taught to write in years past but the features were exaggerated. Points high, loops low. More of a scrawl of incoherency than anything carefully thought through.
Still, Laura could not deny Carmilla this. So she broke the seal, choosing to ignore the red swatches of colour dotting the paper.
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Laura,
A cat only has 9 lives.
In my first life I was a Countess. A spoiled silly girl who believed that the only thing that mattered in life was the next dance or ball or pretty face in a crowd. She was laughable in her innocence. A flirt who was teasing to creepy old men with the worst of intentions while stumbling over a simple phrase to a beautiful girl.
Who never even knew that she’d have anything more than one life to live and seemed to content to squander it anyway.
That was the life in which I could breath. In which I could take the world in through my lungs and turn it into something good and usable and bright. Where eternity wasn’t weighing on my shoulders and the burn of the stars was so achingly eternal in its scope that it didn’t even cross my mind to ponder its mysteries.
Until the life was taken from me. When the innocence of my first life was smashed to pieces by my own intrinsic hope that humanity was kind and good and that gentlemen were gentle without knowing that the world doesn’t care and that smiling faces hide fangs.
But when the universe shattered my innocence it at least gave me a set of fangs for my own.
My second life was born too soon. Springing to action in a dungeon when I should have lain in my grave another few weeks. But I was not to be permitted to transcend my mortality and so awoke to the truth of my reality as the man who held the knife took something more.
But from the tatters of my innocence I built a set of fangs and tore a red streak through reality. Judging indiscriminately as I took what had so been taken from me.
Other vampires will speak of the thirst for blood when they first awake. My thirst was something different.
Not for blood and unquenchable as I drank them dry.
And so, while the first life was innocence, the second was where my world turned grey. Killing those who had taken so much from me. Not meaning to kill while I fed but unable to control the hunger once it rolled through my bones. Mama never particularly cared. Too amused by my rage as the blood dripped down my chin.
In my second life, I was still seen as little value. Just another recruit who would one day give into whatever curse the universe had seen fit to shove upon me alongside the fangs. An amusement. I spent that life an uncontrollable beast. A great cat pouncing through the darkness.
Killing without thought or ability to stop myself until I was caught, captured, and staked through the chest by a man who sought revenge for the one who’d taken everything from me.
And so I died my second death.
And that should have been it. That should have been all. I should have shuffled off this mortal coil to greet the vast infinity beyond the stars that I had only just begun to ponder. To live two lives when most get one was still rare beyond measure.
But all vampires bear a curse. Something that strengthens us by bringing us back also inflicts us a price and it swirls through the very essence of who we are to find what we value most dearly and use it to break us.
The first of us cursed for being the spawn of angels and humans. Demonized only for existing.
Perhaps we deserved it.
William’s curse was apathy, the choir boy who once shone so brightly could not summon a twinge of warmth for another creature. Mattie battled her own perception, time skewing her reality as she fought to keep perspective in a changing world, twisting words until they became what she needed them to be. Mother had long given into the insanity, a creature so old that she’d learned to twist the madness back into order.
All past tense. Yet I am still here.
For my curse is to remember.
Even though you make me wish I could forget.
The mortal immortal. I do not age but my clock ticks on, death looming over my head and claiming it’s pound of flesh so I can never quite release my humanity. For to be human is to die. To be immortal is to live.
Mu curse has trapped me somewhere in between. Dying and returning. Feeling the sting of death only to be reborn back into my body. Unable to fully grasp the enthusiasm of life or the complete indifference of death.
And so I awoke, gasping for air I did not need, to my third life. Born from where I was set to be entombed in Mama’s mausoleum. For even she is not cruel enough to place her diamonds back in the ground.
And I became something precious to her. No longer a mere amusement. Death could still come to the undead and yet my curse had somehow allowed me to thwart even that. The curse of mortality making me immortal among the undying.
So I was trained and taught. Control, the core at every facet of my being as Mother handed me off to Mattie for instruction.
And I became a hunter. Prowling at the edges of the night. Taking exactly what I wanted or what I needed with no-one to tell me otherwise. Blood spilling across my mouth accurate to the drop as I could measure and predict what I wanted to take. Lust of any kind lost its hold on me as I was pushed to the limits of breaking and overcame them.
Perfectly in control of my actions.
Killing because I wanted to, not because I was lost to a haze.
Mattie and I roamed the better portion of Europe, Asia and Africa, dealing with whomever Mother wanted dealt with. And so in my third life I was a hunter.
My fourth life was short, but not my shortest.
I awoke to Mother standing over me, the stake still in her hand as Mattie sat demurely on the couch. Something in her eyes apologizing for the action. The inaction. I could remember no threat, no danger at the end of my third life. Only whirling with my sister across the dance floor and drinking our fill until we were drunk on our own power.
But Mother watched my face as I awoke, a gleam in her eyes as I leapt from the couch with a hand on my chest and heaving nothing from an empty stomach. Death curled in my gut.
And Mother immediately sent us on another kill. No explanation for her actions.
We took our time at her permission, gliding to the other ends of the earth in our four legged forms until we reached our destination. All tails and fur and nipping teeth as I remembered what it truly mean to smile and I thought that I’d left the call of death behind me.
But as I was draining the blood from the body, fresh blood curling beside the death in my stomach, I stopped at the point of no return. Fangs retracting as the mortality and fragility of the life before me whirled in my head and pulled at my gut as though I could still sense what the end of life really meant and the value of every minute watching the stars.
Then Mother appeared. And I braced for failure. For the blow or the words or the pain. And despite the man still lying prone before me, so easy to finish and avoid whatever her wrath would be, I could not do it. The pleading eyes of Mattie could not beat the curl of death that I bore within my veins.
And Mother wasn’t angry. Her eyes looked almost proud as she told me that I’d become useful. She had a new mission.
But I’d still disobeyed.
And so ended my fourth life.
In the fifth I became a new type of hunter. Mother seeing my connection to mortality and humanity and determined to use my curse to her benefit. The inability to understand fragility and mortality that set into our kind, not an issue for me.
For dying still terrified me. Death’s sting so clear in my mind.
And she sent me to hunt out girls. Not to kill but to woo and befriend and eventually betray. For who better to understand the motivations of humanity than one who cannot forget it’s grasp. And so I took what was offered. Dashing aside the distant memories of my first life for the primal hunt that filled the next three, turning my body and words into a new kind of weapon.
I preyed on the girls that I had once been.
Relying on their innocence and trust in a pretty face and kind words to conceal what lay beneath.
And like me, their ignorance was their own and they should have seen what I was doing. It was easy to make them believe they loved me. I took what they had to offer. Blatantly aware that none of it was true, as they fell so easily for a fabrication I’d designed. As they failed to challenge even when I showed them a glimpse of my darker nature.
That fifth life was my longest.
Perhaps it was also the happiest. There was a time when I would have placed it but second. yet I know better now.
For in my fifth life my duties were only required every 20 years, leaving me with 19 to do as I pleased. The things I saw. The things I did. They are seared across my mind like something beyond reckoning.
My past was not only filled with evil moments.
I read every book I could get my hands on. Watched great painters and scholars rise and fall. Saw the world spin around me as nations changed hands and lands burst from death to life in a constant tread. I’ve forgotten more people than one could even meet in a lifetime. Watching time race by as the world turned around me, only the night sky and Mattie capable of making me spin.
But for a stupid error, I think my fifth life might have gone on forever. For I had lived long enough that even my immortal mortality was beginning to wear away from me. And although, in this moment I regret its passing as it took me here, I do not regret the death at the end of my fifth life.
Mattie and I should have known better than to taunt fate. But my stepping forward gave her time to run away.
And so, when my eyes opened to see the stars above in my sixth life, their consistency rattling against my heaving body as I shook against the ground and death reasserted it’s curl in my stomach, Mattie was still there to greet me.
Barely a year had passed into my sixth life before Mother had another assignment. So it was with that fragility of mortality heavy on my mind that I met Elle.
And I fell in love for the first time.
It took six lives for me to fall. It takes most only a portion of one.
But fall I did. With mortality singing in my veins I tumbled over the girl I had been sent to trap and deceive. And yet I did not realize I was playing the same game I had in my fifth. Still going through the same motions despite the new patter in my heart.
Not recalling that the girl presented in my fifth life inspired only a belief of love, not the actual entity.
I fooled myself like I’d fooled all the girls who had come before and so I tried to save her.
The girl I loved. Who did not love me.
And mother killed me, ending my sixth life and dumping my corpse into a coffin filled with the blood of the one who hadn’t loved me.
My seventh life was born in blood.
I came to, gasping, blood flooding down my throat the moment I opened my mouth. And when my body seized in pain as death reasserted itself, there was no-one to hold me. Only hard wood and stone to scrape against as my scream could do nothing but gurgle in the darkness.
I somehow thought she’d come get me.
As I rationed the blood but it still ran out. As I lay in an empty coffin in nothing but darkness and waited. As I didn’t die but didn’t live for decades.
My seventh life never knew anything but blackness and blood.
It ended when i chose to end it.
My eighth life was born on a battlefield. As the world split open and the blood of dying men dripped down my throat. Never having expected to awaken, I threw myself towards the stars that were a lifetime away.
And I wandered. And Mother found me.
And I did as she said but locked the mortality in my bones away as best I could. Determined to show nothing but apathy towards a world which offered me nothing in return and a set of humans who were insignificant to the spin of the stars.
Even Mattie could not draw the thrum of life from my lips that had once defined my existence.
And I thought I’d beaten my curse.
Uncaring about the world, uncaring about the girls I was handing over to mother, and only enjoying the occasional instance in which I could annoy her. For she wouldn’t risk killing me again. Not with so few lives left. They had become precious and I, her glittering girl, was still the oddity with the strange curse that made others think twice.
I met you in that eighth life.
Another day, another target, mortality and humanity locked as far away as I could get them. And I expected another wide eyed maiden fair who fell for the pretty face. But you did not.
You hated me without being cruel and you spoke of innocence and goodness and I could detect no fangs lurking behind your pretty face. What a fool I was.
And you slowly pulled pieces of all my lives together.
I was anxious at first. Angry and hurt and tried to push you away and make you be quiet because nothing like you could exist in this world. Innocence yet passion. Hate but care. I had been hurt so many times before and I could feel my undying death curling at my doorstep because I was the death curling at yours.
Yet you refused to let me pounce. Capturing my everything and demanding answers that I could give and answers that I couldn’t.
I could tell you of sacrifices and vampires and yet the way you looked at me never changed. Confronted with the fangs of the world didn’t shatter your innocence as it had mine. As I’d watched it do to every girl I’d ever been revealed to.
You stayed constant.
You stayed you.
I couldn’t tell you of why I rushed to protect you or why you made me feel like the mortality and fragility rushing over me for once wasn’t such a bad thing. I didn’t know myself.
I just acted on impulse and was a girl that I hadn’t seen in any of my lives but somehow reflected all of them. And she felt good and safe and she only came out for you. So i learned that I would do anything for you.
And I didn’t realize why until it was nearly too late.
You made me feel like I’d come home and you looked at the vampire and couldn’t seem to fathom that I’d do anything for you. Like you were surprised at the notion.
And I realized I loved you.
And it was such an easy realization to make that I didn’t fight it. I simply bolted from your room to follow you where life had taken you so that I could prolong it. Not caring that I would never be in your arms because at least if i died again, you could have a chance.
And I threw myself into the pit with a sword and you watched me fall and I didn’t know if they would ever find me.
So I closed my eyes and made a wish that I could be your side once again. A cat only gets 9 lives and I wished that I could be given the chance to give you my last life the way I’d given you my eighth.
Because I would do it all for you.
When I died the eighth time, it was the first time there was no fear.
And I got that wish. My ninth life was born in your bed and the first sensation I grabbed onto was you clutching me as tightly as possible and the first breath I took was full of the smell of you.
And before I could even thank the universe your mouth was on mine and world was exploding in every way I’d never thought possible and I knew that I’d never be able to repay the universe for giving me you. Not just to watch over and die for, but giving me you in my arms and snuggled against my chest.
For a time life was good.
I didn’t know better.
We sat on campus as earthquakes rocked the campus from an angry god. We tramped through a forest full of pitchforks and witches. We took up in my Mother’s apartment as we were forced to face a set of murders.
And I was blind. So blind. Because I was happy and you were happy and perhaps that’s the worst of it. We were so happy that we couldn’t see the trouble coming. The night we finally came together under the stars all my constants shifted. The sky moved and Mattie moved and they could no longer match my constancy. For you had already shifted my orbit until I moved to spin around you and the sky didn’t matter because I loved you and this was my last life and I would give you all that I could.
And I tried to play the hero.
And I protected you from my sister.
And i gave you all I had to give and when that wasn’t enough, I tried to give you more.
For a moment I was strong, for a moment I saw that which would be revealed to me as time swam on. For a moment I broke both our hearts with my realization. You broke our hearts with your innocence.
And it was no-one’s fault that we broke our own hearts. You were you and I was me and that wasn’t enough.
But I came back. I came back for you. Because I couldn’t leave you. Even if I couldn’t be with you, you were mine and I’d given my eighth life for you and I was still so in love that I couldn’t let you go because to do so would mean that I would have to go back to being something else. Something where the sky again became a constant.
And I was trapped in your orbit.
My ninth life was born in you and it would forever be yours.
Which made you mine.
And the worst of it was that the realization, the thing that sent me scrambling away and ending us in a way that felt worse than any of my deaths, was something I forgot as I angered you and protected you and kissed you on late nights when we both should have known better.
I was ready to give myself to you all over again. Consequences be damned.
And you told me no.
You told me no. You pushed me away. You got up and walked off. And perhaps that’s why I still can’t hate you even though my world is burning and I should rip you limb from limb.
Because I did it anyway. Giving you the secret I’d sworn to keep silent because I wanted you to be safe. And once again I did it for you. In your name. Because I am stupid and hopeful and still that innocent idiot at the ball who learned nothing across her lives. Because I trusted another pretty face and never realized that while I was a monster, so were you in your own way.
Fangs that I never saw and never expected because I thought I knew you when you didn’t even know me.
And you shattered me.
Just like the first time I fell, you shattered me. Like that Countess in the ballroom. And I’d only let her back in because you’d demanded. I’d let her back in for you. That hope and innocence of my first life had come rearing back in my ninth, tearing down everything in between because you demanded that I be right and good and everything.
And then you broke her all over again when you gave away the tools to kill my sister.
When you betrayed me as soundly as any knife to the back.
And I was a fool for not seeing that I’d given you the dagger and that you weren’t everything I hoped you would be. Because, I was romanticizing you the same way you were me. You seeing me as good. Me seeing you as innocent.
I betrayed 7 lives of learning for you, lives spent only with my sister. And with her gone, they are all I have left of her.
For you shattered me Laura. And I am once again that girl awakening from being shattered and making my fangs from what remains. Last time I cut a swathe of blood across a castle. Last time I was so young. This time I am old, and I am out of lives and out of family and out of reasons to bother caring about anything but you.
For you are still mine.
This ninth life was still born in you. This is what I begged the universe to give me without knowing what it meant. So it’s your fault and it’s my fault and maybe it makes sense that we’d still be tied together this way.
Look at what I’m about to bleed across this campus, when it’s all done and my ninth life finally fades away to nothing as red runs in circles around everything and you are still alive to see the ashes of my destruction, know I did it all for you.
Because in nine lives, you were the only thing worth saving and damning.
Because my curse it that I remember.
Because your curse is that I love you.
Carmilla