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You didn’t know what to do with Laura Hollis.
Laura Hollis has never been what you expected her to be. She is nosey when she should just leave things alone. She is talking when others would be quiet. She is everything when she was just supposed to be a girl who meant nothing to you.
But sitting in the dark of the mansion, avoiding your return to the floorboards, you find that she has surprised you again.
“I don’t care”, she’d said.
The floor don had sprayed Mattie with holy water, Mattie had attacked the floor don, and Laura had ended up with Mattie’s fingers around her neck at the end of it. Of course she had. Interfering when she should have been quiet. Only a brief shake of your head had stopped Laura’s life from ending right there at 2 in the morning.
Instead of a comment to Mattie or a thanks to you, she’d just shouted, “Is Perry okay?”
She’d asked a question about someone else’s health when, by all rights, her body should have been cooling on the floor. She asked before bruises from Mattie’s fingers had even begun to form.
Because Laura cared. She always cared.
That was what had gotten you into this mess in the first place. Laura, of all the roommates of all the girls you’d taken, had decided to be the one to care about her missing roommate. Laura had cared when more girls went missing. Laura had cared when Laf was pod-peopled. Laura had cared when Kirsch was taken.
She’d cared hard enough to give up everything. Her free time to find her roommate. Her safety to find the girls. Her room and bed to keep Laf safe. Her vampire bodyguard when Kirsch was taken.
Laura cared.
She’d cared about you.
Only two weeks of knowing each other, most of which were spent with you trying to annoy her, and she still told you that she cared about you enough to think that you were worth something. You shuffle on your chair in the darkened living room and run a hand down your pants.
Laura cared about you.
Maybe not in the way you wanted and maybe in a way that was wrong and maybe she hadn’t cared quite as much as you would have liked her too but there was never a doubt that she cared.
For the first time in centuries, someone cared about you.
Your hands move to your chest and beat a rhythm across the raised scar, new to your skin. She’d cared enough to hide you in her basement. Even after you’d broken up, she cared.
Except.
You could hear her upstairs, vampire hearing easily picking up the murmurs as she undoubtedly hovered around Laf and Perry. The scientist was giving orders in cleaning Perry’s wounds and Laura could be heard stumbling around to follow them. It still sounded like she cared but, just moments ago, she’d said something different.
“I don’t care.”
Your chest almost aches as the words come back to you. The frazzled tone with which Laura had said it. For the first time, you’d heard the exhaustion leak into her voice. You’d been forced to stand there silently and just stare at her. You don’t know if you would have been able to react regardless.
Because Laura had burst forward like a whirlwind when everything was about to fall apart, just shouting until the shouting had given way to gasped breaths framed by silence. Her every inhale so short that it almost seemed like she had no time for them. They were high pitched and broken and clearly pushed through tears. Tears which Laura did not let fall as the words came out.
“I don’t care.”
Your hands push harder against your chest, rubbing as though you could somehow restart the shriveled organ underneath. You wonder if you pushed her to it. Because Laura has never been what you expected and even though she’s always seemed so wonderfully open and free to speak, you have to wonder if maybe you were wrong.
If you’d never been asking the right questions.
If the Laura Hollis in your head wasn’t the one who was walking about upstairs, padding on her toes as though she was afraid to disturb anyone. Because what did you really know about Laura? Because, when you thought about it, Laura said a hundred things while saying nothing at all.
Even if she said nothing in those hundred things, she’d said those hundred things to you.
Now who was she saying them to?
Worse. Was she saying them at all?
Because she’d said “I don’t care” with exhaustion in her voice. She’d said it while begging for a chance to sleep. While begging for no-one else to yell at her.
They’d been yelling at her and she still kept going.
They’d asked her to lead them and she’d done so. Almost enthusiastically. Because she cared if people were getting hurt. She cared about her friends and you and the whole campus. But that Laura and the broken one who had slumped against the furniture were very different people.
Why did Laura care?
You couldn’t say.
You’d just known that she did.
But now she’d said she didn’t care. Now, you can hear her upstairs where she’s helping Laf and Perry. Ostensibly caring. Even when she said she didn’t.
Which was the lie?
Did Laura care about them or not? Did Laura care at all or not?
Did Laura care about you or not?
Somewhere, along your twisted path, had the places where you intertwined with her golden road broken her into not caring? You’d left to save yourself. You hadn’t meant to break her.
You run your fingers through your hair and wait.
#
You can hear her coming but you don’t move.
“Hey,” Laura says and before you can decide if you want to say it back, she’s speaking again. You give her a lie as to why you’re waiting up and when silence falls again, you risk a question of your own. Your fingers playing with each other as though it makes the question casual, “How’s Betty Crocker?”
“Fine,” she says. Then adds, “Not that you care.”
“Not that I care,” you parrot back. She’s not wrong. She’s always the one who cares and you’re not supposed to. Were never supposed to. Always told yourself you wouldn’t.
But here you are.
It seems your minds have travelled the same path despite your distance and Laura asks, “So why me then? Why did you care about me?”
You’re sitting as close to her as you can without moving your chair. She’s sitting in her chair on the side that’s far away from you. If you preferred poetry to philosophy, that might mean something to you. “I don’t care”, she’d said.
You do. You know you do.
You don’t know about her anymore.
So you give her a non-answer, “What makes any person sacred to another?” You don’t deny you care, you just don’t say why.
Laura wants why you care. Of course she does.
You don’t have a why to give her. You never have. You wish you did. She gets up across the room and you follow her as though she’s the light and you’re nothing but a moth caught in her flame. A moth with fangs perhaps, but still just a moth.
A moth with a sword and you’ve jumped at lights before.
You don’t have a why to give her so you give her whatever you can. You give her all you have to give.
You give her how.
How you care about her. How you love her.
You draw closer even as her face remains expressionless. The face of somehow who has no energy left to care.“The others aren’t mine,” You say, “You are. To annoy or not. To love or not. To save or not.”
It’s not enough. You knew it wouldn’t be and she even tells you so. She wants whys and all you have are hows. You know you care. You know you love. You know that you have to watch her finally cry the tears she didn’t earlier in the evening and you know that you’re no longer allowed to reach out and wipe them away.
You lay your cards on the table and you both know that it’s not enough.
“I don’t care,” she’d said.
But that Laura Hollis was dry-eyed while this one catches glimpses of your face when she thinks you’re not looking. And maybe, this Laura cares.
Still cares about you.
Laura tells you she doesn’t care about your reasons. She wishes she could but she can’t. Different things matter to her than they do to you and what you have to give isn’t enough. You look down. She doesn’t care about your reasons and you knew it was coming and still something breaks a little bit inside you. Breaks enough to send a tear falling down your cheek.
She asks you what you want.
“I don’t care.” she’d said.
And something in you screams.
So you look up, swallowing past the clog in your throat and let her see the shiny glass in your eyes, “Do you miss me?”
Do you care enough to miss me?
“Like someone cut a hole in me” Laura says.
Why did Laura care about you? You couldn’t say. You knew better than to ask.
But with a catch in her throat and eyes that meet yours for the first time all night, at least she still did.
#
You’re playing Senet, a game that pre-dates even you, and the pieces are rough under your fingers. Laura can’t sleep and you’re a vampire so boardgames have somehow become the solution to her insomnia.
You remember the last time she wasn’t sleeping and an “I don’t care,” rolling off her tongue.
Her banter with you is lighthearted at best as you try to ignore the way her scent smells slightly different than you remember, tinged with new soap and new detergent missing the bits that used to smell like you.
Or maybe she never did and you’ve just forgotten.
Still, you roll your eyes and quip appropriately. You’re glad to see the old Laura, even if she’s treating you the way she treats all of her friends. Uncaring of your history when she grabs your arm and forces you to play. Even if she seems to have moved on from your relationship.
You haven’t.
Laura Hollis is never what you expected and you don’t know if you ever knew how to read her.
The topic takes a 180 before you’re ready and she’s suddenly asking if drinking the anglerfish blood would have killed you.
You can’t help yourself, “Would you care?” You don’t look at her.
“I don’t care,” she’d said.
She pauses and you hear her breath catch. Just once. Quickly. High and short like she doesn’t have time for it.
Then the words come pouring out of her, “how can you say that? Do you think I hid you here because I don’t care? Because the thought of anything happening to you makes me feel like I can’t breath?”
You try and keep your face straight despite the whirling in your head but she is still the sun and you are a moth so you find yourself leaning closer as the words keep coming. Even more so when her voice starts to shake in a way too reminiscent of nights past. “And i don't know how i’m supposed to feel around you or what I’m supposed to do, because-”
You get too close and she stops talking.
Laura doesn’t move away and you’re kissing her before you can decide not to. You don’t want to decide not to. Your hand pushes its way into her hair and you almost jump when her hand cups your cheek. You kiss her hard, as though you can make her yours again. As though you can make her smell like you again. As though you can make her feel why you care when you’ve never had the words to tell her.
She breaks away.
As she speaks, you hand slowly slides down from the back of her head.
To her neck.
Her shoulder.
Her arm.
She tells you all of the reasons that she shouldn’t care about maybes and some days.
This time, the words come from your mouth, “Well, who the hell cares about fair?” you say.
Who the hell cares?
“I do.” Laura says.
Your hand falls away entirely. No longer touching her even though you continue to look. You look and you look, caressing her with your eyes.
At least, Laura still cares.
#
There’s a collar biting into the skin at your neck, chafing just enough to pull away the skin before it heals again. With every step, Vordenberg shoves you on the chains connecting your wrists to the collar jangle a melody that is somehow heavier than the toll of the church bells that had played at your first funeral. The blood on your chin has started to dry, crusting into rivers that you can’t wipe away.
He brings you to Laura.
Of course he does.
You cared enough for her to fall into his trap so of course he brings you here.
Except when Vordenberg announces your imminent death, Laura doesn’t move. “We heard you,” is all she says. Your blood suddenly boils, hurting worse than the chains or the collar or the smug voice of the old man behind you who now holds your leash.
“What?” the word tears itself from your throat because she is sitting there and not looking at you and not moving.
And not caring.
“You beg me to come and save you,” you say, “and I do even though you blew me off by-”
“I blew you off?” She finally turns, “I’m not the one who said that evil wins.”
She finally turns and there is blood on her face and her chest and her tone is dead as she ignores the fact that at the end of it all you cared enough to try and come for her. You can’t even blame her. Danny is dead and evil has won and Laura won’t even look at you.
“I don’t care.” She’d said.
Here it was. Here it is. She doesn’t care.
She is still and she is silent and you are going to die. You are going to die alone and uncared for and nobody will mourn the fact that you are gone because there is nobody left to care. When Vordenberg raises the sword, all you do is bow your head because you are Carmilla Karnstein and you made a life on not caring.
Why start now.
Except Laura speaks.
Laura who isn’t supposed to care about you anymore. You can’t do anything but stare at her as she holds the charter and threatens to kill a man to save you. The gesture is nice but you find it hard to believe that Vordenberg will buy her bluff.
“I don’t care,” she’d said.
This is just Laura being Laura. The way she’d patched up Perry after proclaiming that first ‘I don’t care’ because it was the right thing to do. She’ll pretend to care enough to save you but that will be all.
The floor is hard underneath your knees.
Still, you look at her. You look at Laura because even this facsimile of care is more than expected to get as you died. Perhaps, she will take the time to bury you as a memory of when she thought you were worth caring about. Perhaps, she will bury you by Mattie. That’s all you can hope.
Laura Hollis doesn’t care about you. Laura Hollis cares about everyone. She will not sacrifice them for you. She will not kill a man to save you.
Except she does.
The crack of the charter rebounds through the room as she snaps it across her knee and Vordenbergs death cries chase it as Laura lets the charter crumble under her fingers.
She cared.
#
She sits in the library with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and she looks at you and says, “I didn’t care. I burned that poor man to the ground and I didn’t care. All I could think was that I needed to save you. When I thought he was going to kill you…
I didn’t care”
All you can do is wrap her in a hug. She didn’t care about anything.
She was telling the truth that day in the mansion.
Except.
She apparently cared about you.
#
She cared and you broke her.
You’re in the library and Laura simply sits. She does not react to news of the campus in trouble. She does not search for a way out. She does not bother with anything around her. She just sits.
“I don’t care,” she’d said.
This time, you can believe her. She can’t do it herself so you find yourself grumbling as you follow the ginger scientist and make sure they don’t get incinerated by a group of tiny dragons. You drop chocolatey foodstuffs in her pillow fort of solitude. You sit through the night and do not move from your perch as she twists with nightmares. You keep an eye on the campus above for any way to defeat your mother.
You are Carmilla Karnstein and you don’t care. Except for her. For her, you do. You do not know why but you know how. Perhaps, you love her because she is yours. Why she is yours, you cannot say. You can say how you love her. How you've always loved her. You love her by doing what she would want you to do to.
Laura would want you to care about everyone.
So you do.