Susanna Nádasdy smiled seductively at the young lady, Mircalla Karnstein, who was kneeling at her bedside with her hands under the coverlet. Susanna looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder and beckoned for Mircalla to come closer. Mircalla obeyed and withdrew her hands from Susanna's coverlet and began to caress her tenderly. At last, Mircalla even laid down beside Susanna on the bed, and drew her in close, smiling languidly as she did so. Susanna made a purring noise and felt immediately delightfully soothed.

"Dearest Mircalla," Susanna whispered, voice low and husky with love.

"Susanna," Mircalla's voice was even lower and raspier. "It has been far too long since last we've met."

"Well, I scarcely can get a day to myself," Susanna replied ruefully. "You know how domineering my father is. I can't even breathe without his permission, just in case I do something to slander the Nádasdy name."

"Well, whatever happens, I doubt that it will be your breathing that slanders your family," Mircalla replied cheekily, shifting under the covers until Susanna was sitting directly underneath of her. "That is, unless your breathing comes in too fast or too hard," she added suggestively. Susanna only laughed in reply, watching with excited eyes as Mircalla lowered her head until their lips were touching.

Susanna and Mircalla were countesses of neighboring estates and had only met when both of their fathers were busy conjuring up a plan to secure some more of the territory between them. They were making treaties and alliances in return for some of the spoils that would come from this newest conquest. The two became fast friends and then, as fate allowed, far more. In time, it became the goal of both women to spend as much time together as they could, despite the distance between. As of that particular point in time, Mircalla had managed to sneak away from her home, Karnstein, to come and visit Susanna's estate. She'd been here for several days now, and still nobody noticed.

Mircalla's own father, Ferenc Karnstein, neglected his daughter severely. Sometimes, he even forgot that she existed just because she wasn't a son. It hadn't been hard for her to sneak off. The difficulty had come after she entered Susanna's home. Susanna's father, Hans, was on the opposite side of the spectrum. If Ferenc never noticed a thing Mircalla did, Hans noticed everything. He was watchful where Ferenc was blind. He was a vigilante where Ferenc didn't even care. If Mircalla could leave her castle without Ferenc noticing, Susanna couldn't even breathe without Hans criticizing it. But Hans' observant vigilance ended with Susanna. He never once even suspected that his daughter might be engaging in nightly visits from her female friend of Karnstein. As far as he was concerned, Susanna was so tightly under his control that she wouldn't even have the guts to do something like this, let alone the resources. If only he'd understood just how deeply the two girls loved one another. They would do anything for each other, even going to the length of sneaking out to visit, even if they could only come out at night. Now the two girls were entertaining another night together, curled up under Susanna's bedsheets, skin to skin.

As romantic as nights like these were, however, nothing compared to nights in the garden, but that was perhaps because they were the riskiest nights of all. Just two young countesses, creeping between shadow and moonbeam and amongst the leaves and flowers of the garden to steal a night together. In fact, the two countesses even shared their last kiss in this little moonlit Eden, sitting side by side and overlooking a small lake towards the edge of the garden. The moon was a glowing disc upon a dull gray sheet of water that was as still and silent as glass.

"I am sure, Susanna, that you have been in love; that there is, at this moment, an affair of the heart going on," Mircalla said to her lover.

"I have been in love with no one, and never shall," Susanna whispered in reply. "Unless it should be with you!" Mircalla felt something powerful move her heart in response to these gently-spoken but passionate words. She turned her dark eyes to meet Susanna's green ones, enchanted by the pure and powerful love she found within them.

Mircalla suddenly moved forward, catching Susanna's chin in her hand. She pulled Susanna closer and closer until their lips met. This kiss began slow and gentle, but soon became feverish and hard as hands roamed through hair and across skin in perfect rhythm to the motion of their mouths as they kissed longer and deeper. Soft moans filled the warm summer air and combined with the occasional rustle of a nightgown as the two women continued to nuzzle and caress one another with lips and fingers.

"Darling, darling," Susanna finally murmured, "I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so..." it was a good hour before either of them chose to return to bed, sneaking back across the massive garden and back into the castle.

Once the pair was on the last step that would lead inside, however, Susanna stopped them both and turned to face the moonlit garden.

"Let us look again for a moment; it is the last time, perhaps, I shall see the moonlight with you," she said.

"What do you mean?" Mircalla replied, a little alarmed by this cryptic and gloomy phrase, but Susanna would not answer. Instead, she only continued to stare out at their little Eden with languid and pensive green eyes, one arm still wrapped sweetly around Mircalla's slim waist.

In the end, Susanna proved correct in her prediction. Although Mircalla was able to spend one more day with Susanna, their next night was cut short. Ferenc had finally noticed his daughter's absence and although he had absolutely no clue where she had gone, not knowing her well enough to even conjecture, he sent out a letter to Hans for help. Hans might not have known Mircalla much better, but he knew Susanna, and if he knew Susanna, he would have Mircalla. He ended up lying in wait, watching his daughter with extra care that day, even long after the sun had gone down. He waited carefully outside of Susanna's room, ear at the door until he heard gentle voices speaking in conversation. He did not need to hear much to recognize his daughter's own soft, sweet voice, and Mircalla's far lower and raspier tone. Enraged at the words he was hearing them speak, he did not hesitate to kick in the door and draw his sword...

Susanna and Mircalla escaped that night unscathed, but the next one they shared together would not yield the same result. Firstly, Susanna and Mircalla were kept far apart, forbidden from even seeing each other for nearly half a year, but even once they were free to at least speak to one another again, either Hans or Ferenc had to be in attendance. It was the first time in Mircalla's life that Ferenc had ever noticed her, though it still boiled down to a selfish reason. He didn't care what Mircalla did, he just worried about what her actions might do to his own reputation. Even now, while watching Mircalla, the selfish man only saw himself. But it was still better than Hans who, unlike Ferenc, did care what the two girls did, and made sure that his every expression somehow conveyed displeasure with them, even if they talked about things as mundane as the weather.

Of course, the two girls were forbidden from ever sharing a room or a night, and guards were posted outside their doors whenever one young lady visited the other, but Susanna was not ready to admit defeat. Instead, one particular night, she managed to dupe her father and her guard into thinking she was curled up in bed when, instead, it was just her nightgown, stuffed with pillows and hidden with an extra coverlet. The real Susanna was quickly making her way to Mircalla's room, an ancient spellbook in hand...

"What are you going to do with that?" Mircalla demanded in a small voice. She wasn't even sure how Susanna had been able to escape her room and get around the entire castle just so that she could climb through Mircalla's window the same way Mircalla had climbed through hers a few months back. How had no one stopped her sooner? Especially since the spellbook she had looked so big and heavy. And it was a full moon that night. How had Susanna not been spotted?

"I'm going to reunite us, to everything we once were," Susanna replied determinedly as she flipped through the old pages. "I am going to reunite us and give us the life that we deserve. A life we can share as one..."

"You mean you're going to have us run away?" Mircalla asked, sounding almost excited. "We'll see the world together?"

"You know I've always wanted to travel somewhere beyond the castle walls," Susanna replied, not looking up from her book. "And you are mine, and you shall be mine. You and I are one forever."

At last, the young woman found something. It looked like a spell that would give them the ability to hide within shadows just until they could escape, but Susanna never got to finish the spell before a guard burst in. Susanna's guard had dared to go into Susanna's room and ended up discovering her deceit. At the same time, Susanna's voice had bled through Mircalla's door and when Mircalla's guard realized that the voice did not belong to her, it did not take long for either of the guards to put two and two together.

The two girls were both put under arrest for the crimes of witchcraft and homosexuality, but in the end, only Susanna was executed. Ferenc and Hans made an agreement with one another that Hans would try and help save Mircalla in the name of Ferenc's reputation and, in return, Hans would get some of Ferenc's wealth and power. Ferenc would help disassociate Hans with Susanna so that when the inevitable disgrace for having a witch and a lesbian for a daughter would arise, Hans would still be able to save some of his own reputation by using Ferenc.

It was in both of their plans to allow Susanna to die simply because at least a little blood needed to be spilt in order for the masses to feel like justice had been done and because neither of them cared too much about Susanna, she was their chosen scapegoat. Really, the only reason they even agreed upon making an attempt to save Mircalla at all was because Ferenc was so vain and pompous that he did not want one single stain on his image. Hans had been a little different, willing to ruin a bit of his reputation now and then rebuild later. It was why he had no problem watching his daughter die. Ferenc, however, had been a bit more adamant about Karnstein purity and made that deal with Hans to protect Mircalla at the cost of Susanna. Hans had no issue agreeing with this, knowing that Ferenc would help him back up to grace after he took this inevitable fall for his daughter's heinous sins, though both men knew full well that Mircalla was just as guilty as Susanna.

The two counts quickly blamed everything on Susanna, using eyewitness evidence that since it had only been Susanna with the spellbook, Susanna was the only one to blame. They spun a story of lies, stating that Susanna was a practicing witch and had used black magic to seduce Mircalla into her services. They painted Mircalla as an innocent and confused victim, nearly defeated by the forces of darkness because she did not know any better and hadn't had a man to protect her. They wrote Susanna as the vile and vulgar one, responsible not just for the witchcraft the guards had seen that one night, but for any and all homosexual acts between herself and the young Karnstein prior to then. They accused Susanna of sneaking into Mircalla's bedroom every night to seduce and sleep with her even if it was against Mircalla's will or without her consent. It had been Susanna with the spellbook, after all. Mircalla was an innocent bystander, put under the influence of Susanna's spells to allow all of these shameful things to happen to her and to delude herself into thinking that she liked it. She could not be punished for Susanna's seductive sins.

Their plan worked liked a charm and they were able to divert enough attention from Mircalla so that her life was spared, but all of that anger had to go somewhere. So now, Susanna was surely slated to die, if not by the law, by something of a popular vote. Ferenc and Hans had done their job well and created Susanna into a perfect scapegoat. She would die not just for criminal activity, but because the rest of their kingdom genuinely believed that every bad thing ever said about her was automatically true. Only Mircalla was smart enough to see through the lies, but she was powerless to speak by now because of Ferenc and Hans' little story. Since they'd made Mircalla out to be nothing but a silly little girl, victim to things she couldn't understand, no one ever listened to the little countess of Karnstein and anything she said in defense of Susanna was chalked up to silly girl talk or further enchantment from Susanna. She would have to be killed now, for none of them would suffer a witch to live.

Mircalla could only watch from afar, aghast, as her lover was executed right there in Karnstein, right in front of her. She had been unable to save Susanna. On the day of her execution, as her final word, Susanna only said one thing:

"Fear not, Mircalla! To die as lovers may, so that they may live together shall be our story! I will meet you again in death!" then she spoke no more, and nor did Mircalla, grief taking her ability to do anything but mourn.

For the next few months, Mircalla became increasingly bitter, cynical and sadistic. With her one true love gone, stripped of life and torn away from Mircalla, Mircalla felt that she had nothing else worth living for. Or at least, she felt as though she had nothing left to be good for. She stopped caring. She stopped functioning. She did what she wanted whenever she wanted, not caring about the consequences of her actions. None of it displeased her father, however, now that she was no longer engaging in witchcraft and homosexuality. She spent most of her time either brooding in her room, or watching the servants being punished. She was not up to anymore trouble. That was fine with Ferenc.

At the end of those months, however, the young countess of Karnstein finally attended her first ball. She did not remember anything of that night, except for how lovely it might've been to waltz with Susanna instead of all of these dirty, disgusting men who claimed to love her dearly and who lavished her will all sorts of promises she saw right through. They were all the same, stubborn, egotistical pigs. And they weren't even that smart, the way Susanna had been. These men were ugly, stupid, vain and boring. Mircalla wanted to waltz with Susanna.

The only relief came after the ball, in the dead of night, when Mircalla was near sleep. She had been hoping to dream of Susanna again and to dance with her in that dreamworld if she could not dance with her in this waking one. She never got to engage in such a dream, however, because she was woken up by a visitor. It was a strange, spectral figure whom she could not make out entirely, so hazy was the night, but she imagined it to be Susanna. In fact, when the figure mounted Mircalla, it began to kiss at her neck in the same way Susanna used to in all the nights they spent together, whether in the garden or in the bed. Was Susanna back for revenge? Was this gentleness some new form of torture? Or was she going to take Mircalla away to a place where they could finally be happy together? And were these kisses and caresses in the middle of the night just Susanna's way of saying hello again after so long? Mircalla could only moan a little as Susanna nipped at her neck, and then her breast.

Suddenly, Mircalla felt a sharp pain, cutting deeper than any pain she had ever known before. She couldn't even scream anymore, having been quite drained by Susanna's visit. She could only lie there, mouth open in a silent cry as the pain grew. It began to burn and she struggled to push the specter away, but she was paralyzed. She could only lie there as her life force was sapped right out of her veins. Finally, then, Mircalla began to fear death. For the first time in her life, she was afraid to die and wanted desperately to live. She clung to the last threads of her mortality, but they unraveled faster and faster as the fates prepared to unwind her story and cut the string. She began to pray silently, though she did not believe in a good or forgiving God anymore. She prayed for life, if nothing else, far too afraid of dying. In that one moment, it became her one true fear, even worse than losing Susanna. In that one moment, Mircalla would've done anything to escape death's grip. Then she died.

But death did not keep her. Instead, it spat her back up into the land of the living, but she had come out wrong. Changed. Different. Monstrous. Vampiric. She was sure that she was still dead, that disconnect of body and mind (soul?) an ever-present torture, but she was able to walk and see and talk again. She could think and respond and act, but it all felt... different. She had no pulse and no need to breathe or eat. But she did have the need to drink. Blood. From the moment Mircalla's dark eyes opened again, she was thirsty. But even after she quenched her initial thirst for blood, another kind of hunger drove through her system. Was it the hunger for life? What an ironic Hell for the girl who'd spent her death throes fearing the scythe of the Reaper. Was this God's punishment for an unrepentant sinner like her? To forever roam the land of the living, dead? Always wanting for something she'd never have? Though that was nothing new to the young countess of Karnstein.

But in time, Mircalla would come to see that she was only half right in her assessment. A far more exquisite torture was in store for her, beyond being dead in a world of life. Her ultimate torture was the most ironic and painful of all. It was to see Susanna, again in death just like they had wanted, but to never find a happy ending. Time and time again, they would find one another and fall madly in love, but never would it ever end in anything other than death and despair.

And as an extra sort of irony, if Mircalla was the girl of death stuck in the land of the living, Susanna was the girl of life stuck in the land of the dead, forever haunted by Mircalla's specter. And her punishment had not been to endure eternal death as Mircalla's had been. Hers was to experience a very twisted eternal life. She could die, yes, but she was never kept for long before being reborn, again and again. Maybe she came back in a new life every time, but she was an old soul. Worst of all, though, to Mircalla, Susanna never had any recollection of any of her past lives. It didn't matter how many times she'd died and been reborn, every time she and Mircalla were reunited, it was like the very first time for her. Mircalla cursed God for giving them both such ironic Hells and began to ask why, but vaguely, something did stir in her memory...

When Susanna had died, she was welcoming of death and had promised her loyalty to Mircalla even beyond the grave. But Mircalla? When she died, she had feared death and begged for anything else, forgetting even Susanna in that one moment of terror. How ironic was it now for their roles to reverse? Susanna would forever be the one to live and fear death and she would always shy away from Mircalla every time they met again. She would forget Mircalla after every new death while Mircalla was the one who would never forget Susanna and never be able to pass on into death the same way Susanna had tried so hard to do centuries ago. Susanna would be a creature of perverted life and Mircalla of perverted death. They really would become one through their loves, God himself switching them up to torture them.

Their story ended the same way every time before completing its cycle all over again in a different time and place. Same play, different stage. Year after year. Mircalla always ended up taking Susanna's life, only for it to be returned to her within a few years' time, and Susanna always filled Mircalla's dead heart with life before death would do them part for another decade or two until they could be as one once again. Susanna always ended up hurting Mircalla, although it was all inadvertent. Mircalla always ended up hurting Susanna, though it was all unintended.

But the vicious cycle of hurt and pain between the two girls, like the endless round of life and death, never ceased. The very first cycle had started the moment Mircalla had crept in through Susanna's window on that dark and fateful night centuries ago and so it would be for centuries more. They had lived together, they had died together, now they would live together once more, just like Susanna had promised in her last moments of her first life. But they had both come back wrong. In the same way homosexuality was a perversion of love, so too was their existence a perversion of life and death.

AN: Here's chap 1 of a Carmilla fanfic inspired by several lines from the book that imply that this isn't the first time Carmilla might've fallen for a victim. I'm using the old headcanon that Person A is Person B's lover, reincarnated over and over again. Also, this fic will cover book and webseries and Susanna is, of course, Carmilla's original Laura. I came up with the name because Susanna was J. Sheridan-LeFanu's beloved wife, and it appears that Susanna was a name that existed back in the 1600s (albeit with slight spelling changes), so it's historically accurate sort of.