A/N: This is not any of the projects I should be working on, but hey, it's writing, I'll take it.
Set in some nebulous time period after the whole tying-Carmilla-to-a-chair incident. Shh, just work with me.
After Laura got over the shock of having a strange girl barge into her life and declare herself her roommate, the next thing she noticed was she couldn't see Carmilla's daemon.
"Don't get your little pink panties in a twist," Carmilla laughed in that sultry voice she was always using. "Axl is a gecko, he's nocturnal. Doesn't like the light so much. He spends his time right here." She tapped her pocket, where Laura could see the outline of… something.
Laura accepted Carmilla's explanation – her little English goldfinch daemon, Acelin, not so much. He would constantly whisper to Laura at night as she was brushing her teeth, asking, why had they never seen Axl, not once, not even at night when he could reasonably be active? Why had they never heard him utter one word?
After the incident with the… wrongful interrogation, Laura found it harder and harder to ignore the validity of Acelin's questions. Why had they never seen Axl? She had never noticed the tiniest rustle of fabric as he shifted in whatever pocket he was hiding in. They hadn't even caught a glimpse of him during that whole time Carmilla was tied to the chair, although he could have been hiding in Carmilla's corset – it wasn't like Laura was about to reach down there and check.
One night, as Laura was getting ready for bed and Carmilla was predictably out of the room, Acelin started back in on his complaints.
"I mean, Carmilla told us she wouldn't hide anything anymore. So why hasn't Axl shown himself yet?" he chirped querulously.
Quickly bending to spit out her toothpaste, making Acelin flutter his wings and dig his claws into her shirt to keep balance, Laura looked at him in the mirror.
"You're right, we need to figure this out," she said firmly.
Acelin stretched his neck out, flattening his feathers against his body. "Hold on…"
"Come on Ace, you're the one who keeps going on about it!" Laura said in exasperation.
"Yeah, but I want us to get away from her, not try to sleuth out her secrets ourselves!" he warbled.
Laura sighed heavily. "C'mon Ace. When have we ever backed down from an investigative challenge?"
"Well, it's never too late to start," Acelin said, but Laura could feel his resolve start to waver.
"You know that even if you don't help I'll figure it out myself," Laura told him.
Acelin sighed, ruffling his feathers in defeat. "Fine. But I'm just making sure you don't get yourself killed."
Laura laughed as she flopped onto her bed and Acelin fluttered onto her headboard. "I'm just trying to catch a glimpse of a girl's daemon. What trouble could I possibly get into?"
"You'd be surprised," she heard him mutter, and she reached up to flick his tail where he sat above her head. He pecked at her finger, and they both giggled before settling down to start planning.
Several days later, they found the opportunity to enact their scheme. Carmilla was gone for the evening, but she had promised to be back at a reasonable time. As the hour grew near, Laura sequestered herself in the bathroom, closing the door until only a tiny crack allowed her to see into the room. Acelin was perched on the windowsill above Carmilla's room, the distance a slight tug at her heart, but nothing she couldn't handle in the name of investigative journalism.
The time grew later and later, and Laura's leg was well on its way to becoming completely numb when Carmilla finally brushed through the door. Kicking off her boots willy-nilly and slinging her bag onto her bed, Carmilla paused for a second to look around the room. Laura had told her she would be spending the night at Danny's so she would think she was alone.
Laura watched with bated breath as Carmilla tucked her hand into the pocket of her jacket. She curled her hand around the contents, her fingers closed in a tight fist as she drew it out, obscuring the it from Laura's view. Slowly, bringing her hand towards her chest, she opened her fingers to form a cup with her palm, running her finger over what rested there.
Laura pressed her eye to the crack in the door, straining on her tiptoes to see the other girl's daemon. Carmilla shifted slightly, her hand opening more fully, and Laura caught sight of a metallic glint just as Acelin ruffled his wings in shock and gasped.
Her fingers convulsed back into a fist, and Carmilla snapped her gaze up to the windowsill where Acelin sat, immediately pinning him with a deathly glare. In a blur she sprang up and snatched him in her empty fist, bringing him close to her face to snarl at him.
A wave of painful pins-and-needles rolled through Laura at the contact, and she let out a cry, stumbling through the bathroom door in blind horror.
Carmilla's head snapped up at the sound, but her cold eyes seemed to look straight through her.
"Carmilla," Laura gasped, feeling like her breath was being squeezed from her lungs as Carmilla clutched Acelin tighter. "Please, let him go, I'm sorry, please let him go…"
As she spoke, Carmilla's eyes seemed to clear, and widened in horror when she realized what she was doing. She released Acelin, who flew directly to Laura, and let her hand fall as she brought her full fist to her chest.
Laura caught Acelin in her outstretched palms and brought him to her heart, cradling him and stroking his feathers as he burrowed into her collarbone. Tears slipped down her cheeks as they whispered assurances to each other, each making sure the other was all right.
Finally, when Acelin's tiny heart stopped fluttering against her fingers, Laura turned back to Carmilla.
"Laura, I –"
Laura cut her off, pointing a shaking finger at Carmilla's clenched fist. "That's not Axl. What is it?"
Fear and pain sparked in Carmilla's eyes. "N-no, it's nothing, I –"
"Carmilla." Laura took a step forward, running her fingers over Acelin's soft chest. "Where's your daemon?"
Carmilla's chest rose and fell rapidly with labored breaths as her eyes darted around the room, searching desperately for a way out. Finding none, she let out a long, shuddering sigh, turning her face away, and slowly held out her hand.
As her fingers uncurled, Laura finally saw what she had kept hidden for so long. Resting on her palm was a bronze coin, an inch or two in diameter, engraved with the image of what looked like a large cat.
Laura recognized the object from her own mother's grave.
"Carmilla…"
"Her name was Adalheida," Carmilla said, still not looking at Laura, her voice low and rough. "She was a black panther. I was a late bloomer, and she- she had just settled a few months before… before my eighteenth birthday."
She looked at Laura then, her eye huge and full of sorrow. Tears began to well in the corners and she pawed at them roughly, wiping away the moisture with the heel of her hand.
"I loved her so much. She was my Ada, my joy." Her voice broke, and she scrubbed at her face again angrily. "But then I died. Do you know what happens to a person's demon when they die?"
Carmilla pierced Laura with a burning gaze, and the smaller girl could only nod. She was only too personally acquainted with that shower of gold Dust.
Carmilla nodded sharply back. "She wasn't there when I woke up. Maman gave me this instead." Her fingers closed back over the coin, her knuckles turning white. "I don't know if she made it herself, or if she stole it from my gravestone. I never bothered to ask."
"But you've been telling everyone your daemon's name is Axl…" Laura said in confusion.
Carmilla let out a humorless laugh. "That was Maman's idea. She said to tell everyone my daemon was male, so I would seem like less of a freak." She offered Laura a twisted smile. "The rumors of what it meant to have a daemon of the same sex were alive and well even back then. Maybe especially back then. People were not kind when they knew." She shrugged one shoulder. "Still aren't. That's why I've never bothered to change the description of my imaginary companion, I guess."
Carmilla cupped her hand near her chest again, tracing the outline of the graven panther. Her voice dropped until Laura could barely hear her. "And it feels like less of a betrayal, somehow, to pretend like my soul is completely different than what she was."
Her face crumpled, and Acelin hopped to Laura's shoulder as she reached out for her. "Oh, Carmilla."
Carmilla dropped her head onto Laura's vacant shoulder, which quickly grew damp from the tears she could no longer hold in. Laura smoothed small circles onto her back as she guided them onto Carmilla's bed, leaning back and allowing the other girl to sink into her.
Carmilla held the daemon coin out in front of her again, rubbing her thumb across the edge. "I barely got to know her," she said numbly. "She had just settled, and I barely got the chance to know her true form before I- I…"
She pushed herself upright abruptly, her shoulders rounded and trembling. She fisted her fingers around the coin again, clutching it to her heart as she clasped her other arm around her stomach. "I lost her." She turned to Laura, her eyes wide and panicked. "I lost her, Laura."
Laura had no idea what to do in the face of such heartache, so she did the only thing she could, and held Carmilla while her body shook with sobs, as she fully mourned her daemon for what may have been the first time since she lost her.
When Carmilla began to quiet, her wracking sobs turning to shivers, Acelin hopped from his place on Laura's shoulder to her chest, nuzzling his little head under her chin as he often did with Laura. Carmilla sucked in a shuddering gasp, going completely still in shock. But as Laura brushed the hair away from her face and simply nodded, she raised one shaky finger and ran it down the length of Acelin's back.
The pins-and-needles sensation filled Laura again, but this time, painful wasn't quite the word she'd use to describe it. As a ghost of a smile formed on Carmilla's lips, she might have even gone so far as to say it felt… good.
A/N: Carmilla: Adalheida, black panther (Ada is a German name that means joy, so that's where that line came from); Axl, gecko
Laura: Acelin, English goldfinch
Pretty sure this is just fanon, but the assumption is that if your daemon is the same sex as you that means you're gay.