Does it really take the end of the world to also end ennui? Three hundred years, more or less, of being bored and irritated results in a hell of a habit. One that's tough to break.
But things happen. Death, so many deaths, death as a route to life, life of a sort anyway, deaths just begin to tick by…like regiments of ants, inconsequential, rattling on, decades, centuries, millennia, a woodpecker drumming outside her window…
Until the moment it stops. Not death, the deaths keep piling up, but the senseless, endless, relentless ticking stops. And she wakes, waits for it, wastes time and energy listening for the familiar. Loving Laura threw a wrench into Carmilla's machinery, making her awaken and, sadly, think. Remember. Act.
The killing became personal, ugly, palpable. And her skin– as if thousands of needles were pricking her at once– to feel life while taking lives– Mattie masked that feeling, swamped it under with delight, delight and wickedness, and her death, at the hand of the Amazon– at the hand of the girl she loves– loved, whatever– ultimately at her own hands– Mattie's death smothered the last relic of the mask.
And now all she does is feel. It's disgusting. She's the monster in her own nightmare.
She's tried to damp it down, feeding sparingly, feeding voraciously, killing for the sheer taste of blood, for the smell of it on her skin, even tearing at her own arms with her sharp, sharp teeth in hope of quelling sensation, emotion, compulsion.
Nothing helps.
Getting too attached has always been her one flaw as a vampire. Humans are just so warm and so soft, and even the truly wicked ones have moments of the most endearing vulnerability. But never before has any of them permeated her smooth, hard shell.
Carmilla knows, and doesn't know, the anguish Laura's experiencing. She seeks back, so far back, to her first kill, self-defense– or maybe revenge– she tells herself different stories at different times– but certainly not to save someone else. And, obviously, the one time she tried to save Laura, and the others, she failed– why has it taken them all so long to see that?
Her exoskeleton dissolves, leaving her undersupported, leaving her horribly, uncomfortably open, and she loves Laura, and she loves LaFontaine, and she grieves Mattie, and Danny, and Perry– where is Perry? So much being present simply shows her how much is missing.
And something very remote tickles what remains of her vampire consciousness. Something wondrous and terrifying. She senses her sister– her sisters– and her brothers, too, reanimating, replenishing, calling to her, and she can't succumb to her humanity– not yet–
She looks at Laura. Where is Laura? Laura's dead eyes stare ahead, and Carmilla, torn between wanting to run and wanting to be free, chooses.