Carmilla may be over but my love for it is endless. Just a quick little something I whipped up in honor of the conclusion of this great little series.
Based off the theory that Carmilla was only stripped of her immortality, not her vampirism. She's mortal, but not human.
Disclaimer: I do not own Carmilla.
Stirring The Stillness
Of course, there are still so many things you want to do in life.
You'd said it yourself.
But perhaps traveling the world, visiting Paris, sleeping in hotel rooms and never living in the same city twice were things you could wait for, if only for one more night.
Because tonight was yours, and hers, and no one else's.
You're still incredulous, unbelieving, even hours after it's all been over. Limping back up from the tunnels, your are both weary, but far from defeated. There is triumph in every step you take, every breath, every heartbeat. It astounds you to know now that yours isn't the only one.
You've been clinging to her all this time just as tightly as she's been clinging to you. But you can't stop yourself from reaching out to run your fingers over the insides of her wrist, pressing them in ever so gently, just to feel the flitting pulse for yourself.
You're still having trouble believing most of this is true, but that is perhaps the most difficult thing to comprehend.
You assume you'll just have to keep finding proof until your belief is natural.
So after many more weary, but excited steps, you eventually make it back to the library, now quiet and unpossessed, just the way you preferred it. And after all has been said and done, there's nothing more either of you can do other than collapse onto the couch there, still covered in blankets from the last time she'd rested, during which time you'd made a deal with death itself.
It still gave you chills to think of it, to think of what had almost happened. And what had happened, as a matter of fact.
Carmilla hasn't been lenient with you in terms of letting you forget that you'd been dead for six minutes and fifty eight seconds. As much as she's smiling and yes, even crying – the thing she'd told you vampires can't do – she's still chiding you, grumbling and growling in the most literal sense of the word.
As you're being reprimanded for scaring her to the point where she'd almost joined you in death, you realize she's broken down into tears all over again. Weakly, she presses her back against the cushions of the couch and sinks down, dreading to recall the memories of the minutes you'd lain there, cold and lifeless in her arms.
But you comfort her, whispering reassurances that it's all over now. You remind her you know exactly how she felt, and how she still feels now.
Because you'd lost her once before.
So you tell her that you know exactly how she feels as you curl over her, covering her now-mortal body with your own. You slip your hands up and over the sides of her neck before balancing them on either side of her face. Dipping down, you kiss her lips as you've done so many times before.
But this is one of the first times you're doing it now that she is mortal like you.
You're still getting used to it, probably just the same as she is.
You can sort of recall what it was like to be alive without a heart beating inside of you – very vague, unpleasant, and all-too-recent memories.
But for her, it's been centuries.
You can only imagine how foreign this must feel to her, for the stillness that's taken a seemingly-permanent residence within her chest for hundreds of years to now be stirred by a relentless pulse.
Even now, as you kiss her again, you can feel it. It is in the side of her neck, in the veins of her wrists on your back, and at the center of her chest where yours presses close.
You soothe her with kisses and kind whispers for an undetermined amount of time, until the sobs begin to lessen.
Briefly, you wonder what this reborn pulse of hers means. She is clearly mortal now, able to age and die alongside you, which cleans the slate for all of those distasteful visions of you dying old and decrepit while she maintains her youth forever.
But though she is very much mortal now, she isn't human.
You can still feel the fangs in her mouth when your tongue slips into it, and you can still feel the gravelly rumble in her chest as it fades from growl to purr. Her vampiric state has not been altered, only the loss of her immortality.
She's probably the first vampire to exist with a beating pulse, a ticking clock.
Now, time would matter to her. Now she had a limit.
You can't help but feel guilty about that.
But you know she'd never relinquish it for anything, not if it meant living together with you for as many years as she has left now.
She'll never regret this life if it means she can live it out to the fullest at your side.
At long last, your kisses seem to quell her. Or perhaps it's the overwhelmingly exhausting combination of being mortal once again, on top of just having fought with and won against a death goddess. Likely a mix of all of those things and then some, but whatever it is, it causes her to grow quieter.
You leave one more kiss on her lips for now, caressing your fingers down through her hair until your hands are curled at her sides. She never releases her embrace on you as she whispers your name, over and over again like a prayer.
You rest your head on her chest and listen. Just listen.
You must've laid with her like this a million times before. So many things are the same, and so many are different.
Her presence is the same as always – lying with her is like lying beneath the stars on a warm, quiet night.
Her scent remains as enticing as ever, perfume mixed with a faint component you recognize as the rustic tang of blood on her fangs, a smell that is entirely more alluring to you now rather than unsettling.
And you've heard her purr before, scarce as the opportunities had been, but you'd gotten lucky a few times in the past, usually after the warmest, most intimate of nights shared between you.
But now, there is something distinctly different about that purr.
It is so much fuller, so much happier.
So much more alive.
You feel and hear every breath that comes and goes through her body.
But without a doubt, your favorite thing about her is her new heart.
It beats so strongly beneath your ear, echoing slightly in the familiar pulses you've always come to know that compose a heartbeat.
But hers isn't just any heartbeat.
It's a heartbeat that's been dormant for three-hundred years, coming from a heart that was never supposed to move again with the rhythm of life.
So to hear it now - stirring the silence, alive and well, beating as fervently as any college girl's in love should - was nothing short of a miracle to you.
You can't help but get lost in the sound, trying to absorb her pulse into every part of yourself. You commit it to memory, the way it pauses for just a second in between pulses, for just an instance longer than the generic sound. It makes hers unique, makes it something you'll always remember, something you'll always be able to recall and tell apart from any other.
Her heart beats, and it's still next to incomprehensible for you, and for her.
But you aren't going to question it, you aren't going to regret it.
You just listen.
Now, it is the strongest sound in her body, more so than her rumbling purr or her enthralled breathing. Every inhale and exhale sync with her purrs, though at times, both of those are forced to hitch.
Sometimes, they are interrupted by the remnants of her sobs, little hiccups that cause her to jolt and whimper.
Whenever this happens, you squeeze her a little tighter beneath you, as best you can given your position.
A few times, she is overcome with doubt, unable to believe any of this is real. The purr dwindles and fades to become distant background noise, and her breathing becomes labored.
At those times, her heart strikes much more thickly, in hard, fearful strokes that seem almost painful to you.
And it is all you can do to reassure her, over and over, that it's real, that it's over, that it's okay now.
Slowly, you move your palm down to her hip, resting over the wound she'd sustained what seemed like so many semesters ago. You don't miss the slight flinch in her response. You apologize for hurting her, startling her, and begin to rub softly over the old scar.
At the same time, you turn your face, pulling your ear away from her pulse for just a moment to replace it with your lips.
And you kiss her there, over her heart, covering her pulse with silent promises of your undying love and affection for her.
Again, you remind her that it's all okay. Everything.
You kiss her and kiss her, trailing from her collar, down to her shoulders, up the sides of her neck and then to her cheeks, all along her hairline, to the crease of her brow, the bridge of her nose and then the tip, before finally reaching her familiar lips once again.
You kiss her until her breath has slowed, until her frantic heartbeat has calmed, until the purr has returned full force.
At that point, you rest your head once again.
You've slept like this many times before, but this is undoubtedly your favorite.
But it is clear that she assumes otherwise.
Shifting slightly beneath you, she continues running her hands up and down your back, through your hair, idly threading as she releases a long tired sigh.
"It must be so strange..." she murmurs, and you feel every vibration in her voice. You look up, lifting your head from its favorite spot to gaze curiously at her.
"What do you mean?" you ask. "The whole 'saving-the-world-with-a-hug-and-the-correct-answer-to-a-totally-not-dreary-riddle' thing?"
She chuckles softly beneath you.
"Well, there's that too, yes."
Again, she shifts, and you now realize that she's trying to coax you to rest your head elsewhere. Anywhere but where you want it most.
For a second, you fear you might be hurting her somehow, until she finishes her thought.
"Isn't it strange... to listen to it?" Her lips contort in a bit of a grimace, and there's no question about what she's referring to. "After so long... so long... now it's back? Just like that? I'd forgotten what it feels like. It's like there's a bird trapped inside of me, desperately wanting to get out...
"It's a little scary. I don't remember how I dealt with it... before. I can't remember how I lived with it for as long as I did. And I don't know how I'm going to be able to do it again now." She lifts her head to meet your eyes, and hers are uncertain. "Isn't it... unsettling for you, Laura? Mine, I mean. It's been quiet for so long..."
And you can't help but let out the tiniest of chuckles. Keeping one palm over her scar, you move the other to slid beneath her opposite side, until it rests beneath her ribs. Her heart continues to beat against your fingertips.
"Carm... I can't even explain this properly. I really can't. It's not unsettling for me at all. It's just... incredible."
Again, you dip down to kiss over her heart, feeling its pulse increase just a little as you do so.
"I'll tell you how you're going to live with it now," you tell her. "You're going to live with me."
You kiss her lips again, and she pulls you down, bringing you closer. She sighs into your mouth, and she trembles in a way she never has before.
You can feel the little hiccups again, but understand her tears are for better reasons now. You kiss a few of them away and rest your forehead against hers.
"I love it, Carm. I love your heart. I love it so much. I can't even begin to describe it. I want to listen forever. It's just... beautiful."
One more time, you kiss her, your smile overlapping hers. She whimpers again, so softly, her voice cracked and thin and almost inaudible when she next whispers with it.
"Thank you..."
At last, she can finally accept it, this foreign motion within her chest.
As the last of her tears fall, so too does her conscious. You rest your head once again over her heartbeat and listen as she falls asleep. The purr becomes choppy and soft, her breathing becomes easy and deep, and her pulse becomes slow and steady.
But it never fades.
Even long after the purr has grown silent.
Even long after her breathing has slowed with slumber.
Even long after the night has been underway.
Her heartbeat never fades.
So you listen, for as long as you can, to your brand new lullaby.
It will be the first thing you hear every morning, and the last thing you hear every night.
And you know you'll never get tired of listening.
A/N: I've always been a sucker (hah) for fluffy stuff, especially if it's in terms of Laura comforting Carmilla. In my previous fics, I'd written Carmilla as having a heartbeat simply because there'd been nothing in canon explicitly stating if she had one or not, until long after I'd already written them. So I'm glad it's been addressed and now I can write it with accuracy.
Also, I just timed from the beginning of episode 36 to when Laura woke up, saying she was dead for approximately 6 minutes and 58 seconds.
Major thanks to the Carmilla series for giving us the happy ending we've all been waiting for so long for.
Please review!