Carmilla's POV
I looked down at the rough, wooden stake I held in my shaking pale hand. I stole it from the Summer Society, who had hundreds stowed away in secretive cabinets. I knew they wouldn't be able to tell if one of the immortal-life-ending sticks went missing. I wanted to die. I was a monster, like Ell had screamed at me. Now I was falling for another beautiful young girl, and I just want to keep her safe this time. I don't want to be the terrible monster I am, but everybody sees vampires as blood-thirsty beasts of the night, coming to eat your virgin daughters. It's not that I don't want to kill people - I do. I want to rip their necks open and taste their metallic blood dripping from their arteries. But I can't. Laura wouldn't want me too.
Just thinking of blood sliding down my throat makes me hungry. I can already feel my fangs piercing through my gums, my sense of smell searching for the rich red meal, my ears trying to find the beating of my next victim. I had to do this now. I raised the stake.
The crickets chirping lazily outside in the warm spring heat reminded me that everybody will be out at the ironically themed, "Supernatural Spring Salsa," for only another thirty minutes or so. It was now or never.
I adjust where I'm sitting, so I'm now perched upon the edge of my clean folded bed, yellow pillow laying delicately on top, and tell myself it's for the best. The ache in my arm from holding the piece of tree up for so long, tells me it's time. I take a deep breath, a lonely tear sliding down my cheek, as I begin to plunge the lumber into my chest.
"NO!" Laura cried as she opened the door, stopping in the doorway, hands going toward her mouth, while she was seeing my hand going swiftly towards my chest, the wooden dagger firmly in my grasp. I stop when my ears first hear her, the tip only an inch and a half through my skin, slightly touching the outer wall of my right atrium, near my pulmonary veins. Everything went black.
Laura POV
Time stopped. Her heart stopped. Thoughts frozen. A supreme tightness around her throat stopped breaths. Her muscles tensed, painfully, stopped movement.
Carmilla.
Rage, hurt, remorse, shock, anger, grief.
Despondency.
Why hadn't she come to talk to her? They had become friends hadn't they? After everything they had been through, together, fighting, working together? Laura thought they had been friends.
She thought they may have meant more to each other at one point, but now, she knew nothing about the ghostly face that lay in the hospital bed. Now, thinking back, she can pinpoint when Carmilla had started to retract. It seemed to be right after she told her webcam about her "worst crush ever."
And Carmilla, one of the most self-less people she knew had been in so much pain over something that she had resorted to trying and stake herself. Her heart fluttered in her chest as she recalled walking into the dorm room, not expecting to see her roommate in mid-suicide. People, study-buddies, whispered about the battle to fix her, about how things were dicey right now, about how she just would not wake up.
Her eyes, locked on the pale frozen form laying so mall on a hospital bed, screamed a million questions and accusations as she tried to process. She shrugged off Danny's arm, the cloying weight of it making her sink.
She just wanted everyone to be quiet.
Get out. Get out. Get out. "GET OUT," Laura heard her voice crack as it raised in volume and ferocity. Shocked pairs of eyes stared at her as they dutifully followed her command. "Out, all of you!" she gestured to Laf and Perry, Kirsh and Danny- before violently pointing at the door. "Leave," she shouted, whiling back to the prone form on the bed, finally alone. Her lungs came back to life, filling her chest. Heart pounding as a flush of anger made her tremble. Breaths forcing their way past gritted teeth.
"WHY?" She demanded of the unconscious vampire, stalking up to the bed. She slapped the cold yellow pillow beside the lank brunette tresses in frustration. "How could you be so stupid? You are supposed to be the strong, hero one who comes and rescues me!" All the fight left her as she really took in the other woman, looking so forlorn, lost, pale and faded. All sorts of IV's and wires were attached to the woman's slight frame, dwarfing her. Laura's shoulders slumped and tears viciously pricked her eyes. She swiped at them, before balling her hands into a fist to stem the flow of sobs coming from her mouth. She kneeled quietly, grief rushing through her at the despair the brunette must have felt to have been driven to this. She felt responsible. She was her roommate. She felt a vast abyss of emptiness threatening to swallow her.
On impulse, Laura stroked back a strand of hair from her peaceful face and pressed her lips to her forehead. She rested her head on Carmilla's chest as though te sound of her heart could reassure her - but reminding herself even when she was awake, her heart did not beat.
This was it. Another person she desperately cared for was leaving her alone again. Her mother had left her. Carmilla was leaving her.
