AN: Chapter 7 for all you lovely people! :D
Disclaimer: I do not own Carmilla.
The forest, the land itself, was dying. And with it, Laura and the fairies and every other piece of magic that had come to exist over the thousands of years the forest had lived and grown in that world. It was dying, some kind of poison or disease or dark magic that Carmilla had spent the last decade trying to figure out, but she just didn't know. All she knew was that Laura, their home, were dying, and it was all Mother's fault.
Nothing happened at first, those first couple of years after Lilita found out. Carmilla waited for it, watched for it, almost worried herself sick as she tried to figure out what her mother's plan would be, but there was nothing.
When she left to hunt, she barely tasted her meal for worry of Laura, expecting to return home to find her tree destroyed, chopped down and turned into kindling, Laura gone from the world. She expected some of her mother's goons to appear with axes and chainsaws and fire at every moment, expected some death demon to rise from the ground and attempt to drag Laura into the underworld, expected her to have found some way to disembowel a pixie while still keeping it alive, reenacting the last torture she had put her previous girlfriend through.
She expected everything and anything and was just waiting for it to all happen, but it never did.
She almost thought it wouldn't, that it would all be okay. She would get to keep the woman she loved, get to live a quiet little life when her mother wasn't calling her to Silas for the sacrifices, that she could finally be at peace. At peace and loved and with something permanent to accompany her into eternity.
Carmilla almost believed this. She let herself believe it, let her guard down, let Laura's soothing words and reassurances that she couldn't get in between Lilita and her plans so she was no threat calm her. Let herself relax into Laura's kisses, let herself thread her hands into Laura's hair and pull her closer to her, let herself melt into the branches of the tree as easily as she melted into Laura's arms and just forget. Forget about the mess of the world that existed outside of their glade.
She let herself believe, let herself hope, and when, a few years later, Lilita called her to Silas, Carmilla went willing. Went willingly to show she was not a threat to Lilita's plan, went willing to show that Laura would not stop her from serving, went willing to show that nothing would change except just how happy she was.
And it seemed ok. Those first couple of days of that first year were actually almost pleasant. Lilita was pleased to see her- asked about her life with Laura, seemed genuinely interested in the answer she gave, and had a soft smile when she sent her on her way. As if she was happy for her child, happy that her daughter had found someone she approved of to spend the rest of her life with. As if everything was going to be ok.
And for four years it stayed like this. Carmilla integrated herself into the college life, showing up in classes and at parties, flirting her way into people's hearts and friend groups, though for once not bedding every soft body that came her way (not when she had one waiting for her at home, someone soft and warm and smelling like the sun and wood and the winds that blew through the forest). And when the time came, it was easy to get the five- all too easy, since they all trusted her, wanted her, were more than willing to follow her into the abyss that would lead to the pit they would happily go dancing over the side of.
It was easy to comply, easy to work for Mother, easy to play her part as the little High Priestess Mother had always wanted her to be. This time without protest, this time without a fight, this time without fighting to save any of the special ones, because none of them were anywhere near special enough to compare to her.
It was easy, because she believed it would help.
But when she got home, when she returned to the forest and Laura, it was wrong.
She could smell the death and decay long before she saw it, brought to her on the winds as a warning, speeding her on that much quicker to get home and see what had gone wrong. She prayed as she ran- prayed it was nothing, just perhaps a wind from the city, where rotting garbage always left the sour taste of rot in her mouth, prayed to any god that still had some hope for her that she would find nothing wrong.
There was so little left. So little left of the world she had called home for so long. The grass was dead and brittle under her feet despite the soft spring they had had. Flowers had wilted before they had bloomed, falling to the ground to rot where they should have thrived. The rivers, what was left of them, had faded almost entirely, leaving an almost black sludge of permanent mud where once clear water had freely flown.
And the trees. Every tree she saw was dead, dried and shriveled and weeping some disgusting puss where branches had broken and fallen to the ground, leaving nothing left but the smell and sight of death.
She found Laura holding on, just barely keeping herself alive through the strength of her magic, barely holding back whatever had destroyed the rest of the woods. Barely able to lift her head from where it rested on a root, though her smile, weak and pained and barely a smile at all, was bright when Carmilla came to her.
It started shortly after she left, killing the flora and fauna that lived at the end of the woods, slowly creeping in closer and closer destroying all who lived permanently in its way. They tried; all of the citizens of the forest tried, so hard, to stop it, but nothing had worked. Nothing had worked to drive away the taint, nothing had worked to save them, all of their magic had been useless to beat back whatever had been killing them.
Even Father had woken up, had tried to destroy that which threatened his home, his daughter, and even he had fallen. Fallen and failed and been left nothing more than a dead log where once he had stood tall and proud and strong. There had briefly been mushrooms and mold and insects, covering his remains, but even those had died, their normally purifying act of breaking down that which had come from the forest to return it to the forest halted by their own deaths.
Laura had held on. She had held on, just long enough, to say goodbye.
It wasn't hard to find a spell of preservation, not after the hundreds of years Carmilla had spent by Lilita's side, watching her gather together magic from this world and the next and combine them a hundred different ways. Not for her little High Priestess, her glittering girl, not for Carmilla. It was easy to find, easy to cast, hard to speak, for every word she said broke her heart a little bit more.
It was almost like she was asleep, if Carmilla ignored her lack of breathing, ignored the fact that the grass around her never moved, never shifted, never changed even as summer slide into fall into winter, the snow blanketing everything else except for the little patch of warmth her spell had maintained. It was easy, so very very easy, to pretend she was taking a nap, and when she woke up, everything would be fine. It would be fine and okay and nothing would be wrong.
But it was, because Laura was the last of the forest, the last to live because of her temporary spell, and if she didn't find something soon, she would be lost as well.
There was nothing.
For months she searched- searched through the internet, searched through entire libraries, found and hunted down the leading scientists and magicians and everyone else who could possibly help, all to get some kind of answer that would. She searched and she threatened and she begged, going so far as to show up at Silas itself. Show up and fall to her knees before her mother and beg, beg for a cure, a counter spell, something that save and spare Laura's life. She could live with the loss of the rest of the forest, could spend the rest of her life replanting and bringing back the magic that had thrived there before, so long as she had Laura.
Her mother just shook her head and sent her away, reminding her that, much like stone outlived flesh, so did it outlive wood and always would. And she would do well to remember that in the future.
There was nothing she could do. No one she could pray to, not potion she could make, no magical cure that would bring Laura back from the brink of death her spell had frozen her at. There was nothing.
Nothing, until she went to Mattie to say goodbye. Because if she couldn't save Laura, couldn't bring her back, then she would at least go with her.
"I had a husband, once," Mattie said softly, after she had heard what Carmilla had to say and dried her cheeks of the tears that had fallen. "He was badly wounded when Maman found us. I begged her anything to save him. This was thousands of years ago, when Maman was softer, a bit kinder, and searching for someone to become her first child. She gave him back to me, turned me, let us spend the rest of his days together. And when he finally passed, old and gray and wrinkled, Maman gave me this." She held out her locket, letting the trinket sway back and forward before Carmilla, who stared as if the decoration could give her the answer she needed.
"I put my heart in here," Mattie continued, her own eyes unfocused as she stared into the distance, "to protect myself from the pain of ever having to fall in love again. It hurt. More than I can ever say, but the pain of losing him hurt more than losing my heart ever did. And so long as my heart, my source of life, is here, I can survive. And maybe you will too."
She went on after that, mentioning a witch who could give her the potions, mentioned a jewelry maker who could create something, a ring or a necklace or a bracelet (for metal held as long as stone and was perfect for a heart) of her design to keep it in, and how she would be there to help her through the process Carmilla needed. Went on about how Carmilla wouldn't have to be alone like she had been, and how the process would be painful, yes, tearing out your heart always was, but after? The pain would be bearable in comparison to keeping it after it had been broken.
Mattie continued on to say all of these things, but Carmilla barely heard, and wouldn't have cared if she had. Because listening to Mattie, hearing her speak, remembering the tale she had told, Carmilla had a thought.
It was crazy, a bit harebrained, an insane little scheme that would either work or lead her to die, but she would try it nonetheless. Because there was no after if she lost Laura, there was no removing her heart to get rid of the pain, there was nothing but the sweet nothing of death if this didn't work.
But part of her thought, almost for sure, that it might. Because if you can put a heart in a locket and keep it alive, who's to say you couldn't put a heart inside another heart and do the exact same?