A/N: So, I know it's been a while since I updated this but real life shit takes so much time out of your day! There's still more to come so hope you guys keep reading- comments and likes feed my motivation!

Laura ran.

Her lungs burned with the effort of bruised muscles pulling against them but her cheeks were already flaring with something else. Anger pure and white prickled against their underside mixing with something she couldn't put a name too. Or refused to in the heat of her fury. All she could see were hands circling that girl's wrists, whispering words that were supposed in some twisted way to comfort as they cajoled her to God know's where. To some circle of hell on earth, she was sure.

And Carmilla had done it. Called in those lackeys as if she were just ringing up a pizza place to put in an order. It was the ease in the way she'd done it that really made Laura's blood run hot. The thoughtless simplicity - something she'd just never associated with her roommate. Her Mother, sure. The Dean had treated everyone like pawns in some giant kind of game, placing them on the board wherever she wanted like the director of a grand ballet. But Carmilla for all that casual manner and hostility had always been so considered. So gauged.

Never callous.

Wiping an embarrassing trickle of moisture from her eye the small blonde finally made her way across the lawns onto the edge of the campus woodland and slowed her pace, making sure to check no-one was watching as she finally stopped. Resting a palm against a large oak, she heaved wildly trying to corral those spiralling thoughts into some kind of coherence before the pain in her side forced her to cramp up and she found herself sliding down against the trunk as her eyes clamped shut.

Left alone with the sounds of leaves rustling and birds trilling.

What an idiot.

She had thought that being away from her roommate would make her feel safe; that some space might get rid of the trapped, claustrophobic sensation descending over her like a bedspread but now that she had stopped moving, she was stunned to find that the exact opposite was actually true. She felt bereft. Alone. Unable to catch her breath although the cuts and bruises marring her skin probably had more to do with that than anything.

She siphoned air through her nose as her chest began to quake.

Now what, Hollis?

She was by herself again.

A state she always seemed to be dragged back to in the end. Or maybe she searched it out.

It was one or the other. After a while, she'd given up trying to work out which of those things was true.

Fingers playing idly with a small bunch of pale lilac flowers growing in the shade near her feet, Laura rubbed their tips against the soft skin of the petals not caring that they coated them with a fine sweet smelling powder.

"How does a small girl with so little skin on display manage to cover every inch of her with this muck?"

Wait, muck. Was that the word she had used? Mess?

Grime?

The exact term guttered at the edges of her consciousness; faint and elusive. She remembered her mother saying something like that when she was little. That usually soft face had contorted into a grimace at the sight of her daughter in shirt and shorts that made her feel worse than any of the words that came out of her mouth.

Expression is everything after all. Her mother had that one right.

And it wasn't like she'd been swimming in any mudholes.

Laura had only been playing in the park near their house, whiling away a few hours with Greg and Sandy the neighbours kids by playing their own version of catch that they'd cunningly named Styrian 'Scaping . The play-area was pretty much tarmac and artificial grass underneath the swing set and slide- painful on the knees and ugly to look at. So when Greg had suggested moving the game to the trees nearby she had thought it was a great idea; felt it added something, made the sport feel much more real. Alive. Primal somehow.

"You know mud like this never comes off, don't you?"

When she'd gotten home (well before curfew mind you) there had been hard fingers pulling through her hair afterwards in the bath, nails that caught against her scalp as scrubbing sponges were dragged against skin making it raw and red.

To be waved off as sunburn if anyone asked... though no-one ever did.

"It worms its way under the skin into your bloodstream leaving deposits there like fat."

She hadn't understood what a deposit was back then, said as it was in that sing song way, but she sure knew about fat. The no-sugar, coeliac diet her mother made sure she followed was responsible for that; policing all four corners of her room and lunchbox when she could.

Fat was the enemy. Insidious. Obscene.

Dirt a close second.

Embarrassing the family the trinity's godhead.

"You can't see it. Not until later. But what happens when you start to wonder why you feel so heavy when you get up? Or why your backpack cuts into your shoulder? Why your skin doesn't shine like it used to? The boys will notice before you do. And by then it's too late."

A cascade of warm water poured over her hair and face making her choke and screw her face up before a flannel was scouring under her eyes scritching the skin across the bridge of her nose.

As if it could wipe away the freckles there along with the dirt.

"There now. Much better."

She remembered trying to offer a watery smile as her mother pottered around the room, looking for the bath towel that matched the one hanging on the handrail. But it dropped when she caught sight of the round hairbrush her mother was holding to her chest, its tines sticking out like spikes on a mace. Waiting to snag every stray hair.

Any that didn't sit right.

The ones Laura so desperately wanted to keep, though she wasn't sure why.

Jerking her eyes open with alarm, the dark blonde tried to shake her head to clear the strange memory as bark and sunlight came back into focus. The campus around her seemed weirdly empty as she scanned the area nearby. Most people were probably in lectures right now, but there was still an eerie quality to the air and the smattering of pollen in the shafts of daylight didn't help.

And Carmilla's probably running around somewhere looking for you too.

The thought filled her chest with both satisfaction and guilt.

A crazy turbulent mixture of sensations that definitely didn't help with the whole focusing thing.

Laura breathed out slowly. Acclimatizing herself a little to the solitude around her.

Trying to work out exactly what she was supposed to do now. After all, the researching at the library hadn't given them anything but a crib sheet on what those things last night weren't which was about as helpful as a handbrake on a canoe. They needed to know what they were. What they wanted.

Because that was always the key, right? Figure out someone's desires and you had the chance to thwart them. Or at least control them so that they couldn't hurt anyone.

Declaw the beast.

The thought made her uncomfortable; was way too Dean-like for her taste but she was beginning to think there was a kernel of truth in there somewhere. When they had been trying to decipher what had happened to Betty, it was only when they figured out what the Dean was after that they had the leverage to do something about it.

There was no reason to think any differently about those things in the library was there? Predators were predators. Completely ruthless in their need to exploit someone else; focused on self preservation over everything else.

Carmilla isn't like that though.

She almost growled at her own stupid brain.

She knew that. Of course, she knew that. But she was finally getting somewhere here- the last thing she needed when she was onto something was a big pulsing hit to the guilt burbling around in her belly.

She was just trying to protect you.

Damnit!

So...predators, Laura thought intently. They hadn't killed that girl or left any marks as far as she'd been able to see. So they didn't need her blood. Or skin. Or organs.

Bile rose up in her throat but she kept going. They took her face though and copied it. Or...maybe they took their own faces and changed hers to match. So was that like, theft or assault? Were they stealing people's identities or making their own personal army of clones?

As she puzzled over the questions buzzing around her mind, turning them this way and that the small blonde looked up for a brief moment. And it was then that in the empty grounds she finally noticed movement by the edge of the small manmade lake to her right. A figure was standing there staring out at the water. Throwing up a hand to shade her eyes as she watched them, it was only as she squinted that Laura realised that the person with their back to her was actually in the water. Only up to their ankles to be fair but far enough in to make her frown.

What the hell were they doing?

She was up on her feet before she even knew what she was doing. All questions forgotten. Taking a step forward, the brief urge to jog back to the library to get Carmilla to come see this with her washed across the tiny student's spine but then a surge of resentment blotted it out before it could take hold. She sure as heck didn't need to witness any more displays of heroism today. The very thought made her want to barf.

So instead she straightened out her shoulders and began tiptoeing closer to the lake, letting the long grass flatten under her sneakers and mask their footsteps.

As she made her way closer Laura watched curiously as the figure waded further into the frigid water, their back never turning round once. Then she noticed a burbling in the water a metre in front of the stranger. Ripples on the water's surface. A gasp broke from her throat as a head suddenly emerged from underneath the pond's surface choking and spluttering for air.

Her legs froze.

It was a boy. Hair flattened by dirty water he heaved up mouthfuls of the stuff uncomfortably then seemed to peer up at the shape standing over him. She couldn't see his expression from this far away, couldn't see much of his face at all but a hand snaking out from the water towards the person in front of them was visible. As if he was asking for their help.

Oh thank God, thought Laura.

There was no help forthcoming though.

The outline remained where they were for a moment obviously staring at the student in front of them. But then they pushed forward letting the mini waves they were causing lap against their thighs as the person reached out with both hands and placed them on the boy's sodden scalp. And they pressed downwards. Using all their strength to push him back under the water. Holding him there as he struggled viciously against the pressure fighting with everything in his body. Struggling not to drown.

Crap!

Laura broke out of her stupor.

Ignoring all of the warning bells ringing in her mind she started to run towards the pair of them. Gaining some traction as her shoes hit the paved walkway she looked around desperately for anyone to help her, anyone who might have noticed what was going on but the few pockets of students that might have been milling about usually were nowhere to be seen. There was no-one anywhere around.

So she steeled herself and increased her pace, ignoring the burning from earlier as she sprinted across the campus grounds, jumping over the small ornate patches of shrubbery.

It only took ten seconds before she was there and her feet skidded on the slick algaed stone at the edge of the lake. She didn't care about falling over though. Wading into the water, Laura paid no attention to the way her jeans clung to her legs as she reached the pair. She simply threw her arms round the standing figure's shoulders and pulled them backwards using their own surprise and momentum against them.

It took all of her strength to keep both of them from falling backwards but she breathed with relief as the boy's head broke through the water again sputtering and bringing up another load of water with each mouthful of air he took in.

"What the hell are you doing? You're going to kill him!"

She shoved her captive away from her then, not wanting to be touching them any longer and stared angrily into their face. But what she was met with only brought confusion. It was a girl- another student not that much older than herself and she had been crying. No. Not just crying. Sobbing; her eyeliner was running in black streaks down her cheeks, her long wavy hair pushed back behind her ears.

"I'm sorry." She wept as Laura glared at her, hands on her hips. "I didn't know what else to do. I...I couldn't..."

"What is this?! Are you trying to kill your boyfriend because you guys had a fight or something?! Are you kidding me with this crap?"

The girl's eyes widened. "He's not my boyfriend. We're friends. Best friends. I love him. But he's...it's not...something's wrong with him."

Laura threw her hands up. "Murder is not a solution! Did you try talking about it?! There's a whole bunch of books on Freud in the library for this exact thing!"

The boy was still sitting in the water in front of them as his 'friend' glanced over at him.

"You don't get it. I tried everything...but something happened on his way home from the club."

She stopped as if sizing Laura up for a moment but then her lip trembled and words just began spilling out.

"I thought it was a hangover at first. Like maybe someone had spiked his beer because a couple of days later he started forgetting stuff. Little things at first. Quotes from books he used to love. Lectures he was supposed to go to. Nothings." She paused. "It started slow but it just got worse and worse the longer it went on until he didn't recognise people that we hung out with everyday. Alan and Ryan and Claire. Last week... he didn't know who his own roommate was." The girl ran a wet hand through her hair as she fought to keep her breathing from spiralling out of control. "I thought...I thought if I kept him with me...that I could remind him of things. Jog his memory. Bring him back, you know?"

Laura flinched but said nothing as she kept staring at her willing her to go on while simultaneously not wanting to hear anything more.

"His brother always had mental health issues; spent the whole of his childhood moving in and out of government facilities and he'd already told me about what kind of dark things went on in those white rooms. Even he knew something wasn't right after a while though. So he begged me. Like actually got down on his knees and made me promise I wouldn't send him to one of those places. Made me promise to take care of him myself." She sniffed and rubbed a fist against her eye. "I didn't know what I was doing. I told him that but he...he ...cried and Lloyd, I'd never seen him cry before. I didn't know how to... what to.. I had to say yes. Didn't I?"

Laura's mouth opened to say something but nothing came out. All she could do was look miserably at the girl who gave a shaky shrug.

"I tried everything I could think of. Reading his essays back to him. Showing him old movies. But it didn't work. I couldn't get through to him. He was just fading away more and more every day and his face...this sounds crazy but his face it started to change somehow. Flattened out or something. I looked all this stuff up in medical textbooks but nothing explained what was happening to him. Then...after a while I had to lock him in my dorm room when he started getting aggressive. Hitting his head against stuff. The walls. The furniture. My roommate moved out not long after. I don't blame her though. Who'd want to deal with this?"

"I...How long has this been going on?" said Laura quietly.

"Since it started? I stopped keeping track of time but I guess maybe...a month?"

The small blonde swallowed hard as she took that in unable to ignore the pleading, hopeless look on the other girl's face. Flicking her gaze across to Lloyd her chest stuttered at the blank expression he was wearing. At the familiar features that were branded into her mind from last night.

He had their face. Or they had his.

She was looking at another victim and the realisation made her feel instantly nauseous.

That they were no nearer finding out what those things were. What they wanted. Or how to stop them.

For his part though he simply stared back at her. Not curious at all, not wanting anything from her but showing a complete lack of interest. It came as a shock then when he blinked once and threw himself backwards under the water, letting the stagnant water cover his head.

And Laura realised suddenly that he must have asked his friend to let him out from his prison to come here and push him under. Even buried under all that loss and panic he'd remembered enough to want her to set him free. Had probably begged again and again until she'd broken and agreed to do it.

Her hands were shaking as she ran further into the water and dragged his shoulders upwards even as he fought against her. Cupping his chin and pulling it into the warm afternoon air Laura panted with momentary relief as he took air in through his nose. Wishing more than ever that Carmilla was with her to tell her what the hell she was supposed to do now.

TBC...