So, there they were: Rebecca, glaring at Carmilla, who was holding a mortified Laura, with LaFontaine and J.P. observing the developing situation with mild alarm and surprised confusion, respectively.

Okay, Carmilla decided. Figuring out how Laura felt about her clearly estranged mother - and understanding just what had caused that estrangement in the first place - could wait until the woman wasn't looking at her like she wanted to set Carmilla on fire on general principle. How to manage that, though... That was the question.

First things first, she supposed. "Anything we need to be aware of with that medication?"

"It's Paracetamol," Rebecca said, voice clipped. "To be taken four times a day. If necessary, you can supplement it with a 400mg Ibuprofen, though only three times a day for that."

Laura blinked, managing to focus on the present instead of dwelling on Rebecca's knowledge of her sex life, which was at least part of what Carmilla had hoped to accomplish. "You're giving me aspirin?" she realized.

"Until everything the hospital gave you is out of your system, you can't have anything stronger," Rebecca replied simply. "Fortunately, until then, you won't need anything stronger."

"What were they giving her, anyway?" Carmilla wondered. "As the only person here who didn't ever get a look at her hospital chart..."

"You only would have seen an alphabet soup gibberish of chemical names, if you had," Laura offered consolingly. "It didn't make any sense to me, either, but from what I understand, they were stabilizing the... stuff, in my bloodstream, and performing a controlled stepdown. Binge drinking it the way I did... Not smart, as it turns out."

"Binge drinking in general isn't," Rebecca interjected, giving Laura the kind of Look that was intrinsic to mothers everywhere: a mixture of chastisement and mild disappointment, subtitled What the HELL were you THINKING?

"Tell me something I don't know," Laura snapped. "Believe me, the hangover the next morning made that perfectly clear."

"I've no doubt." She stepped closer and handed the bag with the painkillers in it to Laura, who didn't look happy - though, really, she hadn't since she'd woken up - but didn't hesitate to take it. Whatever was wrong between the two of them, Carmilla realized, Laura obviously wasn't at all afraid of her mother. That made her feel better about the woman having been taking care of her girlfriend for the past several days.

She also had to wonder what it was like, having a mother you weren't scared of. After so long, she could barely remember her birth parents - being nobility, they hadn't been around as much as they could have, in any event.

"Why are you here?" she asked randomly. "At Silas, I mean. If you were surprised by Laura's presence, it can't be because of her."

Laura snorted, but there was no humor in it. "You're asking for a reason? Like, singular? Her motto is pretty much 'Why do something for one reason, when you can fit a few ulterior motives in for free?'"

Something abruptly clicked into place. "No wonder you always had so much trouble believing I was doing things just for you." Not that she didn't think there was more to that belief than that...

Rebecca sighed. "One day - one bright, glorious day - you'll understand that multi-tasking and achieving as efficient use of one's time as possible is not something repugnant. Should I just stand around doing nothing when not busy with my primary objective? To say nothing about knowing what effects my actions will have, and doing what I can to make them work to my advantage. Given what I know about the events of last semester, I should hope that you've at least learned to think about the consequences of your actions."

Laura winced, but didn't back down. "You know what else I learned? Poor communication kills. The entire situation we're in could have been avoided if the dean had just explained things at any point." She looked sideways at Carmilla. "And other... misunderstandings... could have been prevented."

And she certainly would have liked to avoid the entire 'tied up and starved for information' routine. Still, though, she had to say one thing, "She thought of you as a bug, Laura. She would have torn your throat out before ever sitting down and explaining things to you."

"You should have called someone," Rebecca added. "If not me, then your father. When you realized how serious things had gotten... I know you want to prove yourself to him, but-"

"But nothing!" Laura interrupted. "All either of those things would have done is get people killed. He'd probably have made the current Corvae occupation look like a day at the beach by comparison, and your approach would have just left an increasing number of bodies on the ground."

"As opposed to what did happen?"

Her face colored. "We tried to avoid that! You never do! Death isn't the solution to every problem! Why don't you ever get that?!"

Rebecca sighed, shaking her head. Carmilla, for her part, was starting to understand that many of the bumps in the road during their relationship were, to varying degrees, not necessarily only because of what Carmilla had done, but because she was also unknowingly reminding Laura too much of her mother. (Though, without knowing any specifics, she couldn't say she'd do any of it differently than Rebecca evidently had, making her wonder how much she actually had in common with the elder Hollis.) "Murder her for Christmas, murder her for Christmas," she murmured, sotto voice.

Laura flinched and wheeled around to face her. "Don't. Start. With that," she ground out.

Before Carmilla could say anything else, Rebecca spoke up. "I had hoped that, given, well, everything," she began, waving a hand to encompass everything from Carmilla to Silas as a whole, "you might have let go of the idea that everything is black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. Sadly, that's always been one of your more persistent delusions."

"Ugh. Tell me about it," Carmilla agreed. Laura didn't seem to know which of them she should be mad at.

"Very well. When she was nine-"

"Hey!" Laura interrupted with a yelp. This, clearly, was something she hadn't considered: there being someone around to tell embarrassing stories about her. Given her initial bonding session with Mattie, though, Carmilla was pretty sure Laura owed her in that category. "You know, you never did say what the initial reasons were that you came here," she pointed out in what was totally not a blatant change of subject. "And if you've had about a week or so to work on them..."

"I haven't, actually," Rebecca countered, not at all phased by the interruption. Really, she'd probably been expecting it. "The past five days have been spent investigating Baron Vordenberg and the Board of Governors as a whole, monitoring Miss Perry's activities, taking care of you, and making sure that you would be released from the hospital as soon as was feasible. There has been time for little else."

"Oh." She paused. "Thank you for that, by the way. Might've been able to say it sooner, if you hadn't been avoiding me."

Rather than pointing out that staying away from her was what Laura evidently wanted, she simply inclined her head in acknowledgement. At that point, LaFontaine decided to break into the conversation. "What do you know about what's going on with Perry?"

"The possession? Enough. While I trust you to be able to resolve her situation in due time, I know you-" This was directed specifically at Laura. "-will be driving yourself crazy worrying about that and every other problem on campus, let me set your mind at ease regarding one of them: the Silas Charter is safe and secure."

"You do have it, then?" For all that she was asking, Laura didn't sound at all surprised.

"Yes." She paused, locking eyes with her daughter, and added in a serious tone, "Some things are too dangerous to be left laying around."

"Well, if I'd known where to find it..."

"Since Vordenberg's still breathing, I take it you're not confident about the rest of the Board?" Carmilla asked, eyeing her.

"Destroying the Charter would be too extreme an option to be taken now. Killing the Chair is only one of who knows how many effects it could have. I don't know what, if anything, it would do to the remainder of the Board. And if they all died, control of the campus would fall to Corvae. As such, its destruction is a measure of last resort."

Laura went still. "That's it, isn't it?" she breathed. "That's what she wants. Direct control, no Board. That's what she was going to do with the Charter. I mean, I kinda figured, but..."

Depressingly, that sounded about right. "Knowing her, she'd probably set things up for you to be the one to destroy it - killing Vordenberg and undoing all your hard work - just to hurt you that much more."

"Wait, you know who's possessing Perry?" LaF broke in.

"What was that you said earlier about poor communication?" Rebecca asked pointedly.

"I hate it when she's right," Laura muttered quietly enough that only the vampires in the room could have heard her. She sighed and, speaking at normal volume, said, "Like Carm said, we don't know anything. But if we are right... It's the dean."

LaF's mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

"You should talk with Xena, next time you see her," Carmilla said quietly. "Discreetly suggest that she bring a motion before the Board to posthumously fire her, or something. That way, even if the Board does die, she won't automatically gain control."

"Danny knows?!"

"No." Laura sighed. "She doesn't know any of this. When she finds out how much we've - I've - been keeping from her..."

Yeah, that wouldn't be pretty, Carmilla silently acknowledged. LaF, for their part, seemed slightly mollified not to be the only one left in the dark. As for Rebecca...

She was looking at Laura, expression unreadable. "And on the subject of keeping things a secret, is there anything you should perhaps mention about Lophiiformes?"

"I couldn't say anything before," Laura said before Carmilla had a chance to even ask what the woman was talking about. She did, though, note that this was the first time in a while anyone had actually used the fish god's full name. "I was under surveillance, and if word got out about what they told me..."

"Who told you?"

"The protesters." She looked at Rebecca. "How did you even know about that, anyway?"

"They might not be considered much in the way of a security threat in any respect, given that their 'protesting' consists of little more than standing around and humming, but when every "off-duty" protester abruptly converges on the hospital room of someone they had no way of knowing had even been hospitalized, it raises eyebrows among the administration."

Laura facepalmed. "Dammit, I didn't even think of..." She trailed off, shaking her head.

"Cupcake...?"

Knowing the question for what it was, Laura explained, "If I had to guess, they might have... sensed what happened to me. They claimed that the stuff in the lager... It's tainted with Lophii's blood."

Carmilla jerked in surprise, focusing entirely on Laura. "What?!" Something occurred to her. "And they were giving you more...?"

"Yeah. Decreasing amounts, though."

"That doesn't make it better!"

"I agree, but I could hardly do anything about it."

"But... you knew. You knew, and you didn't tell me."

"No, I didn't," Laura agreed, defiant. "If I had let you know, you would have just rushed to me, ignoring anyone and everyone on the lookout for you - again - only this time, Mattie wouldn't have been there to stop you. Now that we're safe and sound here - you know, in this place for 'fellowship scholars or visiting professors' - I can tell you about it."

Given that she'd already admitted to herself that, even without knowing that, she would have risked a visit before much longer, she couldn't quite deny the insinuation. Laura's veiled dig at her lie regarding the house upon their return to Silas didn't go unnoticed, either. As such, all she said was, "So tell me, then."

Laura hesitated. "Well... Okay, keep in mind that this was seconds after I'd just woken up from heavy sedation, which still hadn't quite worn off, yet."

"Duly noted."

"Okay. Um... Well, there was the thing about the blood, obviously. Also, don't let Mattie drink it. Lophii's blood, I mean, not the beer. Though she shouldn't have that, either. It tastes awful."

Carmilla's eyebrows rose. "Why would Mattie...?"

"I don't know. But they specifically said she shouldn't. Also something about some gates that the dean wants to open, and I think Vordenberg wants to kill Lophii? I don't..." She shook her head. "It's all kind of fuzzy. I thought I'd dreamed it, at first, to be honest." Something in her eyes suggested there was something else, but she didn't say another word. Carmilla made a mental note to question her about it once they were alone. "With the Light destroyed, Lophii couldn't hold the dean, after her body was destroyed."

"She's been in Perry all this time?" LaF demanded as they stood up and walked closer. "Or just since we got back to campus?"

"I don't know," Laura said with a helpless shrug. "That was all they said. I suppose they might know more, but... Do you? I mean, if you are experiencing a lesser version of whatever residual connection they have to her, have you picked up any vibes, or however it works?"

They frowned, thinking. "Not that I know of," they said slowly. "I'll have to ask them about it tomorrow."

"Quietly," Laura said pointedly. "I know this whole hiding things business goes completely against your truthspeaking ways-"

"No." They held up a hand. "For Perry... All I need to do is focus on other, not dean-related truths. And brew up that tonic."

"I'll begin collecting ingredients for it immediately," J.P. promised.

"Thanks, Jeep."

"In the meantime," Rebecca began. "Laura, you need to take your first does of painkiller, then get to bed. You need rest."

"Resting is pretty much all I've been doing for days!" Laura protested. She picked up the bag even as she did so, though, so Carmilla concluded that whatever the hospital had last given her before she'd left was probably wearing off quickly.

"You weren't done, yet. Had the situation not been so tenuous, I would have let you stay in the hospital until the doctors were actually ready to release you."

"I wanted to head down to the Lustig Crater tomorrow and check on the protesters," she objected. LaFontaine, as she and Carmilla both knew, was more likely to find one or two "off-duty" protesters to talk to, as they seemed a bit more normal - and talkative - when away from Lophii.

"Absolutely not," Rebecca stated firmly. "If it's so important to you, enough people would recognize me as your doctor that my heading down that way to look them over wouldn't be amiss, but you are not leaving this house, young lady."

Laura made the oddest expression, like she wasn't sure if she should be grateful to Rebecca for doing her a favor, or indignant that Rebecca was acting maternal when Laura didn't seem to want her to be, and her face had gotten stuck halfway between them.

"Sounds like a plan to me," Carmilla interjected before Laura could even begin getting upset. After a brief hesitation, she added, "Do you... need a place to stay?"

Rebecca shook her head. "I have one, thank you. And if there's nothing else, I'll be on my way."

"Wait!" Laura burst out before she could even take a step. "You must know about Corvae. What is it that they do, exactly?" That, Carmilla had to admit, was something she would like to know, as well.

Judging by the way Rebecca had the attention of the entire room, she wasn't alone in that. "At the moment, very little." At Laura's irritated sigh, she smiled. "I'm not prevaricating. Ostensibly, they're an investment group, but recently, fewer and fewer people have been investing with them. Many businesses they managed have gone under. Their CEO had been devoting more and more time to the managing of a small university in rural Austria - yes, I am talking about Ms Morgan. I'm sure they'd like you to think they're as huge and powerful as they once were, but the truth is, what you see at Silas? That's about as much force as they can muster up. They wouldn't be buying anything here at all, I suspect, if the money wasn't going into an account also controlled by their CEO... or it would be, had Miss Belmonde and Mister Vordenberg not interfered with the sales process. Her 'untimely death' also means that the account is currently being overseen by the Board Chair, instead. Likely why they're playing along and not provoking him - they can't afford to."

"So... If we can manage to unseat Vordenberg and get someone less homicidal to replace him and kick out Corvae, we won't have to worry about them, anymore?" Laura asked hopefully. "Like, ever?"

"If I had to guess, they're one bad decision or disaster away from a hostile takeover. You might suggest to your father that he speed that up, if you want them gone sooner, rather than later."

"I'll... think about that." Bringing both of her parents into matters was clearly not something Laura wanted, despite the fact that she'd always spoken fondly of her father (and never once mentioned her mother). Yet, she wouldn't want anyone else suffering or dying if she had the means to prevent it, no matter how uncomfortable doing so would make her. Once she'd gotten some more sleep, Carmilla decided, they could look the situation over to determine if they'd reached that threshold, yet. The Corvae people weren't exactly much of a threat at the moment, after all... but why wait until they were to act?

"Good." Rebecca shook her head again. "Where this all-consuming ethics and morality of yours came from, I have never understood. It certainly wasn't from Patrick or myself."

Laura straightened up, indignant. "Don't you talk about him like that! He has plenty of ethics! You think he's never agonized over any decisions he's made? He's not you."

Rebecca didn't say anything in response to that, merely looking evenly at her daughter. Carmilla got the feeling, though, that there was plenty the woman could have been saying, but she wasn't. Because she knew it wouldn't do any good, so she wasn't going to cast shade on Laura's father in a vain attempt to improve her own image? Or perhaps... she couldn't bring herself to crush whatever illusions Laura held about Patrick Jarman, even if that meant Laura thought badly of her, because she couldn't bear hurting her little girl?

Maybe she and Rebecca had more in common than she'd thought.

Still, enough was enough, for one night. "Laura, c'mon. I think the pain's making you cranky, and you definitely need some sleep."

"Indeed," Rebecca agreed, turning and heading for the door without ceremony. "If you need me, let me know. I'll be around." Then she was gone.

She hadn't actually said how to get in touch with her... but Laura also hadn't asked. Either she had no intention of doing so, or she already knew a way.

Something else to worry about later. It only took a moment for Carmilla to retrieve a glass of water from the kitchen, and Laura swallowed the medication with a grimace of distaste. "I hate pills," she muttered. She glanced back at the stairs, sighed, and gave Carmilla an apologetic look. "Really not feeling up to managing those right now. I hate to ask, but could you maybe...?"

"Not a problem." She gingerly scooped Laura up into her arms, and, jostling her as little as possible, carried her upstairs to their room. Undressing her was a slower, more careful process than usual, as well.

"Cannot wait until these stitches are gone," Laura grumbled once they were finally finished. "I really want a shower."

"Settle for a sponge bath in the morning?" Carmilla asked seductively as she slipped into bed next to her.

"...like I was saying, I'm glad these stitches are there, doing there job and all."

She chuckled.

Laura sighed in relief as she settled into a comfortable position, promptly tugging Carmilla over to cuddle. "God, I have missed this."

"So have I, believe me," Carmilla agreed feelingly. "I hate being away from you for so long."

"Me, too." She paused. "So, um, about that conversation we keep avoiding having...?"

Carmilla placed a finger against her lips to still her words. "Laura," she said softly. "Let's survive the current crisis first, okay? Then we can discuss the logistics of that." Laura inhaled sharply in surprise, making her review her own words... and she realized that, intentionally or not, maybe she'd all but agreed that, at some point, she would be turning Laura. And maybe she'd meant it. "And maybe we can talk about it once your Mom's out of firing range," she added under her breath.

Laura snorted, but, tellingly, didn't disagree.