When they cautiously opened the door down the hall from theirs, LaFontaine was greeted with just what they'd expected. Laura was in her roommate's bed, tangled in sheets they were sure hadn't been washed since the battle, curled around the yellow pillow. LaFontaine entered and crossed the room to the desk and, still without saying a word, pulled the small brunette's rolling chair directly in front of her face. They sat down and waited a few beats.

"Hey."

"Hey," Laura replied in a broken whisper, her eyes never straying from the spot she was seemingly trying to burn into the wall opposite the bed. LaF could see tear streaks running down their friend's face not only vertically, but horizontally as well. They were just beginning to dry. She must have crying just before I came in, LaF thought, subconsciously rubbing their now-sweaty palms on the thighs of their jeans. All she's been doing lately has been lying in bed crying. Maybe she doesn't have any tears left. Maybe telling her won't be so bad after all.

"I don't know if you've talked to Perry," they said slowly. "But if you have, you probably know that I've been spending a lot of time in the library with JP. And you may have noticed that the big Sumerian book has gone missing from your desk. Well, maybe you haven't noticed, and I totally understand why you wouldn't have noticed what with your indescribable tragedy and all, but the book has, in fact, gone missing. I have it."

At the redhead's ignorant mention of her circumstances, Laura's eyes began to water once again and her bottom lip trembled as her face took on a look of pure, unadulterated agony.

"Oh," they said, understanding their mistake. "My bad. Totally inappropriate. I'm so sorry. I'm kind of new at this 'being sensitive to emotions instead of analyzing them' thing."

Laura still didn't avert her teary eyes from their position. She barely blinked. LaF took this as an opportunity to further examine where they had gone wrong. I don't know what to do, they thought. I'm a scientist; I'm supposed to always know what to do. Solutions are kind of my thing. Haha. Solutions. Puns.

They chuckled to themselves before stopping abruptly to apologize again.

"Sorry," they rushed. "I was laughing at something I thought but, uh, I realize how kind of dumb that is. I, um, I came because I've come across something I think could be really, really crucial to everyone's emotional states. Well, actually, it's mostly for yours."

Laura let out a long, yet weak sigh. She sniffled before uncurling herself from around the pillow and sitting up, her joints making muffled popping noises from staying still such a long time. She stared directly into LaF's eyes and inhaled.

"LaF," she began. "You're my best friend and I'm appreciative that you're trying to help. I know everyone is trying to help. But, honestly, I don't think any of you understand. I can't expect you to understand. It would be totally unfair for me to expect that. Still, I'm going to try to explain, okay?"

LaFontaine nodded, their eyebrows creasing together in a look of concern.

"Whatever you think you've found," Laura said, her voice growing stronger. "Will not help. There is nothing, nothing that can help me right now. I know it's been a long time and I've been worrying Perry, but I don't know what else to do. I don't want to get up ever. If I get up, I'll find her. I'll find her everywhere, but not everywhere enough. I still accidentally stumble across philosophy books all the time. Endless pairs of leather pants. I don't even know where she could have bought them all from." Laura paused to gather her thoughts. "There are millions of cassettes for a Walkman I haven't seen yet. Cassettes, LaF. Carmilla is everywhere in this room and, yeah, it destroys me to see it, but it's all I have now and I refuse to leave her again. I refuse to forget her. I refuse to let her think, wherever she's looking down on me from because I know she is, that I'm moving on from her. It's the only way I can tell her how I feel now, even if it's stupid."

LaFontaine sat back in the chair. They'd underestimated how hard this would be. They didn't ever quite understand what Perry had meant when she said Laura couldn't come over or couldn't go grab take-out. Laura couldn't because there was no Laura anymore. There was her body and her face and her voice, but not the positivity and love that usually accompanied the former. Laura as LaF knew her didn't exist anymore. As an engineering minor, the shortest of Silas' redheaded trio could not let something so broken go so unfixed. It was against their nature and they had to do something. They would tell her, no matter how hard they knew the outcome would be.

"We can get Carmilla back to you."

"What, exactly," Perry shot accusingly at her roommate. "Did you say to her?"

"I told her JP and I could bring Carmilla back."

Perry's jaw dropped. Her eyes widened and she froze, no longer fanning her unconscious ward. She straightened up from over Laura's limp form on the bed.

"Are you trying to make me faint, too?" her voice lifting an octave. "You can't just… you can't just say stuff like that. Even if there was a way to fix this, you can't just say that."

Perry gazed at LaF expectantly, waiting for some sort of explanation. It wasn't that the RA didn't believe LaF; she wanted to get the full story. LaFontaine could and had done many exceptionally extraordinary things in the past, but none on the level of resurrecting the dead. Or, really, the twice dead now. If that was even possible. She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head, making it clear to the bio major to spit out whatever they were supposed to be saying.

"Well," they started slowly. "JP was able to translate almost the entire Sumerian book after we found something on the Internet about a passage in a similar book from Brazil. The passages are almost identical, actually. He thought the Brazilian book came about 150 years later, but the gist was the same. With the Brazilian version, there's a story about this ritual tha-" they were cut off by a sharp intake of breath coming from the bed adjacent.

"Perry?" Laura questioned, clearly confused at her advisor's sudden, unexplained appearance.

"Hey, Laura," Perry replied. "Su-, I mean, LaFontaine called me a few minutes ago. You fainted, if you couldn't tell. Are you feeling okay?" Laura quickly apologized for the inconvenience, but Perry continued. "I noticed you hadn't been eating anything the last few times I went to restock your fridge, so I planned on coming to see you today anyway."

"I'm fine, Perr," the tiny journalist assured. "Thanks for coming over. I, uh, LaF and I were having kind of a heart-to-heart and I guess I just got a little woozy."

"I bet your blood sugar's pretty low," LaF interjected quietly. "You haven't been eating that much, like Perry said."

Laura looked as guilty as she felt. She did appreciate Perry bringing over countless dishes of food, she just never really felt hungry anymore. She didn't feel hungry, thirsty, bored, tired, anything. She felt empty. She was sure her friends had picked up on her mood (or lack thereof), but Laura wasn't ready to delve into deep conversation about it, as she was sure Perry would like. Instead, she turned to LaF and tried to address the question at the forefront of both hers and Perry's minds.

"I'll do anything," Laura professed. "Whatever you've found, how it works, I don't care. Just tell me what to do."

LaFontaine looked down and fiddled with a loose string hanging from the seam of their jeans. They made no move to explain and Laura grew impatient.

"LaF, I swear, if you don't start giving me some answers right now, I'll-"

"For starters, someone else has to be prepared to die."