Chapter 8
Carmilla's jaw actually dropped. She blinked a few times and shook her head a few times, then looks at the shorter girl that seems to be confused or having some kind of mental break.
"I'm sorry what did you say?" Laura stands up a little to be able to look up at Carmilla without the woman having to hunch over. She takes a couple of quick breaths because the reaction she got wasn't exactly what she was looking for.
"Will you be with me again? I understand what I did wrong and I realize that my reasoning was stupid because I now know that I would give anything to save you, even someone else's life." Carmilla blinks a few more times. She had almost forgotten that she killed the bastard who had chained her up. He told her that if she destroyed the scroll that worse things than him, the angler fish, the dean, would come after them and destroy the world. Even after hearing all of these things Laura still destroyed it because it was the only way she could save the love she had betrayed. Then of course there was the betrayal itself. Mattie was dead because she had trusted Laura, she trusted Laura with her sister's life and she went behind her back and told the amazon about it. Because the Danny knew about Mattie's heart she knew the only way to kill her would be to crush her heart. Now Carmilla literally has no one except this small girl in front of her.
"Laura, I can't." Carmilla looks away and Laura looks down in defeat
"I understand, I just thought I would try again…" Laura now walks past Carmilla and continues up the stairs when the toe of her shoe catches the edge of the stair and sends her face first into the upcoming stairs. As she collides with the stairs she hits her hip on one of the stairs and her shoulder on another. After the single moment of pain secedes she lays her head down on the closest stair to her face and just stops to feel the chilly tiles against her cheek when she hears laughing. She looks up and she sees the normally dark looking vampire laughing hysterically.
"Oh my god, you can't even help yourself can you? No matter how hard you try you can't even have a moment when you are truly serious." Laura frowns at the girl gasping for air because she simply couldn't catch a breath. Lucky for the undead woman she didn't need to breathe so she must have just been doing it for the effect. Laura gets up in a huff and storms up the stairs.
"Oh come on you know it's kind of funny, don't take it to heart creampuff, it was just too funny to resist." Carmilla stumbles after her; still unable to catch her none needed breathe. She catches up to the huffing girl heading up the stairs and follows close behind her still chuckling a bit. Laura looks back and sees the laughing girls face and simply can't be mad at her for laughing. Laura notices that Carmilla's eyes have seemed to lighten a bit and her normally angry features have changed into those of a softer being. For a second Laura was able to see more of Carmilla than most people had seen knowing her for years. The human smiles at her more chipper than ever vampire and she looks up again, continuing up the stairs till she gets to the top to see the all holy light of the vending machine.
"Ha! Food! My love!" Laura runs over to the vending machine and starts to dig around in her pockets, searching for change and finding nothing. She looks at Carmilla with her lower lip sticking out and her eyes as big as quarters.
"Carm… I have no money." Carmilla looks at the pouting girl in front of her and looks at the thin plastic barrier between them and the many yummy snacks that her tiny human wanted. Carmilla moves past the pouty little Laura and stands in front of the vending machine of goodies. She looks the machine up and down as if she were sizing it up. She puts her hand flat against the plastic and it slowly starts to morph away from her hand. Then she takes just one finger and draws a rather large circle around the medium sized hole and as she drags her finger across the plastic it withers away from her touch.
"Oh my god! I totally forgot that you could do that, who knew you would be so helpful when it came to being stranded and needing something out of a plastic box of death." The plastic circle falls to the floor and Laura is on the snacks like she hasn't eaten in days.
"Gee thanks super girl, because your solution was to flip your pockets out and pout at me like you wanted me to buy you the puppy in the window" Laura stops in her motion and looks back at Carmilla.
"Hmmm, true but that's okay because you got it open and that's what matters." She continues her gathering of her goodies and once her arms are full she moves away from the now ruined vending machine and smiles at the, now feeling kind of used, vampire.
"Thank you so much Carm." She then begins her journey back down stairs.
(After making it back down stairs with a few unexpected and strange turns)
"Look. See. Supply run to the vending machine complete. Zero creepiness. I don't need a baby sitter" Laura sits down on her pallet, strategically placing her snacks in place so she is able to reach them all. The vampire with her hair up in a bun sits down next to the small, but hungry, human.
"This is still the Library, and Ell is still out there. I'm not letting you wander off because the last thing we need is you-" Carmilla readjusts herself in her seat as Laura gets up and looks around the room, realizing that it has changed somehow.
"I could have sworn the hallway back was over this way…" Laura looks around the room full of mostly junk that had fallen off the walls, and white cloths thrown over stacks and stacks of books. Torcher devises hung on the wall as if they were trophies.
"to get lost." Carmilla sighs to herself, "case and point." Carmilla looks down at all the snacks Laura brought down the stairs with her and is a little surprised that she was able to hold this much
"Well maybe we just got turned around?" the wondering girl starts to walk off in a direction.
"Something like that." The sitting woman takes a look around the room and realizes that she might have seen this room before a few years ago. She shifts her body a little and can help but hope that Laura won't ask too many questions but has a terrible feeling that she will.
"Look at all this creepy stuff! Ugh, what in the name of Krueger is this for?" Laura picks up one of the torcher devises and examines it
"Interrogation, torture for all I know. I've never been here before. We should go…" Carmilla insist as Laura ignores her and continues with her exploration.
"Hmmm. I wonder, what else is back here thought?" Laura treks further back into the room when Carmilla can barely see her outline. She pinches the bridge of her nose and impatiently speaks to Laura in a tone that she is trying very hard to control.
"Why yes, that is the exact question you shouldn't ask," Carmilla then looks back and sees that she can no longer see Laura's out line but she can hear her stumbling around in the mess in the back of the room.
"Laura, no! Don't go rooting around back there, okay? You're just going to end up getting-" Then all at once Laura's figure rushes toward her and all she can see is the face that Laura makes and Carmilla knows that means that she is about to fall. Camilla quickly catches the girl in her arms and keeps her from busting her face on the ground
As the two come apart their eyes meet and both of them remember what happened on the stair well and how much they don't want to talk about the subject or risk making it worse. They quickly move away from each other
"Sorry." Carmilla quickly spits out and in return her nervous human responds with.
"Uh, no problem. I just tripped over… more old VHS tapes?" Laura picks one up and examines it. I wonder if this is from that camera, or if there's anything on them…"