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Carmilla hates the dark. It reminds her of the eternal blackness that surrounded her for seventy years, starless and soundless with only the congealed blood of god knows how many people matting her hair and clinging thickly to her skin and the inside of her nose and the grooves of her teeth and she hates the dark. She can’t sleep in the dark and It’s painfully ironic that her nature forbids her to do so as well, more or less. She hasn’t slept in the dark since the bombs broke her out of her god forsaken hole in the ground. She can still remember the din, the bombarding noise of it all, and how for the first time in seventy years a smell other than rotten blood filled her nose. Smoke, acrid, sickening smoke and burning hair and flesh assaulted her senses after the dirt and the wood and the blood stopped raining down on her--shrapnel from a bomb that must have landed beside her plot. She’d opened her eyes and quickly shut them again, a raspy yelp that she’d later realized came from her own unused throat sounding around her at the sudden brightness, even though the smoke dimmed the sun. She didn’t understand because light was all she’d wanted and suddenly it hurt, the darkness becoming a strange momentary comfort before it scared her again and she forced her eyes open despite the pain that bore into her skull.
She is not in that box anymore. She knows this. It’s not 1942 anymore, It’s seventy two years later, it’s 2014 and she is laying beside Laura. She knows this. Bust she still can’t bring herself to sleep while the moon is out.
Laura noticed her breath hitch at the sudden darkness one night when she’d reached up from beside her to turn her owl lamp off. She’d quickly turned it back on, making sure Carmilla was alright. Carmilla nodded, mumbling something into the yellow pillow that Laura couldn’t hear. Some prompting resulted in Carmilla reluctantly telling Laura that the dark made her dimly beating heart clench in a very bad way, that the dark made her feel frozen and suffocated. That it reminded her of her internment. She explained to the human that even with a lamp on, she couldn’t sleep in the dark. She needed to see the sun before she could rest. the lamp, however, made her nights away from the window and the view of the stars much more comfortable. Laura had listened intently with watery eyes, and stayed up all night, holding Carmilla close so she wouldn’t be alone. They slept the day away, tangled together under the covers.
Some nights she stayed glued to that windowsill, eyes looking up at the starry expanse above her. She was always grateful of the fact that Styria didn’t suffer heavily from light pollution. The stars were always clear, granted there were no clouds. She would sit there wit a few candles burning, the only sounds being the flick and hiss of her lighter (an old Zippo she’d picked up in the seventies in London after an Adam and the Ants concert) and Laura’s steady, slow breathing and beautiful heartbeat behind her.
Sometimes she’d go out after Laura fell asleep. She’d leave her a note so Laura wouldn’t worry should she wake up alone. The vampire would head out the door, either a travel mug of blood in her hand, or if she was having an especially hard night, either vodka or whiskey. Sometimes she mixes blood and whiskey. Blood and vodka isn’t good together. She would take her travel mug and sometimes go to a rooftop or the quad and she’d lay on her back, propping herself up occasionally to take a swig, and she’d lay there all night, watching the stars and the clouds drift over her and breathing the bloodless air, pulling it deep inside her as she traced the constellations for what is very conceivably the millionth time, and picking out all the planets she could. Sometimes she returned sober, walking quietly into their dorm and changing into pajamas before climbing into bed with Laura, wanting to soak up an hour or so with her before the little human would have to get up for class. Laura would smile because she smelled like grass and smoke and something musky and somehow flowery, and she was home again. Carmilla would burrow her head in Laura’s chest and Laura would kiss her head and they’d fall asleep together in that momentary peace. Other times she’d stumble through the door, rambling loudly in German or French or whatever language she’d been reading most heavily that day and smelling of cigarettes and on one occasion, cigars. It’d wake Laura up, but she didn’t mind, really. She knew that normally she shouldn’t, and wouldn’t, tolerate Carmilla’s drunkeness, but it wasn’t a regular habit, and she knew it wouldn’t damage her physically in the long run. And Carmilla never hurt her. Never. No matter what state she was in, the vampire was always tender with her, and Laura knew that so many things about Carmilla were far beyond her understanding, and that sometimes drinking herself into oblivion was the only way to stop the noise in her head.
It didn’t always work.
Other nights she’d lay beside Laura with her nose buried deep in one of her books by Camus, reading the words her eyes had traced hundreds of times with her fingers slowly combing through Laura’s hair as the little human slept beside her. Sometimes Laura would talk in her sleep and Carmilla would lose interest in her book, her eyes following the soft curves of her face and the fluttering of her eyelashes and the curl of her lips. She would trace Laura’s bottom lip with her thumb, sometimes murmuring to her in German, hoping she was sleeping well. Sometime she did not sleep well and Laura would wake with cries on her lips for her mother and to get out of the car, and mom, wake up why won’t you wake up and she’d find Carmilla’s eyes and realize where she was and Carmilla would pull her close, broken cries muffled by her shirt. They would both stay up after nights like these, with cups of cocoa and reruns of Doctor Who. Carmilla never missed Laura’s soft sniffles and she’d gently nuzzle her head in reassurance that she was okay and she wasn’t alone.
As the months passed by, Laura noticed that Carmilla came home drunk less and less, unless it was around a particularly painful date. Or so she assumed. She never asked about these times, Carmilla’s eyes begging her not to. Laura understood. She still went out just as much, sometimes running errands that were best done in the dark, but the nights she came home smelling of whiskey and cigarettes were fewer and further between. Carmilla noticed this too, but it even took herself a bit to catch onto the reason why.
One night after finals, Laura watches Carmilla all night in awe. It’s three AM and dark as can be outside, the stars and the moon hiding away behind the clouds, and Carmilla is asleep. Not fitfully, not whimpering in German or Russian, no speak of coffins or blood and no tense muscles, no death grips. She is sleeping peacefully with her head on Laura’s chest and there is cocoa on her breath, not alcohol. Laura watches her protectively all night, her fingers combing gently through the vampire’s dark, loose curls, a loving smile ghosting her lips.
Carmilla wakes up to a good morning from Laura and it is actually a good morning because when she looks at the clock, it’s nine AM and there’s light streaming in through the window turning dust trails into tiny little galaxies, and she sits there in awe for a long while, because she never thought she’d ever close her eyes at night again. She looks at Laura who is making coffee and smiles because maybe healing is realistic, maybe only to a point, but realistic nonetheless. She knows that she will probably never heal completely but if her eternity with Laura is dotted with these healing wounds and little victories then she is content. Her smile only widens when Laura turns to her because this healing is a product of Laura, Laura who showed her that she could be loved and that she wasn't a monster, and reminded her of the fact every time she came home with smoke and whiskey breath instead of coming home smelling like grass and wind. Laura hands her a mug of coffee with cream and four sugars, and Carmilla thinks that maybe darkness isn’t so bad as long as she is by her side.