To Die As Lovers May, So That They May Live Together

2014 Laura

When Carmilla, or Mircalla as she had taken to calling herself again, was finally freed from her bloody coffin, she felt a lassitude, and a languor that weighed upon her all the time. She felt herself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over her, a melancholy that lasted for 70 years more and took away every pleasurable thought she ever had. She did not smile for anything now. Even the darkness and violence of life left her uncomfortable and apathetic. Her time in the coffin had broken something within her, and she was no longer the same girl she used to be. Dim thoughts of death began to open up in her mind, and an idea that she was slowly sinking into it took a gentle yet not unwelcome hold over her.

In all her centuries as a vampire, Mircalla had never once considered death to be an option for her. Now? Though she still could not visualize herself actively doing anything to end her existence, the idea of everything ending was a common one for her and was not entirely unpleasant anymore. She had imagined herself dying in variety of ways, though she never did anything to affect the process. She simply traveled the world alone in a haze, seeing everything and nothing. She saw it all, as divers saw what was going on above them, through a medium that was transparent but also dense and rippling. She observed the world, but did not feel as if she was part of it.

For about a decade after her escape, Mircalla continued to travel the world in this gloomy and lonely haze. It was in the 1950s when Mother found her again, sulking alone in France. Mother wasted no time in recruiting her again, seeming to have forgotten the brutal punishment she had inflicted upon her old protegee and accomplice.

"Oh! Darling, darling! That is all blood under the bridge now!" Mother waved her arm dramatically, as though trying to swat a fly away. "You and I are together again and I have decided to take mercy upon you this time and I will not return you to your coffin. There you go, is that not worth a smile?" Mother seemed so proud of herself, but Mircalla couldn't even look at her anymore. Then Mother's tone became sharp.

"Listen, Mircalla. You weren't supposed to be let out this early! Your punishment was supposed to be at least a century. But seeing as you have escaped and you have had some time to see the light again and to come to terms with your actions and their natural consequences, I will be gentle with you. Come, rejoin me in my service, or return to your coffin..."

Mircalla had not liked either option, finding no joy in seducing idiotic young girls into Mother's hand and certainly fearing the blood-filled coffin, but she knew she had to make a choice, or Mother would make it for her.

"Fine. So be it. Whatever," Mircalla grunted, and their little deal resumed.

The game was the same, even if under a different name. Now, instead of just roaming Styrian grounds for ditzy little idiots, Mircalla hunted a University. Mother had built it around the time she had finished burying Mircalla in that awful little coffin. The university's name was Silas, and it was welcome to people from all over the world, though young women often received priority. And since Mircalla was Mother's main tool of operation, from the 50s and onward, it became a very queer-friendly school. Mother prioritized pretty young girls who liked other pretty young girls just to make things easier upon Mircalla. But Mircalla still took no pleasure in her job and she began to hate that school with a passion, loathing the day when she had to return to it to do Mother's bidding. Her one condition was that Mother's victim could never be one of Susanna's reincarnations. Mother agreed to those terms, just so long as Mircalla kept up her own end of the bargain, like last time.

Mircalla ended up meeting several of Susanna's reincarnations, both in and out of Silas, but she did not feel anything for them anymore. Every time they would find her, Mircalla would make their life Hell. Although she did end up falling in love with each and every version, she tried not to show it. She was trying to defy the cycle again, actively hating her soulmate instead of loving. It was one last act of desperate rebellion. If Mircalla could not change her fate, or undo what Mother did, or beg God for forgiveness from this curse, then the least she could do was take it out on the one thing she could control: Susanna. It was the only part of her curse she had any say in, so she would use it for all it was worth.