The Time Traveler's Wife

The Other Wife

September 2000

Carmilla looks out Laura's attic window to find that, whenever she's traveled to, the leaves are changing into autumn colors. She looks around her and finds a pile of clothes, neatly folded. But no Laura.

She gets dressed and quietly steps out into the hallway. She strains to listen for a few minutes before surmising that no one is home. There's a Charmed calendar hanging in Laura's bedroom, and assuming that Laura's kept up with flipping it as the months go by, it indicates that it's September 2000.

She walks around the bedroom, having never really had a great look at it. There are a lot of Buffy, Xena, and Charmed paraphernalia, and pictures of Laura with her parents. These pictures are still around in her bedroom later in life, and the more prominent ones are up in their apartment in 2017. A few krav maga belts are proudly displayed on the wall.

Carmilla takes a moment to appreciate the simplicity of it all.

This Laura still hasn't had to deal with Carmilla's mother, or her angry ex. She hasn't had to deal with a vanishing bride on their wedding day. And she hasn't been faced with a wife who's doing her best to get over a lot of hurt and anger-- not necessarily directed at Laura, per se, but she's still feeling the effects of it.

But Carmilla wouldn't take any of that out on this young Laura. Hell, Carmilla was doing her best not to take her anger towards her mother and Elle out on Laura in any time period. But things were still tense in 2018.

Continuing to make her way around the room, she notices that Laura has a computer, similar to the one Carmilla's mother had bought her back in 2000. Except whereas Carmilla's had remained largely unused, Laura's was clearly utilized quite often. She runs her fingers over the fading keys and pushes the power buttons to turn on the monitor and the drive.

After realizing how spoiled she'd become with 2017's technology and waiting what seemed like hours for this computer to turn on, she laughs at the desktop wallpaper - a very badly edited photoset of Buffy.

Deciding not to go through any of Laura's personal files, Carmilla simply goes to the internet browser - a very antiquated AOL application that starts the process of the noisy dial-up sounds. By the time she's finally logged in, she really only gets a tinge of nostalgia from looking at the user interface before she hears the front door open downstairs.

Footsteps go towards the kitchen and Carmilla quietly steps out into the hallway to see if she can figure out who it is.

"Hey, dad. ...Yep! I'm home from school. So, Danny was wondering if I could go see her play in her baseball game later..." Laura huffs. "But why not? It's not like I have strep throat anymore! And she said her mom could pick me up on the way and then drop me off after--"

A long sigh. Carmilla slowly makes her way to halfway down the stairs.

"Fine. Bye."

Carmilla holds back a snort as she hears Laura slam the telephone receiver onto the cradle and stomp out of the kitchen.

"Bad time?" Carmilla asks with a smirk.

Laura jumps and grabs her chest. "Eep!"

"Sorry," Carmilla says, chuckling, "guess it is a bad time, after all."

Laura shakes her head immediately. "No! It's great to see you! I keep thinking maybe I did make you up in my head." She runs over to Carmilla excitedly with a beaming smile. "It's been forever."

Carmilla holds out her arms and Laura runs into them, squeezing her in a hug. If memory serves, it'd been over a year and a half since the last time Laura saw Carmilla.