Ellen and Tay’s Excellent Conversation

**Saturday September 7, 2019**

Ellen  stares up at the ceiling tiles, trying to find patterns in the weird little dots for the… fourth? Fifth time? She can’t sleep, and the last time she tried to get up and walk around she was ushered back to her cot real quick. She could have gone home – her torso barely even hurt anymore – but she worries that if she leaves, she’ll lose out on her chance to catch up with Chris. And it was hard enough to find him in the first place.“Ughhhhhh, there’s gotta be something to do around here…” she groans in a whisper, not wanting to wake up anyone else who might be in the room.
It’s then that she remembers that Carmilla  should still be around. Seb had gone home, and Grim didn’t seem like much of one for conversation, but maybe Carmilla would indulge her boredom.

The vampire in question was currently perched on a supply cabinet in the corner of the room, on her haunches like some sort of gargoyle. The grey of her face took on an eerie blue glow in the light of her phone, which she was quietly tapping away at. Her eyes were swaying back and forth, easily noticeable in the dark of the room - while the red glow that had replaced her irises earlier in the day had mostly died down, there was still a hint of it present in the depth of her pupils.

Ellen peeks out of the curtain around her bed, checking that no one will get angry with her for sneaking out again, doing a double-take when she notices the glow up in the corner of the room.

“Psst! Hey! Carmilla,” she tries to whisper shout, but realizes it would be easier to just go closer. She walks up to the base of the cabinet, craning her neck upward to face her new teammate, “Is that actually comfortable, or do vampires  just have a natural inclination to find the creepiest place in a room to hang out?” she asks through stifled snickering.

Carmilla's ears twitch at the whisper-shout, and she scoots to look over the edge of the cabinet at Ellen. "Maybe we do," she grins, phone light reflecting off a set of long fangs, "But mostly I just like to be tall. Wanna join me?" She reaches a hand down, offering a way up.

Ellen checks over her shoulder again before taking Carmilla’s hand and scrambling up to the top of the cabinet. “Thanks for the lift,” she shifts into the dust on top of the cabinet, “What’s up?” She looks down over the room briefly before her eyes are drawn to the light from Carmilla’s phone, and her brow furrows watching Carmilla use the device with incomprehensible ease.

The screen shows a colourful top-down overview of a fantasy forest with glowing mushrooms and magical wolves. At Carmilla's tap, a lady knight in a cape runs over and attacks a weird mannequin monster, her sword trailing rainbows. The words 'FIRST BLOOD!' appear on the screen as the mannequin goes down, and Carmilla mouths a quiet 'yes!' to herself.

"Not much. I don't actually need to sleep anymore -other than the like… overwintering… hibernating? Yeah, that's it - so I was kind of bored. I would have left and found something else to do, but I promised your friend I'd stay here, and…" she looks up, biting her bottom lip in thought - fangs resting on the dark grey skin of her bottom lip. "I didn't really want to go outside. I can't stop thinking about the… fight, earlier. When the man pulled out the stick. This seemed safer, I guess." The phone screen goes red as it lies abandoned. A message from a teammate reads 'WTF dude why you feeding'

Ellen instinctively holds her torso at the mention of Takahashi and the ‘stick’. “Yeah, Chris can be a real stickler for ‘*procedure*’ sometimes,” she rolls her eyes remembering all the times he’d called her on breaking the rules, “Guess it’s nice to know some things don’t change.” She pauses for a bit before continuing. “So... is there anyone you can ask if, like, any kind of wooden weapon is trouble? Y’know, ‘cause you can’t really test that kinda shit? Got any… vampire friends?” Her face scrunches up as she realizes this line of questioning could either come across as really insensitive or really stupid.

Carmilla chuckles. "I don't know any other vampires. I mean...I do, but…" she breathes in sharply through her teeth. "They're on the other side of an ocean, and not friendly. I never had time to ask… I don't actually know anyone here other than you guys." She looks down at the neglected screen. "Ah, scheiße, I'm throwing. Might as well exit this match, I can't focus anyway." She force closes the app and pockets the phone, instead turning on the cabinet so she faces Ellen. "I don't wanna test it, no. I do know garlic's fine but other than that all bets are off… Oh, and the doorway thing. Gotta be invited. 'S why I had to find an abandoned building to squat in, I originally wanted to just sleep in some guy's attic and mooch off their WiFi.

You? I mean, um, you're obviously not, like, normal."

Ellen scoffs at that claim. “I mean, you’re not *wrong*. That’s just a hell of a thing to get told by an actual, literal vampire.” She brings her feet up onto the cabinet and rests her chin on her knees, turning her head to meet Carmilla’s eyes. “I’m just your average really strong, hard-to-hurt, time-travelling 16 year old. But I didn’t do the time travel on my own, I got help with that. This ain’t news to you though, right? Never had the ‘reading’ thing work that way; I thought I couldn’t even do that anymore…” Her sentence trails off as she stares at Carmilla, *I guess this saves me from having to explain everything. Wonder what she thinks about all this…*

Carmilla makes an uncomfortable face. "Yeah… I'm… Sorry about that. I mean, uh. It felt like I saw something I shouldn't have. Like reading someone's diary, except the diary gets forced into your head like a full garbage bin." She cocks her head to the side, as if trying to translate something in her head. "I just meant.. superheroes have origin stories, right? For how they get their powers? Like, they get thrown through a portal, or injected with alien DNA, or bitten by a hot doctor, or merged with a space God… I didn't see anything like that. Have you always had yours?"

“I could always read people. I didn’t actually realize other people couldn’t do that until I was, like, 12. I just thought everyone else loved asking lots of redundant questions, like ‘We all already know that guy’s grandma is in the hospital, why would ask him how his grandma is doing?’” Ellen tries to force a smile to psych herself up to continue explaining.

“The strength and being tough are... extras, I guess,” she shifts uncomfortably, “You ever do something really stupid for your friends?”

Carmilla nods. "I once climbed out of a third story -wait, shit, fourth, stupid Americans - a fourth story window at night to attend a friend's going away party before she was gonna move out. Got dragged out halfway through the night and taken back to the hospital and they put a guard on my room for a week. Worth it though."

“That’s rad,” Ellen laughs, “Parties are definitely worth it! Sucks the fall landed you… wait, back in the hospital? What were you in there for? What were ancient hospitals even like?” She shifts to sitting upright with her legs crossed, more engaged in the conversation now.

Carmilla blinks. "Oh, uh… I'm not… I died in like, 2017." She sighs, embarrassed, and looks down at the room filled with beds and makeshift partitions. "The real reason I am up here is… all of this reminds me of it. Hospitals, I mean. The curtains pretending to be walls and the identical beds…"

"I was sick, when I was alive. Badly sick." She takes out her phone again, opening up the photos app and scrolling through pages of grey-faced selfies before finally landing on a gallery of pictures marked Berlin, Germany.

She opens the gallery, and the screen is filled with a photo of a rather more alive-looking Carmilla, hijab over a hospital gown, smiling next to a group of people that look like her family. An IV leads to a machine next to the bed. She scrolls through a few more photos, the same gave with different people- visitors, doctors. The view from the window changes with the seasons.

"I spent my life in hospitals. I don't want to spend my unlife in them too."

Ellen watches Carmilla scroll through the pictures, looking back and forth between her in the hospital and the person beside her now. “Damn, sorry to bring that up. And that Chris made you stay here. If it makes you feel better, you look like you’re having a lot more fun now.” Ellen gives Carmilla a playful punch in the shoulder and cracks a half-smile.

“Sorry for calling you old, too. I just figured with the costume and the name, it seemed, like, too cheesy even to be a hero costume. You look like the encyclopedia entry for ‘Vampire’.” She starts to laugh, fiddling with the ends of her hair out of embarrassment.

Carmilla grins widely and poses, swishing her cape and forming a V with her left thumb and index finger at her chin. She winks. "Don't I look dashing? Like a storybook vampire prince? I thought, you know, if I'm going to be part of the eternally damned I might as well just go for it and commit."

"Carmilla's not actually my name, you know. It's my hero name! I picked it from a book. My real name's Katayoun."

Ellen blinks a few times. She had never considered that ‘Carmilla’ was a hero name. Add the wink and the pose, and Ellen finally breaks. She bursts into laughter, throwing her hands over her mouth so’s not to wake anyone up. Tears in her eyes, she manages to calm down and regain her composure. “You sure fucking did commit! Oh my god!”

“I guess it’s for the best you’re the first vampire I’ve ever met. Especially if the other ones you know suck,” she smiles at Katayoun before scrunching up her face, “Oh shit, pun not intended.”

Carmilla grins at the pun, but she puts on a more serious face afterwards. "If you ever see any other vampires, please don't trust them. They're… they don't see humans as people. You maybe shouldn't even trust me. I haven't bitten anyone but I don't know...I haven't been like this for very long. Maybe they were always bad people, or they just stopped caring, or… or maybe it takes a while, and I will become like them."

"I hope I don't." She hugs her legs to her chest.

Ellen scoots closer to Katayoun, resting a hand on her shoulder. “I know what that feels like, worrying that maybe you’re destined to become a piece of shit in the future. If you want someone to talk to about it, I’m here. Or if you want someone to call you out on it, maybe talk to Seth. Uh, I don’t know if you know him though. Either way, I think there’s enough messed up people on this team that you should be able to find someone to talk to who gets what you’re going through, even a little.”

Tay leans into the contact eagerly, grateful for the support.

"Thanks. I think you're doing just fine," she turns her head to look at Ellen, smiling. Her eyes seem more human than ever, tears rapidly building and flowing over as she tries to rub them away on her sleeve. The red glow is nearly gone, banished to a slight haze in the pupils. "Actually, I think you're doing great. You didn't hesitate to help the other people at the range, or me when I was threatened.. I can't imagine you turning bad."

Her gaze falls to Ellen's neck, and the red glow flashes in her eyes. It's over as quickly as it appeared, and she jumps when she realizes how close she is and scrambles to the other side of the cabinet.

"Ack! I'm sorry! I didn't want to… uh. I haven't… I'm sorry." She says, wide-eyed.

Ellen throws her hands to her neck instinctively, returning Katayoun’s wide-eyed look. “You’re good, dude. It’s… fine.” She wonders how much she means that, as she makes space between herself and Katayoun.

“Are you hungry? ‘Cause if me being here is gonna be a problem, I can go back down. You were up here first and all. Just… are you alright?”

Tay shakes her head vigorously. "No! No, I'm not hungry! I ate today and I don't need to eat more than like once a week or less even and that has never happened before I'm so sorry I shouldn't have relaxed I don't know what happened I don't want to bite anyone I have food with me I'm so sorry," her chest rises and falls rapidly, as if hyperventilating - a stark contrast to the complete lack of breathing so far. "Please don't leave."

“Woah, woah, woah. Cool out. It’s cool, it’s cool. I’m here. I’m right here.” Ellen tentatively extends a hand towards Katayoun, trying to gauge if it’s safe to move closer. At being asked to stay, she gets her arms around Katayoun and pulls her in for a hug.

“Deep breaths. Take it easy. I got you.” Ellen tries to speak softly, patting Carm’s back. She lets the silence take over for a little while before checking if Carm’s breathing had steadied. Waitaminute, I thought she didn’t need to breathe. Is this like a force of habit thing?

She figures she can ask some other time. Some things you just don’t ask when a friend is recovering from a freakout.

Carmilla wraps her arms around Ellen tightly. The rapid movement stops after a few seconds, replaced by the unnatural calm of a total lack of breath. "... Hahaha... I haven't had a friend, a real, non internet friend, in years and I'm already fucking it up."

She pulls back a bit to look the other girl in the eye. "See what I mean? A dead girl almost bites your neck and you still want to help her."

Ellen sighs and leaves just one arm around Katayoun’s shoulders. “You wanna talk about fucking up a friendship? This dumbass,” she thumbs at herself, “went and got super strength so her best friend wouldn’t be alone, and then went and abandoned him anyway. I’d say we both got stuff to work on.”

Tay smiles. "That's rough buddy. I mean, I don't think you abandoned him. Like… ok, you're not there now, but you can always go back, right? To the exact second that you left or something?" She scratches her head. "'Sides, You didn't leave for no reason. You're here to make sure he doesn't have to worry about his best friend getting hunted down by the police or heroes or something. That's heroic if you ask me."

She lets Katayoun’s reassuring words sink in. For the first time since she got to this weirdo future, someone actually thinks she’s good. That’s she’s not a totally lost cause. A feeling of relief, maybe even just happiness, washes over Ellen and she relaxes, leaning her head against Katayoun.

She wipes a sleeve across her face, trying to hide the tears welling up in her eyes. “It’s fuckin’ dusty up here.”

“Hahaha! Maybe that’s why vampires like high spaces. The dust alerts us to human interlopers or something. You don’t need a guard dog when you have a sneeze alarm!”

Ellen laughs along softly, still wiping her eyes but out of tiredness now. *Oh shit, I better get down from here befo…*

She doesn’t even finish the thought. Head still resting comfortably on her friend’s shoulder, Ellen finally drifts off to sleep.

Carmilla freezes and stays like that, slowly taking her phone out of her pocket and loading up the new season of Dave Galaxy.

The room grows quiet.