Chapter Text
“Hey Jonny, I’m heading to the store,” Carmilla called. “Is there anything you need?”
“A father who cared more about my happiness than what I could do for him,” Jonny responded, only half paying attention while he finished ironing a seam.
“I don’t think they have that at this store. I can get you some unconditional love from a chosen parent, would that work?”
Jonny paused his work to grin at her. “I guess I’ll have to make do. And I think we’re low on milk for the blood-chocolate abomination you call “coffee”, and the sourdough starter that we like.”
“That you like. I haven’t eaten bread in a hundred years. For all I know it could be terrible. Anything else?”
“No. Why are you going to the store anyway? Are we that low on something? I could just eat takeout.”
“Jonny. I’m a doctor. I’m not going to tell you that you can eat only takeout. It’s absolute shit for your cardiovascular system.”
Jonny sighed. “Yes, Mom.”
“I should be back in about an hour. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”
“Don’t worry, I will!”
He waited until she was gone before he took out the object he stole from her and Loreli’s ship. He wasn’t hiding it from Carmilla, he was just…
Okay, maybe he was hiding it from her.
It wasn’t intentional, there just wasn’t a good time to bring it up. At first, it was too soon and any mention of Loreli might hurt her, then after she seemed more stable, it was too late to tell her without her wondering why he hadn’t brought it to her before. Maybe he could slip it into a pocket in her wheelchair, or pretend that he had just found it while out on a walk? He could claim that he’d taken the promise of doing something stupid literally, and broken into Loreli’s room.
He looked down at the object in his hands. Maybe it wasn’t worth the effort. Maybe it was a broken prototype for a project that she forgot about fifty years ago.
But it certainly seemed important. It looked like those diagrams of the human heart, back in 9th grade bio. He could feel it pulsing in his hands, about one beat every second. It was an even bronze or gold, with a faint rainbow-y sheen, like an oil slick. It didn’t seem to have a place to plug it in, but as far as Jonny could tell, it had been beating sixty times a minute since he stole it about a month ago. That was…sixty times sixty times…maybe another sixty? That was a lot of beats seemingly without being charged. Jonny didn’t even know how metal could bend like that. How much power was that taking? Did it have a little miracle-of-engineering battery inside of it? It was slightly colder than the air around it, but Jonny couldn’t tell if that was the way metal normally felt or if it was using heat to power it. Would that even work?
…I know you want to say something about power sources, but I’m trying to add an air of intrigue and mystery. We don’t need to know the exact way the Heart works.
Yes, we do, but you can continue.
Thank you so very much, Your Royal–ow!
Jonny shoved the heart back into his pocket when he heard the knock on the door. Had Carmilla forgotten something? But she wouldn’t knock, would she? “Come in, it’s unlocked,” he called, standing up and walking to the doorway–
–only to freeze when the door opened to reveal Loreli standing on the other side.
After a moment, he said, “Carmilla’s not here right now,” trying to sound casual.
“I know,” Loreli responded. “I’m not here for her. I’m here for you.”
She advanced into the room, and Jonny scrambled back to maintain a solid six feet of distance. “We’ve known each other for centuries. We were happy for so long, just the two of us. And then you came along. We were so happy together, but you had to come and interrupt that.
“You’re just a distraction, really. You’re gonna live another fifty, sixty years maybe, and then she’s going to come back to me.” Loreli walked forward until Jonny was trapped against a wall. “And it would be doing both of us a favour if I removed this distraction now.”
Jonny felt a sudden sharp pain on his neck, and then he felt nothing more.