Chapter Text
“You need to talk to her eventually,” Carmilla says, one hand’s fingers tapping against the side of her leg at an inconsistent rhythm. It’s not from any of the songs Chrysanthemum recognizes, so she assumes it’s something new. It could just be a random pattern, they suppose, but they are fairly certain that the Doctor wouldn’t waste time on randomness without a purpose. She is always so productive with every second she has, as if it’s going to slip away, even though they have plenty of time. It’s one of those intriguing things about her.
Chrysanthemum is not focusing on studying her to avoid acknowledging what she’s saying. That would be incredibly petty of them.
“I have spoken to your daughter. At practice.”
They move their bishop without looking down at the board.
“You know what I mean,” Carmilla replies, exasperated. She looks out the window, not paying attention to Chrysanthemum’s face, but she can probably guess their reaction just from their tightly controlled tone. The stars are less infinite than the two not-quite-women, but they’re easier to predict. “And she can’t hear you insisting on calling her my daughter. It won’t get under her skin from here.”
“It gets under yours, doesn’t it.”
“I thought we were over the hostilities.”
“I don’t fancy seeing another one of my daughter’s abusers on a regular basis.”
Carmilla does not rise to the provocation. She does not point out that Chrysanthemum’s adoptive daughter, one of hundreds of failed clones from eons ago, is long dead. She does not object to their word choice. They have gone in circles about how unjustifiable Carmilla’s actions were a thousand times, if not more, and none of those times have resulted in anything more than months of being shut out. She has learned to tolerate Chrysanthemum’s opinions on “clone rights,” and in return, Chrysanthemum has tolerated her existence.
They have both done things that many would consider unforgivable. Carmilla knows she is worse on that front, but sometimes she finds Chrysanthemum’s general policy of inaction as distasteful as her own worst deeds. And it’s not like their hands are entirely clean. Not like nothing’s ended because of them. She knows she’s just looking for reasons to resent them at this point, but damn, if it isn’t frustrating seeing her sometimes. A living reminder of all the fuck ups Carmilla should’ve avoided.
The clones weren’t one of those. It’s not her fault that Chrysanthemum went and got attached.
“She’s not going to change unless you tell her what you want.”
Chrysanthemum purses their lips. Carmilla’s said the wrong thing again, or whatever. Negotiation with them is like trying to wrangle the octokittens. I’m not going to change unless you tell me what you want either, she thinks.
Carmilla isn’t stupid. She’s lived for a very long time, and she wasn’t stupid when she was young either. She is, however, very good at ignoring information that is inconvenient. Chrysanthemum is very good at pointing out when she’s doing that, in a way that Carmilla can’t quite match.
This isn’t one of those moments.
She looks at the board, considering carefully. It’s only in three dimensions, today. Chrysanthemum set it up that way. They’re usually the one making the decision, as they are the one who found space easily moldable. Carmilla’s version of the more complicated boards requires much more technology, and some effort to move around. She could just ask, if she wanted something else, and Chrysanthemum wouldn’t begrudge or deny her.She usually doesn’t.
“And what have you told her?”
Carmilla takes a hold of a polished white knight, moving it to defend her other from Chrysanthemum’s encroaching bishop. The knights in these set are curved to almost look like the top of question marks from Chrysanthemum’s preferred alphabet. It feels like an old set, with chips missing from the wood and cracks in the stone board, but it’s much more ancient than it appears.
“Do you want a transcript?” she drawls, and Chrysanthemum moves their king forward one. They’re still looking at her, eyes barely moving but still perceptibly taking in different pieces of her. “I’ve said enough, for more lifespans than even we have. I’m trying to listen now, with some hints about the indiscriminate murder.”
They don’t laugh, though maybe some of their other bandmates would’ve. They listen to the movement of Carmilla’s fingers and wonder if it’s the vampirism that makes her eyes, so precise in their examinations, seem dead. She has that answer written down somewhere, put in a chart like everything else.
Carmilla moves the pawn furthest to the right forward two, and Chrysanthemum takes it.
They don’t know if Nastya’s eyes are the same as they were when she was alive. They seem impossible sometimes, with specks of a color closest described as rainbow coming and going like a very fickle cat, and the lines of blood that hover around the edges of the whites run as quicksilver as the rest.
They’ve seen that poison running down her body, mixing with the red of the planet she’s returned from massacring and staining a dress shirt that Carmilla had loaned her. Her blood was much harder to clean up after than the rest. It was the only amount with consequence.
It was only once, since she’d joined the crew of the Silvana. It won’t happen again, Carmilla is confident, but there’s nothing she can or will do to stop it. Chrysanthemum didn’t know anyone Nastya had killed. They didn’t even catch the name of the planet. It’s completely impersonal, but it’s still the right thing to be outraged about. As Carmilla would point out, the recent has to be what matters. Not the past. It’s what keeps everyone on this ship civil, for any given length of time. It’s not forgiveness; it’s the only thing that keeps them together.
She can’t and won’t compel them to forgive Nastya for the massacre or for how she treated a clone millions of years ago outright, but she’s still finds ways to be ruthless when it comes to negotiating peace. She’s ruthless in everything she does.
”It saves time,” Carmilla had said once when they were both much younger, and Chrysanthemum hadn’t understood. They were immortal. They had forever for each other. Wasn’t it good, to take as long as they needed?
They understand her better now that they’ve chosen her company. Just because nobody involved would die, that didn’t mean they would be forever.
“It’s more than that,” they say as she finishes sliding a rook forward. She must’ve polished her nails recently, because the color is only faintly chipped. Even with vampiric grace and eternities to practice, there’s only so much she can do to keep heavy engineering work from wrecking havoc on her carefully cultivated aesthetic. Chrysanthemum adjusts one of their own rooks in response. Both hold three of the other’s pawns and a queen behind the board, meticulously lined up in their own fashions. Carmilla switches her free hand from one rook to another, and in response, Chrysanthemum pushes forward a bishop.
It’s more than what? The murder? As if the thought behind it matters more than the act itself. It is wrong to cut a life full of potential short, through negligence or violence. That is what a good person would resent Nastya Nikolaevna Rasputina for, and that is some of it. They haven’t grown entirely numb to murders in quantity.
“She really does want to do better.” That’s the worst part, isn’t it— the wanting. It was easier when the Mechanisms were a force of nature to be cleaned up after, their presence a storm that left devastation in their wake. They were hurt people who’d abandoned their personhood in favor of confronting that hurt, and now most of them are as dead as the civilizations they’d run through, leaving almost universally worse for their presence. And now the first to die and the only to survive is here, and she wants again. “And we can’t keep going like this.”
She’s not wrong.
She moves in a knight, and they adjust a bishop to threaten it. It’s a defensive move, but not one that will keep her from taking one of their knights. They do, and she takes the offending piece out next.
It’s not that there’s anything she could do to stop them from shutting Nastya out forever, in the literal meaning, but that comes at a cost. Everything with immortals is a negotiation — to be together is to take on the burden of the other’s sins and to be apart is to live in a world made of tissue and fragile things. The past can’t matter as much as the present if they are to be together, and they’ve already made the decision to be together. Maybe it’s unforgivable. Maybe that makes them complacent, to make that trade. Carmilla knows when she’s won.
They adjust their posture and look down at the board instead of at her. It’s unnecessary and a dismissal of the conversation. It’s a forfeit. There’s something tight in their chest, and some memory forces its way through her, out of context and too strong for the moment. She can’t even begin to label what it might’ve been, before it’s gone, leaving only the taste of acid in the back of her throat. This is what victory looks like, she reminds herself, and this is what family has always looked like. A series of concessions in the name of avoiding a greater hurt.
She takes a pawn with her leftmost rook, and they return the favor. She takes that rook with a bishop. Carmilla has the advantage in pieces now, but the difference is only one pawn. There’s never any guarantees. Not with them. This dynamic, it shifts wildly with every push and pull, and she can never relinquish her grip if she wants to stay in control of the board.
That isn’t family anymore, she reminds herself, we can do better.
They are doing better. She pushes hair that’s fallen before her face away, and they advance a pawn. One of dozens in the set, completely indistinguishable from its peers. The only reason to protect them is for what they can become— what they aren’t at the moment. They aren’t valuable on their own. Even Chrysanthemum doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice them when necessary. She doesn’t respond to it directly, pulling back her bishop into a space protected by one her own pawns but right in the way of their bishop. They take the bait, but instead of capturing their bishop with the pawn, she takes it with a rook.
They move their remaining knight forward, to the square directly before where her remaining rook sits, threatening a pawn, and they sigh, adjusting their position again.
“I don’t like hating people, Carmilla.”
She takes the rook back a square, and they go back to the pawn. They like to inch their pawns forward, bit by bit, whenever she doesn’t cut them off with dramatic assaults. She keeps ignoring it— they’ll run into her own line of pawns soon enough— and moves her remaining bishop to threaten their remaining knight. Behind the knight is their bishop and behind that, the king. She pays mind to its location at all times.
They move the knight out of the way, revealing their bishop. She could take it, at the expense of letting her bishop be taken by the king. She’s already fairly certain the game, if not the discussion, will end in a draw and from the look on Chrysanthemum’s face, they’ve got the same idea.
“I know.” I do, she doesn’t say, just like she doesn’t draw attention to words Chrysanthemum doesn’t say. She doesn’t like hating people, but she does because hate is reliable. It burns like nothing else does, hot and safe. It keeps away more inconvenient emotions, like regret, like fear… like grief.
It’s been millions of years, and Chrysanthemum still holds what remains of their love for their daughter close— for one of thousands of Carmilla’s discarded clones. Time erodes all things, even golden memories. If they still remembered how the clone would bend at the slightest suggestion of want from an authority figure, so ready to break themselves before anyone else could, would they be sitting here now? They haven’t forgiven her, and they say they never will. She’d believe them, the steel in their voice as they’d made that promise, but they said they’d never sit civilly with someone like her only seventy thousand years ago. Without resentment to hold onto, those memories will slip away faster. They believe. She knows it, because she knows the defeat in their eyes like she knows a reflection in the mirror.
Instead of moving to take the bishop directly, she pulls her last rook up using the opening the knight left behind: “I also know you’re in check.”
“Oh?” Chrysanthemum says, though they saw it coming. They glance at their bishop, which would be in perfect place to take the intrusive rook if that wasn’t the last line of defense between the king and her bishop. They move the king to a diagonal from the rook, which lets her take that bishop. Their knight was left in place from earlier, giving them the option to revenge their bishop on hers, but they capture her knight instead. Despite what Carmilla thinks, they do know the value of sneaking behind enemy lines. “There.”
It leaves room for the rook to go after their precious pawns, but two can play at that game.
Sometimes, they hate how much they understand why Carmilla takes action as much as they hate the actions she takes. Sometimes they hate those reasons more. This whole cursed conversation isn’t just for her daughter’s convenience. Eventually, Chrysanthemum will come to understand Nastya, and then they will love her.
And there is only so long her hate can burn.
-
The game itself is a draw, eventually.
It doesn’t matter. They’ve both won and lost countless times. A look at their records, which Carmilla keeps track of for some reason or another, would leave most mortals scrolling through digits for an uncomfortable length of time. They stay sitting for sometime, considering the board and where they’ve left the pieces. Chrysanthemum gets to their feet first, gathering up their layers of skirts. Their breathing is unsteady for a moment, and they reach for their cane where they left it tilted. It helps with the unsteadiness some, but it’s not all physical. They still don’t want to confront this.
“Rematch later?” Carmilla asks, her eyes closed as she threatens to nap.
“Of course,” and that helps even more.