A/N: Total AU for both FI and Carmilla. Lots will be the same, but pretty significant differences. FI characters older, Carmilla all the same. The rest you can figure out as you go...

It's been a year and a half and not a damn thing's changed.

Reagan thinks something should have. Something. Everything.

The world should have started spinning the other direction, or it should have just stopped, frozen in place at the exact moment they found her. The sun shouldn't rise, the moon should disappear, the ground should open up and swallow them all whole.

It has to change, she thinks. It's all sideways anyhow, everything should just go the distance, just finish the fucking job. Maybe then it would make some sense, maybe then it there'd be some logic to it. Maybe that's what she needs to happen, maybe she needs some sort of bizzaro version of the life she had.

Karma could look at her again. Liam wouldn't spend all of his time and money fighting battles he can't win. Shane wouldn't be such a useless fuck and Amy….

And maybe, she thinks, she just needs a world where the monsters are heroes and everyone knows people like her for the killers they really are.

It doesn't really matter how or why or what, but it should all be different, it should all be changed.

Amy Raudenfeld-Solis is dead and the universe should fucking acknowledge it. There should be no more normal, there should be no more same.

Except there is. There's been 578 days of same. 578 days of everything - and everyone - else carrying on and moving along and things working out for people and no one else

(except maybe Lauren and Farrah and Liam and - wherever the fuck she is - Karma)

even seeming to notice how fucking wrong everything is, and everything working as it should and the status being very fucking quo.

There's been 578 days Amy's never seen.

And that?

Is just not right.

And no matter how many nights she spends sitting here drinking instead of out there, doing what she's meant to do, she knows it won't bring Amy back. She knows hiding isn't doing anyone any good, hell, she knows some people - probably some good and innocent people - are most likely dead because she isn't doing her job.

Reagan tries really hard to care about that. She does.

But all that really matters to her is that one exceptionally good and innocent and amazing person is dead because she did her job. And that, in the end, whether she does it or no, whether she sits here at this bar drinking her life away or if she gets off her ass and starts hunting again, it won't matter.

It won't save anyone else. They're all doomed, her friends, her family. Amy's dead, Karma's lost, and Liam's slowly slipping away.

And in the end? It'll get them all.

She just hopes it doesn't leave her for last.

Nothing's ever going to change and she's got 578 days worth of proof.

It's been a year and a fucking half and nothing has changed.

And Reagan's not sure just how much longer she can live with that.

It was Lauren who found her - 578 days ago - and as unbelievably selfish as it is

(and it so is and Reagan tries really hard to feel guilty about it)

Reagan thanks God everyday that it wasn't her.

If it had been, if she'd been the one to find Amy like that - lifeless and bloodied

(shredded) (that was the word the coroner used) (shredded)

Reagan's quite sure she would have lost her fucking mind.

Sometimes, she's not entirely sure she hasn't.

Lauren held it together. Reagan had seen things - things most of them couldn't imagine - but it was the little blonde who had kept everything in order, had made sure they took all the right steps, handled everything in just the right way.

Reagan knew Lauren was good in a crisis - she'd seen that first hand - but this? This was some next level shit.

By the time Reagan got there, to the woods out back of the townhouse Lauren and Theo were renting while their dream home was being built and the adoption of their first daughter was being finalized, Lauren had taken complete control.

That wasn't anything unusual, was actually perfectly normal.

The last normal thing any of them experienced that night.

Lauren had cleaned up Amy as best she could. She didn't know what else to do, how else she could really help. But she knew if seeing Amy like that was as painful as it was for her?

It would fucking kill Reagan.

So she used towels and when the towels were soaked through with blood

(her sister's blood) (and she so couldn't think of that)

she had Theo bring her sponges and a bucket and she soaked it up, as much as she could and did everything she could to minimize the damage - the visible damage - because she knew they were going to need as clear-headed a Reagan as they could possibly get.

Whatever - and Lauren knew it was a what, not a who - had done this was still out there.

She cleaned Amy as best she could and then set about arranging what was left of her sister's clothes - what wasn't torn away completely or soaked in so much blood that she had no choice but to rip off the fabric in shreds and give them to Theo to toss - trying, in vain mostly, to cover the worst of the wounds.

The ones that just wouldn't come clean.

(The ones Reagan knows Lauren sees every time she shuts her eyes)

When she arrived, Reagan kept her distance, standing next to Theo, silently watching Lauren work and trying not to think about how bad it must have been before.

"She shouldn't be doing that," Theo said, his voice cracking and frighteningly loud in the silence of the back yard. "She's tampering. This is a crime scene. There could be evidence, traces, fibers and shit."

Reagan didn't say a word - she didn't trust her voice, didn't trust that she could open her mouth and do anything but scream - but she reached out blindly and took his hand in hers.

Theo's hands were big, bigger than Amy's

(and Reagan had to bite back a cry at the thought that she'd never hold her wife's hand again)

and as he laced his fingers with hers, Reagan felt an odd sense of comfort, of safety.

Of normal.

She's often thought that one moment might have been the only thing that got her through that night.

Theo might have left the force, might have quit trying to fight the good fight with laws and rules and punishments when he realized just how much bigger the fight was than he could have ever imagined

(one more thing on a long fucking list of things Reagan has to feel guilty for)

but Theo was still - at heart - a cop to the end. He couldn't help it, couldn't help but worry about trace evidence and fingerprints and DNA. That was still his world and as ridiculous as Reagan knew it was, as ridiculous as he knew it was, they both found a moment's comfort in something normal.

Something sane.

A killer. Some random homeless person trying to steal money. A sexual predator lurking along the wooded trails waiting for an easy mark.

Someone horribly average, horribly un-noticeable, horribly mundane and horribly….

human.

That was how the story always went, right? They'd find someone and everyone who knew him would remark on how nice he was and how serene he seemed and how they never would have imagined he could have done something like that.

Sometimes, Reagan knew, the worst of the monsters were the ones that were utterly human.

Reagan and Theo and even Lauren knew that anyone could do anything if pushed hard enough, pushed far enough.

And they knew that there would be no guy, no vagrant, no sex fiend, no killer found hiding and bloodied in the woods.

Nothing mundane. Nothing average.

Nothing human.

They knew that as sure as they knew there was no evidence here, nothing the cops could work with. No traces of anything, at least not anything they'd understand.

Lauren and Theo hadn't seen as much as Reagan or even Amy had. Reagan had done everything she could to shield her friends and family from that world, done all she could to keep her secret.

She'd even thought about leaving, thought about it so many fucking times. It was the only way, she knew that. The only way she could keep them all safe was if she was nowhere fucking near them.

But she'd never left. She'd stayed. And every day - every day when nothing happened, when they all went to bed at night safe and sound and loved - Reagan worried about it a little less.

She should have known better. People like her don't get the happy endings. They get what they've earned.

It's karma.

So maybe Lauren and Theo only knew it mostly in the abstract, maybe they'd never lived as fully in her world as Amy or even Karma and Liam had, but they'd both seen enough to know that whatever had done this was nothing the cops could handle. Nothing they'd even begin to understand.

And whatever it was, whatever had taken Amy from them was out there still. Waiting. Watching.

Hunting.

They stood there together, Reagan and Theo, holding onto each other and that small bit of normal they had left, because they both knew it was slipping away, that whatever normalcy they'd been able to pretend their lives still had?

It died with Amy.

When Lauren finally pushed herself to her feet, Theo hurried to her side to help. And when Lauren, who would have always swatted his helping hands away, took them without a word, Reagan knew how bad it really was.

Even before she got her first look at Amy.

She resisted, as long as she could, actually looking at her wife. It was easier that way, easier to focus on the ground or the brush or the wreckage left behind by whatever had done this. She could be clinical then, look at the way her father had trained her, like a hunter, not like a wife or a lover or a friend.

If she just focused on everything around the body

(and oh, fuck, that's what Amy was)

(the body)

it was easier, but easier didn't mean better, because the body was still there and the body was still Amy and there was no amount of clinical, no amount of training, no amount of hunter in her that would ever make Reagan OK with that.

But she had to try. It was either try or lay down on the ground next to her wife and die.

And Reagan might not have been OK - she didn't think she'd ever be OK again - but she wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

So she focused on the ground, all of it, every bit of dirt and grass and rock surrounding Amy was blood, the red staining everything, leaving an outline Reagan was sure wouldn't fade for months, if ever. But that was something, a sign, a - no matter how ridiculous the word sounded right then - clue.

Whatever had done this, it had let Amy bleed out, let her life flow out of the slashes and scrapes and wounds and saturate the ground.

It hadn't fed.

Cold comfort, but Reagan was pretty sure that was the only kind she'd be getting any time soon.

The brush - a few scraggly bushes and a small tree or two - told Reagan more. They were battered, branches snapped, needles and leaves bent and broken and dangling and sprayed across the ground.

They had fought. Amy and the… whatever. It wasn't much of a fight - Amy had never really had a chance - but she hadn't gone easy and that was… something.

Reagan could picture it, could eye the pattern of debris and destruction and visualize her wife fighting, using every trick, every tactic, every move Reagan had taught her.

Amy always wanted to learn more. Always.

Reagan had been the one to say enough. The one to know that if what she'd already taught her wasn't enough, Amy never stood a chance anyway.

Whatever had done this was too strong, too quick. It had darted around Amy, always a step ahead of her strikes, always a heartbeat quicker than every move she tried.

It had toyed with her, fucked with her, let her think she had hope, a chance. Reagan had seen it before, seen the way things would kill, the way they would tease and taunt, the way they would keep their prey

(Amy had been prey)

standing, literally alive and kicking. It kept the blood flowing, kept the heart racing, it made everything - the flesh and the blood and all the rest - taste better.

Made it all taste alive.

Reagan felt her knees buckle and her stomach turn over but she pushed on, striding forward, never breaking, never pausing. She wouldn't open that door, she wouldn't let herself crack or crumble or falter because if she did, if she started down that road, she knew she'd never stop.

She would run and never look back.

Her eyes stayed on Amy's face, on the parts that weren't scratched or bruised or clearly - so fucking clearly - broken. Reagan focused on Amy's eyes - she didn't know if they'd always been closed or if Lauren had done it - but it was almost enough, almost enough for Reagan to convince herself that Amy was just sleeping.

Just another of a thousand tiny naps on their couch, another of a thousand night's sleep in their bed.

Reagan settled on the ground next to her wife and gently reached out, the pad of her thumb brushing softly against Amy's cheek, and she had to repress a shudder at the thin shadow of red that followed across Amy's skin.

She had seen worse. She had done worse. But this… this was Amy. This was her wife, the woman she'd been with since she was nineteen years old. And this was just too much, Reagan couldn't. She just…couldn't.

So she didn't.

She laid down on the ground, cradling her wife's body against her chest and cried until she couldn't see, couldn't think, couldn't be.

That's where her father and her brother found her, holding her wife's body and staring into space and just not… there.

The first time it happened was in this very bar.

Almost every time it happened, every time she found some cheap bit of ass that she could bury her anger and pain and frustration in , it was in this bar. It would have had to be, Reagan didn't spend much time anywhere else. Here and her house

(their house)

(and it would never happen there)

(even Reagan had limits and fucking another woman on their bed was so far past those limits)

her house and here, that was pretty much it.

She had something of a routine, if you wanted to call it that. Drink. Sleep. Repeat.

Sometimes she skipped the drink. Sometimes the sleep. But it all rolled around again, day after day, night after night.

578 times.

They'd all tried, at first, to pull her out of it. But then, slowly, they all fell away.

Theo and Lauren's adoption came through and they had their hands full taking care of - as Lauren put it - an 'actual child'.

Shane and Duke broke up - again - and when reconciliation number five or six or whatever the fuck it was didn't happen, Shane slowly drifted away and, honestly, Reagan was surprised it took him that long.

Shane had never been capable of handling this life. He was great with high school drama, with fake lesbians and outing everyone in sight, but when it came to the real world - the real world - Shane flat out sucked. He and Duke couldn't never make it work because Shane couldn't handle being with someone who lived so much in the gray

(probably, Reagan always thought, another thing she was to blame for, but Duke was good and a good hunter is hard to come by)

and hid from the light. So, yeah, she wasn't all that shocked when Shane stopped calling, stopped texting, stopped coming round.

He left flowers, the most beautiful ones you could ever imagine, on Amy's grave every week.

At least there was that.

That left Liam and Reagan didn't suppose she was ever going to get rid of him. She'd lost Amy. He'd lost Karma. Her pain was a little different

(Karma was alive. Somewhere in Europe, last Reagan had known, near Austria, maybe?)

(Gone, but alive.)

but they still had that in common. It had always been their bond anyway, each of them being in love with half of Karmy. They'd all long since gotten past that. Amy's feelings for Karma had never amounted to a half of what she felt for Reagan. And everyone knew Liam was Karma's one true love.

The four of them had made their peace. They - with Shane and Reagan and Theo - had made themselves into an odd, but working, family.

Which might have explained why it hurt them all so much when Karma left. When she and Liam broke, when Reagan had had to make a choice.

She'd made the right one, she knew that. Yes, it hurt Liam and no, she didn't know if it hurt him more or less or just… differently… than if she'd chosen the other way, but Reagan would never believe - hunter training or not - that she'd ever really had a choice.

Liam had become her best friend. And Karma was - and always would be - Amy's.

So, yeah, werewolf or not, killing Karma wasn't a fucking option.

Liam had never been the same

(a feeling Reagan can easily grasp)

and he'd been something of a mess for quite a while. He didn't follow the drink, sleep, repeat pattern. His was more crush the weak, take their money, repeat.

In a short six months after finding out his wife was one of the monsters he'd come to despise

(and fucking another one)

Liam had become the man his father

(father, grandfather, what-the-fuck-ever)

had always wished him to be.

And it almost killed him. Literally. If not for Reagan and her brother, Liam's dealings with some very, very bad men and the very. very bad things they did with the bodies of virgins

(why was it always virgins?)

might have ended far differently.

He owed Reagan his life. And while he'd repaid that debt already

(there was an incident in Belize and the less said about that, the better)

Liam had been reborn or - at the very least - repurposed. There would be no more crushing, no more taking of the monies. He was - finally - going to be the man of integrity he'd always portrayed himself as. He was going to help.

And Reagan was his first 'victim'.

She would never admit it - ever - but Reagan was grateful for him. She was fucked up, way past the point of no return in most ways, but Liam kept her from finishing the job.

The first - and last - time she tried to go hunting while drunk, it had been Liam that stopped her

(she might have preferred something other knocking her out from behind and stuffing her in his trunk, but it did work)

and then - when she'd come to and he was sure there were no weapons in the vicinity - he confronted her.

"You got a fucking death wish or something?"

She didn't answer, did nothing but stare forlornly at her gun and her knife and her stake, piled high on her kitchen table, just out of reach.

He wouldn't understand, she thought.

No, she didn't have a death wish.

But she didn't have much of a life wish anymore either.

To his credit, Liam didn't dick around, he didn't even try to understand. He just put it in terms she'd understand.

"If Amy saw you like this, she'd never forgive you."

Liam had apparently thought a hungover, groggy, and unarmed Reagan was a less dangerous Reagan, a notion she quickly disabused him of by kicking him in the face and knocking him cold.

She was there, with ice and a beer, when he came to.

He might have been a prick about it, but Reagan couldn't say he was wrong. She never went hunting drunk again.

She never went hunting again, period. At least not for monsters.

The first time it happened - in this very bar - the girl looked just like Amy.

If Amy was six inches shorter. And had a pixie cut. And a dozen or so tattoos running up one arm and very obvious submissive side and a lust for pain.

So, basically, exactly like Amy if - like Reagan - you were half past the point of too fucking drunk to really care.

She took Ms. not-so-much-like Amy upstairs, to the room over the bar she rented for exactly this reason

(a few hundred bucks and promising not to kill the vampire bartender went a long way)

and proceeded to make her scream

(never ask a hunter to hurt you, at least not when she's too drunk to remember - or care about - your safe words)

and then, when the girl's begging reminded her too much of Karma

(Please, Reagan. I'm sorry.)

and her tears reminded her too much of Lauren

(and Farrah and Mrs. Ashcroft and all of Amy's students lined up at the back of the church)

and she just couldn't fucking take one more second of it, she dropped to her knees and begged forgiveness

(she might - might - have called her Amy)

and slid her head between the girl's thighs, making her scream in a whole different way until the poor thing blacked out and Reagan left her there, staggering home with her wedding ring in her pocket and a bottle of Jack in a brown paper bag.

Not her proudest moment.

Not her worst either.

That one, the last time it happened - a week ago, now - was all Liam's fault.

He threw a party. More accurately, Squirkle threw a party and Liam was informed, in no uncertain terms, that if he wanted to continue doing whatever the hell it was with the company jet and the company's money and the assorted favors he was calling in from all corners, his attendance was expected.

The divorce had been bad press. Karma's affair - or what the press had assumed was an affair - had damaged Liam's brand, and that was simply unacceptable. The scion of Squirkle needed to make an appearance, he needed to keep up his image, to remind the world of the real Liam Booker.

"If the world knew the real me," he said to Reagan, "they'd have me locked up in a padded cell and you'd be in the one next to me."

He wasn't wrong.

"My grandfather's going to want some eye candy on my arm," he said. "And I can't deal with whatever rent-a-date he's picked for me." He eyed her carefully, still wary of sudden kicks even after all these months. "And you owe me."

Reagan arched an eyebrow

(and Liam almost cried, it had been so fucking long since she'd done anything remotely that normal)

and scooted a little further back on the sofa. "I owe you?"

Liam grinned. "Remember Belize?"

Reagan rolled her eyes and reminded him - gently - that they'd sworn to never speak of that again and that, by her reckoning, that had been him repaying her.

"I saved you and your brother and killed three very pissed off trolls," he said. "I think that more than exceeded any debt I owed you."

"I didn't kill your wife when I found her fucking a werewolf."

(Reagan had long since learned to never say 'another' werewolf)

"I wish you had," Liam said, somehow managing to hold her gaze as he outright lied. "So you owe me."

Reagan had also long since learned to let Liam have his little lies and his proclamations of hating his ex-wife and wishing her dead.

(Even if she'd kill - or die - to have Amy out there, somewhere, for her to hate)

So, she'd agreed and let Lauren work her magic and doll her up, talking all the while about how good it was she was getting out and doing something.

Theo watched from the door to their bedroom - Lauren's makeover headquarters - holding the baby

(two months old)

(they named her Amy)

(Reagan's never held her) (not even once)

and studying Reagan. He was trying not to be obvious about it, but Reagan knew. She understood, really she did.

Lauren loved her, she always had, she always would. And love can blind you, love can make you miss what's right in front of your fucking face

(like it had done to Amy)

and maybe Lauren knew that and maybe she was OK with it, but Theo? He had a life to protect - two of them, actually - and that trumped any love he might have had for Reagan, any pity he felt for her loss, it trumped everything.

If keeping Lauren and little Amy safe meant watching Reagan, meant considering her more threat than family?

He was OK with that.

Reagan went to the party, staying on Liam's arm most of the night, even staying sober, which did little to help her fight off the urge to find someone - something - to kill.

If she'd thought about it, if she'd given it even a second's thought, Reagan would have realized the storage room was the last place she should have snuck off to when everything got to be a bit much and she needed a moment - just one fucking moment - of peace.

The cater-waiter girl restocking the champagne didn't look a thing like Amy, and Reagan wasn't drunk so she couldn't pretend she did. But it didn't matter.

If she'd thought about it, if she'd given it even a moment's consideration, Reagan would have known what she was doing. It would have sunk in when she asked the girl to say it.

"There are no boyfriends around me right now."

It was rushed, hurried, like it was a fact she was used to, something she didn't have to think about, the words coming too fucking easy.

So not Amy.

Reagan shook her head

(which, since it was between the girl's thighs, might not have gotten her point across quite the way she wanted)

and she stopped what she was doing just long enough to correct her.

"Slower," Reagan said. "Stammer a little. Like you're nervous."

"There are no… boyfriends… around me… right now?"

If someone had asked her later just what the fuck she thought that was going to do for her, what she could have possibly been thinking, Reagan wouldn't have had an answer. But she would have been pretty sure it wasn't supposed to make her fall apart. It wasn't supposed to make her absolutely lose her shit and end up in the fetal position on the storage room floor sobbing.

It was Liam who found her, the little cater-waiter girl recognizing him as Reagan's boyfriend and - discreetly - bringing him to the storage room.

Liam didn't ask what had happened, exactly - he didn't want to know - instead, he tipped the girl

(very well)

to keep her mouth shut and to make sure no one else came into the storage room the rest of the night. He settled down on the floor, tugging Reagan into his side, wrapping her up in his suit jacket and his arms.

They spent the rest of the party - Liam's family be damned - huddled there together between the bottles of champagne

(I squirkled it)

and hors d'oeuvre trays, five hundred and sixty-some-odd days worth of pain roaring out of Reagan now that there was no alcohol-slash-sex cork in the bottle.

And when the party-goers had all left and the catering staff was finished with its cleanup, Liam slipped from the room and out into the hall, pulling his cell phone from his pocket and dialing a number he'd thought he'd never use again, while Reagan pretended to sleep.

"Karma? It's me. When you get this message… I… It's Reagan. She needs you." This had gone way past what he or Lauren or anyone could do. "Karma, can you… come home? Please?"

Reagan found out later that it was Lauren who made the call, who fished her cell phone out of her pocket and used speed dial to call her father and her brother.

Lauren was smart, she understood. She got that there were certain things that needed to be done. The cops, for one. They couldn't see Amy like this

(and neither could Farrah or Bruce or anyone else)

it would just complicate things, create too many questions they couldn't - or wouldn't - answer, and while Lauren's clean up job was good, it was going to take more than some towels and sponges to cover the truth.

Martin, Reagan's father could do it. He could cast the spell, it was simple enough. A basic bit of magic Martin had probably learned in his teens, back in the days before he'd really become a hunter, before he'd taken in Glenn and then Reagan, making his own little makeshift family.

It was a few words, some basic ingredients Lauren had laying around in her kitchen, a protective circle

(one he drew in Amy's blood and Reagan has always been so fucking glad she was still out of it for that part)

and - to the world - Amy looked, for lack of a more fitting word - better.

Dead. But better.

No more blood. No more wounds.

Reagan found out later that Theo was the one who reached out, who contacted the few cops they knew and trusted, who, in turn, made sure Amy's body was seen by their coroner, the one who would tell the family the truth they needed to hear

(heart attack) (undiagnosed heart condition) (tragic) (perfectly natural)

and give Reagan reality.

(Shredded) (Three dozen wounds, all of them deep, half of them fatal on their own)

(everything else intact)

The coroner - a frumpy little man Reagan was sure would have been happier as a high school biology teacher - tried to make it better.

"She probably died quickly," he said. "The first or second wound, for sure. It's likely she didn't feel much pain at all."

Reagan didn't tell him that she knew of at least fifteen separate creatures that could keep their victims alive through dozens of supposedly mortal wounds for the express purpose of making sure they felt every fucking one of them.

Amy had felt it. Reagan knew. She'd felt every bit.

Reagan found out later that it was Liam who made the arrangements and took care of everything, refusing to let Farrah or Bruce have to worry about any of it. He covered it all, the casket, the service, the beautiful marble marker.

He called Karma. Flew her in on the Squirkle corporate jet, met her at the airport, nodding silently when she asked him if it was real and holding her when she collapsed in the jetway, his heart breaking for the woman he'd loved

(loves)

and he let her stay, along with Lauren and Theo, at the Booker family compound, telling his grandfather to - quote - 'go fuck yourself' when he suggested that might not have been the best idea.

Reagan found out later how they had all stepped up. How they had rallied around her, circled the wagons, made arrangements and notifications and, basically, kept the day to day life running.

She found out how her brother and father

(and Duke and, begrudgingly, Shane)

had started quietly digging. Nosing around, working as many of their contacts as they could, trying to find out something - anything - on what monster had done this to Amy.

Reagan found all that out later, when she could function again, when she could breathe, when she had two or three drinks in her and the rawest of her nerves were at least slightly numb.

She found out all that. But in 578 days, no one - not Martin or Glenn or Liam or even Reagan - found the monster. There was nothing. No suspects. no evidence, no leads.

The trail wasn't cold. It was non-fucking-existent. For 578 days, Reagan had nothing to fight, nothing to kill. She was forced to accept it, forced to believe it was some random fucking thing, that Amy had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which, really, left her with only one conclusion.

It was her. It was all her. Her fault. Her responsibility.

Her karma.

And on day 578, Reagan found out. She wasn't entirely wrong.

The walk from the bar to the cemetery - a walk Reagan has memorized every fucking step of - is never as long as she wants it to be.

It's long enough - just - for her to sober up a little. And that leads to thinking and that leads to remembering where she's going and why. But it's not long enough, not by half, for those thoughts to turn to second thoughts, the kind that could force her to come to her senses and turn around.

So she always ends up getting there, even when she doesn't really want to

(which is always)

and she always ends up there just as her buzz is starting to fade, just as the warmth of the liquor flowing through her - the only thing that gives her the strength to face that fucking rock in the ground - starts to chill.

It isn't that she can't deal with Amy being dead.

(it's not just that.)

It's that fucking rock. It's the patch of grass she sits on. It's knowing that everything she ever knew of Amy - her hands, her skin, her lips, her heart - is buried in a box under that grass and all that dirt, rotting away, slowly dissolving into nothing and what she's left with

(nothing)

is… well… Reagan doesn't know what the fuck it is.

It's a soul. That's what they call it. But Reagan's seen too much and killed too much and watched too many good people die

(even before Amy, before the best of them)

that she isn't sure she can even believe there is such a thing as a soul.

You try killing demons and vampires and werewolves and trolls

(especially the trolls)

and see if you don't have some doubts about heaven.

Hell? That shit's real.

Reagan's living in it every day and, lately, she's doing it alone.

She hasn't talked to Liam since their night in the storage room, since she supposedly didn't hear him call Karma.

It's not that she's avoiding him

(sending his calls to voicemail, not listening to the voicemail, and deleting his texts isn't avoidance)

but she can't face him - she can barely face herself - after…

The nameless, faceless, couldn't remember them in the morning girls were one thing.

She was drunk. She was in pain. She needed… something - not that she ever got it from those girls - but that's so not the fucking point. There were excuses, there were mitigating circumstances, there was enough alcohol to blind her

(in some cases, literally)

but none of that, not a single fucking bit of it, was true that night. Reagan was stone fucking sober and she knew - she fucking knew - what she was doing.

Betraying Amy.

It wasn't enough that she got her wife killed, no, Reagan had to go and piss on her memory - their memory

(there are no… boyfriends…. around me… right now)

and Reagan just can't deal with Liam telling her that it's OK, that it isn't as bad as she thinks, that she didn't do anything wrong

(which, given that he thinks she's fucked up enough to call in the werewolf ex-wife cavalry, is just so much bullshit)

and she really - really - can't deal with Karma. Which is fine, since she doubts she's ever going to see her again and - believe it or not - that's enough to make her start crying again.

The tears - and the scotch - are in her eyes - so Reagan almost doesn't see her - the figure slumped over Amy's gravestone, until she's practically on top of her.

Later, she'll blame the tears

(and the scotch)

for dulling her edges, for burying her hunter instincts, for the way she fumbles going for the knife tucked inside her jacket, for the way it slips from her fingers and drops to the ground. Reagan takes one staggering step, trying - as best she can - to reach for the blade in the grass and keep her eyes on whoever - whatever - is on her wife's stone.

It's a drunk, probably. A too drunk to make it all the way home asshole who picked the wrong stone to pass out on. The wrong stone on the wrong night in the wrong fucking life -

"Reagan?"

The voice - her voice - is weak and shallow but still unmistakably her.

"Karma?"

The figure - Karma - lurches off the stone and Reagan barely has time to brace herself before the redhead crashes into her, driving them both into the ground and into the faint strip of light from the one street lamp at the cemetery's gates.

It doesn't matter how drunk Reagan still is or isn't. The sight of Karma's face beneath the hood of her jacket sobers her in a hurry.

Karma is a mess of bruises and cuts and slashes and blood and any number of wounds her werewolf constitution should have healed. And then there's her eyes. One is swollen shut - and looking at the other, Reagan thinks that might be a small mercy - the other has clearly been gouged and poked and damn near pried loose and it's amazing that Karma can see at all, much less recognize Reagan in the dark.

"Rea...gan…"

Reagan shifts slightly against the ground, pulling Karma more solidly on top of her, supporting the younger woman's body with her legs as gently as she can

(not gently enough to keep Karma from moaning and trying to say her name again)

and she cradles Karma's head in her hands. "Shhh… don't try to talk, OK. I'm going to call my father and he can bring help -"

Karma ignores her and fumbles briefly in the dark, grasping for and eventually finding Reagan's hand and shoving something into it.

"Found… her…"

Karma's head drops into Reagan's lap and the older woman's hand finds her neck and… yes… there's still a pulse.

(Thank God)

Reagan pulls her cell from her jacket, dialing her father's number and glancing down at her hand, at whatever Karma was so insistent on giving her.

Found her. She said found her. Or ''founder'?

Reagan unfolds the paper as she waits for her father to pick up.

One word.

Who the fuck, Reagan wonders, is 'Silas'?

Styria, Austria

Danny sticks her head in the door without knocking

(and what else is new?)

and clears her throat to get Carmilla's attention. "They're here," she says. "The latest bunch of cast-offs."

Carmilla sighs, dropping her book into her lap. She wasn't reading it - not really - mostly just staring at the same page over and over again, trying her level best not to fixate on the fact that Laura and LaF were at least an hour overdue for check in, ignoring that Perry has spent most of that hour in and out of the room in some kind of stress-induced cleaning binge, and trying not to think of the impending arrival of the 'cast-offs'.

"Can't we come up with something better to call them?" she asks. 'Cast-offs' has always made her think of some poor, street urchin French children, orphaned by the revolution, yet constantly upbeat enough to sing all about their hardships.

(She really needs to update Laura's Netflix queue. Dr. Who was bad enough. The movie musicals have got to go.)

Danny shrugs as she steps fully into the room. "LaF suggested calling them 'cannon fodder'."

Carmilla arches an eyebrow, almost afraid to ask. "Cannon fodder?"

Danny nods, settling down on the edge of Laura's bed. "Yup. Because they're convinced that all these girls will, eventually, go all pod-people and obey the Dean's telepathic orders to attack us, forcing us to use up all our defenses and weapons and leave us ripe for the Dean's plucking."

Yup. Carmilla wishes she hadn't asked.

"Remind me again why I haven't locked them away in some lab somewhere and lost the key?"

"Laura," Danny says.

Right. The reason Carmilla does anything and everything at least according to everyone else.

"How many do we have this time?" she asks Danny as she stands, tugging her shirt down, trying in vain to smooth out the wrinkles and look somewhat leader like.

(As if that would ever happen.)

"Just four," Danny says, "The last round of disappearances was double that so it seems like the Dean might be getting somewhat better at selecting girls that meet her requirements."

Whatever the hell those are.

Carmilla takes a deep breath - more for psychological effect than actual need - and steels herself. "OK," she says, "bring them in."

This is the part of this that she hates

(yeah, like it's the only part)

and it's the part that Laura is so much better at. She can actually look at the girls, can actually remember their names, can actually talk to them and listen to them and appreciate that they're real people and not just failed experiments that the Dean has rejected and sent back out into the world with no memory beyond their own names.

Laura sees them, sees them as people, not just as so much…

cannon fodder.

That's it. As soon as they get back, LaF is getting locked up in some cozy little lab with all the residual brain goop and parasite remnants they've got and they're not coming out until Carmilla stops thinking like them.

And maybe not even then.

Danny leads the girls into the room like a parade of beauty queens making their way across the stage posing and preening for Carmilla's approval.

She barely hears their names, barely registers them as individuals

Betty Spielsdorf

They're all just one more blonde, one more brunette, one more frizzy haired young thing who probably didn't have much more of a brain before the Dean took her than she does now.

Sarah Jane

Carmilla actually feels bad - a little - about it. She knows none of these girls asked for this, none of them volunteered for the Dean to do… whatever the hell she did to them.

Elsie

But there are so many better things Carmilla - and Danny and Laura and even the ginger twins - could be doing right now, so many different and more important and far more effective ways they could be fighting against the Dean. Ways that involve so much less glad-handing and polite smiling and phony upbeat optimism and much more killing.

Danny goes silent in the doorway and Carmilla glances over, smiling as best she can at the three girls standing in her dorm room.

"I thought you said there were four?"

Danny nods. "Sorry," she says. "It seems cast-off number four has gotten a little distracted by Perry… hang on."

The tall redhead disappears down the hall, leaving Carmilla alone with the three girls and a seemingly unbreakable silence that feels not unlike being trapped underground in a coffin with no one to talk to but yourself.

The door pops back open and cast-off number four comes in, Danny right on her heels, but Carmilla doesn't hear Danny's apologies or mutterings about Perry and her disinfectant and just what the hell is she cleaning all the time.

Carmilla doesn't hear anything - or see anything - other than number four. Because, really, she's pretty sure that she's lost her mind

(and maybe she really is locked in coffin somewhere and this is her mind slowly dying without blood)

because there's no way, no fucking way at all, that number four is standing there or - more accurately - that she's standing there, because no, not possible, not even a little fucking bit.

"You…"

It's all Carmilla can get out and she knows - even without looking - that Danny is staring at her and starting to freak because that's Danny's biggest worry, that Carmilla will snap and lose her mind and start doing, you know, vampire shit, when Laura isn't around to reign her in.

But Carmilla doesn't't care. Because right now? She knows they have a much bigger problem.

Number fucking four. The last cast-off, the one who doesn't seem to register, even a little bit, the sheer panic - the absofuckinglute terror - on Carmilla's face as she steps forward, smiling and somewhat shy and holds out a hand.

"Hi," she says. "I'm Amy."