#for REPLYING to all my rambling and acting like I'm not banging the same trope over and over and over

[dee-brief]

How to be a terrible friend in a few easy steps: 1) Plan an angst-riddled fic for your friend’s birthday. 2) Get so flipping busy in life that said fic remains only 30% done and chilling on your computer as it slowly but surely becomes months after said friend’s actual birthday. 3) Ignore the really, really, really cool prompt fic you got graciously handed because you know you need to finish the birthday fic first before you can start on abovementioned really, really, really cool prompt fic. 4) Finally decide to take your own birthday as an excuse to ignore some RL things to finish said birthday fic. 5) Don’t actually even finish the fic on your birthday but take almost three weeks after it to ignore RL things to write. [5.5) Take so long the person you’re writing fic for actually writes YOU fic in the interim >__<]) Don’t write the birthday fic. Or the prompt fic. Instead, write snippets of an AU nobody but you knows about and that nobody cares about or wants to see.

[blows a streamer] Happy birthday, Sarah! At this point, it’s more an early-ish birthday present for next year than a very belated birthday present for this year. I swear, your actual birthday fic will be written. Someday.

Honestly, even if Camille hadn’t been around the moment Kirsten’s buzzer went off – obnoxious orange with a huge Feed Me! sticker on it, because ‘why not?’ was Camille’s motto – she would have known it was one of those days Kirsten was in an exceptionally bad mood, doing all in her power to contradict all the literature that stated her people were kind, empathetic beings. Whoever had written that literature obviously had one hell of a marketing degree: they knew to leave out the part that her people also embodied the term “hangry” like nobody else in the known universe.

“Are you seriously not going to talk to me because I took out the book you wanted from the library?” Kirsten shoved the buzzer back into her bag and whirled around, a wall of blonde hair and icy silence. “You know we’re roommates, right? You know the book will therefore be in your room for the next two weeks, right? Does it really matter whose name it’s under?” Kirsten continued to march. Camille continued to stride behind her, trying to resist rolling her eyes and throwing her hands up in exasperation so she didn’t walk into anything or anybody as they ploughed down the hallways. “Kirsten…” Would strangling her roommate really be such a bad thing? There was certainly no shortage of replacement babysitting jobs. Too bad Camille was attached to this irritating, slightly wonky one. “I didn’t do it on purpose! Our PhDs are so similar it was bound to – Oh, sure, let the swing door close in my face. What is this – high school?” She sighed. “Look, I’ll even let you keep it late on my name. I’ll pay the damn fine. Or whatever will make you feel better for me ‘stealing’ the book you need for your literature review.”

This earned her a little glance over the shoulder, but nothing much more. For the love of Dracula rolled in a doormat – why did she like this insufferable blonde, again?

“Afternoon, Kirsten. Camille.” Ayo smiled up from the forms she was filling in, completely oblivious to the fact that Kirsten was acting like a child instead of a mature, put-together twenty-something who just happened to need some food. Camille almost wished she was allowed to act this irrational and moody from skipping a meal. Her childhood would have been damn interesting, if that had been the case. “Feeding time, Kirsten?”

“Yes,” Camille answered empathetically. “Holy hell, yes.”

“Don’t say that rather delightful oxymoron be heard by too many,” Ayo chuckled, flipping through her papers. “You’re in luck; one of yours is open right at this very second.” She scrawled something down. “Bed four.”

Kirsten thanked her shortly and started down the hallway of curtained-off beds. Camille sighed and sank into a waiting chair, pulling out her phone in anticipation of the boredom. But she hadn’t even loaded any of her new emails when Kirsten came striding back. One look at her friend’s face, and Camille straightened from her slouch – she didn’t need to have seen through Kirsten’s eyes to know who was waiting behind the curtain.

“Where’s Ayo? I want somebody else.”

“She walked off. Looked important.” Camille stood hesitantly and put a hand on Kirsten’s arm. “Hey. Talk to me. You seemed fine with him on Monday.”

“That wasn’t this,” Kirsten said, eyebrows furrowed and shoulders tense. “You know what happens when…” She twisted her hands. “I’m with Liam!” she snapped hotly.

Camille took a deep breath so her usual views on Kirsten’s boyfriend would not leave her mouth and make the situation tenser than it actually was. “Last time I checked, feeding off of somebody doesn’t count as cheating.” Kirsten looked at her with big, conflicted eyes, her expression saying what her words could not. “He’s a good guy,” Camille defended. “He would never do – ”

“Of course not. But I… but…”

“I can come with?”

Kirsten pulled a face. “It squicks you out, watching.”

“It’s not the best entertainment ever, no, but if you need me there to… mediate then… Hey, who knows; I might get a front-row seat even if I don’t come. You know flashes tend to happen when you’re stressed.”

“Yeah.” Kirsten cleared her throat, suddenly looking shy. “Yeah. Would you…? I mean…?”

“I’m the best wingwoman ever. And don’t you forget it. Go on. Pale And Ready To Bale is not a good look on you.”

Kirsten gave her a small smile and squeezed her hand, and Camille couldn’t bring herself to feel any irritation or exasperation at having to follow her friend to the fourth curtained-off bed. There was a gap in the curtains, and through it Camille saw the familiar unruly mop of brown curls. The rest of his face was, predictably, buried in his tablet, fingers swiping furiously as he held the screen too close to his face.

“Hell, Goodkin. Hasn’t anybody told the human world about bifocal contact lenses, yet?” Camille said, breezing her way into the cubical.

She laughed, then; not at his flailing jump of surprise, but at the way his face lit up with delight when he saw Camille and Kirsten. She’d thought, in the beginning, that it was just because one had to be somebody who found a very particular genre of things exciting and exhilarating in order to willingly volunteer to be a walking, talking buffet. She still mentally apologised, on occasion, for pegging him as somebody who was joyous to see them just because of what they could give him.

“Ah, hark, the arrival of sweet Melétē  and Mnḗmē.”

The dork probably even pronounced the names of the two muses in the correct Latin. “Does that make you the muse of song? You gonna sing our praises?” she teased back.

“Not after that I’m not: now I’m not amused,” Cameron grinned and then held up his hand for a high five.

Camille glared. “No. That was terrible. You deserve nothing for that crack.”

Cameron’s face fell into a puppydog pout for a moment before he focused on Kirsten. The expression turned so warm, Camille had to glance at the blonde to see what affect it was having on her.

“Evening, Stretch.”

“Technically, for us it’s mid-morning,” she deadpanned.

But Camille could see her resolve to be aloof and cool already cracking under his warmth. Neither Kirsten nor her, already pegged as ice queens by their peers since high school and earning more of said reputation as they mowed through college together, had been able to stand up to the passionate, nerdy genuineness that was Cameron Goodkin. The plan had been to go to the lab the Academy had set up for him and his other human scientists and only do the bare minimum for the study so that Maggie and Turner wouldn’t make their lives hell, making the lives of the humans hell in the process. They had, after all, enough problems to wade through without being the sudden labrats of a feeder who had gone in to have his memories wiped at the end of his year of service and had ended up producing enough notes and theories that they set him up, memories intact, in the unused sub-sub-sub-basement of the Academy.

They hadn’t expected to be wowed by his ‘little human science toys’, or by the theories he was slowly refining about Spirit magic. But the more they listened and watched and let themselves be part of the discoveries he was pioneering, the more they understood why people as ruthless and as dogged as Maggie and Turner had been won over by one scrawny, stubborn human in his mid-twenties.

A scrawny, stubborn human who wore geek Tshirts under his multitude of plaid shirts, Camille was reminded as he removed the plaid monstrosity from one arm. She narrowed her eyes, wondering if she could convince him to take it off all the way so she could bin it – he had a hundred others to replace it with, anyway – but then caught Kirsten’s eye, saw the unspoken message in the gaze, and dutifully turned to face the other way, pretending to be very busy on her phone. She could almost feel Cameron shooting her a curious look; she wasn’t actually allowed to be around when the feeding took place and had therefore never shown up with Kirsten before. But his attention only focused on her for a few moments.

Not that she could blame him – there were all sorts of reasons  a woman with razor-sharp fangs biting you on the arm was a lot more attention-grabbing than the back of somebody seemingly scrolling through Facebook.

She was glad, not for the first time, that slipping into Kirsten’s head naturally meant only that she saw what the blonde was seeing, but didn’t necessarily feel what Kirsten was feeling. It was weird enough having her view suddenly distorted – to suddenly be herself but looking through somebody else’s brain – without having emotions that weren’t hers shoved into her chest. Unfortunately, Cameron’s little machines sometimes had the latter effect. He was getting better at controlling it, but Camille could still remember very, very clearly the first time Kirsten went under and Camille was suddenly not only feeling weakened by Kirsten’s use of Spirit but was also feeling emotions that weren’t hers. They weren’t Kirsten’s, either, and being forced to feel a double whammy of fake emotions still invaded her dreams, sometimes. It had been intense; the foreign emotions had been stronger than her own, drowning out her panic and fear and dislike and making her almost react the same way Kirsten had when Cameron had pulled her out, gasping and disorientated.

It was a good thing weakness had kept her slumped in her chair; she wasn’t sure what anybody would have done if both her and Kirsten had grabbed Cameron roughly and kissed him passionately.

He had dismissed it as magic-science residue the one whole time he’d spoken about it, gently trying to hand Kirsten some of her pride and control back. But one didn’t simply forget. Especially not when the same not-boyfriend person you’d kissed was also under your mouth giving you the blood your entire body craved while he gasped in automatic reaction to the euphoria from your saliva. And, no, Camille couldn’t fault him for that little gasp; she’d been there. She understood.

So, as soon as Kirsten let go, Camille jumped in to be the diversion Kirsten had brought her along to be, calling his attention back to her by whatever means necessary so Kirsten could put her walls back together and pretend it was just another feeding with just another human, and that those not-hers emotions that Camille had also been forced to feel were the only reasons she’d kissed Cameron Goodkin. She diverted even as they both beat a hasty retreat, too fast for him to even get a word in edgeways until they were already closing the curtain.

“See you tomorrow morning! Err… evening?”

Kirsten took a deep breath and shut her eyes. Camille patted her on the shoulder in consolation.

***

Camille missed what happened to start the argument, as her entire concentration was being taken up by Linus excitedly babbling about the new toys they’d installed into the lab and were about to use. It seemed it didn’t matter how many times Camille told him that despite her brief upbringing in the human world, their worlds were now enough apart he was speaking a foreign language to her; Linus would insist on trying to impress her or engage her in the things that were exciting him every time he had a spare moment. Camille didn’t actually mind it, either; Linus was naïve in ways that were dear and amusing, and there was a genuineness and steadfastness to him that Camille felt drawn to. So much so that she’d wondered a few times whether the fact that Linus had made Cameron’s lieutenant even in the deepest dungeon of a vampire college was more telling of the likeness that connected the two scientists than of Linus’ curiosity, passion to pioneer the unknown and geek-streak that ran as wide as the Grand Canyon.

It was, unfortunately, that naivety and that grand chasm that also made him incredibly prone to putting his foot in it. And as much as he was a great guy most of the time, there were also times Camille had to remind herself that a dhampir blow could easily kill a human, so slapping him was not quite the way to go despite what her irritation was telling her.

“Linus,” she tried to interrupt, gritting her teeth to hold in the caustic, acid words she didn’t want to burn him with. “Look, I appreciate the grand tour of the nerd-dom but I – ”

His face disappeared as the now-familiar slight swooping sensation grabbed Camille behind her eyes and pulled. One blink later, and she was staring at Cameron’s face, level with hers for once. And that wasn’t the only difference; the usual spark and excitement were gone from his eyes and face, and he looked tense and wary and a little upset. Camille shook her head in an attempt to break away from Kirsten’s mind, succeeding a split second before Kirsten started yelling, filling Camille in on erupting argument anyway.

“What are you actually doing here?” Kirsten snapped, furiously. “And don’t give me the same old crap you spun Maggie. Why are you here doing this? What’s the outcome, Cameron? What’s the game plan? Or did you really just not outgrow fantasy so much you have to self-insert yourself into escapism like this?”

Linus whispered ouch behind Camille, but Cameron only flinched a little. “My intentions? They’re to make sure you don’t end up like virtually everybody else with your element, Kirsten. They’re to find a way – some way – to stop Spirit turning you insane. A way that doesn’t include dumping all of that darkness and insanity and negative life-force drainage on your bond-mate.”

“Hey, thanks for that bit, by the way,” Camille chirped loudly, hoping to break the intense stare-off. But neither of them looked at her. “The whole Mad Hatter vibe isn’t really my thing, you know? I have no idea about ravens or writing desks.”

“My job is to make sure you and Camille are safe,” Cameron continued, fingers flexing in and out of fists as he stared at Kirsten.

“By ‘keeping me safe’ you mean blocking my magic,” Kirsten accused.

“What? No, I – ”

“That’s what everybody else wanted. One little pill, and I can stop everything from happening to me. I can no longer be a danger to anybody. But I’ll have this thing inside me, forced back, that’s there but that isn’t allowed to breathe. That’s what you want to do to me.”

“Kirsten.” Cameron took a step forward and put his hands on her shoulders. She startled, but, to Camille’s surprise, did not fight her way out of his hold. Not that she would need to fight very hard; at her flinch, Cameron loosened his hold so much his fingers barely brushed against her. “I don’t want to supress your powers, okay? I’m not letting that pill anywhere near you unless it is literally that or your life. And I won’t let that scenario happen.” Kirsten stared at him with wide eyes for a moment before her mouth twisted.

“You do want to take away some of my ability, though. I heard you. You want to make sure I can no longer see ghosts.”

Cameron sighed and scrubbed at his face with one hand. “Cupcake, I…” His eyes searched hers for a long moment. “There’s no evidence the ghosts are real. Only you can see them. It could just be that what you think are real spirits back from the dead are actually just…”

“The start of insanity.” Her voice was cool, brittle and dangerous. “Just because you can’t see them –”

“I know,” Cameron interjected quickly. “I know, Stretch. Maybe it’s because I don’t have your magic. But… I’m not going to take that chance. I’m not going to ignore the possibility that the ghosts aren’t magic but are some sort of way the magic is trying to hurt you.” He was quiet for a long beat. “Even if that means working toward a world where you won’t be able to see your mom again.” She stepped back from his remaining hand on her shoulder, and Cameron let it fall limply to his side. Camille watched them watch each other for a long moment, noting how the whole lab was quiet and waiting. “Are we going to do this?”

Kirsten glanced at Camille, and the brunette gave her her best winning, confident, affectionate smile. “We’re going to do this. But.” She turned and half-glared at Cameron, fierce and unrelenting. “Promise me you will give as much weighting to the theory that the ghosts are real. Promise me you’ll let me try and see the dead instead of erring on the side of caution; promise you’ll take risks where my mom is concerned.”

“Yeah,” Cameron said, and his tone of voice alerted Camille at once to what had happened. “I promise. Of course.”

Kirsten turned and marched briskly toward Camille, pulling up her hair so it wouldn’t get in the way as she walked. Linus slunk off as she approached, and Camille crossed her arms and raised an accusing eyebrow at her best friend.

“What?” Kirsten asked.

“It holds a lot more weight when you’re not compelling the man to make the promise you want him to make,” Camille pointed out. “I mean, are you not usually the one going on at me about trust and shit?”

“I had to be sure,” Kirsten shrugged, but she wasn’t looking at Camille as she said it.

“One day he’ll realise you’re manipulating him. And somehow I don’t think he’ll like it very much.”

“He’ll have to learn to deal,” Kirsten said, stubbornly unrepentant.

Camille rolled her eyes but let it go, flopping in her usual seat for the experiment. To her joy she found the boys had finally listened to her suggestions and bought the good chocolate, and she started on it before Cameron had finished making all the necessary checks.

“That’s for stabilising your blood sugar afterwards,” Cameron said when he caught sight of her. His grin was pure exasperated fondness, and Camille saluted him with the chocolate bar.

“Giving it a head start,” she said around a full mouth, and he rolled his eyes.

“Alright, team, let’s glue her in and see – ”

“Glue her in?” Camille interrupted, incredulous eyebrow raised.

“Well, somebody objected rather loudly to the ‘welding’ metaphor last time,” he said, his gaze on Camille pointed.

“Yeah, well ‘gluing’ sounds just as stupid.”

“Knitting her in?” Linus suggested from his seat.

“What, am I being transformed into an old woman’s blanket?” Kirsten scoffed.

“Pinning her in,” somebody else called from the side of the lab.

“We’ve been over why that one will not happen,” Cameron shot back. “Guys, we’re wasting time arguing about something that doesn’t even – ”

“Folding her in?”

“That one’s not bad. Baking metaphor. What do you think, Cupcake?” A grin twitched at his mouth.

“I will end you,” Kirsten said, very calmly.

“Yeah, she’s still cookie dough. Not done baking yet.” It slipped out before Camille could think; before she could remember that perhaps other people in the room had watched enough vampire cult classics to get the reference. Cameron gave her the oddest look; a mixture of pride at her taking up the referencing torch, confusion about whether it was a relevant reference or just one made because of baking, and a surprised-aching-hope that it did apply to Kirsten; that she wasn’t as eternally unreachable as he thought. “Ugh.” She had to say something to cover up her slip. “Just use the comparatively not-awful one from last week.”

It worked; his face scrunched up as he thought back. “Stitch her in?”

“We’ll use the least gag-worthy while we find something better,” Camille agreed.

Cameron shrugged. “Stitching it is. Alright, everybody. Get ready – on my mark – ”

They’d run the simulation to map Kirsten’s powers and their effects enough times for Camille to no longer be caught off guard by the second-hand emotions and visions. So it didn’t take her long to realise that something was different, this time; something was wrong. It was like each of her eyes was pressed to a different peephole, and she was seeing two separate scenes unfolding while her brain struggled to keep up. On the one hand, there was the usual montage straight from Kirsten’s head into hers – flashes of Kirsten’s life, her father, the sister who had disappeared years ago. But she was also seeing faces that were jarringly familiar to her that Kirsten would never recognise. Kirsten had, after all, come after Camille’s parents had left without a word.

The pain of reliving her abandonment increased and decreased as her mind struggled to deal with two completely different flashbacks at the same time, dialling back enough that it was a distant sort of hurt and then slamming into her as fresh and gutting as it had been on the day they’d left her.

“Camille?”

Kirsten’s memories disappeared abruptly, and suddenly her own were given the spotlight. They slammed into her with such a force she lost whatever small grip on the reality of the lab around her she’d held on to. There were the Moroi, all looking at her scornfully like a piece of trash under a microscope, discussing in loud voices whether she was too tainted to be reformed into a proper guardian, given the way she’d been brought up in the human world. The feeling of being let in only because they were so desperate for dhampir clung to her like a scar that would twinge whenever somebody brushed up against it. There was Theo, pushing her harder and harder despite fatigue and injuries, all under the guise of making her better and stronger and worth something.

“What’s happening to - ?”

“Is that really all you’ve got, Millie? And yet they let you join the fancy place and not me. Maybe it’s cause most of the higher ups are dirty old men. Is that how you – “

“Cami-!”

“Millie, Millie, Millie! Get up!”

There was smoke and fire of younger years; her home was on fire, and she couldn’t get out. And that transformed to her lying on an expanse of nothing, staring at blurry stars, hearing Kirsten screaming for her as she felt herself dying. Kirsten had saved her, hadn’t she? But nobody was coming now. She was dying. She couldn’t breathe.

“What’s wrong with her? What’s happening?”

“Dude, she’s totally not breathing at all. Her heartra – ”

“Don’t! Kirsten, hey! You can’t heal her! You’ll only make it worse when the backlash of using your powers falls on her! Just… let me… Camille. Hey, Pumpkin, hey.”

She hadn’t made everything right. She hadn’t proven herself. And who was going to look after Kirsten, now? Stinger was still out there. The Strigoi were amassing an army. Kirsten hadn’t even declared a magic yet. Damn, everything was fading so fast. What a shitty way to die. What a –

The scene around her jolted and scattered, confused and suddenly not as real as she’d first thought. Something was moving her arms; she could feel them being dragged forward and positioned. But her arms were limp at her sides… weren’t they? Sensation flared into her fingers; a drumming. A steady beat she didn’t really want to focus on, but that was there and attention-grabbing anyway. And then, beneath her other hand, the whoosh of air. Like a breeze passing over the earth, only more deliberate. More like –

Breath. Something was breathing right under her hand.

“Camille, sweetheart, I need you to focus on me, right now. Whatever’s going on in your head isn’t the most important thing right at this moment, okay? You’re not breathing properly and your body’s freaking out and that’s probably making everything feel very, very shitty.”

Yeah. Yeah, it was. She was dying.

“I need you to focus on what’s under your hands, okay? Use those enhanced senses, Supergirl. And then make your breathing and your heart match what you feel. You can do it. Just focus.”

Cameron. The voice was Cameron’s. She knew him. And she’d met him after the night she’d died. Which meant…

A deep inhalation rumbled under her fingers, and she followed its example, gasping in air. It felt magnificent. Cameron continued to murmur things to her – encouragement, instructions, nonsense pet names so she wouldn’t get lost again – and she clung to his wrist with one hand, letting his pulse thrum through her as a metronome for the galloping that was going on inside her chest. Her other hand scrambled for purchase against his chest, slipping up and down the weird-feeling bumps that the buttons on his flannel made.

Eventually, she was able to breathe properly again. Eventually, her heart slowed to just-above-normal; enough to make her head clear. Enough for her to open her eyes. She was on the floor of the lab, and Kirsten and Cameron were both crouched in front of her, looking worried. Kirsten didn’t hug, much, but Camille received an armful of blonde almost as soon as she’d proven she was all there and not dying, and Camille let go of Cameron to hug her back. She had to work incredibly hard to keep the tears from breaking free.

“I’m going to go and call Ayo,” Cameron said, and she saw him stand out of the corner of her eye. “Just relax until she’s here to take a look, okay?”

Camille shut her eyes, tightly, and wished she could shake off the remaining ghosts that clung to her. Something else was niggling at her, though; some inconsistency her over-stimulated brain needed to pick apart and make sense of. There was something off about what had just happened, and she needed to reconcile the truth with the lie her brain had been telling her. But what was the lie?

Cameron returned, and Camille realised at once that he was wearing only a plain Tshirt. His flannel, she realised, had been taken off and thrown over his chair when they’d first come in. So then… why the hell had she been feeling button bumps under her fingers?

“You okay?” Kirsten asked her as she frowned.

“Yeah, I… yeah. Just something I’ll need to figure out, later.”

But later was manic. And then the days wore on, and she forgot, for a long time, about the mystery her adrenalin-fuelled brain had insisted was so important back then.

***

They’d learned how to delay Camille being pulled under into Kirsten’s mind, and she was happily munching on chocolate as she waited and the scientists mapped Kirsten’s brain activity when the noise started and made her instantly alert.

“What is that?” she asked, already getting to her feet.

“What?” Cameron said, distracted.

“That sound. It’s like – ”

Strigoi, Camille thought a moment later, really had to stop trying to emulate bad movies. The three who barrelled their way into the lab did so with a Hollywood flair, and they did so snarling like animals, brandishing crude weapons and – honest to gosh – chuckling evilly. It was so over-the-top that everybody else in the lab stopped to stare for a good few seconds, nonplussed and not yet as afraid as they should be.

And then the battle started.

“Get Kirsten out!” Cameron yelled at Camille, and she didn’t have enough breath to spare to shoot a no duh, genius his way.

She knew she had to pull the Moroi from the experiment and hustle her to safety – but knowing she had to do it and being able to fend off three Strigoi who had weapons when she only had her fists and her feet was an entirely different ballgame. Her training and her desperation and her knowledge of the lab’s layout meant Camille managed to kill one who was just about to turn Kirsten into dinner. But snapping his was mostly a fluke, and Camille knew it. She was no match for two oldish seeming Strigoi, and the best plan was to run the hell out of there. The other two, who had been mostly hanging back, now advanced as a team.

Cameron yelling and throwing something on fire at them was only a momentary distraction; the one nearest him snarled, easily dodged the fireball and then leapt forward in a streak of speed Camille barely followed and Cameron had no chance of tracking. Said Strigoi flipped Cameron’s desk at the human, knocking him clear across the floor and then pinning him beneath the metal.

“Cameron! Cam!” No answer; no movement. Camille’s heart constricted in pain and worry.

At the very least, the loss of Cameron’s computers made Kirsten start to rouse. But it was too little, too late: the most it would do was allow Kirsten to wake up to her best friend being murdered – or worse, turned – just before she got her own blood drained from her body. But to hell with them if they thought they could take Camille down without a damn good fight. They laughed at her as they advanced, deliberately slowly and completely at ease.

She slammed one in the face, breaking her nose, but her partner caught Camille around the throat and squeezed and –

The lab lit up in bright, glaring light. Camille flinched at the sudden brightness, confused brain skittering for the source. Kirsten, mostly awake, hissed and tried to get under cover. The Strigoi burst into flames. With a yelp of surprise, Camille freed herself from the burning, horrifically-shrieking attackers, grabbed Kirsten’s hand, and pulled her out of the wide circle of sunlight. Sunlight. In the lab. Camille looked wildly up and saw a trapdoor in the ceiling had been rolled back to reveal what looked to be a mirror of some sort that was reflecting the sunrise down into the lab. Another look around and she found Cameron, pale and shaky, clinging to a lever in the wall. He was watching the burning Strigoi with wide, horrified eyes, and as Camille watched he slid weakly down the wall and landed in a heap on the floor.

“What the hell?” Kirsten breathed shakily.

It was a sentiment taken up by Maggie and the senior dhampir trainer, Fisher, when they barrelled into the lab a few moments later. Linus babbled a slightly-coherent explanation, and Maggie took charge. Her first point of call was getting Fisher to escort Kirsten far away. Kirsten, however, resisted, eying a still-crumpled, very obviously in pain Cameron on the floor.

“Go, go – I got him,” Camille assured.

Kirsten squeezed her shoulder, once, and then allowed herself to be led off. Camille scampered to Cameron’s side, relieved when she didn’t see or smell much blood.

“Now was not the greatest time to try we wrestling,” Camille joked, hands trying to figure out what was wrong.

Cameron blinked at her, eyes glazed and face uncomprehending. “What wrestling?”

“We? The… the famous wrestling crap on TV where they hit each other with chairs?”

That startled an almost-laugh from Cameron, which led to a groan. “WWE. It’s just my leg, I think,” he added in response to Camille’s prodding.

She made her touch to said leg as gentle as possible, but he still cried out. “Okay, shit, sorry.” He tried to wave her off, still panting in pain. She glanced back to his overturned desk, and then measured the distance from it to where they currently were sitting under the lever. “And yet, you still came all the way over here.”

“Crawled, mostly,” he explained through gritted teeth. “Had to get to the…”

“That was a really nifty thing to put in this lab,” she said, glancing again at the sunlight still streaming in. “Was that your idea?”

“Was inspired by a recent Mummy rewatch.” Camille gave him a blank look. “The Mummy? Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz? ‘No harm ever came from reading a book’?” He shook his head. “Add that to the list of things I have to… introduce… you… to.” He panted the last few words, face now looking a little green.

“Right. Ayo time. Don’t look at me like that; I’m strong af. I can carry your skinny butt up there. I’ll even do it bridal style if it wouldn’t hurt you more.”

He tried to smile for her, but it just came out a grimace. And the facial expressions only got worse from then on – even though Camille tried to be careful as she lifted him to his feet, the movement still jarred him. And as much as most of his weight was on her, hopping about was not a viable option. Luckily, Linus zoomed to their side and took Cameron’s other arm around his shoulders. They had to adjust their positions a few times before they got the right balance that meant Linus wasn’t banging into Cameron’s injured leg as they walked, but eventually they were able to make their slow ascent to Ayo’s capable hands.

Camille was looked over by another medical assistant and then sent to sit with Kirsten, who was actually one of the least badly hurt or drained by the whole fiasco. They were sent back to their dorm early, with Fisher posted outside the door just in case, and so Camille only got one more glance at Cameron that day. Ayo had fitted him with a leg brace and was busy explaining the correct use of crutches to him as Camille passed.

They both made a beeline for the lab as soon as possible the next day, and found that it mostly looked normal, except for some scorch marks on the floor that made an odd shudder run through Camille’s insides. Cameron’s workspace was also visibly stuck back together, with cobbled parts of other computer and technologies to replace bits of his that had obviously not made it out of the battle. Cameron himself looked a little cobbled together, as though held in place only by tenuous sticky tape. He was shockingly pale, and looked smaller than usual with the crutch and the leg brace.

“Didn’t Ayo give you two of those?” Camille frowned, watching him painfully limp around his table, putting too much weight on the injured leg for her liking.

Cameron waved a vague hand. “I can’t have both my hands occupied,” he said, firmly. “I need to get this up and running again.”

Camille and Kirsten shared a glance. “Cameron,” Kirsten started, doubtfully.

“I’m fine,” he snapped, still not looking at them. “Just… I’m fine. I can still do this.”

“Nobody said you couldn’t,” Kirsten tried, gently. “But we just…”

“Hand me that wrench, please?” Cameron said, voice like steel, and the women shared another glance and a sigh.

“Okay,” Camille said, dubiously. “But I’m going to laugh if you fall on your ass in front of me.”

She didn’t get to show that the statement had been all talk; Cameron didn’t fall. But he did get increasingly paler as the morning wore on, and before long his hands were trembling in pain and his leg was barely supporting him even with the help of the crutch. Kirsten and Camille had both retired to a corner of a lab with their library books, content to just be around the people they now considered as friends as they put their lab back together, helping where they could. But when Cameron had to suddenly grip the table to keep from collapsing, Kirsten shut her book with a snap and marched toward him, Camille hot on her heels.

“Okay, you’re done doing this.” She took him by both of the shoulders and supported him upwards while Camille positioned the chair behind him. “Sit.”

“I don’t need to -!”

“Cameron. Please sit.” Kirsten’s voice and demeanour changed, but for once Camille couldn’t find it in herself to call her friend out for using compulsion. “Please, just take a break, okay? And, look; this chair has wheels. You can use it to wheel around the lab.”

“I…” Cameron said, blinking at her.

“It’s more convenient,” Kirsten promised, lowering him into the chair. “You’ll get a lot more done this way.”

“Yeah, okay,” Cameron agreed.

“Or,” Kirsten said, suddenly eager and kneeling before him. “Or – I could heal that for you. I could make it better right now.”

“Wh-? No! No, no, Kirsten!” He yelped a little, involuntarily, as he twisted away from her in alarm. “Stretch!”

“What?” Kirsten folded her arms, face steely. “That’s what I was meant to do with this element, Cameron. That’s what I’m good at.”

“Animals – no mammals yet, I’ll add. And one or two dhampir and Moroi. No humans. There are no records of human healing anywhere. We have no idea what that would do to you or Camille.”

“Oh, man, that’s flimsy bs,” Camille argued. “If she can heal animals, she can do a human.”

“There’s no scientific proof,” Cameron stressed, glaring at both of them.

“Isn’t that what an experiment is meant to bring to light?” Kirsten argued back.

Cameron shook his head, mouth in a tight line. “I’m not leaping that far into the unknown. I will not risk you! Either of you!”

“It’s not a risk – ”

“Everything we do in here is a risk! Everything! Just because we’ve spent hours running all the variables doesn’t mean we’re not wrong,” Cameron snapped. “That’s why we take it further and further by tiny, calculated, acceptable steps. We do not jump all the way to unknown species healing when most of the lab isn’t even paying attention to stats!”

“Cameron,” Kirsten soothed, placing a hand on his arm and leaning a little closer. “I just want – ”

He clapped his hands over his ears and shut his eyes, tight. “You’re not going to compel me to do this!” Camille and Kirsten both drew back a little, surprised that he knew what compulsion looked like. Now that made a few past interactions very interesting. “You don’t…” He sighed, used his hands to scrub through his hair wildly, and then ran them both down his face. “You’re not the first Moroi down here, Kirsten.”

“What?”

“You’re not our first experimentation. Maggie… she always had her eye on you, but her and Turner wanted to advance on you slowly so you didn’t run off. In the meantime, there was a Spirit wielder who was… already in deep. Her name was Marta. She was… the hallucinations had already started and we… we were reckless and went too fast and…”

“And what?” Kirsten asked, very quietly. Camille kneeled before them, her hand on Cameron’s good knee, her heart pounding uncomfortably. She thought she knew where his story was going, and empathy ached through her as old wounds threatened to reopen.

“She turned herself Strigoi,” Cameron said, flatly. “Before we had the failsafe in the lab” – he motioned to the lever – “and before we knew… Turner killed her. Burned her alive.” He stared at them in turn, eyes haunted but shoulders determined. “We don’t take risks that big,” he stressed, but his voice was cracked instead of authoritative.

They let him get back to fixing his lab, after that, but both of them stayed close. Camille, in particular, abandoned the pretence that she was doing work very early and went to help him so he didn’t have to rise from the chair when his attempts to do so ended in him in pain and humiliation, unable to rise. Kirsten eventually had to go to a class, but Camille bunked hers after a silent conversation with her best friend; gazes that promised she’d look out for the human that had inexplicably become special to them.

She brought him coffee, eventually, and then reclined in a non-wheelie seat beside him, bouncing his crutch up and down while he watched.

“If I had stayed in the human world,” she said, suddenly, “If they hadn’t come to find me, I mean. I probably would have studied something to do with brains in a human university.” Where she would have found the money, she didn’t know. But this was a pipe dream; she could forget how much of nothing she’d always had.

“Yeah? Any field you like in particular?”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t old enough to extensively research. I just… what you’re doing here; trying to help by understanding the brain…” She nodded, unable to put it into words. His hand squeezed hers. “What about you, Goodkin? Were brains your first love?”

“Yes and no,” he said, making a hand wobble in the air. “I mean, except for the months I was convinced I was going to build the world’s first time machine, neuro-something has always been my path. My mom’s a neurosurgeon. Brain doctor.”

“But you went for PhD instead of MD,” Camille said.

Cameron sighed, a little. “Medical doctors… Look, I’ve known a lot of them throughout my life. All sorts of specialisations, all sorts of temperaments. And they… They’re great. They do great things. But they’re always looking at problems. They’re always trying to find solutions; the body is just a means to an end, really. I don’t… I didn’t want to see humans like that; to look at what was wrong and try and be the godlike one who fixes it. I just want to… to… wonder at it.”

“You’re such a nerd,” Camille said, fondly, her chest warm.

“No, no, but like…” Cameron leaned forward as much as he could, eyes alight and hands gesturing. “You and Kirsten – you’re not human, but there’s the same wonder in how you work. How your brains work. How your minds by themselves are… beautiful. Camille, I know you didn’t really look at your brain scans but… oh, man, Sweetheart, your mind is magnificent. And then you factor in how it links to Kirsten’s! And on top of all of that is the fact that you are behind all those neurons and that amazingness.” He was grinning at her; still too pale, but suddenly alight from the inside in a way she’d never seen him. “Not just a scientifically beautiful working organ; not just scientifically fascinating but also… there’s a person behind it all. And that person is amazing. You and Kirsten… you’re both so…” He gestured, big, like he had no words.

And Camille stared at that gesture, watching as it made something big and warm start in her chest. Something fragile she didn’t want to be there, because she knew how much it hurt when it was broken and proved untrue. But as much as she tried to stay realistic – as much as she reminded herself that nobody saw her as worth anything more than what she could do for them and be used for – the delight and warmth in Cameron’s eyes demolished her walls. The warmth and aching pleasure of being loved filled her veins and lay there, singing, while she sat silent and gaping and unable to breathe properly in a good way.

“I’m so glad you two were the ones who became part of this,” Cameron said, firmly, and Camille couldn’t give in to the desire to reach across and hug him close.

***

There was something off about the way Cameron was leaning on his crutch when they arrived that day, but he made sure there was no opportunity to ask more than once if he was okay. His leg had been slowly healing – mostly because, Camille was sure, she and Kirsten had been forcing him to take it easy – and he’d even been medically cleared to use only one crutch a few days ago. So the first explanation Camille jumped to was that he’d done too much and injured it more; she and Kirsten shared a few rolled eyes and raised eyebrows, and then they went to work on the pre-testing.

Linus had just finished walking them through the new simulation when Cameron, on view behind them, suddenly staggered and half-fell into his chair. The women exchanged a look, let an oblivious Linus finish, and then marched up to Cameron to find out how they could help.

“We’re going to round up the others and get coffee,” Linus called from the doorway. “Orders?”

Cameron shook his head, and the other two also declined, watching while Linus led the only other occupant of the lab out. Alone with just Cameron and determined to use that to their advantage, they rounded on him.

“You guys should get the caffeine,” Cameron said, not meeting their eyes.

“You should tell us what’s wrong,” Camille countered. “What did you do to your leg?”

“Nothing. It’s not the leg. I’m fine.”

Kirsten gently lifted his hand by the wrist, displaying his shaking hand as evidence. “Cameron.” Her voice was worried but incredibly firm. “What is going-?” Camille saw her suddenly jerk in surprise, saw her eyes widen, and saw her grip on his wrist tighten.

“Kirsten?”

“What – His heart is going crazy,” she gasped, staring at Cameron’s wrist in horror before looking at him in the eyes. “Cameron. Holy crap. Camille, call – ”

“Don’t, don’t. It’s okay.” Camille didn’t bother with his hand; she pressed her palm right above his heart. The organ was beating erratically beneath her palm; too fast with jerks like it was being kicked. One particularly vicious kick had Cameron exhaling shakily, obviously hiding a groan. “It’s fine. I just forgot. I just need a moment.”

“You forgot?” Camille said, incredulous. “What? You forgot to tell your heart how to beat properly? That’s bullshit, Cam. You’re basically dying.”

“I’m not dying,” Cameron sighed. “It’s just heart palpitations. It’s really not as – ” He broke off and flinched, hard, automatically curling in around himself. Camille felt the way his heart had squeezed all wrong, and her own heart started thudding in fear.

“Explain, or we’re hauling you off to Ayo right this very second,” Camille insisted.

“We should be doing that anyway,” Kirsten countered, looking grim.

Cameron sighed, again, and slumped a little in his chair. He looked everywhere but at their faces. “I was born with a bum heart. Took the doctors a few years to figure it out, and when they did it was… bad. Had surgery when I was ten. It fixed most of it, but not all of it. The rest can’t really be fixed by the technology we have right at this point in history, so I instead deal with what I can in ways I can. But the medication is… it has a few crappy side-effects, sometimes. So I…” He paused, struggling for words. “Moroi bites… they don’t only release endorphins.”

He finally glanced at both of them, and then settled on Kirsten. “Your race has evolved to be the very best at extracting blood from a willing donor. That means making it pleasurable for the donor, for starters, but it also means making sure you get the best and easiest… meal.” He pulled a slight face. “So you also release agents and chemicals into blood that regulates your blood donor’s systems; fixes small problems to make the process better. If a Moroi bites a human with cholesterol, for instance, the venom starts to break that blockage down. Because cholesterol interferes with the blood sucking process. Some of those chemicals also regulate heartbeat; do, in a much better way, what heart pills do. The condition, of course, is that when you’re being fed from you can’t have any medication in your system, because it tastes hella nasty, apparently, and we still aren’t sure what human meds do to Moroi.

“Long story short – I wasn’t selected as randomly to be a feeder as people are led to believe. I was the experiment before I was the experimenter. And I’ve gotten into the habit of not taking pills on the days I’m being fed from. But I can’t be in the programme right now because of the stupid leg and this morning was manic and I just… forgot that it wasn’t a feeding day. Forgot to take the pills. And my body’s a little freaked out. That’s all. I’m fine.”

Camille and Kirsten stared at him. Camille’s stomach had dropped somewhere to her knees. “’My heart is going wonky because I didn’t take the medication I need to to keep it okay’ and then in the same breath ‘I’m fine’?” she said, incredulous.

“They’re mild palpitations,” Cameron countered, his expression long-suffering. “It’s…”

His heart kicked again, and he winced, and Camille automatically began rubbing at his chest. Her fingers slid over something bumpy underneath his skin – something metal, from the feel of it – and abruptly she remembered the day months ago when she’d been bewildered by the mystery of the missing buttons on his shirt.

“Does Ayo have meds?”

He shook his head. “She wouldn’t have those.”

“So, what, we’re just supposed to sit around and watch you -?” Kirsten was upset, and Camille couldn’t blame her for being so.

Cameron forced a smile. “It should be over soon.”

“Should,” Camille parroted, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

Kirsten’s expression hardened, and she suddenly lifted the wrist she was still holding to her mouth.

“Whoah -! Kirsten!” Cameron tried to jerk his hand away.

“I’m not going to heal you,” she countered.

“You – I’m going to taste like crap.”

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself – like you usually taste delicious,” Camille snorted.

It worked; he was surprised enough he glanced at her, and in his distraction, Kirsten bit down. Cameron’s heart sped up even more under Camille’s hand, and for a long moment she was terrified they’d made it worse. But then the quiet groan he released was familiar, and with one more jerky beat his heart slipped back into rhythm, calmly, as though there had never been anything wrong. Cameron sagged in the seat, eyes closed as he got his breathing under control, and Camille looked to Kirsten. The blonde’s face was screwed up in disgust, and Camille indicated the door that led to the bathrooms. Kirsten nodded, trying not to gag, and made a beeline.

Camille turned back to watch Cameron watching her go, his face ashamed and miserable. She should get an honorary PhD in distraction, she really should, she thought with a sigh.

“So, hey… I’m feeling bumpy things…?”

He looked at her, thrown, and blinked a few times. “The sternum doesn’t ever heal properly,” he finally said. “So they have to… staple you back together.” She ran another hand over the bumps after wordlessly asking for permission. “Those are the staples.”

“How bad was it?” she whispered, not quite able to meet his eyes. His silence was telling. She laughed shakily, suddenly feeling light-headed in her relief that he was there and breathing and okay. “So… I’m thinking I should start an I Died Once club. You’re my first official member besides myself.”

Cameron grinned slightly at her, and touched his forehead to hers. “How rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist,” he said, quietly.

Kirsten was still gone, and Camille was still shaken, and Cameron was a grounding anchor she’d always insisted she didn’t need but apparently really did. So she unlocked the doors sleep sometimes wrenched open, and looked at him and asked, “Was there anything for you? I mean… did you see…? For me, there was only blackness.”

He cupped her cheek, gently. “You have four minutes after your heart stops to be resuscitated,” he said, quietly. “I think you didn’t see anything because you weren’t gone, yet. Kirsten was already working on bringing you back.” He smiled, gently. “But that’s not the sort of thing you want to waste your whole life worrying about. It defeats the purpose of living.”

“Ha. What is this purpose you speak of?” She was being flippant and purposefully argumentative, but he looked at her seriously and answered, anyway.

“I, for one, am not going anywhere until you and Kirsten are safe.”

***

The world was spinning out of control around them. Camille and Kirsten were gripping hands, tightly, but even that didn’t anchor either of them. Not when Maggie and Turner were a second from ripping into each other physically. Not when Cameron was standing in front of them like a guard with huge eyes.

“It’s just a theory,” Cameron insisted, again, as though Turner would listen this time.

“We cannot just get another dhampir and make them bond-mates with Kirsten,” Maggie snapped. “She’s not the only Moroi we need to protect! This afternoon’s attack proved that! We lost good people, Turner. This is supposed to be a place to keep them safe!”

“We need Spirit to turn Striogi back to Moroi,” Turner argued, smoothly. “If we get their best and make them our best, again…”

“That’s just a theory,” Cameron said, again.

“And I’m ordering us to test it, Goodkin,” Turner said, turning a dangerous look on Cameron. “Either you help me – use your scientific whatever to make it as safe as possible – or I do it myself.”

“Over my dead body are you going to force Kirsten Clark to bring another person back to life,” Maggie snarled.

“Careful, Baptiste. I can make that happen,” Turner warned. “Just grab a random human off the street – somebody nobody will miss. Bring them here. She gets another bond-mate; somebody to share her negative effects with so that she can become stronger. Then we work on turning Strigoi; on a real weapon against the bastards.”

“We don’t know what healing a human will do to her,” Cameron insisted, not backing down from Turner’s advance.

“It’s not a request.”

“That person is going to be in her head,” Cameron argued, actually taking a few steps forward, his anger rising. “In both of their heads! That’s not even mentioning the fact that bringing – ”

Turner’s hand closed over Cameron’s throat. Camille and Kirsten both shouted and started forward, but Turner released Cameron casually and he staggered back, barely-healed leg folding a little underneath him.

“Find a human, or I’ll send people to find one. Help me do this, or I’ll make her do it without your expertise. This is not a negotiation.” And then a sudden gleam entered his eyes. He took out a stake and pointed it very solidly in Camille’s direction. “Or perhaps we don’t need a second bond-mate? Perhaps we just need to strengthen the bond.”

Kirsten and Camille both tried to fight. Maggie was able to wrench Camille out of Turner’s hands. Everybody was yelling and panicked and angry, and it was therefore a moment before Linus yelling Cameron’s name got people’s attention.

Cameron sat on Kirsten’s usual recliner chair, his face pinched. There was a syringe in his arm that clattered to the floor as his fist went numb. Horror nearly sent Camille to her knees.

“If it has to be somebody…” He was panting already as Kirsten reached him.

“What did you do?” she cried.

“Will st…stop my heart.”

“No,” Camille groaned, making her way forward on shaky legs.

“This way… if it works I’ll f…find a way to make it b…better for you two. And if…if it doesn’t…”

He shuddered and groaned and slipped sideways. Camille and Kirsten both caught him. “Don’t let me be one of them,” Cameron whispered. “And don’t… don’t make this your fault. If you see my ghost, k…kick…”

They laid him on his back out of automatic habit more than anything else.

“Cameron? Cameron!”

“Cam? Cammy Cam?” Camille felt herself starting to cry. “No… Cam…”

Kirsten caught her hand in a vice-like grip and met her eyes. “This is going to kick you in the ass,” she whispered.

“I don’t care,” Camille snarled, dashing at her tears and then at Kirsten’s. “You save him.”

Kirsten took their joined hands and put them, Camille’s on the bottom and hers on top, on Cameron’s chest. She took a deep breath, and Camille felt a sensation she’d never experienced before kick to life in her gut.