The Con by Vespertine
21
Disclaimer: Disclaimed.
A/N: Inspired by ‘The Con’ by ‘Tegan and Sara’. This is going to be a rather dark and angsty story so be warned, though I do plan to toss in some fluff and humor along the way.
Reviews would be most loved and flames for my mallows!
Enjoy!
xXx The Con xXx
21
"The only thing worse than a loser is someone who won't admit he played badly."
Micky Rosa-21
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At this moment, the world had never seen a more miserable person than Kagome Higurashi, and yet miserable didn’t seem strong enough a word. How could anyone sum up the feelings that suffocated her in one word? As emo-kid-clichéd as it was, she sat in a small, sparse, room writing in her journal about how her life was spiraling downward into a dark abyss. Before her trips through the well she had never known such despair. It was like depression was something of legend and myth and such dreadful feelings could never possibly creep into her life and yet here she was…
She wondered how anyone could ever recover from these feelings; claw their way to freedom and breathe the sweet, fresh, air of happiness…of normality. She especially wondered how anyone could get better in a place like this; where all the walls were dismal shades of gray and “soothing” hues of MRE brown and green. Just thinking about the cheerless colors made her sink further into the darkness. A lot of things about this place made her sink further into the shadows of her despondency. A knock on the wall outside her room roused her from her thoughts, but then she was distracted by thoughts of how sad it was that she wasn’t even allowed a door for someone to knock on before a soft feminine voice called her back to reality again. Why was it so hard to focus anymore?
“Kagome, it’s time for group. If you don’t come the doctor will think you don’t want to get better and keep you here.” Kagome glared hard at her journal, begging it to get her out of this, then sighed and followed the nurse in the faded navy scrubs to a place more depressing than her empty, gray room.
She entered the room and slipped into the only empty hard, cold, plastic chair available and surreptitiously glanced at the other people in the circle of chairs. A lot of them were rocking back and forth, some looked half asleep, and two were snapping rubber bands repeatedly against their wrists. The only thing they all had in common was that they all looked miserable…like her. A man in a gray suit entered the room and passed out a paper to everyone and handed them a crayon to fill it out with. She hated that the only writing utensils allowed were the same terrible crayons that kids get with their menu at restaurants. Was a pencil really so dangerous? She noticed someone digging their crayon into their thigh, breaking it in three pieces.
‘On second thought, pencils seem more dangerous now…’ She thought as she eyed the person with the broken crayon like she would attack her at any moment.
“Now then,” the man in the suit spoke in a calm friendly voice “please fill these out and then we will go around and share how we all came to be here and what we hope to accomplish while we are here.” The room was soon filled with the crinkling of paper and scribbling of crayons. When the last person turned in their paper the man in the suit called for silence.
“All right everyone, let’s begin sharing. Hmmm, let’s see…Kagome Higurashi, this is your first time joining us, why don’t you tell us how you got here and what you hope to accomplish while you’re here. No pressure, we’re all friends here. Take your time and we will listen.” How did she come here? Suddenly she was bombarded by memories of that day…
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*Her body hurt all over from the hundreds of failed attempts to travel back to the past. She couldn’t count the number of nights she spent crying at the bottom of the well that no longer hummed with magic. Despite the hopelessness of the situation, she was determined to find her way back…even if it killed her. The anguish she felt was unbearable and she knew it wouldn’t go away until the well took her back to her other life. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep, and she couldn’t function.
Her mother had tried to force her to eat but to no avail and so she demanded Kagome at least take a shower to scrub the dirt from the floor of the well off of her body. Her hair dripped cold water on the floor and her clothes as she walked down the hall on her way to the well house. She was almost to the stairs when she heard shouting from her mother’s room and paused midstride. She crept over to the door and listened in on the conversation.
“Father, it will only make things worse if we destroy the well house or move her or all of us away! I can’t lose her like I lost her father!”
“Be sensible! If we move away to my brother’s shrine she will be so far away that she will forget all about this nonsense and return to her normal self! No more demons, no more wells, no more danger, no more Inuyasha!” Kagome was filled with rage. How dare they speak about her behind her back; try to take her away from her destiny! Her friends needed her, Inuyasha needed her! She burst into the room, screaming.
“How dare you! I’ll never leave them behind! You can’t make me! I’d rather die!” She started tossing things about the room until she found a beautiful but deadly sharp hairpin and dragged it down her left arm.
“Now I can be with them!” She was laughing hysterically now. “They’re surely dead by now! I’d be dead with them if Inuyasha hadn’t thrown me down the well during the battle! Naraku would have killed me too! We’re all dead! We’re all dead! We Are All DEAD!”
Her mother tried to restrain her while her grandfather rushed to call the police. She thrashed in her mother’s arms and managed to escape twice when she elbowed her in the nose and stomach. They were still rolling around on the floor when the police rushed in. One of the officers held her to the ground and cuffed her while the other helped her mother up and to the awaiting ambulance. She was escorted to the hospital to be treated for her injuries and three hours later she was transferred to a psych ward.
For the first week she tried to end her life any way she could; ripping the shiny black film out of the VHS tapes in the wreck room and tying it around her neck as tight as she could, ripping the underwire out of her bra to cut, and even drowning herself in the toilet during the nurses shift change. After that she just laid in her bed all day and all night, starving herself, wallowing in her misery. The doctors soon put an end to that and weeks later she finally started participating in one-on-one counseling, and that is where she got her Mead Journal. She hated the awful black and white print on the front that was so busy it made her worry her eyes would bleed every time she looked at it. Eventually she colored in the white spots with a black crayon and that made it more bearable.
The journal sat tauntingly on her desk for a week before she gave in and decided to write in it and she found it actually helped. The doctors didn’t believe her when she said she’d traveled into the past and she was beginning to think that maybe she hadn’t so she hoped that writing in the journal would help her remember. Soon she was writing in it a few times a day. Writing dark, depressing haikus and talking about her feelings. She found it was a great way to pass the time and an even better way to convince the doctors she was closer to ready to get out of that nightmare of a place.
She had to get back to the well. She had to see…had to see if they were really dead. She was going to con her way out of there.*
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“Kagome? Kagome? Kagome, are you alright?” The man in the suit asked. Kagome shook her head and looked around, lost.
“Huh? Oh…yes, I’m fine.” She rubbed the dark, raised scar on her arm absentmindedly. “I…I think I’m not ready to talk about it yet.” She admitted. The man in the suit smiled at her kindly.
“That’s just fine Kagome. We have all the time in the world. We’ll be here to listen when you’re ready.” He reassured. “Alright then…Umeko, why don’t you give it a try; tell us how you came to be here and what you hope to accomplish while you’re here.” The sounds in the room faded away as she berated herself for not being strong enough to tell. The doctors will know she’s still struggling now and she’ll have to work so much harder to fake normalcy to get out of this dump. She took a calming breath and steeled herself for what she was about to do. She raised her hand and waited to be called on.
“I changed my mind. I think I was just nervous about going first. I’d like to get this off my chest and put it behind me. It all started on my fifteenth birthday…”