Charlotte woke up after about three hours or so of nothing but nightmares and despair. At first, she hoped that it was all a nightmare; then she noticed the white animal named Kyuubey laying on her bathroom counter. Her chested began throbbing once more when she realised it was all reality. Her stomach hurt hurt as a reminder to her that she needed to clean up the bathroom. Even through despair she felt she must do what she was expected of.
She sat up and reached for the handle of the toilet. She pulled it down, trying not to watch her vomit as it went down the drain. She felt utterly disgusting; that was the cake that she and her mother had shared. That was the last cake her mother got to eat and she just vomited it up and gotten rid of it as if it was any other cake.
She hick-upped as she forced herself off of the bathroom tile. She stumbled, the world spinning. She put her hand on the wall and stared at the ground for a moment. "I need to go to the hospital... I'm sure I can't just ignore what happened." she said, her voice coming out low and hoarse.
Kyuubey sat up and shook his head a small bit before warning her, "Don't forget your Soul Gem. It would be consequential if you did." He jumped off of the counter and over to the tub. He scooped the gem up with his large tail. He climbed up to her shoulder and handed it to her.
Charlotte looked at the gem. It was very smokey now, with only small bits of bright pink swirling around the orb. She had wondered for a moment what it's dimming like meant but with everything else going on, she decided that she didn't really want to know. She took the gem into her hand and pushed into the depths of her pocket. She let out a deep breath before looking down at her clothes. She decided after a few moments that she didn't care that she was wearing the same thing as yesterday, all the way down to her favourite black scarf with orange poke-a-dots.
Charlotte blinked back tears that were beginning to form again, even though she didn't have anyone that she needed to be strong for. She took in a deep, painful breath. She needed to get going. She slowly trudged to the front door and slipped her small feet into her brown loafers. She hated that she was having to go back to the death place of her mother, but it was an inevitable fate. If she ignored it, her mother would be cremated and never thought of again; rather then buried with a tombstone that would be therefor more then one-hundred years. She had tried her best to get all of her mother's burial plans finished beforehand, but she was always worried that something would go wrong and she would never see her mother's grave like she had planned.
Charlotte let out a sigh as she opened the wooden door, which felt heavier then she remembered. Her eyes dropped to the ground as soon as she left the comfort of her house. She felt she didn't deserve to look at the other faces of the world. They were all living, unlike her mother. The hard reality was finally setting it. It hurt worse then yesterday, but she had no means of coping today. She hadn't eaten, so there was no purging. She didn't have the money to handle it anymore. She tried to push the painful thoughts out of her head, though it wasn't working the way she longed for.
She looked up when she recognised the familiar pavement of the hospital sidewalk. A knot twisted in her chest, causing a small wave of nausea wash over her. This was still too painful to look at.
She walked into the doors of the hospital and heard the usual voices that greeted her; both ladies at the desk were expressing their upmost regrets. She walked up to the nurse's station and without a hint of emotion in her voice, she asked, "Do you know where I have to go from here?"
"Hold on, hun." One of the nurses, the blond one, reached over to one of the many grey filling cabinets and opened one of the drawers. She started shuffling through some paperwork, then handed Charlotte a few. "These papers will go to the funeral home or crematorium that you are planning for you mother." She reached into the cabinet again, pulling out a few more forms, "We need you to sign these papers to release her medical records and her body to said funeral home or crematorium."
Charlotte glanced down at the papers and fought back tears. These papers were like the symbolisation that her mother was definitely dead. She looked at the words on the papers, none of them registering. After she decided that pages were definitely Japanese, she asked the nurses, "May I take these with me? I'll bring them back once I'm done reading through them and filling them out."
The brunette nurse nodded, then started back to their own business.
Charlotte scooped the papers off of the counter and started the path for the waiting room. She caught herself midstep, her thoughts causing her to shake her head. She had somewhere that she felt she needed to see one last time. She kept the documents at hand as she approached the elevator. She pressed the up button to call the elevator, it's fondness something that she knew that she wasn't going to miss. When the elevator chimed to make note of it's arrival, there was no one inside. Even though Charlotte felt it would oddly be more comfortable with another person with her, being alone was probably what was best for her right now.
She pressed her floor number and closed her eyes as the elevator doors shut and started ascending to the floor that once was the home of her mother. She hated how everything has become 'once was'. Now that her mother was dead, everything felt foreign, almost numb. She bit the inside of her cheek when the elevator dinged to make her aware of her surrounds. She opened her eyes and stepped out of the elevator. She turned to her left and walked the white hall. One or two loitering nurses told her that her mother had passed, but she simply ignored their words. She wasn't sure of what she was here for, but she knew that she didn't expect the presence of her mother.
She walked up to the room that once was her mother's. It's strong smell of disinfectant made the room have a completely different atmosphere. The bed had been made flawlessly. The flowers cleaned away; the side table they rested on cleaned of her mother's books as well. She wondered for a moment what they had done with those books, but her thoughts were swept away by the realisation that this room was very depersonalised.
Charlotte stepped into the room and held her hands to her chest, ignoring the fact that the papers she was holding were getting wrinkled and battered. She felt a strong twist in her chest that almost felt like the pair from when Kyuubey thing had created her Soul Gem. She felt like that whole part of life was surreal. It hadn't even been a whole day and nothing special had really come from becoming a magical girl. Well, other then getting to have cheesecake with her mother, but then... She let out a sigh, hoping that would take a small bit of the pressure off of her chest.
Charlotte reached into her pocket and pulled out the Soul Gem. It was tainted dark purple now. It didn't even have the spindle of pink like it had had in the bathroom, just before her leaving. She didn't feel the urgency of it and jammed it back into her pocket. Her chest twisted in pain again and she let out a small wasn't like any other pain she had experienced; but she had a lot of things happening right now. She wrote it off yet again.
Charlotte looked at the papers and skimmed through the lines, none of the words really sticking in her mind. She reached into her pocket and took out a pen. She didn't quite recall how she obtained the pen but at least it was there. She filled in the date and her name where they asked, answering whatever questions they had to ask. She did this all with a robotic hand, none of it even feeling real. She felt like this was a dream that she would eventually wake from. After filling out the forms the way they desired, she let out a sigh. She took another good look at the room before reluctantly leaving.
She rode the elevator back down to the lobby; where she took the papers straight back to the nurses at the front desk. "Here I finished filling them out. I hope I did everything properly." she stated, her voice more hollow sounding to herself then it was before. She also felt a wave of fatigue that just danced around her as she started to leave the building. She got about 30 feet from the front door, right at the foyer where bikes are kept before needing to sit down. Exhaustion took over her, so much so that even getting on the ground to rest seemed like too much. Somewhere along the way, that ferret-like creature, Kyuubey, had disappeared. She had no idea when exactly that happened, she had been too busy walking those halls and seeing her mother's room one last time.
She leaned against the wall after getting off of her feet and just let out another sigh. Her chest was aching so painfully and breathing felt hard. She was right here by the hospital but when she tried to yell it came out as nothing more then a small squeak and there was no way she was going to get up. Maybe she was dying too. She used all of her left over strength to pull out her soul gem and set it down next to her. She watched the dark purple colours swirl around inside the soul gem. It looked so sad, Charlotte felt like crying for it. Her chest began throbbing, the pain almost feeling like a spear or a bullet running through the centre of her chest. She let out a yell that came as nothing more then a small "Ah!" noise. She gripped her chest tightly and curled up into a ball.
As she squirmed in agony, all she could think of was how she was going to go to heaven and have sweets and, if she is lucky, cheese with her mother again. Her mother's favourite food ever was cheese. Even though she bought pastries and candies, she adored cheese. Cheese was something her mother bought the way normal people would buy cakes. She treated cheese like the specialty item that they were only allowed to have for a celebration. Charlotte had forgotten that.
The last straw for Charlotte was remembering her mother's simple, but strong love for cheese. Even if she ever ate cheese again, it was never going to be the same without her mother by her side. Her heart twisted in sheer agony and she clawed at the ground, causing the tips of her fingers to become skinned and bloody. She curled up and screamed as much as she could. She had no idea what was happening to her. She caught a glance at her soul gem while she was curling up and noticed the cracks that were appearing, leaking what seemed to be purple smoke or something like that. Charlotte could only catch a glance before she was rendered immobile. She felt a sudden release of the pain. Her chest stopped aching and the agony suddenly stopped. She still felt all the sadness and despair of loosing her mother, but all of that physical agony was gone. But, the feeling of being immobile was still lingering.
The stress of all that she had just gone through took over her, her consciousness fading. As she fell into a deep sleep, she feared that she was dying. Even though she also felt like dying would make her able to see her mother once again, she still feared the thought of dying. Before she could argue her point for wanting to stay alive, a last wave of exhaustion washed over her and she was simply unable to continue being conscious...
