AN: And so instead of revising, the young Caitlin decides to write fanfiction instead to prove her idiotic prowess
"What you're experiencing is completely natural. Hallucinations often occur when someone is in between dreaming and sleeping. In fact, dreams are just big old hallucinations, as you fall asleep you become less conscious, thus your mind is reverting to the subconscious. Psychosis is in fact a state when someone is in a deep state of their subconscious for a prolonged period of time," Dr Amakata explained.
"Well, how come I've never really experienced these hallucinations before?" Rin replied.
"Well you're in a new and stressful environment, that's sure to stimulate some anxiety and stress in the brain which might cause these hallucinations at night time. Often, I would write these hallucinations of completely but it sounds like they're all very similar. I think that the hallucination in and of itself is of some significance to you."
"Well, yeah, it might be but when would I have heard these things before?" Rin asked.
"Why don't you mull it over for tomorrow's session, since we shouldn't be having this one anyway, it's just an emergency chat."
"Okay," Rin said. Dr Amakata smiled then walked out of the yellow waiting room and got set up in the counselling room. The plastic white clock in the corner of the room hung up high, ticking in omniscience, 7 AM. As per usual, the wretched medical stench was driving Rin mad. He decided to leave and get some breakfast.
Haruka was sat at his usual seat with a nurse by his side, Rin observed this as he got a fruit salad for his breakfast that particular morning. Other than that , there wasn't really any change to the layout of the canteen, except that Ai was sitting with Nagisa and Rei again. And Rin didn't really know where to sit.
He decided he would go and eat in the common room. As he settled down in the room, he realised that he hadn't actually set foot in the room until he had first arrived but then he remembered that he'd only been there for three and a half days. It was Tuesday? Or was it Wednesday? It was so difficult to keep track of time.
"Eating alone?" a semi-familiar voice could be heard above the tick-tock interrupted silence. Rin turned to find that Makoto, the volunteer, had sat next to him.
"Oh, yeah, I haven't really met anyone that's good for sitting with, yet," he replied.
"Really? Rei and Nagisa are usually really friendly."
"Oh, they were but I don't think Ai was that comfortable with having a new person on the table so I never really felt comfortable around them."
That and they're so obviously in love with each other that it's kind of awkward to be there unless you're socially oblivious. Maybe I should ask Haruka to sit with me, he's socially oblivious and it would be kind of funny to see how much of a game changer that would be.
Rin shook his head slightly to shake off such crazy thoughts. And so he ended up having a conversation with Makoto about how he was progressing in the ward and it was nice and Rin then went back to the canteen to put his fruit pot and his plastic spoon in the bin.
When he got back to the canteen, Haruka's table was now only occupied by the nurse who had been sat with Haruka. Her hands seemed to be gripping her scalp as though she wear about to rip her own her out and scream bloody murder. Well, I guess the whole "getting Haruka to eat something other than a solid bar of nutrients" didn't go so well.
It was about 2pm when Haruka just randomly opened Rin's door and sat on his bed. Rin, being the diplomat he was, set his book aside and sat up. He didn't speak though because speaking was far too logical and make communication much harder and much simpler (in different ways).
It was kind of odd because about two minutes later he realised they were just kind of sat there not really doing anything and he kind of felt like he needed to talk but it had been like two minutes so talking now would just be awkward and kind of weird so he didn't know what to do.
"Do you hear them?" Haruka asked, turning to Rin.
"Hear who?" Rin leaned forward slightly, straightening his back.
"I suppose you don't. Nobody does."
"Okay," he sighed and flopped back towards his pillow.
"You don't have bedsheets," Haruka stated.
"I know, they thought I would hang myself with them."
"Would you?"
"If this hospital was empty, yes."
"Why?" Haruka asked, his dull stone-like gaze moving from the wall to Rin. He took a deep breath and sat up.
"I haven't got a reason to live, I guess."
"And that's a reason to die?"
"Yes. I have no reason to be here so all I'm doing is eating food that someone else is starving for, sleeping in a bed that someone is probably actually desperate for, causing people problems, breathing oxygen other people deserve and turning it into carbon dioxide which scientists say is killing planet Earth. And I'm wasting all of this shit for no grand reason. No one's life is going to be saved, no cures will be found, nothing's going to change. I have no right to breathe, but for as long as I'm living, I'll be doing it automatically."
"They say that, when you die, your body decomposes and to do that it takes oxygen and also converts it into carbon dioxide. So essentially, you'd still be taking oxygen away and killing the Earth but people would… miss you," Haruka replied.
"Who would miss me? I've made my family's lives a nightmare, they were somewhere between being relieved and panicked when I was admitted. Relieved because they wouldn't have to deal with me anymore, panicked because of how much they've got to pay to keep me in here. And it's still one of the cheapest places."
"Why didn't they take you to a free clinic, then?"
"Did you know it's actually really hard to get into one of those? I was going to go to one originally but they're mostly completely full or have really specific regulations."
"I didn't know. Do you think your family wouldn't miss you?"
"I- I guess they would but they would be better off without me. A lot of people get used to it, someone being dead. They stop, caring, or they stop talking about it and everything in the world simmers down and then there's no real proof they ever existed, except the ashes on the shelf, or the tombstone in the graveyard. And eventually, ivy will climb up the tombstone because after someone's been dead for a while, no one gives a shit. No one visits their grave it just gets messy and overgrown and crazy. But it's sort of like living anyway, because the older you get the less people give a fuck about you. The only difference is, when you're living you get wrinkles and you stink and you know it and you can see people doing things you like to do but you're getting brittle and you can't do them. When you're dead, you don't see that. When you're dead, there's nothing else. There's no joy or fun in being dead but there's no pain either. And sometimes, when you know there isn't any joy or fun for you, only the pain, the nothingness doesn't seem so bad, it seems nice, calming."
"Thank you."
"Thank you?"
"My parents died when I was younger, so it's better to think that they're death meant that they wouldn't get old and ignored," Haruka explained.
"That's not really true for everyone, just people like me. I mean you would have visited your parents, right?"
"No. No, I wouldn't have," Haruka replied, almost coldly. Rin wasn't really sure why but he put his arm around the schizophrenic and decided that that had been enough words for one day.
The common room wasn't as frightening as Rin had originally anticipated it to be. He sat at a table read a book, heard a verbal fight break out, took a deep breath, choked on the disgusting clinical smell, heard this horrible sound like rusty metallic wheels clattering along a linoleum floor, heard the doctors break the fighters up, heard the awkward silence.
"Well that was a train wreck," Nagisa commented jovially. Rei laughed and all went back to normal but Rin couldn't focus on his book anymore.
"What're you reading?" Rin looked up and noticed that Makoto had taken a seat next to him. It was refreshing to talk to sane people.
"The Picture of Dorian Gray, it was like the only book I could find, so I thought I'd read it," he said.
"Really, like there's fifty books here," Makoto replied.
"Yeah, but they all seemed boring, or too girly."
"So what do you think of Dorian Gray?"
"Well, it's good, I mean, it's interesting." It's also full of homoerotic subtext, holy shit.
"Yeah, I've read it before, actually. What chapter are you on?"
"Chapter 3?" Rin replied noncommittally, he was a little lost with the old fashioned prose. The truth was he was too embarrassed to take a romance book like Twilight or The Notebook.
"Oh, so your still early into the book?" Makoto asked. Rin nodded. Across the room a girl was clutching a battered red book, which was not from the library. It had Hanako's named etched at the bottom.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Go ahead."
"I heard at group therapy that a lot of people seem to like this girl called "Hanako" but I don't know why and apparently she's leaving soon and I'm kind of curious about it all," before Makoto could reply, Haruka had appeared out of nowhere and sat next to Rin.
"Hello, Haruka," Makoto said, in a perfectly friendly tone. As though Rin's previous question had evaporated into thin air.
"Hi," Haruka replied with nothing to his voice as Rin often noticed.
"So, how have your sessions been going?"
"I don't need them," Haruka replied.
"Yes, but the doctors say that if you co-operate you can go swimming."
"I don't need the permission of mad men," Haruka replied. Underneath the table, he searched for Rin's hand, when he found it he laced his fingers around Rin's, whose hand stiffened. Above the table nothing had changed except for Rin's face which had started to get red and blushy.
"Are you alright?" Makoto asked Rin.
"Uh, yeah, it's just all the homoerotic subtext is kind of embarrassing," Rin half-lied. Haruka looked at Rin feeling something in his chest when he saw his pretty red face. He jolted away from the table, letting go of Rin's hand and running off toward the emergency room.
"I guess he doesn't like homoerotic subtext?" Rin joked awkwardly.
"So sorry, I have to go tell the nurses he ran off. It was nice talking to you, Rin," Makoto smiled and patted Rin on the shoulder, and the readhead began blushing like a school girl, again.
"Uh, yeah, cool, see you some time, that would be cool," Rin rambled. His hand felt tingly.
The doctors unanimously decided that since Rin knew his room was soundproofed he couldn't sleep in there at night and that if he told someone he would have to move hospitals. Rin wasn't sure how he felt about this but Dr Amakata said that if they worked together then it wouldn't be long until he could sleep in his own room again. However, Rin took this information with a pinch of salt (and his first Prozac), that didn't mean his bedroom.
"Hey, Haruka," Rin said, "Are you alright? You seemed kind of freaked out in the common room, earlier?"
"Yes, I just thought there was something wrong, inside of me, like a bug," Haruka replied, setting his bed up next to Rin's.
"Well, I guess it's good you were okay."
There was silence between the two of them once the beds had been set up. Lights out would be coming soon. Haruka turned to Rin, with an unplaceable look in his eye.
"Rin, have you ever been in love with anyone?" he asked.
"Well, I don't think so. I think that the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone is that they love you back, so I don't think I've ever been in love with anyone."
"Have you ever loved someone before?" Haruka asked.
"There was this one person but they… I didn't really fall under… they had no interest in me, and I was just being stupid. Maybe I didn't love them, they were kind of a dick."
"What does love feel like?" Haruka whispered back.
"It felt weird, it felt horrible, actually. Romantic love is actually the worst kind of love because unless they love you back it just feels like there's a hole in your heart and it just really sucks," Rin sighed.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Does it feel physical?"
"It's everything, physical, mental, emotional. It makes you sick to your stomach."
"Do you want to die because of that… girl?"
"What girl?" Rin turned to Haru in confusion.
"The girl you said you loved."
"Oh, uh, them? Well I'm not here because of that person, I mean I guess it was an added problem but I don't really think about them a lot. I do think about the trouble it caused me though, I'd say that was a bigger factor in everything that happened."
"Were you… did you love a boy, Rin?"
Rin did not reply, he just decided to pretend that Haru hadn't asked the last question and trued to sleep, despite that god damn clamouring calamity in his head or his ear. Haruka turned on his back and smiled, there were happy memories on the ceiling.
Rin dreamt of sitting in Dr Amakata's little room which was flooding and flooding and the more he tried to talk or yell the higher the water rose. Haruka dreamed of holding hands with Rin and feeling that weird feeling in his chest and coughing out a butterfly and Rin coughing out one too. At least one of those dreams was generically and dream reader friendly.
AN: UGH, this is awkward, it probably won't be out til tuesday actually.
LinkinBizkit97: Thank you! Once again I get told a lot to make sure that your writing makes people ask questions. Think of a lot of this as being like a friendship bracelet, you have lots of separate things, you put them together, and then tie up the loose ends. I was a bit worried I got their relationship a little erong so thank you, again. Also, the part at Rin's bed was actually never going to be a scene but I know how annoying it is when you read a fanfic and the main pairing don't interact very much for a whole chapter, it drives me crazy. I'm glad I added it though, it was actually quite significant. I have been meaning to watch "Girl, Interrupted" for forever, but I can't find it in DVD stores and I don't think we have it on UK Netflix.
ElykaEvelyn: Thank you!
No0onat: Thanks, things like this make my day because I always get a good feeling when I wake up and a fanfic I really like has bene updated. Yep, along with Rin and Haru's developing romance/relationship there's the mytstery of both Haru and Rin's life and how they ended up the way they did, etc etc.
WinterPrayerofTheMoons: Thank you. Sorry it's no longer again, I'm so prissy about pacing.
NanaMatsu: Thank you so much! You're too sweet.