A/N: Yes...it's been WAY too long. I apologize profusely. I have been super busy, and this story is REALLY hard to write because I never know what I'm going to do with Jack or Camryn...plus Jeremy...you know how it goes I'm sure. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter. I made it nice and long for everyone so they wouldn't be TOO upset with me. I think you'll like what I did here. At least, I hope you'll like it. Enjoy!
The mirror shattered into a million tiny pieces when it connected with the cold white wall. From the other side of the door, Candace winced and turned to Ava. The elder spirit was in the midst of studying her nails and yawning when he pounded on the door with both fists. His offensive language fell on Ava's deaf ears. She turned and opened the door on Jack's tantrum, almost receiving a misplaced beat from one of his fists. Her hand circled around his closed fist and she smiled. He growled and wrenched his hand free from her grasp, turning his back to her. Crossing the length of the room, he pulled back and punched the wall. Ava rolled her eyes and slammed the door behind her.
"Stop being such a baby!" she roared.
Jack whirled around, a deep rooted fear in his eyes. "Why did this happen to me and my family?"
"It's not always about you, Jack. This happened to Camryn because He wanted it to. It needed to happen," Ava stated.
"Oh, so Camryn needed to grow up with out a father and then become a scab?" he spat.
"Yes," was Ava's simple reply. "Look Jack. I know that you saw what Jeremy did. He knows you saw what Jeremy did. And because you broke the rules, you need to make a choice now. You no longer have time to think about this, although I'm positive you were going to make this choice anyway."
He bit his bottom lip and looked at the mess he had created. "Well then I don't need to say it for you, if you can read my mind. Just let me see her."
"I can't do that Jack. Camryn needs to go through this part alone," Ava sighed, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Did Jeremy do this without Candace?" he growled, his hands balled into tight fists at his sides.
"Yes, he did. And if you plan on hitting me, I strongly advise against it. Thomas would have you dropped out of this department faster than you can think about breathing," she stated coolly, guiding him out of the room.
Candace bit her lip as the duo walked by her. "Jack?"
He turned to flash her a small smile. "It's fine. I just have to stand and watch while my daughter has a psychotic drug induced hallucination."
"I had to watch Jeremy go through them," she whispered.
"He had more than one?" Jack inquired.
"I told you Jeremy was no good," she sighed. "Good luck Jack. It's one of the hardest things you have to see."
---
The lights buzzed above her with an irregular whine. Her brain throbbed against her temples as she tried to sit up. It was then that she could feel the suffocating hold of restraints around her ankles and wrists. Tears of frustration and confusion sprang immediately to her eyes as she looked around the grey room. It was empty save for the bed she was strapped to. A familiar overwhelming fatigue clouded her conscience and she began to weep. A heavy wave of defeat crashed down on her spirit. She went limp on the table and let out a loud shriek.
"Angry about getting caught?" a voice asked.
She craned her neck toward the low tenor. "Getting caught doing what?"
"We found your heroin Camryn."
"I don't have any heroin on me. I came here straight from the hospital," she choked.
"They were under your pillow. And Jeremy told us what you said to him. Shame on you Camryn. He's been doing so well this time around."
Her mouth opened and closed as she gasped for breath, a sad little goldfish frantically searching for air. Jeremy had stabbed her in the back, like she had done to so many of her friends before. It was not a feeling she enjoyed and understood why, in the end of it all, she was laying strapped to a cold steel table alone. Jeremy wasn't her friend. He was a friend of the drugs. She squeezed her eyes shut to block her sad tears of betrayal, but they managed to find their way out. A sob coughed its way out of her body. All she could feel was remorse for all the people she had lied to and stolen from, just to get that next fix. She cried because she thought she had really found a friend in Jeremy. The feeling of being a desperate junkie's scapegoat tore through her insides like white hot shards of glass. She turned her head to the edge of the table and threw up until there was no more pain.
"Jeremy lied to you," she croaked.
A soft chuckle escaped the doctor. "Honestly, who can I trust in this place? You're all liars."
"But I'm telling the truth. I have no connections to smuggle heroin in here," she stated, a soft pleading undertone in her words.
"Camryn, you tried to kill your mother yesterday. That's not normal behaviour," he scolded.
"I'm a Mercer. I was angry. That's what we do!" she cried.
"I'm afraid I have no one to trust but myself. And I have to punish you."
"How? By binding me to a fucking exam table?" she spat.
"No. By forcing you to take all the drugs you thought you could hide."
Her eyes widened in justifiable terror. "But that could kill me!"
"It won't kill you, only make you wish I had. The shock to your system will be worse than anything you will ever know. But hopefully it will work." He padded softly to the bedside and held up a loaded syringe. "You'll find it has been cooked to perfection."
He jabbed the needle into her arm and pushed the drugs into her system. It entered her bloodstream with warmth she had almost forgotten but immediately recognized. Her body relaxed on the table and her eyes closed in ecstasy. 'This isn't terrible. No shock. Just pure, unbridled pleasure,' she thought as a wide smile took over her face and she made herself comfortable. 'When I get out of here though, I am going to beat the ever living fuck out of Jeremy. Or maybe thank him for giving me free heroin.' The doctor saw the joy on her face and grinned his own sick grin of pleasure. He pushed another dose into her system, which made her open one eye in curiosity. The doctor shivered at the overwhelming colour of her eyes. Her pupils had constricted to pinpricks in her eyes, giving her an almost alien quality and forcing him to look away.
"This is supposed to hurt me?" she challenged. "I feel fantastic!"
"I'm just getting warmed up Camryn. Wait until you come down," he sighed, injecting her again.
The second dose was kinder to her system and she shivered as her eyes rolled back into her head. "Hit me again Doc," she moaned, trying to curl into a ball on the table.
"Not yet," he warned. "I don't want to kill you. I'll leave you with that and be back for you in half an hour."
Her eyes were completely closed now, but she shrugged and turned her head to face him as if she could see him. The image sent a slick, cold, lump down his throat as he walked out of the room. She lay on the table, head lolling around as the drugs began to hit her. It would be a long way down for her, being unable to react to the things she would go through. Camryn would see things with unnatural alertness, feel things with painful vulnerability and hear things that probably didn't exist. But he didn't care. She was scum and she compromised the integrity of the centre. For that, she needed to be punished. She would learn her lesson, unlike Jeremy had failed to so many times before her. With a sigh, he ran his fingers through his salt and pepper hair and made his way back to his office.
---
The doctor had been in and out of the room four times before she had all the heroine in her system. He had been teasing her, only briefly, by letting her begin the descent off the roller coaster, but he rescued her each time. But this time, through her opiate haze, she knew he wasn't come back to save her. She would crash, and no one would be there to catch her. How long would he leave her on the table after she was sober? A day? Two days? Forever? She began to panic and her head whipped from side to side, calculating an escape she could never make. There was a window in the corner of the room, no bigger than a shoe box. 'Am I withered enough to squeeze through there?' she asked herself, studying the glass. Her wrists burned from the friction of the leather cuffs holding her to the table. More calculating to determine if she could manoeuvre in such a way that she could chew through her bonds. More failed logic. For the time being, she was stuck with her own apprehension. Wendy had gone through this once, coming down from a high, bound to a bed. But it had happened because the guy she was having sex with, forgot where the keys to the handcuffs were, 'stepped out' for a drink and forgot to come back and get her. Camryn had taunted her for weeks. Now she was in the same position.
Movement in the corner of the room caught her eye and she jerked her head to catch a full glimpse of it. She blinked, unsure if what she was seeing was real. Steely grey eyes gazed back at her, taking in her position. Caramel fur fluffed out from the animal's body, while the paws and tip of the tail were a marshmallow white. The cat meowed and licked its nose, which Camryn now noticed was half black. She blinked again and licked her lips. 'Where the fuck did this cat come from? And why did I not hear or see it until now?' She demanded. The cat padded over to the table, its body lithe and sturdy like that of a cat that spends its days chasing mice in a field. 'Purely for sport though. I don't much like the way the furry bastards go down. Too many bones,' the cat's eyes revealed. Camryn peered over the edge of the table, watching as the cat licked its paw and began cleaning itself.
"Who are you?" she asked the cat, fully expecting an answer.
It looked up at her, as if that would answer everything.
Her eyes narrowed. "I asked you a question."
The cat's eyes changed from grey to blue. She gasped and tried to reach out to the cat.
"My dad had the same colour eyes as you, ya know," she stated. "Well…I think he did. I never really met my dad. He died when I was just a baby."
It meowed, this time a low, mournful meow that emitted more pain than she realized she had ever felt at the loss of her father. In the meow, she heard it ask if she missed him.
"I miss him everyday I can think to remember him. My mom seems to have gotten over him with no problem what so ever," she scowled, rolling on to her back.
The cat hopped onto the table with her, purring loudly. It nuzzled her neck and made itself comfortable.
"You purr louder than my Uncle Bobby snores," she remarked. "And I don't even know if you're real."
In response to her comment, the cat bit her forearm, and she tried to swat at it, but her bindings saved the cat from harm.
"I didn't ask for proof, you asshole. It still doesn't make you real. This is just…an interlude I guess. The real fun starts once you leave, I just know it," she sighed.
His meow came from the back of his throat, sadness from another world in the low tone. Tears pricked her eyes. Tears she had forgotten existed. Tears she still hadn't shed at the loss of her father all those years ago. They leaked from her eyes, rolling down the apples of her cheeks and into her unwashed hair. She had never had so much time to think about how much she wished her father were still alive. There were so many questions she could never ask, and answers that she knew she wouldn't get anyway, even if she did ask them. In her seventeen years of living, she had never felt so fatherless. The cat could feel her sorrow in every layer of his body. With a painful yowl, it hopped off the table and darted into the darkest corner of the room. Camryn thrashed on the cold table, trying to twist in the right direction to see those familiar blue eyes of the cat. But her restraints did their job and held her in place. She screamed with powerful frustration and manoeuvred herself into such a position that her wrist reached her mouth. When the warmth of her skin touched her lips, she began to bite and chew, hoping to break free from her bonds. The warm, metallic taste in her mouth should have made her stop. But she was too far gone in her state of despair to realize that the taste signified the presence of blood. She couldn't feel the pain of her teeth cutting through her flesh as she bit deeper and deeper into her wrist.
"Camryn! STOP!" a deep voice bellowed.
She looked up into the stranger's eyes, tears streaming down her face and blood smeared around her mouth. "Daddy?" she whispered.
Jack's eyes fogged over with anguish at the sight of his ragged and savage daughter. "Camryn, what are you doing to yourself?"
"I…"She faltered briefly as she broke down and began to sob. "I just want to be right again."
He pushed her hair behind her ears and wiped her mouth clean with a white cloth he pulled from his pocket. "Cammy baby, chewing your hand off won't make that happen."
"How did it get this far daddy? They weren't my drugs. Why didn't they listen to me?" she cried, collapsing onto the table, ignoring her bleeding wrist. "I thought Jeremy was my friend."
Jack has no response for her. Nothing that would make her feel better. "You're going to beat this habit Cammy. And you're going to live a great life. You've grown into a beautiful young woman."
She snorted, wiping her nose with the back of her clean hand. "I'm strapped to a table, covered in blood and full of heroin. There's nothing beautiful about me."
"You-Camryn, you need to fight harder than this," he said, busying himself with cleaning her wrist.
"I think I should just give up. I have nothing to go back to once I'm done here."
"Don't you dare say that. You have an entire life to live once you're done here. Go to school, move away and have a family. If anything, fight so you can beat the fuck out of Jeremy for turning his back on you," he demanded.
"Are you really here dad?" she asked softly.
There was no answer and when Camryn opened her eyes to look at her father, she was heartbroken to find the room empty. More tears spilled down her face and she slammed her fist against the surface of the table. 'Of course he isn't really here stupid. He's dead,' she chastised. But when she looked down at her wrist, she saw a white cloth tied around it to quell the bleeding. And suddenly she was laughing. Not the insane laughter she had grown accustomed to in recent years. But real laughter fuelled by a happy moment or a particularly fond memory of someone. Maybe he really had been there after all, watching over her.
