WARNING: SERIOUS ANGST AHEAD. Not the end, though.

Oh yeah, and I wrote the song at the beginning, a pity I can't sing it for you . . . sorry in advance.

"Mary Jane's Last Dance" belongs to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Not really a big part here, mind you, but still . . .

. . . Please don't abandon this--yet.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

How can I see the world

As it, hurts me so

Utterly and completely in

It's hopeless and dreaming

Hey, go away

Simply fly away

Drift to a place where I

Wish that I could find someday

But the world is cruel in ways

Mocking me watching me

The waves I cannot realize

Still holding me uptight . . .

~*~*~*~

The pounding of the too-hard pressed marker on the glossy white-board was the dominant sound in the classroom. In fact, besides the occasionally gusting air-conditioner and the trembling machinery that activated a little rattling sound along with it, the room was silent.

Tea shifted in her waxy seat for the umpteenth time in the past fifteen minutes, mending her position to survey the clock in the corner--and again, it hadn't even been half of the class, yet. She gave a quiet, helpless little groan in discontent, coming from the back of her dry throat.

She needed something. But unlike the same feelings she had experienced before, she knew what brought this on.

Smoothing the damp hair at her temples, Tea cradled her eyes. The marks from the bright lights blinked fleetingly on the sight of her eyelids, wandering away to impossible places and fading out wistfully.

Her forehead was sticky from the dry day. It was hard to ignore, but the barest traces of bile in the back of her throat proved to be much worse to forget.

Tea rubbed her head again, weary enough to ignore the urge to adjust her position again, but she still twitched, blinking a few times afterward in what seemed like no reason at all. She had long since lost the purpose of the lesson, focusing instead on the quaintly atrocious hairdo her teacher sported every day; a gray ball of fluff fastened back simply with two oversized barrettes hanging near her ears.

She wondered how long the woman had been recording fresh assignments and explanations on her expansive white board. Looking up at the clock, she saw it was only about five minutes.

Tea groaned highly and softly, again, lowering her eyes.

Blood pumped through her veins so angrily she felt it uncomfortably all over, pulsing, nagging at her to go--but she still stayed in her seat, determined, feeling her bottom lip tremble.

/It's so close,/ she thought wildly /I can get what I want, and it's ~so close~./

She shook herself roughly enough that her head spun, but it didn't really help that feeling of ~need~.

Tea stared, trying to sit still.

"So," the teacher began, breaking her pattern of strokes on the white board, and consorting her notes for reassurance. She continued speaking, but Tea didn't hear, as the sweaty, sticky surface of her skin bothered her immensely. Too immensely.

It wasn't as relieving as it should have been when the class ended.

~*~*~*~

The open hallways were slightly cooler, though not by much. Her locker offered a temporary reprieve with it's chilled surface, and she leaned on it tensely, feeling her right hand ball into a fist as it rested on the gray metal as well.

The footsteps of routine passing time were as clear as ever to her ears, mingled irritatingly with the buzz and scuffles of the junior high students' routine banter.

She felt a migraine coming one. Tea lightly struck her gray-painted locker with the tender fist that rested beside her pounding head.

"Tea--are you alright?"

"I'm fine." She muttered moodily to Yugi, but didn't open her eyes or look up in mutual greeting, so he took a step forward in concern. He had watched her earlier that morning, finding the girl restless and constantly uneasy with a feverish look on her face during the entire lesson.

He frowned, adjusting the heavy textbooks in his arms.

"I guess . . . " his tiny set mouth pinched to the side in a disapproving manner, not looking at all as if he believed her, but she didn't notice; her eyes were still shut very tightly.

With a sudden jolt of startlement, he noticed that she was shaking.

Tea felt as if she were breaking and cracking from the inside out, her sanity slowly exposing itself in a strange, routine and impractical-based world. For a second, she didn't think . . . just floated.

"Well anyway," Yugi continued cautiously "I forgot to give you this before, but it's from Grandpa and I."

It took another silent moment for her to regretfully rip her gaze to the innocent sight of Yugi, staring at him with a decidedly annoyed expression and a little glare. He stared up squarely and unafraid, furrowing his brows over his large loopy eyes while digging in his pocket.

She swallowed. It seemed unnatural, and was a slightly painful contraction of her stress-dried throat, causing her to wince once when her head pounded twice.

/What's happening to me./ she thought to herself vaguely.

Yugi retrieved what he was looking for in a short manner of time, bringing them up to her with one last wistful look at their glossy surfaces. Truthfully, he didn't think Tea would take the gift very seriously, but games were something he understood in the whole entirety of things.

People were often a different matter. /There are no rules in life, but people find so many ways to break them./ he thought sadly.

She took the three small packets into her hand with a taught care, looking down at them with her eyeballs because she didn't dare move her head again. Foil flashed happily to her, letting the lovely colors wave incessantly up to her, joking and wandering her face, but it barely registered. She noted the shape of an ugly, brutish thing, located just under the now-famous title of;

/"Duel Monsters"/

"Do you play?" Yugi asked anxiously, still watching her every movement.

Looking back to him dispassionately, she felt a flash in her mind, mingled with gaping pain and what should have been nausea. She licked her lips tensely.

"No."

"Oh." He began to cutely scratch the back of his head "Well--Grandpa owns a game shop, and that's the latest thing . . . it's actually pretty fun to play."

Yugi laughed nervously, she grunted. With one last meaningless look at the glossy cover, she slipped it open, sliding out little cards in mint condition, almost as glossy as the cover, but in a different sort of way. They came out smoothly, identical on one side, gazing in haphazard colors on the other.

Tea used two fingers to slide them out with a sort of control where she didn't have to remove the entire group of cards, as her cold, sweaty fingers slipped along their smooth surfaces. She pulled out two.

"Some people say that you can predict the future with them." Yugi continued, a-matter-of-factly.

She looked at him quizzically. "Like Tarot cards?" she asked dubiously and obviously annoyed.

/This sounds like some sick trend./ Tea thought to herself, rolling her eyes mentally. /We'll have to watch out; there's going to be a whole new generation of obsessions that could fit in with the "Trekkie" crowds./

"I guess." He replied, shifting his weight.

/Yeah right./

She winced when the cards she held shocked her abruptly, cursing them vilely under her breath for their inanimate moodiness. Every thing seemed to be against her today . . .

. . . Except for the wide eyes of Yugi. Unbelievably weary, she sighed, knowing that through his kindness and supposed view of 'friendship', she couldn't oppose him. Not now, when he was staring at her so earnestly.

That was the only thing that kept her from just falling against the locker in misery right then.

Tea flipped over the cards in false interest, examining them as lazily as she could, because the monster in her head seemed to have other ideas regarding that situation.

Happy, girlish, sickening colors assaulted her vision.

One seemed to be a giant fuzz-ball with wings and a grossly wide smile. Her top lip curled up in distaste at it's look that clearly illustrated; 'I am so much better than you.' Naturally, the title proclaimed 'Shining Friendship' with all honors and heartiness worthy of a cheerleader on Prozac.

She absently switched the two cards to view her second unfortunate selection.

~Her~.

/What?!/

Wait--no. There was a woman with a staff, and a greenish complexion staring out blankly in what appeared to be a gaudy robe and high ponytail. The picture wasn' pretty, just powerful, strangely powerful as she felt her hand shaking.

/Oh god,/ she thought wildly /I'm going insane. Fucking insane.

/I saw ~me~ there./

"What's wrong?" Yugi asked again, picking up a feeling of unease from his peer.

Tea's head snapped up, now glaring at the unsuspecting boy. This was too weird--too pat, too ironic. 'Magician of Faith'?! What the hell was this? Was this meant to mock her, as a stupid girl who was destined to fail . . . Her lips pursed, he was startled into discomfort, wondering if he had done anything wrong.

"Who do you think you are?!" Tea exploded, throwing three packs, one open and two unopened, at him and throwing her hands back in barely controlled rage. "You think you're clever?! That's the worst setup I've ever heard of!"

Yugi's eyes widened.

"This . . . ~disgusting~ superstitious crap is so corny." She hissed "I'm not stupid enough to not realize that you're setting me up for something like this ideal 'friendship' of yours, only for your little inside ~joke~."

"B-but Tea!" Yugi protested, but she cut him off.

"Go ahead and take your little 'gift' and give it to someone who cares." She deadpanned coldly "Like your little blonde buddy over there. You act like her enough already, so go off into your damn games.

"And leave me out of it."

She stalked off, leaving Yugi very confused, and feeling his eyes itch with threatening tears. He stared at the two cards on the ground. One tear dropped messily on the surface of the 'Magician of Faith'.

Tea felt her headache multiply.

~*~*~*~

"Excuse me," Tea said through gritted teeth of longing "I'm not feeling too well."

"Hope you get better soon, Miss Gardener." The teacher said, without looking up from his pile of homework.

She didn't await further orders, gathering her things and leaving the room in a hazy hurry.

Yugi saw her leave with concern, but knew his place in her eyes in that moment, and she didn't look back. Brow creased, he consorted his handwritten assignment again with a subdued frown.

Tea had no intention of heading to the nurse's office. She knew nothing ~there~ would help her feel better. /Once more can't hurt, can it?/

She shivered in anticipation, picking up her walking pace until her legs began to cramp up, but she didn't let up whatsoever. Her entire journey to the sakura tree was a free-flowing experience, and she felt herself relaxing to her craving slightly around each corner of the school.

/ . . . Can it?/

~*~*~*~

She was lost, she supposed, because that was how it felt. She ~had~ lost. But that was not what her body was telling her, it was only what her mind was screaming.

/Life would be so much easier without a brain./ Tea decided.

And inhaled her savior.

Benson was lost in a world of his own forgetting, sprawled out beside her in the same fashion that he had been when she came up the hill in her wobbly crutches, his pale eyes opened only haphazardly and his dreadlocks grinding into the dry, dead ground.

A great deal of the grass had already blown away from it's home, leaving gaping lapses of dry dirt scattered about the entire field, not including the track. The horizon expanded in a hazy--nightmare. Bluer than blue, clear, and so distant; distancing itself from pathetic souls such as theirs.

Exhaling, Tea cursed the sky under her breath, yearning for a storm again or something to get her out of her hazy partial-consciousness that she despised. She looked back down at him, though he was too far gone to notice, realizing his headphones had slipped down to his neck, pounding away extraordinarily enough she could hear a little--

--She looked back to the horizon, as she felt herself go dizzy, looking at, but trying not to notice the spite of the sky.

/So blue./ she hated blue; her eyes were that color.

Dreaming, she had found, was an easier point of existence, and she was blissfully slipping into a dream without even trying. It was a wonderful feeling, and she felt, for once . . .

. . . ~Peaceful~. She giggled.

"Ga . . . Girly?" Benson croaked, turning to his side with a precarious wobble, as his head stayed limp and careless.

She didn't answer, letting her actions, which seemed nothing more than numbness and so easy to execute, fall toward him in a slump. It didn't seem awkward to her at all, her head dug into his shoulder and feeling his fleeting heartbeat through her cheek.

The way the wind blew through the deciduous trees, and the fact that it was the only sound excluding themselves. It was an uncomfortable sound, speaking only with loneliness, and she burrowed her eyes further into Benson's shoulder.

"This' it. They're comin'." Tea barely heard, trying to ponder on his words instead.

/When they come, I don't want to be here./ when her father would come home, she knew it would probably be with another woman who had dropped out of high-school, trying to act as though she was wiser than Tea herself, and never excepting the realization that perhaps she wasn't, or that the girl didn't care. They were all the same since her mother, even her aunt was that way, and instead of being as motherly to her as they tried, they only seemed untouchable; never understanding.

She didn't know what her father saw in them, but she hated them.

She hated them for trying to change her. For trying to drill her into something like themselves; lost and oblivious and ignorant to everything besides themselves.

Deep inside, Tea wished she could be like them, but it hurt so much as she already understood how she could never be.

Holding her breath so that her head spun, despite that her eyes were still shut as tightly as possible, she breathed out a dry little sob.

"I don't want them to come."

"Meneither."

"I want it all to stop."

"/Well I don't know but I've been told--you never slow down, you never grow old./" sang Benson's CD player. Tea wondered on it for a little bit.

"It'll stop soon." Benson slurred in a weary tone "It'll all stop soon."

" . . . How?"

Only the music answered her.

"/Tired of screwing up. Tired of going down, tired of myself . . . tired of this town./"

"Me too." She whispered, feeling her eyelids tighten as water built up behind them.

She wish she was better--at anything. Even dance, she had hoped so much that she was as good as it felt, but she wasn't good enough. Never good enough . . .

It was painful when she realized that. And even in her drugged trance, it hurt her.

"At least I won't hurt anymore." Said Benson vaguely.

Tea opened her eyes.

"How?" she demanded.

"/Last dance with Mary Jane,/" the music echoed, enticingly "/one more chance to kill the pa-a-ain . . . "

/Only one last chance?/ she wondered /Only one?/

Benson didn't say anything, as he breathed steadily, she knew he wouldn't say anything more. Sighing into a swirly abyss, Tea fell back, opening her eyes blearily to a dry-brightened world, entrapping her.

She stared at the tree, idly.

/If there's only one more chance, then you would want the pain to go away forever./ she thought.

There was only one forever; Tea looked at her hands in grim fascination, suddenly aware that no one could interfere this time. She could just--go away, and no one could stop her from escaping.

Her brown hair trembled, as she began to laugh; happily.

/My last chance . . . / she thought gleefully, searching through her bag, ransacking it with vigor, and eager to end it all.

Finally, she found exactly what she was looking for, a sharp silver razor blade . . . ~*~*~*~

Yugi slumped against his hand, feeling his cheek bunch up to the side as he stared to his elbow. He wasn't bored, precisely, just caught up in a stomach-tumbling sensation of profound dread.

He practically flew out of his seat when the bell signaled his lunch hour.

Even though he was very hungry, he noticed it stayed a back-space in light of that dreading feeling again, that became worse with each step in the direction of his locker. As his eyes were downcast, he didn't notice Annie stumbling up to walk beside him.

"Hey Yugi," she said, still managing to sound cheerful, though she was obviously trying to be serious "are you okay?"

"Huh? Oh--yes, I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" she pressed "I mean, I saw you talking to that weird girl earlier, and she seemed kinda mean. I ~told~ you not to get mixed up with people like that; she's bad news."

Yugi, looked at her in surprise, sunlight highlighting the edges of her hair and make-up dulling the shine on her cheeks, before returning his eyes to downcast. She was a nice girl, but there were some things for everyone that people just didn't understand.

"Maybe," Yugi voiced instead, clearly disinclined to discuss the matter any further. Annie sensed his need for alone-time, biting her lip, unsure if it was wise for such a nice guy as him. She finally sighed mentally, and stepped in front of him, turning over her shoulder with a white smile as he jolted still in surprise.

"Well, I'll save you a seat at lunch, I guess! See you."

"Bye." Said Yugi, still distracted.

He watched her go, but wasn't really seeing her cheerful form. /Why is it that I feel like I'm forgetting something?/

Dragging his petite feet across the sunlight-glossy linoleum, he shoved his hands into his pockets, recovering the forsaken gift from before.

Her words still stung, but he knew he was far from giving up in her case. Yugi frowned.

It was strange, he knew she was sad, just ~knew~ it, yet she just pushed everyone away violently before they became too close--what was she afraid of anyway? Everyone needed someone, but she was forcing herself to nothing.

She must have been tearing herself up from the inside. He wondered how someone so amazing had fallen into such a routine of self doubt and automatic pain.

/Tea's an amazing person/, Yugi thought to himself, looking at the card in his hand /~she~ just needs to realize it, just like I have . . . / he fingered his puzzle, but this time, found no immediate comfort in the soft metal under his hands.

/Hurt me?/ where had that thought come from? /No, she's hurting herself more than she'd allow herself to hurt me, I can tell. I guess she seemed a little weird earlier, a little grumpy, but that's it./

Realizing, he chuckled. "I can't believe I'm trying to convince myself of something, weird."

Yugi kicked a rock. Wait, a rock?

His feet had unwillingly led him outside; the courtyard unless he was very much mistaken. Squinting at the sun, he wondered idly why there weren't any more students out, as it was an absolutely beautiful day.

He sighed, watching a few girls giggle at the side of the school, happily enjoying the shade while they ate their sandwiches and discussed unimportant matters as a respite for the trying school day. They didn't notice him, or didn't care, but he smiled all the same.

Happiness was contagious for him, he decided.

Yugi surveyed the whole of the dry field, searching for anyone as pleasant company for lunch, because the cafeteria was looking much less inviting with each second at the sun.

Squinting, he spotted small figures in the distance, mulling around the roots of a gigantic, sadly dying, tree. The shapes were peculiar.

Suddenly, without warning, another huge wave of dread washed over him, seeming to drown his stomach as it sank no smaller than a few feet. His eyes widened--

--and he found himself running over to the tree in distress. Not noticing how he seemed stronger than before, or taller, or even ~why~ he was running, trampling the ground carelessly as he felt the warm air rush past his cheeks and ears--

--Yugi stopped, looking onto the figures in horror-

--~blood~.

"Wha--" Yugi felt helpless, his eyes widened to an uncertain degree, his breath coming in rapid gasps and in erratic increments. At first it was unbelievable, in his sheltered, innocently oblivious life . . .

. . . But he had ~seen~ blood before.

And he knew it who it belonged to before he even spotted her brown-haired, slumped figure.

" . . . Tea . . . "

Yugi trembled.

He screamed.

"TEA!"

He ran to her side, with courage that he didn't know he possessed.

"Oh--no. Ohno. SOMEBODY!!! Somebody, YOU HAVE TO HELP!"

Without a thought, he brought her body into his arms, spotting her wrists as the culprits of her deadly mess. He couldn't do anything else--Yugi grabbed them with each hand, hoping it would work to bind them for now, hoping she would still be alive.

/Of course she'll still be alive!/ his mind screamed.

He screamed too, shriller and with more urgency than he knew he could do, caught up in instinctive distress, just trying for them to hear him . . . to help her, to help ~him~.

/Ohno-ohno-ohno-ohno--/

It all seemed like a bad dream. Her pulse was weak into his palms, her blood seeping dispassionately through his fingers, and dripping into fat droplets, staining the ground dark.

"PLEASE!!! SHE'S STILL ALIVE, BUT WE HAVE TO HELP HER!!!"

He began to go into a blank state, into shock. Distantly, he was aware of a few gasps and shrill screams that rung in his ears; terror unsheathed. Dimly, he heard the words;

"H-hello? 911? There's--there's a-a girl here and--oh my god--her wrists are cut--"

Yugi's eyes were so widened it was hard to see. He began to whisper, not daring to cry, because he couldn't help her if his hands went weak, if he was too caught up in his own fright.

He leaned into her slowly. Trembling all over.

"Oh Tea," Yugi saw everything go blurry "what have you done to yourself? Tea, you can't leave . . . you just can't . . . "

The sirens didn't sound soon enough.

~*~*~*~

. . . alright, I hated that chapter. I had writer's block regarding where to come from in this situation, and it's had me depressed all week.

This is the most angst-ridden chapter I've ever written in my life.

But the next will be the last in this story, and I can assure you, yet again (really, it's me who needs the reassurance), that everything will be resolved in it. This is a prequel to "The Sanctuary" after all.

I'm really bad at stuff like this . . . and it didn't help that I was so disgusted with myself for the dry writing at the first section (it was supposed to be agonizingly long). Please tell me what I can do to improve it . . .

And you guys had better come back for the ending. Tell me if you'd like to receive an e-mail when it comes out, which will be before school comes back, if I'm lucky.

Again, thank you for actually sticking through this chapter, because I have a feeling my reader responses will become agonizingly sparse in response to this.

Thank you. I mean it, so much.

Please review, if you can.

giggleplex