"It was the last session I had with Dr. Tsubaki... Something happened.

'Kagome, as you are aware, your Matron-'

'Yura...'

'Yes, Yura,' she said, nodding. 'She is thinking of handing you over to the authorities if you don't clean up your act. Tell me, why is it you don't care?'

Should I tell her? Should I snort and ignore whatever she said afterward? Should I let my feelings, which I finally named Chaos, take over?

Chaos answered my question when she picked up the table and threw it at Dr. Tsubaki, screaming words I didn't understand, but I knew were mean and unnecessary...

Then Chaos stopped, because I collapsed at a new feeling surrounding me.

I realized... I did care- Chaos was how I displayed it. Chaos was how I showed people I cared- that I cared about me, myself, and only me. I was hurting myself because I cared enough to treat the wounds afterwards, and that was the only feeling of love I ever received- from myself.

'I do care,' I had whispered, looking up to the woman considered a professional in making everything better for me mentally- yet the thoughts still rain through my head-

Mama didn't love me.

Daddy didn't care for me.

Grandma didn't kiss me good night.

Grandpa didn't assure me everything was right.

I didn't know me for who I was.

I didn't know me.

-and I laughed, Chaos throwing her hands in the air with a deep chuckle of her own. 'I care more than you or any other person out in this world. I care about myself! See these cuts-' I screamed, ripping my sleeves- 'that no one bound for me! See these wounds that dripped my blood! See these scars that remind me of the times no one cared about me and my well being, except for myself!

'Do you see!?'

She was shocked into silence for never having seen my sealed self-inflicted injures, but hearing of their existence. Obviously, she had thought it was not so bad as it was, and she hastened to call security as Chaos drowned my mind in painful darkness, my arms bleeding from the unkempt, broken, jagged claw like nails extending from my finger tips that scratched me for a new release of anger.

I heard Chaos screaming, the darkness becoming the handicap that allowed clarity of words being said to encompass me. She had yelled, 'See my blood- it boils with fury for the times I've been near people like you that think something's wrong, but never care to hear the true story. It's eating away at my skin each time I draw it because, every time, it's ignored and disregarded when it cries out loud for attention! See my blood- it calls! It calls! Be damned and have your damnation be written in this enraged blood!"

When I woke up, I was in the institute.

In the Mentally Unstables' prison.

In Madness' Mouth.

In Chaos's home...

She was free... where I was trapped.

Now, I had a better reason to bleed. To give her life, freedom, release, love- and I still had none.

But I was only filled with sadness. Sadness replaced the anger, hatred, frustration, and fears that made Chaos who she was.

Again, I embraced the feeling- the sadness, the depression, the cruel truth that no one cared for me, no one ever did, ever would... Sadness made me its home and I gave her a name- Calamity.

When Calamity said, 'don't speak,' I didn't speak. When Calamity said, 'don't do it,' I didn't do it. When Calamity said, 'don't feel, think, or like,' I didn't feel, think, or like anything. When Calamity said, 'don't care,' I didn't care... or, at least, I tried not to.

Calamity didn't like that I couldn't not care what others thought, felt, or said about me, so she clenched my throat closed against food and words... She controlled the way I walked and looked at those around me. I heard I always had this pitiful sheen to my eyes, or this stare that said, 'I'm in pain and no one has helped me,' yet, somehow, held no accusatory tone to it. She would have drooped my shoulders further, if she could have, but they had already become stiffly sloped and sternly shaped to the fullest extent. I had done a good enough job with my shoulders, she decided. Congratulations, from her, was a stream of bitter sweet tears. That was her way of laughing for joy.

After all, she had a house, a body, a mind. She had a life to live, and she lived it while trying to kill me. She wanted her home to be free of a spirit that, if it wished, could turn against her and reject her fully.

Calamity starved me.

I was trapped, Chaos was free, Calamity was in a balance- trapped with me in a body she wanted for her own, and now able to move freely. I had been wounded so deeply by Chaos's parting, that I didn't care what Calamity was doing.

I thought she was a friend, looking out for me in her own strange way as I had thought Chaos was doing.

Then it came.

The starvation wasn't working fast enough for her.

She tried to overdose my body with the medication handed out with dinner. She clamped my mouth shot when I wanted to shout away the pain lacing through my stomach and limbs, telling me, 'death is better. You're free. God will care for you.'

But...

I remembered...

There was no God watching me...

He let all of this happen! The cuts on my arms! The abyss in my soul that kept housing hurtful, harmful, disturbingly strong and withheld emotions! The coldness thrown my way every time someone tossed me any sort of look- pitying, disgusted, calm- just as my family, the foster homes, and the orphanage had discarded me! The people who didn't care, who couldn't care less!

So, I rebelled against Calamity and shrieked out all my frustration, all my anger, all my pain, all my sadness and despair- everything the clinic people called 'depression'. I blew it all out through my lungs in unintelligible roars.

I hadn't spoken in so long that my voice cracked and my wind pipes collapsed on me- or perhaps it was the drugs taking affect- and the institute's personnel were beside me before I even hit the ground.

Again, I was tossed away.

From Chaos's home, into Calamity's...

Medical doctors cared more about my wounds than my mental state, but they still cared. So, with Chaos and Calamity gone, as Calamity had found its abode, I embraced Confusion once more, wondering why these people cared...

Then I realized. They cared because they had to- they had to care for me for the time I was there in order to get rid of me and collect the money someone was paying. Who was paying? I had no idea.

Confusion became Comprehension, and Comprehension became Acceptance.

No one cared.

There, in the hospital, I took a scalpel from a tray that passed by me in the hall on it's way to a surgery without the nurse noticing since she had turned to talk to the red-head behind a desk. Right on the spot, right there in the hall with the patients and doctors and nurses milling about, right there for the world to see as it had so many times before when no one had cared, I put the blade to my skin, Chaos seeping back into the abyss of my heart, my mind, my soul because there was such a wide chasm, wide enough for Chaos and Confusion and Calamity and Acceptance to reside and fight for dominance without anything to disturb them or work side by side with one another to destroy me without being spotted or noticed, and I cut myself. A to-the-bone deep, width-of-the-wrist wide incision.

And I saw it.

My blood.

It hadn't changed.

I hadn't changed.

And neither did the people around me.

No one cared.

No one cared.

I remember wishing I didn't either.

No one cared...

... But me.

Mama thought I wasn't enough.

Daddy thought nothing of me.

Grandma thought I was a ghost.

Grandpa thought nothing was wrong.

I thought they were right- I wasn't bad, just not enough, because I was nothing but a ghost.

I thought they were right.

Why that thought entered my mind at that particular moment, I will never know. I was just getting up and moving for the first time in two weeks after my actions, just waiting for the doctors to toss me to the side of the road now that I was fine, again, and an extra burden to them while I was well. Everyone else had...

Then, just after I thought that, one of the nurses came to talk to me. The same nurse who had pushed the cart carrying the instrument that had almost killed me.

'Kagome,' she said, nodding to me. I, having rid myself of Confusion, Chaos, and Calamity, nodded back. 'Do you remember me?'

The nurses and doctors all asked this. They thought, I suppose, that the drugs may have ruined my memory, or I was so unstable mentally to remember anything. So, I just nodded again and spoke her name. 'Sango.' She smiled.

'I have a friend I'd like you to meet.'

'Why?' This brought Confusion back, and Confusion lit herself up like a light bulb, burning bright in my eyes. Why would anyone want me to meet someone they knew? I only saw this woman twice before- she was at my side when I woke up, thinking she was responsible for my actions- and even so, no one ever gave me a second glance or thought before- so, why!?

'I think he can help you.'

Those were dreaded words to me. Words I never wanted to hear- ever! I remembered Dr. Tsubaki and Chaos's reply.

'Help me... Help me...! No one cares enough to help me!'

Sango took a step backwards, surprised and frightened by my violent reaction to her simple statement. With shock griping her throat, she whispered, just audibly, 'I do.'

Everything vanished. White light encased my mind.

Was it possible... that someone who knew nothing of me could care...

For me?

She didn't know me. I didn't know her. I knew nothing of Compassion- of Sango- of belonging.

When she said that, I learned later that I had cried- and it wasn't by Calamity's bidding.

That day, I met her husband- a lecherous, constantly happy man- Miroku. He was a lawyer for a law firm run by Sesshomaru Takahashi. His interest in my past also brought me to tears, but I wouldn't speak of it... It hurt too much. Or, perhaps, it was that he cared in the first place- him and Sango. He was persistent, but he learned, very slowly, that I would not speak.

Three weeks after I met him, he looked to his wife and nodded. 'She should meet him. It would help.'

Again, the word help brought a heavy feeling of lead in my stomach.

I couldn't handle any more help...

Thankfully, I thought, a week went by before I met Sango's friend..."

A/N: I would like to thank all of my reviewers for their support. Especially Lenne-chan and Ama (Shades of Oblivion for reminding me- 'Quality over quantity'. -Smiles- Thank you.

Next chapter is the last one. Please review and tell me what you think.