Pills

by Kard of Dark

Standard disclaimers apply.

Chapter 6: Pet Shop, ending

kuragari.

shimatta PETTO SHOPPU de HAMUSTAA wa mawari-tsuzuketeru.

"KARAKARA......"

senkai, nisenkai, sanzenkai, nanzenkai?

shinda.

--"Pet Shop" by Plastic Tree

Her body shook, this couldn't be real. None of it could be real. But it was. He had raped her and left her. Like nothing was wrong.

"And why not?" The room was black, dark, nighttime. The room had been filled with light from the setting sun and now that no lights were on, everything a was dark black. But she could see Kenshin standing there against the wall in the soft moonlight that only touched his half his body, hiding his face from her view.

"You raped me, Kenshin. that's not excusable!"

"Again, why not? It was your punishment for not believing me," he said in a soft monotone as she stepped away from the wall and into the light. Kaoru gasped, her eyes widening in shock and surprise. But also in sickness. There was part of his skull missing, part of his brain, body fluids dripping down his face from the chunk that was missing. "And this was my own for not believing you, but I did what I did on my own free will. No denying that, Kaoru."

He stepped closer but Kaoru stepped backwards out of the bedroom she had moved to as the memories came back to her. Acting out the entire truth as if it only happened a few minuets ago instead of a few days. But if it really just happened, Kenshin would be alive and real instead of just a figment of her imagination.

Yes, this image wasn't real. He was just as fake as the images that went through her mind when she remembered the night Kenshin left. Like the "vision" she had of Kenshin's death.

He wasn't real. They weren't real. Nothing was real.

She laughed, the sound harsh to her own ears. Raising her hands she covered her face as more laughter came pouring out. "How stupid I was to believe something like this! Not of it is real!"

The tears were coming now, real or fake? She briefly wondered that as she touched her cheek and looked at the wetness that was left on her fingers. Was anything real anymore? Or was this all a dream conjured by the sleeping pills?

Glancing out the small hallway she saw the couch and wondered if the sleeping pills were still there. Those things worked magic to her. They made everything go away and she loved them for that. Like magic.

And if this was all a dream created by them, why was this dead Kenshin here? Would she forget everything that happened in her dreams once she woke up?

Everything would be better that way, if she did.

There would be no pain, no sadness. Only the refreshed feeling that one gets after a good nights sleep. In fact, there would have been no mortification of having Sano and Megumi rescuing her from a terrific vision that wasn't real.

"And if this isn't real, neither are you..." the words were a whisper as she looked over at the bleeding Kenshin, seeing no emotion come across his face. He was calm. Calm as only the dead could be. The way their lifeless bodies look when they are lowered to the ground in a coffin, never to be seen by human eyes ever again. Only the bugs and rodents that made their way through the ground would notice the lifeless thing, if they paid any attention to it at all.

Rotting away for the rest of eternity until there was nothing left, not even a memory.

"Who's to say what is real?" Again, the monotone, the lifeless voice. It held no emotion, and she took comfort in that. The dead could not come back, and this was all in her head. It was all a dream she could wake from.

"Who's to say you are dreaming and not wide awake?"

"There's no other explanation. This is all just one big dream! One giant hell that I'll wake up from at any moment now." Kaoru refused to let the dream Kenshin get to her. She refused to give in, but she could feel her courage slipping nonetheless. Why, she didn't know. But it was leaving her as the dream Kenshin walked closer and gently reached out to touch her face.

"I'm as real as you, as real as anything else that is standing around you. I'm dead Kaoru, and I am real." What was left of his once beautiful red hair shook slightly as he gave a shake of his head. "There is no other way."

She slapped his hand away and stepped back, wanting to get as far away from him as she could. "But that's the thing, you aren't real. There is no possible way you are real!"

"Who decides what is real and what is not? What gave you the power to decided that?" He came closer, his voice gaining some emotion as he did so. "I did what I did to you Kaoru because you deserved it for thinking I couldn't care for you! I love you, damn it! And nothing will change that. Not even petty jealousy."

His words shocked her. yes, she had been jealous. Jealous of a photo. A picture that didn't have her in it. "I don't care Kenshin! You never smiled for real that day, you never gave any indication that you really cared for me at all the entire time I knew you! How was I supposed to know if you did or not when every time you told me that you loved me there was no emotion?"

Her body shook in suppressed anger. She wanted to scream, she wanted to swear. She wanted to kill him.

"But I'm already dead. Just like every other person you held close. Like every other person who slipped right through your fingers. All the ones who left you and you wished them dead."

"You...you're lying!" This time she did scream it out as she tripped and fell to the floor, and proceeded to crawl away from him. Anything to get away from him and his...his...

"Truth. You know I'm speaking the truth. Deep down you know its true. That every word I say is true. Every little bit." He followed her, slowly as he moved one foot with each word he spoke. It was syncopated. And very much true.

"And so you accept the truth. And there is no way to get past it, is there?"

She had come to the couch and she used it to stand up as she rested against the arm. Next to her was the coffee table and the bottle of pills, and on the other side rested the clear way out. The way to the door, to a different freedom where she could seek help from those who called themselves her "friends".

"Friends?" He laughed. It was rough on her ears, his voice was no longer smooth. Instead it was harsh, caught some where between a scream of pain and a scream of pleasure. As if it couldn't decided what it wanted. "They were never your friends. A doctor? A friend?"

There was another laugh, and this one hurt even more as he finally made it in touching distance of her. "You can't trust a doctor, remember? It was a doctor that took your mother and father away. A doctor that was lying to you about being there to help you. Why, even the nice Dr. Hino that gave you the sleeping pills just wanted to flirt."

Kaoru didn't know if it was the force of Kenshin's hands that made her fall to the couch cushions of her own body, but she hit the soft surface, the bottle of sleeping pills parallel to her eyes. She could just reach out and grasp it and make everything go away.

Kenshin watched her make her decision, all the way taking about how she couldn't reach a salvation through help from her friends. That they didn't want her help at all, only more money so they could live on in their own way. Sano was a gambler after all.

Her hand was shaking as she reached out and grasped it, not knowing what to do with it as she sat up. She half listened to Kenshin and what he had to say and listened to her own thoughts on what she should be doing when a hand slipped through her thighs and the hands owner straddled her body. "You know you want to do it."

It was Kenshin, but he was also over by the couch arm. And he was. There were two of them. She struggled and pushed the Kenshin on top of her off. Standing, she only managed to fall over the coffee table. Turning around, still on the floor, she cried out as another Kenshin appeared sitting on the table looking quite smug.

Another appeared by the stereo, standing and looking over the collection of CDs. And another and another and another. They were appearing all around the room. She started to shake, trembling in fear. The bottle rattled in her hand, making its existence known.

"Oh, the poor dear has the bottle!" laughed one, shaking from the movement. She crawled back wards to the wall, using it to sit up as she gazed about the room. Each Kenshin now had their eyes on her. Watching her every movement, her every breath. It seemed to captivate them as if they had never seen something alive and breathing before.

"Leave me alone!" she screamed out as one reached out to touch her. Kaoru slapped the hand away only to be grabbed by another. The Kenshin sitting on the arm of the couch called the others off, his amber eyes laughing. That was the difference in the Kenshins, some had amber eyes, some had the soothing amethyst.

The all laughed again and backed off, her hands shook as she brought them together, trying to open the bottle. If this was real, sleep would make it all go away as it did before. Yes, it would make everything better. All better.

The bottle opened and she tossed the lid to the floor beside her as she spilled some onto her hand. She didn't--could not, remember the directions. Her eyes couldn't count the amount of pills in her hand.

Kaoru just took them, swallowing the amount that was in her hand and prayed for it to work fast.

She didn't remember how long it took for them to work, she didn't remember anything. Everything just went blank.

"A young woman of twenty three was found last night in her apartment home by a neighbor who was complaining about the music being to loud. Police say she overdosed on sleeping pills. Onto later news..."

Kaoru's aunt could no longer listen to the radio station as she stared about the small apartment in pain. This was where her niece lived and died. She couldn't bare to stay there any longer, but she had to. Everything had to be sorted through, put into many different piles to be sent to many different places. She kept her tears in check as she glanced at the red headed woman that she knew to be Kenshin's mother.

They both had to be strong and had to keep going on.

They had to believe that their lost loved ones where in a far better place.

Finished.

Ah, a completed fanfic. It's always nice to see that word, "finished" on your work. And it was done in two weeks. Well, better then anything really. This last chapter was 1,894 words. I'm glad I made it into two chapters. Don't know about you, but I am. Well, if anyone is still asking as to why she did what she did, I'll answer in three simple words: she went insane. Everything is as simple as that. What she went insane over, though, is guilt and grief, and lots of it.

It seems dark...

In the closed pet shop the hamster continues to turn around and around.

"Scuttle, scuttle."

1000 times, 2000 times, 3000 times, how many times?

It's dead.

Well, the hamster is Kaoru and the going around in circles part is the sleeping pills, which means that the "how many times" is the amount she swallowed. And of course, she did end up dead. This wasn't such a bad thing considering what she was going through. She took the easiest way out, the way she had convinced herself was the best way to go since the first chapter. Congratulations to anyone who guessed what she was going to do since the very beginning.

I don't really have anything else to say. . Other then thank you to MoMo-ChAn and to those of you who reviewed. Its nice to feel loved. And thank you to all of those who reviewed, I'll just honor you here: madoxx, Lemon Honey, sage, African Hornet, mojine, Psychotic Tanuki, Mageblood, MoMo-ChAn, Daydreamingkotori, corrosion, and Kean.