Title: Memento Mori (chapter 1 – "Alone")
Author: Kurukami

Standard disclaimer: Barbara Hall is the creator of "Joan of Arcadia" and CBS owns it. I own nothing of importance in this matter save the stringing together of words my brain meshes together. Don't sue me; I'm broke enough as it is.

A/N: Spoilers up through "Silence" (1.23). Thanks go to flannery77, for a great beta-read and some insightful comments on weak spots that needed to be clarified.

I stood there, fury twisting inside me like a spring wound tight, as their car spit the gravel of the parking lot against my feet and took them away again. Typical. As usual, they just couldn't wait to put me into yet another person's hands. The tentative, weak hugs were just camouflage for that fact.

Someone softly cleared her throat behind me. I ignored it, staring fixedly down the asphalt road that led back through the forest to the real world. The real world was a place where not everyone was going to express their inner feelings in lovey-dovey, politically correct psychobabble. This place, on the other hand, was just another dumping ground for social rejects and nutjobs – oh, sorry, I meant "obsessive-compulsive personalities" and "victims of impaired perception" and "mentally divergent individuals".

Yeah. Another bunch of fucking crazy wackos.

And now I was stuck here too.

The someone gently cleared her throat again, and I turned to narrow my eyes at her. "Her" was an aquiline twenty-something with a perky expression and blonde hair bobbed short, who cradled a clipboard and wore a white collared t-shirt with the name of this dump embroidered on it. She practically vibrated with positive energy, despite the late hour of the afternoon, and reminded me of nothing so much as a parakeet that had had a pinch of powdered meth dropped into the water of its bird feeder.

Not that I ever did anything like that.

"Hi!" she chirped. "Welcome to Gentle Acres! You must be…" She trailed off, looking at me expectantly.

"Judith. Montgomery," I enunciated.

"I'm Lori!" she gushed. "Come on, and I'll show you where you bunk down!"

I somehow drowned the impulse to quote Wednesday Addams back at her – I'm not perky, but I want to be! – shouldered my duffel, and trudged after her through the trees and away from the road.

Shelter consisted of a pair of whitewashed dormitories with all the aesthetic appeal of a prison – big, boxy, three-story structures with precisely rectangular windows spaced at precisely equal intervals. I was willing to bet that the windows were of a design that I'd seen more than a few times before – thick glass, engineered not to open more than six inches. Sufficient for a breeze but not wide enough to actually risk anyone getting out, either purposefully or as a result of tragic accident. The rest of the campus was spread out across both sides of a grassy, gently sloping valley, complete with a shallow creek meandering down the middle, a low broad wooden bridge crossing it, and plenty of pleasant sunshine to lighten cloudy dispositions.

I despised it immediately.

On the other hand, it was better than the last few places – no splintery cabins, no lack of central heating, no plumbing of dubious manufacture. Still, the desperately-trying-to-be-subtle aura of cheerfulness made me wish I'd been able to sneak a pack or two of cigarettes into my duffel. Lighters are compact and relatively easy to smuggle; cigs, less so. That fact, given the Orwellian luggage-searching which took place before my getting dumped here, meant no smokes and no easy way for me to burn away stress.

They'd even found the lighter, damn it.

But they hadn't found the miniature Swiss Army knife I'd tucked between the cups of the bra I was wearing, which I found at least somewhat amusing since they'd given it to me for my birthday four years ago. So at least that gave me something to fall back on if I felt like I was about to start screaming at someone. It wasn't like I could actually talk to anyone here – the shrinks would be just like my psych-expert parents, Fran and Bill, sitting there murmuring empty platitudes and pretending to understand while they passed judgement and gave me "assignments", while the crazies I was stuck here with were going to be too drawn up in their own angsty drama to give a damn about me. The patterns of behavior at places like this were pretty much always the same, and I've always been quick to recognize patterns and learn new stuff, if it was anything I really cared about anyway.

The main door of the girls' dorm eased itself closed with the slow hssss-thunk of pneumatic braking (can't allow door-slamming around here, nope). I flickered a glance at the locking mechanism as Lori led me along – fairly standard deadbolt, key required on both sides to open, which just reinforced my initial impression of this place as a nicely-dressed prison. The lock was probably pin-and-tumbler, which would be easy enough for me to slip with the screwdriver on the Swiss Army knife, a few paper clips, and a little effort. If need be, I could get out and…

What? Slip the lock on one of the cars here too, try to drive away? And go where? For an instant I wished I'd paid more attention when Jason had been fumbling with the wires under that one car's steering wheel, but at the time I'd been too caught up in the rapture of X and wishing he was fumbling with the buttons on my shirt instead to give a damn. Even if I had been paying attention, it didn't matter. I couldn't very well show up on my parents' front lawn with a stolen car, especially since that whole thing with the car with Jason was what led to getting caught and night court and probably most of getting stuck in a place like this yet again, even though this time it wasn't my fault. It's not like I did anything really wrong, just got the lock on the car's door open, so we could go for a fun ride and I could feel like a normal teenager necking with a cute guy. Better that than sitting around the house, feeling the weight of my parents' disappointed stares on my back, with their eternal expectations that couldn't be met by anyone less than a marble statue of a saint in a church somewhere because no matter what I did it obviously wasn't good enough –

Shit. Ten minutes here, and already I was feeling more depressed than when I'd arrived. Wonderful.

I tried to shift into a reasonably comfortable position, but the chair I was slouched in wasn't having any of it. There's something about these institutional plastic chairs, just like the ones in most high schools – it's like whoever's in charge picks them because they're hard and unpleasant, with the protruding metal boltheads specifically designed to leave indentations in your butt and make sure that you're pins-and-needles from the thighs down by the time you're allowed to stand up.

The physical sensation, in this case, matched my mood. I never liked talking to shrinks in the first place, even when I wasn't stuck by myself in a detention camp masquerading as a nice place to be. So sitting in a circle with nine other people, plus a shrink, all making futile attempts at conversation so they could pretend they've actually got some connection? Definitely not my favorite thing.

When the conversation came around to me, I tiredly introduced myself just like I'd done so many times before, then swallowed all the bitterness I would've loved to spit in the shrink's faux-understanding expression. Three weeks in total. Nineteen more days of this crap left to go, nineteen more days of sitting in circles and listening to strangers bleat about the problems they've got, of making stupid-ass artsy-craftsy projects that meant fuck-all and couldn't be sold to even the most desperate of kitsch stores, of shrinks prodding me and poking me and trying to get me to open up to their insincere efforts.

Across the circle, some girl combed a dark lock of hair behind one ear and hesitantly stumbled over her introduction, her face pale and nervous. She was trying to explain why she was here without actually specifying anything. She had to be new at this; I could see it in the way she sat and the way her eyes scanned the room endlessly. Partly she looked as though she thought the twitchy chick without much left in the way of hair or the pale butch with the thousand-yard stare were somehow contagious, like if she sat still too long then what ailed them would get her too. Partly it seemed like she was expecting to see something that never showed up. I almost felt sorry for her, getting dragged into this unhappy reality. Almost. First time out truly alone, abandoned by all the support structures that are supposed to be your foundation, it leaves you hollow and shaking and wondering what the hell happened to your life. It did for me, and I'd had all the psych stuff drilled into my head from an early age by the so-called parents. For her…?

She'd either cope, or she wouldn't. The way I felt right now, I couldn't find it in me to care.

Nineteen more days.

Sffft. Sffft. Sffft.

I'd been right about the lock. It had been ridiculously easy to pilfer paper clips from the arts-and-crafts crowd, just like all the times I'd gotten away with loot from so many stores. It was almost as simple to twist the lock open after the night wardens had done their patrol and made sure the outside doors were secured. I never slept much anyways; figuring out their patterns was nothing more than observation and they were predictable. I'd stolen down the corridor, slipped the lock, and ghosted out the door smooth as could be.

I just couldn't be stuck inside tonight. Not tonight, with bitter anxiety ratcheting ever-tighter inside me and my pillow looking more and more like the perfect match for my snoring bunkmate's face. No. I had to get the hell out, walk the sloping grass under the moon and stars, try to fill the ragged emotional emptiness that hung just below my breastbone, be as alone physically as I was in my head.

Sffft. Sffft. Sffft.

The motion of my hands was precise and regular, like a clock's hand scything away the moments of the night. The smooth surface of the creek's stone slowly whetted the pocketknife's blade, as I tried to let the familiar, rhythmic act of honing the steel's edge ease the harsh certainty gnawing away inside my stomach. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. The faint, delicate crosshatching of scars along the inside of my biceps and forearms, each line precise and thread-slender and scarcely visible even in the day, let alone the full moon's light, spoke to the latter case.

Sffft. Sffft. Sffft.

Five days I'd been here, and it wasn't working tonight.

I tested the blade with a gentle thumb. It had the raspy near-friction that told me the edge was about as near as I'd get to a razor without cracking open a safety shaver from one of the showers. It was what I needed. It would give me back my clarity of thought, send all those acidic truths tumbling away, for a little while at least. It was the best I could do without losing myself in drink, or a dose of ecstasy, or…

Pointless to think about what you don't have, Judith.

I pressed the steel against my forearm far up near the elbow, gradually increasing the tension in my wrist until the small knife's length began to indent a line on my skin. Drew the blade across the taut skin, smooth, slow, and sure. It was too dark to see for certain, but experience told me that so far it was nothing but a thin, faint red line, no different than someone might get from a accidental scrape against a tree. Pull the edge across that line again, and again, always precise, always in the same place, and now I could feel the gentle, liquid tickle as flesh parted and blood from the deepening cut begin to flow across my skin. With that came the sweet, sharp release of pain, and the sensation momentarily drove away everything else that wanted to crowd into my skull.

And for just a moment, I had peace.

But then all the words and memories and emotions came flooding back in, like the tide rising to wash away a tranquil sand castle on a beach, and I thought, do it again, it'll take root this time, give me something, something to purge the conviction inside me that it was somehow all my fault, that if I'd done this thing or hadn't done that thing then I wouldn't be sitting here on a cold dirty slope, alone in the dark while Fran and Bill were probably somewhere happy, laughing, better off without me, and I moved the blade of the knife further away from my elbow and drew it across my skin again, and again, and…

It wasn't helping. I could feel the pain from the lacerations like hot wires against my skin, but it wasn't giving me what I needed, wasn't taking my pain away the way it always had before. I could feel the burn of emotion high up in the bridge of my nose as tears tried to well up, tightening my throat like a wire noose. My parents were most likely happier now than they ever were while I was around; all they ever did was try to analyze what I'd done wrong this time. They'd be better off with some other guinea pig for a kid, because then they could apply all their little pet shrink theories on them and raise the perfect child who'd make them proud, and somehow my hand was holding the knife's edge parallel with the line of my forearm now, ready to just draw the sharp edge from my wrist towards the hollow of my elbow. Down, not across; it would be so easy, just a couple of long, smooth incisions, one for each arm, and then I could fall away from it all, forget about all of the criticism and loneliness and bitter conviction hunkering inside me, and the pocketknife's blade felt comfortably familiar against my skin and I tensed my wrist and –

Behind me there was a sudden snap and rustle and thud as someone muttered a curse and tripped her way through the tangle of shrubs at the treeline. I jerked the knife's edge away from my skin, dropped it between my legs and tucked my bloodied arm near my side. Tears slipped down my cheeks despite my effort to hold them back, and I hastily wiped them before whoever it was could get close. Don't ever let them see you cry.

"Oh. I, uh, the door was unlocked," murmured a girl's voice behind me. I didn't bother to reply to this obvious truth; what was the point? Just leave me alone, and I'll be out of your way in no time. I'll be out of everyone's way. She persisted despite my silence – young voice, familiar somehow. "Are you… OK?"

I swallowed the first half-sob, half-laugh that wanted to claw its way out of my mouth. "Yeah. Sure. I'm fine." My voice broke on the last word regardless of my intent to keep my voice level.

The other's feet whispered across the grass, coming closer. "Are you sure? Because, um, you don't sound fine." I could see her moving out of the corner of my eye, not too close, settling into a cross-legged posture on the nearby turf. "Is there – can I help you out with anything?"

Oh, sure, just hold my arms steady while I make the cuts, won't you? I bit back the sardonic reply that surged up, feeling my jaw clench with tension. I flickered a glance at whoever-it-was through narrowed eyes and ground out, "I really don't think so." Dark hair, dark eyes, pale face – the new girl who'd been sitting across the circle from me in the idiotic group therapy sessions.

"Look… I know what it feels like, being stuck here," she murmured. Oh, really, princess? Some of my emotion must've spilled over in the glare I tossed her way, but she overrode her hesitation and went on, looking at me intently. "It's like all the things that are supposed to be there for you, supporting you, they're far away and sometimes it's like they were never there in the first place. It's like you can't really talk to anyone because you think they won't understand or they won't listen or they're too busy or they've got too many burdens already, and if you did try to tell them what you're going through they'll just look at you like you're some kind of freak."

I stared at her in astonishment, features frozen in disbelief as the words spilled out of her. For once, I felt caught without a quick retort. How could she know…?

She saw the expression on my face, but seemed to misinterpret it. The intent, mature expression that had shrouded her features with her earlier words disappeared like mist under the summer's sun, leaving only a nervous girl behind. "OK, maybe it's just me that feels like that, but… I guess it's just that I saw you not really saying anything in those stupid group therapy circles, which I totally get you not doing, and I thought if you needed someone to talk to or…"

"Why are you even here?" The words came out more harshly than I'd intended as she trailed off.

She looked away for a moment, eyes scanning the darkened slopes around us, then looked back at me with a small shrug of her shoulders. "I had a bad dream. I couldn't get back to sleep. I got up to throw some water on my face in the bathroom, and when I came out I saw you down by the door, and…" Her brow furrowed with uncertainty. "Anyways, you didn't come back right away, so I … got worried. I don't know why. It's just… someone once told me that not everybody knows how to ask for help, so…" She spread her hands in a "who knows" motion and shrugged again, falling silent.

It was surreal, hearing so many of the things I'd had bottled up inside me coming out of her mouth. Her words were disconcerting, punching holes in the dismay and trepidation that had clenched inside my chest like a cold hand. And yet, at the same time, for some reason I couldn't wholly pin down, it was strangely comforting. Somehow, the serenity I'd been trying to force myself towards had manifested without my notice in the midst of her words. I looked over at her, actually looked at her in the dim moonlight, saw the deep brown hair and pale skin so much like mine, the features and dark eyes not so different from my own, the empathy in her gaze. We could practically be sisters.

"I'm … Judith," I said quietly.

"I'm Joan."

We sat on the damp grass for a time, alone together, and watched the moon slip towards the western horizon.

We snuck back to the dorm as quietly as we could (which, given the apparent attraction Joan's feet had for roots and trees, was tougher than I'd initially thought it would be). I kept a watchful eye out, knowing that the so-called camp counselors weren't above nighttime perimeter walks, and let Joan go in first while I stayed behind to relock the deadbolt and make a quiet beeline for the bathrooms.

The cool water of the tap farthest from the bathroom door was soothing to my forearm. The flow of blood had already nearly clotted, and I carefully washed the lacerations clean with soapy fingers. What was I thinking? I could've… I almost… I shook my head, trying to focus on what to do next. The cuts still ached, and the skin around them felt hot to the touch. Think. I had to keep them hidden, somehow; if the people in charge here saw my arm striped with fresh wounds I'd be in even deeper shit than when I'd first arrived.

Come on, Judith, think. You can't just leave your arm to bleed all over this place's sheets; that'll be a dead giveaway. What're you going to do about…

My eye fell on the toilet stall, and I felt my lips draw back in a wry grin.

Persuading the nurse the next morning that I'd twisted my ankle the night before wasn't at all the chore I'd expected it to be. A few moments alone in a shower stall had sufficed to replace the sticky reddened toilet paper I'd used to bandage my forearm with a fresh makeshift dressing, and the Ace bandage the nurse had politely provided for my ankle held the absorbent material in place much more effectively than the sock I'd bound it with before I slept. Wound around the forearm, elbow, and bicep, the Ace wrapping was much easier to hide under a long-sleeved shirt than the bulky sock-paper combination I'd rigged together earlier, and if I needed to I could just claim that I'd strained my arm somehow and needed the support.

Feeling relieved and somehow lighter, I walked down the dorm's second-floor corridor. I felt like I needed to speak with Joan, tell her … I didn't know what I was going to say. Thank you, probably, but beyond that? No idea.

Little Miss No-hair came wandering out of a door on the left, yawning and scratching her head as she shambled down the hall towards this floor's bathroom. I eyed her askance as we passed each other, then went back to scanning the door numbers for the one Joan had mentioned last night and – hey, wait a second. Wasn't that it?

I backpedaled, looking at the half-shut doorway that other girl – what was her name? Darla? Darlene? – had just emerged from. That was definitely it. I knocked tentatively, not wanting to wake Joan up if she was sleeping, and peeked around the door's edge. Joan lay still on her bed, face to the wall and knees drawn up to her chest under the blanket. Sleeping still, I'll bet. I was about to draw back from the room when I caught the small motion of her shoulders and head hitching jerkily, heard the small keening whimper of tears held back.

"Joan?" I ventured softly.

She jerked at the sound of my voice, turning her head into her pillow. "Go 'way," came the broken reply.

"It's me, Judith. I just wanted to…" I eyed her hunched shoulders, seeing the tension held there, then slowly walked over and sat down on the floor beside her bed. "Are you OK?"

Her words were quiet but intent. "I thought it was over. That it was never real. That I could just go back to being me again, but I can't and I, I – " She broke off, shaking.

"Wait a second, hold up… Joan. What's wrong?"

She turned over in the saggy bed, and looked straight at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and the ephemeral traces of tears lingered on her cheeks. Her voice, when she tried to speak, was unsteady. "You wanna know why I'm here? Because a while ago, I got bit by a tick and got Lyme disease." Her voice, hesitant and halting at first, began to speed up, the words spilling over one another in an increasing rush. "It's this bacterial infection that gives you all these nasty symptoms like fatigue and headaches and fever and a rash, and if you're infected with it long enough you can start seeing and hearing things that aren't really there, and I had it most of last year, and I thought I was seeing these things and people that seemed so real and, and – "

"Whoa, whoa… easy." Her hands were clutching the blanket fiercely, and I rested mine gently atop hers, trying to calm her down. "Gently. Relax, Joan… you're OK. You're safe now."

"No." She shook her head emphatically. "No, no, I'm not, because one of the things that happened too was that I had these intense dreams, about stuff that I couldn't possibly know, things that made me take actions I wouldn't normally do, actions that were related to the things I thought I was seeing. The doctors dosed me with antibiotics, got the infection out of my system, said I was OK. But last night, the bad dream I had that woke me up, it was just like that, like those dreams that I used to have. That's why I was awake. That's why I saw you leaving the dorm. That's why I…"

She stared at me pleadingly, eyes frantic and shining with unshed tears, voice edging towards hysteria. "Please. I'm not crazy. I'm not."

I took her hands in my own, entwined my fingers in hers, tried to soothe her with my voice. "No, you're not crazy. You might've been sick for a while, but you're better now. It was just a dream, nothing more." The look of incipient panic that had been filling up her features was beginning to recede as I talked. I sighed, and let a ghost of a smile slip onto my face. "Do you know why I came up here? I came up to your room because I wanted to thank you."

"Th-thank me? Why?"

" 'Cause I was in a very dark place last night, and you helped me find some kind of calm again. You're not crazy. Nobody crazy could have talked to me, gotten through to me, the way you did last night, made me feel like I wasn't so alone in the world. Trust me, I know. You, me, we're not crazy." I shiftily darted my eyes from one side to another, then leaned closer and murmured conspiratorily, "I'm not too sure about your roommate Darlene though."

That startled a laugh out of her, and her tired smile shone like a spotlight through her tears. I held her hands, talking to the one person who'd cared enough to actually really try to talk to me, smiling at her as the morning's sunlight glimmered through the window.

Two weeks isn't so long to spend when you have a friend to spend it with.

to be continued...