"So, Katie, is it? Tell me how you feel." That is the fifth time in the past fifteen minutes he has mistaken my name. I glare at the psychiatrist from my position across the desk as the scrappy looking man in the revolting brown sweater vest plays with a sorry excuse for a beard in the reflection of his paperweight. The tapping of his pen is also starting to get on my nerves, and I resist the temptation to hurl it out the window. Might not be a bad idea to send him through too if it wouldn't mar the wonderful view of the beach outside.
"It's Kairi." Not that he'd remember that. My parents are paying me to see a completely incompetent shrink who is actually worse than Mr. Rawls. And I hadn't thought that was possible.
"Okay, Carrie, then. What has been bothering you? Your parents say you've been more quiet and getting into things." I give up trying to correct him, small crescent marks imprinted in my palm of my nails from clenching my fists so hard.
So many things have been bothering me, from the worry of my friends to the confusion of the unknown flashes of visions. Oh, and the lack of understanding people seemed to have.
Now where should I start. Tell him how my two best friends and I disappear, and only I return? Leaving out the details would probably be a good thing. If I'm sitting in a shrink's office, he probably is convinced I'm mental. Really, I should be used to this by now. Why do I even bother anymore?
"Confused, frustrated, mad, sad," I recite in a bored tone, summing it all up in four words. It's way beyond those words, though, but I'm learning to tell early if someone is going to be much help or not. This man is the latter.
"Good, good," he mumbles, nodding his head. "Now why is that? How does it make you feel?"
"How about confused, frustrated, mad, and sad?" I snap rudely. "And maybe because no one is really listening!" I'm practically yelling by then, but it only earns me a nod. Sighing, I slump in my seat, my head propped in my hand, elbow on the armrest. No one ever listens to me except maybe my friends. Even they always seemed a little distracted. I can remember having to always repeat myself, telling Sora what to get next for the raft until I was close to taking that wooden sword of his and bashing him over the head. And Riku, well, he was always too independent. He was the leader. Everyone listened to him. Why would he need to listen to anyone else? And me? I guess…I guess I was always just tagging along. No wonder no one listened to the girl.
Immediately, I feel bad for my thoughts. Of course they listened to me. I'm just trying to find someone to take my anger out on, but I don't want it to be them. In fact, they've always been two of the few who did listen to me. It figures that without them, things seem so much lonelier.
The silence stretches out as I refuse to speak, only the scritch scratching of Dr. Lane's pen on his pad. Really, it's been two hours of sitting here and we've gotten no where. I know that we can't do anything unless I participate and try, but what's the use? I could walk out of here and he'd just continue on writing. He should have given up on the ink blot tests after seven answers of "nothing." A splotch, dark, shapeless, meaningless to me. The only thing they remind me of are shadows and an amorphous heartless lurking in the two dimensional depth of the paper. People usually answer with "animal" or "angel" or even "butterfly," don't they? And I'm trying really hard not to be put on medication.
"I see," he mutters again. "And can you tell me why?" I am so close to just bashing my head open on his desk in frustration.
"No…" I answer stubbornly, slumping into the chair with a pout. I'm being childish. I know that, but I can't help it. Now I know why children feel so inferior to adults. The adults will try to do anything to appeal to the younger population, but it never works. Even this office was overdone, colorful paintings and bright plastic toys scattered in the corners. The cheerfulness is so fake, it's almost revolting. Child psychiatrist he calls himself? What child could play with toys while being asked billions of questions and being humiliated?
Even his unnatural patience level is wearing off, though I don't care to make this any easier on this. My own patience has shortened, drained away waiting in that dark place before Sora could save me. There's only so long someone could wait before they start to lose my mind. Though…maybe that is what this all is about. Did I lose my mind?
"Kairi, would you like something to drink? I'm going to get a cup of coffee." He leaves without seeing me shake my head, most likely to go into the hallway and scream. It's easy to see the tension hiding under that gray sweater vested disguise of calm, a pale blue vein pulsing in his forehead. I couldn't be his biggest challenge, could I?
Left alone in the office, I sigh, thankful for the peace and absence of that irritating scribbling. If only I could get rid of the ticking from the clock on the wall. Bored, I sit up to preoccupy myself with the papers and sheets scattered on his desk. My name on a file catches my attention. It's my file, my right to look at it, right? Curiously, I reach for it.
My life is laid out before me, my grades in school, my medical history, recommendation from the counselor Mr. Rawls…flipping through the pages, one section strikes me hard. Post traumatic stress disorder, possibility schizophrenia or delusional disorder? Is that what they believe I have? The folder disgusts me with the evidence that people believe I am hallucinating. Dropping it, I turn my attention to the stack of Rorschach ink blot cards and pick one up.
The one that vaguely looks like a dragonfly that I hadn't mentioned. What a large black splotch has to do with the mind escapes me. Still, there is an attraction to the symmetric design, trying to find an image when there wasn't one. Reminds me a bit of studying cloud shapes when I was younger. Examining once corner slightly resembling a rabbit, the ink seems to tremble, blurring. The air around me seems to chill as a shiver runs up my spine, and the rabbit in the picture moves, turning glowing yellow eyes toward me. Right away I gasp and drop it.
"What just…" It's just a rabbit shape again, no glowing eyes or anything. Tentatively, I pick it up. It couldn't have been anything. Just…my mind playing tricks on me. Just a blob, not even a rabbit. The reassurance would have worked if the chill didn't slice into the air, an ominous feeling hanging above me. The rabbit doesn't shift this time. It's what I thought had looked like a bird's head that mutates into a claw, reaching out of the paper to clamp onto my wrist. My scream catches in my throat as I let go once more, the paper hanging from my wrist by the vice-like grip on my arm, nails digging into my flesh.
"Somebody! Help!" It couldn't take that long to get coffee. I didn't want to be alone again, begging for the doctor to burst through the door, but when I look, a black fog creeps in under the door, through the cracked open window, flowing from every shadowed corner and from behind every diploma hanging on the wall.
"Princess…you thought you could escape so easily?" a voice threatens, oily smooth. I don't here it with my ears but in my head, a foul, rotting smell accompanying the smoky fog that slowly closes around me. "The dark is all around you. You can't escape it. Not even that damned Keybearer can fight us all. The battle has just begun…"
What had once been an inkblot morphs, writhing now off the paper as it surges to for a shadow heartless, those yellow eyes I had seen glaring hungrily as it forms in the air before the blank paper falls away forgotten. With the other hand free, it slashes at me, drawing red lines down my cheek. I barely feel the blood trickling from the wound. All I want to do is get away from the desk, get away from the inkblots and the creature that grows, the ceiling now a dark cloud that rises to accommodate it's new height. The hand on my wrist twists into a dark tendril, winding its way up my arm as I scream.
"No! I'm not going back into the darkness!" I cry out, trying to anchor myself to the desk. The shadow tendril grows like a vine, slowly but surely as it reaches my shoulder and tries to twist around my chest. Winding around my neck, the pointed end rears up in front of me like a cobra about to strike. I swear that yellow eyes and a shadow heartless's head looks at me and laughs before it strikes toward my chest. The pain penetrates my body, a burning in every cell as a wail fills the air. It takes me a moment to realize it's my screams, falling limp against the shadows trying to encase me as the fog seems to slowly fill my head as well. At that moment, the door slams open and I drop on my hands and knees, coughing onto the floor.
"Kairi! What are you doing!" The paper cup falls from his hands as the psychiatrist rushes in. The room is back to normal, no shadows in the room lit by the light of the setting sun. The inkblot I had been looking at lies on the floor innocently as does the rest of the papers from the desk, scattered around me. No heartless, no fog.
"But they were…" I choke between sobs, breathing heavily. Swiping at the tears in my eyes, my cheek stings and my hand comes away spotted with blood. My arms display other scratches, each one a crimson line oozing its way to the surface before smearing across my skin.
Had there been anything really there? Trembling, I accept a cup of water and pills handed to me, taking them without a fuss. I am barely listening to him, sitting there on the floor with my eyes fixed on a dark stain on the floor. My blood. Had there been something here or did I somehow do this to myself? I don't ponder anymore as the drug begins its magic and sends me off into a foggy calm while I wait from my place on the floor as my parents talk with the psychiatrist out in the halls. At least the door is half open, ensuring me that I am not in here alone again. If I'm alone, the heartless might come back.
Chapter 12
I don't care about what problems this weekend will make. All I want to do is lie here on my back in the sand right by the water, soak up the sun and the freedom from the hospital. The waves crashing, grainy particles of sand warmed by the sun's rays. I want to be able to go home, smell like the beach. It's amazing how much I've taken all this for granted. Now, I just want to bottle it up, take some back to the hospital with me to look upon anytime I want and be able to return. Watching a gull lazily circle in the air above me, I make a mental note, come back later with a jar and try to recreate the beach in the bottom. A little sand, just a bit of seaweed, a shell. Simple things that represent what I miss. Satisfied with my plan, I take another deep breath as I've been doing a lot all day. Mmm…salty ocean air, dusty scent of sand…
I've got to go back tomorrow. I knew I wasn't out for too long, but still, it seemed to have gone by so fast. My fingers dig into the sand by my side as if trying to hold onto this particular piece of beach forever, a shiver of warmth running to my toes. Closing my eyes, I don't see darkness but the pink of the light beyond my eyelids. Not artificial lights or pitch black but the color of the pink new flesh of a baby, so full of life.
The hospital, it doesn't seem dead but lifeless. The patients there, they don't actually live there, only a shell of them. They're minds are already either gone or only staying there for a while. No wonder it seemed cold no matter how tight I pulled my blankets around me at night. There's no life within those walls.
A sunburn doesn't worry me. I just turn my face upward, a little smile playing at the corner of my lips and listening to the others laughing in the distance. Cool water, lapping just at my feet, stealing the warmth from the sand and leaving its breath in the ground, the sand settling as the water trickled through the grains and back out to the larger body. I always thought it was looked as if the beach was breathing, a sleeping giant. The sand, pulsing, breathing amidst the sea foam, especially when you stepped into the newly wet sand at the water's edge and it rushed up to wash away the footprint. Somehow, I feel the beach is alive. Dwelling on the idea of life for a moment, I get an icy shock, one wave daring to pass the edge and send water around me. Sputtering and sliding in the wet surf as I follow the tide a bit, I cough, cheeks burning red.
I never learn, do I. It's not the first time that has happened, always an unpleasant shock. As I cough up the water, dripping wet and struggling to stand up without being knocked down again, the memory of one of the last time returns to me.
It had been years ago, when I was young. I'd been lying on the beach, watching the sky being dyed by the setting sun from the day's blue to the red orange of the coming night. I'd been thinking that time as well, reaching for those memories just out of my grasp of where I had come from, if I could remember that other world that must have been my real home before I woke up on the beach, police searching the shore thinking I was some lone survivor of a boating accident. Just lying there when the wave came along, pulling me screaming and choking into shallow waters. That time, small hands reached under, pulled me up. I could remember Riku and Sora's smiling round young faces then their laughing as they helped me out of the waters and snuck me to Sora's house for a dry change of clothes before I could catch a cold. This was exactly like that time, only I am now a bit older. And the hands that pulled me up this time weren't Riku and Sora.
"You've lived here for how long and no one's told you not to lie that close to the water?" Roka steadies me, holding my hand as we make our way back to dry land. "Okay, little mermaid, how are you feeling?" His eyes are laughing at me as I blush, wringing out the bottom of my shirt to no avail.
"I'm fine, I'm fine…" Apparently I could add grace to all the things I've lost lately. Luckily, it's a warm day, battling the chill from my damp clothes. "Um, thanks I guess," I mumble. "I'll try to be more careful next time."
Roka laughs again, picking out a bit of seaweed tangled in my hair and hands it to me. "Come on. The others have lunch ready." As he puts his arm around my shoulder, I can't help feeling something strange. Not the flutter that Selphie seems to get every time she's around him but a sinking feeling. Maybe guilt? Annoyance? Something about him bothers me, and at the same time, I don't think it's possible. Maybe it's because he just seems so…perfect.
The picnic laid out on the blanket seems like something out of a TV show, laughter accompanying the music of Selphie's coos about how perfect it all looks. Accepting a sandwich from thrust at me, I take a seat in the circle and unwrap it.
"Decided to go for a swim, ya?" Wakka asks, tossing me an extra towel to throw around my shoulders. "Didn't your mother ever tell you to wait an hour to swim before eating? Or was that after?" Blushing at the teasing, I brush it off and take a bite out of my lunch, salted with the sand on my fingers.
A real beach picnic, one I haven't had in a long time even before the hospital. And the food…you'd think that it being dusted with sand it would be disgusting, but it only added to the experience. "Selphie," I say, mouth full. "This is really good."
"Hm? Oh, I didn't make it. Wakka did." I choke on my sandwich as Tidus laughs, pounding on my back a bit. "Yeah, who knew he could actually cook?"
Wakka looks embarrassed for a moment, laughing and handing me a napkin. "Ya, well, you people never asked." So strange, not knowing that he liked cooking. I knew Sora and Riku like the back of my hand, but these people I call friends, I realize how little I actually know of them. It's nice getting to know them. All this, I guess it is helping me take my mind off of things.
"Hey! Kairi's smiling!" Looking up from my sandwich, I see Tidus pointing at me, like an excited kid at the toy store. It only pulls my smile bigger, and I let out a small laugh. I guess this is one of the few times lately where I've found the need to stretch those cheek muscles. It's been a while, the feeling so alien, I cover my mouth and giggle.
Roka pushes my hand away, and I look up, the others all seeing my smile, and I see all of theirs. "Don't do that," he tells me. "See? Big smile!" Pinching my cheeks, he tries to make me give a big grin, but I turn away, chuckling slightly uncomfortably. I know he's only trying to be nice, but I can't help myself. Thankfully, Selphie breaks the feeling with her silly flirting.
"Like this Roka?" Selphie could blind us all with her teeth, leaning closer to him as he leans back and laugh. Her crush on him is more than a little obvious, but it doesn't seem to bother either of them as everyone laughs.
"Yeah, exactly like that." It leads to a smiling contest between the three boys, all trying to flash their best grins as we laugh. I guess their efforts to cheer me up is working. In the end, we're all lying in the sun, exhausted from the laughter, faces and throats soar. I want to immortalize this day. Crystallize it, shrink it, save it in my pocket forever.
As we all lay there, Tidus and Selphie's snore mingle with Wakka's mumbles in his sleep. Just me and Roka. Both of us are silent, listening to the sounds of sleepy friends and hungry gulls waiting to pick at what's left of our picnic. Finally, he moves, lightly resting his hand on my arm. At the brush of his fingers, I tense up.
"Kairi?" he asks, assuring that I'm awake. "Selphie…sort of told me what's happened to you." This is news to me. Sitting up, I look him in the eyes, questioning him without a word. "I mean, she told me some things, not all of it." That Selphie, she can never keep her mouth shut. But then, that shouldn't surprise me considering how long I've known her.
I don't say a word, giving him a long hard look before trying to lie down again when he pulls me back up, still trying to talk. "Come on, it's okay. I don't think you're crazy. You seem perfectly normal to me." I know he's so sweet, but I don't like it. It…tempts me to forget who I really need to remember.
"What do you know about normal?" I challenge. "What do you know about me? Did she tell you that I'm at a hospital for something other than a broken bone?" I can't stop what I'm saying, knowing this isn't me. It's a defense mechanism, keeping me away from him, and it's working from the looks of shock on his face. I don't want to hurt him, but I don't want him near me at all.
"Kairi, I just…"
"No. I'm sorry," I apologize, sighing. "I'm just going to go now. You're really nice and would be a great friend but…not now." I want to leave before I ruin the memory of a perfect day. It's clear in his eyes that he just wants to get to know people, one of those guys who are different than others, but he's also new, unknown to me. Lately, I've had enough of the unknown.
With a sigh, I give him a reluctant hug, show him that I don't really dislike him. I just need to know the familiar, know that things will get back to how they are supposed to be eventually. Giving him a sad look that tells him I don't want to talk right now, I turn to leave. "Tell the others that I'm sorry. I'll be happy to have them visit me again."
No good bye, I don't think it matters. I want to keep this day separate from the rest of my memories. A good bye would just connect it with me going back to the hospital tomorrow morning. Rubbing at my eye, I head home.
"Kairi, you're back already?" One of those rare times my mother is home. Immediately, she rushes me to the bathroom at the sight of my still slightly damp close, the salt from the ocean making my hair stiff. I let her baby over me a bit, filling the tub before leaving me to my own devices as her cell phone rings. Surrounded by steam and bubbles she pours in for me that I always loved when I was little, I sink into my bath, the water scalding before numbing into a comforting burn. Long day…Things at home aren't like I had left them. I still haven't figured out if the changes have been good or bad.
………………………………...
Author's notes: I know it's been nearly half a year, but I guess the short version of my apologies is that I'm sorry, things have gotten out of control for me, and I've been going through a lot of things I don't really want to talk about. As summer begins, I'm planning to try to get back into writing more, and if this chapter seems hastily written, it's only because I'm trying to just work at starting up again. I don't plan to leave this story unfinished. Wilted Rose is my first priority when it comes to finishing stories. Possible that I might work on other stories, update other things other than this for a bit, but I plan to always come back. It's just that ideas build up, must get them out of my head whether they are good or bad, but it frees me up to thinking more on Wilted Rose and concentrating on what I'm going to write next.
I'd just like to thank you all for sticking around even when I keep on disappearing for a while. Next chapter she'd be back in the hospital unless I get enough people say they'd like to see another chapter outside first, because either way I can work it. If you'd like, e-mail me at and I'll most likely get back to you within a day or two. Now, on to answering reviews…
October Breeze: Died? Ha! They can't kill me off that easily! Not sure how fast I can update, but I'm doing my best! Thanks for still sticking around!
Ud: To tell you the truth, I didn't even notice the name thing until one of my friends pointed it out. Roka's an actual name that means White Crest of Wave and just happened that I thought it fit. Apparently I just don't see the obvious very well. ;;
Ed: Organization? Oye, too many conspiracies already! No, he's not from the organization, he's just the new kid on the island.
aliasfan: Ha, once a year, I guess you were close on the guess! Thanks so much for your loyalty to the story! Aye, I think everyone's been busy lately, and I don't think just because summer is coming along, it will get completely better.
Kintora: Hehe, wow it seems as if everyone but me really did notice the name thing! I'll try not to be forever again!
MaroonSorrow: And that's what happens when there's budget cuts and the school makes the PE teacher their counselor!
Chibi Trowa B: heya! I see someone got lazy to log into their account again!
Puppkid: Wow, a new reader? Oh, thank you so much! And welcome to…Wilted Rose I guess! Heh, don't worry, you're not the only one feeling sorry for Kairi!
Seig Wolf: No, it wasn't on purpose, more like me not paying attention and then finding it was a little late to change.
Shady Fetish: ha, those three are fun, aren't they! I knew they were taken from other Final Fantasy games, but I always wondered how they really were in Kingdom Hearts.
Khfan: Thankies a billion! I'm going! I'm going!
Byn: ha, now is anything going to be thrown? Ooh, you rp too? Yeah, that does take a lot of time! Yes! Go continue on your own!
Kawaii-rae: Squeaky!Hey there!
For those I missed, I'm sorry! I just replied to those who put in a review for the last chapter! But all my readers, love ya all! Thanks for sticking around! You all are what motivates me to get my lazy but on the computer! I'll see you in the next chapter, ya? And hopefully it doesn't take another half a year again! Feel free to e-mail with any other comments and ideas you have! Don't worry! Wilted Rose will never die!