Author: Stoicstella E-mail: Stoicstellayahoo.com
Rating: R (definitely)
Summary: Since her mother married Naraku, Kagome bears the cross of her violent home life in silence. To whom could she turn anyway?
Author Notes: It has been brought to my attention that I accidently named chapter seven the title of Chapter eight... Uh, Sorry... This Chapter owns the ever unusual title of Happiness is not A Fish, which refers to the fact that you can't just go out looking for it and reel it in. It derieved (as do most of the chapter titles) from the lyrics at the begining. Sorry for the confusion... happy reading.
[""] Spoken
[''] thought
[] indicates a change of point of view within individual sections. (these will be pretty apparent though -- at least I should think)
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi. Song lyrics belong to Our Lady of Peace.
Happiness and the Fish
"'I'm upset
Happiness is not a fish
That you can catch
Imagination can't resist
This laziness
That pins you down get on your knees
Everyone you meet today
Is feeling useless & ashamed"
Chapter 8: Happiness is not a Fish
The rain was sticking to the window like an unsuspecting fly squirming on fly paper. Kagome tried to imagine what rain would look like with little black legs and wings and was therefore pretty much blocking out the other sounds in the room.
"Higurashi?" a voice gently prodded at her attention.
"Yes?" She replied softly, not taking her eyes off the heavy raindrop that was quickly escaping the glass surface and becoming part of the pool on the outside sill. That one was stronger than the others.
"Would you like to share today?" The woman's gentle voice persisted. "We would all like to hear from you."
Kagome allowed her eyes to scan the circle of girls. None of them looked eager, or very much like they wanted her to share. Some looked angry, some bored, and a few undeniably ashamed. One girl even stared at Kagome with eyes that desperatly pleaded every other pair they met to do nothing that even resembeled "sharing." None however, looked like they would very much like to hear from her.
"I'd like to pass today." Kagome said finally, turning her gaze to her feet. The left was wearing a plain white sock that was getting worn at the end, and threatening to rip just where her big toe was pressing, While the right was bulking with an air splint, which looked to her like some sort of glorified plastic boot, and did nothing whatsoever for the pain.
"Just one thing and then you may pass" The young counsler insisted gently but firmly. "Tell us how you feel today." Kagome looked up. Making eye contact with only the woman across from her this time.
"How I feel?" She asked rhetorically, keeping the bitterness toward the question on her tongue, instead of allowing it to seep into the room and drown the other occupants. Unconsciously her finger ran the thin line that scarred her throat and she felt her larynx jump nervously when her mouth finally began to form the words.
"I feel tired." She choked out, as her throat constricted unexpectedly. "I haven't slept in so long I dream when I'm awake just to fit in all my nightmares." She continued while breathing softly to avoid more sobs.
"How do I feel?" Kagome demanded again, swallowing hard. "So empty I can never be filled, so weak I don't think I can ever survive, and so... so guilty. You want to know how I feel?" She asked suddenly, looking at her feet again and watching tears she had not realized she was shedding gather on the plastic and roll to the floor.
"I wish I had died every time I take another breath, because every second I'm alive is one more second that something in my life can and will turn to shit and it's always my fault."
Before Kagome had even realized the counselor had left her chair she was kneeling in front of her and had Kagome's head laying on her shoulder. The gesture was meant to be comforting, but the emptiness Kagome had been feeling was all consuming, even her pain was dull background noise to her numbness anymore.
Sesshoumaru was watching a chest which moved up and down at the command of a ventilator through the Plexi-glass which separated him from his enemy. Naraku was in what doctors like to call a persistent vegetative state. Which really meant that he was only alive because the doctors kept him so. His heart was slowly pumping, his lungs were filling with air and depleting again, and his sensory systems still registered painful stimuli, but all other fronts of the brain were inactive. Even this was not enough though to satisfy Sesshoumaru.
"Surely constant pain is what you deserve..." he whispered quietly watching as the glass his forehead was pressed against fogged and became clear again. "I only wonder if it's painful enough. If it even compares." He turned his body and leaned his head against the glass the other way, looking out into the hall of the bustling hospital. Kagome was in this very hospital somewhere, receiving care from a counseling program for teens from abusive homes, but he wasn't allowed to see her.
He had come here secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of her, that he could use to replace the image of her broken and unconscious form being lifted into the ambulance that night. But she was on a secure unit and she wasn't allowed visitors for at least another month.
He was supposed to return to college tomorrow, and assure his father that he would be able to take over the family business without being distracted. So Sesshoumaru knew, that there was a chance, not only would he not see Kagome before he left, but if his father had his way, possibly never again.
With a sigh Sesshoumaru turned and walked out of the building keeping his eyes on his feet as he went.
Kagome ran her fingers around the outside of the little paper cup twice before she lifted it to her lips and allowed the little green and gray colored capsules to slide to the back of her tongue and with a swig of water effortlessly down her throat. Happiness in a pill. That was the idea, or at least sedation, the numbness that started in her brain and crept throughout her body like a plague. Having feelings was too stressful.
The charge nurse walked quietly away pushing her med. cart and Kagome looked back up at the mirror in her room. Her counselor had requested that it be placed there. She thought it was important that Kagome come to terms with her self.
All four of Kagome's eyes met their respective partners and she stared herself down determinedly, daring her reflection to look away first, and half fearing it might. The scars were enough to make anyone uncomfortable.
The one ran diagonally from the left side of her nose to the rounding of her jaw line. and the other was about an inch and a half of ripped flesh stretching downward from the right-hand corner of her mouth. The stitches were still in place and the area around them was red and irritated.
Kagome and her reflection looked away at the same time. She didn't recognize anything about herself anymore, and she didn't want to "come to terms" with it.
In so many respects things had become clearer, she had realized her mistakes throughout, and even made peace with some of her inner demons, but there was no pill strong enough to kill or even numb the guilt. It owned her like a cheap toy, and threw her effortlessly over the edge every several seconds.
The counselor, Angel, reminded Kagome in calm tones that she was not to blame. That nothing she could ever have done would give him the right to behave that way, to do such things. The words bounced off her and echoed back in every sentence that was spoken between them. Kagome could say it without breaking a sweat. "I did nothing wrong. I didn't deserve this..." inside she felt nothing.
she was thinking of her mother again. The soft sad way she would smile when Naraku came home from work, The way she would sit on the very edge of Kagome's bed when she asked her what was wrong, and the silence that consumed their entire relationship. Kagome had let her mother erode away, perched on the edge of that bed waiting like a statue in the sun. If once she had complained, confessed, gave forth even the slightest act of contrition, perhaps it never would have gone so far. Her mother sat there on the bed waiting, waiting for Kagome to tell her tale... and why not? If all of this really was her sin, then did she not owe Penance?
Kagome's eyes fluttered closed as she leaned even farther back in the small chair. Her mind immediately began playing the same old scenes, as if they had been paused, and just waiting for her to shut off the other distractions that were blocking them out.
Her mother was huddled on the floor crying... Heavy feet hit a stone still body again and again... Oceans of blood stained spotless hardwood floors and ridiculously expensive rugs.
SCENE CHANGE
The inside of the closet door had little knots and imperfections. inanimate objects seemed to be shaking with fear... Solid metal hinges bent as if under enormous weight and popped off entirely... her own feet moved somehow beneath a sea of scrambling body parts.
SCENE CHANGE
A cold white metal ceiling reflected images too far off to decipher... sea's of faces with masks and glasses conferred loudly in intelligible code... lights seemed to flash from everywhere and everything.
and then
there was just Kagome.
She was staring up at herself from the surface of a cool water. The reflection girl smiled at her, but there was something empty about it. Her eyes were full of scorn and rage. All to late Kagome noticed the expression changing from a smile to a smirk as the flesh upon her face began to crack and peel.
"It's all your fault" the rotting face taunted, but not so loud so that Kagome could hear it from this distance. She could just make out her lips moving, as the ground raced up behind her quickly. She had already fallen what looked like miles away.
"Ouch" Kagome suddenly cried, rubbing her back a little, but making no effort to stand up from the spot on the floor where she had just fallen. She stared at the ceiling until everything looked like a blurry formless blob, without any sensible shape. But she darn't close her eyes again.
There were Ceiling tiles... 142 of them, at her last count (although she knew she had counted some of them more than once and probably a good deal of them more than twice... she kept count anyway, always remembering the number that she left off on, and holding it in her memory as unequivocal fact). The ceiling tiles were all she had to cling to at the moment, and she did. She clung to them like a cat to a tree branch, waiting patiently to fall because she was afraid to try to climb any higher lest she fall from there anyway.
"Mrs. Matsushita?" a calm voice drifted in from somewhere below ceiling tile number ten.
"I'd prefer Higurashi... if you don't mind." she heard her own voice respond although she hardly registered a thought process to go along with it, nor even her lips moving to allow the sound to escape. The ceiling tiles changed position over her head as she shifted her body slowly taking 1-10 out of view entirely as she welcomed 50-60 into her line of sight. Neurons were firing in her brain and she was deftly processing them, everything else in the world was still and silent.
"Ms. Higurashi..." The patient voice corrected and then paused again as if expecting further rebuking. When no response came at all it continued.
"There's a miss Senaka here to see you."
"Oh" Mrs. Higurashi let fall thoughtlessly from her lips as she continued to count 143, 144, 145 in her mind.
"Hello Mrs. Higurashi. My name is Miss Senaka, and there are a few things I would like to discuss with you." A polite but firm voice broke in from somewhere in the area below tile 11 or 12.
"Can you please look at me ma'am?"
"No" was Mrs. Higurashi whispered response as the tiles in her view wavered slightly and then disappeared all together succumbing to her closing eyelids.
"Mrs. Higurashi, I'm well aware of the impropriety of my timing, but I really must conduct a personal inquiry into..." she paused in what was obviously a well oiled speech and changed her voice to a much franker tone.
"Listen, While Dr. Matsushita had a rather extensive life insurance policy through his work his beneficiary can not receive funds if he is killed during -- or as a result of -- injuries incurred while participating in illegal acts..." The voice paused obviously expecting some sort of a reaction. After getting none she continued.
"Look lady..." she went on taking a sharp turn away from frank and directly to frustrated. "I'm a hospital legal advisor, Your husbands estate is all tied up until someone pulls the plug or until it falls under the control of his brother, who is his estate executor, meanwhile his life insurance policy is null and void. Do you understand what I am saying to you, Mrs. Higurashi?" There was another small pause during which Higurashi willed her head to lift and began to open her eyes.
"You can't afford to stay here any longer. I have your discharge papers ready for your signature." the tall lawyer with fire red hair finished with a sigh. Mrs. Higurashi watched her with interest, thinking about nothing in particular.
It was 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon on her first visitor day. Kagome had expected her mother to come today and in fact she had almost been dreading it; she just wasn't sure that she could face her mother. Even so, when she took the call and found out that her mother couldn't make it in to see her, it stung deep down inside, in a place Kagome hadn't even realized she could still feel pain.
Kagome had not spoken to her mother in roughly a month, so the fact that Mrs. Higurashi had left the Matsushita estate and was living back at the shrine in a very different part of the city was a little bit of a shock. Nothing seemed to fit back together where she left it. Her mother was working as a waitress at a local cafe and going to school to become a teacher. She was changing her life around completly and she didn't have time for her daughter any longer, not until Saturday, anyway: she just couldn't get the time off from her new job or from school, to the lonely hospital.
Kagome released a small sigh as she glanced at the clock again; the second hand was jolting slowly around it almost mockingly, there was still 120 hours left until her mother was going to come see her, and every minute dragged on like it lasted a day.
She let her mind wander as she turned her attention away from the clock and back onto the mirror in front of her. The red and itchy stitches had been taken out and the open wounds had all healed over as far as they ever would. There were still two very large scars on her face, and one on her throat, but they had long since turned white and began to fade into her normal perception of herself.
Kagome ran her pointer finger along the thin white line that extended from the corner of her mouth, remembering the intense pain that brought it to her. Her eyes flickered closed as she watched the white hot memories playing inside her head, and she couldn't help but think of him.
"Sesshoumaru." she whispered allowed as she opened up her eyes. 'I wonder what he's doing now.'
He barely noticed he was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel until he suddenly stopped and the silence began echoing in his ears. Sesshoumaru didn't know how long he had been sitting in his car; the clock face had been blankly staring at him since he removed the keys from the ignition.
He rubbed the finger he had been tapping idly as he imagined what he could possibly have to say to the girl he couldn't get out of his mind every second of the past month. The problem was: he tried to picture her in any other condition, dressed in his shorts and T-shirt lounging about his dorm room, sitting on his bathroom floor with those little pouting tears the first day they met, even the terrified look she gave him before the police drug him away that night that seemed a life time ago... but none of those images would come. Every time he closed his eyes all he could see was her broken body that lay bleeding on the ground without a sign of life or breath. No other image of Kagome would come no matter how hard he tried, and his mind no matter how often he tried to tell it otherwise refused to believe that she was all right.
He released his breath in one big sigh steeling himself for the great burst of energy it would take him to really open the car door and make his way into that hospital. Running situation after situation through his mind, trying to just picture one that could end even partially well, he pulled the door handle and stepped out onto the curb.
"I am a rich and powerful man." quietly escaped from his lips, as he watched his well polished shoes walk in through the sliding glass doors. 'but,none of that ever mattered when it came to Kagome.'
For a split second Sesshoumaru stood poised on the first landing his hamstring tensed all ready to lift his leg onto the first step of the next stairwell. But he was suddenly wrought with an enexplicable desire to turn around, go back to his car, and drive as far away as his tank of gas would take him.
'perhaps everything that ever could have been said between the two of us has been. Perhaps there is nothing else.'
Defiantly though he pushed on. Refusing to face any reality that left him as a coward, no matter how foolish the other option may be.
Sesshoumaru approached a set of very heavy doors with a big metal handle. To the right of the doors, jutting out from the ceiling, was a surveillance camera, below which was a little red button labeled Push For Assistance. He placed his finger firmly on the button, feeling it press in, but not hearing or seeing any sign of assistance right away. After several seconds, a buzzer sounded and he heard the door click as it unlocked.
Behind a very sterile looking white counter sat a tired and stern looking woman; she looked at him half interestedly, pausing with her pen poised inches from the next word she was about to write on the folder in front of her.
"Can I help you with Something" she drawled after a second of impatient waiting for him to tell her his business.
"Yes, I'm looking for Higurashi Kagome" he replied in a dignified, yet somewhat condescending voice. undeterred by his tone, the desk nurse casually pointed down the hall to her right.
"It's room #7..." The woman smiled wryly as she returned her eyes to his "if you get to # 8 you've gone to far."
'what a miserable piece of work this woman is.' the already annoyed Sesshoumaru thought as he turned to go down the hall. He could hear her pen already moving on the page and knew she was disinterested in any ulterior intentions Sesshoumaru might have had. 'What a place!'
Kagome sometimes thought that if she concentrated all her energy on an object she could move it with her mind. You know, like maybe she had the dormant capability for telekinesis but she just never realized her true potential before. As of yet it had not worked. That's why when during this particular attempt of mental doorknob turning the doorknob actually began to turn, Kagome almost screamed out loud. When you spend a lot of time by yourself, you start to get jumpy.
Had Sesshoumaru known all this, he may not have gotten that taken aback look in his eyes when she threw her hands to her mouth and gasped so loud that she caused herself a fit of coughs. Her throat aching from the excursion and her eyes watering slightly, Kagome almost smacked herself for the greeting. Here was her visitor, her white knight come to rescue her from her monotiny and the first thing she does is offend him. 'I really can't catch a break, can I.' she thought with a mental sigh.
'I can do this... Casual' Kagome decided trying to seem aloof. She made a little wave with her hand, and opened her mouth to say "Hi" but all she managed was a little Squeek where the word should have been. And then before she knew it she was hugging him.
His body was stiff and tense toward her sudden outburst of affection. Wrapping her arms as tight as she could get them around his own she could feel every muscle in his shoulders and chest begin to slowly loosen and relax. She buried her head in his shirt and cried quiet joyful tears, not wanting to open her eyes and find he was never really there at all.
'Okay that was casual.' she praised pulling herself away to look in his eyes. They were soft but stern, just the way she always remembered them to be. Oceans of fury and sadness rippling beneath a golden translucent lid, a cover to be shown to the world.
"I thought for so long I would never see you again." he whispered lifting a single finger up to wipe the tears collecting beneath her eyes. "It's amazing... with all the obstacles that seemed to want to stop me from even trying that I ever even made it here at all." Kagome stepped back from the embrace, not really sure what to do with words he had given her to digest.
"Why did you come then?" she replied finally, looking at her own wriggling toes.
"I had to." he said "I couldn't stop thinking about you." Kagome took another retreating step away from him without taking her eyes from the floor. Suddenly an unexplainable fire was lit within her chest. She was just so angry with Sesshoumaru and she didn't know why.
"Well have you sated your curiosity?" she barked harshly, letting her head fling up suddenly and meeting his eyes. He didn't respond.
"Well?" She persisted "you know your obligations to me are over so you can stop worrying." she shot out, in a quieter but no less harsh voice.
"Are you crazy?" Sesshoumaru shot back defensively, stepping forward to take her back into the previous embrace. His motion was stopped by her hand on his chest pushing him away with a small yet effective shove.
"obviously." Kagome snorted pushing her bangs back over her head with a thoughtless swipe of her hand. "I don't need your pity though..."
"Wait, just a minute!" he began again in an angry defensive tone. "It's not like that." he added in calmer tone, trying to explain. His hand reached forward to smooth her hair. But Kagome's anger was not placated so easily, and she caught his wrist swiftly in her palm.
"What is it like then?" she spat, with raw disbelief.
"I never pitied you." he said earnestly, pulling his wrist free from her grasp and turning his back to her. She watched his silver hair bounce back and forth as he walked toward the door. Sesshoumaru turned back to her before he touched the knob, his eyes burning with passion and fury, the likes of which she had never seen there before. "I thought I loved you, but I don't even really know you do I?" he said coldly his hand on the knob.
The bottom fell out of the room. Kagome reached out for anything to hold onto. The first thing she grabbed was a little framed certificate. Something that her counselor had "awarded" her. It made a satisfying crash against the door.
"You obviously don't" she screamed at the long gone visitor. In minutes every glass object in the room was smashed against the adjacent wall, and Kagome was just crumbled there by her bed staring at it. She couldn't help but feel like it was just some metaphor for her life: A mess she made without meaning to that she'd never really get completely cleaned up. Ten years from now someone would walk into this room and step on a sliver of glass. She'd always be causing someone pain; It was inevitable.
Post chapter Author's Note: So what are you thinking? Grasping for something to throw at me yet? Well only one more chapter left so... we're down for the count. I wonder how this thing is going to end... oh yeah, don't forget to review.