Title: Work-A-Holic
Author: Tsubasa Kya
Disclaimer: Feathergriffin and I are writing a story together. Please view my profile for a link to our shared profile, and read and review that story too. I do not own the characters used herein, whether they are "Yu Yu Hakusho", or "Inuyasha" based.
Chapter thirteen: Alcohol
In a perfect world, there are rules. The therapist never needs therapy. The teacher never needs to be taught. The judge is never judged. The lawyer never needs defense. The cop is never arrested. And the doctor never needs care.
But the world wasn't perfect. The therapist that needs help ends up in a psyche ward. The teacher that needs to be taught cannot teach. The judge that is judged does not rule. The lawyer that needs a defense will no longer defend. The cop that is arrested is on the wrong side of the law. And the doctor that needs care will die.
Kagome looked at the cool glass in her hand as she thought of this theory with a sort of half-smile on her face. Inside the glass was amber colored liquid. She could remember eyes that were that color. Amber eyes surrounded in blood. Such a funny picture, she thought.
"That man should have cleaned himself up," she muttered. She looked at the cup with amusement and said with a laugh, "This is gross. I know now why I do not drink. But I poured it, so I will drink it now." She continued to drink the glass, sipping it like it were something to be savored. She found the taste wretched and decided that it would not do to continue drinking the open bottle.
She remembered her mother when she was young. Kagome must have been only five or six years old at the time, but she couldn't remember for sure. Her mother had been furious, and all the time she was drinking. Souta wasn't old enough to remember it, but Kagome remembered that time.
"You wretched child!" her mother would say to Kagome if she got near. Her mother was hardly ever more than a few feet away from Souta. She had a hip sling for the boy, and she would coast around the kitchen taking drinks of alcohol even as she busied herself with dishes or whatever she was doing. If Kagome got too close, then Souta would be put in a high chair and her mother would get out an old wooden spoon.
Kagome remembered being very afraid of her mother for the longest time if she put Souta down. During that time, when Kagome's father had died, her mother was an emotional train wreck. She would be set off by the smallest thing. She would adore Souta, spoiling him with toys and treats. But Kagome was just a wretched child.
Kagome looked at her glass again with a frown. "Who filled it?" she wanted to know. She didn't. She told herself she would finish the glass and then quit, since the drink was so horrible, and it burned as it fell down her throat. But she was not wasteful.
"You wretched child!" she heard her mother's voice echoing inside the kitchen. It forced her to look around in a vain attempt to find the older woman. "Of course you filled it. You took it, now you drink it, or so help me I will get the spoon!"
Kagome shook her head to clear it and drank the liquid again. It wasn't fair that Souta could be so peaceful all the time. That he could be so happy. He really didn't have any idea of the state of affairs in the shrine. He knew he loved the home he grew up in, and Kagome couldn't let him lose it.
But it was taking a piece of her to do so. She'd sent the fax off to Saiza earlier that day, so within a few days time her paralyzed patient would be in her home. She still didn't have any place set up so he could be housed though. The doctors would be coming the next day, before her patient arrived, to see that she had suitable arrangements for accommodating him.
But here she was, drinking herself drunk and stupid. She was killing brain cells with this acid-boiling liquid. She found it ridiculous that anyone could possibly spend an entire evening after work just drinking. For one, it was unproductive as she was finding out now. There were a great deal many other things that she could have been doing at that moment.
Like cleaning out the old storage room for her patient, or scrubbing the filthy house from top to bottom, or shoveling the flurried snow from the shrine stairs and salting them. Or attempting to get through the well…
No, that part of her was behind her. She couldn't get through. She wouldn't want to if she could. Hands touching her, pulling her back and forth through a crowd of hungry gatherers, people who desired not food but another type of sustenance. Power, they wanted power.
"I hate drinking," she said quietly, hearing a slur in her voice as her hands poured yet another drink but her mind didn't register the movements. Her mind forgot to catch up with her, and she drank not from the cup, but from the bottle.
"It doesn't seem like that now!" cackled her mother's voice, the same cold, crisp voice she'd used when Kagome was five. Kagome snapped at the sound of a shattering noise and looked around, trying to figure out what made the nose.
She was standing in a pool of liquid; the bottle was smashed on the wall of the kitchen, just above the stove where her mother used to stand with Souta on her hip. "Shut up!" she heard herself screaming. She grabbed the cup and downed the liquid in one massive chug.
"Look at you! You're just like me. Stupid, wretched child!"
"I'm not like you!" Kagome screamed, throwing the glass with all her might at the hazy image of a hallucination of her mother. The glass passed through and hit the wall like the bottle had. "I'm not like you!" She toppled over and crawled across the dirty floor to the corner she used to cower in.
"I'm not like you," she whispered. "Not like you… I'm just different… I'm not like you…"
In the back of her mind, she knew something was terribly wrong. Something was wrong and it needed to be fixed. But she wasn't sure she would ever be able to fix it. She was a slave, but she no longer had a master. She was a child, but she no longer had a mother. She was a mother, but she no longer had a child.
"Damn you," she sobbed. "Damn you all to hell!"
Why did she pick up the alcohol? Why?
All she wanted was something wet. Something to moisten her dried out mouth. Without thinking, she grabbed the first thing she could think of. And it brought up memories of her childhood. It brought up the irony that she was sick and she knew it, but she wasn't like other doctors.
She couldn't die from this sickness. She couldn't die period. She had tried so many times. What could they do to her in the slave pens? Nothing. They could do nothing to inflict that fatal wound so she wouldn't have to go to her final master. She only went with him because without him it was an eternity of suffering in the pens.
But with him, she was promised that she would see her family again soon if she just fulfilled one promise to him. He wanted his heir, and he wanted her to be the one to give it to him. It was all she had to do. She agreed when he promised she would see her family again.
Then he took all that away from her. He had his heir, by her blood and his, and he took the child from her the instant she gave birth. The child, a boy, was given to a wet nurse to be taken care of. She didn't shed a tear for the loss, because she didn't want it.
She only wanted to go home. She didn't want to be in the feudal era any more. She didn't want to live the tortured life she had. She didn't want to remember those faces, those looks of betrayal. She wanted a normal life, to grow up with her girlfriends and giggle over boys.
Instead, she had been thrown into some ragged old place where no one she would ever know in the future could ever know about. Where no one she had ever met in the past would still even exist in the future. She wanted out of that world, and into a new, better, less painful one.
She wanted to be rid of the memories. These memories that burned her so much, and that face that loved her yet was so betrayed by her. She wanted power. She still wanted power. She was greedy. She wanted the best position in the hospital for power. She was on her way up.
And now this? A trip to the past, and her memories. Everything falls apart. Just one small drop of alcohol and she was freaking out. Never mind the several glasses later factor.
What about her son? What about the boy she had never met? The child she hadn't loved?
This chapter was long in the making, even though it took a few hours. I thank you for your patience. Please review! 10-review rule in place. That's just crazy... no really, it is.