Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Beacon Mental Hospital...

Jasmine didn't know why she had to be here of all places, and yet this was where she still found herself residing now.

Her room was all but barren, even with the neatly-made bed and what few personal belongings the young woman was allowed to keep with her. One of said belongings she was currently gripping to her chest. The sting of an itchy bandage that was hidden by the clothes she was forced to wear caused her to cling to the teddy bear even tighter in that moment.

It was an attempt to ignore the urge to scratch the self-inflicted wounds; the unbearable need to tear the thin scabs from her abused flesh again. It happened with even the smallest of wounds, but the self-inflicted cuts on her right hip were perhaps the most annoying. Absentmindedly picking at them was what lead to her mother figuring out that the girl had begun cutting again, after all.

Jasmine had learned that the wrist was too obvious a place, even with bracelets, so took a scissor blade to any area that was easily hidden with panties and sleep bottoms. It seemed like a better option whenever she couldn’t take the pain of being verbally abused by the very woman that still bothered to take care of her, but...

Something as small as that wasn't enough to have landed her here. Even with an emotional overload and temporary breakdown involved, it wasn’t a legitimate reason for pulling her from her home so suddenly and transferring her to a city in another state altogether. Or, at least, that was what Jasmine thought.

She was depressed, bipolar, had a fairly high anxiety level, and was occasionally suicidal; not insane.

With a soft sigh at her own thoughts, Jasmine placed her forehead against the cold glass of the only window in her minuscule room. Her pale blue hues gazed out into the stormy, cloud-covered city from beneath shortened and fairly unkempt darkened ashen blonde locks. Said locks brushed down along the right half of her freckled cheeks and down past her chin to unknowingly accenting the bags Jasmine had under her squinting eyes.

She really wished that they would have at least let her keep her glasses and necklaces in here. The glasses she could admittedly do without, but not having her ankh and the medallion of her patron god left her feeling naked. Vulnerable.

A sudden, shrill scream from one of the other patients situated on her floor caused the young woman to jump much like a doe would while her head shifted in the direction of the door. Jasmine was usually a tense and easily-startled person to begin with, but her anxiety only seemed to have gotten worse since she'd been transferred here the day before last.

This place was far from good and it didn't take a rocket scientist to see that something was off about the building no matter how 'harmless' it seemed at its surface layers. Something terrible lurked here; she could feel it.

Jasmine relaxed a few moments after the initial scream that startled her. There were sounds of the nurses trying to calm the patient, assuming that it was the same person that had just screamed, so that helped her be more at ease when she turned to look back out the window.

A few droplets of rain fell against the thick glass and danced their way downward before her, yet it did little to bring Jasmine out of her gloom. Still, she watched as it began to drizzle within Krimson City whilst thunder rumbled softly both above the hospital and off in the distance.

Never before had Jasmine been so far away from home and as lonely as she was at that moment...

Even in knowing that her patron deity was still there watching over her, she still missed her best friends and even her mother and younger brother; the latter two of which she would often get into violent verbal confrontations with. None of them had come to see her here. They didn't have the money to afford tickets to the various forms of transportation that would bring them to Beacon Hospital. Hell, Jasmine didn't know if her family and friends had even been told that she was transferred elsewhere.

It wouldn't have surprised her if they hadn't been, actually. Her original doctor and insurance company were notorious for dropping the ball on damn near everything these days.

Whatever the case, Jasmine didn't want to be here. She didn’t want to be in some mental hospital in a city she didn’t even know existed before that week. She also couldn’t bother keeping her forehead from audibly landing against the glass as she thought all of this.

It would take ages to try to get transferred back home, if they would even allow it, and just thinking of that alone was enough to awaken her voracious depression. Jasmine’s eyes started to sting and she released a quivering sigh, “Why even bother...?”

“Why even bother...why even...why...why...” A new, unfamiliar voice caused the young woman to jolt slightly and spin around on her heel with a guarded stance. It was probably a comical sight, given how Jasmine now held her teddy bear like a weapon, but she didn’t care.

There was another patient, and they had actually entered her room. That made Jasmine unbelievably uncomfortable. She'd already seen what some of the others here were capable of and could be in some serious trouble if this person was one of them.

The blonde couldn't tell if who she was dealing with was volatile, though. There wasn’t any apparent ill-intent coming from the person shifting uneasily just inside of her doorway.

The patient, Jasmine wasn't sure of their gender, was hunched over. They were shaking and pacing in short, shuffled steps while they kept repeating the words that had alerted Jasmine to their presence in the first place.

Their skin was far paler than her own, hair tussled and white, and eyes puffy and red with their color unknown thanks to the constantly averted gaze and the fact that the blonde wasn’t too fond of making eye contact with people for her own reasons. It was strange for her to watch, honestly. Jasmine didn't quite know how to react either; they were clearly in a state of unrest which could make them dangerous, but...

“Um,” She started, unsure on whether to move closer or not but took a timid step forward as she lowered her teddy bear anyway. Jasmine leaned over a bit, trying to see their face a little at the chance of perhaps being able to read them better and failing. She saw the dried blood stains on their shirt and her eyes widened at the sight as she asked cautiously, “Are...are you okay...?”

Their pacing continued, eyes on the floor and a hand coming up to shake just centimeters away from their head. “Are you okay...are you okay...okay...okay...”

“I'll take that as a no...” Jasmine frowned and stood there. She should probably call one of the nurses in to get this one, but would raising her voice set this kid off? This place was far more stressful than she believed she could manage to handle much longer.

“Okay...okay...not okay...not okay...help...help, help, help...!” The patient muttered, voice cracking faintly as panic seemed imminent. Jasmine paused to furrow her eyebrows while she continued to observe their behavior. So they could speak without simply repeating what those around them said, but they were also asking her for help and she could feel her heartstrings tugging. There was no way Jasmine could call a nurse to come and get them now; the staff obviously didn’t care if this kid was going around with bloodstains on their shirt.

“I don’t know how to help,” She admitted softly and placed her teddy bear on her bed before tentatively taking a few more steps toward her guest with her hands up. They hadn’t tried to hurt her so far, so this much might be safe if they really wanted some assistance of some sort. “You’ll have to tell me what to do...is that alright...?”

A gasp left Jasmine’s lips when her fellow patient shuffled the distance between them and actually placed their forehead on her shoulder. Their entire body was quivering, voice against her shirt barely a whisper, “We can’t escape him...we can’t escape him...!”

“There you are, Leslie. What have I told you about going off on your own?” Another voice, this time belonging to a doctor that entered her room as well, had filled the air right as Jasmine was lifting a hand with the intent of perhaps placing it on the frightened being’s head.

Said doctor looked around after placing a hand on each of this Leslie person's arms as if to lead them away from the young woman, only to pause when his gaze landed on Jasmine. He seemed surprised to see just how close she was to the other patient, but tried to hide it, “Oh, I'm sorry; he wandered off when I was talking to one of the nurses. He's harmless though, so you don't have to worry.”

“Have to worry...have to worry...have to worry...!” The kid was repeating words again and the blonde couldn’t help feeling sorry for who she now knew was a him of some sort. This caused her to frown softly as she watched Leslie being forced to shuffle away from her. It didn’t seem like he wanted to go, really.

“I'm more worried about him at the moment. Is this normal...?” Jasmine motioned her head at Leslie, who was now shaking his own head and trying to pace once more. The doctor's grip on him prevented this, which didn't seem to help the poor boy's state of being. It was obvious by Leslie's bruises and dirty clothing that the staff here weren't exactly the best caretakers with him, so it was no wonder he was so messed up even now that his doctor was right next to him.

“Well, 'normal' isn't exactly why people come here. For Leslie though, I suppose you could consider this normal behavior, yes.” The far older male paused once more as if he seemed to realize something and held his hand out with a smile. “Oh, do forgive my manners. I am Doctor Marcelo Jimenez, the Director of this establishment.”

A chill ran along Jasmine's spine when the hand was offered, her gut twisting in knots just from Dr. Jimenez's smile. It was a mental red flag; something the young woman would get often when she sensed something off about a person with what her family considered empathic abilities. The fact he was standing so close made it easier to physically read him without her glasses, as well.

Subconsciously using her latent ability, Jasmine knew that there was most certainly something off about the doctor standing in front of her.

“...Jasmine.” She replied somewhat stiffly, glancing to Dr. Jimenez's hand warily. Jasmine didn't know if he was two-faced, a chronic liar, or simply just a dangerous person, but she honestly hoped she wouldn't be finding out what was wrong with the doctor first-hand.

To be in a place she'd never heard of before was one thing, but it having so many people that had her in a near-constant state bordering fight or flight was exhausting. There was no telling what would happen to her the moment she let her guard down here.

Dr. Jimenez didn't outwardly seem at all bothered by the fact the young woman before him so blatantly refused to shake his hand and simply smiled, “Oh, yes, you must be my new patient! I'm sorry we weren't able to meet under better circumstances, but such is life. Our first official session is scheduled for tomorrow, so I will see you then; if not around dinner tonight.”

Jasmine would have said she was looking forward to it, but that would have been a blatant lie that the young woman didn't have the energy to follow through with. Instead, she simply gave a quiet nod while Leslie had begun his fidgeting again at the doctor's side and brought her attention back to his hunched form.

“I guess I’ll be seeing you later too then, Leslie...?” She asked gently to the young man, but all he did was mumble something she couldn’t make out while faintly nodding his head. He was still uneasy about something and Jimenez led Leslie out of the room without so much as a final farewell.

Perhaps the doctor was in a hurry. Whatever the reason for his swift departure with the boy, Jasmine vowed to keep an eye out for her new doctor. He was up to something, and on top of that; she was remembering what Leslie whispered to her just before Jimenez came in. The young woman couldn’t help but shudder.

‘We can’t escape him’? Yeah, that wasn’t fucking ominous.

Jasmine was quick to crawl onto her bed and pull her stuffed bear to her chest in an unrelenting embrace. Even when the suddenness of the action was enough to cause a sharp pain to shoot along the inside of her ribcage worse than it had so far that day, the blonde couldn’t bring herself to loosen her hold on the old toy. It was a clear warning from her still-healing pleurisy with each sting to her quickened breaths, but her racing heart and mind had little room for concern about such a thing.

All Jasmine wanted to do was go home; this place was seeming to become darker the longer she stayed. It was suffocating and most certainly beginning to feel like Beacon Metal Hospital really would be the death of her. Would she ever get to see her friends and family again...?

Time passed slowly, Jasmine having dozed off at some point while curled into a ball on top of her small bed. There was no telling how long the young woman had been napping before a nurse came in and practically shouted her awake.

“Jasmine!” He bellowed into the small room, causing her to gasp and bolt awake with a fist at the ready to punch at whoever was nearby out of sheer instinct. Once the nurse saw that she was finally up, he huffed and motioned over his shoulder, “Get your ass moving, kid. It’s time for vitals check and then dinner.”

“Okay...” She let out a squeaked yawn while sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. The floor was freezing against her bare feet, causing Jasmine to search for her slippers in her groggy state. They were nowhere to be found and she frowned as she kept her teddy bear tucked close.

Did someone take the slippers while she was sleeping? She prayed they hadn’t, but a good majority of the patients were unattended 90% of the time during the day, so it was feasible. If anyone had come in, they thankfully left her alone, though. Jasmine would have woken up if anyone tried to touch her.

...She hoped.

The nurse snorted with disdain upon seeing the blonde trying not to panic over something as small as ratty slippers, turning away with disgust clear in his behavior, “Don’t fall back asleep or I’ll have you and that damn bear hosed down.”

Jasmine couldn’t keep from frowning with despondency at this and held Donnie closer to her while she curled around the teddy bear. No one cared in this place, that much was certain. Would she end up like Leslie and the other patients if she continued to stay here...?

“Miss Summers?” Jasmine jumped with a squeak when a voice came from beside her, along with a gentle hand on her shoulder. It was Dr. Jimenez, the last person she wanted to see, but it wasn’t like she had much of a choice of avoiding him in this horror movie asylum-esque hellhole.

“...Dr. Jimenez,” She greeted and tried to shrug her shoulder from his grasp. He got the gist that she was uncomfortable with being touched and pulled the offending limb back, but was still focused on the blonde when she asked, “I thought my session wasn’t until tomorrow?” Which roughly translated into ‘I don’t like you, why the hell are you here?’.

“It was, but some things have come up. I was wondering if you would be willing to have the session after supper, since we need to get your information into the system as soon as possible and it may be another day or two until I’m free enough to do so.” He explained while one of the nurses finally got around to checking the young woman’s vitals.

Jasmine flinched at the shock of pain coming from her tender arm when the blood pressure cuff was slipped on and began to inflate. It was a sensation akin to what the young woman suspected having one’s arm crushed felt like. Jimenez noticed this and raised his eyebrows.

“Your file has mentioned that you have fibromyalgia. It’s bad today, I presume?” A motion to the cuff and arm quivering in pain got him a nod.

“Yeah...I also have a blood disorder, not that your nurse Todd out there actually listens to what I have to say. It’s why I bruise really easily sometimes.” Jasmine said bitterly as the cuff was finally pulled away and her temperature was checked via an electric thermometer in the ear. Once the female nurse had jotted down the results, she moved on to the next patient, thus leaving the two to converse undisturbed once more.

Well, at least until one of the other patients let out a blood-curdling banshee of a screech that made Jasmine jump damn near thirty feet out of her skin with a sharp yelp. Jimenez observed this, nodding to himself after a moment when he still hadn’t gotten her answer about changing the session time, “It’s decided, then. One of the nurses will bring you to my office once you finish eating. We can discuss your problems better there, and I’ll see about getting you some medication for anxiety. You appear to need it.”

“Thank you, doctor...” Jasmine managed to get out while she tried to slow her poor, overworked heart down once more. She did a fairly good job of not blurting out ‘no shit, Sherlock’ instead of the thank you, glad to see him turning in preparation of leaving the room.

“Good. I will see you soon. Be sure to eat all of your food.” With those last couple of short sentences, he was gone again. Jasmine felt herself finally relax a bit and sighed while putting a hand to her head. She could feel a headache coming on, but at least she wouldn’t have to see the doctor for a while if she just got the session, which was really just a fancier way of saying appointment, over with.

When her tray of food was brought to her, Jasmine didn’t have much of an appetite. The fact the crap they fed them looked like it was processed dog barf next to a moldy baloney sandwich didn’t help matters. She couldn’t help but scrunch her nose up while her stomach churned at the sight, “Ugh...”

In the end, all the young woman could manage to stomach was the misshapen and stale dinner roll. She washed it down with the unusually fresh, small carton of milk and waited for one of the staff to fetch her for her appointment. She just hoped that it wasn’t going to be Todd again; he always would grab her by the arm violently and shove her about whenever he had to take her somewhere.

Soon enough, one of the female nurses came into Jasmine’s room and led her down the long hallways to where Dr. Jimenez's office was. She even let her bring her teddy bear with her, but didn’t say more than telling the blonde to follow closely. Jasmine just opted to stay quiet, too.

“Ah, Miss Summers; welcome. I apologize again for the sudden schedule change,” The doctor greeted her when she stepped into the large room. It was mostly full of shelves along the wall lined with thick books and, of course, there was the desk that the older male was seated at in the center of the room. He motioned to the chairs in front of the desk when Jasmine stood there uncertainly. “Have a seat, please.”

The door closed behind Jasmine and she cautiously moved to ease herself down onto the nearest chair. She held Donnie close to her, focusing her gaze on the blurry image of Jimenez’s chin while keeping her silence. Never in her life did the girl think that she would miss her glasses as much as she did when being unable to make out the minute details of the strangers here.

It made reading someone harder than usual, and that could be dangerous for her.

“How are you feeling?” Jimenez started off as he sorted out the papers stacked in front of him and pulled out a file from within his desk. Upon opening the file, slipping on a pair of reading glasses, and picking up his pen, he looked up at the young woman while waiting for her reply.

“...Tired.” Jasmine forced herself to mutter. It wasn’t a lie, and it was short and simple. All she had to do was get this paperwork appointment out of the way and then she could go back to sulking in her room. Plotting escape while doing so seemed like a good idea too, but she still wasn’t currently physically healthy enough to attempt it. Not yet, anyway.

The doctor’s contemplating hum brought her out of mentally cursing her body for being so weak, him flipping through the papers of the file. Jimenez was skimming the words on the pages, eyebrows rising higher up the wrinkles of his forehead as he went on before finally coming back to the front of the file and looking up. He relaxed his expression when he did, as if trying to cover up whatever surprise he’d experienced from her cautious gaze.

He tapped the page of the file with his fingers in thought and saw the girl flinch faintly from the sudden sound. Jasmine was still refusing to make eye contact with him, though she appeared to at least try one or two times since arriving. Even with the clear anxiety, she wasn’t as bad a case as the others within the hospital and they both knew this, but Jimenez continued as he would for any other patient or guardian of one. “It says here that you suffer from random bouts of insomnia, and have done so since you were twelve?”

“Yeah, but I think I just mostly sleep a lot these days. Probably due to my depression even though I don’t sleep well when I manage to. My doctor says the medications are working exactly the same, but I’m not really convinced about that,” Jasmine grimaced as she absently played with her teddy bear’s worn fur. “He’s actually just a nutritionist nurse practitioner that was the only person they could find for the job, and he sucks at it. A lot.”

“An increased urge to sleep isn’t all too uncommon in those suffering from clinical depression. You’ve been diagnosed with a bipolar disorder as well, I see.” Jimenez ignored the extra information, but jotted something down in the file. Jasmine couldn’t help but feel confused at this; no doctor she’d met up to this point had done that. Not even her incompetent N.P. ignored information so blatantly.

She could feel her stomach begin to churn in an uneasiness that was hard to pass off as simply her nerves. Her gut feeling was telling her that Jimenez was a part of the darkness surrounding Beacon Mental Hospital, but it also warned her not to let him know that she could sense this.

Jasmine tried to appear annoyed, rather than panicked, instead and attempted to stop the racing of her heart while forcing a soft scoff, “Tentatively diagnosed with bipolar two.”

“When did your mental illness start? In childhood?” Jimenez didn’t notice how the blonde placed a hand to her chest. He seemed more preoccupied with other things; something that wasn’t just getting information from Jasmine to put into their system and better flesh out her files and mental health history.

A part of the girl was thankful for at least that much. If he was distracted, then he wouldn’t take note of the finer details in her behavior that could give away her fear. If he saw anything at all, then Jimenez would likely brush it off as more signs of anxiety.

“No, it was in my mid to late teens,” Jasmine answered his inquiry after a tiny moment of unintentional silence. The doctor was still too distracted and didn’t acknowledge it, so she continued, “It just got worse when I turned sixteen and I didn’t get help until I was eighteen. I felt like some sort of wild animal, and I just...I never wanted to be like that again. I’m not that kind of person.” The blonde had to pause at her own words.

She wasn’t that kind of person. Or, at least, Jasmine desperately tried not to be...

“Ages sixteen to eighteen.” The doctor gave a slight hum and locked his gaze onto the girl. He folded his hands neatly over the file before asking, “Is that when you nearly choked your brother into unconsciousness on the sofa one night?”

Jasmine bristled upon hearing those words and she swore that she felt the pain of her heart practically stopping.

Jimenez shouldn’t have known that. He couldn’t know that; only Jasmine, her brother, her two friends, and her mother knew. It was the first time her younger sibling ever called her a monster, but he also never told anyone other than their mother in the hopes that she could protect him from his volatile sister.

On top of that, Jasmine never told any of her doctors or even therapists, so this jackass shouldn’t have known a damn thing about it. No one outside of her family and best friends should have even been remotely aware of the event, unless...

Did someone sell her out...? Was that the reason she’d been sent here?

“That...was before I got help.” Jasmine couldn’t help but become defensive about the current topic. The guilt she still felt from all of the horrible things she did and said to her brother and a number of other people in those three blurred years of unmedicated hell aside, the blonde was pissed. Her temper was beginning to rear it’s ugly head no matter how hard she tried to keep it in check.

She didn’t know if it was how Jimenez's tone seemed almost threatening, or the fact that he simply knew about such a thing to begin with, but she finally lifted her gaze to look the doctor dead in the eye. Jasmine’s visage was one of pure ire.

“Now now, no need to look at me like that. This is all mandatory questions for your information so I know what to do in order to help you.” Jimenez tried to calm her down, but she saw him glance to the phone to make sure it was close enough. He was more than likely checking that he had it within reach to call a nurse with a sedative should she decide to attack him.

Contrary to what he was obviously thinking, Jasmine continued to stare unblinkingly as she was unable to resist calling him out on his suspiciously sloppy work.

She’d been through paperwork and personal information filing before on numerous occasions, and he was forgetting some rather critical questions. Her tone was low, but biting: “If this is so mandatory, then why haven’t you asked about my suicidal tendencies or the sensory overload episodes I’ve been having? I started cutting again too, and yet you didn’t mention that either. One would think that would be pretty important for dealing with someone who suffers from clinical depression as harshly as I do.”

Jimenez immediately appeared taken aback, almost as if he wasn’t expecting the girl to be so rehearsed and capable enough to know exactly how this went. Still, he was quick to hide this fact and cleared his throat.

“I was just getting to that.” He stated and was trying not to let whatever it was about her that threw him for a loop keep him distracted. Jasmine could sense this and, despite her gut warning her not to do anything to make her a potential target, didn’t stop there.

“You should know that none of your staff have taken down my emergency information or gone through the proper paperwork, either. Nothing for potential allergies, family and personal physical and mental health histories, emergency contacts,” She paused in listing everything they legally neglected to do just to see the doctor’s reaction. He was managing to keep composed, but Jasmine could tell that he knew she had him cornered on this paperwork matter. The few beads of sweat collecting on his brow gave him away.

“Well now, it would seem that someone is severely slacking in their work. I will have that fixed as soon as possible. Let’s see...” Jimenez played along with what he considered her petty little need for ‘proper paperwork’, trailing off as he opened and sifted through a file cabinet directly behind his chair. After a few seconds, he pulled a stack of unfilled papers out and grabbed a clipboard from atop the cabinet, “Here we are. Can I trust you with a pen, Miss Summers?”

“I’m suicidal on and off, not homicidal, so yes.” Jasmine fell silent as she remembered recently wanting to carve her younger brother’s throat open with a pen shortly before having an overload episode and being taken from her home. It happened often whenever he began to act like an entitled little prat, but she never actually went through with the violent urges. Yes, as badly as she wanted to, Jasmine never hurt her sibling. She wasn’t that kind of person anymore.

Part of her cutting problem wasn’t just dealing with the occasional verbal abuse from her mother, but also keeping herself from harming others. If she took the frustration out on herself, then the people around her could remain safe.

Jasmine kept this to herself for the time being and accepted the offered clipboard and pen. Thankfully it was the proper papers, as a brief flip through the pages proved, and she went to work filling the small pile out with Jimenez watching her almost thoughtfully. It was a little disconcerting, but he was a doctor.

A doctor that made her skin crawl.

“Don’t worry about dating each paper. I will do that once our session is over.” Jimenez instructed as he continued to observe her. Jasmine glanced up with her fallen bangs mostly hiding the action, frowning deeply upon confirming the suspicion that he hadn’t stopped watching her. She should have kept her damn mouth shut after all.

“Right...” Jasmine somehow managed to utter without appearing too unnerved. She had to congratulate herself on that one, because it was not an easy feat when someone was staring so blatantly at her. Doctor or not, she never was fond of being looked at by anyone.

The appointment went exactly how it should have all along from that point on. In fact, Jimenez was doing and asking everything a little too perfectly.

It was almost like it was some one-sided script that was directed towards her, and he was not a very convincing actor. He probably would have been to most people, but it couldn’t fool an empath’s mental alarm system; not even one as untrained as Jasmine was. Her distrust of the man before her only grew when everything fell into order after she called Jimenez out on his mistakes.

The questions and paperwork continued for what must have been an hour before a nurse was called in to take Jasmine back to her room once all was said and done. Jimenez even smiled at the girl as she stood from the chair and set the clipboard and pen on the edge of his desk.

“Thank you for your time, Miss Summers. Hopefully our next session will go much more smoothly now that all of the paperwork is out of the way.” He watched her give a faint nod, though she couldn’t say anything due to his phone ringing before she could bother to try. Jasmine, as usual, jolted with a gasp from the sudden sound.

Jimenez raised his eyebrows and made a mental note to, indeed, add an anxiety prescription to her daily medicine regimen while he answered the phone, “Beacon Mental Hospital, this is Director Jimenez speaking.”

Jasmine, on the other hand, was annoyed with her reaction to something as small as a freaking phone ringing, but she knew it wasn’t exactly something that she could have complete control over on her own. It was due to cursing her frantic heart that she almost missed the look of fear that overcame the doctor’s face after the person on the other side of the line spoke.

“Ah, Executive Administrator! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon.” He was quick to turn the chair around so the back faced the door. This made Jasmine curious now, having seen just how much Jimenez began to sweat in a matter of seconds. So this guy was afraid of something. That information was extremely useful, or it could become so in the future.

“This way, please.” The nurse urged from the doorway and the girl was quick to follow. While her new doctor was most certainly not someone to be trusted, it was good to know that he could feel fear. She could hopefully use that if the time ever came when she would need to defend herself from Jimenez.

Jasmine was well acquainted with fear, to the point where it almost drove her insane before she got treatment for her mental illnesses. Fear and rage were a potent combination, but if one triggered fear in an opponent before anything else, then it provided a brief upper hand. Then you could attack or flee while the other’s brain decided on a fight or flight response.

Being led through the halls in silence once more allowed Jasmine to glance at her nails. They weren’t too long, but it would be enough for her to physically defend herself with more than biting and what little she could remember from taking karate classes in her early teens.

“Here we are,” The nurse voice pierced through the blonde’s thoughts while opening her bedroom door for her and stepping to the side. “Curfew is in ten minutes, so one of the other nurses will be coming around to lock up tonight. Brush your teeth before that and get settled in bed for the night.”

“Okay.” Jasmine nodded as she went into her room and set Donnie down on the bed before approaching the mirrorless sink against the opposite wall. She picked up the small ziplock bag holding her toothbrush and a tiny tube of paste, getting to work on finishing up before it would be taken out of her room for curfew.

“If you can’t sleep at all, then just let one of the staff know when they make their rounds.” It was something Jasmine often heard thanks to her occasional insomnia issues, but there was no way in hell that she was going to give them an excuse to sedate her.

She kept those particular thoughts to herself and merely nodded once more when she replied around her toothbrush and mouthful of frothy paste, “Mn’kh.”

The nurse left with that, letting the girl finish up and crawl into bed on her own. Jasmine moved to her stomach to peer out at the night sky, though only saw storm clouds. She wouldn’t be able to see the milky way tonight as well, she guessed. It wasn’t unusual for the monsoon season, but the thought had her frowning into the cheap, flat pillow they expected her to sleep on. Sleep that she wasn’t having any real hopes in getting tonight after everything that had been going on.

Surprisingly enough, however, Jasmine could feel her eyelids growing heavy once she got as comfortable as she could manage.

The sensation of oncoming slumber was greatly welcomed despite lingering fear of not being aware of her surroundings while she was asleep. Jasmine exhaled slowly as she felt her body relax, one arm draped over her teddy bear while the other was bent up to brace her head from beneath the pillow. It wasn’t too cold in her room thankfully, so she only had the sheets resting around her thick waist while she lay on her side.

Everything was quiet compared to how noisy the hospital usually was during the day. There were no screaming patients or nasty day-shift nurses; just the gentle sound of a drizzle outside the window and the distant sound of what could have been a coyote howling before the squeak of a cart and jingling keys drown it out from her mind.

Jasmine barely acknowledged the fact that the latter of the only sounds other than her own breathing was probably a nurse. She was drifting off far too quickly to care about anything longer than a fleeting thought that was drown out with mental images of home. Her current small home on the edge of the countryside, the large house of her maternal grandparents that she spent most of her childhood before the two divorced...

These saddened, but lulling memories calling the girl away were cut short when a sharp jab of pain came from one of her arms.

The sensation snapped Jasmine back into full consciousness within seconds. Her first instinct was to lash out at whatever caused the burning ache now under the skin of her right upper arm, but she found that her wrist was being held into place on the bed to prevent her from jerking it about. That caused panic to begin to set in and the blonde prepared to fight off whoever had her in their clutches.

“Relax. I’m already finished.” The nurse holding the limb down said as she pulled the long needle of a syringe out of Jasmine’s arm. It was hard to see exactly who it was in the darkness of the room, but the woman discarding the empty medical device into a biohazard bin on the cart was dressed like a nurse. She swiped the injection site with an alcohol swab a final time without much care to how the patient she technically just assaulted was reacting.

Jasmine wrenched her arm out of the other woman’s grasp as she sat up and pressed herself back against the wall. Her chest was starting to tighten and heave in warning of an oncoming anxiety attack while her mind rushed with all of the things that she could have just had shot right into her system. She had to know, demanding in a quivering and distrustful voice, “What the hell did you just inject me with...!?”

“Just a little something for your anxiety,” The nurse, who appeared to have dark hair pulled back in either a bun or ponytail and thick-framed glasses from what Jasmine could barely make out, explained. Her tone was flat, as if she hadn’t just given a shot to a sleeping patient, and she went about collecting the girl’s dental hygiene bag while continuing, “Dr. Jimenez ordered it before he left. I was going to wait until morning to give you the shot, but you were making such awful sounds in your sleep that I decided it would be best just to do it now so I don't have to wake you early in the morning.”

“You could have just woken me up anyway...” Jasmine scoffed and groped around blindly, not taking her eyes off of the nurse she didn’t recognize. She pulled Donnie closer once feeling the worn cloth of his arm beneath her trembling fingers and held him to her chest with her legs pulled up, watching the other woman cautiously. She was beginning to get lightheaded from her heart racing so fast and offsetting her breathing, but was somehow able to keep from completely losing it.

“This seemed the easier route.” The woman pushed the cart out of the blonde’s room before turning around and taking hold of the doorknob, “I’ll be coming by again in an hour to make sure that you’ve managed to fall back asleep. Rest easy now.”

Jasmine didn’t ‘rest easy’ at all that night after that incident.

Her arm still hurt even after morning rolled around, and she ate and slept very little the next day. While she had been told she was allowed to leave her room to go to the recreation hall with the other patients that weren’t a high priority, Jasmine still refused to do that, too. If she stayed in her room, then she could keep at least some sort of advantage should another nurse come in with more shots.

This went on for two days before the staff finally got fed-up with her behavior around shower time and forced her out of her room. As usual it was Todd that chose to escort her to where they wanted her to go. His grip, of course, was purposefully digging into the visibly bruised area where Jasmine’s new ‘anxiety medication’ had been injected.

He dragged her into the recreation hall after she’d bathed and dressed, only to shove her forward once he’d opened the door. Todd snorted when the girl tripped and fell to the floor, “Now behave or I’ll have your sorry ass thrown into solitary confinement for the next twenty-four hours. Without that stupid bear.”

“Yes, sir...” Jasmine muttered while picking herself up slowly. She was far too exhausted to bother fighting back, but knew that was probably for the best. No one other than her brother had made her want to gravely injure someone until she’d come here. No one except Todd, and it scared Jasmine knowing that she would have bashed his head in against the nearest hard surface if she didn’t fight to restrain the urge.

She wasn’t going to let herself turn into the kind of person her biological father was. She could control this.

Todd let out one of his notorious scoffs before he left to talk up the nurse that was supposed to be keeping an eye on everything. Jasmine sighed in relief when he turned his attention elsewhere, but didn’t quite know what to do from there.

The female nurse that took her to the showers had made Jasmine leave Donnie in her room. Todd then refused to let her get the teddy bear before dragging her here, which the girl came to expect and hate about him.

That still left her feeling unbelievably vulnerable in the area that was crowded with other patients, though. Some of them were looking at her and all Jasmine could think to do was rush to an empty table in the corner to get away from their curious gazes.

It wasn’t much of a change, but at least everyone seemed to get the idea that she wanted to be left alone and went along their own business of reading, playing board games, or doing puzzles. Jasmine was thankful for that and slid into one of the chairs at the table while trying to keep any impending panic attacks under wraps.

She was pretty sure that whatever Jimenez ordered she be injected with wasn’t for anxiety; there was absolutely no change in her behavior since then. Being switched to different types of medications for so many years gave her enough knowledge to know that this meant nothing new had been introduced into her system.

Jasmine didn’t want to dwell on that at the moment since it only made her tired mind hurt and her fears of this place grow. It was when she went to lay her head on her arms that the blonde noticed the table had crayons and a bunch of printer paper on top of it. Some of the pieces already had drawings on them, but she spotted a few that were still blank. It had been a while since Jasmine had last drawn something, and she wasn’t that good using crayons to do so, but...

The thought of an outlet for all of her stress was tempting enough for Jasmine to grab a piece of paper and dig through the bucket of broken crayons for a decent fleshy color. She knew that she couldn’t draw anything with a noose, something she associated with her mental illnesses, if she wanted to get out of this hellhole any time soon.

After a short while, Jasmine decided to start off drawing a manga-esque version of herself. It was just a simple bust, but it came out with sorrowful expression no matter how hard the girl tried to keep it from doing so. That was alright though; there were still other pieces of paper.

An unknown amount of time passed as she continued to draw as best she could with the crayons at her disposal. Four pages were filled with random fictional people and some animals, along with the Ancient Egyptian god on the fifth paper that was grabbed. Jasmine could feel herself smile softly while she continued to add little bits in the spaces around the deity’s lone figure.

Seeing the jackal-headed entity helped to remind her that her patron god was still with her no matter how horrible things had gotten.

Her mind was too muddled for him to visit in her dreams clearly in this place, but there had been small hints here and there that were the usual signs that Anpu, more commonly known as Anubis, was about when she thought back on them. Jasmine felt pretty stupid for letting the entire situation blind her to the little things, yet it honestly wasn’t the first time. He was always so patient with her no matter how many times she wondered why such a being would bother sticking around as long as Anpu had.

Jasmine made sure to apologize under her breath and was relieved that she didn’t get the feeling that the god might have been irritated with her.

Actually, all she was really sensing at the moment was--

“Pretty...”

--Someone standing behind her. Dear gods, how did she not notice it sooner? They would have bitten her if they were a snake, as her mother often said, and Jasmine couldn’t help but jolt in her chair from the voice. She whipped her head around to stare accusingly at whoever decided to disturb her, only to relax a second later upon seeing who it was.

“Pretty dog...pretty dog, pretty dog...” Leslie continued to mutter while shuffling in place. He wasn’t really looking anywhere in particular as he did so, but Jasmine assumed he meant her drawings. She glanced to the paper beneath her hands before looking back to her fellow patient.

“Do you mean this?” Jasmine asked and held the paper up for him to see more clearly. Leslie didn’t look longer than a fleeting glance, but gave a quick nod of his head. His hands were fidgeting and Jasmine set the black crayon half on the table as a brief thought occurred to her. Perhaps her and Leslie could become friends of some sort...?

It would be nice.

“His name is Anpu, but people also call him Anubis,” She said softly while still holding the paper up and trying to explain in a way she hoped Leslie would understand, “He’s my father figure, since my real dad wasn’t really in my life. He looks after me.”

“Dad...dad...dad...” Leslie could only repeat. He still hadn’t stopped shuffling and Jasmine frowned softly. He didn’t seem as worked up as when she last saw him, but it still made her somewhat sad to witness his need to continuously repeat the actions. It was similar to how she would rock back and forth in an attempt to comfort herself right before the panic episodes she was having at home...

“Do you...want to draw something too?” Jasmine couldn’t ignore feeling like she needed to ease whatever could be bothering Leslie. Perhaps it was her maternal instincts kicking back on after being away from her animals for so long, or perhaps it was some need for a human companion in this place; Jasmine didn’t bother thinking about it longer than a couple of seconds.

Placing her paper back down, she slipped a blank one to the space to her left and moved the crayon bucket to sit between her work space and the other. Jasmine also pulled the chair out enough for him to sit before settling back onto her side of the unspoken barrier she’d just put up for him to hopefully be more comfortable with sitting near her, “Here you go, Leslie.”

The young man kept pacing for a brief moment longer while repeating ‘draw too’, but he stopped and slowly sat down after a minute or two and quieted. Jasmine smiled at this and it grew when Leslie picked up a crayon and began to draw. She went back to her own drawing while feeling a lot better with someone at her side.

Someone that she got the feeling wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone a five foot two, hundred and ninety pound twenty-two year old female, anyway.

They sat together in a comfortable silence despite Jasmine jumping faintly every time there was a sudden and loud noise. Leslie seemed to be quite content with whatever he was drawing, even smiling a little when the girl glanced over a few times. That sweet smile suit him far better than the sad expression he seemed to have beneath the one of panic and fear she usually saw him wearing.

Maybe he was just lonely, too...?

Jasmine paused to watch Leslie thoughtfully before she grabbed another blank sheet of paper and picked up the tiny quarter of what was probably a flesh-colored crayon at some point. She grabbed a paler gray one as well, just for good measure, and got back to drawing. Broken and dirty crayons or not, the activity was as relaxing as the blonde had hoped it would be for her, even if her serene state wouldn’t be for long in this place.

She peered over at the young man every now and then while still focusing on her current picture with a smile of her own. This went on until Jasmine finished what she was doing and peered over to her fellow patient, “Do you want to see what I drew, Leslie?”

Leslie gave a few nods in answer to her question, quiet as the girl slid the paper around the crayon bucket and left it for him to take if he wanted to. He did, after what seemed like a bit of hesitation, but soon smiled when he saw himself depicted in crayon. Jasmine got the feeling that he didn’t recognize that it was him, perhaps because she’d left out all of his bruises, but he appeared happy enough with it.

“Pretty...” He muttered and traced the pale but colorful lines set out before him. It seemed to soothe him, to which Jasmine was relieved about for some reason. She didn’t bother trying to figure out why.

“You can keep it if you want to,” Jasmine offered and continued to watch him. She didn’t know how old Leslie actually was, but he was a lot like a little kid in some aspects. How he reacted to what she said confirmed this for her.

“This...is for Leslie?” The boy looked up timidly, but his expression was a mixture of surprise and hope. It was like he wasn’t used to people being kind or giving him things. Jasmine knew she was probably right with that hunch, given how this place was smothered in despair. It was so thick that it could have been collected as a viscous fluid, honestly.

Still, she tried to smile with her nod to show that this wasn’t some trick, “Mm-hm. All for you and no one else.”

“Good, good, good...!” Leslie beamed and looked back to the picture. He’d begun happily rocking side to side within his seat while running his fingers over the crayon portrait. The sheer joy with such a simple thing only made Jasmine’s heart hurt more for her potentially newfound friend.

“I already put my signature on it in the gold there too, see?” She pointed to the corner of the picture from her spot while trying her best not to let her sadness bleed into the smile she was fighting to keep in place.

“No name...” Was the muttered reply she got when Leslie presumably looked to where she motioned. It wouldn’t have been hard to spot, seeing at it was the only gold on the paper. A simple ‘JS’ beside an ankh. Was Leslie confused about that?

“That’s actually how I sign what I draw, but--” Jasmine began to explain, only to pause when something dawned on her. She should have realized it sooner really, feeling the fool for not doing so when it was so obvious. The girl could feel guilt and stupidity smack her full on when she finally picked up where she’d so suddenly stopped herself, “--I...never told you my name, did I...?”

Leslie didn’t respond immediately. This led Jasmine to believe she was right in assuming that he didn’t hear her returning Jimenez's self-introduction with her first name alone. He more than likely hadn’t because she wasn’t talking to him directly at that point, and whatever mental illness he had could have also been a contributing factor.

Before she could even open her mouth to apologize for something a part of her knew she had no real control over, however, Leslie paused in his rocking but never looked up from the picture in his grasp, “...Jasmine...”

The blonde was shocked to hear her name actually falling from his lips. She most certainly wasn’t expecting it; especially as the young man began to repeat it while rocking side to side again. The motion wasn’t out of happiness this time, but Jasmine couldn’t read what Leslie was feeling and she didn’t want to stress him out by asking if he was going to be alright.

“Jasmine...Jasmine...” He continued to descend into mumbling more and more. While Leslie’s head was tilt down towards the picture, it was becoming obvious that he was looking through it and to some distant place that only he knew. She felt that he was going to a little world only for him, perhaps some small place of happiness that he’d somehow managed to hold onto despite being here.

She wished that she was strong enough to hold onto things like that, but these days...

“Yeah...yeah, that’s right Leslie,” Jasmine muttered as she saw him drifting away mentally because of whatever might have triggered the poor boy. She hoped he heard her, yet knew there was no guarantee. Not when someone was like this.

While the girl began pondering leaving Leslie alone at that point, his murmurs began to change. In fact, Jasmine really wouldn’t have noticed it if the male’s voice hadn’t gradually become louder and increasingly laced with building panic. His rocking hadn’t stopped, lips quivering while he practically chanted, “Bad...bad...! Bad! Bad! Bad!”

“What....?” Jasmine was confused and even became a little uneasy with the sudden turn in the other patient’s demeanor. She opened her mouth to let him know that wasn’t right while she maintained the space between them, trying not to begin freaking out just from witnessing such instability, but her pulse was already loud enough in her ears that she barely heard herself saying: “No, Leslie, my name isn’t bad. It’s--”

“--Jasmine Summers, I presume?”

The blonde could only jump when her name being called from directly behind her was completely unexpected. She squeaked through a gasp and barely caught a glimpse of a rather professional-looking woman before something even more startling to her fragile state of being occurred.

At her small, sharp sound of shock at the appearance of the well-dressed woman now standing behind the two seated at the table, Leslie let out a howl of a scream. He had thrown his head back to do so, getting so loud that Jasmine was forced to cover her ears because he showed absolutely no signs of stopping. The white-haired boy started to shout incoherently when the nurses rushed over upon noticing this episode, their interference only appearing to make him worse.

Jasmine could only watch in stunned silence as they drug a flailing Leslie away while he repeatedly yowled for the nurses to let go of him. Her heart was still drumming violently against her ribs and lungs to the point of the usual pleurisy pains threatening to act up, but now she was more confused and helpless than panicked. She didn’t understand what had just happened; not when things were going so well beforehand...!

She’d almost completely forgotten about the woman standing a few feet away until her voice reached her through her thoughts again, “Well, that wasn’t too unexpected. Your file mentions you might have a form of anxiety, after all. May I sit here?”

The woman was motioning to the seat Leslie was previously occupying. She looked to be in her thirties and was tall, pale blonde hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck. She was extremely professional in appearance with her suit and heels, having a necklace and set of matching earrings. Anyone could tell that this woman didn’t belong here, yet no one was looking at her like the sore thumb she seemed to stick out as to Jasmine.

“Um,” The younger woman began cautiously while watching the other female as if she were about to jump at and bite her. Jasmine’s body hadn’t completely calmed back down, but the emotional drain of such a sudden incident of anxiety and confusion had her feeling light-headed. “Who are you, if I may ask...?”

“Who I am is not important,” The woman replied matter-of-factly while sitting down anyway. Jasmine had to quickly collect the drawings before the woman could put the briefcase she was carrying on top of them uncaringly. Her portrait of Leslie was crumpled and a bit torn now, probably from the boy’s unexpected fit, but she still went to straighten in out. Until she’d glanced at what he’d drawn, that was.

It was a simple picture of a house and smiling stick figure family with some pets, much like how a preschooler would draw something, but that wasn’t what had Jasmine pausing briefly in wonder. The colors weren’t exactly right. In fact, they were a lot of not right.

The bodies were each different and mixed of blues, purples, and greens. The hair was the same, as was the house and animals, and even the sun wasn’t colored like it should have been. She’d never seen anything like it before.

Was Leslie...colorblind?

It was possible, but so was the chance that such an off set of colors chosen were due to a mental illness. Leslie may have simply liked the colors he used and focused on that instead of making it accurate, too, but not knowing surprisingly bothered her more than it would have normally.

Jasmine tried to push the nagging for an explanation to Leslie’s drawing to the back of her mind and returned to flattening out her own art. She shifted her chair a little further away from the mystery woman, not looking at her when she sighed softly and tried to get the answer as to who she was and why she was bothering her.

“If who you are isn’t so important, then why are you here?” Jasmine asked with that same weary sigh, cringing when the paper tore beneath her gentle, smoothing motions. Crap, she was probably going to have to redraw the picture on a different paper...

The woman watched the younger blonde, almost as if assessing her physically for something while she responded simply with, “I’ve come to pick you up for your therapy.”

“Wait, what therapy?” Was Jasmine’s immediate and cautious demand while she snapped her full attention to the other female. No one told her jack shit about any therapy, and in this place? That could very well have meant the absolute worst. She was so obviously untrusting, thinking that these wackos were going to try some sort of electro shock therapy or lobotomize her, but the older woman wasn’t at all phased by such blatant suspicion.

“Dr. Jimenez didn’t tell you?” She seemed to be surprise, but Jasmine could detect this was simply for show. She almost wouldn’t have noticed the little hints that gave the woman’s uncaring nature to the situation away if it wasn’t for her stomach beginning to twist. Something was going on here, and a part of Jasmine didn’t want to know what.

“I haven’t spoken to him since my appointment a couple of days ago. He’s been gone.” Jasmine didn’t want this woman to know that she was onto her, or that her paranoia wasn’t simply due to her anxious state. Thankfully playing it off by focusing on the damaged paper once more so she didn’t have to make any eye contact was surprisingly easier than the younger blonde thought.

“I see. He must have been too busy and forgot to mention that he signed you up for it before he left.” The woman didn’t seem to care enough to bother noticing any of this going on in Jasmine’s head as she opened her briefcase and pulled out some papers that were stapled together. She moved the box of crayons and slid them over for the girl to see. It was more legal papers it seemed, but she didn’t exactly explain the papers when she continued, “It is a fairly new type of group therapy that we’ve been testing on various mental illnesses for a few years now. I’ve looked at your files and have to agree with Jimenez in terms of how eligible you are for the program.”

Something about all of this wasn’t sitting right, moreso than the whole mental hospital situation. Jasmine couldn’t help but think this was too sudden. Absolutely nothing would go through the system and be approved in only a matter of days.

She felt, however, that it would be wise to keep this to herself for the sake of her own safety and simply gave a faint frown. “Do I have to go...now?”

“Yes, but mostly for preparing for the therapy. If you take well to that, then we’ll allow you to have your first session today. You can read the legality of everything in here on the way there.” The woman spoke to Jasmine as if she’d already agreed to this nonsense.

Jasmine chewed the inside of her bottom lip for a moment in thought. She really, really didn’t want to get involved in whatever scheme this supposed ‘therapy’ was, and wanted to make that clear without appearing aggressive. Less of a chance of becoming sedated or sent to solitary confinement if she remained docile for the time being, so she kept this in mind while asking, “What if I don’t want to have this therapy, though?”

“Your doctor and insurance company insists on it, I’m afraid.” Once again with that chilling all-business tone, but the information the woman was giving was what caused the younger blonde to bristle more than her tone could ever have. “They say that they won’t approve or finance your return to facilities near your home if you don’t at least give the therapy a try to see if it helps your condition.”

The gods damn it all, Jasmine knew that John and her insurance were going to twist her arm at some point. Why couldn’t they see that she was well enough to go back home and actually let her do so!? The system was so screwed over these days that it wasn’t even funny at this point. Fuck...!

“...Alright, I’ll do the therapy.” Jasmine had to inhale deeply to keep her temper in check, reminding herself to give everyone involved in this clusterfuck a piece of her mind after she got out of this hellhole. It was hard, but she managed to speak without sounding like she wanted to beat someone over the head with a chair.

The very chair she pushed herself out of while unintentionally giving a sullen mutter, “I just want to get this bullshit over with and go home as soon as I can, anyway...”

“If all goes well with your sessions, then I’m sure we can arrange at least that much.” The older woman had excellent hearing, yet Jasmine didn’t believe a damn thing she just said. It didn’t matter how much a part of her wanted to desperately cling onto the sliver of hope offered; the girl knew that she couldn’t afford it.

Not if she wanted to survive this with what little sanity life had allowed her to keep.

Forced to leave her drawings behind on the table and carry the legal papers instead, Jasmine found herself rounded up into a van with three other patients and two men she didn’t recognize that were dressed in black suits and looked like a couple of bouncers. The large white van had no windows in the back that made it feel like some sort of prison. Apparently the girl wasn’t the only one to notice, as the oldest of the four of them began to mutter something frantically about the walls closing in.

Before he could get much further in a potentially bad episode within the small space, however, one of the men in black injected something into the poor guy’s arm. A sedative no doubt, and Jasmine kept still and silent as to not be next on their list. She would remain complaisant for now, but if one of these bastards started coming at her with that needle...

Well, instinct was something she knew all about depending on whenever she found herself in a physical confrontation. Jasmine just hoped her fight or flight switch was still prone to flipping to fight.

She wasn’t a teenager anymore, not to mention the anxiety attacks she found herself struggling against whenever she so much at heard the nurses arguing over who got what shift. They were gradually getting worse as time went on and could reduce the girl to a sobbing mess rocking back and forth in a corner.

Jasmine shook her head to get rid of the thoughts when it felt like her heart rate had begun to quicken. A check to her pulse let her know that her heart hadn’t sped up at all. Just a warning of a potential anxiety attack in response to her imagining having to fight off a bunch of men trying to sedate her, she supposed.

It was at that time that they’d reached their destination, of which a part of the blonde was grateful for. It gave her something to focus on other than her own twisted mind or the bullshit papers she left in the van.

Despite that, however, the building her and the other patients were led into wasn’t anything like she’d imagined it to be. It didn’t seem like a place one would go to for therapy. In fact, all of the people she could see through the windows of the different levels were dressed far too formally; the same as the older woman still at the front of their current little pack.

“This way, please.” Said woman spoke up when she’d glanced over her shoulder and saw Jasmine moving along slowly while she studied her surroundings. Jasmine reflexively snapped her teeth at one of the men when he went to shove her to get her to move faster, the action making him recoil when he thought she was actually going to bite.

Jasmine would have been lying to herself if she’d said that it didn’t make her smile a little bit and wonder if she could get away with doing the same to Todd the next time he grabbed her arm. Unfortunately there were other things she had to worry about, one of which being how Dr. Jimenez himself was standing in the windowless room they were ushered into.

“Ah, Miss Summers! I see you’ve been chosen for the program as well.” He greeted the girl, but she refused to reply at first. It made him visibly uncomfortable as she kept her gaze locked onto his for a surprising amount of time. She blinked before looking away after a few moments.

She was mulling over her words in her mind and reminding herself that kicking a doctor would probably result in sedation. After a few short seconds, Jasmine let out a huff through her nose, “The anxiety medicine injection you had one of the nurses shoot into my arm when I was sleeping isn’t working.”

“Injection...?” Jimenez muttered in confusion, only to clear his throat when those pale, gray-blue eyes snapped towards him once more. “Oh, yes. The Injection. Of course. We shall wait a few more days and if there haven’t been any changes, then we will see what else we can do. How does that sound?”

Jasmine could only hold her silence in her ever-present unease and realization that he didn’t know about the injection. Somehow that actually wasn’t all too surprising, but if Jimenez didn’t order it, then who did...? What the hell was even in that shot to begin with?

She subconsciously rubbed the bruised injection site as her and the others were instructed to sit down and watch something closely. It was some sort of film, on a projector of all things, consisting of just random pictures; including an image of a Rorschach test. There didn’t seem to be any purpose behind this other than the mild headache Jasmine began to feel after watching it loop a few times.

They were all asked how they felt after the film before being brought to a different, much brighter room. There were bathtubs full of some sort of milky liquid, all appearing linked up to--

Jasmine felt her stomach drop and her thoughts halt when she caught sight of a brain within the center of the room. It was floating in a round glass container, multiple hosed implements of gods knew what leading to and seeming to be stabbing into the brain from all angles. Was this a part of this so-called ‘therapy’...?

The blonde broke away from the small group without even realizing it. She didn’t recall giving her feet the command to walk, but they still carried her down a few steps and towards the pickled grey matter. No one even bothered to stop Jasmine, not that she would have noticed such a thing while remaining transfixed upon the morbid sight.

She finally came to a stop once close enough to the brain, the literal center of whatever system took up the entirety of the room, and studied it. It was most definitely being penetrated by what she’d correctly assumed were a bunch of massive needles attached to those thick black hoses. There was even a label on the outside of the spherical container. A label with a name.

Ruben Victoriano.

That was right; this lump of lifeless grey matter was a person at one point...

“Over here, Miss Summers.” The older woman from before called out to Jasmine from where she was standing beside one of the many tubs. Her speaking up when she did caused the girl’s thoughts on the bodiless brain to stutter briefly, but that could have been the intention.

Those stationed about the room, and the building in general. seemed like the kind of people that could make a person disappear if they asked too many questions. Perhaps that was what happened to whoever Ruben Victoriano was, though there was no real way to ever know for sure. Jasmine grimaced, but kept silent as she went over to the woman with a final glance back towards the brain.

No questions, she had to remind herself. Stay quiet and play ignorant long enough and they would let her go home. It would all be worth it so long as she could go. Home.

A second woman, slightly younger than the first and with long dark hair and thick glasses while also dressed like she was meant to be in some high-end business office, began to instruct Jasmine this time. “Get into the tub, if you would please.”

Jasmine’s chest tightened upon hearing her voice, knowing immediately that this woman was the nurse that had given her the injection that time a few nights before. She obviously wasn’t a nurse of Beacon hospital, what with the suit top, pencil skirt, and high heels. That meant that it was these people, not Jimenez, who ordered her injection.

That left the girl at a loss of what to do now when all her mind was screaming for her to do was to run. Jasmine knew she wouldn’t be able to make it out of this place, though; too many people. People that were now staring at her expectantly.

“...In my clothes...?” Jasmine had to force herself to say. She hoped that it wouldn’t give away that she knew about how the injection wasn’t Jimenez’s doing and was absolutely terrified of those surrounding her. Thankfully, the not-nurse didn’t appear to care enough about anything to notice.

“The water is quite warm,” She spoke, almost as if she were trying to comfort the young woman’s unease, but her tone was...dead, in a way. This woman had seen some shit, Jasmine concluded, but she still frowned at what was said.

“That’s not what I mean.” Was her bitter, muttered response as she sifted on her feet. They actually expected her to get into weird murky white water without changing out of her clothes? What the hell was up with these people? Between injections and this ‘therapy’, the entire thing made absolutely no sense. It made her head hurt.

“We will provide you with dry, clean clothes once everything is done,” The first woman stepped up to explain, arms folded neatly behind her back. She tilt her head to one side after a brief pause before asking, “Unless you would prefer to be nude?”

“Hell no,” Jasmine blurted out rather defensively. She could barely stand to see herself naked, so no way were these creeps going to get a peep show at her expense. She’d suffer the soggy panties riding up her ass crack, thanks.

The older blonde let out a chuckle at the girl’s response and motioned to the tub with her head. “Then it would be best to do what you’re told if you truly want to get his over with in a timely fashion.”

Jasmine glanced to it before taking a steadying breath. She had no choice if she wanted to get through all of this bullshit. She wanted to be done with wading through all of these lies and go into the waiting arms of her family.

Hell, Jasmine would give anything to be listening to her mother and brother arguing again right about then; even if it led up to a blow-out fight. At least then she would have had some normalcy still and not find herself crawling into some strange, padded tub.

“Now, we will be putting you into something similar to REM sleep with the help of this device. You may see some strange or disturbing things during this, but I can assure you that this is completely normal,” Jimenez spoke, not at all reassuringly, once Jasmine was settled into the tub. He’d glanced to the blonde business woman briefly while passing her and Jasmine could detect traces of unease or fear in the doctor just from how a single bead of sweat rolled down his forehead.

He was being careful, stepping lightly, and maybe even had something to hide. Jasmine didn’t have much time to pick apart the clearly stressed chemistry between the two as a beeping from the machine beside her tub distracted her. Even from her position, she could see scanned images of what she assumed was her brain on the screen.

“We will go over your experience once the session is over.” The older blonde moved to on side of the tub to offer the younger woman a smile. It was a strange mask of an expression that ceaselessly failed to reach the woman’s eyes, and that made Jasmine shift uncomfortably.

Bad move on her part, because there went her soggy boy shorts panties trying to turn themselves into a thong. Jasmine swore that she was going to demand a freaking bathing suit if they made her do all of this again.

“Now relax,” The dark-haired woman to the girl’s right began as she lift Jasmine’s head and pushed her hair aside. She was preparing something that the younger woman couldn’t see, humming out when she felt an involuntary shiver in their sanest patient. “This will all be over before you know it.”

Jasmine inhaled shakily and gripped the sides of the tub in some sort of a preemptive strike against whatever was coming, sensing something cold against her skin and noticing a building, sort of reverberating sound in both her ears. She couldn’t help the fear, couldn’t refrain from whispering to herself like a child calling out for their parents in the midst of a nightmare, “Anpu protect me...!”

Then it happened; a white hot pain that radiated all throughout her head. Jasmine gasped from the suddenness of it and gripped the edge of the tub so tightly that her knuckles tingled, but it wasn’t enough to distract from the agony dancing through her skull. There was a shrill ring in her ears that followed, and then...

Nothing.

It was almost as if she’d fallen asleep, really, but a part of Jasmine knew better.

The ringing faded back in at a lower decibel as she forced her eyes to open after a few moments of uncertainty. Jasmine found herself laying on her side on a sofa, blinking a few times to clear her vision and stare at an old wooden coffee table that was cluttered with papers and other miscellaneous items. It was a table the girl recognized immediately and she sat up to look around with hope.

Sure enough, the inside of her grandparents’ house was what greeted her. To say it was a sight for sore eyes was a complete understatement. Even the old couch she’d been resting on, purchased long before Jasmine herself was born and was home to many a dust bunny and snoozing dog, was a relief to see.

The old, worn fabric scratched against the skin of her palm as it always did and the sensation was relaxing. That was until the blonde realized that she was still wearing the clothes from the mental hospital. The bland off-white clothing made Jasmine grimace before she remembered where she was and pushed herself over the back of the sofa.

From carpet to tile, past the kitchen table, peninsula, fridge, and back to carpet again.

Jasmine was rushing to her old bedroom in search of some different attire. The closet was probably still full of nothing but sleep t-shirts, honestly, but that would be infinitely better than what she was dressed in. Even the stripped pink Scooby-Doo shirt a friend from childhood gave her would be better than the damn stuffy outfit still clinging to her.

Grabbing the smooth curve of the golden handle and forcing it down, she pushed the door open and froze upon seeing what was inside. It was her bedroom, but not the one at her grandparents’ house. No, the room she now stood in the doorway of was her room at home, in the little green trailer at the edge of a desert countryside. Jasmine had to rub her eyes just to be sure that she wasn’t seeing things. A glance behind her, revealing a darkened hallway, proved that she wasn’t. Even the handle of the door had changed, right beneath her palm.

Was this what Jimenez meant when he said she’d see some strange things? No one explained how this ‘therapy’ was going to work other than that lame ‘REM sleep’ lie that the doctor had fed her. This wasn’t like her dreams, it was too...real. Far too real, and she was in control of what she did.

Pondering these thoughts, Jasmine entered her bedroom and began to strip after she opened the right door of her closet. It was just as messy as she remembered, though she found one of her dresses easily enough.

Jasmine pulled the thin-strapped, dark navy blue dress over her head and smoothed the fabric down to where it stopped in a frill just below her knees. She almost immediately felt better being in her own clothes despite everything. Something was still missing, though...

She glanced to her right and spotted the full necklace racks hanging on the wall. That was it; she needed her necklaces. Jasmine grabbed her silver ankh first, followed by her cats eye moonstone oval, pewter Anpu medallion, and lastly her small silver eye of Horus. Contented with that, she looked around her room once more. It really was nearly just as she left it, though the Anpu doll she’d hand-sewn was propped up against her pillow alongside Donnie. The hospital had only let her keep the teddy bear, as Anpu had a heart with a hematite stone and they didn’t want her to be ‘tempted to harm herself again’ with it somehow.

What kind of idiot did those people take her for? She had to shake the thoughts from her head before they could anger her and inhaled to keep her relative calm.

Jasmine was home now and, all in her head or not, that meant that her animals should be there as well. The blonde couldn’t help but let herself smile at the thought of seeing all of her little ducks and maybe even her goats as she hurried over to her window. She pulled the curtains back, the window quickly following in her building, anticipated glee.

Before she could call out to her feathered children however, something stopped her words in her throat with a strange, strangulated sort of sound.

What Jasmine saw...

Were sunflowers.

It was a vast field of hundreds, if not thousands, of sunflowers unlike anything Jasmine had ever seen before. The sea of gold and green spread to the furthest horizon in a way both beautiful and yet somehow suffocating to the girl.

She could feel herself exhale slowly while taking in the view lain out across where her duck and goat pens were supposed to be. There was absolutely nothing there other than her trailer and the sunflower field; not even the young cottonwood tree that would scratch against her window on windy days. All that met her was the stillness where she was so used to seeing the lives she nurtured day after day. It felt like a moment frozen in time, a moment that didn't belong to Jasmine, and that seemed to unnerve her about as much as the boundless field of towering flowers and sunset skies.

Something caught the young woman's gaze in the moment she thought this, seeming to materialize from nothing in the distance while she squinted. No glasses even in her dream, she scoffed at not being able to find them, but that only had her leaning out of the window to try and see whatever this new thing was.

A sharp pain from her right shoulder caused Jasmine to recoil with an inhaled hiss from the sting and clutch the area. The blood was clear enough upon the fingers of her left hand when she withdrew it and peered down in the confusion surrounding this entirely surreal ordeal. The source of the pain and blood only caused more confusion for the poor girl as she wracked her brain for a cause of the sudden wound.

“How the hell...?” Jasmine muttered with furrowing eyebrows. She'd had blood from this place many, many years before what was happening now. Nothing had even touched her, so there was no reason for it to be bleeding, unless...

She paused upon struggling to lick and wipe the blood from the wound to uncover it for proper inspection.

There was no mistaking it now; her shoulder was bleeding from a scar she'd gotten as a child during her time playing in the desert around a dead apple orchard. That very scar was now bubbling out blood like a leaking water line despite being shallow and no longer than an inch.

It had originally been made by barbed wire she'd failed to hold out of the way when climbing through the old rusted fences surrounding the property, but this time it was bleeding far worse than it initially had. It was all so...

“...Interesting.”

No, that’s not the word I’m looking for, Jasmine thought with a frown down at her wound. If anything, her old scar bleeding the way it was now was creepy; not interesting.

She froze in the next moment, her weary mind finally realizing that she wasn’t the one who had spoken the singular word. Jasmine could only shudder and cautiously glance around from her peripherals while she checked to make sure there were still weapons hidden about her room. Thank the gods there were, including the machete she kept by her bed, but it brought little comfort as the earlier voice returned.

“No significant connection to the system, yet the subject has somehow accessed the main memory centers despite the current rejection of STEM,” This voice began speaking lowly, almost to itself like some sort of personal documentation. It almost sounded muffled or faded; like listening to someone talking through a thin wall.

Jasmine realized that the mystery voice was drifting in from the window, but didn’t look back outside. Not directly, at least. She was pretending to look around for something on the cluttered desk right beside her and shifted her head just enough for a quick peek.

There was a man standing some feet away from her window, amongst the ocean of sunflowers, but he looked...strange. As in, more of a corpse than a living man, but the hood he was wearing covered all from his mouth up in an ominous shadow so she could see no more than heavily scarred skin where the slightly burnt and dirty clothing didn’t cover. The man didn’t indicate that he’d noticed she knew he was there.

Unfortunately, thinking back on his words only confused Jasmine as the man took in the single window seemingly floating before him at the edge of the field and appeared thoughtful of the situation. “While I have had something similar happen in a small percentage of previous test subjects, none have ever made it this deep before. This subject makes for number seven in the series of anomalies I have previously encountered in my studies,” Mystery man paused with a humorlessly scoffed laugh, “The read outs must be driving Jimenez insane.”

“You know Dr. Jimenez?” Jasmine asked as she reflexively turned back to the window upon hearing her new doctor’s name before mentally cringing. She could have smacked herself for giving up her little charade so easily, but this person, possibly conjured up from the depths of her subconscious, could have information she might be able to use against those who had twisted her arm into doing this.

The male tilt his head to the side slightly, sharp gaze regarding her coldly from the shadows of his hood. He appeared to be calculating something before speaking with a tone that almost could have been regarded as monotonous, “By your reaction, I assume that you can both see and hear me.”

“Yes.” Jasmine nodded and placed her hands back against the cool metal of the window’s rail. Her right shoulder stung sharply once more and caused the girl to look to her still-bleeding scar. The flow was much heavier now and was gradually trailing down her arm, but she could deal with that later. This man had almost all of her attention for the time being.

She couldn’t feel anything from him in even the slightest with the expression beneath the hood as emotionless as his tone, but Jasmine almost found this...facilitating, if not terrifyingly so. Just his general predatory demeanor was enough to send alarm bells screaming through her head, and yet she couldn’t help but feel like a part of her was being drawn to him by some unseen force.

That part actually scared her once she realized that she’d begun to lean further out of the window. Jasmine had to pull herself sharply back just to keep from tumbling forward, eyeing the man cautiously when he gave a brief dark smirk at her obvious panic.

“...Who are you...?” She barely managed to utter. Intrigue was quickly morphing into a suffocating fear that was coursing through every inch of her body, and this seemed to please the hooded male quite a bit.

“The deliciousness of what little of your fear that is leaking into the system aside, I am currently unable to hear you. A curious thing, really, but it doesn’t matter. You don’t have much time left here.” He was as still as a statue even when those scarred lips parted to speak, and this all seemed so surreal in some way. Terrifying, but more surreal than before.

“I don’t understand...” Jasmine said despite how he explained that he wasn’t able to hear a single thing she was saying. She couldn’t help it; all that was filling her head was the buzz of a million questions. Maybe she could find something to write them down on? Figment of her subconscious or not, this being might actually have the answers she felt that she desperately needed.

“Since you were obviously drug into all of this without knowing the truth of the matter, I’ll give you some advice.” The man turned his back to Jasmine and shifted his head just enough so she could still hear him from over his shoulder as much as her ‘non significant connection’ allowed, “Don’t trust Jimenez, beware of Mobius, and pray that you and I never meet again. I won’t be so willing to let you go next time, girl.”

He began to walk away, image beginning to flicker in and out among the swaying flowers like some sort of failing projections or even one of those science fiction holograms on shows and in books. Jasmine was, to say the least, no less confused than she had been before this odd one-sided talk. She felt irritated, actually.

“Hey, wait!” She shouted after him and didn’t care if he could hear her or not as she tried to get his attention before he was gone. She wanted answers, needed them, and all he was going to say was that she needed to be wary of an asshole she already didn’t trust, some Mobius thing she didn’t even know about, and that they better not meet again? What the fuck kind of bullshit was that!?

Entirely on impulse and swearing under her breath the entire way, Jasmine found herself rolling her old computer chair closer to the window. Her intent was to use it to help her launch herself out of the window easier and it would have worked if a large, dark-skinned arm hadn’t locked around her waist before her entire body was through that metallic threshold.

Only the blonde’s upper body was outside of the window when it happened;

A shock, like a bolt of lightning, shot through Jasmine’s exposed mind with excruciating pain.

The ringing was back louder than it had ever been, surroundings melting and melding into a symphony of blackened agony and muddled thoughts. Time had stopped, sped up, no longer existed within the space of assaulted senses that could no longer be discerned as a singular person.

Jasmine felt emotions she didn’t recognize, smelled scents that triggered no memories of her own, felt surgically precise slices and severed nerves of flesh torn away from limbs that were not hers.

Millions of trillions of different synapses of hundreds of people fired off with fear and numbness and pain. They were filling her to the breaking point, tearing her apart on a molecular level as they howled and cried for freedom within the void engulfing her very being. They were grabbing, pushing, pulling at atoms she wasn’t certain she was connected to anymore. There was only the anguish filling up her lungs like fluid.

Light, a pinpoint of vermilion hues of anger and hate and fear, exploded into the darkness and embraced her shaking essence like an abusive lover. Her skin was the very flames replacing the void with a whole new dimension of torment, the ringing in her ears a screaming crescendo of a young woman in her death throes.

Jasmine barely recognized that she was the one shrieking when the darkness returned to swallow her whole.