Disclaimer: Don't own the characters; probably never will. They're Rumiko Takahashi's and hers alone.

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No-Name Girl

Chapter 1

Rin walked down the street, thinking of her life. She didn't know anything was wrong with it; she thought she was average and that the few people she was friends with had weird families. She didn't know she was the weird one, but she had considered the possibility before. Never seriously, but a consideration nonetheless.

She thought her life was perfect, or close to it. She loved her mother and father, and her brother was even pretty cool sometimes. Her mother showed she cared by her worry (about what, Rin wasn't sure) and her father just didn't wear his heart out on his sleeve, he just hid his feelings because of how he had been raised. Her brother may have looked like a "Goth," but he was really quite kind and caring, though sometimes morose and dark in his philosophical thinking.

As soon as she stepped into her house, she knew something was wrong. All was eerily silent, and an odd smell hung over her head. It's never silent, Rin thought confusedly.

"Mom?" she called out. "Dad?" She started toward the kitchen, but stopped. The kitchen looked different… Somehow… There was blood on the walls… "Mom?" she asked again, this time quieter. Another step forward and she saw a surprised look on the blood-covered face of her mother. "Dad?" She didn't need to step forward further to feel he was dead, too. "No…" she saw someone run out the back door. Her brother? She stepped quickly toward the kitchen.

Her brother wasn't there… A gun sat on the floor next to her father, but too far to have been in his hand. She dropped to her knees, thinking her brother—her kind, quirky, laughing, older brother—had done this. But he couldn't do this, could he? No, she tried reassuring herself, he couldn't. Then she saw the silent screams trapped on her mother and father's faces and gagged. Oh gods…

She was in a daze as she walked to her room and picked up the phone. The ringing sounded as if it came through cotton balls. It stopped suddenly. "Hello," she heard in the distance, "you've reached '911,' what's the emergency?" the woman sounded bored. She stayed silent, but someone spoke for her. Through her.

"They're dead. He killed them. They died…" She wasn't sure how, but now she noticed that she held the gun in her hand. She hung up the phone as the operator started forwarding the call. It seemed only seconds to Rin, but the hours passed, one as the next, as the police and firefighters and ambulances showed up. She was in a stupor as they asked her, uselessly, for information on the killer, the murder, what she saw, who's gun it was. All she would say was, "They're dead. He killed them. They died. Blood. Blood everywhere. Oh god, it was terrible."

The blur of her being taken to a hospital to check for multiple different things was not remembered the next morning. The only thing she remembered from the day before was waking up. No more, no less. She was screaming when she awoke; from a nightmare, it seemed. Her family was dead. She had a gun. But of course that wasn't true. Her family was still alive and she had no gun (this had taken many hours of pulling and coaxing by the various policemen and women and hospital staff.) Then she saw the room she was in.

A grimy half-white bed covered in stains of unknown origin held her and the room she sat in had an identical paint on the wall and a mirror. Where was her bed? Where was her mother? Her father? Her brother? She called out their names to the walls. The unhearing walls and deaf floor and silent ceiling. All was unhearing except for the mirror. Well, not the mirror, but what was behind it.

"She doesn't remember what happened yesterday at all," a woman in a white lab coat told a woman in a dark blue business suit. "She doesn't know her family is dead. Her brain just won't accept her family's death through the hands of a murderer. You know they believe it was her brother? I had heard he was a psychopath or something and made up stories about their dad beating them and their mom hiding it. A 1-2 operation of sorts."

"What will happen to her?" Business Suit asked.

"We'll lie. We always do in cases like this. They got into a car accident while she was out and they all three died. Drunk driving can do horrible things," Ms. Psychiatrist added in a conspiratory tone.

"Won't she figure it out after a while though?" Ms. Suit said.

"Not if no one tells her."

"Where will she live?"

"Who knows?"

"So she won't learn what happened."

"Yes; we believe that if she doesn't learn what happened, she'll be better off."

"So you say," Ms. Suit said quietly, turning toward the exit.

2 years later…

Rin walked through the airport, looking for the newest set of victims she was to live with. A Higurashi family, if she remembered correctly. There was a boy about her age, and older sister (how much older she wasn't sure,) a mother, and a grandfather. She looked again at the reference picture in her hand. They seemed innocent enough. It'll be fun to play with this one, she thought about the boy. She looked up at the signs that pointed to baggage claim and followed them, walking quickly in knee-high boots with a chunky heel and a long black zipper.

She finally reached her destination, after much jostling, and slowly pushed her way forward to grab her two suitcases. One almost passed her, beat up and worn with the frequency of moving. It had paint on it proclaiming "Rin smudge" because as soon as she had started going to foster families, she had smudged out her own last name. Forgetting the past was so much easier than reliving it. Now she just had someone from the family sign the bag as she passed through.

She heaved the larger bag off the rotating belt and pushed her way back out of the crowd, cringing with every implication of physical contact. She reached the edge of the crowd and searched the faces. A few passed over her, either not seeing her or grimacing at her attire. Ripped up black stretch pants, low cut because of the weight loss she'd had in the past two years, and a faded and torn FBI hoodie with her thumbs coming out where the sleeves intersected the wrists.

She saw a family step uncertainly forward toward her, seeming to be hers. They looked enough like them. She smiled, almost menacing with the deep indigo lipstick, thick eyeliner, and matching purple eye shadow. She grabbed her bags by their handles and readjusted her purse/backpack on her shoulder. Her flame decorated boots poked out from the legs of her pants. They had sunk lower on her hips since she had last worn them.

Upon finding that this was, indeed, her family, she started in on the boy. He looked shy enough, but he was 15, so he couldn't be all too shy. She couldn't stand how innocent they all looked. The mother wore a humble—homely even—dress, the boy wore a blue sweater vest with brown shorts, the daughter a white button-up blouse and green skirt. And they all smiled. It was a sickly sweet one, like eucalyptus cough drops.

"So…" the boy started nervously, "how many homes have you lived in?" The mother shot him a glance and his sister elbowed him. Rin shrugged it off.

"It's alright," she assured them. "I think your house is number… 5? Or is it 6? I've been in enough to think I probably won't be staying long. I never do." The family seemed to be troubled at this. She thought they assumed she would do something illegal. Drugs, prostitution, or the sort. Not that they were all wrong on the last one. To their relief, she tried changing the subject. "So, I heard there was a grandfather in the family. Where is he?" The mother looked dismayed at the question.

"He's at home preparing a 'welcome here' dinner for you," she said as she looked Rin up and down with a grimace. "We were hoping you wouldn't be too tired to eat." She tried to be polite, and Rin smiled. She had come halfway across the country for a good family, at least. "It's going to be a little formal, so I hope you didn't pack your best dress in the bottom of your bag." She made a small, nervous laugh and the kids laughed a little with her. They looked as if she had just worn them out with that joke.

"I didn't," Rin smiled. "In fact, I think I packed a good dress very close to the top; one of those things you grab last, you know?" she added. She acted hospitably in case she needed to impress these people; just because she knew she was going to have to leave didn't mean she had to bring it upon herself faster.

And maybe she actually wouldn't have to leave for once. Just maybe she could stay here for a while. Maybe… but she would be fooling herself to believe that. She knew that. Besides, why would she want to stay here anyway? She hopped into the back of the mother's forest green van (it seemed as innocent as the family themselves) and proceeded to stare out the window. The girl tried small talk first.

"So where are you from?" Kagome asked politely. A little twang rang in her voice. Not too much, but enough to be noticed.

"Not too far; I lived in Alabama before my family died. Nasty wreck, too." She didn't see the brother and sister look uneasily from one to another as they laughed nervously.

"Really? We lived there a few years. Where'd you live?" They continued to ask mind-numbing questions like these, making small talk somewhat fearfully. What states had she lived in? What schools had she gone to? Had she had any boyfriends? Was she still a vir— Had she ever been kissed? (The question had changed at a violent nudge from Kagome towards Sota.)

"So why've you lived in so many houses?" Sota blurted out before Kagome could elbow him. She kicked him and muttered "idiot" under her breath. Rin smiled at this; she and her brother may have never done that, but she had loved him just the same.

"It's alright," she reassured them. "Nobody wants somebody whose family died; nobody wants a teenager most times. Especially not families who have a chance to get a baby." She looked back out the window and then added, "Besides, I'm not exactly the 'Good Witch' Glenda, if you haven't noticed." They eyed her carefully, not sure what to say. No one said anything, and for that Rin was glad.

The car pulled along a gravel driveway and a decrepit house appeared in Rin's vision. Well, decrepit wasn't the right word. It was more… dead… looking. The shutters hung crookedly with cracked paint that had to be 50 years old by now; the door looked about to fall off its hinges. She scrutinized the house, thinking that couldn't be the house she was to live in. And then she saw the next house and thought maybe she was wrong.

A sprawling country manor with an old-world elegance stood tall in her vision. A large front yard with a long driveway lined by trees and shrubs. Windows stared out at her blankly, all except for one. The vision of a young woman looked majestically out at her. Suddenly she was called back into the real world by something the mother said.

"They say the house is haunted by the ghost of a young maiden," she said amiably. "She was a huntress. The men and women alike respected her for both her great beauty and her great wisdom. She outsmarted foxes and outran deer, if the story is true, and supposedly she haunts the East Wing. They s—"

"There's an East Wing?" Rin said in shock. This place was huge.

"Yes," she replied, pleased the girl was interested, "there's also a West Wing, but the old wine cellar has been blocked off. The structure wasn't stable." Rin looked back at the window, but the girl was gone. It looked as though she had never even been there. "But back to the story. They say that she died in a fire in a room in the east wing a hundred years ago. They found an odd skeleton with her; the old newspapers said it had been a dragon, but who's to believe that nonsense, hm?"

"Nonsense, yes," Rin agreed. "What did you say the girl looked like?"

"Young girl, probably about your age, with long straight black hair. And she had eyes like a deep well. People said you could fall into them at just one glance."

Funny thing was that was the girl Rin had seen in the window. Rin had seen a ghost and now she was going to be living in close quarters with them. With her.

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A/N: Ok… So it's more topics I really have no experience with, but I still relate a little because I've moved a lot. Seems like it'll be mushy, you know? Girl gets orphaned, girl finds likable family, girls finds flaw, blah blah blah. But it won't. It'll probably be my least happy story so far. I actually had this written on paper and was going to change it only a little bit, but then tangent time came and I couldn't stop myself. So, here it is.