Disclaimer: I do not own the Inuyasha universe. I simply use them for entertainment purposes.

~*-Shattered Dream-*~ A Oneshot

The darkness pulled and tugged, dragging her away so quickly that she barely had time to reach out for a panicked Inuyasha before it swallowed her whole. His wide, golden eyes were burned into her memory as the darkness hurled her along, a painful compressing feeling beginning to mount throughout her body. It hurt!

She tried to gasp, to call out for Inuyasha, but no sound came from her mouth. Or did there? The pressure constricted around her, and Kagome screamed. She screamed loud and long, because it felt like the darkness was crushing her, her bones cracking under the pressure. What was happening? Was the well taking her back? Why now? Why?

'No! Please no! Take me back! I don't want to leave, please!' she tried to beg with the darkness, but it paid her no mind, dragging her back. No. She couldn't leave. Not with all her friends there. She had not future in her era. Her future was with a dog eared hanyou from the feudal era. The man she loved.

But she would never see him again.

Inuyasha...!

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The all encompassing pain eased slowly, draining out of her body like a sigh. The darkness remained, but no longer did it pull at her, consume her from the inside. But she felt hollow. She was missing something, something dear, and her heart knew it.

'Inuyasha.' She wanted to sob. Was it all just a nightmare? She begged for it to be just a terrible, terrible dream.

She was laying on something soft. 'A bed'. Kagome thought, clenching her hands in the thin sheet covering her. Maybe it was just a dream. If it was, she never wanted to sleep again...

"Kagome?"

Kagome smiled, knowing the voice of her best friend. Sango! Struggling to open her heavy eyelids, the world blurred into focus hesitantly. Where was she? She had to see her. Tell her all about the dream and demand that she never let her fall asleep again.

A dark blurr above her slowly straightened to show Sango, a happy smile on the older woman's face. Kagome smiled back, ecstatic.

"Sa-" Kagome coughed harshly, her throat dry and crackly. She swallowed heavily. Wow, she must have been out for a long time to be this parched!

Her coughing fit over, Kagome sighed and let her eyes slide shut again. She was so tired...

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

She floated to consciousness again, this time faster and from a more familiar darkness of sleep. Kagome mentally slapped herself. What happened to not sleeping ever again?

'At least I didn't dream again.' She thought, sighing in relief and opening her eyes slowly, letting them adjust to the light in the room.

Considering calling out for someone, there had to be someone nearby, she quickly discarded the idea when her throat burned from the simple act of breathing.

Kagome blinked rapidly, trying to clear the whiteness from her eyes. She frowned. Was there something wrong with her eyes? There wasn't white anywhere in the old priestess's hut, and she was seeing nothing but white.

Flexing her fingers to rid them of the numbness that gripped her body, she was about to lift a hand to see if she could see them when a smooth voice caught her attention.

"Ah! If it isn't Miss Kagome, awake again, I see?"

'Miroku!' Kagome thought excitedly, squirming where she lay to try and see him.

Miroku laughed, and came into view, smiling down at her. She smiled back. So her eyes were working! She could see his every feature. His black, cropped hair; his slightly tanned skin; the earring in his left ear and his... purple... robes?

Kagome frowned and looked closer. His monk robes were different somehow. The same color, but a different cut, like a t-shirt...

'Why is Miroku wearing scrubs?' Kagome thought, remembering the clothing from her visits to the hospital as a child and from the television series on her mother's soaps.

"Is she awake again?" came Sango's voice and Kagome stretched her neck to look over at her friend. Maybe she could explain some things-

Her breath caught. What was going on?

"S-san...go? Mi-mi-mi-ro?" she stuttered, her wide eyes flying from her one friend writing on a clipboard to the other giving her a charming smile.

"What was that?" Miroku asked calmly, tilting his head slightly as he sat on the edge of her bed. Her raised bed. Futons were not raised.

What was going on?

Giving her head a firm shake, she tried again, opening her eyes cautiously, just to see that the scene had not changed. Her friends were in scrubs, at her side in a hospital room.

"W-what...?" she squeaked, her voice box not used to being active.

"Do you not remember?" Miroku asked, the calm look never leaving his face. "How about your name? Do you know your name?"

Kagome nodded, a confused frown creasing her brow, "K-kagom...e."

"Very good!" Miroku chirped, taking the clipboard from Sango and motioning for her to do something else. Kagome's eyes flickered to the clipboard. What was on it? Would it tell her what was happening? She tried to read the print that flew by as Miroku flipped through it. She caught long, complicated words, one's she couldn't understand, but some of the few she did disturbed her. Word like 'crash', and 'prognosis', and 'treatment'.

Panic fluttered in her chest as she looked up at the serene Miroku. Something was wrong. This was wrong. The hole in her heart that had almost been filled, began to deflate again, filling with cold stones that cut her deep. Something was wrong!

"Now, as you will only be conscious for another... say... thirty seconds or so, I just want you to relax and nod or shake your head to answer my questions, alright?" Kagome's breath hitched. Why would she only be awake for a few more seconds? What was wrong with her?

"Are you in any pain?" Miroku asked, pen poised above the paper.

Kagome shook her head. No, her body did not hurt. But a growing headache was starting to make itself known as she tried to piece together this puzzle.

"Do you remember your family? Your friends?" Kagome nodded twice. All of them. Though, she didn't know why they were dressed so weirdly...

"How about the accident? Do you remember that?" Kagome frowned. What accident? What was he talking about? She tried to frown at him, but her eyes grew heavier, unbearably heavy. But she fought. She had to get answers! She shook her head lethargically.

"No? Well, it's to be expected. You did hit your head pretty hard on the concrete. But no worries! Your memories will come to you in time."

What memories? What accident? What was going on!

Kagome wanted to scream, to have a tantrum and demand that she see someone with an iota of sense. But instead, she fell asleep, unable to fight off the wave of fatigue any longer.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Next time she woke, she gave a quick prayer that it would be Kaede's hut she saw when she opened her eyes. She wanted to see her friends. Her real friends. Her demon hunting, jewel finding explorers of the Feudal Era!

Yet, when she opened her eyes, she knew her prayers had not been answered. There was that white ceiling, looming over her. She bit her lip and clenched her eyes shut. She didn't want to see that!

"Child? Are you awake?"

Kagome blinked her eyes open and shifted her head to the side slowly. It had been Kaede's voice, but had it really been Kaede?

Kaede's old wizened face stared back at her in casual curiosity, but Kagome felt her heart sink ever further by the red and white striped apron around the woman's middle. A candy striper.

'No no no no no...' Kagome chanted in her head. She wanted to wake up! Someone was messing with her head, and she had had about enough with it!

"They had told me that ye had woken, but doctors nowadays know nothing. I had to see for myself. But it seems they were correct. How are you, child?" Kaede's kind voice continued but Kagome refused to listen, turning her head away and clenching her eyes shut, fisting her hands in the sheets and willing with all her might to just wake up.

"Kagome!"

No, no not him... please...

"Shippo, ye need to keep quiet. And shouldn't you be in your room?"

"Ha! Like they can keep me in there!" came the little boy's boisterous voice, she could practically see his chest puffed out in pride.

"Shippo! There you are!" came Sango's voice as she entered the room. "Miroku! He's in here!"

"No! Don't give me away! Sangooooo!" whined Shippo.

Their voices rebounded in her head. What was happening? Why were her friends here? Why were they acting so differently? Why why why?

Her head swirled. She needed quiet. She needed to think. To straighten everything out. Everyone needed to be quiet!

Opening her mouth, Kagome tried to tell them all to shut up, and though all she managed was a wheezy whine, everyone suddenly became silent.

Fighting tears, Kagome took some calming breaths, trying to make the beating of her heart not so loud as to block out her very thoughts. Unwanted, a hiccup escaped her tense lips. Everything was just so overwhelming, but she needed to know.

"What h-happened-d?" She asked, opening her glistening eyes to her shocked friends.

They stood there in silence, staring at her with wide eyes, and it made her irritated. Growling a bit to herself, she said again, as clearly as she could. "What. Happened?"

Sango broke away from the group, coming to her bedside and sitting delicately where Miroku had sat the time before, a comforting hand laying next to her own. Her soft brown eyes were tinged with sadness and pity, making Kagome's heart skip a beat. Please, no. Gods no.

"Kagome." Sango started, her voice heavy. "I'm sorry, but you've been in a coma for two years."

A whimper slipped past Kagome's lips. No! She had begged! Prayed! It couldn't have all been a dream! She looked frantically between all of her 'friends'. Each nodded solemnly, making her fall further and further into despair.

"N-no!" she croaked, clenching her eyes closed. "No! No no no no no-"

Even as 'Sango' gathered Kagome into her arms, the young woman could feel the pieces of her soul that had once been whole and happy, slowly crack and drift away.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Days passed. Kagome sat, as she had every single one of those days, motionless in her bed, looking out the window.

It had all been a dream.

Another tear escaped her azure eye, burning down her cheek like the rest. There seemed to be no end to them, like there was no end to her agony.

None of it had been real. Kaede, Shippo, Miroku, and Sango, they had all been used by her mind to take her to though a fairytale of majestic measures. Even Kilala had been only Sango's pet cat that she had brought in to see her comatose body once in awhile. They weren't even friends! And Inuyasha... Inuyasha didn't even exist. That had been the worst. There had never been a boy in her life before the crash or after the crash named Inuyasha.

Following the explanation, Kagome had lost the will to move from her hospital bed. To do anything, really. Sure, she still had her friends, but they weren't the same. They all had lives, one's that existed just fine without her. They didn't know it, but her world revolved around them and only them. Now that they were no longer there...

Kagome blinked heavily and sighed. She had cried, raged, and sobbed. But nothing had changed the fact that she wouldn't see her real friends anymore. She had thought, hoped, that when the well finally sent her home, that she might be able to treasure the memories of her time there for the rest of her days, but no- the world had stripped her of that too.

The sun was setting, but it didn't matter to that girl from the future, who's heart lay in the past.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Curled up on her side, Kagome hesitantly arose from wakefulness once more. She wanted to stay sleeping. She had had a wonderful dream of golden eyes and moon kissed hair...

Breathing in deeply, she opened her eyes to see the familiar layout of her room. Not a single thing had changed from the last time she had been in this era. Even her homework was still splayed out on her desk, waiting for her to get to it once they finished tracking down Naraku.

Following extensive physio and psychological care, she had been sent home to live her sadly empty life. She attended school, trying to earn a GED to get a decent job. It depressed her to think that such things mattered in this world.

Stifling another sigh, Kagome stretched, her arms creaking as her back arched. Her back hit something solid and she shifted, trying to get away from the wall to allow for proper back cracking, but her eyes widened when the wall pulled her back.

Looking down, two arms were wrapped around her middle, arms that could not be her own as her own were currently suspended above her head. Fear fluttered in her heart. Someone was in her bed! Kagome tensed to spring away, when she noticed the hands. She knew those hands. Her eyes widened. But there was no way...

Scrubbing her face, Kagome looked down again, but the arms were still around her middle, pinning her solidly against the slightly moving 'wall'. Her hands shook. She had to know. She might be hallucinating again, and she could feel herself fall a little bit more at the thought. This couldn't be real, her mind was playing tricks! Kagome hated her mind for all the cruelties it played on her, but this one... It played with all her heart's fantasies. She had to know...

The soft pads of her fingertips grazed the rough knuckles, tearing a gasp from her. Carefully, as though they might disappear the moment she moved too fast, Kagome ran her fingers down each finger, tracing the dangerous claw tipping each and every one.

A soft huff in her ear halted her examinations. She had a sudden urge to run. To get away from all these confusing thoughts. But why would she run away? Why not fall back into that blissful embrace of 'insanity', as her therapists had called it?

Steeling her resolve, Kagome closed her eyes and turned her head. The warmth behind her remained, even as she opened her eyes to see two roguish eyes glinting mischievously at her, a fang peeking out of the corner of quirked lips, and two white puppy ears that she knew to be as soft as silk focused entirely on her.

Her breath caught, her eyes teared, but she could not look away. Dared not to blink.

He lifted one hand, pushing her bangs back gingerly. "My Kagome." He whispered, his voice the rough timbre she remembered so clearly; loved so dearly.

Breathless as she was, she couldn't only think the one thought that had finally brought some of her broken pieces together:

'My world.'

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Eh. Hated the ending. Maybe I'll fix it sometime in the future.

Anyways... just a tiny update so you guys know I'm still writing and such. Trying out different styles of writing. How does it look? Good? Bad? Should I just ditch the heartfelt stuff and never look back? Give me your thoughts.

Inspired by 'Shine a Light' by McFly and Taio Cruz as well as 'Just a Dream' by Nelly. Kind of a mixture of the two.

Hope you enjoyed!