Twin Sisters

Disclaimer-Do not own Inuyasha.

Full Summary: (A/U)Kag's P.O.V- I took over my sister's life after she died, slipped into her place without missing a beat. I wore her favorite fuzzy sweater, kissed her boyfriend, inherited her friends………………….and her enemies.

Kagome and Kikyou hadn't seen each other since their parents divorced when they were three. Kikyou stayed with her father, a brilliant and reclusive author. Kagome ended up with her mother, a jet-setting socialite who hop scotched her young daughter all over the world. Then Kikyou is murdered-and her twin wants to find out why because she was out of town when it happened, Kikyou's friends don't know she's gone. If Kagome has her way, they'll never find out. Only Kagome will know-and the killer.

A/N: So sorry for the long update but I was just a tad bit busy with Christmas shopping.

~**~

Chapter One: Arriving

Kagome's P.O.V.

My father was a patient at Memorial Hospital in a town called Shikon Cove in North Carolina. My mother had learned this from grandpa Higurashi when she called to alert him that I planned to visit my father. I didn't expect to find an international airport in Shikon Cove, but I was surprised by how hard it was to get to the place. No passenger trains went there, and the few buses that served the coast arrived at impossible times, like three in the morning.

Damn my luck.

In the end I took the advice of my travel agent: I laid over in New York City one night, then flew down to Richmond, Virginia, and rented a car. The rental-car contract plainly said that renters had to be over twenty-one.

Shit.

I am only seventeen years old. Hmm……..I should show the clerk my license and talk to him about uhh……whatever comes to my mind. That'll kind of keep him distracted, I hope.

So I pulled my license out and to my surprise he didn't even take a two second glance at it, he took a one second. Thank god. I signed the rental agreement and went out to claim the car. It was a blue dodge ram truck.

Getting away from the Richmond airport was a major bitch. I feel relieved to finally get out of there. I hadn't really done that much driving since I recently got my license. I guess you can say that I am quite the aggressive driver. Finally after minutes of driving I finally reached I-95. Long empty stretches of road were punctuated only by green signs for destination and blue signs for "food, fuel, and lodging." Those signs were the only clues to life near the four-lane highway. I might have been on the main road to hell.

I had to pay attention when I turned on a narrow state road and headed toward Shikon Cove on the Outer Banks. I found myself behind a slow-moving pickup filled with trash and old tires.

I sighed. Curse them slow drivers.

I went on the left lane and speeded up. Then I noticed that the pickup was starting to swerve almost letting it hit my car if I hadn't gone faster.

"What the hell is this driver doing!? Fucking dumb ass driver!" I yelled as I past the pickup and was now going faster then I was before.

Then after a minute or two I looked at the map again to check where I was. The road was crossed again and again by unnamed side roads, which made me wonder if I had missed a turn somewhere. Seedy shacks along the way had posted signs advertising surfboards and fish bait.

I began to notice seagulls wheeling overhead and I knew I must be near the coast. The sky with its pale sun stretched hot and bright above me. It is very hot over here. I had the car's air conditioning on full blast. In England this temperature would have sent people to the hospital with heat prostration. The two-lane road cut between sandy hills with sparse patches of vegetation. The land was bleak, except for the pools reflecting the sky.

"'Bout time I'm here." I said to myself as I past a sign saying "Welcome to Shikon Cove."

I stopped at the nearest gas station and bought a copy of the local newspaper. It had four sheets, most of them devoted to a recent fishing competition. I did find a brief story on page two about my twin's murder.

Local police have no leads in the recent robbery that ended in the death of Yuki Hedrick, daughter of summer resident Dick Hedrick. Police caution residents to secure all doors and windows at night and not to open the door to visitors who cannot satisfactorily identify themselves.

I smiled a little at the paper's creative rendition of our family name. I wondered to myself how you get Kikyou out of Yuki. What a bunch of idiots. Especially my father Richard, Dick, oh come on! If my mom saw this she would laugh at the name they gave him. She'd probably say he is a dick. Our last name was misspelled too. I noticed that the little weekly was full of misprints.

I got directions to the country hospital, which turned out to be an ugly cement-block building surrounded by a black asphalt parking lot. I parked and got out. The heat of the pavement burned through the thin soles of my shoes. I stared at the squat, ugly building ahead of me, unable to move. I guess I was afraid of finding out what was inside the building. Don't be silly, I told myself. The worst has already happened. Kikyou is dead.

I pushed open the hospital's glass doors and was hit with an arctic blast from the air conditioning. At the front desk, a woman in a pink jumper told me that visiting hours were over. An air of hushed silence pervaded the place, and I found myself lowering my voice. I explained that I was Richard Higurashi's daughter, and that I had just flown over here from Italy to see him. The pink lady's face melted into an expression of concern, and she urged me to go right on up.

At the nurse's station on the third floor, two nurses in crisp white were chatting about how they slept with over thirty men. I snorted.

Damn sluts.

"Ahem……" I cleared my throat trying to get their attention.

Still talking, eh?

"Excuse me…will you sluts shut the hell up and help me!" I yelled.

I blinked. Still talking!? Gosh are they that deaf? You'd think they'd hear me since I am standing right beside them. Whoa talk about having the most interesting conversation. I tapped one of the nurses. What the hell!? You cannot tell me she did not feel that.

I am starting to loose my patience right now! This time instead of taping her on the shoulder I stomped on her foot real hard to get her attention, she yelped in pain and grabbed her foot. I smirked at her.

Finally!

The other nurse glared at me, "Excuse me miss but you don't have to be so aggressive to get our attention."

I fumed, but I kept calm. I explained who I was and they gave me sympathetic looks and ushered me to my father's room.

I stepped into the room and saw my father lying limp on the hospital bed. If I hadn't seen the gentle movement of his breathing, I might have thought he was dead. His cheeks were sunken and the bones of his face stood out sharply, making him look a good deal older than his photo in Contemporary Authors. Flexible plastic tubes were taped to his arms, and a bottle of clear liquid hung suspended over one side of his bed.

His head turned, then his gray eyes widened at the sight of me. "Kikyou," he whispered.

Goose bumps rose on my forearms. "I'm Kagome," I said. "Not Kikyou."

He stared at me as if trying to memorize my features.

"I'm not Kikyou," I repeated firmly. "Don't start thinking of me as Kikyou."

"Of course not." He licked his lips. "I can tell you're not Kikyou."

"How?" I said quickly.

"How? Well, I know you can't be Kikyou because Kikyou is dead." His mouth worked.

"Were we very much alike?" I asked.

"Very," he said shortly.

"We were going to get together next year when we were at college. We were hoping we would get a chance to know each other then."

"Your voice has a higher pitch then hers and your hair isn't up in a low pony-tail," he said.

"Really?" It had just occurred to me that there was a lot my father could tell me about Kikyou.

"It's terrible," he said hoarsely. "Already I can't quite remember the sound of her voice."

I glanced around the room, a little surprised that it seemed so bare. Every hospital room I had ever visited had been filled with flowers. "Doesn't anybody know you're in here?" I asked before I could stop myself.

He smiled sourly. "No. And that's the way I like it. The police notified my next of kin, but fortunately I regained consciousness soon enough to tell them to keep away. All I need is a bunch of family around here prattling about how famous I am, and the place will be swarming with reporters."

I glanced at him, startled. "You mean no one around here knows who you are?"

"I always tell people I'm in investments. That shuts them up." He snorted. "Nothing is more boring than investments."

I wondered if Shikon Cove's library had copies of my father's books. Then, recalling the few, scattered houses and the forlorn gas station I had passed, I realized that the town probably didn't have a library. Shikon Cove gave new meaning to the phrase "out of the way." I supposed that was what my father had drawn here.

"Tell me about you," he demanded suddenly. "Do you like games? Puzzles?"

He seemed disappointed when I said I didn't.

"Maybe you read a lot, then?" he suggested.

I struck out on that count, too.

"You aren't a budding writer, evidently," he went on, not bothering to hide his disappointment.

"No. I guess I'm not." I watched him coolly. He might be my father, but he had never sent me so much as a birthday card, so it didn't bother me that he didn't like me. I figured he was no bargain either.

He snorted again. "So how is your mother?" he asked abruptly. I followed his thinking: he was already blaming mom for everything he didn't like about me.

"She's fine," I said. "She's talking about getting married in the spring."

"I feel deeply sorry for her fiancé." Suddenly, as if his dislike of mom had given him an unexpected shot of energy, he sat up in bed and stabbed a finger against his buzzer. "I've got to get out of this place," he said. "Do you have a car?"

"I rented one in Richmond."

"You can drive me home, then," he said.

"You don't have your own car?"

"No," he said abruptly. "I was driving a rented one, and Kikyou's car has disappeared."

A nurse came in hurrying in. "Everything okay?" she asked brightly, her eyes darting anxiously from him to me.

"Take these tubes out of my arms," my father snapped. "I'm going home."

The nurse smiled at him as if he were a troublesome child. "I'll tell the doctor you're feeling much better, and we'll see what he says."

"Unhook this bottle or I'm going to go walking down the hall dragging it after me."

"It's a very serious matter to leave the hospital against medical advice." The nurse frowned, then in a solemn voice added the clincher: "If you leave against doctor's orders, your insurance may not pay!"

"I am leaving with or without your assistance," snapped dad. "Kay- I mean, Kagome—get out of here while I put on some clothes."

I went out into the hall to wait for him. A couple other people in white went in, and I could hear raised voices; eventually forms were brought for dad to sign in saying that he was leaving against medical advice. It never occurred to me to persuade him not to check out of the hospital. I could recognize determination when I saw it. Besides, I had to admit I was intrigued by the idea of going to Sewell's Falls.

My father was bound to ask me to spend the night. Not only would I get to see where Kikyou had lived, I might even get a chance to sleep in her room. I wondered if she had left a diary. If she had, I figured I would take it away with me. I had as much right to it as anyone.

It was odd to think that I had sat three feet from my father, looked into his eyes, and felt absolutely nothing. With Kikyou it had been different. I barely remember her—had we played together in a sprinkler one hot afternoon or had I imagined it?—but even the mention of her name made my heart race. She was dead, but her name still called forth a rush of emotion.

 I was sure she was the one person in the world who could understand me. I needed her so badly that I still thought there was some way we could be close. I suppose this meant I was out of touch with reality, but that's the way it was.

When dad came out of his room, he was short of breath. Even though he was in terrible shape, it was obvious to me that I had gotten my straight athletic-looking shoulders and the height that kept me from seeming fragile like my mother from him.

My father was strongly built, and quite handsome, I guess.

"They wanted to put me in a wheelchair," he barked. "I told them they could forget it. I'm perfectly capable of walking."

I didn't argue with him, but a wheelchair would have made sense. Even though I avoided looking at my father, I was conscious as we walked that he was unsteady on his feet.

The heat and light of the parking lot hit us when we stepped outside the big glass doors. Dad tottered a bit then blinked. Maybe I should have put out my arm to steady him. When he slid into the car's passenger seat, I noticed that his lips were blue.  He looks like he is almost going to die.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

He glared at me. "I'm as okay as can be expected, considering that I've had a heart attack and my daughter's been murdered. Any other questions?"

I leaned over him and pulled the map out of the glove compartment. "How far is it to Sewell's Falls?" I asked.

"About a three-hour drive." he said.

He was having a hard time taking his eyes off me. It was a trifle unnerving. I turned the car in the direction of the highway. "Tell me about Kikyou."

He heaved a sigh. "It's impossible to sum her up in a couple of sentences. I know everything there is to know about her, you see.  I wouldn't know where to begin."

I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye; there was no hint of irony in his expression. Maybe he thought he knew everything about Kikyou. But everyone has secrets. In my seventeen years I had learned that much.

"Did she have a boyfriend?" I asked.

"Lots of them," he said promptly. "Boys ran after her constantly. But she was far too young to get involved. She enjoyed admiration, but she wasn't interested in anyone in particular." He dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief.

He was kidding himself. Juliet had been younger than Kikyou when she started sneaking out to see Romeo. "You mean there were no boys in her life at all?" I asked skeptically.

"Kouga Atsuki came around a lot. She liked him," he admitted. "I never could understand why. I think he was a lot more serious about her than she was about him. From the time she was five or six, I knew she was going to be a beauty. She could have her pick."

"We both look like mom, I guess." 

"Don't be ridiculous," he snapped. "Kikyou didn't resemble Chiharu in the slightest."

Sure. Just because me and Kikyou had black hair while mom had blond hair doesn't mean we don't look a like. All three of us had dark eyebrows and identical short noses and that didn't mean we looked alike.

"Was Kikyou good at school?" I was terrified at school, mostly because I didn't have much else to do with my time.

"She was interested in life," he said. "She was a student of the human heart. She could have been a great writer-not that I ever tried to push her, but she had talent." He sighed. "Her hunger for life was magnificent. It was as if she knew she needed to scoop up experience because her time was short."

He blotted his cheeks with his handkerchief. "Chess, computers, student government, music, art, cheerleading-so many interests. I know she was happy. That's my consolation." He closed his mouth abruptly.

Kikyou sounded revoltingly like the well-rounded girl the college committees wanted. I couldn't believe that was the whole story. Dad might have known Kikyou, but I figured I knew her in a way he didn't. I was her twin.

"Tell me about what she was like when she was growing up," I suggested.

He didn't need encouragement. He told me about Kikyou's life in so much detail you would have thought I was going to be the star in a movie about her. I learned that she liked being  the lead horsey in her pretend games at the playground when she was seven, that she had turned vegetarian at eight, and had gone back to eating beef at fourteen.

It was strange hearing about Kikyou's life, almost like encountering an alternate reality. Would I have turned out more like her if I grew up in Sewell' Falls?

My father stared out the window blankly. "She was outgoing," he said, "not like me." His eyes glistened with tears. "She didn't know the meaning of fear. Went off the high-dive at six."

He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose, and then he turned accusing eyes on me. "You're not like her at all. I don't know what I expected. I was completely staggered when my father called and warned me you were coming. I suppose I had some half-insane idea you could replace Kikyou. But you're different. You're cold."

Cold?

I wasn't going to let him get away with that. "I don't even know you," I pointed out. "What did you expect?"

He snorted. "The trouble is you're like me."

At last he succeeded in offending me. We drove for the next hour in tight-lipped silence, and I began to wonder what I was getting myself into.

The last thing I wanted was to get into a contest with my father in which I tried to prove I was as good as Kikyou. Why should I care what he thought? He was as much a stranger to me as the man I sat next to on the plane. His opinion meant nothing to me.

Soon, however, I realized I had nothing to gain by letting him know how angry I was. If I got in a fight with him, all I would do is cut off a fountain of information about Kikyou. "So, tell me about Kikyou's friends," I said at last breaking the silence.

"Everyone loved her except for four people she had said she hated," he said.

Naturally. That goes without saying, I thought ironically.

He filled me in on everyone she had ever been close to. I heard that the four people she had hated went by the names of Miroku, Sango, Rin, and Inuyasha. I listened the whole time, but the entire time, I was wondering how I could find out what Kikyou was really like. A diary, I thought. I didn't keep a diary myself, but Kikyou had grown up with our father telling her every day that writing was more important than boys. Of course she would have kept a diary…………………………

~~~~~~~~~**

A/n: I finally got chapter one out! Now all I got to do is study for my test this coming week. * sighs * Stupid tests.

Anyway hope everyone enjoyed this chapter. Oh and there will be a scene where Kouga kisses Kagome, but don't worry this is in fact a Inuyasha/Kagome pairing, I love that pairing. Till then people review. The more reviews I receive the faster I update.

--BlazinRuby