A/N: Inuyasha and all characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi, this story is the brainchild of Kajatk8, and belongs to her. No profits are being made from this, it is just a fun way to pass the time and expand my writing capabilities.

Thank you Ariel-Mystic-Siren for Beta-Reading!

Warning: Kind of graphic scene, not for the faint of heart. Re – M in the ratings. Not saying that someone younger than 16 can't figure out how to read an M fic, but just saying.

Chapter 6. Nightmares of the Past

Kagome had been in this world for a long time. Yet, she knew it wasn't the right world.

'Right world?' She thought. 'What a weird thought, is there a wrong world?'

It appeared to be the one she was currently in. She looked around. She appeared to be in a formless space, and had been for what felt like days. She was surrounded by darkness, which was strongly reminiscent of being inside the Shikon Jewel. But there she'd felt lonely and empty. Here she didn't feel evil in the darkness. It just felt like she was out camping in the country where no manmade light touched the land.

As she watched, her surroundings changed. The closer she looked at them, the more she realized she recognized them.

Home.

There was the Goshinboku. There was her house, the well-house, the torii gates, the shed where her father kept all the shrines trinkets, the steps, even the big bell for visitors to ring. But it looked wilder in this place than she remembered.

She looked up. It was autumn. The trees took on a wonderful fiery color palate of oranges, yellows and reds. A cool breeze blew through the trees and several leaves came raining down on her head. She tried to grasp one, but it just slipped through her fingers.

"Mama? Souta?" No one responded to her calls. "Jii-chan? … Buyo?" Kagome said aloud.

Perhaps no one was home? She walked towards her front door eager to see her family. Just as she was about to reach for the handle to the door; it flew open and out ran a small giggling girl.

Kagome jumped back in surprise. The girl paid her no mind and she could have sworn that she had almost run right through her. It was as if Kagome were a ghost.

"You can't catch meeee!" The little girl shrieked.

"Of course I can, and then I'll gobble you up." A man said from the door and darted after the little girl all the while making chomping noises.

Kagome looked over to the man and froze.

"Daddy?" She said horrified. She looked him up and down and took in his appearance as he chased the little girl. The girl shrieked and squealed in delight attempting to outrun the man chasing her. But, in the end he caught her. At this she squealed even louder.

"Don't rile her up too much, she'll never take a nap if you do," The girl's mother intoned from the open door. Her voice was harsh, but the effect was ruined with the bright smile that lit up her face. Her brown eyes shone with amusement as she watched her husband and daughter play. Her hair was done up in a loose bun with chopsticks and she leaned against the doorframe, a hand resting on her rather swollen belly. She looked to be about six months pregnant.

"No." Kagome said as she took in the scene. The woman looked like her mother. Her mother had been wearing that dress – was wearing that dress. She was wearing a western style dress whose heavy cloth was off-white. The dress was covered in bright white and pastel pink flowers falling off a subdued cherry tree that was blowing in the wind.

Kagome blanched and flipped around to gaze at the man. He wore a simple casual hairstyle with his reddish blond locks just reaching past his eyes. The hair became closely cropped to his head the more it reached his sideburns and behind his ears. He was adorned in a dark green long sleeve shirt; he also wore a pair of black boots and black pants. His bright green eyes were twinkling with mirth as he threw the girl in his arms up a few feet and then caught her still making chomping noises, as if he would eat her up.

The small girl was wearing a western style long sleeved dark blue dress hemmed with green patterned with bright red cherries bundled with leaves. She also wore white knee socks and bright red boots to match the dress. Her short hair was swept up into a wild flyaway pony tail with a green ribbon. Her blue eyes were alight with happiness at being tossed.

"We're going to the park. Don't worry she'll get tired out there no problem." He replied coolly to the woman in the doorway.

"Yes Mama, don't worry," repeated the little girl held in the arms of her father and smiling sweetly. Her face reeked with childlike mischief – as if she were accustomed to using her charm and whiles.

The woman just shook her head, looking amused. She walked back inside closing the door behind her. It shut with a snap and the pair looked at each other and smiled.

Kagome's chest filled tight with emotions and she found it extremely difficult to breath past them. Her mother hadn't even said goodbye to them, she'd just turned and simply walked away.

Kagome had always loved how her mother explained the story of meeting her father, Bradan. He had been an airman stationed at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. But he'd had some leave saved up and he'd always been interested in the Shinto religion and shrines. He'd come to Honshu with the express intent of visiting as many traditional shrines as possible. He'd started out at the Higurashi Shrine in Tokyo, but once he'd seen her mother, he knew he'd found something far more important than lost history. He'd always said that he'd been struck by Sucellos, the Celtic god of love that day.

Kagome's mother Kiyoko had been performing the traditional purification of the shrine –and he was unable to look away. It had been love at first sight, and he'd not visited another shrine on his trip. After his deployment, he'd left the Air Force and moved to Japan, where he'd soon married Kagome's mother. Kagome was born nine months later.

Kagome's father had become a military contractor on mainland Japan after leaving the military. He hadn't wanted his children to be ostracized at school for being hafu; so he'd taken a very liberal stance and his children had taken their mothers last name when they were born. It would have been perfectly convincing, if it weren't for Kagome's blue eyes. They screamed foreigner. But as Kagome grew up, she found people thought her special for her blue eyes, and she was never teased.

"Mama doesn't suspect a thing!" The little girl said a little too loudly.

"Shhh. Be quiet or we won't be able to keep it that way," the girl's father said in hushed tones bringing a single finger up to his lip in a shushing motion.

The little girl followed suit: "Shhhhhhh," she said, and then giggled.

"No." Kagome intoned again. That was all that she had been able to say since this scene had begun playing out in front of her like a movie. She didn't know what to do or how to extricate herself from the scene. She tried to run away from her house, but found no matter how hard she ran, she couldn't get away from the shrine.

She watched helpless as the daughter and father walked down the steps and got into a rundown white Toyota. She thought since she didn't get in with them, that she would be left in her courtyard – but no such luck. She found herself being spirited away becoming a passenger in the car. She sat in the front passenger seat and watched as the man helped to buckle his daughter in the back.

As the father did this the girl played with his watch. It was a black automatic watch and the front of it was exposed so she could see all of the gears and movements of time. She poked at it and tried to memorize the clicking motions of it all. "Tick, tick, tick," she intoned.

As soon as he had strapped her in, he tickled her neck and said, "tick" and she laughed and tried to squirm away. He smiled and strode around the car, got in the driver's side and turned over the engine.

Kagome couldn't believe what she was seeing. This horrible day was playing out right before her eyes. She tried to expatiate herself away from the car, but found she couldn't. She was strapped in, just like her former seven year old self. The day she and her father had lied. They'd deceived her mother into thinking they were going to the park. In reality, her father had taken her to help him pick out an anniversary present for his wife.

This was the worst day of her life. Kagome covered her face with her hands and started to shake with trepidation. She'd found she'd been holding her breath because breathing had become almost impossible. She let it out in a harsh exhlation. She wouldn't. She couldn't. She couldn't watch, and she definitely didn't want to listen as the father played an I-spy car game with the little girl.

Kagome had remembered how her father had always been able to trick her. No matter what game she played. He would be so sneaky with twenty questions and would attempt to inform her that a fly only had four legs when she knew it had six. He would argue – no! This one has only four; he was a brave fly who had lost two legs in a scrap against a spider. Kagome had to work out his clues; and what he didn't say was far more valuable than what he did.

After the car stopped moving Kagome finally removed her hands from her eyes. She watched as the man smiled and got out, saying how they were here! And now, they could go pick out Mama's present.

She didn't know when she had begun to cry, but she could feel tears on her face, and they came silently to her. She simply watched as the events played out helplessly in front of her.

The father and daughter entered into a jewelry store and picked out a lovely pair of diamond earrings.

"What do you think? A pair of jewels for the gem of my life?" The man joked.

"Can I see?" The little girl said. She looked on as the jewelry seller handed her the princess-cut diamond earrings and she cooed, "Wow!" The little girl had never seen anything so shiny or sparkly. Though they were colorless, they also contained all the colors of the rainbow, and if she turned her head, she could swear she saw purple, and green and blue and even a yellow sheen sparkle at her. She just couldn't wait to see her mother's face light up when she opened her present.

They paid for the earrings and walked out with a spiffy paper bag festooned with flamboyant tissue paper exploding out of the top. The pair did not notice, but Kagome did. The weather had taken a turn for the worse. The sky had darkened from light blue to pitch-black and grey clouds had rolled in overhead, while they'd been in the store. What had started as a gentle trickle evolved into a torrential flood as the rain came down in sheets.

The little girl said, "Hurry, we'll get soaked Daddy."

Bradan buckled his daughter back into the car, placed the festive present next to her on the seat and said, "Now don't forget, it's a secret." Again he brought his finger up to his lips and made a shushing sound.

"Shhhhh, it's a secret Daddy!" the little girl imitated him.

He walked around the car and got in again, turning over the engine.

Kagome wanted to run, she wanted to leave the car but found she could not. She was paralyzed with fear. She couldn't move. She didn't want to be here, but she also found she couldn't look away either.

They had only driven two blocks and were parked in front of a stoplight when Kagome looked to the left. She spotted the fancy grey car that would plow into them well ahead of the impact. The woman appeared to be flailing her arms madly around on the steering wheel, in mock imitation of a race-car driver in the Indie 500. She'd lost control of her car because of the rain and was fishtailing out of control.

Kagome looked back at the little girl. She would be forever changed this day. She'd watch as her father was killed right before her eyes. She'd watch as the last words she'd said to her father had been some silly secret that she couldn't tell her mother about the present. It hadn't been a heartfelt talk. She hadn't even been serious. She'd been joking with her father. But she would be far too young to understand the implications of this 'last talk with dad' for years to come. She was only seven years old.

Kagome looked at the man sitting next to her and at that moment, right before the impact, she studied his face. He looked kind, happy and absolutely clueless. Then the man turned around in his seat and waggled his eyebrows at his daughter. The girl laughed and then the world exploded in a hail of broken glass as the grey car slammed into them.

Kagome hadn't remembered that part. She'd known that if her father had been sitting in the driver's seat properly he would not have died. He had been wearing a seatbelt, but because he was twisted, when the car slammed into him, his neck was broken on impact. What she hadn't remembered was that he had been teasing her. He had turned to speak to her, and at the last moment, she'd killed him. It was her fault. She had been the ultimate cause of her father's death.

Somewhere in her rational mind Kagome knew it wasn't true. It hadn't been poor seven year old Kagome's fault at all. It had been the woman's fault for not buying new tires the previous week when the mechanic said she needed them. It'd been the fact that the woman wasn't paying attention and had been in the middle of texting when the car spun out. It had been the woman's fault for having one too many drinks at lunch and then getting behind the wheel. It had been their old beaten down white Toyota's fault – a car that was twenty years too old to be carrying around such precious cargo. It had been the weather's fault. It had been the stoplight's fault. It had been random chance that they happened to be the only car caught at that particular stoplight, at that exact moment when the woman had careened into them. There were a hundred and one other possible reasons that it wasn't her fault.

Yet, Kagome didn't think of any of those. She felt a pit in her stomach deepen and she couldn't help but think she had been the cause of her father's death. And once she started, she couldn't stop.

Kagome looked around – her seven-year-old self had hit her head and received a concussion. She'd need 10 stitches in her scalp where a large piece of glass had hit the back of her head. Her arm would also be in a sling because it had been broken during the crash, but otherwise she was fine.

Kagome pitied the girl. She'd complain about the scars after recovering from the trauma. They'd always remind her of this fateful day. Poor girl. She didn't know how many more scars would write out their somber tune into her body along the way.

Kagome forced herself to look at her father. He wasn't fine. He wasn't fine at all, he was dead.

He was sitting with his head thrown forwards as if in sleep, but he was straining on the seatbelt. It didn't look natural. There was blood pouring from his right ear, and nose, and his nose was also broken. Kagome bent down and looked at the man's face.

It'd been a closed casket ceremony and now she knew why. He had died with a smile on his lips.

Kagome buried her face in her hands and wept.

A/N: So there you have it, where Kagome has been since chapter three. Don't worry, it will all make sense next chapter.

Another note, this chapter was supposed to be just one, but it became almost 16 pages, far too long. So I cut it up in the easiest way possible for me to cut it. And I'm going to post them pretty close together so you won't have to wait on the edges of your seat. =)

Review and make me smile!

Kiyoko – is a Japanese female name for a pure child or one that mean's clarity. I thought this particularly relevant to Kagome's mother, a child of a shrine.

Bradan - PRONOUCE: "bray + dawn" DESCRIPTION: Comes from the word bradan meaning "a salmon" in Irish and the bradan feasa, the "Salmon of Knowledge" (read the legend) is central to the tales of Fionn MacCool (read the legend).

Sucellos – is the celtic god of love and time, though when depicted with his wife, is considered the god of prosperity and domesticity. I thought this was especially appropriate as her father marries a Japanese woman who gives birth to Kagome, a time traveler. ;P

Edit: 08.19.2016 - Fixed grammatical and spelling errors, small edits.