Sorry that it's kinda long. I do NOT own Shota, and I improvised a look for her. I DO own Trish and... quiet a few OCs actually... there's another plan coming up :) hehe. I love reading other fanfictions so Kudos to you all! Though you won't know that I'm talking to you unless you actually read this...! 3

"Let's reminisce, shall we?"

Images flooded in a blur all around Lydia, a blindingly bright moving screen of colors and eerie echoing voices.

"Lydia! Come home for dinner!"

"Comin momma!" a little round faced girl with dark brown hair stumbled over to a kind, drawn looking woman in a dark green dress. Lydia stared at the woman. Her eyes glazed over with fresh salt water, she blinked at the haunting and familiar face. The woman's hair was also dark brown, and pulled in a messy but attractive bun. Her skin glowed, she was a slim lady. Her mouth quivered into a small half smile that soon trembled back into an upset frown.

The woman placed her at a dinner table and a man walked in. He pecked the woman on the lips before reaching around the chair and tickling the little girl who laughed and giggle loudly, squirming away from the wiggly fingers of the tickle monster.

"Why are you doing this," Lydia's whisper cracked and very small begged. The picture changed and the same girl grew taller and looked about three years older, seven, to be exact.

It was a beautifully sunny day, the blue sky lifting the spirits of the group gathered around the long black box. A woman in gray stood to the left of the box, the girl beside her. The woman's face was tear streaked, her dark hair was pulled into a tight bun, and her left hand held a handkerchief over her working mouth. Her large blue eyes longed for the blonde haired man with the soft green eyes. The eyes inherited by the daughter holding her other hand.

The small girl's eyes spilled water down her small face. Her soft green eyes cast down at the whole where her father was to be kept for the rest of eternity. She clutched her mother's hand, vowing never to let go of the only parent and relative she had left. The woman crouched down suddenly by the daughter. She cupped the girl's face in her hands and smiled at her.

She touched their foreheads together and told her, "Life is a wonderful thing, Lydia. Don't ever question its worth. It's alright to be sad, angry, and happy. Smile always, even at a time when you loose some one you love."

"I'll try," the girl cried. The woman hugged her close for a moment. While she went over to touch the box as it lowered, Lydia turned away. A hand touched her shoulder.

She looked up to her friend with a small white dress and brown ringlets. The girl smiled at her sadly, her own green eyes shined wetly. The young Lydia buried her face into her best friend's shoulder and the two slowly walked away from the descending box.

A figure hid in the shadows, watching the people leaving the funeral and the child sniffling into the shoulder of the Confessor. He smiled at the two. The soft green eyes looked to where the shadow was, suddenly insecure and stopped moving.

"As you can see, your memories are quite vivid and stronger than you can recall on your own."

The pink portal that had been striking curiosity and worry in the town's people for the past week and a half spit up eleven dark clothed killers. The people ran and screamed. Lydia looked around for her mother. Her friend tugged on her hand, trying to escape. One of the town mothers picked up her friend and ran off with her. Lydia reached out for her screaming friend. The dark green eyes widened and she tried to break the person's grasp so she could go help Lydia.

Lydia's mother screamed from where one of the mysterious figures hit her down into the open whole with the coffin. "Mother!" Lydia shrieked and broke off running. She sped past the people who were swarming this way and that, the sun beating down on her back, burning her skin through the black cloth. Heat and everything else seemed much harder when panic settled in. Lydia rushed to the tall, dark mass and shoved it out of the way.

"Mom!" she reached down for her mother's hand when a glove covered her mouth and yanked her off the ground.

She screamed into the hand, and kicked the person. The one who she'd pushed aside walked up and kicked her legs still. Her capture held her arms behind her back and dragged her through the portal away from her home, mother, and life.

"No!" Lydia sobbed. She plopped down on the ground near the rock that had suddenly appeared. She leaned against it and cried.

"Would you like to see how your father died?"

"You wouldn't!" Lydia looked up at her black sky with anger and terror.

"Who the hell are you?" Hiei held the woman against a tree, the cold metal of the sword only an inch from her neck. She looked frightened. Her wide eyes reflected panic and quick thinking. He pressed the sword up against her neck. She swallowed hard.

"Trish."

"Hn." He looked around. "What's in that cave?" he nodded curtly to the opening in the rock.

"Nothing."

'Don't believe her.' His cold stare deepened, glaring at the girl.

'Who are you?' he demanded from the new, unfamiliar telepathic strand.

'That's not important. Go.'

'Get out of my head.' He pushed Trish to the hollowed out structure.

She looked back, uncertainly, thinking to run away. His red eyes never left her cautious, guarded gray ones as the katana pressed into her back. She winced and turned back around to lead the way.

Lydia turned her head away from the horrific scene. She heard the last blade swipe and wet blood spatter. She could smell the stench. Her salt crusted eyes leaked again and the crust was washed away. She breathed heavily through her mouth, head pounding.

"I never saw this."

"But you knew."

"They wanted me."

"They wanted to see if you would be able to handle it. Younger bodies are stronger."

"So they practiced on my dad?"

"Unfortunately for him."

"Don't show me anything else," she cried softly, throat aching. She closed her eyes and rested her head against her arm on top of the rock.

"You're mother," Shota continued the movie. The sky shifted in a nauseous blur to show the night sky with a waxing gibbous moon directing the clouds.

"Why are ya doin this to tha gel?"

"She needs to know."

"She does know. That's why she's remembering!"

"She needs to understand" Shota sighed, choosing a better word and glancing over to the immobilized Spirit Detective.

"These are her memories, why are we watching with her?"

"Because we need to know to, right?" Shota considered Genkai for a moment.

"Not really, however, it helps a lot if you do know."

"These are her memories. They are her choice to share, why exploit her so cruelly?"

"Kurama, dear, don't you want to help your friend?"

"Of course we wanna help her!" Shota ignored the tall, orange haired teenager. "Don't you wish she wasn't so guarded, so you could help her?"

"Don't you think it's appropriate to be guarded?"

"Under circumstances and to an extent, always, I agree with you there. That is why you are guarded."

"We help her at her own pace. We wait for her to open up. We love her for who she is. You are causing great pain," Touya told the witch.

"I'm aware of that," she informed him with a grave smile.

"Oh, stop acting like you care! You're a witch, you don't care if you hurt us with this freak show or how badly your hurting Lydia!"

"Kuwabara," she warned. A large snake slithered up his shirt and wrapped around his neck, squeezing him enough to where he couldn't speak. "Don't defy me."

"Kuwabara, just calm down. We'll get out of this eventually."

"Dead or alyve?" Kurama grimaced at Jin's words and did a mental shrug.

Shota comfortingly patted Lydia's shoulder where her body sat catatonic on the stump. Her eyes were open, but white and unseeing. Danika's body lay beside them a few feet away.

The young Confessor had screamed until she fell deeply unconscious. Shota knew a price would come for that one. As a gift, she allowed Danika to lie there on the ground undisturbed.

Lydia had no idea the others could hear her, much less see her memories she'd worked so hard to hide from them.

She wished she could hear them.

She felt more alone than she'd ever been. More alone than at her father's funeral, than when she was kidnapped and locked away with only her torturers only interested in hearing her scream, than when she returned home to find she had nothing left.

She felt more alone as she was forced to finally witness her own memories, than when she'd been forced to kill her mother. That replay had been excruciatingly difficult to sit through. She made herself watch it though.

Shota watched from outside Lydia's head, hurting nearly as much as her reluctant prisoner.

A couple extra images passed by from Lydia's school. The teenagers ignored her, made fun of her… Lydia just watched, tears still falling but making no sound or movement. Both women felt the abandon and dead hope while Lydia wasted away living on her own in London, England. Shota saw fit to toss in one good memory. Lydia and Touya's first meeting.

A younger Demetrie had introduced the two and trained them in basic fighting skills. Touya's round face showed his delight in meeting a new friend. Lydia's face had shown curiosity and excitement. This was when the two were five years old and Lydia had been taken to the Makai on a special occasion. The two hung out for many days while the grown ups took care of business. The two were inseparable, like Lydia and Danika had been. That was why she pushed Touya and the others away.

She smiled, remembering him holding her in the forest before Hiei had interrupted them. Apparently she hadn't tried hard enough presently.

"Any one I'm close to leaves," her voice held no emotion.

"Not being close to some one will tear you apart."

"I'm aware."

"This is the only memory I have not shown them."

Lydia turned slightly to the side. She thought for a moment.

"Wait… shown them? This, is the only memory, you haven't shown them?" she raised her voice, despite the pain it caused her dry throat. "What have you done?" she demanded in a dangerous tone.

Shota was not taken aback, in her present state, Lydia could not physically hurt her.

"I've only shown them what you have failed to. They needed to see it nearly as much as you do, I promise. I would not have committed such a trespass against you had it not been necessary."

"Is that so?" Lydia spat.

"I think it's so." Lydia froze.

Above her head, a red sky swirled and purple grass cushioned her feet. Her mother walked up to her.

"W- what are you doing here?" Lydia whispered. Her mother touched her cheek.

"I've been in your subconscious for a while now."

"Shota!" Lydia called.

"Shota's not here right now. She's left you to us." Lydia stared in horror past her ghostly mother. Shigure walked up to her. He reached out to caress her face. She jumped out of the way and fell to the ground.

"My pet," he cooed.

"Get away from me you're dead!"

"Yes, thanks for that," he grinned sadistically. "You know, Takashi and the Princes are still looking for you," he spoke to her like she was still a child. She gulped and laid there on the ground for a moment. She wondered if the others could hear the conversation going on.

"Yes, honey," her mother answered for her. Lydia nodded, biting her lower lip. This might be a good thing.

This way they could find out without her having to face them herself. It was cowardly, but the only way she could stand it.

"He promised I'd be safe."

"He promised that you'd be able to keep yourself save, that no one would be able to stand a chance against you," Shigure reminded her. He began smoothing down her hair.

"Was I a failed experiment?" she was going to get all she could out of her head before she ever spoke to any one about her nature.

Shigure sighed and sat back on the ground against the rock, "Yes."

"It's only because of your blood dear."

"My blood," Lydia frowned at her mother's response. If she was going to let her subconscious talk to the boys and company, she needed to understand it.

"Yes, you know you have a wizard's blood line."

"Yes," Lydia agreed. That was why Demetrie trained her in the basics with Touya, because Touya had a kind of magic of his own to contrast.

"That is why Demetrie took charge of you after…" her mother trailed off on the unimportance of restating the obvious.

"There is something in you we don't understand though," Shigure pondered, his hand rubbing his chin in professor way… a sick, disgusting professor. Her mother stroked her arm. Lydia refused to move.

In truth, both figures scared her. Shigure had done damage to her soul and body in those dark rooms on the table or in the bed. It disturbed her to have the woman she loved and killed beside her smiling.

"Your body has a designed resistance against any force," her mother kissed her forehead after saying this.

"This peculiar resistance is what made you unstable," Shigure thought.

"No," Lydia contradicted, sneering, "making me a fire demon and a confessor made me unstable."

"Wrong," Shigure sat up on his knees. Lydia looked at him, startled. Kurama had said making someone a fire demon was a hard, agonizing task. She knew he had been right, she suffered through it.

"You're not a complete fire demon. Stability is debatable on that note, because an artificial fire demon is said to be unstable but we could not make you a fire demon." Lydia tried hard to literally wrap her head around this new information and suggestion.

"And I'm not a full Confessor either," she put together quickly. They nodded to her. She looked wearily up to Shigure, unwilling to ask, "How did I get the Confessor's dreadful power?"

"Ah, that," Shigure obviously didn't want to discuss this one, "Well… okay here's the thing. You knew Takashi wanted to make a fire demon and confessor weapon." She nodded impatiently. "He also fed you a Confessor's blood."

"… WHAT?!" Lydia shouted, bolting upright for a moment. "Who?"

"I'm not sure we can answer that dear."

Of course not, because she herself didn't know.

"It hurt you horribly though."

"The whole damn thing hurt me you ass," she retorted.

"I mean, you remember all those needles and pins, right? Every time you were dragged and strapped down in my workshop you eyed them with the terror that I would use them on you."

"You kinda did," she snorted ruefully.

"I only teased your flesh with them," he eyed her shoulders that the sleeveless white dress exposed. She had small scars over the skin there. "Did you ever think who they were for?" Lydia shuttered at the horror.

She then knew exactly what had happened to that Confessor.

"Takashi offered his blood to use to your creation because he is a fire demon …"

"You have a wizard's blood line…"

"You're not a complete fire demon…"

"Your body has a resistance that can stop evil or any forces…"

"Not complete…" Lydia listened to the two stating facts one after the other. She held a hand out for them to stop, then sat up on her elbows.

"I have powers that a wizard would possess from my blood, but not many any more due to my formulation. That makes me kinda like Jin, and Touya. They have limited powers too.

I have fire demon blood which is why I can become unreasonably blind as to what I'm doing when enraged and gives me the speed I've gained and muscle endurance. And because the fire demon blood and virus did not completely knock out my wizard genes, I'm not a complete fire demon.

It's because of a resistance living in my body, that is undetectable, that is why I could not become a Fire Demon.

You stripped a Confessor of her powers… a direct strip to where she's probably dead, and that blood is now circulating in my system making my life more like Hell.

Thus, having an incomplete transformation of four different types of energy, the third being unknown… I'm unstable and can not always control myself as I please or need…" Lydia slowly figured out. She stared, incredulously in front of her, past Shigure and her mother. The realization of all of this hit her. A satisfied feeling of finally understanding swept over her body.

Her mother smiled broadly at her, Shigure nodded in self satisfaction. The two disappeared like a mirage. The red sky above her dulled and the purple grass faded away.

She blinked, and saw the sunlight shining down on the green forest, green, green, grass, and the sparkling blue river that bubbled happily in the valley. She blinked up at the dark clouds that were slowly drifting over the valley from the far right. She looked up at Shota who stared down at her expectantly, her arms folded.

"The sky is upset… it's churning with grief," her paled green eyes looked into Shota's almond shaped brown eyes.

"Only since you returned."

Lydia looked down at her hands and away from the criticizing glare.

Did that clear things up?