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Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any characters belonging to Rumiko. I do however own parts of this storyline and any original characters appearing in the story.

Hearts Condemn Us

Chapter II.

'Home sweet home, there's nothing better than one's own bed.' Manami thought as she let herself fall down on her bed for the first time in two years. 'Nothing has changed, it even smells the same.'

She closed her eyes and let her ears take in all the sounds around her. Somewhere in the house she could hear pots and pans moving, telling her that aunt Naomi was preparing dinner. A sound towards the left part of the house spoke to her about games, buttons and a happy Souta. Manami snuggled into her cushion and sighed happily. This is what she had missed the most, the knowledge that she was never alone. That those dear to her were near, being alone yet together. Again focusing on her hearing, she tried to locate Kagome but came up with nothing.

'She's most likely studying again.' She mused. 'Such a good and clever girl.'

Though Manami liked studying, she wasn't as overly obsessed as her cousin appeared to be. But perhaps that had something to do with different priorities. To Kagome, school was one of the most if not the most important things in her life right now. Manami had already finished, graduated and was at the point where she could start looking for a job if she didn't want to continue studying. Even in the past, school had never been the most important thing to Mana. But she guessed that's why she liked Kagome so much, being so dedicated to something in such a strong way was something she herself wasn't the best at. Manami preferred to try lots of different things, and of course did her best to get good at the things she did, but never did she try really hard on just one thing. It seemed that Souta took more after her than his own sister, liking school but liking a lot of different things, like games and soccer, better.

'I wonder if he still wants to become a professional soccer player, if he's got the skills he might make it.' Manami sighed. 'Let's ask Kagome on what she wants to become later, perhaps she still wants to be a princess like in the past.'

Manami giggled to herself, remembering the days when she played together with her younger cousins. She always played the mean and dangerous dragon, Souta was the knight, and Kagome the princess. And every time she was slain, not by the knight but by the princess. And instead of the knight and princess sharing a loving embrace, she always got a kiss from the princess while she feigned death. Another giggle escaped her lips at the fond memories before she slipped away into a light slumber.

Some kind of light hit her face, and she pulled up her hands in order to shield her eyes from the bright lights. From far away, sounds of something akin to a breath reached her ears. Slowly opening her eyes from behind the shelter of her hands, she found herself lying on a green field underneath a blue sky. Has daylight always been this bright? No answer came. It was then that she realised that she wasn't alone. To the side of her was a young girl. Who is she? Her hair was as black as the oncoming night and skin almost as pale as snow. Her eyes were closed, but her lips slightly parted as she breathed in and out at a slow pace. Do I know her? Does she know me? Her questions echoed inside her head without an answer. For some reason, she knew that behind those closed eyes lay the colour brown. But how?

The grass underneath her fingers was soft, but somehow felt unreal. She glanced around and saw nothing but that green grass reaching the horizon. Where am I? Everything about this place was as unfamiliar as it was familiar to her. It felt as if this field was filled to the brim with memories, things she couldn't remember. The same was with the girl next to her. Somewhere in the depths and cracks of her mind was a memory linked to this girl besides her, but she couldn't reach it. She knew that she knew this girl, and that this girl knew her. But from where? Where is the flower mark?

Sounds drifted across the fields, and in that instance her attention was drawn elsewhere. Voices? Yes, voices speaking in strange tongues flittered closer and closer. But there was no one there. The fields were empty aside from her and the girl. Yet closer they came, speaking of things unnatural to her, with words she didn't understand. And it was then that it hit her. She knew what they said, she knew this girl next to her and she knew this place. Why did I forget? Bright light surrounded her before it shifted to complete darkness. Looking over to her left she saw the girl move, eyelids fluttered before opening. Something ran down her cheeks as she watched the girl open her eyes. They were brown. The scenery around them shifted. Am I crying? The voices grew louder and louder as the darkness closed in. Something slithered across the edges and fear took hold of her being. Don't come any closer! Her scream went unheard as something took hold of her legs and pulled her into the darkness. And then there was nothing.

Not yet, it's not yet time.

With a start, Manami sat up in bed. Her heart beating fast and her breathing going even faster.

'Did I have a nightmare?' She asked herself, but realised that that wasn't the case. 'No, it was no nightmare, but then why am I afraid?'

Manami was hardly ever scared, there was the occasional fright and panic, but nothing like this. It felt as if she had just ran a marathon, running from something she rather not have close to her.

'If I could only remember what that dream was about.' Manami mused. 'It's all a blur, aside from those eyes, they were brown.'

Even though those eyes hadn't been scary, there had been something in her dreams that had most definitly been scary. Manami couldn't remember ever having a dream like this one before. She usually remembered things like this. Moving about the bed, pain shot up her right leg. Manami looked over and pulled up the bottom of her legging. What she saw shocked her.

'A handprint?!'

"Manami-nee, dinner's readyy!" Souta's voice came from downstairs.

Whipping her head around, she only calmed at the realisation that the voice belonged to Souta.

"Coming!" She shouted back, hand over her ankle.

Downstairs the family gathered for dinner. And though Manami was ecstatic at the thought of eating together with them, her unusual dream had left her distracted even more so than the pain in her ankle. Which was pretty disturbing too, but somehow she found herself accepting the strange bruises and pain over the dream she couldn't completely remember.

"Manami?" Naomi's voice carried to her ears.

"..."

"Manami, are you okay?" Naomi asked again.

"Ah, yes. Just a bit tired is all." Manami responded, a faint smile on her face followed by a tiny yawn.

Her aunt smiled, and dinner went by in a flash. The food tasted wonderful, and she had missed her aunt's cooking. She herself wasn't a bad cook by any means, but there was something melancholy and warm about her aunts food. Smiles and jokes flew across the table, Manami laughed and joked along with them, but in the back of her head those brown eyes looked at her and the pain in her ankle stung badly. And then it was gone, dinner was over and the dishes were drying in the rack. Everybody had gone their own way again, Souta was up in his room playing, Kagome was chatting on the phone with a friend, Guv was watching the news and Naomi was reading some magazine next to him on the couch. Instead of unpacking, Manami readied herself a bath. She was in dire need of some calm and undisturbed time to think, and a bath would help her with that.

Bubbles reached the rim of the tub and Mana eased back in the scalding water. She liked her water hot, nearly painfully so. Often she felt dirty, touched by something, and after a bath as hot as this she felt completely clean. The feeling never left, but it was the idea that counted. And it helped her think, for some reason. Lifting her legs out of the water she stared at the bruises on her right ankle.

'It looks too much like a handprint to not be one. But then who had pulled her ankle so hard to bruise it?' Manami thought to herself, noting that the size of the hand was rather big. 'It can't belong to a child or woman, the print is too small for that.'

But her first assumption had been correct. Manami could easily discern four out of five fingers, and part of a hand palm. Then there was the dream, she remembered nothing but the brown eyes. There was nothing but that, no matter how hard she tried to remember she just couldn't.

'Aargh, this is so irritating!' She inwardly screamed at herself, giving herself a imaginative slap on the head. 'This is not getting me anywhere, just let it go and perhaps things will clear up tomorrow.'

Manami stepped out of the bath, grabbed a towel and started drying her body, taking care not to put too much weight on her right leg. The mirror fogged over, and with a simple swipe of her hand she saw herself. Only it wasn't her own face she saw reflected. Brown eyes looked back at her, instead of her unusual one green and one silver coloured ones. Her hair, which should've been a mahogany red was now definitely black. With a gasp, Manami inched closer to the mirror.

'Is that? No, that can't be..?'

What looked back at Mana was none other than the girl she had seen in her dreams. Now that she saw the full picture she remembered.

'She was right next to me, laying in the grass.'

But there it stopped. She still couldn't remember anything other than the girl she was looking at. And it was then that the similarities between her face and the one in the mirror struck her. They looked too much alike for them not to be related to one another in some way. Manami blinked, and the girl was gone. Back were her weird eyes and lighter than black hair. Mana shook her head, not knowing what was real and what was not.

'What's going on? First some weird dream, then a hand shaped bruise on my ankle and now a girl appearing in the mirror, if that's what really happened.' Mana all but whispered in her head, almost as if someone else could hear her thoughts.

The episode in the bathroom had shaken her up considerably, and even now when she sat down on her bed trying to dry her hair she was still having a hard time keeping her hands steady. It wasn't like her to be this shaken, but she had been back for just a couple of hours and weird things started happening. It was like this in the past, when she had lived here at the Higurashi shrine after she lost her parents. Auntie was kind enough to take her in, but as soon as she came here things like that happened. But they also stopped as soon as she left for London. Not one weird or scary dream, no weird vision in a mirror, no nothing.

'Seems like my previous assumption of those dreams being nothing more than a child's over-active imagination is dead wrong. So now what?' Musing to herself, Manami came up with no answer. 'Hmm, let's just read Alice in Wonderland again, it's never failed in calming me down.'

Manami picked up the book from her night stand. It had always been one of her favourite stories as a child, and even now she could dream away and find herself at tea parties with strange characters singing weird songs and poems. Hours passed before she slipped away into a deep slumber, this time without any weird dreams about endless grass and darkness. Instead of that was a starry sky, the feeling of flying and something tickling her cheeks.