Kagome fought her way out of the terror before she rolled out of bed and emptied her stomach in the bin just within reach. She'd scarcely eaten dinner that night, so there wasn't much to heave up as wracking sobs rattled her thin frame. Vomit turned to bile in the space of a few choked breathes and tears burned tracks down her cheeks.

The dreams were always the same. Simple memories, happy memories—turned to ash and dust and bone faster than a star could fall, and so much more bloody upon impact. The first time it happened, Kagome had woken in screams clutching her pillow to her chest. It had taken being held by her own mother to remind her that it was not Shippou's body she was curled around, it was not blood clinging to her skin but sweat and sheets.

The dreams were always the same. Every time she woke up covered in the blood of a loved one, terror trapped in her throat like a burning stone she couldn't swallow or cough up—just wedged there, suffocating her, burning her, killing her.

She didn't know why the dreams had started when she'd returned from the past and not while she was there-not while there was danger every day, when every morning they greeted was a blessing to have survived the previous night. They had survived.

All of them had survived and yet she dreamed of their deaths every night.

When Kagome had the heaving under control, when the shaking stopped, and the tears, she pushed herself to her feet and grabbed a sweater and pulled on her shoes. Scrubbing the tears away with a sleeve, she tip-toed down the stairs—pausing every so often to let a creaky step rest—and through the kitchen to the back door.

Her bow and quiver of arrows was where she had left it that morning, hanging off a hook by the door. She grabbed them then strode into the woods behind the temple. The further she walked, the darker it got and the less traffic she could hear—and there was less pollution to clog her nose. She glanced up at the sky as she walked and noted the new moon. Maybe that was why it had been Inuyasha she'd been crying on top of in the dream tonight.

Step-by-step her shoulders dropped into a slouch, her grip on the bow loosened, her gait smoothed out. Peace was a visible shawl across her posture as she soaked in the quiet of the forest. It was not the same as 500 years ago, but it was better than nothing.

When she came to her spot, she sank down next to the fire ring and set to stoking it. The habit of building the fire eased out the last of the nightmare and settled into her bones like a warm blanket after a cold day. Night passed slowly as the fire flickered and cracked in front of her, but Kagome barely noticed as she pulled her knees up to her chest and stared into the flames. At least like this, awake in the dark next to a dancing fire, her memories were not filled with blood.

o.o.o

When she woke in the morning it was to find a blanket draped over her and her cheek pressed into the dirt, the taste of smoke on her tongue and in her nose.

Mama must have brought the blanket. Again.

Guilt soured the peace of this small hollow in the woods. Her mother never complained, but Kagome knew she was probably worried out of her mind. Standing up, she folded the blanket and made her way back to the house—bow and quiver thrown over her shoulder.

At the kitchen door when she paused to hang up her weapon, she heard her brother's voice.

"Is sis gonna be okay? She keeps waking up screaming and sleeping outside. I thought she said everyone was alright when she got back?"

There was silence long enough over the crackle of frying meats that Kagome thought maybe her mother wouldn't answer but then-

"I don't know, Sōta. She's going through something. We just have to be patient and she'll talk to us about it when she's ready." Another pause and then—"Thank you for taking her a blanket again. I never hear her when she goes out."

Sōta grunted and that was that.

Kagome stood shame-faced outside the kitchen door and stared down at her feet, the blanket clutched to her chest. Her fingers dug into the fabric but it was too soft to offer any relief, no friction for her nails to worry apart.

Taking a deep breath, she pasted on a bright smile and stepped into the kitchen. Kagome was fully prepared to put it all aside and pretend nothing was wrong for as long as it took to ease her families worries.

o.o.o

The day she finally broke it was warm enough outside to go without a jacket or sweater. Kagome dragged her broom across the warm stones, her swings absent as her mind wandered and she sent leaves flying every which way. The shrine was crowded today but Kagome paid the visitors no mind as she went about her chores—or at least went through the motions of going about her chores.

She was perfectly content to ignore the visitors as she swept, and when pressed to offer up vague, empty smiles and directions where asked.

It was only the sound of a steady thumping that drew her out of her memories and into the present.

Glancing around, she paused at the sight of the children gathered around the god tree. There wasn't anything out of the norm about that—the tree was ancient and the children sometimes liked to try and climb it.

That was not the case today.

Her attention zeroed in on a kid in dark blue jeans and a teal t-shirt, a black cap on his head. He was jumping up and down to reach something an older kid was holding over his head. Never content to ignore when someone was being bullied, she took a step closer. "Hey, kid!" she called, frowning. "What are you doing?"

All the kids paused and looked at her, though one of them stopped to knock the smaller kids hat off—revealing a burst of bright orange hair and green eyes. If that wasn't enough, the thing the older kid was holding was the Shikon.

For just a moment, she was back in the feudal era retrieving jewel shards and fighting Naraku. Purity burst out of her, a tidal wave of pink power that washed out and around, encompassing the entirety of the shrine and the mountain it sat on and spreading out over the sprawling streets of Tokyo.

Of course, as humans they were unaffected. Her powers washed over them like so much air, a warm breeze to stir the sweat at the napes of their necks. The only ones moved by her display and loss of control was her family—they all stared at her from their places around the shrine.

Of course it wasn't the Shikon. Not the real one, at any rate. Grandpa sold fake ones as charms, and that's all this one was. The orange-haired boy was not Shippō. The jewel was not the jewel. This was not the feudal era. Everyone was safe.

And that was the kicker, wasn't it?

They had been safe when she'd left them. Maybe injured, maybe still a little sore from that last battle with Naraku, but safe. Alive. But for how long? The feudal era was called the warring era, wasn't it? How long before one of them fell to a demon or a bandit, or to something as simple as time.

Before she knew it, tears were etching lines down her cheeks. Scowling, she strode forward towards the bully and snatched the fake jewel from his hand. "Bullies aren't welcome here. Get out!" She shoved the jewel into the younger boys hand then and strode away, broom still clutched in a white-knuckled grip.

o.o.o

Her family found her, much later, sitting in front of the empty fire ring. The broom lay in pieces around the small campsite. The last of the days golden rays shown through the gaps amidst the trees. If not for the modern clothes her family wore, they might have been in the feudal era for all the quiet that surrounded them.

"I'm sorry about the broom," she whispered, unable to meet her mother's eyes.

"That one was good for giving splinters, anyway," Nodoka said, and sank down next to her daughter. "Sōta, why don't you gather up the pieces and we'll get a fire started. I think tonight is a fine night to welcome spring in with some hotdogs and marshmallows over the fire."

"Right you are, daughter mine. I'll shuffle over to the kitchen and grab what we need. I expect we can even have a few ghost stories tonight to give us the chills." He chuckled and winked, the weathered lines of his face contorting and sagging with his laughter.

While Sōta was busy with the fire and her father busy with the food, Nodoka turned again to Kagome. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Kagome bit her lip and buried her face against her knees. "I thought the little boy was Shippō. For just a minute, I was back home again and with them and everything was okay."

Nodoka didn't miss the way she called the feudal era home. "Did you know, after your father died, I would see him almost every day in the faces of strangers?" She smiled and leaned back on her palms; eyes closed, she didn't see the way both of her children stared at her. "Every day it was punch to the gut. Going to the store, you holding my hand and Sōta wrapped against my stomach—eating ice cream at the park while you two played in the sand box—waiting in the doctors office for our name to be called because one of you was sick."

She sighed and sat up again, and noting her children's gaze now, frowned. "Maybe this is partially my fault. I tried so hard when you were both little to hide my grief and make reasons to be happy. I never wanted my sorrow to be the thing you remembered about that time. Maybe I forgot to tell you that it's perfectly human to grieve." Nodoka watched as Sōta ducked his head as his eyes watered, but let him have that moment so she could focus on Kagome—and made a silent promise to have some time with him tomorrow.

"When you made the decision to make the wish on this side of the well in case it closed after the jewel was gone, I was so busy celebrating your return that I didn't stop to think about what you lost, what you were leaving behind." Nodoka sighed and looked down at her palms as the fire sparked to life under Sōta's capable hands. "Kagome, you lost an entire family. A sister. Brothers. Friends and their families. Your son."

Kagome whimpered and wrapped her arms all the tighter around her knees. Tears scalded her thighs as she shook. Her fingers dug into her calves, the bite of her nails leaving half-moon marks on her pale, scarred skin.

"You lost a family, Kagome. No one expected you not to mourn. No one expected you to go back to normal as if nothing had happened, as if you hadn't spent the past five years in another time thanks to a magical well." Nodoka set a hand on her daughter's head and ran her palm over Kagome's soft black locks. "I'm sorry if we made you feel like you had to pretend to be happy to be home."

Sōta sat back on his heels and watched as his mother let Kagome sob. He'd never seen his sister cry so often as he had since she'd come home six months ago. It tore at him something fierce, an itch he couldn't soothe. "It's okay to regret coming back," he mumbled, poking at the fire with a stick as he avoided meeting either woman's eyes—not that it was difficult in his sisters case. "I think it takes regret sometimes to make us realize how much we wanted something, or loved something."

The wisdom in her little brother's word startled a chuckle out of Kagome, but she still did not lift her face. Not yet. "Sometimes I feel so much shame for wanting to go back. For missing them so much when it was my choice to leave them behind."

Only when his voice grumbled around the clearing did they realize Katamasa had returned. "There's no shame in loving someone," her grandfather said as he passed the food to Sōta and eased himself to the ground beside the fire. Old and thin-skinned enough to feel the chill in the late spring air, he rubbed his hands together near the flames.

Nodoka smiled at her father. "Exactly. You were torn between two times, two families which you feel great love for. You had to make an impossible choice, Kagome."

For a long time after that, no one said anything. The sun sank down behind the trees and the mountain, leaving the Higurashi's in the smolder, crackling warmth of a merry fire, tasty food, and good company.

Kagome, for her part, was lost in thought. She wondered if her dreams of her friends, her family's, deaths was because she had made the choice to leave them behind. If that was the case, she would likely never be free of the guilt entirely. What a daunting thought. But their deaths weren't the only thing she dreamed, were they? There were battles and near deaths and assaults that had left her trembling for weeks after.

"It's easier here, in the woods, isn't it?" The question came from Sōta, who had melted, dried marshmallow stuck to his cheek. "Being in the woods like this reminds you of them. And you feel safe here."

The miko hesitated but nodded. "It's not that I feel unsafe in the house," she told her mother, forcing herself to meet her mother's eyes. "It's just…for five years I was there more than I was here….and sometimes the bed is too soft and the food is too filling and the noise is too loud. It's like I don't fit in the future anymore."

Nodoka nodded, understanding clear in the soft lines of her smile and the warmth of her eyes. "Then we'll get a good sleeping bag for you, and build a small lean-to in case it rains. And we can make plainer dishes until you feel like you can handle more modern ones again. And if you can't, then that's okay too. We'll find ways to help you make this feel more like home again."

Tears welled again, but Kagome scrubbed them away. "Can I tell you guys about them? I know I told you some things, but not everything. Not the things that made them…them."

"I think we'd all like that." Her mother smiled again and held out an arm.

This time, Kagome didn't hesitate to curl up beside her.

o.o.o

Working through her grief did not resolve itself suddenly one morning. She did not wake up and not miss anyone. Nightmares still plagued her, but it was less her friends dying now and more the trauma of the things she'd experienced.

Though she told her family about her adventures, there were some things she couldn't bring herself to voice aloud—like when she'd almost been raped and forcibly married by one of the Band of Seven, or when her soul had been cleaved in two by Kikyou's resurrection. For these things, she took the memories out, turned them over in her hands to examine them and the feelings they brought, and put them back away.

What she really needed, more than anything, was someone from the past to talk to. Someone who would understand the dangers they'd faced.

But there was not a single youkai in her time.

This was a fact that, though she'd known before she'd made the wish and lost her access to the past, still burned deep. Even her outburst of purity a few weeks ago had not revealed anything even remotely demonic.

There was a part of her that had hoped Inuyasha and the others might have managed to solve this problem, to find a way to save youkai so they existed in her time.

It was another drop in the overflowing pail of her sorrow.

In efforts not to dwell, Kagome turned her attention to her schoolwork. At eighteen, she couldn't go back to high school, but she could self-study and sit for exams with a proctor. None of the top universities would be inclined to touch her, but that didn't matter. Getting her diploma was something she wanted to do more for her mother than for herself, anyway.

And, it turned out, studying proved an adequate distraction from the ghosts that haunted her. When she handed her mother her high school diploma, both women cried.

Re-connecting with her friends from the modern era proved more difficult than reconnecting with her family had been. Kagome found it challenging to empathize about shopping mishaps or spats with boyfriends and they all stopped reaching out. Kagome told herself it was rare to keep in touch with high school friends anyway and didn't think on it much—though there was a part of her that wondered if she should have tried harder.

o.o.o

On the two year anniversary of her return from the feudal era, Kagome tentatively turned her attention to education again. Her grades during her travels were in tatters, but her scores and diploma from after proved she had gotten back on track.

Funding was her only concern, so she filled out applications for what work she could and spent another year saving every penny she could as she studied for exams and visited schools. It was at her mother's prodding that Kagome turned her attention to Universities far from home.

Nodoka's reasoning was that Kagome had already proved herself capable of surviving far from her family—and being far from the polluted cloud that presided over Tokyo on a semi-daily basis would be good to help get some color back in her cheeks.

This is how she found herself standing at the gates of a university near Wakkanai, a duffle over her shoulder and a single rolling case in hand. "What was I thinking?" she mumbled, staring at the students milling about the quad or lounging in the grass under trees.

The campus was beautiful and old. The quad had only a handful of trees, but she thought that might have more to do with the number of students throwing balls or kites or food through the air than it did a lack of landscaping. Besides, all sides of the campus, that she could see, were surrounded by forest.

Kagome sighed before turning away from the campus and walking down the street to the taxi-stand down the street. She hadn't been able to convince herself to sign up for a dorm, not when she still woke up with the occasional night terror. And besides, the cottage she'd picked opened up to the woods in the back—though that didn't seem to be a feat as hard as it had sounded when she'd been looking online from the smog-filled Tokyo.

Tugging her phone (a gift from her mother so she'd stay in touch) out of her back pocket, she pulled up the ride share app and ordered a didi. The flight had been long and she still had to come back and sign up for orientation, but she wanted to drop off her luggage first.

When the did pulled up, she hefted her luggage into the trunk and was about to close it when someone jostled her as they hurried past and dived into a waiting car that started off.

A hurried apology was all she heard before they ran past. Kagome shrugged, too used to the fast pace of her home town to be worried about a little casual rudeness. She climbed into her cab and didn't think about it again.

But he did. He ordered his cab to a half, the tires screeching against asphalt it was so sudden. Climbing out of the car, he tilted his nose into the air and scented—and there it was. But what was she doing here? Was it his imagination? He hadn't gotten a good look at the female loading her luggage, he'd been in too much of a hurry. Was he imagining things?

He sniffed his shoulder where he'd bumped into her and found that though the scents were similar, they were not the same.

Maybe it really had been his imagination.