A Past Not Forgotten by PixieBreath

Chapter One

"Are you thinking about Inu-Yasha?" Souta asked, patting Kagome's hand.

"Huh?" she looked up from her bed and smiled at him, "That was the past, Souta. We're putting it behind us as we speak." Souta smiled, but it wasn't that easy. She was putting the past father away as she spoke, but not behind her. Just out of her mind, still in her heart.

"You don't miss them?" her brother asked.

"If I didn't miss them, then it wouldn't have been a selfless wish."

Kagome had said this every time he asked her if she missed her Feudal friends. He didn't know what she meant, but he could tell it made her sad to think about.

'I just need a piece of it. Anything to know I really existed back there. Anything to know it wasn't a dream.' Kagome thought back to her travels with Miroku and Sango, Shippou and Inu-Yasha. She knew she had made the correct wish. The one that was both selfless and consoling.

~*~*~*~

"The jewel is complete, young miko, and the wish is yours."

"No, no- the wish is for Inu-Yasha."

"Your body encased the jewel, your soul will purify it, your mind will make the wish."

Kagome had looked around, trying to find this voice that knew so much about her.

"I have all that I want, it's my firends that need this wish!"

"Kagome," the voice had said, "then make it for them."

~*~*~*~

And she had. The wish that would break her heart and make her lose everything she had gained. 'I wish Naraku had never existed..... and that they had never met me!' Kagome thought of the moment often. When she was standing in a place that didn't exist holding a jewel only she could control.

She said it to herself at night, 'I wish they had never met me.....' Over and over, until the words mean nothing. She wished they really did mean nothing.

'I just wish there was something, anything.... to let me know it was real.'

"What's wrong Kagome? You've been acting strange since semester started, what is it?"

"What do you mean?" Kagome smiled half-heartedly.

"You never talk to us anymore, Kagome. We're your friends!"

'But you're not them,' she thought as they continued walking and chattering about school. She remained silent, staring around her at the commonplace scenery and missing the ever-changing world she had lived in for so short a time.

'No one is left,' she thought.

She was violently pulled form her thoughts by a hand gripping her wrist. She looked up into angry amber eyes.

"Inu... Inu-Yasha?" she stammered. then she took in the aristocratic features and elegant form.

'Sesshomaru....'

~*~*~*~

"Inu... Inu-Yasha?"

'It IS the same miko, it HAS to be,' Sesshomaru told himself, looking at her closely.

"What are you doing here, wench!" he shouted, sniffing her to make sure she wasn't a demon.

'What foul tricks had she come here to play?'

~*~*~*~

Kagome looked at the last imperial remains of a world she had thought lost to her.

"Sesshomaru?" she asked, and before she could help herself she had slid her arms around his waist and held onto him as if he were the lifesaver.

~*~*~*~

He had not expected her to be glad to see him. He had not expected her to smile or cry or hug him, all with joy he could not understand.

"I thought I had lost you all! Where have you been?" she said excitedly, as if he were a long-lost friend she had been missing and waiting for. As if she had forgotten past occurences and attempts at her life.

Sesshomaru, noticing the awkward stares of her friends and how she held onto him made him feel at home, quiuckly pushed her away and walked off, gone before she could react.

However, he could still hear her voice from blocks away, "Sesshomaru, wait! Come back to me!"

He continued walking, though with more effort than before.

~*~*~*~

'Was it really him? Was it Sesshomaru?'

Kagome looked out into the darkness past her bedroom.

'Yes,' she answered herself, 'and he will be back for me.'

"Are you sure she goes to this school?" a charmed and flirty secretary asked Sesshomaru for the third time.

"Positive, she was walking home not three blocks from here."

"Do you know any of her classes?" she asked.

Sesshomaru, annoyed at having to be civil with such a dense woman, growled just a little.

How would he know any of her classes? What had she been in the Feudal ages? Did they have miko classes perchance? Or a class showing stupid girls how to get themselves into trouble, she could teach that one. Or an archery class....

"Do you offer any archery clubs?"

"Sure! Would you like to see the club photo?"

"Yes." He was shown a small picture of nine girls sitting in two rows, but his eyes were drawn to the one in back with a friendly smile and rather sad, large eyes.

'Kagome, Higurashi' it read.

"Kagome," he muttered, "that's her."

"Is that it?" the secretary smiled seductively.

"Yes, that will be all." He walked out of the building to wait for her in his car around the corner.

~*~*~*~

The assurance she had felt earlier had left her, Kagome was getting panicy. 'What if I never see him again?'

She saw him again.

He was sitting in a black car across the street, staring at her. She walked over to where he was parked, but didn't know where to go from there.

"Get in, Kagome,' he said in his royal, commanding voice.

'Where have you been? Why are you here? What have you been doing?' questions flooded Kagome's mind but nothing escaped her throat.