Notes: This is more a prelude and shorter than future chapters will be if people are interested in it. This is set during the first season before any issues have come up yet. I'll decide as I go what I will and won't use as far as canon goes.

Full Summary: Kagome loses her memory after unwillingly betraying her friends in the final battle with Naraku and is sent to attend Cross Academy where new adventures, romances, and possibly broken hearts await her. Will she regain her memory? If she does will she be able to handle it?

Disclaimer: I'll say this once. I don't own Inuyasha or Vampire Knight. This is a fan work for entertainment purposes only and not to be used for anyone's financial gain.

Chapter One: Gift in Loss

"This kind of forgetting does not erase memory, it lays the emotion surrounding the memory to rest."

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Gray.

A horizon of neutral, normal, unmoving and protective apathy.

That was the stagnant crawl that was leading the priestess back toward consciousness. A loitering pace to avoid the pain that would come with waking, with the knowledge that the battle had been lost.

Naraku had won and she'd been the turning tide on the enemies side.

Inuyasha hadn't even seen it coming. He was so intent on what monstrous human part of Naraku remained within the thick maze that was his immense body. She herself had no way of realizing that many months before when she'd faced the infant that tried to find the darkness in her heart that it hadn't only been searching. It left a seed there when it had discovered the slight moment of discontent she'd held for Kikyo.

The plant had blossomed into a weed that quickly entangled her heart, her mind, and left her nothing more than a puppet to his whims. She hadn't even realized her body was acting against her until she'd shifted her arms just enough to be pointing at the half-demon's back.

She had fought against the mental control but was too weak, too powerless to do more than watch helplessly as her own body was turned traitor and the arrow flew true. It cut deep and sunk into the spine at the base of his neck. Inuyasha was lifeless before he'd ever hit the ground, he'd never even had the chance to turn surprised eyes at his attacker.

Miroku had gone next, taking two shots with a half-defence that failed while he was trying to keep his hand from killing them all with Sango so near the group. The first arrow stuck from his right shoulder and he'd not even finished his protest before the second bit into his eye cutting him off instantly.

Sango.

The demon hunter managed to block the three arrows sent her way and while she called out to Kagome to stop and get ahold of herself she never saw the line of barbed tentacles coming up behind her.

Kagome's eyes didn't even water, it was as if she'd been fully cut off from herself and she was unable to even cry out to help her friends, or to mourn them.

She wasn't sure where the fox kit had vanished to and she was watching Naraku laugh at her while he used less dangerous parts of his new anatomy to press her closer to what was left of his human form. He explained very calmly that she was going to remain alive to be his personal consort once his body had finished reforming when he'd absorbed the power of the jewel.

It was almost enough to finally completely break her when he pushed her closer for a kiss, a final dark embrace to leave her a slave in spirit as well as body.

She only survived because at the last moment a cresent line cut through the outer body of Naraku and gravity had stolen her from his evil clutches. He'd turned to face another opponent she was unable to see but the fall wasn't as long as all the stories say. There was little peace, she could barely breath or move. The last thing she remembered was a large crash, flashes of bright light in front of her eyes, and an intense pain in her back and chest.

She welcomed unconsciousness when the pitch darkness seized her, if death found her, she would be able to at least die with her friends, where she had been unable to stand with them.

Waking wasn't nearly as bad as she suspected when it came to pass.

There was pain, that was for certain; several of her ribs had been broken, her spine had fractured at several points and she'd been fully restrained so she wouldn't move and cause further damage. Her right leg was in a sling and the rest of her was incredibly sore.

The consciousness didn't last though, she saw the horrid shape of her body and lapsed back away again. Though the idea that it wasn't as bad as expected made her confused. Between the sleep and not-sleep of her drug-induced drowsiness she couldn't remember all of a sudden why she'd feared waking, why she'd been very sad...or if she even had been sad. It may have just been a bizarre side effect of the fall.

It was a slow recovery, several months before she was awake at a common basis. Partial amnesia was added to her list of complications from the extent of her injuries. It was only the last year or so, she didn't remember anything. The well and her friends and adventures there first and foremost had been wiped clean. Where her actions at the final battle had nearly broken her her mind had blocked them out. But, she didn't remember her friends or conversations they'd had, same with her family. She vaguely recalled some of the few lessons she'd actually done in class but the lack of almost any knowledge of the school year was blamed on the injuries. It was a relief for her mother when she was offered the chance to repeat without keeping any of her current grades in classes.

She wasn't sure what she'd been doing but her marks had taken a sudden decline she was very embarrassed about. She'd of never gotten into a good school with those marks. Her mother told her with her friends moving a grade ahead of her and going to different schools anyway she wanted her to transfer to Cross Academy. The school constantly received good marks and the students were some of the highest graded in the city.

At first she didn't think much on it, it was sad that she'd have to graduate behind her friends but she was lucky to be alive. Or so the doctors had told her over and over and over again. That it was amazing she'd sustained such injuries cause of falling into a well. She figured it was the well on the property that they owned but was shocked herself as the old well house had always given her the creeps and she tended to avoid it.

Over summer holiday she learned that no one wanted her to remember the year she'd lost from her life. Her family outright ignored her or changed the subject when what she was doing in the year that had vanished from her memory was brought up. The well had been filled in with dirt and the house locked, they wouldn't let her back inside even after the danger of falling was gone. Her friends rarely came by, almost always having some excuse or other as to why they couldn't make dates they planned for. One time Eri had mentioned she was glad that Kagome had lost her boyfriend but ran away after Kagome had started to ask about it. It was horribly frustrating but the one time she'd gotten angry and demanded answers her mother had broken down into tears and her grandfather and brother had glared such daggers at her she'd given up.

She'd been lucky to heal so fully in such a short time. Her back still ached often but the rest of her was pain free by the time summer vacation was nearly at it's end.

By the time the school year was coming up she was both dreading and looking forward to it. She felt like an outcast in her own home. Her family wasn't mean to her, but she thought it incredibly unfair that they would turn away from offering her any answers to what had happened to her that she wasn't able to remember. She had the hint that it was possibly an abusive boyfriend that had caused the injuries in the well, harrowing but something she'd of been able to handle if they would actually just tell her! It was making her incredibly unhappy that her family wouldn't trust her with her own life! Everything she'd read said that usually Amnesia recovered in it's own time, that it would be fine once she'd returned to her normal routine likely everything would snap back all at once.

She hoped that would happen sooner rather than later. It was depressing that she had to go attend a school so out of place when her own school might have done more to help her addled brain. Having friends that weren't constantly hiding things or avoiding her though was something she was in grand need of.

Optimism was what she was trying to embody the first morning she walked onto the Cross Academy campus.

End Chapter

I won't continue without at least some feedback. I like writing for my own merit but there's no point in sharing if no one likes it.

-Nera

Reviews: When I get some I'll answer! Yay.