Disclaimers: I make no claim to own any of the anime/manga characters of InuYasha.

A Kikyou Introspective

If she was unhappy with the current situation, she had no one to blame but herself.

Kikyou almost never just said what she meant. She spoke in cryptic words that she assumed others would understand the meaning of. When she told the priest that, “He is a hanyou that I could not bring myself to kill because of his human half. You will have to decide what you want to do with him,” she assumed that he would understand that InuYasha was not evil, and should be turned loose. She thought perhaps they would keep him tied up and delay him for a while, but not that they would attempt to kill him. After all, the priest must have gone through training similar to hers, so why had he not understood her?

Yes, InuYasha kept getting in her way and at the time she had thought that she didn't care whether he lived or died, but realized later (after her reincarnation had rescued him) that she did. Not only that, she was actually jealous. She thought that she had a great deal more influence and control over the hanyou than she really did. Who knew that one single action on her part would send him straight into the arms of her rival - her living, breathing, reincarnation?

Kikyou thought back on the first time she met InuYasha. She did not figure out until much later that it was he who had been lurking in the forest and made sure no harm came to her when she was injured before the others showed up looking for her. When she came across him in the wood, she could not bring herself to kill him because he was half human, even if she would have liked to get rid of his demon half. And when she reflected back, after discovering later on what he was truly capable of, she realized he had never seriously tried to harm her or even to steal the jewel from her. She had come to realize that he followed her out of loneliness and the need for some kind of contact with another living soul.

As a priestess, she too was separated from the common people of her village and was lonely for companionship. And while she claimed to want to be an ordinary woman, in truth, she relished her power and status. Yes, she did have to fight demons, and her life did become challenged more often after the Shikon no Tama was given to her for its protection, but she never wanted for anything. The villagers made certain that she was never hungry and always had a roof over her head. She had far more than the average person in the region had. She did not have wealth, for that would have been inappropriate for a priestess, but she had respect and those that looked up to her. She also knew that there were other priestesses that were somewhat jealous of the gifts she had been born with.

And still, she was lonely.

The priestess wondered if what she felt was truly love, or a want of something she thought she could not have. She had grown tired of protecting the Sacred Jewel, for her life had become much more difficult once it was entrusted in her care. She thought she could kill two birds with one stone. If InuYasha would have wished on the jewel to rid himself of his demon half, he would have been acceptable for her to take as a husband. In addition, the jewel would have been purified and gone so that demons would no longer have come after it. She had not thought of the possible consequences of that action at all.

Back then she had no idea of what InuYasha's demon half was, other than an Inu. In her wanderings after her rebirth, she had learned that InuYasha had a half-brother, who was not just an Inu Youkai, but also the Taiyoukai of the Western Lands. That meant that InuYasha's demon half was nothing ordinary - he was the son of one of the most powerful youkai to ever roam Japan. And yet, he had been willing to give that up for her. Did that mean he truly loved her? She could not allow herself to love him unless he changed, but it appeared he had loved her enough to change for her.

She did not know or care that there were demons that would still come after him, even if he were human. Just the fact that he was the son of the great dog general would be reason enough for them to want to kill him, even if he were no longer a hanyou. She also did not take into consideration the number of demons that would still be looking for the jewel. She would still be fighting them, but would no longer have InuYasha's hanyou strength to help, and probably would have lost her own spiritual power as well. She had assumed that he would become human, that she would no longer be a priestess, and thereby ending her troubles. Looking back, she realized that neither of them would probably have lived for very long.

And then there was her reincarnation. The girl made no bones about the fact that she loved InuYasha as he was. She had no problem with his demon half and had accepted him without reservation. And while Kagome may have cried over it, she never tried to stop InuYasha from coming to see her. The only times she had truly raised a fuss was when she decided to attempt to take InuYasha to Hell with her. The girl may let him see her, but she wasn't letting him leave, at least not like that. In addition, even when she had tried to cause the girl harm, she did not tell InuYasha about it - of that the undead priestess was fairly certain. There were several times when Kagome could have been negative towards her, but she never tried to poison InuYasha's mind against her. No, she did a good job of doing that all by herself.

Then there was the undeniable fact that Kagome had saved her life more than once, and it was partly because she thought that InuYasha still loved her and would be sad without her, in addition to the fact that the girl thought it was the right thing to do.

Was this what love truly was? The willingness to accept someone for who and what they are and wanting them to be happy, even at your own expense? Kikyou pondered these things as she headed towards her old village.

Even looking back on the day of her death, she realized that she should have known that InuYasha would have never done such a thing. Even when he thought she had tried to kill him, he went after the jewel, not her. Yes, he trashed the village in his anger, but he did not intentionally harm anyone. She would die from her injuries and her soul could go on and be reborn, but she had sealed him deliberately to Goshinboku, to neither live nor die. She had instructed Kaede to never seal a demon to that tree or it would be there forever, but then she had done it herself. At first, it was in anger and hatred for what she thought he had done, but before her life was drained from her, she almost regretted it. She tried to convince herself that she had sealed him because she couldn't kill him, but at the time she knew that it was not true. She thought that she had been betrayed, and she was tired of protecting the jewel, so she let her life slip away after she instructed Kaede to burn the jewel with her body.

Who knew it would turn back up in her reincarnation from five hundred years in the future fifty years later, and shortly after that the witch Urasue would revive her to start her endless wanderings as the walking dead? That strange little girl, who had absolutely no training, affected everyone around her. It was hard to believe she was her reincarnation, not because she was untrained and Kikyou liked to think she had no power, but because of the tremendous amount of love that the girl had for everyone around her.

Even when Kikyou thought of Kagome as weak, it was clear that the girl had the power to inspire and unite others that often would be enemies, something that Kikyou could never have done, or would even have tried to. The girl loved the hanyou openly, and it only increased her powers. She had frightened Naraku the most when she became so angry over his treatment of Sango that she blew his body out from under his head, forcing him to go into hiding to create a new one. And her love of the hanyou had driven her to find him when no one else would go, the result being that they now were mates - and the girl was even more powerful than before. Who knew?

She finally came to the conclusion that she had loved InuYasha as much as she was capable of, but it wasn't nearly enough. She wondered how many times her soul had been reincarnated over the five hundred years that finally it evolved to the point that a young girl could accept a hanyou openly, be reborn with the jewel in her body, and then pulled through the well? For all appearances, the girl was here to right what had been wronged, which included freeing InuYasha from his seal. Perhaps the regret that she felt just before her death had been real, and she came back in a later lifetime to release him from the sentence that had been imposed upon him for a crime he had not committed.

Maybe.

If that was the case, then she had no reason to apologize to either of them or even feel guilty for any of her transgressions. After all, if this was fate, then none of them had a choice. It was just the way things were meant to be.