It wasn't easy, knowing that she had been replaced. It didn't help that he still came to her, when Kagome was gone, and made her feel as if she couldn't go without him again.
He would kiss her and stroke her and somehow, for just a little while, she could pretend that he had never loved the dainty girl from the future. Perhaps the girl was only a dream. When their tongues dances together, Kikyo could forget that though he came to her, Inuyasha stayed with Kagome.
He comforted her, protected her, lied to her.
That he cared enough about the other woman to lie told Kikyo more than she needed to know.
Perhaps he loved the both of them, but he was in love with Kagome. With her thick, blue-black hair, with her lively blue-gray eyes, with her utter joy at life.
Kikyo should have hated the young woman. She tried to. She tried to push a wedge between Kagome and Inuyasha, but it the end, she couldn't.
She should have despised the young woman that stole away Inuyasha's love, but she didn't. The girl didn't deserve to be hated.
Maybe she should have despised Inuyasha instead then. He, after all, was the one that couldn't seem to choose between them, though his subconscious choice was obvious to all but Kagome. Kagome worried that Inuyasha would abandon her for the dead miko. The though almost made Kikyo laugh bitterly.
That man could never leave Kagome.
That was the hardest part – loving the fuzzy-eared hanyo and knowing, without a doubt, that he might give her a night, but Kagome would receive all his days. Someday, she would receive his house, his children, his wedding-bed. And Kikyo would only ever get a kiss.
One, singular goodbye kiss.