Musings
She really didn't understand Kikyo sometimes. Sure she liked Inuyasha's looks on his human nights, and if she thought about it, she had to admit that his standard looks were strange, but she fell in love with him despite his looks. Bound together in their own journey to the west, she the priest(ess), he taking the place of Monkey, they got to know each other, and slowly fell in love. While Kikyo might have wanted him human, she had come to realize that his yokai traits were a major part of him, and he just felt wrong without them.
She really didn't much care for Kouga. Sure he was nice to her, and he was politer than Inuyasha ever acted, and in fact he had even stopped eating humans just for her. The problem was that he had ever eaten humans, and in their interactions with Sesshomaru's group, she had once noticed Rin's nervousness around wolves, and the implications horrified her. For someone to be following Sesshomaru so avidly, even at such a young age, something terrible must have happened to her. Add in the fact that she knew that Tenseiga could raise the dead, and that wolves have huge territories, and you wind up with anything from her village being decimated by wolves, to Sesshomaru saving her from a pack of wolves, probably out of disdain for the wild canines. Since Kouga's pack lived nearby, it was probably his pack that had attacked Rin, and she didn't know if it was before or after he had promised to stop eating people.
She loved Inuyasha. He had been crass and crude, and could make a sailor blush, but once you dug a little, you realized that all of his lack of manners, anger and cynicism were covering someone who just wanted to belong. Everything from the feel of his energy brushing hers, to his delicate seeming fingers that could rend steel, to the hint of danger when she kissed him, she loved everything about him. She knew he was jealous over her kindness toward Kouga, no love being lost between the two. Even without her actual dislike for the wolf, she could never be with him, if they ever did do that she wouldn't be able to enjoy herself out of fear of accidentally purifying him. If she did wind up blasting her partner, at least Inuyasha would only be turned human, instead of into ash. Her spiritual powers, (she hesitated to call them Miko or holy powers) would likely stay, she had taken no vows, received no training, and had done nothing that would cause them to exist, so they would likely stay if she did take a husband.
Inuyasha
Inuyasha wasn't an idiot. He had been born to royalty from both sides of his family. He understood the use of a good ally, and that sometimes you had to interact with complete assholes in order to get things done. He also had a dog's nose, and could smell someone's last meal. When they had met Kouga, he had smelled human flesh on his breath, and for a moment he truly feared for Kagome's life. Finding her safe had been a relief, but he would never forgive that wimpy wolf for the instant of panic when her scent and old blood and flesh had mingled making him think she was dead.
Inuyasha had a sensitive nose. He also had the ability to perceive power. However instead of comparing colors like Kagome, he had to smell them. Upon waking on the Goshinboku, the power he smelled was so close to Kikyo's that he had thought it was her. Since the last thing he remembered before waking up was an arrow streaking towards him, it was understandable that he would fight back.
Kikyo stank. She smelled of long rotted flesh, damp bone, and unclean things in the earth. The only reason he kept going to her was out of guilt. If he hadn't been so impatient, maybe she would be alive now, if he had been more observant, he would have realized that the smell of sickness that clung to her clothes wasn't from a sick villager, and maybe the villagers could have done something if alerted to Onigumo's presence, as a bandit he had been on an automatic death sentence after all.