A/N: I wrote this teensy little ficlet that focuses on Kagome's feelings during the earlier months after the well closed. Enjoy!
She'd previously lived in denial, wearing false, thin smiles that felt wrong.
Stiff and brittle on her solemn face, like they weren't meant to fit there. Her smiles never reached her eyes. Her brilliant eyes, which had dimmed so painfully over the years. They were dull, clouded. There was clearly something she needed to let out, a demon of a feeling that clawed and thrashed wildly at the insides of her throat where it was lodged, aching to wrench free and dissipate calmly into the cool air. It wouldn't calm until it was released, and she knew that, though she never could bring herself to release it. To admit to herself and to learn to accept the possibility that she may never return home to the feudal era. That was her only other option, aside from the unthinkable. She wouldn't, couldn't accept the idea of staying in this world forever, never to return to the feudal era and everything that it was to her.
It was so, so much to her. It was the brilliant sun bathing her in hues of gold, honey, and amber; it was feeling the cool, dew-sprinkled blades of grass beneath her spread fingers as she ran them through the hillside at the edge of the village Kaede resided in; watching the cool, calm waters of the village's plantain ripple as the sounds of her friends' playful antics echoed behind her like a distant, muffled call of her name, the tug at her heart, the hitch in her breath. It was camaraderie, it was love, passion, betrayal, tragedy, anguish, hope, all these emotions playing their heart-wrenching, soul-pouring songs into the otherwise quiet air, blending and melding with each other like water colors, splashing and curling and billowing alongside one another to create a blaring orchestra of color, life, magic. That was what it meant to her.
She could never, would never, let it go. So her demon struggled and snarled, thrashing and screeching and clawing and tearing, helplessly letting sweet, reassuring whispers of 'I'm fine, really,' slip past it and out from between her soft lips like a cruel wisp of dark smoke. The words seemed to fit incorrectly in her mouth, and where they should've tasted sweet and warm on her tongue, they instead tasted bitter, felt sharp. But that was better. Anything was better than the cold, cruel reality of it all.
The reality that she could never go back.