The Darkness in Her Heart
Once upon a not-so-distant past, a teenage girl of immense purity, although otherwise normal, was pulled down a well on her family's ancient shrine property. Five hundred years in the past, she tamed the feral heart of a spirit-dog. She gathered friends around her, inexorably, becoming the cement of a motley crew. A gruff hanyou. A kitsune child. A cursed monk. An orphaned slayer. They became her beloved feudal family. They travelled far and wide across their homeland, helping the innocent and eradicating evil, and they healed each other's festering wounds and were happy.
She alternately struggled with and nurtured her sacred powers, so that by the time they faced the ultimate evil together for the last time, she was no longer her group's weak link. Her time fighting and surviving and loving in the feudal era had tempered her childish heart and had given her life true meaning. As she conquered the darkness and made that one true wish, she was beautiful despite her anger, and overflowed with purity and love, all because Inuyasha was at her side. He'd come for her. He always did.
When that girl found herself in the wellhouse, in her family's arms, she thought that now, her life was perfect. And then she'd turned back to the well to see him sinking...sinking...sinking out of sight, out of her life.
The woman who hauled herself out of the dead well time and time again, who ignored broken ankle after sprained ankle after twisted ankle, who repeatedly tried to force her waning miko energy into the dirt at the bottom of the well, was a broken rendition of that pure, beautiful girl. And after a while her family wasn't smiling and they didn't reach out to hug her as often.
No one mentioned high school. It wasn't compulsory anyways. No one mentioned a new boyfriend. The jewel had won; she was alone, trapped forever. No one mentioned the times she disappeared for days. No one mentioned the blood-stained clothing. No one mentioned the mirrors that started turning up broken. They couldn't know that when Kagome looked into mirrors, Kikyou looked back. They lived in a shrine to silence and memories.
It wasn't until she was mistaken for Souta's kid sister by his university friends that Kagome realized that fate's cruel lessons about love, and time, and loss were far from over.
And Inuyasha never came back.