She never would truly hate him, no matter what anyone said or did. No contempt would be held in her heart, no scorn or furry. She didn't want to by like Kikyo, and even if it meant that InuYasha wouldn't choose her over the dead priestess, that was fine.
She just couldn't hate anyone.
Kikyo. Cold, lifeless Kikyo, reborn of ashes and soil. It wasn't the woman who walked the earth at present that InuYasha loved; it was the shadow of what she formerly was that he held on to, the thought and promise that what they could have had was still within reach. There was no warmth in her touch, no feeling in her kiss, and no emotion in her life. She was dust, and there was nothing either of them could do about it.
Kagome sighed as she sat down on the dampened grass, tucking her skirt beneath her. Staring out over the cliff, she watched as the city below bustled about, performing their every day activities. Drawing her legs close to her body and wrapping her arms around them, she rested her head on what was now a comfortable chin rest.
She wanted to go back to the others' time and see those that she had come to love, but the feeling in her heart held her to the present time, her time. No, she corrected, she didn't have a time. She was spread across a span of five hundred years, and yet she attempted to declare which era she belonged to? Why could she not be a figment of both worlds?
Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to drift off, her mind lingering between what was, and what was not. Carefully, as though it was a duty, she began to separate things into a list inside of her mind, detaching the truth from the lies in which they were tightly bound.
And no matter how hard Kagome tried, her mind kept coming back to one pair: InuYasha was real, and Kikyo was not.
Like light and dark, or hot and cold, the couple were but polar opposites of each other. They, by right, should never have been able to come together across such a wide barrier, and yet they managed to. And just like the shades of gray, and the lukewarm water, Kagome was stuck in between.
In between what she wanted, and what she could not have.
Kagome felt a hot tear slide down the side of her cheek, not willing to admit to herself how much she loved the hanyou. It was something that her heart begged her to say, to bring out into the open, and the rational side of her mind forced to stay behind bars, in a prison of sorts. She squeezed her eyes shut, attempting to stem the flow of liquid from burning the soft flesh of her face in the form of tears, but her efforts were futile.
There was only one way to stop from crying, and she hated the thought of what she had to do.
Biting down on her lower lip, she stood in a huff, balling her hands into fists at her sides. Breathing slowly and deeply, she made her way to the well, forcing herself to remain calm. With a quick glance over her shoulder at her house, her mother and brother's figures profiled in the window, she jumped into the well, determined to let InuYasha know how she felt, once and for all.
No longer would she be a shade of gray.