The wind whistled outside Kagome's new room, causing Kagome's rest to be rather…. restless. As much as she had wanted to sleep, to fade into a sweet dream where none of her problems existed anymore, she couldn't. It was the howling wind… and the memories festering underneath her eyelids. Her wandering thoughts soon molded into those nightmare-like memories.

Five hundred years ago, a miko known as Kikyo had lived. She had been the shikon miko, entrusted with a powerful jewel, and important responsibilities followed. Those responsibilities, though, became her downfall.

When it had first been revealed that Kikyo was the Shikon miko, Kikyo felt larger than life. She was powerful, she was composed, and she had no limits. Kikyo was exactly the woman she had always wanted to be, a woman completely opposite to her mother, who had become a wild madwoman. Kikyo followed the simple rules that she had been told to follow, and everyone loved her.

Soon, though, those simple responsibilities changed. She was constantly working, and the older mikos had begun to put restrictions on her free time. Kikyo knew that a miko lived for the people, so she didn't mind. She was dedicated to her elder's rules; even when that meant she could not even see her family.

When Kikyo's mother gave birth to her half-sister, Kikyo began to protest the rules. She had complied with the rules at first because she had wanted nothing to do with her crazy mother. She had begun to harbor a deep shameful feeling towards her bother because when Kikyo had turned thirteen and been accepted into the sister hood, her mother Akira began to have visions.

Akira said that the Kami-samas wanted her to give birth to a powerful race of mikos. These mikos would have supreme power to rule over the youkai, eventually creating a superhuman youkai mixed race. They would be granted special powers from the Kamis, and would rule over everyone. Naturally, in a land that feared and hated youkai, and despised all notions of any human-youkai mixture, she was mocked and ridiculed.

Kikyo had attempted to disown herself from her mother, but had stopped after her sister Rin was born. She had met Rin one day when she was traveling through the village her mother was residing in, and was instantly drawn to her. Rin was the kind of baby who smiled like the sun and whose laughter sounded like a babbling brook. Everyone who met Rin loved her. She was the child of a powerful monk, and even as a baby, had shown great potential to be a powerful miko, which should have scared the neighboring villagers. But no one could bring themselves to harbor any ill feelings toward the little ray of sunshine.

Several weeks after Rin and Kikyo's first meeting, Kikyo requested a month of free time to spend with her sister. When the elders rejected her request, Kikyo began to rebel. When she was sent out for work, she would visit the village Rin lived in before returning to the miko headquarters. Kikyo's plan to visit her sister worked well, until she met Inuyasha.

The moment Kikyo laid eyes on Inuyasha, she knew he was fated to be her soul mate. Despite his demon roots, she began to love him, and him her. They met in secret, usually while Kikyo met Rin, and Kikyo felt as though her soul was finally complete. For a year their love affair continued to flourish and grow stronger.

Then, the elders became suspicious. Kikyo, who had already been sneaking out to meet Inuyasha for a year, became arrogant and assumed the old mikos would not catch her. After all, it had been a long time since anyone had tried to restrain her. She was the powerful shikon miko, and since she had not engaged in any forbidden actions, she was still pure. The elders had no real reason to keep her away from him, she decided.

Late one summer night, Kikyo was caught. The younger priestesses had told the elders which days she would sneak out and meet Inuyasha, so they were waiting for her when she returned. She was immediately sent to the inner rooms in the headquarters, and spent two weeks fasting alone. She lived on bread and water, and was supposed to be meditating on her crimes. If they had been too late to catch her, they told her, she could've lost her powers forever.

Kikyo tried to resist their ideas. She knew her mother had been a miko, and had retained her powers after sleeping with Kikyo's father. Akira had retained her powers even after Rin was born, and were only diminishing now because of her old age. Kikyo could observe the world around her and see things contrary to the elder miko's teachings, but after two weeks of brainwashing and fasting until she was weak and dizzy, Kikyo she wasn't so sure.

When Kikyo was finally released from her confinement, she had decided to make changes to her life. As hard of a decision as it might be, she decided she would give up being a miko. She would talk to Inuyasha the next day, and together they would decide to live apart from the rest of the world. She would see Rin too, as well as her mother, but that would have to be after the first few years of isolation from the rest of the world.

Suddenly, Kikyo's morals were changing. Instead of the composed, reliable miko she used to be, she wanted to be the heretic ex-miko, who married and bred with a hanyou. And though Kikyo would've hated the mere thought of her life turning out like that a few years ago, she was a changed woman. She had found what she loved and she intended to hold on to her loved ones.

But it was not to be. The very day before Kikyo would leave with Inuyasha, the shikon jewel was stolen. Quickly, Kikyo was immersed in an all-out war with Naraku, a power hungry half-breed. He wanted Kikyo, because she had saved him from death years ago, and would stop at nothing to have her.

Kikyo was the center of attention to the evil hanyou, and she fought battles every day with youkai who tried to capture her and bring her to him. She couldn't see Inuyasha or Rin anymore, partially because she didn't want to endanger them, and partially because it wasn't allowed.

Kikyo fought with the mikos against Naraku for years and years. She felt herself grow out of her teenage years and into adulthood, without even a glimpse of Inuyasha or Rin. And Kikyo's fragile heart, which had once opposed having deep ties to others, was deeply tied to Inuyasha and Rin. She never forgot them, not once, through those long years.

After seven long years, when Kikyo had aged to be in her mid-twenties, she felt the first signs of Naraku weakening. She would have rejoiced, had she not felt her own side weakening. The elder mikos had died in the fight and been replaced by younger mikos, who became the leaders of the war. But it was Kikyo who was the true leader. She was the strongest, fastest and most powerful miko of the group, and the smartest when it came to battle tactics.

When Kikyo felt the Naraku's power weaken a bit more, she felt it was high time for the war to end. The new elder mikos, who were now called the council of mikos, listened to her advice and made preparations. There was only one simple problem on the miko side of the war: the numbers of mikos in their troops was edging dangerously low.

She instructed the council of mikos to create enough of a distraction for Naraku in order for her to grab the shikon jewel. Kikyo, being the shikon miko, was the only one who knew how to wish a selfless wish on the jewel. Others could try, but if they were not the shikon miko, they weren't entrusted with the powers nessecary to end the jewel so that it would not return.

The idea was both thrilling for the council, because Kikyo had such confidence that she could end the jewel and Naraku, but also demanding. To create such a distraction with their small troops would be impossible, so they would need to recruit new troops. They would need to put young teenagers in battle.

Without Kikyo's knowledge, the council of mikos gathered the most promising teenagers to form their new troops. Among those young mikos was Kikyo's sister Rin.

A few days before the battle, the council was presented with an odd request. A demon met them outside the headquarters and asked to fight with them. He said he would distract Naraku, and kill him, or at leats die trying. When they asked him why he would go to such lengths, the demon had shrugged and replied, saying that Naraku had taken his true love from him.

Kikyo had not met this demon, and was suspicious of him, but looked past that because the mikos needed as much help as possible. Under normal circumstances, she told herself, she would have gone out to personally meet the new warriors who would be fighting under her, but these were no normal circumstances. She was going to end Naraku and the shikon jewel at this battle, once and for all.

When the day of the battle arrived, Kikyo was up before dawn. She read and reread the plans over and over again, checking for any mistakes that had slipped past her the few hundred times she'd read it before. Something felt different about this battle, and not in a good way. The feeling Kikyo had when she thought about the battle set her teeth on edge, and made her want to run from an invisible force.

As the first rays of sun touched the trees, the troops of mikos began to creep through the woods. The only sounds Kikyo could hear were the quiet crunch of leaves against the forest ground and her own heavy breathing. She glanced around at the troop she was leading and tried to determine how many women she had with her. Assembled in her troop were the most powerful mikos, and the oldest. Aside from the mikos on the council, the oldest miko still left was thirty nine.

Kikyo's troop was the second troop to find Naraku's den. As they had predicted, he was residing in the old cave she had first met him in. Naraku had swarms of youkai protecting his den, and many spread out further from the cave. Thanks to the new masking shield technique Kikyo had created, the youkai had not sensed their approach.

She neared the first troop and found the leader of it. The leader was a girl no older than sixteen, and one of the new recruits. Kikyo gave her a silent nod, signaling for her to wait for the other three troops to join them. The sixth and last troop was filled with archers who would take down the larger flying beasts, and had left for the mountains earlier that day.

For one quiet moment before the last troops joined her, Kikyo prayed to the Kami-samas. She wasn't sure anymore if she would win this war, or if she would live through it, and she wasn't entirely certain she cared anymore. She was tired and weary, her lust for life long exhausted and put out. But she was sure of one thing. She wanted Rin to live, for her mother to have more powerful miko babies, and for Inuyasha to meet a woman that was better than she could ever be. All she asked was for her loved ones to live.

With a signal from Kikyo to the newly arrived troops and the first troop, the mikos charged into the clearing and began to slaughter the youkai. Each troop was assigned a specific area, and though she had memorized it, she could not remember it as her own troop ran into the mess.

Creeping around the back of the chaos, Kikyo searched for a way to enter the cave. She wasn't sure where Naraku would be hiding, but if it was Naraku, he would probably find her before she found him. Surveying the battle, she looked on in horror at the mikos.

Everywhere she looked, a miko was engaged in a dangerous fight with a youkai. Though Kikyo had been fighting for seven years, she still felt the wave of emotion course through her body as she saw mikos being killed. Both sides were losing numbers, but all Kikyo could see were the young women, barely into their teenage years, killing and being killed, scarring them for life ever after.

And then she saw Rin.

From across the field, Kikyo saw Rin fighting a monstrous insect youkai. With one arrow, Rin cut into the youkai, purifying him instantly. Another appeared behind her back, and Rin used her knife to behead the animal.

Kikyo's mind swirled as she tried to comprehend why her little sister was in battle. She thought of the young troop of mikos in their teenage years. Rin was nearly thirteen, Kikyo calculated. She hadn't seen her since she was five. And now, Rin was purifying youkai, all because of Kikyo's orders.

She watched her sister move with a fluid grace. She fought like she was dancing, and if she had been older, the technique would have been praised by the elder mikos, and used as a new fighting style. If Rin had been older… she would've stood a chance against all of the youkai in the battle. But Kikyo knew that even though Rin was probably the best miko in her age group, she didn't hold a candle to a full-fledged miko. She was too young to be fighting.

When Kikyo saw her sister's face, she was alarmed by the lack of emotion. It was like the sun had been drained from Rin; no longer was she the sweet baby Kikyo had known. Now she was twelve going on twenty, with her luck in this battle determining her survival.

When Kikyo saw a boar youkai advance on Rin, Kikyo abandoned her original battle plan and bolted to Rin. She needed to get to her sister; she needed to save her from the large youkai. It was Kikyo's fault that Rin had ended up here along with the other young mikos, and Kikyo was beginning to rethink the whole idea of the battle including so many of their priestesses. It was too late to fix that mistake, so she would try to at least save Rin.

However Kikyo would not be able to save Rin. Whether it was fate or an accident, her beautiful baby sister was pierced by the tusk of the boar youkai, and killed by the poison from it. Kikyo arrived in time to watch her sister's face pale and then fall cold, as the last of her life left her body. And Kikyo would never forgive herself.

The battle lost all meaning as Kikyo ambled through the disorder to the den of Naraku. She left Rin's body at the trunk of a large tree, and made a tentative plan to bury her body in a field with flowers. Then after that… Kikyo wasn't sure what she would do. She wouldn't make any plans for her future.

When she spotted Naraku, some feet off from the clearing where the battle was taking place, he was already busy fighting the demon. They jumped higher and higher, the demon who was helping the mikos slashing his large sword at Naraku and Naraku dodged.

Kikyo took in the appearance of the demon, who had turned out to be a half-demon, and looked away. His white hair, red robes, tiny dog ears on his head… she wouldn't let her mind connect the dots. It absolutely wouldn't be Inuyasha. She couldn't bear to lose another loved one today.

When Naraku pierced the hanyo with one of his tentacles, Kikyo began to run towards them. The hanyo cried out and Kikyo covered her ears, so she would not hear the name he called out. And when he tossed the hanyou aside, she shot an arrow at him. She would end this now.

Naraku began to talk to Kikyo, but she could not hear him. Rather, she could not hear anything. Her eyes flew to Inuyasha, who was still alive, but badly wounded. She couldn't tell from her current location, but he looked as if he might bleed to death. Kikyo hated herself for allowing him to be brought into the battle.

Finally looking at Naraku, she watched as his face transform into that of Inuyasha's. Inuyasha's face sneered, and spoke to her, "Let's play, Kikyo."

Kikyo drew her knife, infused her miko powers into in, and stabbed him through the chest. She would not play any games with him, she was too vengeful now. Reaching at his neck before he had time to retaliate, she grabbed the jewel that hung on a chain around his neck.

"Goodbye, Onigumo," she whispered and sliced him again. She felt powerful, more powerful than she had even been as she fought Naraku. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have been fazed by her attacks, but as she knew already, these were no normal circumstances.

Turning away from him, she meditated to center herself. She only had one chance to end the jewel, only one wish. The wish had to be perfectly worded, perfectly selfless in order for the plan to work. Summoning all of her power, Kikyo wished for the jewel to be ended.

And from her hands, the jewel turned to sand and she felt the great Midoriko's spirit be released.

Then from behind her, Naraku lunged. One of his tentacles pierced her abdomen and then retracted, leaving a large hole in her. Using the last of her strength, she turned around and purified him with a large pink flash. She let herself fall, and then join her loved ones in the other world.

And as Kikyo died, she had but one last wish. One small wish that she would ask not from the power that the jewel had left, but from the Kamis. She begged the Kamis because they had let her sister die at such a young age, and maybe Inuyasha too, she wasn't sure. She needed this wish, because of all the mistakes she had made in her life.

She would ask for a do-over. Not a reincarnation, because Kikyo felt like she would mess up her life again if she was born anew. She would ask for a different soul, someone who would share their memories with her, and allow her to watch over them, but not be her. She wanted to be a guardian to this new soul, a mentor who would help them through their life.

Kikyo wanted to give her memories to someone else so that they could learn from her mistakes, and learn how to appreciate the beauties of life. Kikyo was ashamed with the way she had abandoned her family and Inuyasha because of the restritions the elder mikos had put on her. Looking back, she should've left the sisterhood when Rin was born, and when she had met Inuyasha. But Kikyo had been greedy, trying to possess the power that came from being the shikon miko, and the love her family was so ready to give.

Kikyo promised the Kami-samas that she would only be a bystander to this new soul's life, but would be their protector. In return for letting Kikyo watch their life, she would give them a sliver of her soul, which could help them in times of need. It wasn't much to offer, but Kikyo wanted some soul to take pity on her, and learn from her mistakes.

As her soul was floating into the other world, she felt a pull. The Kamis would grant her wish, if another soul would accept her bargain. Would any soul be willing to do this for her? Kikyo mutely worried. She had ruined her own life, she thought over and over again, would someone want her to be their mentor?

And somewhere within the other world a voice called out to Kikyo.

"I will."

Five hundred years later, the soft wail of a newborn baby's voice filled a delivery room.

Hello! How'd you like that chapter? It was reeeeaaally long for me (I'm used to writing shorter chapters), but I loved it. I just needed to give Kikyo a back story. I'm sorry if you don't like it when authors rewrite history; I probably should've warned everyone I would do this! (It's an AU, if anyone didn't get that already.)

And now let me explain Kikyo and Kagome's relationship, in case that was unclear: Kikyo and Kagome are what I like to call soul sisters. Kikyo is watching over Kagome's life, sort of like her guardian angel. Kagome has a bit of Kikyo's soul in her, that shares Kikyo's old memories with her so that she can learn from Kikyo's mistakes. Basically, Kagome has a soul and a tiny bit more in her body, which sort of plays hand in hand with Kagome's "large soul" (that's something from the anime). I hope that clears up any confusion, but just ask if you have questions.

Please enjoy! All characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi.