For an evil deity, the jewel was very chatty. It wasn't enough that it had stolen her away; it wanted her to fight.
And submit.
Why couldn't it just accept its victory and let her sleep? She was tired of fighting—there'd been almost five years of it now—and if it needed a power source, it had one.
But it seemed to need something more from her, a light appearing at the end of a tunnel she didn't even know she was in, and Kagome turned toward it. The ghosts of her friends faded into view, consoling each other on what was left of the battlefield.
"You're not showing me anything new," she said, rolling her eyes. "I knew how they'd react." Who wouldn't? They'd been through so much together, and she admired each of them for how they'd put their lives—their happiness—on hold for a mistake she alone had made.
Every death had cut into her, knowing that there wouldn't have been any shards to begin with if she'd been able to contain the jewel.
If she'd been stronger.
The need to see things through, to give them back some semblance of normalcy, had kept her going. And she'd trained until she bled to make sure it ended in the right way. Naraku's revenge had been stopped, and though not all of them had made it out alive, they could at least move on.
So why not the jewel?