Sometimes, Izayoi wondered if she would have done anything differently. When the ice and snow bit at her bare feet and she clutched her terrified, crying newborn close to her chest, she wondered. While she suffered the pain and separation of her family's ostracization, she wondered. As her son grew and changed and understood that there were few in this world who loved him, she wondered.

The answer was the same each time: she wouldn't.

Izayoi considered that perhaps her soul had been saved, in a backwards sort of way. It had been a very selfish decision to love him, and even more selfish to act on that love. Maybe she was damned, like everyone said, for disobeying the gods and consorting with a demon.

But it had been him who had taught her to understand patience, and shame, and tenacity. She had learned to be a teacher to him as well - nobody had seen him so tender and unguarded as she had, his arrogance stripped and broken down, his heart suddenly open to her. That was the truth - she felt as though they both might have gone on believing the world revolved around them and all of their individual desires and plans. She might never have known herself to be fallible, mortal, just like he had ultimately been, if she'd never met him in that great old forest. So perhaps the gods had not been enraged or offended by their union; no, maybe they'd had a hand in it themselves.

This was what she contemplated as she left the earth, her body, and her son. Inuyasha was going to suffer, and that was the one thing she did regret - he deserved to grow up in a world that adored him and treated him kindly, and to have both of his parents to love him and teach him as much as they had loved and taught each other.

But it was out of her control now, in the murky blackness of death. Izayoi was only vaguely aware that she had died; there wasn't anything in front of her but oppressive, heavy nothingness. She wasn't sure how long she stayed that way. It could have been an eternity - but eventually, the heavy shroud of death was lifted away from her.

As it faded, she was left with something that appeared to her much like earth, if earth were pristine and completely untouched. Everything that had ever brought her joy was waiting for her: the sky tinged pink with perpetual sunset, clear water, the fragrance of innumerable flowers. And in the middle of it all, he waited.

"You weren't supposed to come yet," the familiar voice said. She hadn't heard his voice in so long, and to hear it now propelled her forward, over to him.

"I'm sorry," she replied. She felt as though she was crying, but nothing could be certain in this strange, dreamlike world. "I got sick. I never meant to come to you so soon."

In the span of only a few seconds - or perhaps, in hundreds of years - she was collected up into his arms, arms which felt like the ones she knew and loved and remembered, and he was holding her again. She must have been trembling all over. She must have been crying. Her fingers dug into him, feeling for proof, searching all over to make sure that he was truly in front of her. His eyes found hers and they were perfect, the exact gold that she had always loved.

"I missed you so much," he choked, and she knew, down to her very core, that this was her beloved.

"I missed you, too."

There had always been a common belief that humans and demons were doomed to a life apart, in which they could never hope to understand each other.

Izayoi knew that this was untrue. They had gone to their fates blind, but with immense love. They had braved their differences and found them fewer and smaller than they'd expected. This was the result - there was no doom here, in this perfect world, where their unburdened spirits were allowed to stay together.

The end, in fact, was the best part.