A/N I don't own Inuyasha. That honor belongs to Takahashi Rumiko; but I hope she doesn't mind me borrowing her characters for a little while ;)

The Day Will Come

"The day will come," she would always say.

But that would be all she would say.

Izayoi lived in a state of constant terror, despite her serene expression which rarely dropped, despite her high status of princess, the daughter of one of the younger brethren to the emperor of the time. That was a status she had always possessed. Hime had been her title that fateful day when her father had died, as it was that fateful day when she had met him.

Bandits were never a thing to be sneezed at, a fact which had become frighteningly real one hot summer's day in her seventeenth year. Izayoi and her father had been traveling to some odd lord or another's manor in her father's hope of marrying her to a rich family and save himself from the hard times which had fallen on him and his house. Izayoi gazed at her father, bouncing a little in the carriage as it bumped and rolled down the road, a little crease forming between her delicate brows. She loved her father, who was a generally good man, but she wouldn't deny that she was harboring a few ill feelings for him as of now. She knew it was part of her birthright to be used as a bargaining chip but that didn't mean she had to like it. In fact, she rather abhorred the fact, righteous vexation flooding her heart at the thought of being married off to some unknown, older man she held no love for, simply for the sake of a dowry. The day will come, she thought dejectedly with a small sigh.

That had been when the carriage had lurched, a loud grunt coming from the driver and the horses whinnying in alarm. Izayoi's father looked around in shock mirrored in his daughter's face before he made a similar noise to the driver, an arrow flashing through the curtains of the entrance and burying itself in his neck. Izayoi screamed. The bandits were upon her in only few moments, laughing raucously and raiding whatever they could reach in the carriage that they thought was worth anything… Including her. She had been brought before the bandit's leader, offered to him like a prize, like the plundered spoils of some raid.

But she was rescued. Rescued by him. Touga, the Inu-no-Taisho - a great inu daiyoukai, the mythical Lord of the Western Lands, and a terror to mortals everywhere... Except for her.

She hated him.

Perhaps it had been simply her anger that he had been unable to save her father. Perhaps it had been some retained bitterness towards her father. Perhaps it was the fact that, while she could tell her was a youkai, she couldn't discern the fact that he was in fact one of the most powerful demons in the world. Or perhaps it was simply her ravaged, confusing, adolescent frame of mind. But whatever it was, it caused her inexplicable animosity directed at the stunning, powerful youkai who saved her life. He took her hostility in stride, however, even going so far as to find it somewhat funny. And it certainly was somewhat funny to hear her sob and scream one moment, furious and unafraid and desperate, and the next to be walking the beautiful young human woman down the road on one of her dead father's horses, holding the beast by the reins and leading it forward as she quietly wept into her kimono.

That had been the beginning of the growing attraction between the two. That had been how they had met. That was their origin story, and the rest went down in a secret history. Touga, being the youkai he was, would poke fun at Izayoi and tell her that now he had saved her, her life belonged to him. Izayoi, being the woman she was, would vehemently deny the statement from across the fire he had procured for her, tossing her nose into the air and refusing to acknowledge the man. But over the months they spent traveling together, those little teasings became a little more sincere, that distance between the two over firelit evenings became a little bit shorter, until they would come to understand that one simply could not survive without the other, falling in love without trying.

Their union was not met with joy by any other than themselves. The Inu-no-Taisho's own wife, whom he had essentially abandoned, was only mildly disgruntled, mostly intrigued at how her husband could have fallen in love with a mortal woman, hardly more than a girl. His son was furious at his father at falling from grace as he had by becoming infatuated with such a low and dirty creature as a human. Izayoi's own people, now led by her brother, would have undoubtedly shunned her for loving a demon. Neither of them cared.

Then that night - the fire, the building collapse, the duel... All had changed.

And Izayoi was left alone, to raise a son. Her son. Her beautiful, precious, half-demon son, whom she loved with all her heart.

There was no real way for her to have known how people would treat her and her son as she fled, heartbroken, to the old fire demon she had become acquainted with on her journeys with her departed love. She wouldn't have known the heartbreak he would undoubtedly experience as the old demon hid the black pearl - the final resting place of her beloved - in her tiny son's right eye. A beautiful, golden eye, just like his father's had been. She found out soon enough, however, how cruel people could be even to an innocent child, when she at last returned to the manor her father had once governed.

She didn't tell him what their murmurings had meant as she made their way slowly around the buildings, her silver-haired son tottering and giggling on his unsteady feet and dog ears flicking here and there. He had to have heard their whisperings despite hiding their words behind their hands, and her fears were indeed realized when he came to her one night, a precious, innocent child of four, and asked her in a curious tone, "Mother? What's a 'half-breed'?" She could not stop the tears from flowing that night. And other nights, she would smooth his hair and whisper between his two little white ears, "The day will come…" Whether the phrase was a good thing, a hope of a better future, or a solemn warning of a far more dangerous one, Izayoi wasn't sure herself.

She hadn't expected to die so soon after. Hardly a month later, a high-ranking man of her father's court had murdered her in her sleep, cutting her down in cold blood before turning to her screaming son. "Inuyasha… Run..!" her spirit wept as she watched the sword wielded by the evil man cut her precious child, leaving a ghastly looking cut down his front and him scrambling away in terror.

And he did run. He ran as fast as his tiny little legs could carry him - a much more impressive speed than that of his human counterparts, given his hanyou heritage, but a slow speed for a demon. He ran away from the manor that was as dangerous to him now as any other. He ran... Right into a den of monsters. Izayoi couldn't stop herself from wailing in despair, trying in vain to protect her baby as he was met with demons on every side, trying to escape. And when he did, Izayoi tried to lift him from tripping and falling, her ghostly, unseen hands passing through her baby's without him ever knowing.

For years following, it was a similar pattern of hopelessly watching her precious son running. She had since found Touga's own spirit, which had nearly broken her already wounded spirit with a flood of emotions: crippling fear for her son, selfish joy at finally being reunited with the man she loved, heart break when he told her he had watched her and his son living alone without his protection.

But even their reunion couldn't stop Izayoi's heartbreak. Her son was suffering more than he had ever before. He hadn't eaten in days, nor had he slept or hardly even rested. A week after her death, Izayoi watched in anguish as her precious child stumbled to an apple orchard and ate the first food he had seen in days, before being chased out by the villagers brandishing spears and hoes and other sharp weapons, ready to kill "the wretched demon child". She watched him cry himself to sleep each night without ever being able to comfort his fears, wipe the tears from his small face, wrap her arms around him. She watched as one night, that very act of crying gave away his hiding place from within a hollow tree, betraying his position to a bull youkai who very nearly killed him.

From that night on, Izayoi's heart shattered when her son never cried again for fear of weakness. She still tried to hold her baby in her arms, still tried to rock him to sleep from his position high in a tree, tried to whisper into his ear with shaky breath, "The day will come… My beloved son, the day will come... And you'll be safe..." Her voice was always lost to his ears like a simple breath of wind.

Her son was growing up without her. He struggled. He became stronger. He became colder. Lonelier. Hardened and violent. It scared her. He was surviving of course, stealing food from unsuspecting villagers when he could, sometimes killing a small animal. He had grown to understand his powers, to use the Sankon Tessou on an almost hourly basis. She watched her son use the Hijin Kessou for the first time, digging his sharp claws deeper into his own bloody wound and slinging the bloody youki at his enemy in a surprise attack. She watched him learn not to aggravate those youkai who could best him in a fight, watched him bleed out almost to the point of death on multiple occasions, watched him become a man in his own right… She watched him lose a little bit of the light in his eyes with each human night spent in hiding or wandering into villages to beg for food, with each opponent he killed, with each passing day, month, season, year.

Her already shattered heart was kicked aside by the cruelty of fate and mortal men who tried to kill her precious, suffering, longing, scared, scarred, utterly alone son.

And then he met that miko. In the time between spring and summer of his eighteenth year, Inuyasha met a strange priestess; Kikyo was her name, and she was something else entirely. Izayoi's heart and nerve had hardened along with her son, and she had watched the woman carefully in the beginning, though she wasn't without reason. Their first time meeting the girl had been on the night of the new moon, when her son was at his most vulnerable, holing up on a high branch before the woman collapsed and he went to her side.

Never had Izayoi seen such concern consume her son than then and later, when he and the beautiful miko began their companionship. Izayoi watched closely as Inuyasha protected the girl - often by violent means - watched as he began to chip away at the guarding walls around his heart, watched as her son fell in love with a woman. Izayoi, while elated for her son, was still wary of the young woman. While she was kind, and intelligent, and truly did want to protect those around her, she was also manipulative and almost too intelligent.

The young woman told Izayoi's son about the Shikon no Tama, a powerful artifact which she had been left to protect, and explained how he could use the Jewel to become human and live with her forevermore. Izayoi felt a sudden coolness towards the woman, feeling unnerved by the idea that she only loved the human side of her son, despite him having proved to her multiple times that he cared about her. Inuyasha, however, smitten as he was, was all too happy to agree to the terms.

This was all before a demon tore their lives apart.

Naraku was his name, Izayoi discovered. Despite her mild dislike of the young miko Kikyo, she couldn't help cry as she was cut down by the evil being wearing her son's face, or as her son was attacked by the youkai posing as the woman her son loved.

Any affection she felt towards the priestess, however, was gone the moment her arrow flew from her bow, pinning her son to the Tree of Ages, leaving him hanging from the great tree by his collarbone. She screamed as his beautiful amber eyes - so like his father's - fluttered closed, fury and hate for the woman welling up in her spirit as she threw herself upon his shoulders and buried her face in her son's chest. He was dead. He had to be dead. He was as dead as the woman she vaguely sensed had died behind her, succumbing to her wounds. She felt nothing but a vindictive satisfaction at her death, however; she deserved it.

Right?

Her son was dead.

Right?

She waited for hours, days, weeks. But her son's soul never left his body. The realization that her son was simply in an eternal slumber never truly hit her until almost a year after he was sealed. Izayoi didn't know what to think. So instead, she whispered into the ear of her sleeping baby, well aware that he couldn't hear her. He never had before, but that didn't stop her from murmuring the mantra of the past twenty years of her existence, "The day will come…"

And the day did come.

50 years later, in the form of a vaguely familiar teenage girl wearing strange clothing, climbing out of the Bone Eater's Well.

Her name was Kagome. "Kagome," Izayoi whispered after learning the girl's name. It was nothing spectacular, but… Izayoi felt more at peace with this girl around her son than he had Kikyo. Call it mother's intuition, but she trusted this strange girl far more than she had that solemn priestess.

And Kagome couldn't have been much different from Kikyo, despite, Izayoi later learned, having the same soul as the woman. She was impulsive, and hard headed, and kind, and emotional, and wild, and brave, and stubborn, and terrified, and loyal. While Kikyo had been a beautiful statue of almost utter perfection, Kagome was raw, and while Kikyo could manipulate people and their emotions, Kagome was like an open book. While Kikyo loved the human side of Izayoi's son, Kagome seemed to love both, and the truth was only confirmed one day when she told Inuyasha so. While Kikyo could protect both herself and Inuyasha - a redeeming fact that had not been lost on Izayoi - Kagome was often the one who needed protection.

It was the first time Izayoi watched her son throw himself in front of certain death to save another person. And he did it again. And again. And again.

It was the first time Inuyasha had waited for someone, Izayoi noted, sitting anxiously by the Bone Eater's Well each day she was gone and staring sadly, dazedly into the dark depths, waiting for her return

It was the first time Izayoi had watched her son gain friends, a family: a monk, a taijiya, a kitsune, the strange girl. And it was all because of the strange girl.

It was the first time Izayoi had watched her son grow jealous of other men who came near the girl, the first time she had watched him argue with a person who would call him out on anything he did wrong, the first time she watched him sleep soundly without the fear of someone seeking to take his life before he saw the next dawn, holding the woman he held dear to his heart in his arms.

It was the first time Izayoi saw her son happy since she had died; not comforted as a lonely soul within the arms of another lonely soul, but truly happy. He laughed with the girl, he cried for her, he comforted her, he was comforted by her, he fought with her, he fought for her. He trusted her.

Sure, he had his trials and problems along the way. Izayoi was there when her son - her beloved hanyou, her precious child - had received his father's sword, Tetsusaiga, she was there when he fought his half brother, she was there when Kikyo returned. She was concerned when he promised his life to her, when he broke the heart of that strange girl from the Bone Eater's Well. She watched him struggle physically and mentally just as much if not more than he had for eighteen years previous in his life. But he finally had a reason to keep fighting.

Because he loved her.

Inuyasha loved that strange girl from the future who fought with him, who cried for him, who came back to him no matter how many times he messed up.

It was obvious to everyone, Izayoi noted amusedly one night as they sat huddled around a fire and each other to keep warm, but to the couple she so fiercely approved of, it was woefully unknown. "The day will come," she said to herself.

Naraku's defeat was supposed to a reason for celebration. Instead, it became three years of heartache as the girl Kagome disappeared, leaving Izayoi's son more alone than he ever had been before. Every night, Izayoi whispered in her son's ear, praying to whatever gods would listen to a long-dead spirit that it was true and her son could at last be happy, "The day will come."

And then the girl that her son so loved returned… And it did.

The day had come.

Glossary:

Hime - princess

Youkai - a demon or spirit

Inu-no-Taisho - a title given to Inuyasha's father; Great Dog General

Daiyoukai - a great, powerful demon/youkai

Youki - demonic power or aura

Hanyou - a half demon

Sankon Tessou - "Iron Reaver Soul Stealer"

Hijin Kessou - "Blades of Blood"

Miko - a Shinto shrine maiden; priestess

Shikon no Tama - the Sacred Jewel; the Jewel of Four Sould

Tetsusaiga - Inuyasha's sword

Taijiya - "Slayer"; a demon slayer

Kitsune - a fox demon

A/N I don't see enough stories with Izayoi, so this happened :V I kinda want this to be a kind of one shot series following Izayoi and Touga, but heaven knows how THAT'D turn out - it wouldn't.

So here, enjoy, I guess? Sorry it's crap and it doesn't make much sense at all, but I wrote it in like 2 hours, soooooo... Yeah, it's crap, hahah!

Have fun, don't die, love yourselves, (MADE MINOR EDITS)

Currently listening to: Believer - Imagine Dragons