Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of its characters.
A/N: Here's a little thing I wrote thinking about Inuyasha's childhood and the years spent with Izayoi. I hope you like it and I wish you all a wonderful Mother's Day wherever you are and however you can.
It smells like memories
Something bitter and familiar tingled his nostrils that morning as soon as his consciousness awoke. With his eyelids still closed, lying on the futon that was now empty except for him and the tangled sheets, Inuyasha let the memories that particular smell aroused come to him.
The one who finally got up a little later was not a half-demon over two centuries old but a five-year-old boy who wasn't paying attention to where he was stepping, too busy rubbing his closed fists against his still sleepy eyes.
He walked through those silent corridors that always seemed eerie whenever he was alone and finally reached his mother who, despite her neat appearance and elegant clothes, was sitting in front of a small fire, stirring something on it.
The little hanyou wrinkled his nose as the fumes from the liquid reached him and he immediately covered it with the sleeve of his robe, heedless of the snot he would leave on it.
"Mother," he complained in a quite petulant voice despite being muffled by the red fabric. "What's that smell? Why weren't you with me when I woke up?"
Inuyasha was a child who, on the surface, wanted to appear strong, especially in the presence of others; he tried to act as his mother's defender and protector, and this was most likely due to his having grown up without a father figure. However, inwardly and behind that pout that should have appeared aggressive and frightening but, in reality, was very tender, he hid a strong attachment to his mother. In short, he was a mama's boy and wanted to be treated as such whenever they were alone — which was almost always. Izayoi had now given up teaching him etiquette, preferring him to feel free and happy whenever he could and not wanting to force him to follow the same rigid upbringing imposed on her when she was the same age.
Life would already be too difficult for him; there was no need to complicate it.
Upon hearing that, she laughed and turned to him, smiling. "Were you scared?"
Inuyasha froze at hearing those words but quickly regained his favourite pose as he reached for her: arms crossed and lower lip sticking out. "I am never afraid! But you can't walk around alone. What if there's some bad guy?"
The princess giggled. "My valiant prince would immediately hear him and defeat him, coming to my aid." The little half-demon nodded, finally pleased with that story, and then moved towards the hearth; he quickly retreated and covered his nose again. "It's a good thing you're intrigued by what I'm doing, Inuyasha," she resumed, handling what looked like dried liver before tossing it on the fire with other herbs, "because it's your medicine."
The little one looked at her in surprise. "No, no and no. I'm not drinking that stinky stuff!" He turned his face away, closed his eyes and pressed his lips together, afraid his mother might force it down his throat.
"That means that nasty cold that affects every demon will never go away," Izayoi commented, pretending to be resigned. "And I even counted on you to defeat any villains or monsters in the vicinity."
The child's white ears flicked over his head as one eyelid fluttered open again and he looked at his mom out of the corner of his eye; Izayoi took that as a good sign and continued. "Where could I find another beautiful half-demon now that can help me?"
"Mother!" Inuyasha exclaimed, now staring openly at her. "I've already told you that I am not beautiful; I am strong!"
"You're right, my boy. But with that cold, you cannot be strong, can you? We must make up for it."
He lowered his head and stared at his bare feet, frantically moving his toes whose claws, which his mother had cut off only the night before, were already growing back. His shoulders rose and fell quickly.
"And if I got sick one day, you would want me to take my medicine to get well, wouldn't you?"
Inuyasha nodded, still keeping his face lowered.
Izayoi reached up with two fingers and lifted her son's chin, who now had a few unshed tears in his eyes; she wiped them away with a handkerchief before they could wet his cheeks. Then she pulled him towards her and sat him between her legs, making sure that there was still some distance between the brazier and the child. With one hand, she wrapped the little boy's waist and with the other, she continued to stir the ingredients. This way the process was slower, but she preferred it.
"So you understand why I want you to take the special medicine?" Inuyasha nodded again. "Good, then if you drink it, I promise you one thing. I'll teach you how to make it. This way, whenever someone close to you or a friend is sick, you can help them get better. What do you say?"
Inuyasha finally raised his face to meet his mother's dark, warm gaze. "You are my friend, mother. But I don't want to do it because I don't want you to be sick." At those words, it was Izayoi's turn to hold back tears at yet another evidence of her son's lonely life and her inability to provide him with a better future. But she had learnt to stop them from moistening her eyes because a demon's keen nose could smell them even before they fell and she did not want to worry her son — not while she was able to.
The princess nodded and then placed a kiss on her son's silvery-white hair before she turned to the medicine again.
Being a mother was not what she had imagined the day Toga had revealed his discovery to her, nor what the two of them had dreamed of together. Still, no matter how difficult and sometimes lonely it was, she would never give up on her little boy and hoped that that smile on his lips would last forever.
Inuyasha — the older one — sat up abruptly, opening his eyes as the pleasant memory began to take on more bitter tones as that smell that had now spread throughout the hut. He only wished he could remember his mother's smile, which sometimes, after all this time, seemed fainter, or that loving look she reserved for him. But it was always too good to be true, and he soon found himself thinking of the time when — shortly after learning — he had to prepare the medicine for her, to no avail, because the illness that afflicted her had no cure.
Whenever he remembered her, he tried to go back only to happy memories, but those darker thoughts kept sneaking into his mind, trying to contaminate the one good thing about his childhood. And so, in those cases, he preferred not to think about her at all.
When he reached the main room, the one used as a kitchen because of the large brazier in the middle, he found another woman with long black hair next to it, stirring the source of that memory. And next to her was a little girl with slightly lighter but still dark hair; without knowing it, she was replicating his own gestures when the strong drink had first been presented to him.
"Yuck! Mama, what's this stuff?" exclaimed Moroha, five years old and already her father's double.
Kagome shook her head as she laughed up her sleeves and kept mixing the ingredients. Then she raised her head, noticing Inuyasha, and gave him a look full of mock disapproval as if to say 'this is all your fault'. He shrugged and then sat next to his daughter, taking her in his arms and wrinkling his nose at the now much stronger smell.
"What's Mama up to, Moroha?" he asked, tickling her belly and forcing her to laugh and let go of the tiny hands covering her face. "You're not sick, are you?" he added then, worried, smelling her and looking for something wrong.
"It's for you," Kagome informed him without preamble. "Don't think I didn't notice that cold when you came back last night from your exorcism with Miroku."
"But I never get sick!" he exclaimed, shocked. "And I'm not drinking that stuff!"
"Oh, no?" the priestess arched an eyebrow. "Moroha, what do you think of your dad not wanting to drink his medicine? Would it please you if he stayed that sick?"
"W-what?" the little girl asked before turning her dark eyes — the same as her mother's — on her father. And he had never been able to resist either of them. The half-demon gulped as he watched his daughter's lip protrude and tremble. "But Mama and Grandma Kaede always say it hurts and... and... If you don't heal then-" She sniffed and couldn't complete the sentence as Inuyasha was already panicking, thinking of a thousand different ways to fix it.
"No, Moroha. It's obvious that, if you're sick, you have to drink the medicine!" he stuttered, waving the hand that wasn't currently busy clutching his daughter to him. "Of course I'll drink mine. See?" he showed her the cup Kagome had promptly brought to him, already knowing the outcome of that conversation. "Now I'm going to down it all in one gulp." He swallowed it all without a whimper, making a hideous grimace that he then tried to cover with a smile that actually made it worse and cursed himself because he hadn't thought of covering his nose.
That concoction sucked even more than he remembered; it was funnier when other people drank it. And Kagome must have felt the same way since she was giggling.
Ignoring his wife for a moment, he turned back to his daughter. "That's it! I feel rejuvenated; I'm not sick anymore," he told her.
"Really?!" the little one asked happily as she stood up and pulled her father by the arm. "Then, you can come and play with the twins and me; you'll be our prisoner," she informed him enthusiastically.
Inuyasha would have liked to appear sorry for this latest development, but he wasn't at all: any opportunity was good to spend time with his daughter. In the meantime, he remembered well the times when he, a lot of inches shorter, had pulled the hand and led, and it had been his mother who had followed.
After all, he told himself, it was not difficult to remove those dark thoughts from his mind every time he thought of her. Perhaps, it was time to visit her grave again soon.
Behind them, smiling, Kagome watched everything and thought that a mother's tools were always infallible, no matter how old the child in her care was.