This is the end...well, it's more of an epilogue really. All the major secrets that I felt like revealing (and that the story allowed for me to reveal) are now to be fully disclosed. Finally you get the big surprise I've been hinting at. finally you find out who the last Tumiko Takahashi character in diguise is. Nobody even guessed at it. REally, I would've thought it was obvious. heh! So funny.

And so I write the last AN for this fic. It's really sad you know? I've been posting this one fic for over a year. and I've managed to make some awesome friends! It's been a long year. I wasn't sure I'd ever get this thing finished, but now that I have...well it's certainly a boost of confidence!

A while back I hinted at another fic I've been working on. Everytime I think I'm actually getting somewhere, some form of block or other leaps up to hit me in the head. It's sad too because when I first began writing it I just poured out 6 or 7 chapters with no trouble... then I hit chapter 10 and... well I won't go into how many times I had to restart it. Hopefully I'll have it done and started posting it before I leave for grad school in the fall. It would definitely be awesome after all.

As for grad school... well I'm still in limbo. No school has yet said a definite yes or no yet. Everybody seems to be waiting for my GREs. It's painful that they do that you know. And it's difficult that I have to wait 6 weeks for the score report for a test I took on a scan tron, but that's the way it is and in the meantime I'll just work and write and see how it goes. Maybe I'll take a creative writing class... It may come as a shock, but I've never taken one, though I helped my roommate with hers. Hell we came up with so many story ideas she still hasn't written them all. Don't ask. I'll talk your ear off.

Enjoy this final chapter. Let me know what you think and don't be afraid to drop me a line sometime. REread as many times as you want and I'll "see" you around. Maybe after I've made my attempt at something original if not sooner!

Oh and just because I did it at the end of my last fic,

This person writing another fic would be:

a) a reason for reading.
b)a reason to avoid it.
c)a matter of indifference.

Goodbye for now lovely readers, it's been a blast. Hmm, maybe I could be tempted with a few side stories to this though. spoofs and whatnot. I did leave a lot out after all!

For Fear of Little Men

Tuck watched as the young Sesshoumaru and even Younger Aki disappeared into the well for the last time. Kanna stood by to seal the well properly now that the timelines were as balanced as they ever would be. Three on this side and three just sent to that. At least that's what she insisted had to happen and in her strange way of knowing things, they'd not been foolish enough to argue that. Sesshoumaru, Aki and the pup she carried had to go to the past and Inuyasha, Kagome and the Naraku tree stayed here. History had shown that this was what happened.

He had just forgotten the reasons that manufactured this particular end. Inuyasha and the Naraku tree could have been just as easily sent through the well as Aki and her child. But Aki's health demanded a cleaner environment despite the heightened dangers on that end. Kanna insisted that if Aki were exposed to them over the slow increase of time, she would be fine by the time her life circled back around to this time once again. That, and the marking required the female stay with her mate.

Those were the reasons given to persuade them to leave things this way and Tuck had not questioned them when he was looking at it from that end of the spectrum. But Tuck was no longer so young and unknowing. He was not ignorant of the suffering one such as Aki would be put through just from the knowledge of what was to come.

There was many a time when she knew bad things were to come, revolutions to be had, wars to be fought, and she could say naught of their coming. She could not warn Shippou from his wanderings in the latter half of the eighteenth century. And it was painful to watch as she stayed up late at nights full of worry for a child she had taken on in place of another as they waited for word as to whether he had successfully made it through the violence that had erupted in the country of France.

She could not warn him away from taking their daughter, their precious second child less than a century old, through the American countryside slightly before that. God if only he had listened to her reluctance to let them go. She had not been able to give a reason for him not to take the child or to not go at all, but she had all but begged they cancel the trip altogether.

Sesshoumaru hadn't listened to her; over the years she'd expressed many unexplained periods of reluctance to travel through areas. She'd never told him why and it had angered him slightly that she had kept such secrets from him. After that trip he'd understood. After he'd taken their child into the danger she'd known was there and returned only with the sad knowledge that Aki had been right had he fully understood.

Aki had been taught through all her years of school as a child about many things, reading, ciphering, science and history. It was the history that tormented her so and it was her quiet warnings he'd failed to understand. Those times were dark, but she'd survived them. She'd lost her appetite but he'd helped her through.

Like all the other times their adventures together took a turn for the unpleasant or the painful, they saw each other through.

The worst had come at the beginning of the twentieth century. The first forty years or so had been hell. Aki had become a really picky eater ten years before the first shot was fired in the First World War. Sesshoumaru had taken to hunting up recipes and taught himself cook in order to tempt her to eat. AS he started to get really good at it she dubbed him Tuck and the name stuck.

He'd never even realized it until then, that he and the cook he'd been so suspicious of was himself. He'd expressed this thought to her one night in her last pregnancy, the pregnancy that came after the Second World War. She'd just given him a warm smile and rubbed at the growing indication of life on her front. He suspected she'd known all along.

In total Aki had gifted him with three children, the first of which, the one she was pregnant with now wasn't even their child by blood. It was a phoenix, and a more annoying brat there never was.

Haku, it seemed, had been so impressed by Aki in the short time he'd known her after his death he had chosen her to be his next mother regardless of who the father happened to be. Sesshoumaru hadn't been sure if he should feel insulted by this or not until the whelp was old enough to do more than suckle and sleep. Then he'd known the little beast for what he was.

The moment the child could grasp onto her hair or clothing that was all he did. It was fair impossible to get Aki alone that first hundred years after his birth. The little imp would allow no one to garner her attention unless it was another child she had taken into her care, and sometimes even that wasn't allowed.

As the boy grew older, time Sesshoumaru could claim Aki to himself became less frequent until all he could do was count down the days until he could kick Haku off his lands and try again for a child of his and Aki's blood. He should have known better. The phoenix reached two hundred and away he was sent but at great cost in the long run.

Tuck shook his silver head. Aki had thrown a fit the moment she found out the boy had been removed from her keeping and in the heat of her anger she gathered up the remaining children she had claimed as her own and she too left his company. It took him two years to find her again and three months beyond that to persuade her to let him mark her again.

He left the wooden house built to protect the old well to Kanna and her chanting. It was not business he needed involvement in anyway.

It was that second mating contract that produced their ill-fated daughter. She had been so precious and adorable. Like her mother she was quick with her words and her little green eyes seemed to catch everything. Like her father she had almost instantly hated Haku when she first met him at twenty-five.

His respite from the phoenix was really, only fifty years. Why he had thought it would last longer he didn't know. Luckily for him, Haku singed his bridges with his chosen mother almost instantly upon reuniting with her.

Apparently the love of reading she passed on to all her wards had helped this prodigal son stumble upon a piece of literature he quite liked, something about Oedipus or what not. In any case, Haku took it, or parts of it, as his gospel and desired to push them into being with his own mother. A handful of words to the woman that had carried him from the ashes of his death and she'd laid him out cold on the ground.

Aki was apparently against incest, not that the boy had ever given up. A more determined suitor there never was, unless Sesshoumaru counted. Which he didn't because Sesshoumaru had never been an unwanted suitor.

Aki's third child had been born in the late forties, along with all of the humans born in celebration at the end of the war. He'd thought at least then she'd be willing to travel to her native country. He knew she missed it and he desired their son to know the people from which he'd come. It was obvious to him that the humans had no desire to engage in war to that magnitude for a long while.

Aki had again refused, this time with a rueful smile. She'd surprised him but this time gave him a reason. So close to her original time she feared accidentally changing something important. It would be so easy to change something monumental, something that could erase her very existence.

Sesshoumaru pondered this and realized that there was a possibility of doing something much worse, something that would completely change Aki's life and keep her from ever needing to move to Japan and through the well.

Even so, he convinced her to meet her family. Tricked her into it more like. She never got to know them or really talked with them, but she met all the important members in their course. The way Sesshoumaru saw it, it was inevitable, and it was good for their son.

Their son who had failed to grow at a reasonable rate…

None of Sesshoumaru and Aki's children had matured as quickly as she had growing up as a human, but with each successive birth before the last, they had grown more quickly than this last son.

He had watched as decades passed and Aki taught their boy how to dance each of the new crazes and never once did he grow tall enough to look over her shoulder. Sesshoumaru watched and he worried. Aki's health, while not as severe as the first time he had seen her in her own time, was not particularly strong. While her healing ability had turned out to be excellent when she wasn't pregnant and low on energies, as the various pollutions began to increasingly fill the air more of her energy was diverted to cleaning her air and healing from what damage was still incurred despite her instinctive efforts. He feared she would physically be unable to properly shield a child with such constant "special" needs as their son and his slow growth.

So, after forty years of no observable change he approached Kanna. The dead miko had stuck around long enough to see through the end of Aki's first pregnancy and trained her replacement, just as she had promised. Kanna had been that replacement, and her unique gift for healing had never been understood by anyone but Aki. Only Kanna had continued to heal throughout the wars and manufacturing changes and only she had bothered to develop new ways of healing as advances were made to allow them. Consequently, she had discovered a way to speed limb regeneration in youkai too stupid to keep their limbs intact.

Other healers had expounded upon her method to create a "cure" for his son's unique ailment.

Kanna had been against it. Her reasons had seemed ridiculously inane and unsupported. AT least when compared against his worries for Aki. The treatment would not harm his son and he argued that the boy could not want to seem so young for so much of his life.

He and the healer had argued about it, back and forth for nearly a decade when the healer put forth the idea of taking care of the child herself if he was so reluctant to let him grow at his own rate. Sesshoumaru had completely refused the first time it was brought up, but as it was obvious the healer who had been so slow to age herself would not administer the treatment he desired and it eliminated his fears for Aki's health he conceded to the boy moving in to the youkai house of healing that had been Mouse's domain since its inception.

Aki had stayed barely long enough to see the boy removed from her care. She'd spoken not a word to him as she turned and left. Their contract severing the moment the child's care was no longer theirs to share.

Tuck had never known such prolonged torment or fear in his long, long life. He'd feared she would do herself harm until he remembered her promises made long before they'd met and reinforced at the first opportunity after they returned through the well. Well, actually he'd promised that so long as she kept her promise to never die easy he promised not to die first… After Kikyou tried to stick him with a holy arrow for not returning the pieces of Aki's soul sooner. The demon slayer had gotten in a few good blows as well, upset that her brother's sacrifice had not been treated more respectfully. He had not bothered to fight back, he deserved it and Aki hadn't bothered to hold them back. But she had not joined them either.

It wasn't until he met the young Aki right after her youkai blood had been exposed that he remembered about her curse. Remembered its deadly side effects. At first he'd believed the curse had not struck his Aki because neither he nor their children had died. Then he remembered a half forgotten conversation in the snow between Aki and her ghost, one where she apologized for not dieing. One in which she'd declared that if she had died, they wouldn't have.

It was his constant nightmare. One he had no way of combating for he had no way of locating her, of checking on her. Mouse held a grudge against him for wanting to interfere with the natural growth of his son. Data usually denied they shared blood at all and Loki's people were wary about him since the ruckus over territories arose after the young Aki had been identified. They still didn't trust that he had refused Windy's bid to take over their stewardship of that section of Tokyo for no reason they could see.

They didn't know he'd already known Loki was to have the care of Aki's residence. They didn't need to know He'd not supported Kagura once she confessed doubt in her ability to see Aki, to know what was coming and not attempt to warn her.

He sympathized with her, he did. Had Aki even once Asked what was to come he would have told her unable to deny her anything in his joy to be in her presence after such a long time without it. His Aki had left him for nearly a decade before and nearly that long before that she had not really been with him.

Tuck finally made it down the steps in front of the shrine. The way had never seemed so steep or so long as when it was his turn to leave her behind.

In front of him was his parked car, though the metal carriage was not alone. Windy stood before him, her hip leaning against the passenger side door as she played with her fan absently. Her long time partner in life sat tensely on the hood of his car staring down the road that lead to places other than here.

"Is she gone?" Hanako asked. The youkai bunny had long ago given up on obtaining Aki's heart for herself. It hadn't taken more than two hundred years for it to finally sink in. By then she had formed a steady relationship with the wind youkai that held a similar feeling for Aki. It was why they had lasted so long. Each understood that their first love was Aki and neither would argue about it.

Tuck nodded solemnly as he leaned against the car next to the fidgeting wind demoness.

Hanako heaved a great sigh, "Finally," she breathed and the taiyoukai quirked an eyebrow at her. She didn't bother to elaborate. True she may live on his lands, and Kagura may be one of his stewards as it were, but the people under them, the lost children that flocked to them were theirs. And she'd found that gay men weren't that perverse. At least, not as perverse as every other male, she tended to look after them more. They tended to need more care. Hanako snorted and glanced meaningfully at her partner.

Windy sighed and flicked a folded piece of paper up between her index and middle finger and hold out towards the inu. "Just a brief warning," she began as he took it from her with a puzzled expression. "She's exhausted. She's been fighting that curse for the last three years for all of us and just received the okay to stop."

His gaze at the demoness took on a strong light of confused hope as the two females moved away from his car and down the road. Tuck watched them, one Aki's adopted daughter the other her would-be lover. If they had known where she was all this time, there was no fear that harm had befallen her, as neither would allow it.

He climbed into his car and finally glanced down at the paper they'd slipped to him. An address was written on one side and nothing more. He didn't need anything more. Sesshoumaru had watched Tokyo grow up from its infancy as a couple small human villages sprawling into each other over time. It was strange to watch as things matured into the way they were now. He knew Aki had been plenty happy when some of the products she'd been born with had begun showing up in the world.

She'd been very good at investing in some of the strangest and most farfetched things. He could remember when she bought into Scott's toilet paper. Oh the incredulous comments she had received over that. Or the money she'd invested in Hershey and manufactured toothbrushes. No one had believed those would take off, and then they did. Of course Aki had made sure to invest in companies he was certain she'd known would go out of business to suspicions down. And the money she earned had been used to set up orphanages in several different countries. She'd also made sure to supply the wolves with the money needed to buy up the land they shared with the native peoples when the time came. None of it had been easy. The wolves had not wanted to leave the country, but had needed the space. The natives had not wanted to trust more pale-faced people, but wolves they believed they could trust.

He stopped at a light and let his mind wander further. He wondered if she had kept her hair long. Over the years Aki had adjusted her look to fit with the times. He'd especially loved the seventies with its long hair and love of natural things, though he preferred the more traditional clothes. The sixties had been quite harrowing he dragged her on a tour of Europe and because many parts of that continent was experiencing a certain type of revolution, the clothes became far more revealing than he was comfortable with. Not on him of course but on her. He never wanted another male to see that much of her perfect skin. She'd just laughed at him and danced some more with their son.

The car behind him honked at him. The light was green and he made a left, resolving to get there before dissolving in memory again. He pulled up to her building and turned off his car.

Tuck had to wonder why she always seemed to get an apartment. She could afford a house, hell a mansion, but always it was an apartment. Perhaps she liked the atmosphere of being separate but together, alone but not. For he doubted she'd allowed anyone to distract her as she protected her family this time around.

Tuck climbed the stair, his hard soled shoes tapping lightly on the bare steps. The light glowing warm and bright devoid of flickers and instincts indicated this was a good building, kept in perfect repair by its management. Distantly he heard a knocking as he opened the door to her floor. The hallway was carpeted and muffled his footsteps as he approached the smell of food and the repeated knocking.

Glancing up, Tuck saw someone he hadn't expected to see holding a tray of food outside a firmly closed door. Haku turned to him with surprise, his bare feet barely shifting as he greeted the man who happened to be his father this time around.

The boy's bright red hair stuck out in all directions, ever untamable, though he suspected it was made especially so this night due to it's being slept on. Haku socked a half smile his way; "She wouldn't let me move in, but couldn't stop me from taking the place down the hall."

Tuck shook his head, "Why didn't she just leave then?" he asked. When Aki didn't want to be found and someone got too close she moved on, usually.

"I wasn't the one who gave her baby away without permission," Haku snorted. "She kept in touch with Data you know. Never let him go a day when he didn't hear from her."

Tuck blinked mildly at the phoenix that had never been particularly good with tact, especially when it came to conversation between them. To be honest, he had never truly thought of it that way. He really hadn't discussed it with Aki before bringing it up with Mouse.

"She would have accepted the hardship you know," Haku declared. "She would have accepted it with a smile. She saw nothing wrong with him maturing so slowly; she wasn't worried about getting tired or getting ill. She wouldn't have allowed it to happen. You know Aki, she would have rose to the challenge for him like she did for all of us."

"I know," Tuck answered tiredly. "I did not want her to have to do that."

"But you did not give her the choice," Haku glared at him.

"The past is past," Tuck shook his head. "What is this here?"

"She hasn't eaten today," Haku grumbled.

"And you try to tempt her with Spaghettio's?" Tuck sounded incredulous.

"Not all of us happen to be four star chefs," the boy grumbled.

"I doubt it matters," Tuck patted the phoenix on the shoulder. "She tends not to eat much when she's tired. Let her rest and her appetite will return."

Haku gave him a weird look but shrugged it off and returned down the hall to his own apartment with the tray of cooling spaghettio's.

Tuck shook his head before turning to face the door alone. He didn't bother to knock, if Aki were up to opening it herself she would have done so already, not wanting to hurt the feelings of her son.

He found the door unlocked and let himself in. After removing his shoes, he crept carefully through the small apartment enshrouded in shadows. The sun was setting and no lights had been turned on to combat the darkness. Tuck followed the scent that had always brought him so much comfort and protected his sanity on more than one occasion. It lead into the total darkness of her bedroom.

He removed his jacket and set it over the back of a chair followed by his watch and hair tie. The silver cascaded down his back with a toss and he stepped into the sanctuary of premature night in her room. His eyes adjusted quickly and he prowled forward once again after spying her curled up in the middle of the full size bed.

Her hair curled around her in its lengthy unrestrained glory and her knees tucked up under her chin comfortably, her breathing even and easy. Carefully he moved her hair out of his way and wrapped his arms about her as he used to do.

She was thinner than he remembered her being after their last son and she did not relax into his arms as he desired but she was there and it was a start. With a smile he remembered the first time he'd had to coax words from her and the mark he'd been allowed to make.

"Been to visit your 'Sky animals' lately?" Tuck asked her softly.

"No fair bringing that up," she grumbled tiredly. Over the years whenever they had seriously argued or she had been seriously shaken about something, they always went back to her animals in the sky.

"I visited with them today," he told her with a smile.

"Oh, here it comes," Aki muttered, smiling despite herself.

"I was asking them how I might apologize for forgetting something I was taught so very long ago," he continued.

Aki turned over to face him, "And?"

"They simply told me not to do it again," he shrugged. "They really weren't very helpful. Normally they're so much better at it." Tuck frowned playfully. "So I decided I would simply have to tell you that while I may become more senile in my increasing years." Here she scoffed at him knowing he wasn't really being serious now because he always protested any comment about his age. "Though I can forget the most incredibly impossible of things, I will always remember Aki." He grinned ruefully at her; "I may even need her around to remember things for me and to keep me in shape. I have grown fat without you around."

"Oh please if either one of us gets fat, it'll be me," Aki laughed.

"Only with help of course," Tuck smirked. "Would you like some? I could go for another one."

"Sesshoumaru," Aki started tiredly.

"May I mark you?" He asked in a tender whisper.

With a shake of her head she asked the same question she always did, "Why?"

"Because this Sesshoumaru never wishes to be without Aki," he replied. Always he replied with a different answer. He hoped he would eventually give the right answer to convince her to let him give her that final mark. The one that would tie him to her and her to him for the rest of their lives. "It hurts when you are gone," he added. "Besides, we need to have a united front when Inuyasha and Kagome get back, they'll need a good example."

That last part was just a joke, she knew, but the first part had been very real, as had all the rest of his answers. Each was just as sincere and just as well thought out. It made her wonder how much time he spent thinking about the question over and over again. "You're incorrigible," she declared affectionately. Truth be told, she hurt without him too. Perhaps this once it was okay to believe in forever. They'd lasted five hundred years even with their brief little spats and the few that were not so brief as well. They'd remained true to each other without fail.

"May I mark you?" he simply asked again with a smile.

She smiled back at him, "Maybe tomorrow. I'm no good for anything without at least that much sleep."

With a surprised and happy chuckle he cuddled her close and smiled his way into the special world where only they and those invited could play. It was wonderful to return there when the key had been lost for so many years before. It was a dream of the past, a dream of the future and a dream eternally shared between them. Maybe now he could convince her to go visit that old tree in reality…