Title: Questions
Author: Tsubasa Kya
Disclaimer: I do not own "Inuyasha". If I did, I'd be far more frivolous than I am already.

WARNING: This may seem out of character. This takes place after the defeat of Naraku. It has no definitive main pairing. It is complete as-is.

Questions

You have dared to pick up my scroll. For your daring audacity at doing such, I will answer one question—any question you may have. All you need to do is write your question on the scroll, mark it with your initials, and return this scroll to the hole in the tree. Leave the scroll for one fortnight in time and return to find your answer.

It was the strangest thing, and all that was on the parchment. Sesshoumaru felt an expression of indulgence cross his face—although not a very big one—as he watched the young woman hold the parchment open for his inspection.

"Where did you find this, Rin?" he asked the girl. They had not been long at their current place of residence; with Rin growing and maturing rapidly into a young woman, Sesshoumaru had decided it pertinent to have Rin stop wandering the earth with him.

"In that tree," Rin said, cheerfully pointing at a gnarly, dark looking tree. Small sprigs of green were poking their noses away from the tree. It was a vastly ugly tree. He could almost not stand looking at it, and indeed had thought to slice it down the first time he saw it six days past. "Sesshoumaru-sama, it is a spirit's letter! The spirit is lonely, and we should write to them!"

Sesshoumaru sighed. He had gotten himself into this situation long ago by simply allowing her to follow him in the first place. He should have resisted—told her no. He resigned himself to the fact that even if he had, she would not have listened.

"Get me a quill, and ink," he supposed.

She squealed with delight and raced into her tiny little hovel. He knew she didn't understand her words and how they affected him. He denied any care for the girl, but what if she was right and the parchment truly was a spirit's letter? It was possible it could attempt to take possession of the fool who would write in the parchment.

Still, after six years most certainly not caring for the girl, he couldn't resist but to indulge her whims. After all, he had ordered a human boy to marry her (at the threat of death if something happened to her, not that he really cared) when she said she liked him… maybe that one was taken a little too literally, but Rin was happy and the boy was petrified. It somehow…fit.

Rin came bounding out of the house, past her eventual-husband who was chopping firewood, and she had a quill and inkpot in her hands. She raced up to him again and he raised one eyebrow. "A writing tray? Or would you presume I write on the soil?"

Rin laughed and ran back inside. It had been so amusing to order the boy—Intaro was his name—to marry Rin. He simply walked up to the boy's family and said, "Your son will marry Rin." The family gave the boy up quicker than a dead corpse, the boy paled, and then he mutely followed Sesshoumaru, Rin, and Jaken from the human village.

The two of them were still no more than children, but Jaken and Ah-Uhn were able to take care of most of the things that Rin and Intaro could not, making Sesshoumaru able to wander the lands freely without worry for Rin's safety…not that he worried at all anyway.

Still, they had not been long at their current location. Jaken was attempting to patch a hole in the abandoned hut's roof. Ah-Uhn was off hunting for that night's dinner. And Intaro was still chopping firewood. Sesshoumaru had been preparing to leave for a time. A month maybe.

Rin came back and set the required items in front of Sesshoumaru, holding the parchment open. "I want to ask why butterflies like flowers so much!" Rin chirped. It was a good thing he had enforced her to never write on possibly suspicious items… otherwise there could be trouble. He wrote the question swiftly on the parchment.

"You are to wait upon my return." He said as he did as the instructions said and initialed it. "Return it to the tree and do not touch it." Rin nodded. She breathed on the ink carefully and he stood straight again. Without another word, he turned and walked away.

"Bye, Lord Sesshoumaru!" Rin yelled. "Come back soon!"

He did not come back soon. Unfortunately on his way to return, he got waylaid by a certain argumentative brother of his and simply could not resist the chance to goad his brother into a fight. That lasted a good twelve hours at least, after which he and his brother both were too prideful to admit they were fairly beat up. They went separate ways after that, and Sesshoumaru completely forgot he had been about to return to Rin, so he spent another two weeks wandering aimlessly and fighting whoever felt like challenging him.

By the time he returned, Rin was so worked up over the letter that the minute she saw him she bolted to the tree and came back with the parchment. Intaro watched her mutely from where he was chopping firewood.

"Butterflies are attracted to the sweet nectar of flowers. That is their food source." Rin read from the parchment. "Oh, wow!" Rin said happily. "This paper is so smart!"

Sesshoumaru glared at Rin as she went and got the tray again. "How about this question!" she said, holding the parchment for him. Again, he indulged her rather reluctantly and wrote her question down. It would certainly be simpler to answer the questions himself, but nothing happened the first time, so he assumed nothing would happen the rest of the times.

And so for the next four years, Sesshoumaru found himself alternatively wandering and killing, or writing on a piece of paper. He gradually stayed longer and longer from Rin's home, and one day when he returned, he found a big surprise waiting for him. Rin had calmed down a great deal, and as she came to greet him, she carried a small little boy in her arms.

It almost was strange to him. Wasn't it yesterday when she barely stood to his waist?

"Lord Sesshoumaru," Rin said happily, though much more sedately than she used to speak.

"Where did this thing come from?" Sesshoumaru asked her and was rewarded with her laughter.

"It has been a year since I saw you, Lord Sesshoumaru. Some small things have changed around here." Had it really been so long? He wondered… Yes, it must have been. Then the child had settled Rin quite nicely into adulthood. He turned to leave, but Rin called after him. "Aren't you curious?" he heard her ask.

He paused in his step, waiting for her to elaborate. She did, as expected of her. That much of her had not changed. "His name is Sesshoumaru."

"Such a name is not fit for a human," Sesshoumaru scorned her lightly, but she only smiled. "Do as you like," he told her. Somehow he felt almost as if he were intruding, and he couldn't wait to get away. She wasn't a little girl anymore… There was no reason for him to be there. He started to walk away.

Rin did not call to him as she used to do, and did not tell him to return as soon as possible. It was a good thing she hadn't, because he couldn't be sure he would have left if she had, that way she couldn't grow older if he watched her. It was a stupid notion, but even the great and mighty were allowed stupid notions, weren't they?

He, at least, did not voice his. That meant he could have all that he wanted and no one would feel less of him for it. His image would not be damaged for them. Late that night, as Jaken and Ah-Uhn slept guard, and Intaro and Rin slept with their child Sesshoumaru, Sesshoumaru crept through Rin's carefully maintained garden and to that dark and forbidding tree. He reached in the squirrel hole and pulled the parchment out, struggling to unroll it with one hand.

As he sat under the tree and read the words, he saw Rin had taken it upon herself to begin asking the questions after he had been gone for so long with no sign of his return. Her handwriting wasn't as neat as his, but it was easy to read by the light of the full moon.

When he reached the end of the words, he saw there was still much unwritten space on the parchment. He shook his head. It was simply a child's trick paper of some long forgotten demon or priestess or something.

He never conceded to all the knowledge in the world, but he felt it was harmless. He put the parchment back in the hole and made his way away from Rin and where she would dwell out the rest of her days. Somehow after he left that last time, the days became silent and the nights were cold and lonely though he had never noticed before.

Three months later, he met his brother and though his brother was reared for a fight, Sesshoumaru declined and asked if there was anything he could do for Inuyasha. Inuyasha thought it was a trick question and was highly offended. He didn't see his brother again for many years and by the time he did, all Inuyasha's human friends would have died of the years. Sesshoumaru vowed not to think of how old Rin must have been at the time, or if she and her family were even still alive.

At that time, Inuyasha asked, "You still open for time?"

Sesshoumaru watched his brother with a mute expression on his face. "I am. Is there anything I can do for you?" The cold, lonely nights…the silent days… Inuyasha was feeling that too, Sesshoumaru could see visibly.

Inuyasha tilted his head toward his crudely built home and Sesshoumaru entered. The inside was neatly kept, even if the outside did look like nothing more than a pile of wood stacked unevenly. Inuyasha served sake of a rather pungent brand, and the two sat in silence as they drank.

When Sesshoumaru left, Inuyasha stammered for a proper goodbye before settling on, "Keh."

Sesshoumaru's response was, "Intelligent as always, I see," but Inuyasha didn't take it offensively. He scratched one ear and Sesshoumaru left to wander once more. Days passed and then months. Seasons passed and then years. Sesshoumaru never saw Inuyasha alive after that. He died during a particularly cold winter, and Sesshoumaru thought it a great shame that one such as his brother would fall to the weather.

However, he made the necessary arrangements for Inuyasha's funeral and buried his brother beside Inuyasha's mother's grave. Inuyasha did not leave behind any children, and after so many years, the monk and slayer's descendants forgot the half-breed, so he had been alone in death, as now Sesshoumaru was entirely in life.

It was with a strangely heavy heart that one day, many centuries after Inuyasha's death, Sesshoumaru found his feet retracing the steps he had once walked to where he left Rin and Intaro. When he made it there, he found an abandoned mansion where Rin's house had once been, and a vacant village of buildings to the south of the house.

The main street of the empty village lead up to the front of the mansion, and he followed it mindlessly. Snow blanketed the street, undisturbed save for animal tracks. He searched it all, not entirely certain what he was trying to find. Eventually he found himself in the garden where that gnarly tree still stood, looking even more ominous now. He pulled the parchment out and went inside to open it.

The parchment was free of any markings except that of age and animal nibbles around the edges, and a solitary paragraph marking how to use the paper. Using items he found in the main study, he was able to prop the paper open. As he thought about what he could write on it, simply for the sake of writing being a task more interesting than doing nothing, he searched the study for an ink bar and plate.

He scratched the ink bar on the plate until he had a fine gathering of dusty ink, then spat saliva onto the plate and mixed it up so he would have ink to write with. He found an old quill and dipped it in the ink before writing on the paper.

Why do you answer questions? The question was simple. He almost smiled at its simplicity, perhaps he would have if his face didn't hurt when he smiled. He signed his initials and then he sat waiting for the ink to dry so he could return the parchment to the hole.

After a quarter hour of sitting, he rolled up the parchment and took it back outside. Then, after a fortnight, he returned and opened the parchment inside the rundown mansion. He found a curious answer to his question.

Why do you ask questions?

He leaned back and thought about that. Why did people ask questions? What purpose did it serve? He had to sit there, brooding about that for a week, and he could understand now why whatever it was that answered questions waited a week before it did so. He once more made ink so that he could write to the curious other creature.

You did not answer my question. Why should I answer yours?

It was another week before he went to the hole and got his answer. On it was a list of questions, signed with his initials. All of them were answered, all of them had been Rin's questions. At the bottom was a simple statement. I have answered many of yours. When will you answer one of mine?

He looked thoughtfully at the parchment, his ink already prepared before he put the quill tip to the paper.