As Time Goes By

Life never really turns out how you plan it, mused Kurama as he sat on one of the many balconies of Yusuke's palace.

It started out normally enough, barely three months after Yusuke's return he and Keiko had married one another and quickly settled into family life with an ease that astonished everyone. Genkai lived to see them married and to hold their first child, a girl they named Genkai, much to the woman's outward annoyance and inner delight.

She died quietly in her sleep three days later.

A year later Kuwabara and Yukina married and began reproducing much to Hiei's dismay. Especially when little orange haired Rui happily insisted calling him Uncle Hiei.

Marriage seemed to be heavy in the air in those early years. Koenma and Ayame married one another; Botan vanished for a month and came back happily in wedded bliss with Shishiwakamaru of all people.

The next year Yomi won the Makai Tournament and also won himself a Queen, who insured that the no eating humans policy stayed in place, since she herself was human. Everyone had given a little shudder at the thought of Shizuru in power.

The most surprising was when a rather drunken Chu drunkenly asked Atsuko to marry him, well, he asked the wall three feet to the left and two inches up, but she got the idea and cheerfully accepted, again, technically she gave her acceptance the cushion four feet to the right of Chu, but I digress.

Kurama had settled into a life of friends and work and had pretty much been content with that until one evening when coming home he found Maya standing on his doorstep. She'd turned to him and smiled cheerfully, while waving a piece of paper with what he suspected would be the directions to his house in his mother's hand writing at him. He smiled back and invited her in. It went from there.

Nearly seven years after Yusuke's return, Kurama noticed something odd when he visited. Hiei was always there. First he would just be decorating a window sill or occasionally the couch but now his shoes were right next to Keiko's and Yusuke's in the hallway and he would be either in the kitchen or in the living room helping with the kids.

Then came the day when Kurama showed up on laundry day, he smirked now, remembering Keiko's adorable blush when he found her folding not only hers and Yusuke and the kids clothes but Hiei's as well.

He'd also felt smugly superior when everyone else was gaping in shock when Keiko's third child ended up having black, gravity defying hair and gentle brown eyes. Though Kurama wasn't nearly as smug when Hiei and Yusuke brought out babies four and five. It would seem that multiples were common among fire demons.