2242
(Forty-five years later.)
Hiei knocked on the door of Yukina's quarters, and waited while she put away whatever secret project she had spent the last month hiding from him, and moved his hand in a minimalistic wave when she opened the door.
She wore a simple, solid blue outfit, and her hair was kept in a braid. She filled the cramped crew room with a familiar kind of warmth, just as she had on the two other transport vessels they had jointly owned over the years.
Hiei moved his head aft, toward the holo-projector chamber that had finally gone commercial enough to be reasonably priced. "Take a walk with me."
She nodded with mock duty and purpose, and followed behind as he strode down the tight hallway that ran the full length of the ship.
It hadn't been hard to adjust to this hierachial system of captain and mate, surprisingly. Yukina followed Hiei's instructions with complete trust, and kept the other, temporary crewmembers in line with kind words and expectant pauses.
And Hiei maybe understood a fraction of what Yukina meant about breaking.
They took walks inside the program Hiei had written to be like Genkai's old stomping grounds, talking about people they had known and, in Yukina's case, the minutiae of quirks and habits of the husbands she had had.
They talked about the past, and the future – full-blood Japanese were rare, now, which made their appearance striking, which made them susceptible to suspicion and discovery – and the present.
They weren't safe. They weren't especially happy or unhappy. But there was a kind of contentment that came with knowing each other so long and working so well and having a connection strong as the concrete no respectable contractor used anymore.
Yukina stood on top of a mountain and looked out over Old Tokyo. She cross her arms and smiled. "I miss my old home, sometimes."
Hiei had been waiting for that go-ahead for a long time. With a few quick transactions on the terminal suddenly present in the fabric of the scenery, he gave Yukina back the ownership of the house she had lived in for two hundred years.
He came back to stand with her, and the terminal wrote itself out of the program.
They stayed for a while, and then Hiei said, "I told you so."
She laughed, and knocked her shoulder against his. "I'm making you something. Us, really. It was going to be a surprise, but now I guess I just have to tell you."
She squinted, and found the place where her house was. She could spot it by second nature. "In about…a week, I'll be done with the program, and we'll be able to see them again."
Hiei stared at her solemnly. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
There were diseases, syndromes of people going into holo-imaging programs and not coming back out willingly.
She smiled. "We have each other to restrain us. And it's not the real them; just how I remember them. And you can change it, program in how they fought. None of the behavior will be a surprise, but it will be… something."
He gazed out at the city, and just nodded. It would be pleasant.
And they faced forever together.