Disclaimer: The stories and places mentioned in this story that come from The Vampire Diaries or InuYasha: A Feudal Fairy Tail do not belong to me.
["Text appearing like this is being spoken in Japanese."]

The name Mine is pronounced Mee-nay

Epilogue: Snapshots

1 year later

Damon watched his new wife dancing with her son, looking radiant in her lace gown while his new mother-in- law took 5000 more pictures of anything and everything. He fought the urge to pinch himself, because that was silly, and stood to cut in and catch another dance with his new bride. He spun her around and caught her in his arms, her radiant smile leaving him breathless.

"Hello Mrs. Salvatore."

She blushed and giggled and snuggled up to his chest as he swayed with her to the slow piano music playing in the background.

"Hello new husband."

Damon felt like his grin would split his face in half.

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It was a mere two months after their wedding that they received a summons from Sesshoumaru. To come all the way to Japan. The plane ride had been long and exhausting, but they'd had no chance to just rest, as Sesshoumaru had insisted on seeing them immediately upon their arrival.

"This better be good." Damon grumped, stretching to work out the kink that had formed between in his shoulders from first the long plane ride, then the long cab ride through Tokyo traffic.

"Sesshoumaru wouldn't have called us out here like this if it wasn't." They leaned wearily against the elevator walls on their way up to sesshoumau's office, too tired to feel any apprehension or nervousness. When they were finally seated in front of his desk, Damon shifted at the blank look on the stoic youkai's face. He'd met Sesshoumaru a few times now, but he still felt uneasy being around someone who could be so blank in every situation. Kagome didn't suffer from the same problem, and she gave the being that she had come to love as a brother a warm greeting.

"Salvatore-San. Miko. Thank you for coming on such short notice."

Damon nodded in acknowledment, trying to get used to the unusual way that Sesshoumaru addressed him. He knew it was traditional here, but he wasn't used to anyone being so formal with him.

"Please understand that I would not have called you here for any matter that was not of the utmost importance."

"Of course Sesshoumaru! We came as quickly as we were able!" Kagome chirped with a sunny smile that perfectly hid the fatigue she felt from their flight.

"Now, as for the reason I called you here. A fortnight ago, a human woman approached me and begged me for assistance. She claimed to know what I was, so I agreed to sit with her and hear her request. She had unknowingly had relations with a youkai, and since this male who had deceived her was weak willed and without even a shred of honor, he left her pregnant and vanished. She was ill equipped to raise and care for a hanyou child, and asked that I help her find the child a home. Since you have already proven able to successfully adopt and raise youkai children, and since you are one of the few people I actually trust, I thought I would ask you first if you might take this child in." Sesshoumaru paused, and Kagome gaped at him as he leaned over pressed a button on his desk telephone, buzzing his receptionist at her desk outside his door.

["Mine, bring the child in."]
["Yes, Sesshoumaru-Sama. Right away!"]

Kagome glanced over at Damon, who had gone pale and was staring blankly at the edge of the desk in front of him. Before she could check on him, the office door opened, and Sesshoumaru's secretary walked in carrying a small, pink bundle which she handed directly to Kagome.

"This is Emi. She is a neko hanyou, and is approximately 1 month old. I shall leave you to get acquainted and make your decision." Kagome gasped as she pushed the blanket around Emi's face back to reveal two tiny, black kitten ears nestled in her thick, raven locks. She knew immediately what she would do if it was just up to her, but since it wasn't, she turned to her husband, who was still staring unseeing at the desk in front of him.

"Damon?" He jolted back to attention, turning to look at her with the beginnings of what looked like panic in his eyes.

"What did he just say?" Kagome fought the urge to giggle at him. It seemed he hadn't even noticed that she was holding the very child Sesshoumaru had just asked them to care for. Instead of repeating everything they'd just heard, she simply passed the small bundle into Damon's arms. He paled further, stiffening and clutching at the infant in a desperate attempt not to drop her.

"Am I... am I a father?"

"Only if you want to be." She reassured him, and it seemed to help him breath a little easier.

"If I want to be? I've never thought about it."

"You haven't?"

"I'm dead Kagome. I can't have kids."

"I know that."

"So this isn't something I ever thought I'd need to consider."

"I understand. It's alright Damon, we don't have to take her if you don't feel ready."

"Her?"

'Wow,' Kagome thought, 'he really missed a lot of information in his panic.'

"Her name is Emi."

Damon looked down at the baby in his arms for the first time. He took in her black hair, her fuzzy ears, her button nose. She began to wake, and blinked her eyes open at him, revealing their bright green color and the fact that they held the same otherworldly feel that Shippo's eyes held. She was enchanting, and it made him feel much calmer, and more panicked at the same time.

"This is a baby."

"She's a kitten."

"What?"

Kagome couldn't have held her giggling back if she'd tried this time. The look on his face was both lost and besotted, and it reminded her so much of the look she'd seen on Miroku's face when she'd handed him the first of many babies that Sango had given him.

"She's a neko hanyou. She's half cat."

Damon searched her little face and eyes once more, then looked over at his wife and took in her glowing expression as she watched him hold the tiny being that was being offered to them. Fatherhood was not something he'd ever considered before. He'd been very young when he'd become a vampire, so children hadn't been on his horizon just yet. And then it was moot since a man who was technically dead couldn't reproduce anyway. There was Shippo, he supposed. But being a step father to a fox boy who was already mostly grown was a world away from raising a newborn as his own. But as he stared back down at the tiny girl looking up at him from his lap, as he watched her wrap her tiny clawed fist around one of his fingers, and as his wife squealed and started snapping photos, he new he was not leaving this country without this baby.

He was a goner.

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Emi's first birthday with them proved just how much of a monster Damon still was deep inside. He had driven everyone absolutely mad in his need to throw his little kitten the perfect birthday party. Even Kagome was ready to string him up by his toes. Shippo had proven himself a traitor as he'd sided with his step father in every battle over the whole cursed affair. He'd secretly been pretty desperate for a sibling, and now that he had one, he helped Damon spoil the little girl absolutely rotten. And that wasn't even including her mother. Shippo had not been a baby when her mother finally got to meet her first grand kit, so when Kagome showed up on the shrine steps with Damon and a kitten eared baby just hours after leaving Sesshoumaru's office, a switch had been flipped and there had been no turning back. It was all Kagome could do to keep her daughter from being a complete little terror.

Watching Damon dote on her made it all mostly worth it, though. He'd taken to fatherhood like a sea otter to water and it was the sweetest thing she'd ever witnessed. Her heart still soared every time she remembered him telling her to let Seashoumaru know that they'd like to be informed of anymore youkai or hanyou children in need of homes. Just when she thought she couldn't love him anymore...

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They had 3 more years of peace before Katherine Pierce showed up to cause trouble again. She simply traipsed up on the front lawn of the Salvatore Mansion, where Kagome, Damon, Shippo and Emi were playing with Elena and Stefan. She stopped cold at the site of the animal eared little girl squealing with laughter as Stefan scooped her up and pretended to eat her. The little girl's words left her even more confused than the presence of the other two people she'd never seen before.

"Uncle Stefan, stop! Save me Aunt Elena, save me!"

"My my, it seems a lot has changed since I last stopped by."

The joyful atmosphere died a quick death as everyone turned their full attention to her. She grinned her signature mischievous grin, trying to figure out just what was going on when Damon took the child from Stefan and held her protectively, the small, black haired woman with him standing alert at his side. It was that woman, Kagome, she'd learned, Damon's wife, who had led her to skip town early. She'd spiked all of her plans at mischief, foiled all of her manipulations. Kept her from getting everything she wanted. Mystic Falls held no fun at all for her. She supposed she could try again when the woman was dead. She was a human woman after all.

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Damon searched his wallet for the accompanying pictures as Emi sat on her Uncle Sesshy's lap and filled him in on every detail of her recent jobs as flowergirl to first Koga and Caroline, and then Stefan and Elena. The soft look in his eyes as he listened raptly was much more evident to Damon now that he'd known him so long. Of course he wasn't surprised, Emi was the cutest after all, who didn't love her?

Kagome sat on the other side of the hospital room, sobbing over the teeny, silver haired boy in her arms. Inuyasha had fallen in love and mated a sweet human woman just a year ago. (Emi had been their flower girl as well, but Sesshoumaru had been to that wedding.) Almost exactly one year to the day that Inuyasha had requested her help, Bonnie had successfully found a way to break his previous bond with Kikyo. He'd moved back to Japan shortly after that, and then traveled from there all over the world as a 'free hanyou.' In South America his heart had been captured again, and now, sleeping on Kagome's lap, was the start of the family he'd always longed for. Kagome was more pleased than she was able to say.

The baby was absolutely perfect. He had his father's silver hair and golden eyes, and his mother's tan skin and round, human ears. Inuyasha beamed with fatherly pride while his mate slept, and Kagome snuggled the new member of their expanding pack and let all the love overwhelming her for her family freely leak from her eyes.

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When Emi was 7, and Shippo had started getting antsy for another sibling, they got a phone call from Seashoumaru that they'd been waiting for. The last call they had passed on to Koga and Caroline, as the child in question was an orphaned full blooded ookami youkai cub who would be much better served with an actual wolf for a father. Stefan and Elena insisted they weren't ready for parenthood yet, so Damon and Kagome rushed off to pick up the newest member of their family. They left Emi with Shippo, and crossed their fingers that their house would at least be standing when they got back.

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Kagome leaned against the doorway to her bedroom, smiling softly at Damon, who was fast asleep with two very small fox kits asleep on his chest. They had been very surprised when they'd arrived and Sesshoumaru had presented them with two babies. He'd not made it very clear that he had twins for them. He probably thought it was amusing watching them scramble to catch up with the fact that they would be taking home two homeless hanyou today instead of just one. But they'd risen to the challenge, and as she watched four little fox ears twitch every time their new father's breath brushed against them, she thought her heart might just burst with her happiness. She soaked in the peace surrounding her, then slipped in to bed and lifted one of the kits off of Damon's chest and snuggled him close. She was going to enjoy every last second of them being this small. She knew Shippo would get his devious claws into them and turn them into tricky foxes in no time. She felt Damon press a kiss to her forehead as he shifted around, carefully moving the sleeping kit in his own arms to keep her asleep.

The last thought on her mind as she drifted off into dreamland, was that she couldn't believe her good fortune. She'd had no idea that this is what had been waiting on her when she'd accepted the deal with the jewel to merge with it for eternity. She'd meant to make the most of life of course, but had had no idea that this was the love and happiness that had been meant for her. She would have waited another 500 years for this if she'd had too, and would not have regretted a minute of it.

She was where she was meant to be. She was home.

A.N. And there we have it, we are at the end. I have decided that Koga and Caroline's ship name is Kogaline. I don't have one for Kagome and Damon, sadly, so you're free to call them whatever you like. Thank you all so very, very much for all of your support! This has been so so amazing. Final reminder to listen to Sea Meets Earth by Fever Fever. It's the song that inspired this whole fic, and it's lovely. Well, that's all there is, there isn't anymore. Aloha, auf wiedersehen, bon soir, sayonara, and all those goodbye things, baby.