A/N: Hello again, everyone. I'm sorry for the lapse in updating, but I'm currently fighting Breast Cancer. Time's limited and all that. Anywho, this was a request given to me by Liverpool1207 and I truly hope that you all enjoy it.

FALLING -

"Kazuma?" Shizuru asks, voice far more soft than it normally is. More gentle than it ever is, save for this one day each year.

She is standing in the doorway to her younger brothers bedroom, one hand on the wall of the hallway, the other hand hanging limply by her side. The room is almost too dark, with the lights turned off and the blinds pulled shut, and she can only vaguely make out the shape of Kuwabara, stretched out on the top of his blankets. If it weren't for the steady rise and fall of his chest, Shizuru would think that he were dead.

It's almost noon and he's always up before now. Except for the last seventeen years, he sleeps in late on the twenty-eighth of April. Sometimes he doesn't get up at all - just lays in bed and stares at the picture he has hanging on the wall.

This year, though, Shizuru has had enough. She knows why her brother doesn't celebrate today anymore. But she doesn't care. She is sick of watching him mourn a day he should be proud of; because, really, there aren't many other humans that can say they fight demons for a living and have still made it to their fourty-fourth year.

So Shizuru purses her lips together and walks into Kuwabara's room. Flicks on the light. Puts her hands on her hips and scowls, though the anger in her frown is betrayed by the lightness in her eyes.

"I made you a cake this year so you better get your ass out of bed, Kazuma." Shizuru tells him, forcing her words to take on a demanding tone and not the pleading one her mind is taking.

"I'm not hungry." Kuwabara mutters. He doesn't so much as lift his head to look at his sister when he answers her, just continues to gaze at the slightly rumpled picture across from him.

Shizuru snorts. "Did I ask you if you were hungry?"

Kuwabara ignores her. Closes his eyes and presses his face harder against the pillow, willing Shizuru to go away.

And that's what his sister wants to do. Shizuru wants to just turn around and go back downstairs, light the candles herself and blow them out on her own like she has done the past seventeen years. Because seeing her baby brother like this hurts. It leaves an ache in her chest that reminds her of the one left by her mother so many years ago. The one that her father carved into her heart when he dissapeared from their lives.

It makes Shizuru feel like she has failed Kuwabara. Shizuru refuses to let that feeling be a reality.

Crossing the unlit room Shizuru pauses at the foot of her brothers bed. Kicks the leg of it hard with her foot and points one finger at the door.

"I don't care if you come downstairs and eat with me or not, but you aren't spending another birthday up here, understand? You aren't going to ignore me either, or I'll beat your ass and then drag you down stairs." Shizuru tells him, because she will not fail her younger brother, not like everyone else has. She will not let him waste away full of self-pity. Not when he has accomplished so much in his life.

FROM -

It's hard growing old, Kuwabara thinks.

He has both hands shoved in the pockets of his rumpled grey sweats and his head tilted down, aged blue eyes locked onto the cracked grey pavement. Kuwabara's bright orange hair, now streaked through with silver, hasn't been brushed yet and the short locks are rumpled and slightly curled; he cut his hair short four days after his twenty eighth birthday, when a mission left it so matted and blood stained that he could no longer bare to look at it. The shoes are simple loafers. The shirt an old blue one that he has pulled out from under the bed.

It's hard to take a step and listen to his hips pop and his knees crack. When every step sends a streak of pain up his spine and into his shoulders, forcing him to hunch over as he walks. The grit on the sidewalk that he was once able to see so clearly blurs together, letters on flyers that he passes are unreadable, and sometimes the black spots that dance in front of his left eye make him miss more than just those subtle things.

His team-mates don't realize that he started wearing contacts at twenty seven; contacts which Kuwabara neglected to put in before he left the house that he shares with Shizuru.

No one except for Shizuru knows that he has become almost dependent on ibuprofin. Takes it with him everywhere because, sometimes, he cannot even get out of the bed without taking them.

The doctors all say that they don't have a reason. That, even being the age he is, there is no reason for him to have the issues that he does, that there is no reason for his bones to be so brittle or his lungs to be so close to giving way. They cannot explain away the deep cracks that are forming in his rib bones, cannot answer any questions about why he is suddenly losing his eyesight, or even tell him what medication he should be on to stop the decline in his health.

Everyone he has spoken to is stumped and can only offer stress as a reason. But then, they don't know about the other two worlds that Kuwabara has spent a good portion of his life fighting for.

HEAVENS -

"Master Genkai?" Kuwabara calls out, gently pushing open the sliding door to the elderly womans temple. "I'm goin' out to the training room."

It's only shouted out of the courtesy that has been ingrained in Kuwabara's mind. He knows that the elder psychic doesn't care when he comes or where he goes in the temple, so long as he cleans up after himself before he leaves. She lets him do what he wants for the most part because he doesn't bother her as much as her other students do.

Kuwabara is quiet and clean and doesn't complain when Genkai orders him to help her with something. And maybe Genkai has a soft spot for the boy who so reminds her of the man she once loved. Maybe, though she has not told him this time and she knows he has not realized it, she wants to help him so he doesn't end up in the same way that Toguro did.

Sliding the door shut behind him, Kuwabara toes off his loafers and sits them neatly beside the door. Then he straightens himself up, back letting out a loud snap as he does, and he turns and walks down the sloping hall that leads to his usual work out room.

Compared to the rest of the sprawling temple, the room is small and plain. There are several weights in the back left corner of the room, with enough add-ons to equal close to three thousand pounds, and a jump rope curled up in the back right corner. In the middle of the screen surrounded room stands a large, wooden pole. The pole is a good twelve feet tall and almost six feet all the way around, solid oak wood, and marred with gouges and scuffs. At the top, the pole is splintering. At the bottom it still stands strong, built right into the hardwood flooring.

But this is the room that Kuwabara feels most at home in. It's the simplicity of it all that draws him in. The straight forward purpose that the room was built for - training, nothing more and nothing less. It's in this room, more than anywhere else, that Kuwabara has found comfort the past several years.

GRACE -

It is almost nine at night when Genkai realizes that she hasn't heard the young man training in her back room say goodbye. While that isn't an oddity for any of the other fighters who frequent her temple, Kuwabara always calls out to her when he leaves. It's just one of his more becoming habits - like making tea for the two of them at noon whenever he has come by to train and never argueing when she makes him leave early.

It takes only a few moments for the elderly psychic to traverse the sprawling halls of her temple. She has lived her whole life in this building and there is not a space in it that she has not memorized. The particular training room that Kuwabara always uses, without fail, is near the front entrance. Just a few steps down the hall from where he leaves his shoes each visit.

Genkai pauses outside of the closed sliding door and frowns - a deep frown that sets the wrinkles in her face and causes her eyes to droop. She cannot hear anything from inside the room. She cannot feel anything from inside the room. Not the heavy pants that should be drifting through the flimsy screen door. Not the spiraling mass of spirit energy that the human has developed, which normally is so great during a work-out that it seeps through the wood and screen and fills the hallway.

She knows what she will find before she even slides the door open. The sight of Kuwabara, slumped in a heap at the foot of the training post, hands still curled into fists, still sends her stomach shooting into her throat.

It has been a long time since Genkai has cried over someone, be they sick, injured, or dead. She has just seen too many horrible things happen in her life-time to still be effected by every one around her. Yet when she kneels down beside the strong willed human boy that has visited her temple every day for the past seventeen years, finds no pulse and no life energy, sees glassed over blue eyes that should be filled with life and laughter, she finds that she cannot keep the moistness out of her own aging eyes.

AND -

Shizuru wakes from her sleep with a broken sob and a gasp for breath, tears running down her face and staining her nightgown. She doesn't move, not yet, just curls in on herself and clenches her eyes shut.

The tears don't stop.

One hand covers her mouth, as though it will stop the sobs from escaping, the other hand curls itself into her light brown hair. Tugs and pulls, trying to bring her mind back to reality, to focus herself on something aside from the dream she has just woken from. She can't though, because she knows that it wasn't just a dream.

When things involve her baby brother, they are always a vision of the past. Of something that he has already gone through and just neglected to tell her - or anyone really, as he has become prone to keeping secrets, to keeping to himself.

Moments after she wakes up, the phone beside her bed begins to ring. She doesn't need to answer it to know what the call is about.

It's Genkai, who has just now managed to calm herself down and locate her rarely used phone. She is not on good terms with the elderly psychic; never has been, not when she knows that, in a way, it is the other woman's fault for her brother's ceaseless training. There should be no reason for Genkai to give her a call.

But there is and Shizuru already knows it.

Her baby brother has died and he cannot come back.

NEVER -

"What do you mean he's dead?" Botan questions, and she knows that she shouldn't really be shocked. Kuwabara was an old man, even if he didn't often act it around his team-mates.

"I mean,' Koenma tells her, 'that Genkai found him dead in her house yesterday night. He's already been gathered and taken to the Judgement Hall, where he will speak with my father before passing on."

"Lord Koenma!" Botan cannot help the burst of rage in her voice, nor can she help the jolt of pleasure that shoots through her when the small lord shifts uncomfortably in his chair. "How can you just send him toe the Judgement Hall? He's done so much for you! Why not give him a second chance?"

Because, really, Kuwabara has done more than anyone else Botan has ever had the pleasure of working with. Never once complained that his life was unfair, only when fairness was stolen from someone else. Never had to be asked for help twice, refused to ask for it himself.

He had spent the last twenty years suffering in silence as his body gave out on him; and this is something that Botan knows only because Shizuru told her once, many months ago. Told her that she was worried she would wake up one morning and he just wouldn't be there.

A part of her cannot help but wonder if that was what really happened.

She stares at the prince of the Spirit World for what seems like hours but is only seconds, waiting for an answer. Finally, he sighs and shuffles his papers. Shakes his head. Show no sorrow in his eyes, merely slight annoyance.

"I can't." He tells her. "Father forbids it."

And he will give forth no more information on the matter.

TRYING -

Koenma calls Yusuke in directly after he sends Kurama and Hiei away. The young prince isn't sure what he should expect, not really, but what happens is not something that ever crosses his mind. In short, clipped tones he delives his head detective the news.

And Yusuke just stares at him, dark brown eyes gone cold and face gone blank. It is as though someone has frozen the half-demon in place, ceasing even the steady rise and fall of his chest.

"Yusuke?" Koenma questions, and there may be worry in his voice but it certainly isn't over Kuwabara. No, it is because he doesn't know what will happen now. Doesn't know if Yusuke is going to break himself, shatter himself into millions of pieces that can never be repaired, or whether he will brush the news aside like it is nothing more than a pesky fly.

Yusuke has always been spontanious, even more so in the last ten years or so as more and more of his demon blood awoke.

When several long seconds creep by and he recieves no answer, Koenma once again clears his throat. "Yusuke?"

He winces away from the man when an unglorified howl escapes his throat, barely pulling away quick enough to avoid the fist that slams down onto his desk. The sturdy wood splinters in the middle, then shudders once and collapses - and Koenma cannot bring himself to look down at it, not when it would mean moving his eyes away from Yusuke's face.

There is anger in his eyes, anger and betrayal and guilt and hate and sorrow. Everything and anything, every emotion, as though he just doesn't know how to feel. And, really, that isn't too far from the truth.

Yusuke considered Kuwabara to be family. More than a brother, more than a friend, but someone that would always be there. Someone that would always have his back. Hearing that he is gone, that he can't come back? It is as though the world itself has been wrenched from beneath his feet.

TO -

It is an odd thing, Jin thinks, to realize that the murmuring of Demon World is true. Usually, the whispered stories told in the back shadows of a pub in that realm is nothing more than that. A tale weaved to spread chaos and confusion. One only spread for the sake of sowing doubt into everydemons mind.

That was what Jin has been hoping this one was. Just a story made up by some bored demon with a grudge. After all, who would have thought Kuwabara would really be dead? Jin hadn't, and the cold feeling of surprise and sorrow is still spreading through him.

The wind-demon stands in front of Kuwabara's grave, head slightly bowed and a fist held to his chest. His eyes hold no laughter, only grief. Jin's pointed ears are drooped and a grave sort of sorrow is gripping his heart. Squeezing and clenching and twisting it, because he knows that this man should not have died yet. That a man of Kuwabara's caliber should not have died such a quiet mundane death but the death of a warrior.

"I wish ye hadn't gone this way, laddie." Jin whispers to the grave. "Ye were too good of a man not to at least go out with the bang ye wanted. But then, I figure it's because you're such a good lad that you went so early."

Isn't that how it always went with humans? In all of Jin's travels through the human world, it was always those with evil intent that lasted the longest. The pure of spirit died the quickest.

As it is, Kuwabara had lasted longer than Jin had expected him to. Longer than Kuwabara expected to last, Jin knows that much for a fact. Knows that Kuwabara had expected to die the night of the Dark Tournaments final match - maybe even other nights after that, but always sooner than fourty-four.

A soft wind picks up and rustles Jin's hair. The breeze is soft and warm, almost melodic. Yet its song is tainted with the melancholy tinge of a mourner. Filled with the loss of a loved one and a longing that will never again be fulfilled.

BREAK -

It's silly, Touya thinks with a frown, to put such reverance into the care of a body. Acting like there is a part of the deceased human still inside of it when, in reality, it is little more than an empty shell. Something that will quickly rot and decay until it is a part of the earth.

The act of burying someone is considered foolish in demon world. It sets the mourners up for an open attack, pastes a red bullseye on their forheads. The act of talking to a fallen comrad even more foolish. Everyone knows that they are seldom around to hear it. If they are, is is for vengenance, not for conversation.

Standing here before the casket that contains what is left of Kuwabara, he cannot decide what the reasoning is. Of course, he knows why he is there. Because Jin wanted to come and, with the dangers of being here, in the Human World, Touya couldn't let the wind-demon come on his own.

That is why he is there. Jin is there for a reason he refuses to speak about but can clearly be seen in his eyes - nothing more than grief and the desire to know whether the rumors had been true.

But the others? Them, Touya does not understand. Chuu and Rinku grew up in the Demon World. They know that there is nothing left here to speak too. Nothing but an empty shell.

Kurama and Hiei? They are there, Touya assumes, out of formality and nothing else. As far as he has been able to tell, their love for their human team-mate dissapaited when he became less use on the battle field.

There are several human boys here too, standing at the far back and eyeing the ones they know to be demons nervously. The tallest of the three also has anger in his eyes, anger and hate and blame, and he seems to be looking at every demon there in the same way.

Blaming them for the death of what must have been a very close friend.

But why they came, when they knew full well there would be demons there? That is something that Touya cannot understand.

Then again, he has never been able to understand humans. Kuwabara, he muses, light blue eyes raking over the dark wood of the coffin, was not an exception.

To see a human fight demons...A rarity. To see one go into battle again and again, never caring for his own life, never wincing at his own wounds, just trying and trying and trying to keep everyone safe. Whether they deserve his protection or not. Whether they want it or not. Whether he has a chance of surviving or not. That? That is something that Touya has never seen before.

And, now that Kuwabara has fallen, Touya wonders whether he ever will again. Somehow, he finds himself doubting it.

THE -

Chu walks up to the grave and frowns down at the dark wooded coffin laying inside of it. He shuffles his feet for a moment, unsure of what he should be saying. Then he sighs through his nose and chides himself for acting this way.

He knows that he isn't a deep person and he is more than willing to admit that. A person gains Chu's rsspect by staying loyal and staying alive in a fight. Kuwabara has done that his whole life and then some.

So he holds Chu's respect, even more than most demons do.

"You were a pretty good guy from what I saw, Kuwabara. Real good fighter. Real strong." Chu mutters, almost to himself. "I always thought you had a lot of guts."

He pauses and rubs the back of his neck. Debates with himself a moment longer. Then, gaze serious as it seldom is, Chu gives the open casket a slight nod.

"And thanks." The large man says. "For helpin' Rinku out that one time."

When Chu turns and walks away it is with the knowledge that he will be drinking for two that night.

As Chu heads back to his seat, his former team-mate walks up and takes his place at the side of the grave. Rinku's hands are shoved in his pockets, bright green eyes slightly hooded. The wide grin that the cheerful demon boy usually wears is replaced by a frown.

"Hey, uh, Kuwabara." Rinku says, kicking up a cloud of dust with one foot. "Sorry to hear that you're dead now."

Rinku is older than Chu by several centuries, though few know that. Yet he has no idea of what he should be saying. Funerals are not common in demon world. Even if they were, there aren't many demons living there that Rinku would be inclined to mourn for.

As it is, the small demon is only there because he feels like he should be giving the humans a final "thanks". After all, no one else that worked for Koenma cared when he'd been captured by the Black Black Club. It wasn't their job to rescue a demon, they all said, especially not from humans.

Kuwabara understood though. The human had realized what would happen to Rinku if he were left there - that they would torture him and starve him and beat him. That they would kill him with no mercy. That they would laugh all the while.

The thoughts of his time in captivity sends a chill down Rinku's spine. Forms a knot in his stomach and dries his mouth. So Rinku stops thinking about it and instead turns his attention back onto the task at hand.

"I, uh, guess that I came to say thanks again. For helping me out a few years ago. I was too busy trying to get back to Chu and all, but I know what you did probably caused a whole lot of problems for you." Rinku says. He doesn't realize how right he is.

What Rinku does realize is that he has nothing else to say to the dead man. Kuwabara was an honest man, more so than most, but he wasn't Rinku's friend.

He was just a soul too kind to knowingly let someone suffer.

FALL -

Shizuru waits until everyone else has left to go to her brother's gravesite. She stands there, in front of the granite cross and just to the left of the freshly moved dirt, and she wonders why this happened. Why someone so undeserving of death was ripped from the world so soon.

Why her brother, her only family, had to leave.

She wonders this but, inside she cannot help but feel as though she already knows the answer. Kuwabara dies because Shizuru failed to keep him safe. Just as she has done time and time again in the past, no matter what she promises herself.

No matter what she promised her mother.

"I'm so sorry, Kazuma." Shizuru says, and the grief in her voice is heavy and clear. Her eyes are rimmed red from crying, throat sore from the countless sobs she has been unable to stop over the last three days, hands clenched at her sides tight enough that her knuckles have turned white. "I'm so sorry!"

Then she turns and takes off across the graveyard, because she cannot bear to be there. Not now. Not when every breath of the wind is filled with his laughter, when every memory she has features him and brings a new round of regret and hate into her heart.

She just wants to leave - so she isn't entirely sure why she pauses only a few feet from the grave marking and spins around, one hand coming up to cluch at her chest. The air has changed, from damp and hot, to chilling cold. It pierces into her skin now, lancing her as though it were filled with hundreds of tiny knives, and leaves her gasping for breath.

There, standing beside the headstone of Kazuma Kuwabara, is a creature. It is tall and thin, with eyes the same color as the night sky and long, firebrand hair. She cannot tell whether this creature is male of female, only that there is no grief in it's sharp eyes. It places one slender hand on the top of the dark grey cross, lifting the other one to its lips. It rests its fingertips there for but a moment, pale white pressed to bright red, then pulls its hand away and holds it out, palm away from its body, towards Shizuru.

The last remaining Kuwabara feels her grip on reality dissapear and she crumples to the ground, hot tears running down her cheeks; and, though she's still heartbroken beyond repair, she isn't worried about what will become of her brother's spirit.

Because the creature has just promised her that it will keep Kuwabara safe.