A/N: Not much to say, I just got back into YYH and and I remembered how much I loved the two of them. I was inspired by a friend when we were talking, this came out very sad. I cried a little to be honest.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho or any character's associated with it. This is a work of pure fiction.

Summary: A short drabble about Hiei/Boton. Botan had known she'd have to do this one day, she'd already done it once before. That'd been different of course. She hadn't been friends with them then. She hadn't spent years fighting the good fight and struggling against all sorts of unspeakable evils them back then.

V - Sake

Botan had known she'd have to do this one day, she'd already done it once before. That'd been different of course. She hadn't been friends with them then. She hadn't spent years fighting the good fight and struggling against all sorts of unspeakable evils them back then. No, back then Botan had simply been ferrying a punk kid who'd died unpredictably and was subsequently being given a second chance. Back then she'd teased him about some school girl he knew but one that Botan had never met. Back then it'd been so much easier to do this. So much simpler.

Koenma had offered her a relocation, a chance to avoid this but she knew she couldn't do it. She'd promised them both it'd be her who brought them to the other side. She just didn't know they'd be going together. It wasn't surprising really. Keiko followed Yusuke wherever he went, even when she wasn't supposed to.

The ride to the spirit world had been too short despite Botan's lack of speed. She'd dragged out the ride as long as possible, circling the castle gates at least four times before finally entering the city. Of course, Botan knew where the couple was headed. It didn't take a genius to know that the couple was headed to where most men prayed to go. For Yusuke and Keiko all troubles were over, they had nothing more to worrying about. Their journey was finally at an end.

Yusuke's yells didn't make the job any easier. Everyone had known he'd go like this, kicking and screaming just like before. This time the spirit world couldn't send him back to his body though, this time he was meant to be going. There wasn't anyway around it.

Keiko tried to make things easier on everyone and her efforts weren't in vain. Yusuke grumbled but he quieted when he saw the pained smile on Botan's face. Where they were going a ferry girl like herself could not follow. This was goodbye for them. Permanently.

Years before, when Yusuke had retired, Botan's job as the spirit detective's assistant had ended but their friendship never had. Botan knew she would have to decline Koenma's offer to be the next spirit detective's assistant. There would never be another one like Yusuke and there would never be room in her heart for one. It'd wouldn't be fair to anyone to accept such an offer. It wouldn't be fair to her… None of it was she thought sadly.

Botan's eyes were watery and her cheeks were already stained with their own rivers when the couple finally made their way to the heavenly gates of the other side. Like always Keiko was looking out for everyone else around her and not herself. She brushed off Yusuke's suit with a scolding, straightened Koenma's top-hat, and even fixed George's hair so that it sat neatly atop his head. She busied herself in this way so that she could avoid the reality of her departure. On Botan's appearance she spent the most time on, making sure everything was in tip-top order. She even pulled a tissue from her sleeve, gently wiping away the ferry girl's tears. They both knew what this last meeting was but Keiko seemed to be handling it in her own way. A much different way than Botan would have thought she could all those decades ago. Many things had changed about Keiko but never her capacity to care for others before herself. Botan knew she would miss that the most.

The Urameshi's stepped through the doorway, together of course. And they bickered as they did it, together of course. They had been through many things together and this would be no different. The only difference was that they would not have Botan or Kurama or Kuwabara or even Hiei with them. No, this was a journey only the two of them could make. And so they did. Together. Just as they were before Yusuke's fateful accident.

Koenma was kind after the ordeal and he gave Botan time to, as the human's put it, grieve. She was a ferry girl and the custom was known to her but it was never one she herself had partaken in until now. Botan found she didn't know how the families of departed souls went on after she'd taken their loved one to the spirit world. Botan had done her job perfectly for eons but it wasn't until now that she'd of learnt how cruel it was. Her job, this necessity of the living, was something she found herself unable to bare now that she herself knew of it's crippling effect.

Broken like this was how the demon Hiei found Botan. He had known of Yusuke's departure from this world, not because Hiei had been there when the couple had died but rather he had simply felt Yusuke's energy leave this world.

As a demon known for hating all of the Ningen world Hiei was rather surprised when he felt himself missing the absence of the former spirit detective's presence. At first Hiei had thought to seek out Keiko or perhaps even one of the Kuwabara's but he soon came to find out that in his absence, all of these members had passed on without his notice. It wasn't grief that he felt but perhaps a hollowness within himself, a longing for a day which had long gone by. The lives of the ningen were short and all too fragile but with Yusuke Hiei had somehow managed to forget that. He managed to forget it until it was too late to matter.

Botan was the only one left on this plain he knew so he went to her. Not because he was full of sentiments, because surely a demon such as Hiei had none, but because he knew she was the last one who had seen any of the former ningen. When he found her Botan was in no order to speak to him, too wrapped up in her own… whatever it was that humans felt for each other when one of them died. It was a foolish sentiment of their species. Still, amidst the pitiful display of grief, Hiei found a certain part of himself that almost understood the sorrow and the loss written across Botan's face. It was that shred that kept him from leaving the world completely. Instead it seemed to beckon him entrance into her home, entrance into this static atmosphere of grief.

There was nothing too sentimental shared between them for neither had been sentimentally attached to each other in all the years they'd worked cases together. They did sit in Botan's living room together however, looking at the small mural on the wall. In front of them were pictures of the ones whom Botan had ferried across to the spirit world, the ones that had kept them together over the years. All humans, all gone.

Botan shared her sake with the youkai. It was one of the only things he'd ever taken from her without a snide comment. Perhaps because there was no one left to hear it besides the two of them. Yusuke and Keiko were gone, died together in their sleep. Shizuru's lungs had given out after years out smoking, Genkai had died of old age, Kuwabara had died of a heart attack at sixty-five, and Kurama's human body had given out on him, forcing him to return to Makai.

Hiei and Botan were the only two members of the spirit detective's team left and all they had to share was a bottle of sake. They were perhaps a most pathetic pair, but it was all that they had left here.

"Did you know…?" Botan's voice crackled to life. It was broken and horse from days of silence and wretched from hours spent crying, "Did you know it would happen like this?"

"Hn. Probably. What other choice was there? They were all human on some level, they did what humans are supposed to do. Cease living." Hiei said with much less pleasure than Botan would have expected. Perhaps even this blood-thirsty koorime had managed a change of heart after all these years.

"...Did you know it would hurt this much?" She asked after a while, not certain what she looking for.

"... No." Hiei said passing her the sake. The answer was enough for the moment. She didn't need to hear more.

- End -

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