So, here's an old idea I've had rattling around in my brain for the last year or so. This is "The Heart of Jade", a Yu Yu Hakusho story mixed into one completely twisted original subplot of my own devising. This story will probably be aimed towards Kurama, but it's far from finished, meaning anything can happen. Oh, and this does have a few of my own characters in it; the rest (beside my crazy ideals) belong to Yoshiro Togashi.

=Prologue=

Jade Raya Rivers

"Reika"

Beloved Sister and Daughter

1918-1933

May the dawn light your way home

Family:

Mother: Opal Alice Rivers, age 97

Father: Onyx Coal Rivers, deceased 1945

Siblings: Emerald Lucy Rivers, age 78

Sapphire Elaine Rivers, age 76

Alexandrite Paul Rivers, age 77

Ruby Eloise Rivers, age 68

Holly Marie hunter

Beloved sister and daughter

1918-1933

Gone, but never forgotten

Family:

Mother: Carol Merry Hunter, deceased 1957

Father: Nicholas Evan Hunter, deceased 1984

Siblings: Jack Frost Hunter, age 82

Tinsel Chase Hunter, age 81

Christmas Blake Hunter, age 77

Belle Mary Hunter, age 70

The brown eyed ruler sighed as his eyes fell over two weathered tombstones, the same two stones that had haunted his very being for so many years. The tall teen stepped forward and fell upon his knees before them. "Holly," he whispered the words etched upon the rock, "Gone, but never forgotten." His eyes lost all focus; he lifted his hand and brushed the numbers that would forever remind all who saw them of the tragedy of a life taken before it ever had the chance to live. "You'd be eighty-one today," he smiled softly. He raised his hand to the stone; upon it, he laid a single yellow rose. "Your favorite," his smile faltered as his eyes moved to the stone right beside hers.

He grasped his hand over his chest and squeezed at the pain. He bowed low to the ground and held back the bay of sorrow that always threatened to overcome him at this very spot on the same date every year as he had for every year since the stones had gone up. He swallowed back tears and leaned forward to caress the name. "Jade," he whispered softly as his lips twitched into a fond smile. "I-I never told you," he confessed annually. Tears fell and sobs threatened to choke him as haunting jade eyes painted their way across his vision. In such times of silence, he could still hear her laugh, see her contagious smile.

"Hey!" The brown eyed teen looked up from the mountains of paper that threatened to engulf him. "What?" He asked flatly, an irritation mark pulsating on his forehead. Oh, how he loathed work.

All negativity seemed to drain right out of him. All it took was a single glance into her eyes, and he was hooked. "What is it, Jade?" He immediately sat up straight, frazzled by her sudden appearance. "You work too hard," she replied as she sat her elbows on the only open space on the colossus desk- right in front of him. "Tell me about it," he sighed, reaching for another paper from a seemingly ever-growing tower. The paper, however, was snatched away from the blonde before him. "Work goes by so much faster with help!" Before he could protest, the girl of his dreams began to process and post paper by paper, slowly, but surely, decreasing his work load.

"What?" She inquired, having caught him staring. A light blush brushed across the two's cheeks. "Err- uh, nothing!" He stumbled over words. Jade simply smiled, adverting her eyes for only the briefest of moments before settling back with full force. Her light chuckle intermingled with his own. From that day on, her voice was the wind, the silence, his own darkness and light…

A gust of wind scattered the order in his hair and nuzzled every inch of his uncovered flesh. And like a bell's chime, it was her voice that carried across the field of crosses and stones. His heart fluttered, only to spiral into an endless inferno. The memory, as if coaxed by the setting of desperation and sorrow, picked off from where it had stopped its play- the place he refused to remember until upon this very day.

"So," the ruler blushed heavily, a million thoughts slinging through his rendered brain, "Jade, err, there's something I need to tell you." Jade looked up instantly; the pen she had been fidgeting with fell to the floor. She didn't even spare it a second glance. "Yes?" "Well, err, you see," the teen drew his hands through his hair, his eyes falling to his desk in nervousness. Jade listened intently, hanging on each word. "I-" His eyes screwed up and his fists tightened in irritation. 'It's now or never!' He'd thought. "I'm in lo-"

"Koenma, sir!"

The ruler cursed. He glared at the compact beside him; his glare grew more intense, as the words uttered from it had matched, word for word, for what had interrupted him so many years ago. Sucking up his sorrow and allowing anger to rush through the floodgates, he picked up the object and responded.

"Boton! I'm busy-" The blue haired English woman cringed, knowing she'd just interrupted the Prince and was surely in for a world of punishment. "Sir! It's an emergency! There's a major problem in the Makai!"

"Send out a team, Boton. I'm busy."

"Sir! No one else is available," Boton nervously shuffled backwards as the prince's anger began to show. "Boton-" "I'll go," Jade interrupted. She glanced at Koenma and smirked, a shyness in her eyes, "When I get back, I have something I want to tell you as well." "But-"The ruler was at a loss for words. He didn't want her to leave yet, but she was needed somewhere else, as was he. "Alright," he caved with a small sigh. Jade stood from her seat and followed Boton out. But before she left the office, she paused and turned, her hands clasped together behind her back, "Two shakes." Koenma couldn't help but return the smile in defeat. It was their way to never say goodbye. "Two shakes." With that, she pivoted around and left, not knowing that she'd never return.

"Koenma, sir?" Boton repeated. Koenma cringed at the nostalgia. "The problem, Boton?" "It's the ruins, sir!" The woman seemed to shrink; with each word said, her voice grew quieter and quieter. The Prince's heart tightened in his chest; his breath caught in his throat. His voice grew tight as he successfully suppressed all the emotion he felt coursing through his veins. Irony would have it be the same place she had met her end well over half a century prior. It had to be the place he couldn't bear to see, much less set foot, be it his own or one of his operatives, upon.

Koenma was hesitant as a wall of nostalgia rushed past his senses.

"Jade?" The ruler looked up, determination in his eyes. His grand smile fell when, instead of his blonde friend, he found a broken woman. "Boton?" He questioned. Her eyes were filled with shock and disbelief; her appearance mirrored someone who'd just been told that the world around them had just fallen down. "Boton?" His voice grew apprehensive; his eyes darted behind her to find a silent room of ogres. There was no commotion; all were standing in shock, much like the grim reaper. Koenma stood instantly, knowing taking over his body. "Who?" Boton's eyes lifted to meet his. She simply stated, shattered reality and disbelief in her words, "All of them…" His heart stopped beating. "It's all gone…" She whispered. "Everything… everyone…gone…"

"…send the entire team," he ordered, "Have a second team ready to go. I want them on standby, should something happen…" Boton nodded sadly, understanding every bit of his intent. Before severing the connection, she grasped at air for words. "I-I'm sorry, sir." Koenma turned to stone. "So am I, Boton." He snapped the compact closed. He ran his fingers across the name of the one who would never know what he'd waited for so long to tell. "So am I…" With that, he stood and placed a bouquet of lilies- her favorite- atop the cold stone. With that, he turned and walked away, putting their memory behind him until they would again arise in the same place, on the same day for every year he couldn't bring them back.

He stopped to look back towards the eerie grave one last time for the year, and then stepped through a portal that would take him to his own far away world, a world, he chuckled cynically, that was so close, yet so far away from where she would never be.

Home.

=The Heart of Jade=

"Boton," the prince barked as he climbed into his seat. "Has the team embarked yet?" The ferrywoman quickly nodded, "Yes! Yusuke and the others left right before you arrived. They should arrive at the ruins soon." "Good," Koenma snapped with a glare, "Now, get out of my office." Boton wasted no time. She quickly turned and leapt out of the door, closing it on her way out. Koenma glared for a second longer before sighing and picking a remote off his desk. He pointed it towards the large monitor and turned it on to find the team treading through the forests on the outskirts of a ruined city he knew far too well. Finding nothing of interest, he turned to a drawer he kept locked three-hundred-and-sixty-four days of the year. He produced a key he'd hidden in a compartment underneath his desk and opened the lock. Gingerly, he opened the wooden drawer and lifted his priceless keepsake onto his desk.