Keiko knew something was wrong the moment she opened her front door and saw Kuwabara standing on her doorstep. Lines of grief etched his face making him seem so much older than his eighteen years, and his red eyes showed he'd been crying.
"What happened?" she asked, afraid to hear his answer because she already knew what it would be.
The only thing it could be.
"I just talked to Kurama," Kuwabara said. "He said…he said Yusuke…the idiot wanted one more fight before he came back. Just one more, but Yusuke…he didn't…" Kuwabara broke off with a curse and turned as he wiped more tears from his face.
Keiko didn't cry. She didn't scream. She didn't speak at all. Eventually she would. She'd scream and wail at the world and Yusuke's ghost about how it wasn't fair, about how Yusuke had promised that he'd come back from Makai after three years, about how he was supposed to be back now, about how he'd promised to marry her. She'd cry for all the things they didn't do, for all the memories they never made, for the innocence she never gave him, for the children and grandchildren they would never have, for the life they would never share.
But right now all she could do was stand there in the doorway, feeling numb and empty and so very alone.
"I just…I thought you should hear it from me," Kuwabara said.
Keiko nodded, still unable to speak.
"If you need anything, anything at all, just call me, okay?" Kuwabara added.
What she needed was for Yusuke to be alive, to be here, with her, making rude comments about how she looked in her high school uniform. Kuwabara couldn't give her that.
No one could.
She shut the door and stood there silently, unaware of the minutes slipping by. "Yusuke," she whimpered. Slowly, she sank to the floor as the tears finally came. "Yusuke!"
AN: A little bit of AUish angst that I kind of want to turn into a multi-chapter story...But I need to finish my other projects first, and I'm not yet convinced this story thread is worth pursuing, so it'll be awhile before anything comes of this, if it even does.