Disclaimer: I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho. Never have, never will. Similarly, I lay no claim to the song "I Still..." by The Backstreet Boys.
Keiko couldn't remember there being a storm like the one building outside for years. Rain lashed against the windows and the wind whipped the branches of the trees outside into a frenzy.
Her family's restaurant was deserted. The last customer had left nearly an hour ago and Keiko doubted there would be any more for the night. She'd promised her parents that she would watch the diner for the night while they went out on a well-deserved date. She was glad that her parents still loved one another and was happy to support their date, but she had her own motives in filling in for them.
She jumped at every opportunity to stay busy. She took on extra hours in the restaurant, enrolled in honors classes in school, volunteered for community service. It was never enough. No amount of busy work kept her mind occupied. Nothing kept her thoughts from drifting to him. Everything she did was a reminder, a horrible reminder, of the man she hadn't seen in years.
Two years to be exact. Two years, three months, and fourteen days. She wasn't sure when she'd started to keep track of his absence. What she did remember was sitting on her bed, tears streaming down her cheeks, flipping wildly through a calendar, trying to find the day he'd left.
He'd promised her three years, but she didn't think she could wait that long. She missed him too much, missed his voice, his laugh, his jokes.
Who are you now?
Are you still the same
Or did you change somehow?
Slipping out from behind the counter, she moved to the door. She flipped the 'Open' sign to 'Closed' and locked the door, sliding the bolt into place.
Keiko pressed her fingertips to the glass, watching raindrops streak down the windowpane. The glass was cool against her skin and, leaning forward, she touched her forehead to the window.
She couldn't help but wonder about him. Was the Makai turning him into a different person? Would he come back a stranger?
Keiko knew what the Makai was like; she knew it was dangerous, she knew that demons were ruthless and unforgiving. But he'd been around demons ever since he took that stupid job for Koenma and he'd never changed, never stopped being who he was. If anything, he'd become a better person. His involvement with demons had enhanced the qualities she loved about him, had made him the man she cared so much about. Surely that meant he wouldn't change, that he would return to her just as he left.
What do you do?
At this very moment
When I think of you
Thunder cracked and lightning forked down in the distance, illuminating the dreary street. Was it raining in the Makai? If it was she hoped he was hidden away somewhere warm and comfortable. Keiko's thoughts flashed to Hiei, who had spent so much of his time perched in trees. Did all demons live like that? She prayed they didn't, prayed that there was somewhere for him to go when the weather turned nasty.
He'd never really explained what he was going to be doing in the Makai. He'd disappeared without ever telling her anything, left her in the dark like he had so many times before.
Did he spend everyday fighting for his life? Was he alone? The idea of him traveling through the Makai by himself, battling untold numbers of demons, made her shudder.
She pulled away from the glass, turning her back on the outside world. There was work to do, dishes to wash, counters to be cleaned. Maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to distract herself from him.
And when I'm looking back
How we were young and stupid
Do you remember that?
Keiko had let dishes pile up during the dinner rush, knowing she would need some kind of diversion come closing time, and she was glad for her forethought.
In the past few years, dishwashing had become tedious work for her, boring and time consuming.
It used to be fun and enjoyable, her favorite thing to do when her parents asked for help. But he'd still been around back then and they'd worked together, she'd wash and he'd dry. They were the perfect team. Or at least they were when they were actually working.
She couldn't count the number of times that a water fight had broken out. He was always the instigator, splashing her when she least expected it. Of course, she could've ignored him, pretended she hadn't noticed, but she always retaliated.
Keiko smiled faintly, plunging her hands into the lukewarm dishwater. Wind howled outside and another clap of thunder boomed.
No matter how I fight it, can't deny it
Just can't let you go
She was doing it again, thinking about him when she shouldn't.
What else could she do? How could she possibly keep from thinking about him? Everything she did reminded her of him.
These days she barely talked to Kuwabara. She couldn't stand to, not with the way he reminded her of him. They were best friends, it stood to reason that Kuwabara would have picked up some of his habits, but she couldn't stand to see those familiar actions. The last time Keiko had spoken to Kuwabara, he'd rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly and she'd nearly burst into tears. In that moment, Kuwabara had resembled him so much that it was painful to be around him.
And Kuwabara was always talking about him, asking if she knew how he was doing, reminiscing about their old missions. Once Kuwabara had tried to reassure her that he'd be alright, he was Urameshi after all, and she'd yelled at him, told him to stop bringing him up.
She'd begun to hate Kuwabara, hate him simply because he was a reminder. And in turn, she'd begun to hate herself.
I still need you
I still care about you
Though everything's been said and done
I still feel you like I'm right beside you
But still no word from you
Keiko felt like she was missing some part of herself, like something that she desperately needed to make her who she was had disappeared. And maybe that wasn't so far off. He'd been a part of her life since they were little and now he was gone, just as though he'd never existed.
No amount of words or promises could make that okay. His disappearance was like a physical wound, a gnawing pain that prevented her from doing everyday things.
There were moments when she could have sworn she'd seen him. Seen him standing across the street, seen him waiting for him at the gates of her high school, seen him taking a seat in the desk beside her. Of course, he was never there. No, he was somewhere in the Makai doing what he wanted to without ever telling her if he was alright, if he was still whole and healthy.
Now look at me
Instead of moving on
I refuse to see
That I keep coming back
Was it so wrong for her to miss him? He was her friend, her best friend. She'd made friends in high school, but, if she was being honest, they didn't make up for his absence.
There was nothing Keiko wouldn't confide in him.
Or maybe there was. There were those three words, those three oh so important words, that she'd never dared to say. How could she when his heart was so clearly elsewhere?
She knew he cared about her. It was obvious in everything he did, from the way he talked to her to the way he looked at her. He'd gone so far as to risk his life to save her the time Hiei kidnapped her. It had been his very first mission and he was inexperienced, unsure of just what he'd be facing, but he'd rushed to her rescue anyway.
No, it wasn't that he didn't care about. The problem, the reason she'd never told him how she felt, lay somewhere else. His heart belonged to fighting. She was willing to except that it always would. Heck, she was willing to except anything if it would bring him back safe. He didn't need to love her; she just wanted him to come home
Yeah, I'm stuck in a moment
That wasn't meant to last
She'd thought back in the beginning that she would be able to forget about him, that her memories of him would fade and she would be able to live her life normally until he came back. God, how she'd been wrong.
When she realized that she couldn't forget about him passively, she went around her family's home collecting every object that could possibly remind her of him. She hid pictures, packed away presents, gave belongings he had left in her house back to his mother. But even then it wasn't enough.
So she'd stopped visiting Genkai and Yukina. She made excuses every time Botan asked to hang out. She told Kurama that she was too busy with school and work to talk anymore. With time they'd stopped trying to stay in touch. Whether they had become busy themselves or picked up on what she was trying to do she wasn't sure, but it didn't matter as long as she didn't need to talk to them. And now she was pulling away from Kuwabara, cutting off her last tie to him, but it still wasn't enough.
In the end, she did the only thing she could think of; she stopped referring to him by name. If she couldn't stop thinking about him, she could at least stop thinking his name, she could strip him of his identity so that he was just another person instead of the person that mattered to her so very much. It was cheap, she knew that, but it was the only thing she could do.
I've tried to fight it, can't deny it
You don't even know that
Keiko placed the last of the dishes on the drying rack and grabbed a wet cloth. Taking a deep calming breath, she began to scrub down the counter top.
She didn't cry about him anymore. Not because she was strong enough to control herself, but because she'd run out of tears long, long ago. Sometimes she wished she could cry, if only because it would provide her with a release, a way to stop bottling everything up.
The worst part was that he would never know how she felt. She'd never tell him how much his absence hurt her and she doubted that he was feeling the way she did. He was strong, too strong to get depressed about not being with her.
She wondered occasionally if that's what she was, if she was depressed. She didn't know the symptoms of depression; she'd never bothered paying that much attention to the indicators when they learned about depression in school, after all she never thought that she would become depressed. Somehow though, Keiko doubted that she was depressed.
She just missed him and trying to blame how she felt on something else was pointless.
I still need you
I still care about you
Though everything's been said and done
I still feel you like I'm right beside you
But still no word from you
Needing him, missing him was part of who she was. Nothing would ever change that and Keiko wondered if that was normal. Did all people have someone they couldn't live without? Her parents loved each other, but she knew that they'd be alright without each other.
And there were people like Atsuko who were just fine on their own. Although, the more she thought about it, maybe Atsuko wasn't fine. Maybe that's why she drank so much; maybe being alone was the reason for all of Atsuko's problems.
Keiko didn't want to be like that.
But without him she didn't know what else to be. He was her support system and she'd always thought that she was his, but, considering how long he'd been gone, maybe she had been wrong. Surely if she was as important to him as he was to her, he would have kept in contact with her.
Three years was such a long time. He expected her to stay blindly faithful to him, to trust him to come back to her just as he promised, but she didn't know how much longer she could do that if she didn't know if he was alright. Would coming back to tell her he was okay, or even sending someone else to tell her, be so hard?
She didn't think so.
I wish I could find you
Just like you found me, then I
Would never let you go
Sometimes she considered what would happen if she went to the Makai to try and find him. But just as soon as the idea came she knew it was stupid. She wouldn't last two seconds in the Makai.
But the idea was still entertaining. Going after him, proving she could be tough too, telling him how she felt. If she was strong enough to do those things, certainly she could stay here for another few months without him.
Of course, there was the little fact that she wasn't actually strong enough to find him, but she could fantasize, couldn't she?
When he came back, she'd make sure he never left again, at least not without taking her with him. She'd hold on to him so tight that he'd wish he had never left her in the first place.
Keiko's fingers clenched in the wash towel and she smiled grimly. She'd show him how tough he was; show him that she was just as much a fighter as he was.
Though everything's been said and done
I still feel you
Like I'm right beside you
He'd left her, that was strike one. He wouldn't let her forget him. Strike two. He never contacted her to say he was okay. Strike three.
Or it would have been, if she would ever be willing to let him strike out. But letting him strike out would mean letting him leave her life, and that was something she would never do. She cared about him too much; she loved him too much.
Dropping the rag into the sink, Keiko looked around the deserted restaurant and turned on her heel heading for the stairs. She paused on the bottom step and glanced one last time over her shoulder. The storm was dying down, the rain was slowing, and she hadn't heard thunder in ages. She smiled and continued up the stairs, content in knowing that she'd outlasted the storm.
She'd waited two years, three months, and fourteen days for him to return. Like hell, she was going to give up with only eight months and sixteen days left.
Eight months and sixteen days. She could do that; she could outlast this storm too.
But still no word from you
AN: So, what did you think? This was my first attempt at a one-shot. How'd I do? Drop me a review and tell me what you think.