Summary: Hiei goes missing after a huge battle, where is he, what has he been doing, and will he ever return to the Spirit Detectives?

Disclaimer: I don't own YYH or the song whose name I cannot disclose at this moment in time seeing as how it would ruin the story, however I will give the name of the song at the end.

Frozen in Time

It had been a year since the Spirit Detectives had been needed, one year since Kuwabara was killed by a demon who fancied him as a midnight snack, one year since Kurama had started dating Yukina who discovered not only that Hiei was her brother but also that Kuwabara only saw her as a pretty face while Kurama valued her as a person. One year, one blissfully quiet year. Yusuke Urameshi sighed in contentment, life was good.

"Yusuke!"

"God no, please don't let this be happening." Yusuke thought.

"Yusuke!"

"Please no…" he mumbled, burying his head in his arms trying to block out the sound.

"Yusuke…Yusuke…YUSUKE!"

"What!" the now very irritated Spirit Detective roared.

"Well you don't have to shout." Botan huffed.

"What do you want, Botan?" Yusuke groaned.

"Koenma has a mission for you, come one." Before Yusuke could utter an excuse, the perky Grim Reaper transported them to Spirit World.

"All right, Pacifier Breath, what do you want?" Yusuke addressed the young ruler of Spirit World.

"You." Koenma replied, furiously stamping papers.

"Oh Koenma, I didn't know you cared!"

"Not that way, you idiot!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, Toddler." Yusuke answered glancing around the room, something seemed off. His chocolate brown eyes swept the room taking in the cheerful blue-haired ferry girl, the shy ice apparition Yukina, and the once red-headed fox who had reverted back permanently to his demon form some time back. That was all, nothing unusual. The office was silent as the grave, ironic, since it was once filled with the indignant yells of Kuwabara trying to defend his honor whenever Hiei called him an idiot. "That's it!" Yusuke vocalized.

"What's it, Yusuke?" Koenma questioned, not even looking up from his paperwork.

"Hiei. That's what's missing here, where's Hiei? Shouldn't he be here for the mission, too?"

"There isn't a mission, Yusuke. I called this meeting to inform you that Hiei will never accompany us on a mission again." It was Kurama, his gold eyes flicked over to Yusuke before returning their gaze back to the top of Yukina's head. "You see Yusuke, after the last battle, Hiei accepted something he had been denying for years: The continued use of his Jagan and the Dragon of the Darkness Flame technique was draining his body. So after the battle he left, determined to live life to the fullest before his body gave out entirely. I would get letters from him occasionally, I have here his last one, he wanted me to read it aloud when we were all together again."

Yusuke sat down on the couch, stunned. Hiei was dead? His mind couldn't accept it. Vaguely he heard Kurama read Hiei's last letter.

"He said I went sky diving, I went Rocky Mountain climbing, I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu. And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter and I gave forgiveness I'd been denying. And he said someday I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying." Silence reigned in the office for a few minutes as Kurama folded up the letter. Then Yusuke asked a question that surprised them all; where was Hiei's next destination?

Twenty years later, a group of scientists reached the top of Mount Everest and were met with a sight no one expected. At the top of the mountain was a young man, encased in ice, with chaotic black hair with a white starburst in the middle, a black dragon tattoo on his arm, and a cloth on his forehead. Next to him was a rose bush thick with blood red roses, frozen in eternal beauty, and a sword, acting as a marker for a slab of ebony with words written in gold. "Here lies Hiei," it read, "Protector, brother, friend." The scientists gazed for many moments at the young man with a small content smile on his face, forever frozen in time.

This is the chorus to the song "Live Like You Were Dying" by Tim McGraw.

LS- I know I feel really bad about killing Hiei off but I had to in order for the song to work. Hehehe…on one hand Hiei is dead; on the other hand, I killed off Kuwabara! BWHAHAHAH! I feel better now that I've written this fic because my radio's been playing this song for three days now.

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