Recap: Thirty years after their adventures together, and the ol' spirit detective team have all moved on with their lives: well, almost all. Yusuke is still in love with Keiko, but she has long moved on, and was attending her own daughter's wedding. And, just as Yusuke is still blindly devoted to Keiko, Botan is madly in love with Yusuke – but she has never made her feelings known.

Chapter 2: Living for a Fantasy

"Hey Botan, do you wanna dance?"

Botan lifted her eyes from the cocktail she had been stirring with a straw for the best part of an hour. The ice had melted long ago and the drink had deepened as a result and overflowed over the rim of the glass, creating a small puddle on the table surface.

"That's very sweet of you to ask, but I don't like dancing," she lied before lowering her eyes to her drink again.

"That's not true! You love dancing!"

Botan sighed. She did love dancing. She always had. She had danced with almost all of her friends: all except one.

"Why don't you ask Yukina instead?" she suggested.

"I just thought that you might want to dance," Kuwabara replied, sitting down opposite Botan at the table. "You've been sitting here in this dark corner all on your own for so long. You look even more miserable than Urameshi did when he first showed up here, and even he's having a good time now."

Botan lifted her eyes again, almost instantly finding Yusuke. He did look a lot happier than he had earlier that day – in fact, she thought, he looked a lot happier than he had in months. He was playing some sort of drinking game with Kurama and Shizuru. It was almost amusing to watch, because every time they tipped back their heads, Kurama sneakily flung the contents of his glass over his shoulder. As a result of this little trick, the fox demon was still reasonably sober and Shizuru and Yusuke were becoming progressively intoxicated.

"I'm glad to see him so happy," she said, smiling slightly as she watched Yusuke laugh at a joke Shizuru had just told that had left Kurama looking bewildered.

"You don't look glad," Kuwabara muttered. "In fact, I don't think I've ever seen you look so miserable. You were never miserable before. You used to always be so happy. What happened?"

Botan forced a smile.

"Weddings always make me cry," she said.

It was only partially a lie.

"Yeah, you were a mess at Keiko's wedding!" Kuwabara agreed, chuckling slightly at the thought.

"I wasn't at Keiko's wedding," Botan reminded him. "I only briefly stopped by to offer her my congratulations and to let you know that Yusuke wouldn't be going to the ceremony."

"Yeah, but you were a total wreck!" Kuwabara insisted.

"I spent the day with Yusuke," Botan explained. "It was very hard for me to see him that distraught. He always put on the tough guy act and pretended that he was fine with Keiko leaving him and dating other men, and even when she got engaged he still acted like he was unaffected. Honestly, I don't think the gravity of the situation occurred to him until the day of the actual wedding. I think he was always in denial until that moment. And then, all those years of suppressing it made it as though someone had opened a floodgate…"

"But that's Urameshi you're talking about, Botan," Kuwabara gently pointed out. "And I know you guys are close, but it's not like you're linked emotionally or anything like that. And even if you are emotionally linked to him, he's having a great time over there, so you ought to be smiling too! This isn't a sad day, Botan!"

Botan looked across the room at Yusuke again. Judging by the way he was wildly gesticulating and Shizuru was doubled over laughing and Kurama was shaking his head with a smirk, it looked as though Yusuke was the one telling a joke. Botan wondered exactly what anecdote he was sharing with them. In her own experience, the only time Yusuke became animated when retelling anything was when he spoke about his time as spirit detective – a time when Keiko was loyally at his side. And it was clear that he was already quite drunk, with no sign of stopping his alcoholic binge any time soon as he had a half drunk glass of something resting on the table nearby where he was stood. Botan knew that she was going to spend another night holding back Yusuke's long hair whilst he vomited. In the morning she would be sent out to find something fatty and disgusting for him to eat and she would have an argument with him about how he ought to eat and drink slowly until his body had fully recovered, he would tell her to stop nagging him when he had such a pounding headache, he would ignore her advice and either have indigestion all day or go back to throwing up again. Once the worst of his hangover had passed, he would then either feel great because he was no longer ill and he had enjoyed himself the night before or he would feel terrible because he would remember why he had drunk so much the night before.

"Every day's a sad day when you're living for a fantasy," she muttered, speaking mostly to herself, her eyes still on Yusuke. "It's just something that will never be."

She sighed and patted Kuwabara on the hand as she caught him squinting at her in confusion.

"You're a dear, Kuwabara," she said.

"Okay…" he muttered, looking even more confused than ever.

She gave him a smile before her eyes wandered to something over his shoulder. Yukina was standing a short distance from their table, glancing their way anxiously. Botan still found it hard to accept that the tall, willowy figure with hair as dark as the night sky was Yukina. And it was not just that the ice maiden had darkened her hair and grown taller: her facial features had become more defined and pronounced and she had transformed from a pleasantly pretty girl into a devastatingly beautiful woman. Which made it all the more amazing that she and Kuwabara were still completely devoted to each other. Botan supposed that their relationship was simply one of true love, because, despite the obstacles between them, they had remained together and overcome all manners of adversity.

"I think someone's looking for you," Botan said, moving her eyes back to Kuwabara.

"Huh?" he asked, looking back over his shoulder. "Oh hey Yukina, my love!"

He waved a hand at her and grinned like an idiot, his expression and actions no different than they had been during the Dark Tournament more than thirty years before.

"Keep smiling, Botan," he said as he stood up from the table again. "It's okay to be happy, you know."

Botan nodded and forced another smile as Kuwabara took his leave from the table. She watched him walk back over to Yukina, who smiled at him and took hold of his hands as he joined her. They exchanged a few words and then moved closer to each other, Yukina wrapping her arms around Kuwabara's shoulders and Kuwabara putting his arms around Yukina's waist, and together they began slowly swaying to the music – and Yukina was actually now tall enough that Kuwabara could rest his forehead against hers without stooping over, Botan noted. It was an inspiring sight, she thought, because it was proof, beyond all doubt, that true love did still exist.

But perhaps true love was only mutual in the most rare of cases, she thought sadly as her eyes once more moved over to Yusuke.

Botan had been flying around in a circle for close to an hour, but Yusuke had yet to notice, and so she kept up her pretence of taking him home, all the while smiling to herself, resting one shoulder against his chest and basking in the feeling of his arms around her.

"Hey, what about that Yukina, huh?" he asked.

He was sitting facing forwards and she was, as always, riding in the side-saddle position, meaning that when he spoke to her she felt his breath on the side of her face and neck and felt the tickle of his voice in her ear.

"Yeah," she vaguely replied.

She was not listening. When he talked to her in this position, it was more of a feeling for her than a conversation.

"She looked kinda hot," he said. "I can't believe she's still with Kuwabara! He's a lucky bastard!"

"Yeah," Botan said vaguely.

"Or maybe she's the lucky one," Yusuke said, his voice lowering sadly. "Kuwabara doesn't care how ridiculous he looks going around with a girlfriend who looks young enough to be his daughter… Unlike Keiko…"

Botan was torn. She wanted to feel sorry for Yusuke and sympathise with his pains, but at the same time, he was cuddling closer to her and his lips were so close to her ear when he was speaking and if he could not be with Keiko, did it really have to mean that he could not be happy? She was sure that she could make him happy if he would just give her the chance to, if he would just let go of his past hurt and open his mind to future joy.

"Damn it Botan, what is taking so long? Shouldn't we be back by now?"

Botan snapped out of her thoughts and quickly tried to get her bearings, tried to remember how many times she had circled Yusuke's tower and whether she was moving away from or towards it. In her daze she had completely forgotten. They were both still dressed in the clothes they had donned for Keiko's daughter's wedding, and she had been quite distracted by how fabulous Yusuke looked and how nice it was to snuggle up to him when he looked and smelled so good, and to be flying with him. Her two favourite things were flying and Yusuke, and having the two together often left her a bit scatter-brained. Well, more scatter-brained than usual.

"Um, I was taking a short-cut!" she lied, dipping down through the clouds to get a visual of where they were.

She expected to find them flying away from Yusuke's tower and that it would be in sight, and she tensed herself in expectation of a scolding from Yusuke: but when they cleared the clouds and Botan saw where they were Yusuke was shocked into silence and she was left totally confused.

"I guess I took a wrong turn somewhere…" she muttered.

"Damn it, Botan!" Yusuke groaned.

"Oh goodness, isn't this the recreational plaza?" Botan asked as they flew low over the rooftops of several buildings adorned by gaudy neon signs depicting money symbols and naked women.

"Botan! "The recreational plaza"? Gees, you're so dumb sometimes! This is the red light district!"

Botan sighed.

"I was trying to be polite," she pointed out.

"Oh, I get it!" Yusuke said, grinning at her and wiggling his eyebrows.

"What?" she asked, feeling even more confused than ever.

"You took me here to cheer me up, right?" he said. "You're the best, Botan! You know me too well!"

"Yusuke, I have no idea what you're talking about! Can you at least – Yusuke, no!"

Botan gasped and sharply pushed down on the handle of her oar to chase after Yusuke, who had just leapt down. He landed on the roof of a building and hopped his way down over a few balconies to the ground below and promptly took himself into the building that bore tackiest of tacky neon signs, comprised of two naked women doing something Botan thought might be sexual and a string of money symbols running around their naked bodies, flashing through three different colours too quickly for comfort. Botan landed on the ground facing the door Yusuke had gone through, glancing nervously at the two gigantic demons guarding it. A scream from the inside of the building wiped the indecision from her mind and she moved over to one side of the entrance and sat down on the ground with her back resting against the wall. She would just wait outside until Yusuke remerged.

She had, a few times before, chosen to go inside one such establishment – and she still shuddered to recall those memories.

After what was probably more than an hour of counting the gold stitching on the sleeves of her kimono, Botan finally noticed someone approaching her and she gladly stood up with a smile, drawing in a breath to greet Yusuke, only to sigh it out again, her smile sagging as she saw that it was a woman – an employee of the club judging by her clothing and figure.

"Hey sweetheart," she greeted Botan.

"Good evening," Botan replied, bowing her head.

"Nice!" the woman replied, smiling and nodding her head approvingly. "Subservient little geisha girl is a very sexy gimmick."

"E-excuse me?" Botan echoed.

"You're here for a job, right?" the woman asked. "You've got a pretty face. Nothing special, but those big eyes and that soft hair sort of fits the whole "servant woman" act, so it still works."

"What?"

The woman began walking around Botan, who stayed perfectly still, too confused to move or talk.

"You've got an okay ass," the woman said as she passed Botan's back. "Like your face, it's nothing great, but it's okay. Your breasts are really small, but hey, some guys like that. And after you've worked here a few months, you could probably afford the surgery to give you a better pair anyway."

Botan screamed as the woman grabbed the material of her kimono and pulled it upwards. She managed to hit the woman's hands away, but not before her legs had been exposed up to her mid-thighs, drawing the attention of several passers-by.

"Nice legs," the woman concluded. "You ever tried pole dancing? You've got great legs for it."

"How dare you?" Botan hissed. "I'm not here to work, I'm waiting for a friend!"

"Oh, you're a hooker?"

Botan felt tears start to sting at her eyes. The last few days had been impossibly difficult, she did not now need a demon woman telling her how unattractive she was and accusing her of being a sex worker.

"Excuse me!" she said, shirking past the woman and marching up to the entrance of the club.

"No entry without a membership card or a bribe," one of the doormen told her.

"I'm with Yusuke Urameshi, now get out of my way!" Botan shouted angrily, pushing him aside and storming into the club.

She shouldered and elbowed her way through a sea of rowdy men who tried to grab at her, eventually finding Yusuke in his usual place, sat by the edge of the stage.

"Yusuke!" she yelled into his ear.

"Damn, Botan!" he yelped, ducking away from her and pressing a hand to his ear. "Don't scream at me like that!"

"I think you need to go home, mister!" she continued, ignoring his complaint. "It's late, it's been a long day, and this is a terrible place!"

Yusuke arched his eyebrows at her, casually picking up a bottle of dangerously dark liquid and taking a swig from it.

"I'm having a good time," he said as he lowered the bottle again, the stench of alcohol on his breath making Botan's eyes water. "Go on home, I'll see you there later."

Botan wiped a tear from her eye and sighed.

"The last time you said that, I had to come back here at ten o'clock the next morning, and I found you asleep out on the street," she reminded him.

"I don't remember that," Yusuke replied. "Stop exaggerating, Botan!"

"I woke you up but you refused to actually physically get up, so I had to pick you up and put you on my oar and fly you back home," Botan explained. "I put you to bed and you slept until three in the afternoon, at which point you rolled out of your bed and threw up on the floor."

"…I definitely don't remember that. Don't you think I would remember if you had managed to carry me back to my bed?"

"Um…"

"Just go on ahead and make yourself a nice cup of cocoa and go to bed, grandma!"

Botan thinned her eyes angrily but Yusuke had already turned away from her. She looked up at the performance on the stage that had caught Yusuke's attention, groaning in despair. Yusuke was not nearly drunk enough for her to manage to drag him out of the club on her own, and so she was left with only two choices: she could either go back to waiting outside for Yusuke – and risk being forcefully recruited as a member of staff for the club – or she could get some help extracting Yusuke from the club. After a few seconds of debate and watching the rowdy demons around her, Botan decided on the latter, and made her way out of the club again, summoning her oar and rocketing up into the sky.

Hokushin often lacked a sense of humour when Botan had to enlist his help with anything – in fact, she thought, Hokushin lacked a sense of humour entirely – and so going to him always made her apprehensive. In an attempt to distract herself from the task ahead of her, she veered away from the bright lights of the plaza and over to the darkened, uninhabited forests, where she often saw the exotic wildlife of demon world. None of the creatures she saw were strong enough or fast enough to catch her, and so she often flew over the forests to observe them, as some of them were quite beautiful. And, as though to prove that she had made the right decision, an especially beautiful bird flew up out of the trees in front of her, soaring off to her left. It was so beautiful, with sparkling plumage and a long, flowing tail, Botan could not take her eyes off of it; and in doing so, she promptly forgot the first rule of steering: the hands always follow the eyes.

Botan did not know how long she followed the bird for, either in time or distance, and she only awoke from her trance when something hideous shot up from the ground and devoured the bird in one gulp. She cried out and pulled back on her oar, halting herself midair. A quick glance around about her told her that she was well and truly lost, and in a part of demon world she had never seen before. She contemplated turning around and flying in the opposite direction she was currently facing, but as she could not be sure that she had flown in a straight line, she did not know if that was the best strategy to employ. She slowly turned around on the spot as she tried to decide what to do. As she completed her rotation she saw the monster that had eaten the bird shooting up from the ground, her brain taking longer than it ought to have to acknowledge that the monster was after her.

She screamed and shot away, but the monster – despite being some sort of worm with a mouth the size of its own head – was so massive, it could reach up high and cover great distances with little effort, and evading it proved much harder than she had initially thought it would. The monster snapped at her oar, barely missing her, and the displacement of air caused by it closing its jaws created a blast of wind that sent Botan spiralling downwards. She screamed as she tried to right herself, branches of trees scratching at her face and hands and catching in her hair and clothing. By the time she had control of her oar again she was in the thick of the forest in near pitch-dark conditions, but she was too frightened to think clearly. She flew forwards without changing direction or ascending above the trees, her breathing become ragged and uneven.

In her panic, Botan began thinking about only one thing: where was Yusuke? Would he know that she was in trouble and come and rescue her? He usually had a way of knowing such things – Kuwabara had joked about it, but perhaps she really was somehow emotionally connected to Yusuke. She heard movement behind her and she started to lose focus.

"Yusuke, help me, please…" she whispered.

She heard more movement behind her and her heart began to race.

"Help me!" she wailed.

She screamed as she collided with a thick branch of a tree that easily knocked her from her oar. She landed hard on the ground below, the sound of her oar bouncing away from her resonating around her head. She started to try to stand but something that felt worryingly like a boot collided with one of her shoulders and shoved her back down to the ground. She closed her eyes and tensed, waiting for an attack: but one never came. Instead, she heard the worm monster screaming and the sound of conflict behind her. She sighed in relief and sat up, touching a hand to her chest, feeling her heart thudding against her palm. She was a little annoyed that Yusuke had kicked her down, but it had not hurt, he had done it to keep her safe and she knew that it had been a difficult day for him, so she decided to forgive him.

As the commotion of the battle ended Botan got to her feet, shirking past a lump of bloodied flesh from the monster that had somehow been hacked off during the battle and landed nearby her. In the dark of the forest she could not locate Yusuke immediately, but eventually she noticed a shadow moving towards her, which soon took the shape of a man with wild hair carrying her oar.

"Your timing is just perfect!" she cried, running towards him. "My hero!"

She threw herself at him, grabbing her arms around his neck and squeezing him as tightly as she could. He grunted and she heard him drop her oar with a clatter, but as he did not try to push her off, she held on.

"You're always in the right place at the right time," she said.

She sighed, her mind vaguely registering that something seemed odd – like the fact that she was on her tiptoes in order to rest her chin on Yusuke's shoulder – but she was mostly overcome by her relief, and so she dismissed her concerns. Instead she delighted in the feeling of holding onto him. And, when he continued to let her cling onto him – which was very unlike him – she suddenly found her voice speaking the one thought that had been lingering in her mind for countless years.

"Kiss me," she whispered.

She felt him flinch against her, but again he neither said nor did anything.

"Please," she said, tears forming in her eyes. "Please just kiss me. Don't say anything, don't tell me it's wrong, just do it. Please."

Botan choked out a faint sob and clung onto Yusuke tighter. After a few more seconds of holding onto him she felt his hands on her shoulders. His fingers slid up her neck and into her hair – which had mostly come loose after her tearing through the branches of the trees – and he gently pulled her head back. She submitted to his touch, letting him angle her head back, closing her eyes and praying that he would oblige her request. And, barely an instant later, she moaned in surprise and ecstasy as she finally felt his lips on hers.

She melted into his hold, clinging at his clothing to keep herself on her feet. He worked his tongue between her lips and into her mouth, smoothing it against hers, dominating the pace of the kiss. Botan tried to follow his movements as best she could, but he was being almost aggressive with his assault on her mouth. But, despite their kiss not being exactly gentle or tender, Botan's knees began to tremble and falter beneath her, and she had to reaffirm her grip on his clothing to keep herself upright. She was glad when he moved his hands to her back, curling his arms around her and holding her against him and on her feet. It was not exactly how she had imagined their first kiss would be, but it certainly was passionate and memorable.

Eventually, just as Botan was reaching the point of discomfort, he slid his tongue out of her mouth. She started to relax only to moan out again as he lightly caught her bottom lip between his teeth and pulled on it gently. As he finally broke the contact between their mouths Botan collapsed against him, burying her head into his shoulder and panting in exhaustion. They remained that way for some time more, her barely standing and him holding her up in a tight embrace.

"Oh Yusuke…" she muttered into his shoulder.

"What?" he grunted.

"You don't know how long I've wanted to do that…" she said breathlessly. "Yusuke, I… Oh Yusuke…"

"Did you just say Yusuke? As in Yusuke Urameshi?"

Botan froze. That was not Yusuke's voice. She was too afraid to blink or even to breathe. If he was not Yusuke, then who was she clinging to? Who had she just kissed?

"Y-Yusuke…" she muttered.

"You thought I was Yusuke?"

He sounded offended. And he clearly did not sound like Yusuke. And, Botan thought miserably, before they had kissed, she had begged him to kiss her.

"Well…" she said slowly. "You rescued me from the monster…"

Botan slowly leaned back, tilting her head up to look at the face leering down at her. In the darkness of the forest it was difficult to make out much of anything, and so, out of desperation, she move her hands to his neck, feeling her way up to his face. He had the face of a humanlike demon, which was something of a consolation to her, since her initial fear was that she had just let some sort of monstrous looking demon become the first kiss she had been saving for her one true love. But, after fumbling about over his features, trying to ignore the way he growled and grunted when she poked at him, Botan realised that she did not really know how to recognise a person's face by touch – though she thought she might be able to do it with Yusuke because she knew his face better than anyone's. She moved her hands to the demon's hair, finding that it felt much like Yusuke's did, only it was much shorter, and it seemed to all sweep up towards the back of his head. She sighed in frustration, ready to give up and start yelling at whoever he was for taking advantage of her, but just then her hands landed on something that seemed familiar somehow.

The demon was wearing a bandana around his head, and a little more fumbling around – and a few more disgruntled snarls from him – revealed to her that he had a jagan eye in his forehead, concealed behind the bandana. Botan slowly moved her hands from his face to his arms, pushing them from her. He obligingly let her push him off and she gladly staggered back from him. As she stopped she saw an eerie silver glow of demon energy appear in front of her, illuminating a hand. She watched the hand move through the air and then stop between her face and the demon's.

She gasped at what she saw.

"You!" she cried, pointing an accusing finger at him.

"Hn. Idiot."

Next Chapter: Botan is surprised to see how Hiei has changed since she last saw him, but mostly she is repulsed that she kissed him. Just as she thinks she has gotten over the embarrassment of the moment, she is again reunited with Hiei and forced to endure his taunts: but she learns something about Hiei that perhaps evens the score between them. Chapter 3 – Same Difference

A/N: The sickness continues…

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