Rated PG-13 for language

Author's note: Everything about Kirishima and the boys is completely made up. The more reviews I get, the more I'll write.

Kirishima's POV

I reach the hospital long before the others, my fury quickening my feet and propelling me forward when my heart would rather hesitate. I hate this place; despise all of its glaring white lights and self-proclaimed purity. The smell of sickness is thick and cloying, if only in my mind. My stomach heaves, trying to reject the foulness around me, trying to keep it out. Yet as I stand in the halls of the diseased and dying, it is a different kind of malady I have come to fear. A slow and seemingly unstoppable devastation has claimed my best friend, a plague and pestilence that calls itself Yusuke Urameshi.

Maybe you think I am being paranoid and melodramatic. After all, Urameshi is just some low life punk, isn't he? Bad news for sure, but pestilence? Plague? Perhaps those words are a little harsh…

I don't think so.

When Kuwabara pulled my sorry ass out of the gutter three years ago, I thought he was a weakling, a fool. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Lying in the gravel that morning, my guts slowly leaking out into a small puddle beside me, I knew I was dying. I was only thirteen years old but I knew I was dying. My lower body had gone cold with more than just the morning chill and my vision was slowly starting to haze. Which was fine with me, it was getting awful hard to keep them open anyway. I recall thinking distantly that if I had only been a few seconds faster, I could have out run that other boy and would even now be scarfing down my stolen breakfast. The warm egg and rice dish would have been nice on a morning like this, I mused bitterly as I began to shudder. Suddenly, a great blue shape obstructed my vision. (He always wears blue, it seems….)

"I thought the Grim Reaper wore black." I muttered in dazed surprise. The last thing I remember is his soft replying chuckle. After that, my vision gave way to nothingness and I didn't wake up for a long time.

I didn't know it then, but by the time he scraped me off the pavement, Kuwabara was used to playing the hero. He had already "rescued" Komada and Okubo. I was just another lost soul he reached out to…and it was an uphill battle every step of the way. I wasn't anything like Komada or Okubo, not some good kid fate had played tricks on or pushed into desperate measures. I was a street kid, born and bred. I stole, mugged, and generally did whatever I thought I had to to survive. All he had to do was make them strong, give them confidence. Me…he had to make me human.

After I recovered, Kuwabara brought me home to live with him and Shizuru. Suspicious as hell, I kept waiting for him to demand something in return, but he never did. When I stayed out too late, he was always in the living room waiting for me when I stumbled in. When I nicked some cash and was too slobbering drunk to find my way, he always found me and dragged me home. Never a harsh word said or a hard hand fell. There was only an unspoken disappointment and pity. I hated the guilt that he made me fell. Finally, I snapped.

With a bottle of whiskey in my belly, I was angry and just looking for trouble. When Kuwabara interrupted my third fight of the night, I was incensed. What was his problem? How dare he try and run my life? Why wouldn't he just fuck off and leave me alone? In a rage, I swung at him with all my might. Sidestepping it with ease, he knocked me off my feet and glared down at me with hard black eyes. I wanted nothing more than to disappear, to escape that look. I tried to apologize, but my mouth just wouldn't cooperate. Without a word, he slung me over his shoulder and carried me home. It was the last time I did anything like that again.

Looking back on it all, even knowing Kuwabara like I do, it hard to believe he put up with all my shit. I attacked his honor code every chance I got and sneered at his compassion. Yet, somehow, those very things I viewed with such contempt are now the more important part of who I am. I can't think of a single moment when it all changed, but maybe things like that just happen so slowly, we don't notice until it's too late.

Standing before the room the nurse at the front desk directed me to, my fist ball up and I fight the impulse to slam my knuckles into the brick wall until all this anger inside me fades away. I really wish I could pound them into Urameshi instead! Try as I might, I can't place where it all went wrong. Maybe that change happened gradually too…

What I do remember is the first time we came to this hospital looking for Kuwabara. We found him beat to hell with his arm in a cast, broken in at least three places, the doctor said. Who had done this? We wanted to know. How had this happened? We were angrier than we ever thought we were capable of. He refused to talk about it; told us not to worry and that everything was fine. (FINE!) It was the beginning of a viscous pattern.

He disappears with Urameshi and those other strangers for days, sometimes weeks at a time. When he comes back he almost inevitably ends up here. I can't help but wonder what it will be this time. A few more broken ribs, another punctured lung? Something worse?…Something fatal?

But to be totally honest, it's not the wounds I can see that worry me. It seems like every time he comes back, the light in his eyes it a little dimmer. He smiles less, drifts more. We all see it, but no one ever says anything. (Like talking about it would make it more real.)

Steeling myself for whatever awaits I open the door to find…

…

…

the most beautiful creature I've ever seen laying on the bed. Her angelic face is so pale it almost matches the stark white hospital sheets. Long fans of ebony hair brush across her cheek and I can't help but wonder what it would feel like to lean in close and press my lips to hers, like Prince Charming awakening Sleeping Beauty.

To my surprise, her eyes slid open ( they are gray, like fog rolling in off the ocean). My heart stops in my chest as she captures my gaze in her own.