"Urameshi?"

Yusuke didn't even bother grinning, he just looked Kuwabara up and down multiple times. He could barely sense any spirit energy at all, and on top of that, his physical strength seemed to be dwindling as well.

Botan hadn't been kidding. Kuwabara really was dying.

"Um…hey? Something the matter?"

"Huh?"

Yusuke suddenly realized that he was being impolite…not that that mattered when it came to Yusuke Urameshi….or did it?

"What? Oh, no! Not at all!" He faked a rich, hearty laugh, and placed his hands behind his head. "You busy?"

"Uh…no."

"Cool."

A blank moment passed in which the two just stared at each other in utter confusion.

'Well this isn't going very well' Yusuke thought to himself.

"Wanna…..go do something?"

Kuwabara blinked.

"Like what?"

"Well…" Yusuke paused to scratch his chin….then his temple….then his forehead….then the back of his head….then the back of his neck…."I don't know."

Kuwabara raised an eyebrow. "Did Keiko dump you?"

Yusuke felt his eye twitch. "NO!" He hollered indignantly.

Chuckling, Kuwabara placed his hands on his hips and smiled down at his old friend. Typical Yusuke.

"Let me grab my jacket." He turned from the doorway and yelled that he was going to be gone for a while. Shizuru, the person Yusuke assumed Kuwabara was talking to, gave no answer.

Guess that meant he was allowed to leave.

"So, what have you been up to?"

Kuwabara shrugged. "Not much, lately. Life got pretty boring after Koenma stopped sending us assignments."

"Yeah…"

"Just getting through school these days. Hey, you heard from Kurama or Hiei at all?"

Yusuke felt his blood run cold for a second, but then realized that if he said no, his answer wouldn't be a total lie.

"Nothing from Kurama, and I doubt anyone's heard anything from Hiei. Speaking of which, how's Yukina?"

"Not too good."

Yusuke frowned. Surely there wasn't something wrong with her too?

"Is she sick?"

"No, but she seems worried a lot lately. She keeps doting over me, saying that I don't look very good."

"Yeah, but you never looked good Kuwabara." Laughing, Yusuke twisted up his fingers and gave Kuwabara a friendly punch in the shoulder….no matter how friendly Yusuke's punches were, they still hurt like hell.

"OW! Urameshi…"

"Hmm, I think Yukina's right! You have gotten soft!"

Yusuke started laughing, and after realizing the joke Kuwabara couldn't help but join in.

It was almost like old times.

Almost.

"So what brings you all the way out to my place? It's been months since we've all done anything together!"

"Yeah, I know…I feel kinda bad about that."

"Been spending all your time with Keiko, huh?" He nudged Yusuke in the ribs with his painfully sharp elbow, all the while his left eyebrow seemed to rise and fall in a very suggestive manner that made Yusuke question what exactly he was thinking about.

Then it hit him.

And then he hit Kuwabara.

"NO you idiot! It's not like that!"

Although the tall, burly, red headed man winced, he seemed to be having fun roughing it up with an old pal of his.

"Aw, so there's no Urameshi Junior yet, is that it?"

"That's it, you are so dead!"

Both young men sat on park benches parallel to the other. Their heads were angled up, staring at the nighttime sky and watching the stars pass by.

Watching time pass by.

Watching life pass by.

"So what happened, Urameshi?"

"Hmm?"

"I mean, to us. To all of us. We were unbeatable for so long…suddenly, we're all nothing again."

Yusuke sighed. If this was going to be another philosophical rant by the not-so-wise Kuwabara…

"We're not nothing," he reassured his friend. "We've just…gone our separate ways, I guess. It happens. We all have our own lives to take care of now…"

"…it's kind of sad."

"That we're moving on?"

"No…that we're moving away."

Yusuke's head fell over the back rest on the bench, hitting the planter behind it. The strike to his brain triggered a thought in his mind as well, concerning what Kuwabara was talking about.

With the bond they had all shared; he, Kuwabara, Kurama and Hiei, it was amazing that after everything they had been through, death included, that the one thing that would come between them was space and time. The simplest damn thing in the world…the same thing that eventually came between everyone and everything, separating and dividing them, and inadvertently cutting them off from each other entirely…even the great team Urameshi was apparently not exempt from the effects of time…and fate.

Suddenly, death didn't seem so lonely anymore.

"I guess."

"Is that all you can say? "'I guess.'"

Yusuke sighed. "Well it's not like there's anything we can do about it. You can fight the world, both spirit and demon, and in the end the laws of the universe still have you restrained by its chains. No one wins in the end…I think I've learned that above everything else."

"It shouldn't have to be that way."

"Well, what do you want to do, Kuwabara, take on time itself?"

Although Yusuke couldn't see it, he sensed a smile growing on his friend's face. One long arm reached up towards the sky as if trying to capture the myriad of specs that illuminated the sky.

"……yeah."

Yusuke rotated his head to look at Kuwabara. There was a familiar glint in the young man's eyes…one that Yusuke recognized very well. It was that glint that said Kuwabara was being serious, despite the ridiculousness of his proposal.

"What?"

"C'mon, Urameshi! One last battle! We'll fight time itself, and then nothing will control us!"

Yusuke rolled his eyes.

"I suppose after that you'll say we should battle the laws of gravity."

Kuwabara chuckled.

"Yeah, you're right. It was a stupid idea."

With that, Kuwabara let his outreached arm fall to his side, and continued to stare up into the nighttime sky.

Well, I'm not overall pleased with this chapter, or the last one...they went too fast for one thing...but I do really like how I wrapped it up with Kuwabara's line at the end.

This chapter really symbolizes a lot, and I hope the reader can see that. I mainly wanted to focus on the importance of relationships (friends), and that even the strongest bonds can be broken by distance and time. It's a painful lesson that we all know, but I want to incorporate that theme into this story a great deal.

Let me know what you think, please? Reviews are always appreciated!