Hello every body! This is Blacklight52, another obscure fanfiction author destined for mediocrity! This one shot has been in my mind for about a month now, and it's starting to piss me off, so I'm going to post it and get it stuck in other people's heads! Share in my misery! Okay, here it is.

Botan rushed into her apartment, sobbing incomprehensibly. She slammed the door and sat down on her bed. She knew she had to calm down, but she couldn't seem to.

"These breakdowns of mine have got to stop!" She scolded herself, but she knew she had no control over them.

She knew why this was happening, and there wasn't a thing she could do about it.

Botan was alone. She knew she wasn't really alone, but when she saw all her friends... they didn't truly care about her, not in the way she wanted, no, the way she NEEDED.

Everybody else had someone except her. Yusuke had Keiko, Kuwabara had Yukina, and Kurama had Shiziru.

She needed someone to need her, plain and simple. But no one would ever need the weak, useless ferry girl whose only purpose was to give assignments.

She started crying again, as she did whenever she started thinking about that subject.

"There it is!" Botan thought to herself in wonder. Whenever she started crying, she would also get another feeling, a very small one, but a feeling nonetheless.

It was a feeling that she was forgetting something... but she could never figure out what that something was.

"It doesn't matter anyway, whatever I'm forgetting can't help me now."

Little did Botan know, that something she was forgetting COULD help her, and that something wasn't a something, it was a someone.

Hiei sat perched in the tree outside Botan's window.

"Annoying onna, why do I have to keep an eye on her?" Hiei muttered to himself.

He could hear that stupid kitsune's voice right now: "Because Hiei, you can stay hidden."

"I hate this"

But Hiei knew he wasn't fooling anybody, especially himself. He couldn't deny he didn't mind spending time with Botan. Heck, he downright enjoyed it!

He was drawn to Botan, her bubbly nature kept his pessimistic and brooding personality in check, and he kept her head out of the clouds.

Also, she intrigued him to no end. She always had that fake mask on, that happy-go-lucky, carefree mask. She seemed to fool everybody else, but he saw right through it.

She was hiding something, and he wanted to know what it was.

He felt a connection with her. Both of them were hiding, but they were doing it in different ways. Hiei hid his pain with his indifference, and Botan with her cheerfulness.

Hiei, looking down again, saw Botan start to stand up, then waver a bit. He flashed down and caught her right before she fell.

Picking her up and walking to the bed, he set her down gently.

"Hn." Hiei thought to himself. "She fell asleep. When was the last time she slept?"

With that final thought, he walked over to the door, placing himself in front of it so no one could disturb Botan, and waited for morning.