Character(s): Shizuru, Botan, Yukina, Keiko.
Prompt: Heads We Will, Tails We'll Try Again ("Why Don't You and I" by Santana)
Summary: Stubbornness is an attractive quality.
Notes: Remember that this is a collection of UNCONNECTED one-shots, and therefore disparity and contradictions WILL exist. I do not support any particular pairings, and occasionally make use of one or another to further a plot. I hope you enjoyed this series as much as (or more than) I enjoyed writing it.

Stubborn

Shizuru didn't know when to quit. She couldn't stop loving Sakyo, no matter how many years passed since his death because she had never gotten closure. She couldn't stop beating up her brother, no matter how much he learned because he never learned enough.

It would be easier to give up her love for a dead man, easier to stop caring for her brother enough to make him learn, damnit, that not everything was sunshine and not everyone had good in them.

She couldn't bring herself to stop, and frankly, she didn't want to. One day, she would move on. One day, Kazuma would learn enough. But it wasn't "one day" yet.

--

Botan gave up too easily. She didn't try and remember who she had been when alive. She didn't try and find out if anyone missed her, if anyone was looking for her. She didn't try and pursue anyone she fell in love with. She didn't try to save every soul she came across.

But she did pick her battles. She struggled to help Yuusuke, because she saw something in him, and he called to her in a way no one else ever had. She tried to stop Keiko from turning into a demon because she felt that one day they could be good friends, and she wanted a good friend. She attempted to overcome her fear of Hiei and tell Yukina the truth because Yukina deserved to know that her brother still lived. She pursued Kurama because she knew, in some intuitive way, that he could make her deliriously happy.

--

Yukina was as stubborn as her brother. She didn't give up on anyone that she cared about. She refused to accept that her brother was dead, searching for him throughout the realms. She didn't let the deaths of a human and several birds break her spirit, no matter how much she had come to care for them. And she would never let on to her brother that she knew the truth until he told her first.

--

Keiko was stubborn about the wrong things and gave up on the good things.