Disclaimer: Windily not mine.
A/N: Originally written for the challenge 'storm' over at KH Drabble. Set during KH and KHII. I love these two characters entirely too much, and yet when I came to write, the pun on 'Squall' never even occurred to me. Go figure.
Stormy Weather
or
If You Stare Into the Abyss, and the Abyss Stares Back, Should You Wave?
There's something liberating about storms. Standing in them, you feel how small you are. A pinprick, a dust mote, one zit on the pubescent face of eternity. Perch up high and yell into a storm. I guarantee, suddenly everything feels… not better. Different. If you can weather a storm, with retina-scorching lightning, teeth-rattling thunder, and raindrops so massive they practically punch your eyeballs back inside your head, you can survive anything.
Storms knock down solid things all the time – houses and towers and bleak castles. Thousand-year-old trees come crashing down in storms, or erupt in flames that defy the wetness. Ever see a burning tree in the rain?
Those who endure one storm can endure them all.
Right?
My throat hurts. Maybe I should stop yelling. I can't really hear myself anyway.
No maybe about it. I should stop, but I can't. Not yet. It'd feel like giving up. So I plant my feet, plant my heart, and plant my voice deep in the wind and rain and tears and snot and all the other stuff that belongs out in the cold night where nobody can see.
A half-moon lurks somewhere in the sky. Half-moons across my palms, too, all red and puckered. Can't see them though. I could bring my hand to my face and still see what I've been seeing for hours.
I don't hear my name. When I'm grabbed, I nearly let go and slide over the edge – literally. Maybe figuratively too. I grab the spire, heart jumping as if trying to break free, dragging a noisy tin can up and down the prison bars of my ribcage. I'm already breathless, but somehow I never noticed. Just like I never noticed how numb I've gone.
"Come inside!" yells the grabber.
"Get lost!" I yell back, but not loudly. I wasted all my best yells on the storm. Still don't feel any better. What a gyp.
"Now!"
"Can't make me."
He proves he can. I kick and yell, but my muscles are weak as my voice. When he plonks me down on the floor I huddle up, shivering, trying not to let my chattery teeth bite off my tongue.
He's sodden too. Water drips into his eyes. It should steam when it crosses his glare. "What were you thinking?" He sounds like the thunder. Looks like it too. "You could've broken your neck. Stupid, thoughtless, selfish little -"
"Don't care," I chatter sullenly.
"This better be good. Why were you on the turret roof?"
"Better than being inside. It's all wrong here. Too different. Too… wrong!"
He stares at me. Thoughts collide behind his eyes. Not everything can stay alight in the rain, not even Leon's legendary anger. "You didn't … Yuffie, you can't have thought things would be like before. This isn't Radiant Garden anymore. It's Hollow Bastion."
I turn away. That not it, except in the ways it is. I shiver, hoping he can't tell it's not the cold – just like he can't tell my tears from the rain on my face.
Radiant Garden died in the rain. I've been seeing it for hours; since the first peal of thunder brought it all back. That storm made everything chaotic. Nobody knew where to run. Hundreds ran straight into the Heartless. Maybe thousands. I remember screaming and confusion. I remember being held tight, and then the arms around me just dissolving, like lightning after-images fading away. Nobody thinks I do, but I do.
I really do.
Storms remind you of your own smallness, but nowhere near as much as when someone unexpected wraps you in his arms and lets you cry as your heart breaks along old fissures for a second time.
Fin.