Something More by kageshoujo
Oneshot. Reffie for all the fans out there. Rejoice! My third Reffie fic! Inspired by the short story a guy friend made about me for our grad yearbook. It's been hanging around my head for six months now.
Summary: Reno couldn't afford the commitment. Yuffie wouldn't settle for anything else. And he wouldn't settle for anything more. Only years later does he realize what he missed out on.
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The woman in the train station glowed, unusually. He was in line for train tickets, but he could have spotted her from much farther away. She stood by the vendo machine which was beside the benches, looking around as if she were waiting for someone. She was slender and long-legged—the very thing that first caught his eye—her hair was jet black long, falling to her shoulders. He wouldn't have recognized her if it weren't for the trademark band around her forehead.
"Yuffie," he whispered, suddenly recalling old memories.
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"Reno," she called, in that vulnerable voice that he knew was made to get something out of him.
He dumped his cigarette in the ashtray and didn't bother to look at the girl beside him on his bed. "What is it, Yuf, sweetheart?"
"I want something more than this."
Puzzled, he finally turned to her, seeing her with her arms around her raised knees, white sheets covering her nakedness. "What?" he just asked.
"We've been together for years," she said. "And you're always just absorbed in your job, and I can't be away from Wutai all the time and I'm tired of being just a diversion and... Oh, Reno, you know what I mean."
When she bothered to be serious she looked older than her age. "What?" he said, surprised. "You want to get married? You know that's not possible."
"What's not possible about it?" Yuffie asked. "I'm not a minor anymore."
"I'm a Turk. You know what that means."
"And I'm a ninja. I can fight your enemies, too, you know. They can't hostage me to get back at you or threaten you, I promise."
He was being irate, as she brought up a topic he didn't like hearing of at all. "Aren't things fine the way they are, Yuf? What do you need a ring for?"
"I want to know that I'm not just a passing distraction, that what we have is a commitment!" She was tearing up now. Not what he wanted. Equally, commitment was something he didn't want as well.
He was silent, and she knew what that meant. She got up and picked up her clothes and dressed and said, "I hope you'll live to regret it."
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He couldn't count the years that have passed since then. The years just meld together into one blur ever since she left—he couldn't remember anything about them. All he knew was that they lacked her smile, her laughter, her childish antics. Yuffie continued to look around in the train station, as if waiting for someone. The ticket line wasn't moving, so he stayed standing there staring at her. It seems she grew taller, he thought. And for some reason she looked prettier than he ever remembered.
Then she gave that little grunt she gave when she was bored—and then turned to the vendo machine and started to pick a snack. She put some gil in the slot, and then her canned soda started down the machine—and got stuck.
"Dammit!" she yelled, startling a few others in the train station. She started kicking on the machine but it refused to surrender her soda. Reno, from the ticket line, gave a chuckle, remembering how explosive and annoying she could be. He shrugged, and decided it would be okay to approach her.
"Yo. Need help, sweetheart?"
She turned around to face him, and he was not used to seeing her shoulder-length hair to follow after her. He remembered short black hair. She took a step back when she saw him—the same red hair, the same suit, the same look, as if a ghost of the past. "R-Reno." She looked like she would faint. She could have stumbled on his name.
He just gave her his smirk, as he crouched down by the vendo machine and put his hands up into it to retrieve her soda. In a few seconds, he succeeded, and he got up to offer it to her. "Here you go, yo."
She took it, careful not to touch his hand in any way, as is he had a disease. "Thank you," she said.
He shrugged casually, dismissing how weird she was acting. Of course she would act weird, I dumped her long ago. "No problem. So what's up? What are you doing here?"
She was startled at how he was talking like nothing happened between then before, and then she smiled a thin smile when she decided to play his game. "Getting on a train, of course, Turkey."
Hearing the nickname on her mouth again was so nostalgic. "Where to?" he asked.
"Not your business," she said, grinning up to him, and when she did that, he settled that hair and height aside, she was still the same Yuffie. "What about you, Redhead? Turks business?"
"That's highly classified business, brat," he said, grinning back, as if brought back to the old days.
There was a sparkle in her eye as she smiled wider. "Sorry, Turkey, but I'm not a brat anymore."
He took a second to figure out what she meant, but then she jerked up and waved at someone. Then he saw a man, black-haired and tall (though not as tall as him) and Wutaian by appearances make his way towards Yuffie as he waved back. But what stunned Reno more was the toddler the man was holding by the hands, running down the train station in with a grin and a band-aid on his nose, hair a shocking red, yelling "Mommy, mommy!" at Yuffie.
The man and the boy stopped before Yuffie, and the boy put his arms up to Yuffie. Yuffie giggled and bent down to pick the boy up and carry him in her arms.
"Did you get the tickets?" Yuffie asked the black-haired man.
"I did, sweetheart. Of course. The line was awfully slow, though. Sorry you had to wait long."
Reno made a face, realizing he was now excluded from her world. He knew he was the one who first called her sweetheart.
"You were the one who said I should wait! And you know I can't stand the waiting." she told her companion.
The man just smiled as he said, "But I didn't want you to get tired." His eyes fell on Yuffie's belly, and when Reno realized what that could have meant, he almost took a step back.
But the boy in Yuffie's arms caught his gaze—and for what seemed like an eternity for Reno, his aqua eyes met with similar aqua eyes. "Yuffie..." he breathed out, making Yuffie remember that he was still there.
"Hmm? Oh, what is it, Reno?" she asked, nonchalantly.
"This boy is..."
"Mine." She finished for him, enunciating the word well as if to get a point clear. She smiled at him and then she walked away, the man, presumably her husband, following her.
Reno could hear him asking who he was. She said something in Wutaian that he couldn't understand, but knew that maybe he wouldn't want to.
He stood there and realized what he just missed out on by letting her go.
END.