Damned If You Do
By Nascent Raconteur

It was well past midnight when the young ninja stormed into his bedroom, still in her pyjamas, looking quite distressed. She marched over to Cloud's bed, pausing only to flick the light switch, which didn't do much to illuminate their surroundings. Then, without a word, she planted herself down on top of his bed, right in the centre, where she sat in silence, clutching a large, stuffed toy rabbit in her hands.

Cloud sat up as well, wondering what had prompted the sudden late-night visit. From the look of things, the young girl was clearly mad about something, but for a brief moment, she was too high-strung to even speak, so she just sat there on the bed, quivering with barely contained fury, as though she might burst at any minute.

"Yuffie? What's wrong?" Cloud asked, reaching out to brush a stray lock of hair from her eyes. Despite the young ninja's best efforts to rein in her sable locks with an abundance of hairpins and headbands, they always seemed to slip back in front of her face.

Yuffie scowled, unable to articulate exactly what it was at which she had taken umbrage. A few seconds passed before she had finally calmed down enough to reply.

"What... the hell... is this?" she growled, thrusting the toy rabbit in his face.

Cloud leaned back, placing one hand atop her arm, calmly pushing the object of her scorn aside. "It's... Robbie the Rabbit?" he hazarded.

The toy rabbit was something he had picked up during the ongoing millennial fair. He had been wandering around between the fairground attractions, waiting for Denzel and Marlene to return from their carousel ride, when he spotted it on sale at one of the nearby stalls. As Yuffie had missed the first day of the fair due to her having a meeting with Chekov and her father, he thought he'd get her a souvenir to make up for it. He had left it in her room, on top of her bed, giving the present no further thought until this very moment.

"It's a stuffed toy," she said. "Of all the things you could have left in my room, you got me a stuffed toy."

"You don't like it?" Cloud asked.

"No, I bloody well don't like it!" Yuffie shouted. "I'm turning twenty next year, and you're still treating me like a goddamn child."

So that was it. That was what was bothering her. Innocuous a gift though it had seemed at the time, it served as yet another reminder that she would always be thought of by the rest of Avalanche as the noisy one, the cute one, the bratty one..

The child.

She had complained about it before, but no-one had taken her seriously, and any time she did raise the issue, it inevitably ended with someone giving her a pat on the head whilst telling her to take it easy, which didn't do much to quell her consternation.

Normally, this would have been the point where he would respond that if she wanted people to stop treating her like a child, she should stop acting like one. But she was right. It was something he hadn't really considered, but in retrospect, he should have known that his gift was a little too cutesy and childish, even for her.

"Look, Yuffie... I'm sorry," Cloud said. "I just bought it because I thought you'd like it. I didn't mean to imply.." he trailed off, starting over again. "I mean, I don't think you're childish, if that's what you're getting at."

"But a stuffed bunny?" Yuffie asked. "A pink, stuffed bunny?"

"I didn't think you'd take it this badly.." Cloud replied. "I'm telling you, you're reading way too much into the whole thing. I just wanted to get you something nice, that's all."

"But... why?" Yuffie asked, the tone of her voice softening somewhat, now that they were getting to the heart of the matter.

"Because I l.."

He paused, holding back the word he had almost let slip in favour of a milder one.

"Because I like you, okay?"

"...Really?" Yuffie asked.

"Yes," Cloud replied. "Even though you still act like a child sometimes."

"Well... I like you too, you know," Yuffie said. "Even though you can be incredibly dense sometimes."

They both laughed, and they could feel the tension between them dissipating.

"Listen..." Cloud said. "Maybe we can pick out something you like better at the fair tomorrow."

"All right," Yuffie said, grinning. "It's a date."

She hopped up from the bed, heading back to her own room. Before she left, however, she paused in the doorway, turning back to Cloud. "Anyway, you can keep this," she said, holding up her souvenir. "I'm getting a little too old for this kind of thing."

So saying, she threw the toy rabbit into his lap, before wandering off back to her own bedroom.

Cloud sat there for a moment, raising an eyebrow as he held up the toy rabbit, studying it. The stuffed rabbit stared back at him, mute as a rock, with the same unchanging, nauseatingly chirpy expression on its face. Not knowing what else to do with the damn thing, he set it aside, placing it on his nightstand.

"...Well, good night, Robbie," he said, flicking the lights off again and turning in for the night.

The End

A/N:

This is a brief, humorous piece based on a fan sketch by Satuki Mio, in some ways more a translation than anything else. Hope you liked it. (Also, any fellow Silent Hill fans in the house? I was trying to come up with a name for the toy rabbit, and 'Robbie the Rabbit' from Silent Hill 3 happened to pop into my head, so in case anyone's wondering, that's where I got the name from.)