Fire and Water
by October Breeze
See if you can figure out who is Fire and who is Water. It's way easy, there's a lot of symbolism and 'fire' and 'water' words used to describe them.
She stood atop the roof, her footing loose and shaky against the shingles but her stance firm. She was an ally of the night, an empress, a ninja, a fierce tigress on the hunt. Unstoppable and consuming and free. Tossing her head, a slow smirk spread across her lips, proud, lingering. With sharp eyes, she watched his tall, firm figure walk down the alleyway, his pace slow and confident.
Taking her time, she edged towards the end of the roof, the old shingles disintegrating under her feet. The said dust slipped down and fell over the edge of the roof like powdered snow. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out her gloves, securing them over her palms and jumping off the roof, grabbing the ledge before falling and letting herself drop. She landed lightly on her feet, right in front of her target. Her timing was never off.
He stopped in his tracks, surprise mingling with fear across his strong features. They slowly disappeared into passiveness. "Squall…" she breathed, stepping forward.
"No," he said. "We can't do this anymore."
"Squall," she said again, his name rolling off her tongue like a slow dance, saying it with a barely contained passion. She smiled and stepped forward, pulling her gloves off her hands. They fell to the ground. Squall looked down at them, his eyes unmoving. "Squall…"
"Yuffie," he said and groaned when she became close enough that he could feel the heat emanating from her skin. She lifted her hand and he took her wrist, unable to stop himself, pulling her to him and pressing her between the brick wall of the building and his body. He pressed his face into her neck and her free hand tangled itself in his hair. She breathed him in, all of him, his cool, refreshing skin and his clean smell.
She writhed as well as she could under his weight. Her heart was bursting, staring at his face, his quiet, handsome face that held deep blue eyes with a barely contained storm deep within their depths. She wanted to lose herself in him, reach in and take his heart with hers. She knew she could.
"I love you," she murmured, pressing her face into his cheek. "I love you, I love you, I love you…" She kissed him all over his face, his forehead, nose, mouth, cheeks.
"I love you," he replied, letting his breath out. She kissed him hard and he warmed to her touch, replying with equal force. He was trying to stop himself, because all of this was wrong. But he needed her and hated himself for it.
"Stop," Yuffie whispered against his lips. "Stop trying to stop it…"
Finally, she had jerked him and he let go of her. She stumbled forward, surprised that she was no longer trapped. He stepped away and all she could see was a sliver of his face; the rest was shaded with darkness. His dark blue eyes were turning over emotions, waves of inner turmoil swimming across the part of his face illuminated by the moonlight.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said, stepping away again, his back hitting the brick.
I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you…
"Too late for that," she said, her voice hitting a crescendo. Her stomach burned, her face burned, yet she felt the cool wetness of tears slipping down her cheeks. So quickly, her fiery passions had been dampened and put out. Why, whenever she was with him, did he stop her in her tracks? "Why can't you accept that I love you?" she whispered, holding herself.
He was hurting her. She was hurting him. It killed him to keep turning her away every time, to see her reduced to such an uncharacteristic state, and by his hands. His hands.
She was drying him up.
"I'm sorry," he said, looking away as if it burned to look at her. She shook her head just once, her hair falling into her eyes. She shook it again, holding her stomach. This time she wasn't running, and she decided to tell him so.
"I'm not running this time," she said. She was weak.
He was drying her up.
She wanted to run into him, hurt him, for causing her this pain. That's what the old Yuffie would have done, but it seemed with him things were different.
"I'm not running," she said again. "And you can't make me disappear. Look at me, Squall. Look at me. I'm not something you can hide from and think I'll disappear." But that's what he had tried before. What was going to stop him from doing it again?
"I want to be with you," he said, his voice breaking off. "But I can't."
"Coward," she said, spitting it out. "Coward! The Squall I knew never ran from his problems. He went forward because he couldn't go back. He wore away the things stopping him. What happened to him, huh?"
She was slowly gaining courage. Picking up her disposed gloves, she threw them at him. They hit his chest and fell.
He slid down against the wall, the bricks stinging his skin. But he didn't care. He dropped his head in his hands and shook his head.
"I'm done hiding," he said. "You're right. You were always right."
She walked towards him, her normal energy subdued. She sank down next to him and wrapped her arms around him. She wasn't warm anymore, he noticed. And he wasn't cool.
"You're not trying to protect me," she murmured. "You're trying to protect yourself."
The reality hit him like a deep heat in his chest. He tensed in her arms, and she responded by tightening her grip. He turned his head away from hers, and she kissed down his neck. When he turned to look at her again, a chill swept over her seeing the angry tears in his eyes. As soon as she had seen them they disappeared, as fleeting as a summer rain, and she wondered if she had even seen them at all.
He stood up and she let him. Her heart had finally burst, and Squall was taking the remains with him.
And when he walked away, she stood, watching him, dull and drained, and wondered if she had ever had his heart at all.