Disclaimer: Icily not mine.

A/N: Originally written for Challenge #225 'warmth' on KH Drabble, but this is the longer version. KHII-ish.

Huddled Together

© Scribbler, April 2010.

"Stupid snow. Stupid battles with their stupid loud bangs and crashes and –" Yuffie sneezed. "Stupid avalanche. Stupid, stupid, stupid –" She sneezed again and groaned. "My life sucks more than a cheap hooker."

"Classy analogy."

"Shut up."

"I just regained consciousness. You're not supposed to tell me to shut up."

"Shut up! This is your fault."

Her companion raised one eyebrow. It was a cool trick. Yuffie had tried, until Cid asked if she was having a stroke. "My fault?"

"Sure!"

"Who saved your skinny butt from the wall of killer snow?"

"You owed me for causing it. If you hadn't been yelling and throwing stuff and booyakashah-ing –"

"And what?" His eyebrow climbed. It was rakish. Kind of sexy, actually.

Whoa girl. Bad guy. Bad guy who can do a cool eyebrow thing, but still. Yuffie drew herself up – difficult in a narrow cave, arms circling knees and door blocked with hard-packed snow. Why did near-death experiences make her think inappropriate things? Last time she was critically injured, she'd spent all Aerith's ministrations thinking about cheese. "Now is not the time to be explaining lingo to your unenlightened lugholes. Now is the time for formulating one of those elaborate and clever escape plans. And possibly wet our pants in terror since we're buried in a freaking avalanche."

"If you people had just listened to me instead of automatically starting a fight, we wouldn't be in this –" He sat up, cracked his head against the roof, and recoiled with a curse. It made her feel better.

"Serves you right."

"Did you miss the part where I saved your life?"

"No, but I think you missed the part where we're on different sides. Why bother luring us to Widow's Peak and starting an avalanche if you're then just gonna cancel it out by playing hero? Nearly getting yourself killed to save me doesn't really gel with that whole bad guy mystique you Organisation Thirteen bozos have got going on." Okay so maybe calling him as a bozo was a bad idea with no escape route handy, but she was allowed to be irritable. It had, after all, been an especially cruddy day, and looked set to get worse. Death by freezing, squashing or being stabbed by whatever those spiky wheel thingies were – what a choice!

His eyebrow lowered like a punctured balloon, expression settling into vague confusion. She knew it was faker than Aerith's horrible tofu.

Aerith couldn't bring herself to eat meat anymore. Nobody said anything, but to varying degrees they all remembered the bodies and terror of Radiant Garden's last night, so they followed her lead. That didn't mean Yuffie had to think tofu was anything but yucktastic, though.

Would Aerith find them? Would she worry when they didn't come home? Would Cid? Would they break out a Gummi Ship and come looking? Were Cloud and Leon still alive too, shivering and plotting somewhere under the snow?

Alive and plotting, but not shivering. Those two, admit to an itty bitty weakness like hypothermia? As if! Yuffie suppressed her own shiver. Stupid, stupid, stupid –

"The avalanche wasn't deliberate."

"Uh-huh."

"What use are dead people? Think about it, short-stuff. I came looking for you guys, and I didn't start the fighting. You can blame that on blondie and scarface."

It was true: Cloud and Leon had fired the first shot – or swung the first sword, but Yuffie was too cold and banged up to care about semantics when they weren't about her. "I'm not short! And, okay, maybe you have a point, but you're evil. You're obligated to lie, cheat, steal and kill indiscriminately, and we're obligated to kick your ass for it. It's in the handbook."

"It'd be easier if there was a handbook," her unlikely rescuer muttered, getting to his knees.

"What now?" She'd lost her shuriken in the confusion. She felt its absence acutely.

"Formulating an elaborate and clever escape plan." He touched the blocked cave mouth. It melted instantly beneath his long fingers, hissing and bubbling like a spilled witch's brew. Within seconds he had dissolved a tunnel big enough to pass his long body through. He turned to Yuffie and quirked his eyebrow once more. Smirky jerk. "Coming?"

"You're actually suggesting I follow you – the bad guy – in there?" She didn't invest her tone with much credulity.

He shrugged. "Suit yourself."

She waited thirty butt-freezing seconds.

He was on the other side, smirk firmly in place.

"Does this mean maybe I'm not so untrustworthy?" A 'whoof' left him as her elbow shot between his legs. He toppled like a felled tree. Well, at least that proved his heart was his only missing body-part.

"Maybe." Yuffie stood, extending her hand "But … thanks for saving me. Not that I understand why, you being a=one of the bad guys and all, but until I figure that out – which I totally will by the way, because I'm a ninja, and ninjas are master spies, amongst other things – uh … yeah. Thanks."

He stared up at her. "I'm not a bad guy." His face contorted into a scowl, like he actually had the power to feel angry about anything. "You people like to make out everything's so simple – it's all black and white to you."

"More white than black with all this snow," she quipped.

"How the hell did I expect any of you people to understand?" Then he tore open a dark hole in reality and rolled through. It sealed behind him.

Yuffie gaped. "You mean he could've done that all the time? Stupid villain. Stupid smirky Nobody. Stupid, stupid, stupid… stupidhead!" She shivered. She was seriously risking frostbite if she stayed out here. She hustled away. Cloud and Leon were out there somewhere.

Yet as she picked her way through the debris of half-buried branches and loose rocks, which lurked beneath the powdery top layer of snow to knock her feet from under her, she couldn't forget that last scowl. Nor could she forget or the brief confusion that had creased those green eyes as the Nobody considered why he'd saved her when they were supposed to be sworn enemies; as if he couldn't quite understand his behaviour either, much less explain it.

She shook him away with a toss of her head. "Stupid. Get your priorities right, Yuffie. Find the others, then think about how weird and totally stupid the last half hour was."

She pushed her disquiet aside as she searched for her friends, and soon forgot all about the Nobody who had appeared without any of the other Organisation members, any Heartless, or any reason to be there.

Fin.

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