and that's how summer passed - your, great divide and range of green green grass. oh, maybe it was peace at last, who knew.
On a scale of one to gigantic gaping asshole, Cloud Strife, most literally took the cookie.
Or biscuit. Whatever. I've never understood the difference - one is laced with chocolately goodness, me sees this, however does this mean biscuits are devoid of such chocolately excellence? It does not, O my brothers.
Alas, I have taken a leap down Sidetrack lane, and have lost my train of thought.
Cookies, biscuits, taking them... YES. Gigantic gaping asshole equals one Cloud Strife.
Why, I hear you scream?
Well, if he had to remind me one more time that she was goneanddeadandnevercomingbackanditwasallhisfaultbroodbroodbrood - I was going to bundle him up in gift wrap and leave him on Sephiroth's doorstep. He was trapped in one moment, his mako eyes glowing as they watched the long sword pierce her flesh, as the light left her eyes and the baby pinkness of her dress was blackened with gore.
Death is not an attractive thing, but god dammit Aerith, if anyone could make it graceful -
I couldn't sit in the inn any longer, around Cloud fucking Strife, depleting everyone's already depleted morale, rubbing salt into the bloody wounds of Tifa, beautiful Tifa -
So yeah, gigantic gaping asshole to the power of 375738364 is approximately the region that Cloud finds himself sitting in.
And as a result, I was now sitting atop the great sloping hill overlooking the village, the chill in the air enough to make me sit down on my haunches and wrap my arms around my knees in a huddled attempt to retain some heat. My teeth had just begun to chatter, as I was reminding myself that I would fucking turn into a sexy ninja popsicle before I would return to the all encompassing angst of Cloud Strife, when I heard the soft rustle in the brush behind me. I was on my feet in an instant, Conformer armed and ready with nearly mastered materia, my body close to the ground in a fighting stance.
I mean, I don't call myself the Great Ninja Yuffie just to piss off Cid and Barrett you know (although, I must admit, it does seem that way sometimes).
Instead of a monster stepping from the brush, teeth snapping and claws unsheathed, it was instead a long, scarlet, moth bitten cloak that greeted me, and a pair of matching scarlet eyes, burning from the darkness of a shock of onyx hair.
I drop Conformer, and quickly shrink back down to my bundled up position, a shiver running down my spine as I do.
"Vince, one of these days you're gonna end up dead at the hands of the Great Ninja Yuffie if you don't stop creeping around like some sort of shadow," I muse, doing my best to disguise the shiver in my breath, my knuckles white as I grip onto my legs.
Vincent doesn't say anything (SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKING SURPRISE), but instead takes two long strides so he is not very far from me, gazing out too at the village. A long gust of wind strikes his cloak up and billowing around him, his hair dancing around his jaw and shoulders, and I clench my teeth together in an attempt to conceal an exceedingly audible gasp.
Wordlessly, Vincent unclasps his cloak with his good hand, and drapes it about my shoulders. I jerk as the soft material settles on my skin, the smell of gunpowder and sandalwood floating down with it, engulfing me in his scent.
Not that I... eh... have sat for hours and puzzled over what makes up his own personal musk... eh... yes. I mean NO! No, of course not, nyuk nyuk nyuk.
It is quiet, and the air is still again, and me being me, desperately searches for something to fill it.
"Sure you won't freeze up, Vinnie? I don't wanna have to haul your ass all the way down the hill. I mean if I catch hypothermia, my lithe ninja form should be easy enough for you to carry to the inn - I mean despite your evident muscle wastage, you know, from rotting in a coffin for 30 years without so much as a copy of Midgar Milfs to pass the -"
"Yuffie."
I hate it when he does that. Demonstrates that innate ability of his to shut me up with one quiet, solemn word. I glance up at him, to see, surprisingly, his own eyes staring back at me. My mouth is slightly open, hanging on the word I was about to say, but not quite squeezing it out. He sinks slowly to my side, extending his golden claw to the grass that lay beneath us, and folding his own legs up so he was sitting like an almost lotus flower.
His eyes never leave mine.
He is very close, and I am grateful for the cocoon of his cloak, to shield the bottom half of my face from his piercing gaze. When Vincent looks at you with those eyes, you feel like he is slicing you open, dissecting everything you've ever said and rifling through all your lies and secrets. Finally, I swallow the lump in my throat and croak back an almighty, ninja-like response.
"... Nani?"
GAWD, I wasn't even capable of saying 'what' in English! Wutainese tends to creep out of my mouth when I'm too distracted/frightened/upset to register anything else - which of course, rarely happens, given my excellence at suppressing my emotions, a key trait every ninja should have...!
His lips curl slightly, and I don't know whether he is poised on a smile or a grimace at my pathetic behaviour, before he speaks again.
"You do not... have to speak. Or you can, if you wish. I will listen, if that is what you would have me do. Or... I will leave?"
His voice raises ever so slightly in question as he speaks that word, as I make no move to tell him what I want. He pulls away ever so slightly, and before I realise what I'm doing, my hand has shot out from the depths of his cape to clasp his forearm, my fingers arriving where flesh met metal and scar tissue spiralled up his arm like the vines of a rose.
I don't have to ask him to stay - he can read my eyes better than any of them, down there in that inn. Vincent and Yuffie, the outsiders of AVALANCHE.
I try to unlatch my fingers from their death grip around his arm, but I can't quite bring myself to, the warm, steady pulse at his elbow comforting in some strange morbid way.
Aerith didn't have a pulse anymore. Beautiful, sweet Aerith, so young, so gentle, she shouldn't have been the one to -
"I can't -" I begin, my words more choked than I had intended them to be. I gulp in freezing air, blinking my eyes fiercely against the wind, and my grip tightens on Vincent (I absently wonder what sort of genetic modifications Hojo equipped Vince with that allowed me to stop the blood flow in his arm for so long without developing a fucking clot).
I try again, sucking in before broken little words fall from my lips.
"I can't understand why it had to happen to her."
Vincent does not speak, or intrude upon my words, and as he so often does, draws a sense of quiet in around us.
"Why her? She was the best out of all of us, she was so - she never hurt anything, or anybody - and he just... he just destroyed her, KILLED her-!"
I don't realise I am crying, angry tears spilling out of my eyes, as I desperately try to make sense of it all. I mash my cheeks with my knuckles, only adding to the angry redness that is creeping across my face.
I've always been the ugliest crier - like think Midgar Zolom, on his school picture day, with braces and an acute acne problem, and we're still only scratching the surface.
I spend the next few minutes snorting up snot, and making feeble, STUPID , little whimpers into Vincent's cloak, my eyes swelling out into a puffy mash of tears hanging on eyelashes as I rub them with the heavy material. I manage to control my sniffs, my breath catching past every sob as I try to cling onto any tiny wee sense of dignity I might have left (albeit at the very bottom of my being).
"Leviathan... sorry about your cloak Vince, I'll pay for the dry-cleaning, 'swear-"
He doesn't cut me off with words (words - those things you don't need to speak to me Vincent, wonderful Vincent-), but with a movement, the shift of his night-time coloured hair on his shoulders, and the unholy (but so beautiful, I don't care Vincent) glow of his bloody eyes drawing my gaze in close.
"In my experience..." he begins, his words trailing off, not as though to indicate he is stopping his speech, rather choosing his words with as much pickiness as Cloud when he's trying to find a glass to drink water out of (seriously, the man will re-wash a tumbler as many as TWELVE times before Tifa snatches it from him and fills it - note to self: Cloud's problems may run deeper than interesting leader with brooding/self-loathing issues - explore further.)
I curl tighter into the warmth of Vincent's cloak, watching him like a kitten, the same mixture of painful curiosity and tangible giddiness causing my heart to pound faster. Gods, Vincent speaks more than three words at a time, and suddenly I lose the capacity to understand him, his words fluttering in the rumbling timbre of his voice, just beyond my reach.
"In my experience," he repeats, pausing only slightly this time, "it is often, the most righteous among us that are torn from our sides the soonest. However," he reaches into one of the many deep pockets of that dashing black ensemble of his, a delicate reddish ribbon trailing out with the soft tug of his long, golden fingers. "Not a force on this planet, can... destroy those righteous enough to be torn so."
I watch the ribbon flutter in the cold night air, and all at once it seems to sing that song that followed her, and the grass smells just a little sweeter, the earth is just a little softer and I am so sorry it had to be you-
I can only gaze in wonder at Vincent, my hand moving from the dark protection of his cloak to tremble beneath the ribbon, which he lets slip from his pointed fingers and fall softly into my palm. I pull my hand back in as though the ribbon has burnt me, and bite my lip.
"Sephiroth simply pierced a hole through Aerith, that no amount of medicine or materia can heal," Vincent says the words as simply as he perceives the ending of her life to be, and I suppose, to him, someone who has experienced death, resurrection, being blown apart, being stitched back together (as the rumours go, anyway) the ending of life is easy. He was a Turk. He watched the light leave people's eyes ten times over a day, he has seen bodies wither and perish, he has watched another he loved with all his heart fall to pieces, while her body stayed intact.
I realise then. That is what he sees as 'true loss'.
"He can never take away the memories or feelings we have towards her; he can't take away what our Aerith was," I finish for him - a sentence I don't think he believed needed an ending, but he nods nonetheless, and I throw the cloak from my shoulder, hastily pulling the ribbon around my upper arm. I shuffle forwards on my knees, edging towards him, sniffing for the last time. "Can you tie this for me?"
He looks at the ribbon for a minute (as if he didn't know what the fuck the verb 'to tie' meant) before reaching forward and skilfully tying a tight little knot with as little use of his claw as possible. It was just tight enough that it would not flutter away, but not so tight that my pulse was racing through my arm.
"Hey you're good at that," I say, partially because I'm a sarcastic little monster, but also partially because I am impressed. He says nothing, back to classic Vinnie dot-dot-dot, but not before I realise my palm has come to rest on his thigh for balance, and I am so close to the alabaster smoothness of his high cheekbones that he can probably count the freckles on my nose.
For maybe the zillionth time since I have met him, my breath catches and one thought is honestly the only thing I can focus on.
Gods, he is beautiful.
"And you are surprisingly good at acting as shallow as a puddle."
He stands then, in one swift, smooth movement, and I struggle to regain my balance, caught off guard by his sudden movement. He turns, his coal black hair sweeping out behind him, and he is so fucking majestic as he begins to walk away.
"Hey Vinnie, you forgot your cloak!"
He pauses only for a minute, the deepness of his voice emptying out into the air around him before falling back on my ears.
"Give it to me in the morning. Lithe or otherwise, I do not wish to 'haul' your ninja form anywhere."
I can hear the smile fall from his lips, the coy bastard.
And Aerith, all I smell is gunpowder -
I implore you if you enjoyed this to 1) Drop me a review, because let's all share the Yuffentine love and 2) Steer clear of my old Yuffentine stuff - 14 year old, angsty songfic Cait has nothing on her 19 year old counterpart. Thank you guys, kisses.