A/N: The first thing I thought after playing through Final Fantasy VII, was, 'they have to remember!' I had played Kingdom Hearts first, so it wasn't a big deal to me. Cool, characters from a video game I'd never seen before. But then I played FFVII, and I was probably immersed in the storyline too much to be healthy. I fell in love with it. And then, lo and behold, back to Kingdom Hearts, and it was a different feel from before because, well, I knew them as something other than that. And it was a little off-feeling, because Yuffie didn't know Wutai and Cloud probalby never knew anyone named Zack and Aeris was Aerith. (That name change will be the death of me. It bugs me. So much. Nergh.)
But I guess the whole thing didn't really bother me that much. I mean, Kingdom Hearts is still going - the 'next installment' of all of their stories will come eventually. Maybe Vinnie'll show up in there or Yuffie will ask Sora if he ever met a gunslinger. No biggie. But I was already thinking, and so this was born.
Pretend is a story about Yuffie trying to remember the past. That's all I need to say. I actually was really glad someone was on the same brain wave as me when Hiasobi wrote Hearts, which is still in progress and is absolutely AMAZING. Anyway, I've kept this to myself for long enough. The whole thing amounts to 40 pages on Microsoft Word, so I've split it into three parts. I admit, I'm a real Scrooge and don't like getting jipped, so I will upload each one with a break in between of, say, a week or two. It's more special that way.
And kudos to the absolutely fanastic T. Costa, who is my final fantasy beta! She is awesome, go worship her and her awesome Yuffentine stories of sexy design. Now.
So, here it is, and here we go. Happy holidays, because I am uploading this at eleven o'clock Christmas Eve and need to get to bed before Santa comes. :)
-Manda
o
(It's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing.)
o
Pretend
She once had a very vivid dream, where she was walking in a frozen wasteland –
Only it wasn't exactly frozen, nor was it exactly wasteland. No – it was the most precious thing in the world, a homeland, a frozen homeland and nobody was there.
Only her.
Her feet slapped steadily against the cobblestone, in bright orange sneakers that didn't quite match with anything. The cobblestones led around such oriental and fancy buildings with chipped red paint that was probably once so colorful, but turned such a dull red. Dull dull dull. The buildings were almost falling apart, and she was looking for someone.
There were rivers, or what used to be rivers, winding around and running through on their own journey and pathway. They were frozen, now, or maybe they just didn't move as fast as they used to. She couldn't tell. There were bridges, over the rivers, and the wood was worn down and dull just like the buildings, but the railings were red, too, and her hand trailed lightly over it, like a butterfly, and it was familiar.
She stopped at a crossway, of sorts. The cobblestones led to a forest (and flash, she looked to her left where the forest with no leaves was supposed to be, but a white forest with glowing trees was instead, and she didn't want to be there because poor, beautiful Ae—) with a tall pagoda, still a wholesome red standing mightily in the distance and lovely, and the cobblestones led to a mountain with faces that she recognized so well but couldn't name.
She watched the mountain for a long, long time that could have been a second or an hour, and then she followed the cobblestones to the forest with no leaves (not the beautiful frozen white forest of the Forgotten-) and the pagoda.
It was tall, and beautiful, and smelled so deliciously like home (but how could this be home, when home was—?),along with the building just to her right and left, but she couldn't turn of her own free will and her orange-clad feet led her to the tall strong pagoda that was familiar and home (—not here, or was it—?). Up the steps that (flash, she played on as a child) felt familiar and through the large, old wooden doors that were, too, and her hands pressed against them for a moment.
Then inside.
No one was there.
It hurt, a bit. It was an empty room, but in her mind she knew it was more than that.
It was the same for each floor. One. Two. Three. Four.
Then her feet took her up the steps to the fifth, and sudden anticipation and worried excitement began to build up in her chest and up her throat, and she entered the room.
And when no one was there (who was supposed— no, she knew it was supposed to be G-), she kneeled upon the floor and wept for the first time in a long time.
Yuffie's eyes snapped open to find a familiar ceiling, and she scrambled from her bed (and she had never liked beds, because they were always too high even if she was sure she had slept in beds like that all her life) to goggle out the window, but she relaxed in disappointment when the inky black night sky (always night, where was the sun, that beautiful sun of W—) of Traverse Town twinkled down at her.
When she returned to bed, she found her face was streaked with tears; she rubbed them off and cursed herself lightly before returning to bed.
o
Sometimes, when Yuffie had a dream like her frozen homeland which couldn't possibly be home (because home was in Radiant Gardens, of course, not W—), she would be frazzled and dizzied and so confused throughout the day (what day, because in Traverse Town you slept when you felt like it, and it was too hard to adjust to, even after all these years—) that she wasn't herself.
Aerith (or was it Aeris, sometimes she couldn't remember and it frightened her—) noticed every single time, because beneath that soft voice and those gentle green eyes was a sharp mind – sometimes Cid noticed. Sometimes not. She never could quite tell with Squall –
But that didn't really matter, because of the many things she did to throw people and generally piss them off, this wasn't one of them.
Even if it was by choice, she would back away from it like hell at her heels, because it would start at night with a dream and it would go on and on, like a dream during the rest of the day because if she dozed or concentrated on something very hard and sat very still for a moment, even just a moment, it would be like déjà vu (but déjà vu wasn't exactly like this—) and it was like a very nasty relapse of a cold.
For example.
When Yuffie woke up again after her dream of red and dead forests and empty rooms that made her dream-self cry, she threw her legs off the bed with no desire to lie back down and rubbed her eyes wearily with the heels of her palms, clammy feet meeting the pleasingly cool floorboards of the hotel, in the Green Room.
Shower. Dressed. She looked at the shabby sink mirror – one bathroom between all of them sucked – and eyed her bright green shirt, and flash, she knew it was supposed to be a darker, thicker, woollier green with a turtleneck and some sort of shoulder armor—
She blindly pushed herself away from the mirror and slammed into the wall, shoving off and stumbling into the hallway to eat.
Aerith (Aeris—?) and her worried forest eyes greeted her, and the first thing from the woman's (the flower girl's—) mouth was, "Are you alright, Yuffie?" because Aeri(th or s—?) always knew, always always. She could always tell when Yuffie was having one of those days.
Leon had his days, too, and he didn't like to be pitied and he didn't want anyone to know anything was wrong, so he would walk in and the woman in pink would give him a strong cup of tea wordlessly, with that amazing radar that was once used for someone else... for Cl—?
Cid, when it happened to him, would feel like 0!(! and let every single person know it, don't forget, and Aerith (it was Aerith, silly Yuffie, of course, when had it ever changed since everyone was children in Radiant—?) would smile gently and cook him some of her to-die-for pancakes, but sometimes Yuffie thought that she had once had a friend who was a better cook, and she almost knew her face but her name was always a mystery.
But when Aerith was sad, when she had her days, it was hard to watch, and even harder to diagnose, and the hardest was how to fix her up like she did for them. She sat outside in the alleyway (because when they were there back then, the Heartless weren't that bad and she could protect herself) and somehow, by some miracle Yuffie couldn't grasp or comprehend, she made flowers grow.
When Aerith's days came, Yuffie would slip outside the hotel and Aeris would be sitting in the alleyway, tending her small garden, and to Yuffie it was amazing, it was a gift.
But to Aerith, as she once said to the ninja (Yuffie K—?Yuffie, the Great Ninja Thief, the White Rose of W—), to Aeris… she would smile a very melancholy smile, and say very softly, 'The flowers don't grow here, because this is dead earth.'
When she said this, Yuffie's mind exploded.
Because she understood, she knew, she had been to the church and had sprawled near the garden and she knew because their earth, their Pl—
And then, in that very moment, something struck Yuffie that she couldn't possibly remember for more than a moment, because it was just a feeling, but she looked at Aerith (no, right then it was Aeris, of course, had always been – Aeris) very hard and long, and then she tackled the girl in a hug because in that moment (in those moments, few and far between) she felt like the girl wasn't really there and somehow wasn't real, and later, much later, Yuffie would always search her belt absently throughout the day for a Phoenix Down for Aeris.
But we're getting off topic, because this wasn't one of Aerith's days-
It was Yuffie's, and she was sure her days were unique in the sense that she remembered things that didn't really happen. She sat at the breakfast table and tried to ignore it the best she could.
After Aerith smiled gently at her, and as Yuffie eagerly but drowsily (in that weird, oxymoronical way that only she could pull off, once said the laughing, high pitched Irish accented voice of Cai—) pulled the bacon, eggs, and warm mug of hot chocolate towards her, a very terrifying but very exciting thought struck her.
Because it was so very possible, maybe, just maybe, that her days were unique in the sense she was remembering things that really did happen-
And only she could remember.
It was a funny thought. For the rest of the day (what day – it was more appropriate to say for the rest of the twelve hours she was awake), Yuffie found different places in the safety of the first district in Traverse Town to focus on something very hard and sit very, very still.
The first time was after she left the small little hotel and sat on top of a crate in a remote little alleyway that wasn't where flowers grew. She focused on a smaller crate for a very long time, and it was hard to sit still for five minutes, or at least without hurting herself ("Feast your eyes on the Great Ninja— Whoa—" and then, "Could you at least pretend to be sympathetic? Man, that really hurt!"), but the crate transformed into something else and she closed her eyes and it was burned into the back of her eyelids; the inside of a moving truck, and a man.
A man.
She let it in, breathed it in, held it close and only opened her eyes again after a few moments when those few words that, maybe, just maybe, she had once said were engrained in her memory with an image of a man, lying down on a bench in a moving truck. Then she watched the crate just once more because she couldn't tear her eyes away, and it transformed again; and the wine-red brown eyes and long dark hair were familiar, and the woman's name still didn't come, but she was beautiful, she was lovely, and Yuffie knew that she was the sister she never had.
And then a big brown mass, a jillion chocolate covered muscles with a metallic and shining gunarm that was anything but gallant, and a little purple dress with a long braid and red bow sitting quietly and contently on the shoulder of that huge man, whose name was Barret.
Barret Wallace, who was once Cid Highwind's drinking buddy in late nights in Seventh Heaven, where the woman would cook and smile and literally throw bickering drunks out the door without batting an eye—
Yuffie saw it, and her eyes snapped open in pure alarm, and she was very shaken up (why did she want to see all these things again, when she knew they weren't possibly true, because she grew up in Radiant Gardens, not in Kalm, and not in Edge or Midgar and definitely not W—), so she wobbled away funny-like to go bug Squall.
o
Squall was always a good match, and they were pretty even; sometimes she won, sometimes he did. But he was different, and she didn't like his different, because it was a Gunblade, not a Buster Sword and not Death P-
She just didn't like the idea of a gunblade, that was all. It was as weird as using hairclips as weapons, for Levia-
Hairclips.
How odd, and Yuffie stopped because her stomach felt suddenly very jelly-like, and Squall nailed her and told her to pay attention.
She always felt and acted more like an adult around Squall, because it reminded her of how quickly things were torn away (how quickly she grew up, kicked out into the big wide world until she was found by AVA-), but she stuck her tongue out at him anyway, fixed herself up with a quick potion, and strolled off, cool as you please because she was so much cooler than he was.
Haha, she pwned him (pwn pwn pwn, what a fun word) and he was cooler than Cloud-
"I remember Cloud," she stopped and said this aloud, and childhood memories long since forgotten from Radiant Gardens sprang up easily – a spiky headed jerkface who was like an orange, with a hard shell, but a soft sticky gooey mess underneath, a real jerk of a pretend older brother who was a softie at heart.
But she remembered him wrong, she thought and knew without knowing how, because this wasn't a memory like the cook with a miniskirt and a long ponytail (or let down hair with leather that worked), or Barret Wallace with a gross green vest (or a bright white marshmallow suit, that he wore on the ship from Junon—) and muddy boots that he never cleaned.
Or hairclips, that were used by a Red that was more orange.
And she didn't know how she knew that, so Yuffie walked away from the sewer secret-training ground that wasn't ever really secret as fast as she could.
o
She later joined Aerith, who was humming a cheerful melody as she walked to Cid's gummi parts/accessory shop (ridiculous, Yuffie thought, why the hell would anyone call building blocks for ships gummi parts, and when did Cid Highwind ever be a lame shopkee—?).
"We grew up in Radiant Gardens," Yuffie said idly. Aerith watched the ninja from her peripheral vision, nodding and tilting her head to the side in an unspoken question with a tiny little smile that danced in amusement placed on her rosy pink lips (that was all so Aeris, but so out of character for a flower girl from the slu-).
Yuffie decided that Aerith must have known something she didn't, and carefully filed away this piece of information before continuing.
"It's funny. I could never remember much, and didn't really think on it." Yuffie turned her head towards her pretend sister as they ascended the stairs towards the shop. "Do you remember any of our other childhood friends?"
Aerith's lips curved up a little. "Like who?"
(By who, that was what it was supposed to be – a pretend big brother with chocobo hair told her once in a big sad sigh with his eyes closed, when he needed a little sister's shoulder to lean on and let out some things that needed releasing, but that he wanted desperately to be his, and his alone; his own memories that weighed down on him from time to time-)
Then she pushed open the doors, and before Yuffie could begin to form a reply the loud voice of Cid Highwind penetrated their ears in a loud greeting.
Yuffie's head turned upwards in thought.
"Forgiven," she said.
Aerith didn't hear her as she greeted the pilot warmly.
But when Yuffie greeted the pilot loudly and obnoxiously, more like herself – that was when the woman in pink watched her, head tilted again, and she closed her eyes.
o
"Oi, old man, when did you give up cancer sticks?" Yuffie asked as she sat on the counter, legs swinging – no amount of grunting and threatening from the pilot would make her budge – and the blonde who was chewing a piece of hay looked at her.
"The heck you talkin' 'bout, brat? I never smoked, you know that, kid." He still looked a little troubled at his statement, as if testing the truth in it.
In Yuffie's head, his sentence sounded strange.
(The hell you talkin' 'bout, damn brat? #-)
"Really?"
"Hey, did that Leon hit ya too hard with that gunblade 'f his? I'll have to congratulate him later-"
"You old fart!" Yuffie punched him in the arm, a familiar action (to both of her worlds, imaginary and make believe – real and tangible, which was it? Because they both seemed unreal or very real when she thought about it—), and the tinkling sound of Aerith's laugh made her grin.
There was the three of them. Squall always felt a little out of place among them all.
Yuffie wondered why.
Maybe, maybe she had never known him at all?
In the words of Cid, Yuffie asked herself what the hell she was talking – no, thinking about. It was such a random thought.
And it was strangely scary (if Squall wasn't ever real in her memory, what about everyone else in her head?), and also strangely exciting. Because the people she was (growing less and less) sure she had never met felt much more real in her head than he did.
The three returned to the Second District together after Cid closed up his little shop that let them rent out their cheap rooms (they were getting cheaper, because no one really went to the Second District anymore, and even the landlord left and let them just mail their rent), and Aerith opened up the room that was their kitchen and together room, the one that was connected to the closed office.
Yuffie helped Aerith with the simplistic dinner of stew, and when she set their shabby table with utensils, she remembered using forks for all of her life, in elevated chairs on an elevated table.
But she would rather have used chopsticks, on neat little pillows on a low table with a real meal – one with some sort of spice or honey, and that familiar brown rice.
"Oi, you seen Squallie?" the ninja hollered at the pilot as her pretend sister ladled the food into bowls.
"Crap, kid, don't need to yell so loud-" which was wrong, because she expected more profanity from his mouth, like a good long 'shit,' for some odd reason – "And he'll kill ya if ya call him that."
Yuffie nodded in agreement, eyes closed, and tried to still the shiver that ran down her spine, because when she said Squallie, it was wrong, because the term at the end was for someone else, the ridiculous but awesome invention of the 'ie.' That was for someone else. Not Squall. Not now. Not ever.
Aerith watched the seventeen year old in concern (not a kid, I'm twenty, now—), and lightly placed a gentle, cool hand on her forehead to check if she was feeling alright.
When Yuffie opened her eyes, she almost expected to see the same face and pink dress, but with a nice, short and puffy sleeved red over-jacket, with the sea shhing in the background, on top of a faded orange plane wing.
That wasn't what she saw, though, and her shoulders almost sagged in disappointment – she flashed a grin at her friend to assure all was right with the world (everything with that sentence was just wrong, her insides squirmed and told her so), and she bounded off to place down the bowls for her friends.
o
A few nights later, and Yuffie found herself dreaming again.
"Oi, tall dark and broody. What's up?" The ninja flung herself down sloppily to sit next to the man with long, untamed hair and a tattered, beaten red cloak.
"…Hello, Yuffie." The lack of response made her roll her eyes and make a noise that sounded suspiciously like a big 'pfffft.'
It was growing close to sunset, but a summer sunset – the sky was a very clear, light cerulean with only wisps and traces of brazen golden yellows and mellow bright pinks, and just a light, light tinge of orange – and no stars were yet visible, only the dull half shown moon, who decided she wouldn't shine just yet. AVALANCHE had set up camp here, close to the Corel Mountains in all their light cream chocolate beauty; the current cliff felt more like a grassland than anything else, and the rock the man was leaning against was the greatest contrast to angry red and black.
"It's nice," she said. From the moment the rather mysterious gunslinger had joined AVALANCHE, she could already tell he was uncomfortable around other people, and she, constantly jabbering away and cheerfully shooting her mouth off, probably didn't make it any better.
And then they had wrestled his story from him, and here they were, almost four days later and Nibelheim was so far gone it wasn't even a speck in the horizon.
"You're not much of a talker. No wonder you didn't seem too comfortable around us. Then again, we aren't really a normal group of people," Yuffie continued casually, and she watched the sky for all its worth and then frowned, looking down and picking an offending thread on her green sweater off.
"…Not… normal?" Yuffie grinned at this, because it was obvious he really didn't know the difference much anymore. Sleeping in a coffin for thirty years would suck.
"Yeah. Well, I mean, we're all crazy, but everyone has their own weirdness. Like Spikes, for instance. He crossdressed once!" And she laughed, though the man's expression had only changed by a delicately raised eyebrow.
"Tifa told me, 'cause I wasn't there – wish to Leviathan I had been – he had to get into a whorehouse to save her, and it was one of those really nasty grossness big expensive ones, so he moseyed on in all in drag and actually got picked by the main pimp as his night buddy," she laughed more. The man frowned, and her vulgarity – Yuffie preferred bluntness – most likely did not amuse him.
Yuffie tried not to let the frown unsettle her. He was an unsettling man, but then she thought of his story and decided to disregard the stone-cold demeanor henceforth.
"But yeah, you're probably one'a the weirdest people we've picked up. You might even compete with Spikes, or even Barret," she joked, and didn't look at him because she didn't really want to deal with a frown.
"Is there a reason you came here?" His tone wasn't cold, or even sharply icy. It was that low droll of monotone, but if Yuffie really listened it would probably be a very nice voice.
She looked over at him, and didn't let red eyes affect her at all.
"Yep. Actually, I was just wondering…" And she got up to sit back on her haunches, because she never could sit for still too long, and she tucked a strand of too-long dark hair behind her ear, "What it was like."
The man beside her looked at her in genuine puzzlement, perpetual scowl gone as he had something, something real, that he didn't understand for once in many years.
"What… what is like?"
"To feel again."
She could tell that the question didn't just throw him off – it hurdled him to a different world and back, something that he wouldn't have expected in a million years. It was this kind of unsettlement that set off a gleeful delight in the back of Yuffie's head, especially because she hadn't even come out to trigger that.
As soon as he got back to the planet, and properly screwed his head back on, he looked at the sky.
She almost told him that it wouldn't tell him, and that it was an answer he would have to come up with himself. Hellooo, you have a brain, so use it, mister, but she didn't say that.
"…I don't think I can," he whispered.
Yuffie watched him closely, watched those dark red eyes and watched the pale face and watched the colorless lips tug down in a frown (as compared to the usual straight line).
Then after a moment that seemed like a split second and seemed like an eternity, she rolled her eyes and sighed loudly, and his eyes snapped to her for such a sudden noise.
Yuffie jumped up nimbly, strode over the few feet that separated them, and crouched down again, almost in front of him – off to the side a bit, so that she didn't fall over his extended leg, stupid golden boot and all. She looked him straight in the eye, and silently dared him to meet her gaze; he wasn't the type to be afraid of anything, and there was nothing for him to be ashamed of from her (there were lots of things to be ashamed of, she found later, but not from her, never), so his eyes unblinkingly focused on hers.
Yuffie pulled the rubber band off of her wrist, quick as a flash, and snapped it against the man's pale skin, snapped it right next to his ear. In less than a split second he recoiled, careening away and twisting to the side to regain balance as a red spot sprung up.
The man glared at her, and his self-control was all that kept him from rubbing the angry red mark forcefully (and probably shooting her. In the face). Yuffie was grinning.
"And why, may I ask, did you do that?" His tone, this time, was icy. It didn't bother her.
"You felt it," she said simply, and it threw him off again and sent him careening off again, even if he had frozen completely, and the ninja grinned cheekily as she stood up, brushing off the back of her shorts and walking away, off to camp and her other friends, with the same light spring in her step as always.
Vincent Valentine's red eyes watched her in disbelief the entire way.
Her eyes snapped open, and a second later her torso shot up from the bed as if it had been branded with a white-hot poker. Sweat trickled down her neck and from her forehead, and her breathing was fast and erratic, and the name on the tip of her tongue was running away from her like water trickling from her cupped hands.
And Yuffie almost jumped out the window to run after it.