Much Ado About Nothing
"You're a good person, Vincent."
He isn't really listening. Her voice just rolls over him, the way the sea rolls over the beach, and he stays silent. Nothing she says shakes him; none of it means anything to him. She is just Yuffie and he is the almighty Vincent.
At least, that's what she thinks.
Boyfriend number four—who is more obtuse than boyfriend number three but not quite as bad as boyfriend number one, who lasted about two weeks longer than this one has—runs his hand through her short hair and kisses the outside corner of her eyebrow. "You're beautiful, you know that?"
She chuckles, mimics his tone perfectly. "You're lying, you know that?"
It won't be long before he realizes that she doesn't listen to him, doesn't care about him, at least not as much as she cares about her country, doesn't love him, never did and never will.
"I'm a monster."
The growling voices of his demons agree with him even as Yuffie's expression changes from hope to bitter disappointment.
"What, so I just give up?" The hurt and anger are all over her face. "Well, I won't, Vince, because guess what—I don't care about the demons inside you. I can see that you're a good person!"
Boyfriend five knows she isn't listening to him. Her expression is attentive, her face is turned toward him, but the typing doesn't cease.
She isn't listening. So he stops talking.
As he stands in her living room and watches the city she helped build, he realizes that this, this moment right here, is the loneliest moment of his life.
"Look," she says, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him until he bends to look at her, his eyes just a few centimetres away from hers. "When you're ready to stop being such an ungodly idiot, call me."
I'll be there, she wants to say but doesn't. It's too sappy, too romantic a way to express feelings that aren't romantic at all.
She knows he's listening now.
She'll really know he was listening when he doesn't answer his phone or call her for weeks on end.
The phone begins to ring. Boyfriend five decides to wait to see if she answers it, rather than answering it himself. When she doesn't, he decides to leave it alone.
The speaker clicks to life. Yuffie's ansaphone message plays, there is a beep, and then the voice of a man the boyfriend doesn't recognize.
"Yuffie… you told me to call you when I was ready to stop being such a monumental idiot."
"Ungodly," she corrects automatically.
He watches her go and tries not to think about the old adage, beautiful inside and out. He tries not to think about the fact that she'll hurt him, she'll wound him, and all he will be able to do will be to hurt her back.
Her absence hurts already. But her words, her attempts at forcing him to recognize a lie, will hurt him more.
In the end, he thinks, this way is better.
An instant later, as that male voice continues in slow, quiet tones, she is leaping from her chair, up in the air like a bottlerocket. She knocks something over in her haste to get to the phone.
She answers it and he watches her and she has her back turned to him. She rocks herself from the waist, turning first one way and then another, voice almost shy. But the grin he hears in her words is big enough to light up the goddamned moon and he listens in on her half and wonders why she never sounds that way for him.
Weeks and weeks later, he finds himself on the outskirts of Edge. He's just outside Edge and ready to hitchhike his way in, when he picks up his phone and makes the call.
Her way is better. He's tried it his way and he was no happier, and maybe he doesn't deserve happiness, but she deserves the right to try.
EL FIN