Cliffie: A little ficlet that popped into my head a while back. It's angsty and kinda weird, but I rather like it.
Please review, guys! 3
Contains spoilers for FFVII!!
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII or any of the characters. This is for entertainment purposes only.
Yuffie had known from the beginning that not all of them would make it out alive.
They weren't living in a fairytale, and that was the only place everyone made it out okay. Fairytales, or the good ones, weren't sad or death or blood (so much red) or any of that life stuff. They were about princesses and princes and curses that were lifted and, most importantly, they were about true love. Everyone lived to the end of the story for their "happily ever after".
Yuffie knew that the real world isn't happily ever after, and she knew that not all of them would live. But at the same time she never really expected Sephiroth to kill anyone or Aeris to die.
She didn't expect Aeris (beautiful, so beautiful, even as she fell and the red red red stain grew until her dress wasn't the pink color she loved but the red she hated) to die.
She sits silently by a pool of water (she hates water, really) and stares into it. It isn't life-changing, or revealing, or any of that crap that fairytales say water was. It's just cold, and not quite-clear or quite-murky, with little ripples whenever she knocks a few pebbles into it. Her feet are bare and cold, but she likes the icy feeling that creeps across her.
Her heart hurts. She didn't think it could ache like it does now. She can't breathe properly, either, and takes short, wheezing breaths that sound funny and un-Yuffie-like.
She sits and she stares and waits for something incredibly revealing to come upon her. It doesn't, but she can't bring herself to move. She doesn't know where Tifa or Cloud or Vinnie wandered off to, but that doesn't matter either. They were all broken up over this too and they deserve their own privacy, just as she deserves her.
She feels small. Small and cold and she wishes Aeris was sitting beside her and saying that this was all just a fairytale and she would wake up at any moment.
"Hey, kid."
Her head turns slightly, and she looks at the redhead Turk. He keeps back, amongst the trees that glow eerily. He's smoking, and not smiling, but he isn't carrying his weapon.
Yuffie sighs and turns back around. "Are you going to kill me?"
She wonders what death feels like (red, probably).
"Nah. I don't feel like it."
Her lips twitch with amusement because it's funny and she feels horrible, like she betrayed Aeris (her heart hurts and throbs at the name).
"You know, I assume?" Her voice sounds like her own. That's funny. She didn't expect it to. No one's voice is supposed to sound normal after a death or anything like that.
"Of course."
He doesn't say he's sorry, and Yuffie never expects him to.
The silence is heavy and weird and uncomfortable, and Yuffie tries to think of something to say but can't. Her tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth and it tastes funny.
A cry makes her raise her head. It doesn't come from Reno, especially since he's up now and looking around, one hand on his weapon that she thought he didn't have. Then there's another cry, and Yuffie realizes what is it: Tifa. Tifa, screaming and crying and sobbing so hard it hurts Yuffie too.
"Should I be crying?" she asks, almost without thought.
She can hear Reno shift slightly. "Not everyone cries."
"But I'm sad. So doesn't that mean I should be crying?"
"Why? Just because you're sad doesn't mean you cry."
It makes sense to Yuffie, so she nods and returns to her silence (not stifling, really, but close and comforting).
She wants to keep her silence, but her mouth apparently doesn't, because she's talking again, still not looking at him (she can't stand to look at him, with his hair red red red). "Why'd you come here, Reno?"
There's a pause, and then he snorts. She turns slightly to see him finish his cigarette and drop it to the forest floor, stamping it out with his shiny-black shoe. "Hell if I know, kid."
He turns and disappears, flowing into the trees and leaving Yuffie alone again.
There is no true love because this isn't a fairytale, and Yuffie can't get the vision of red red red out of her mind.