Disclaimer: Tearfully not mine.
A/N: Written for Iki Teru, who requested 'Yuffie/Leon' and 'remember'.
Standing Vigil
© Scribbler, July 2011.
Yuffie sat with hands fisted on her knees. She bit her lower lip. Her fingers opened and closed reflexively. She shifted on her chair. She lifted her heels, then her toes, then one foot at a time. No matter what she did, she couldn't get comfortable.
Eventually she dropped her head onto her chest and let out a long, whooshing breath. "This sucks. This totally, totally sucks."
The steady 'bip-bip-bip' was a poor reply.
"I hate the smell of antiseptic. It stings the inside of your nose. Am I right? Of course I'm right. Why can't they make it smell nice, like strawberries, or chocolate? Hospitals should smell like chocolate and doctors' offices should smell like strawberries. Or baking bread. Everybody would feel a lot better, no matter what kind of bad news they were getting, if they could smell freshly baked bread as they heard it."
Bip-bip-bip.
"Do you remember when I was five and I thought it'd be really cool to see if I could jump from our roof to the neighbour's? I waited until everyone was out because I thought you'd all tell me it was dumb and, like, lock me in my room or something. You found me on top of the broken rain barrel. I had fifteen stitches and a broken arm. When she got back from the city, Aerith said I was lucky Dr. Sweet was around to patch me up while she wasn't. I thought it was more lucky you didn't burst my eardrums with all your yelling."
Bip-bip-bip.
"I was thinking about that the day I found you up in the mountains. You were seventeen and thought you were so cool, and that I was just some stupid little kid when I was a very mature eight-but-nearly-nine year old. You were all 'I want to be alone' and I was all 'can't you be alone with me watching in the background?' and you were all 'gunblade training is serious business' and I was all 'fine but I'll be tailing you and staying out of sight so you can't send me home', although you weren't in room to hear that last part. It was lucky I did follow you, though, because you, Mr. Too Cool For School, totally screwed up and picked a ledge that totally collapsed under the weight of you and your manly gunblade."
Bip-bip-bip.
"I wondered whether you got as panicked as I did when you found me on that rain barrel. I was pooping bricks, I swear! The dust cloud I kicked up when I ran back to Traverse Town? Could've blocked out the sun – easily! If I could've hoisted Aerith over my shoulder and carried her back with me, I would've. Lucky for all of us that Cid's gummi-ship wasn't in the workshop for once. Pile of junk."
Bip-bip-bip.
"Good thing he can't hear me, huh? The way he goes on about that ship, you'd think it was the best invention in the history of the universe, instead of what it is: a bunch of spare parts held together with spit and hope."
Bip-bip-bip.
"We both made it through those times, and the million-and-one other times we nearly died. We're well practised. Right now? This? Totally not a biggie. Not even a middlie. It's a smallie. Smaller than a smallie. You're gonna be fine. Totally."
Her hands hurt under the weight of her body. She realised she was sitting on them and lifted each thigh in turn. Her palms tingled as she extracted them and allowed blood to flow back into them, turning her skin from mottled white to bright red.
Not as bright as blood. Not as red as blood from a head wound. Not as white as bone poking through flesh, or the flashing lights that had freckled her vision when she turned the corner into the castle courtyard and realised it was possible for one person to defeat fifty Heartless alone – at a price. Whatever else she saw in life, she would always remember the image of a body half in, half out of the fountain, bobbing like a piece of driftwood, anchored only by that legendary grip on his gunblade. If he hadn't been holding the weapon, and its weight hadn't anchored him to the side, he would have submerged and drowned before she found him.
"C'mon, Squall," she said, hating the pleading note in her voice. "Rise and shine already."
Bip-bip-bip.
"Wake up. You're okay. All your bones and back together and your skull is totally covered by your scalp now. You can wake up anytime. Joke's over. You were always crappy at jokes and this is the worst. Come on, Squall."
Bip-bip-bip.
"Aren't you gonna correct me and tell me it's Leon?"
Bip-bip-bip.
"Wake up, you idiot!"
"Yuffie?"
The voice was light, female, and behind her. Yuffie whirled, nearly tipping over her chair. She swung precariously on two legs for a moment, arms windmilling. "Whoa!"
Aerith stood in the doorway, a scraggly silhouette. Her hair was coming loose from her ponytail. When she stepped into the light of the sickbay, Yuffie could see the cup of coffee in her hand and the bags under her eyes.
"Um, hey. I came to ask how he was doing, only you weren't here, so I figured … y'know …" Yuffie spiralled a hand. "You hear stories about people in comas being able to hear voices from, like, the outside and junk. I thought maybe, if I talked enough … I can talk the hind legs off a donkey, right? So I figured, hey, I'll annoy him awake … or something …" She trailed off.
Aerith nodded. "How are you doing?"
"Me? Fine. Peachy keen. Totally kosher." The sides of her mouth hurt as she attempted to hoist them into her hairline. "One hundred percent okey-dokey."
Aerith obviously didn't believe a word of her declaration. "Yuffie."
Yuffie's smile faltered. Like a hairline crack in an ice sculpture, it destabilised her whole face. She turned away to hide it. Turned away from Aerith, however, meant looking back at the bed and the silent occupant, stuck all over with wires and nodules connected to monitors. Their beeping and the rise and fall of his chest were the only indicators he was even alive. He could have been a corpse laid out in a morgue. Aerith's healing magic had smoothed away all his wounds, leaving his body perfect apart from that one scar he refused to let her heal.
At first, they had thought he was just recovering from the healing. Magic really took it out of people, even if they were the recipient, not the healer. Then, as hours turned into days, and the days stretched on, it became apparent that this was no ordinary slumber. Aerith had to admit that the brain was far more complicated than anyone really understood, and once more curse the fact that the Heartless invasion had left her healer training incomplete. She had scoured the libraries of Radiant Garden, trying to find a solution to this problem, but had no luck. All they could do was wait.
"He looks wrong," Yuffie said. "In that bed, he looks wrong."
"He does?"
"He looks … smaller somehow." Yuffie shook her head. "He'll wake up." She aimed for certainty, but her voice trembled. She wanted to sound sure of herself. She was usually great at that. The sky could be black with Heartless and she could come up with a flippant remark about what they'd have for sinner after they finished them all. This time, she couldn't pull it off as well as usual. She shut her eyes, unable to look at Aerith when she asked, "Won't he?"
The clink of ceramic on metal work surface echoed as Aerith set down her mug. She put her arms around Yuffie and Yuffie didn't resist. Instead, she raised both hands to hold Aerith's arm like some little kid, not a seasoned warrior and all around fantastical ninja princess. She barely remembered her mom anymore, but thought this might be how it felt if you had a nightmare and your mom came into your room at 4am to comfort you.
"He'll come back to us," Aerith murmured.
"When?"
"You know I can't answer that, Yuffie."
Yuffie sniffed. Damn it, she was crying. "This sucks," she said thickly. "This totally, totally sucks."
"It does."
They stayed locked together, each absorbed in her own thoughts, as the 'bip-bip-bip' of the monitors continued long into the night.
Fin.
.