Redemption
Author's Notes- I'm not personally a believer in this side of her personality, so if you think it's a wrong interpretation.. well, I agree with you! It's fun to explore though.
Disclaimer- I don't own any of the characters or names featured here. This is non-profit and written purely for fun.
I, Yuffie Kisargi, am not the girl they think I am.
It's been some weeks since this gang of strangers and I clashed, since they spilled my blood back in the forests near Junon. I still have not puzzled them out despite days of close observation from their very inner circle. We're currently trekking through forests, heading towards the Golden Saucer again in search of the Keystone. I'm mildly interested in what valuables I can lift from the place, although their quest holds no personal interest for me. I fight, steal, bleed for their cause all so I can follow them and wait for an opportunity to arise, for something more profitable than killing travellers for their pocketful of gil or a useless piece of materia.
Tifa and Cloud are walking slightly ahead while I follow, careful to complain occasionally like the immature teenager they see me as, stumbling, crashing noisily through undergrowth in a way that would make my teachers wince. They're bickering over some minor issue and ignoring me completely. Of course they would. I'm surprised they even let someone of my tender years overhear these grown-up issues. I might even pick up a naughty word from Cloud's swearing.
They see me as a sort of mascot, I feel, and it's safer this way. I was taught well back in Wutai. When you're strong, sometimes it's better to put aside your pride and let others see you as weak. It will be their downfall in the end when they underestimate you. To them, I'm the cute scruffy teen they found in a forest, all childish outbursts and mismatched clothes, a plaster on one knee and an oversized shuriken in her hand. I burn with shame when I remember how they managed to best me in that fight. Pride comes before a fall, my teachers always reminded me, and I certainly fell hard. I was left dazed, flat on my back in the open where my skills are useless, relying on their mercy. My arm broken by a hard blow from the flat of a blade, skin scorched from a fire spell that I could tell the healer had held back, my head ringing from a tossed grenade. It could have been the end of me, and a lifetime of learning bleeding away into a forest floor an ocean away from Wutai's scarlet rooftops. Of course, that fight was under their terms. Here, in the night, it is mine. I was not taught for open warfare, but for the arts of silent death and the skills of assassinating from the shadows.
They treat me like a child, perhaps with the exception of Red XIII who is close to my age in maturation if not years. To the women, I'm an annoying little sister they're fond of. I always get the best materia, some new trinket of armour bought for me, the warm blush of a Cure spell saturating me the second I take a minor injury in battle. They patronise me without meaning to, stroke my hair and tell me how pretty it is, pander to my moods, giggle and tell me to go flirt with Vincent to amuse themselves. To the men, I'm just a kid. They don't see me the way they see the others. Aeris, they see almost as a goddess. I see the reverence in their eyes when her healing magic spills like sunlight from her praying hands and flowers bloom just to be in her shadow. Despite her cheerful, utterly human personality they still revere her, her face too lovely and her heritage too holy to desecrate. Tifa is perhaps more real to them, her beauty not so unearthly they cannot see themselves touching it, and her faults humanise her in their eyes. The mistakes she's made for her beliefs, the turmoil in her past, the scars from years of training. They desire them both, the Cetra with the face of an angel and the spirited young revolutionary. Me? Flat-chested, skinny, hair I hack short with my shuriken. They never look at me with that fever in their eyes.
They don't know me at all. Even when we entered Wutai and they realised my heritage, they still saw me as a teenage runaway, a rebellious young girl who would eventually grow out of this phase and become a sedate Wutai matron who wears traditional dress and pours fragrant tea to entertain visiting Shinra executives. They didn't see the pagoda and realise how many hours, days, weeks of my life had been swallowed up there. How many times I'd been thrown to the ground on skinned knees and dislocated shoulders, and thanked my masters for each and every wound. How many times the air on Wutai's hills had misted red from my oversized shuriken as it hummed like a wasp from the shadows and cut down roaming monsters in their path. I'd spent hours kneeling in silent prayer, my bloodstained hands pressed to my forehead before our glittering shrines, praying for the strength to honour my people. I watched the sun set bloody over my town from the heights of the mountains and my heart burned to see what it had become. Sometimes I wonder if Shinra should have just razed the whole town to the ground. Better dead than to lose your honour this way. The uneasy ghosts of my ancestors must watch with me, agree with me.
Cloud and Tifa have drawn ahead. Tifa throws the occasional glance back at me to make sure I'm not losing myself or being distracted by shiny objects or otherwise getting myself into some teenage mishaps. Keeping up this charade is painful. I am not the girl they think I am. My whole body is a weapon. I know death intimately. I know the way the moon glints on the white crescents of my victim's rolling eyes as they try to make out my face amongst the treacherous shadows and silently ask me why. I know the slow collapse of fibrous tissue as my arm loops relentlessly tight around their throat, and the barely audible sigh as I relax and finally let their strangled scream slip from dead lungs. I know the dull meat thud of a blade sheathed in flesh so quickly the tip emerges bloodless from their chest. I am vengeance, judgement and one day I will be reclamation. I will take back my birthright one silent death at a time.
I disappear into the darkness as completely as a raindrop into an ocean, losing myself in shadows. I move faster than most eyes can track, run up a tree trunk and flip, landing silently on a broad branch, and there I wait, fading into my environment until I dissociate and can barely feel my own presence. I'm very good at this. My breathing and heart slow under my control, and I do not tremble or move an inch. I can remain in place for hours, ignoring cramps and the cold, sinking inside myself to find a state of utter calmness where all is balanced and everything is black and white, yin and yang, and can be separated cleanly with the blade of my knives.
I could kill them now. Not because I feel any particular malice towards them, I like Avalanche well enough. But their purpose in life is not my own. Mine is the salvation of Wutai, my heritage and pride sold off piece by piece with every tacky souvenir, every time our peoples' skills are used for the entertainment of tourists and never for war. I need the power they hold, that they used to defeat me. A lifetime of honing my skills useless against their baubles, their materia. I picture the chunky bracelets studding their wrists, know the precise magic contained in each clasp. It looks so frail, like the glass globes we keep our lucky goldfish in back home, and it has the transparancy and brilliance of useless, pretty gemstones. But the power within those crystals! As a child I used to be thrilled to hear about our god, the great leviathan of the deep who would wind down the mountain and blast our enemies away with the power of the tsunami itself. Then I grew up and realised it was nothing but a guardian force, and that there were stronger out in the world. I will seek them out and make my life a never-ending journey in the pursuit of ever-greater skills. One day the dust on Wutai's plains will be saturated with the blood of invaders.
I'd take out Cloud first. I'd follow from branch to branch, lighter than a night breeze, my whole world shrinking to the weapon at my side and the vulnerable bone cradle of his head passing below. Dropping with only a soft rush of air to give away my presence, as silent as this treacherous physical form will ever allow, one slender arm wrapping like a cable around his neck and my blade slipped almost gently between two vertebrae and splitting his heart. The cartilage of his throat squeezed shut in the crook of my elbow, the pulse of his jugular throbbing against my own heartbeat almost intimately, silencing him as I twist the knife upwards to sever arteries to the brain and make a bloody ruin of the lungs. That sends them into shock almost instantly. A few seconds later I'd let him drop senseless to bleed his life out in the loam. The materia would chink together softly as I held in one hand more power than a lifetime of dedication to my training could ever give.
Tifa, I'd stalk silently as she searched for me, her ponytail swishing and a trace of irritation finally beginning to enter her voice. The crackle of each dead leaf under her foot mapping her precise location as I slipped from tree to tree, my heart singing as we dance in ever shrinking circles, spiralling inward until I could reach in and touch her, spiralling outward to find the clearest shot. Her martial arts training no use when her long legs are cut out from beneath her by my shuriken, the blades tipped with fast-acting poison. She could cry out for Cloud all she wanted, dragging herself round in bloody circles in the clearing until her heart paralysed and her lungs froze, and she died without knowing who watched. People over-estimate the importance of their own life, always want to know the who and why of their death without ever considering it's just a means to my end. They seek the answer even when the sensory overload of pain has left them too crazed to comprehend, and their mind is fading fast from bloodloss.
I drop from the trees, deliberately land with a crash and lay still, weightless, sinking into the soft forest loam until I hear them approaching, unaware of my presence. Just before they come into view I sit up, rubbing my ankle irritably. "Gawd! I thought you guys would never notice I fell behind, you're useless, you know? I oughtta-"
"Are you okay, Yuffie?" Tifa asks kindly, a green Cure spell glowing ready in her hands. Cloud's face is unreadable as ever.
"Yeah. No thanks to you guys," I grumble, jumping up, making a great show of my sprained ankle, and plod after them. I am patient. I would not throw away this opportunity to snatch a handful of materia when there are greater targets out there, magics I am only just becoming aware of. These are great fighters who now consider me a comrade and could lead me towards Wutai's redemption. But I will not become attached and I would not hesitate to end their lives to further my cause. I feel slightly apologetic as my eyes instinctively seek the slender stem of Tifa's unprotected neck, the soft spots above collar bones and under ribcages and the unprotected arteries nestled within the curve of a hip bone. It's nothing personal. But perhaps one day, the glint of moonlight on my stained weapon will be the last thing they'll ever see.