Disclaimer: I own nothing. Except the plot.
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He watched her as she swung, back and forth, as if she didn't have a care in the world. Her face was cast downwards, but he knew she was beautiful. Over the years, she had changed. Her voice, her thoughts, her face, her name… However, she seemed oblivious to it all. She never noticed the stares she received when going somewhere or the hungry glances fired her way. As if that wasn't enough, the woman seemed so blissfully ignorant of the fact that she could influence her country with a single word that fell from her lips and that she had the whole world at her fingertips. It was slightly disturbing.
But he knew when she looked up at him with her large gray eyes through her short raven locks that she was still the same on the inside. Her easygoing manner, her playful smile that rested on her full lips, and even that tendency to take what she knows she couldn't, - can't - have and run like hell still remained. That was made evident when she rose up and took his hand in hers, her small, slender fingers curling possessively around his own.
"You take so long," she said, looking up into his dark eyes. "I must've called you a bazillion times, Vinnie."
The man simply shook his head. Time, it seemed, had a way of changing people, no matter how slow or fast it goes. Places change, things change, people change. And, when his own hand gripped her smaller one, he knew that even those forgotten by it are not immune to its effects.
"Be quiet Yuffie."
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The End