Welcome, everyone. Sylla here. This fic was written for the wonderful La Editor, who is approximately a million times the writer I am, and responsible for some of the most heart-wrenching Yuffentines ever written. Here's to you.
Edit 08/04/12: fixed scene divides. That should make a lot more sense now.
Lucid
by Sylla, for La
The night is bright and crisp, but it feels hazy to Vincent Valentine: one of those moments – and they've been happening more and more lately – where everything feels to him like a lucid dream, disjointed and oddly accelerated. A side effect of his long sleep, he assumes. It will pass eventually.
He is sitting on the deck of the Highwind, considering whether to go back inside, when Yuffie appears and sits beside him. No, flops down in a tangle of gangly limbs at his side. (He quietly reflects that Yuffie only ever does things big.)
"Hey, Vince," she greets him with her usual enthusiasm, an enormous grin (that never seems to falter, even though he knows it's not easy to meet his gaze) plastered across her face. She scoots forward until her legs are dangling carelessly over the side.
"Yuffie."
"Ugh, so, as it turns out Cid totally cheats at cards." She takes his silence as an invitation to continue. "I know, right? You wouldn't think it just by looking at him, but underneath that gruff tea-drinking pilot mask is a fiendish, lying, tea-drinking pilot. But anyway the point is he had two aces in the last hand. Totally cheating."
"He was cheating because he had two aces," he deadpans.
"Duh, Vincent, I took all the aces out of the deck at the start of the hand! But I couldn't accuse him 'cause then everyone'd know I was, uh, creatively interpreting the rules too."
"How unfortunate."
"Huh? If I didn't know better, Vince, I'd say you just made a joke." She nudges him with her shoulder, and he smiles slightly into the collar of his cloak. "Not a good joke – actually between you and me it wasn't all that funny – but still, baby steps."
For a moment all is quiet. Then she adds, "It's okay, though; I snagged his wallet on his way out. I say we spend it all on booze and ice cream next town we hit. Heheheh."
He knows better than to dismiss this casual proposal as mere talk after a similarly off-handed comment about sledding turned into an unfortunate reality on the way up to the North Crater. The owner of the house Yuffie crashed into had been furious – with reason, Vincent admitted. The damage to the front window was extensive. He tries to recall where the nearest town is and finds he can't; regardless, he makes a mental note to keep her as far away from bars as possible when the time comes – or, failing that, to warn every bartender in advance of her young age and just what the consequences of disregarding that age might be.
A fixed stare can make even the vaguest of threats terrifyingly believable, if done right.
Something has been nagging at him, and he finally manages to put his finger on what. Shouldn't Yuffie be huddled in the corner, desperately trying to keep her last meal down?
Ah, no: the Highwind is on the ground. He must have missed the landing, or maybe he's forgotten—it's… hard to keep track, sometimes.
Yuffie has been quiet for a while now. He glances at her to find she's looking up at the stars, just faintly visible beyond the wing of the airship.
"I was wondering," she blurts suddenly. "What're you gonna do after?"
"After?"
"Yeah, you know. After all this." She braces her hands on the railing and starts swinging her legs like a kid on a swing. "Assuming we aren't all, y'know, murdered horribly while fighting a Planet-killing monster-mom."
He lets the question hang in the quiet night for a long while. The truth is he's been deliberately avoiding planning that far ahead, for reasons he finds difficult to put into words. The closest he can come to articulating them is why? Why plan for the future, when the future doesn't matter? Why bother planning when he has nothing to plan for? Nothing to go back to, nothing worth striving for? Why dream of what might be, when what is, what was, is so much more real? All of them have their futures ahead of them, bright futures, possibly. That simply isn't the case for him.
The truth is that, for Vincent, the past has always been more important than the future.
"Uh, Gaia to Vincent Valentine?" Yuffie flaps her hand in front of his face, and he realizes he's been staring at her. Embarrassed, he bows his head, moving his gaze to his claw.
"I haven't really thought about it."
"That's what I like about you, Vince. The conversation really flows."
He looks up at her, and she winks.
This is not the first time she has sought him out, not the first time this strange sort of companionship has bloomed, and more and more each time, he finds himself focusing on the little details: the way she smiles slightly more with the right side of her mouth than the left; the tiny, silver scar on the edge of her jaw; the wind moving the ragged ends of her hair. Her eyes remind him of pebbles from a riverbed, smooth and grey.
He's never articulated this, but deep down he appreciates the way she looks at him. With shameless curiosity, at least at first – because Yuffie is many things, but discreet will likely never be one of them – but never malice. It's a surprisingly frank gaze, something he's unused to after all those years in the Turks, and in the beginning it threw him off. Its honesty is something he's come almost to depend on, some sort of extension or embodiment of Yuffie herself.
He figures the least he can do for the person who looked and saw him—truly saw—is to see her in return. And beneath the brattiness and the bouncy optimism and the boisterousness, he sees—
He sees Yuffie. No more. No less.
It is oddly comforting.
She turns her head to the night sky again, and her profile is outlined in the faintest silver light. (He can hardly remember a time when his night vision wasn't inhumanly good.)
"I knew you wouldn't have. I bet you're secretly planning to go back into that musty coffin of yours in the Shinra basement. We'll save the world, everyone'll be celebrating, Cid'll go and marry Shera because gawd, it's so obvious, there'll be happiness all around and then Vincent Valentine, killing the mood in his private corner of the world. And you know what, that'd be pretty awful, because seriously. I bet there's like a million types of mold growing on that thing by now. Grossness."
He's fairly sure she only uses that word specifically to rile him, after the one time he informed her it wasn't a real word.
"In all good conscience," she continues, "I really can't let you go back there. So what I'm saying is... I guess you can come to my house." The words come out in a rush. "It'll be great, I'll show you all around Wutai – for real this time, without the chasing or the rescuing."
The night feels suddenly over-warm; his skin prickles. "Yuffie…"
"Or I guess you could go stay with Cloud and Tifa or Red or something," she says quickly. "You know. Not like you have to stay with me. I'm just saying you shouldn't have to be… alone." Her voice is quiet now. "You said it, Aeris was always the one talking about the future, and, uh, I just think she'd like it better if you stayed with us, or… I don't know, went out to explore the world, go on a mission to try every new flavor of soda they've invented in the past fifty years, something like that. Just to live a little."
"Ugh, how have you been living all these years without trying the Turtle's black tea-tequila shots?"
"It's been tough," he says dryly. Yuffie snorts loudly. She's conducting a delicate balancing act with her empty shot glass, tipping it toward her with one finger on the rim and seeing how far it goes before it falls on its side.
"You're getting better at that 'joke' thing all the time. You know what, we might even get past witty comments before the century's over. I think we should celebrate that." She calls over the bartender and orders two more shots, and he makes a mental note to put a stop to it before it goes too far.
If anyone could think getting hammered the day before their wedding was a good idea, it would be Yuffie.
"I'm glad you came, Vince. Well, you and Tifa and Cloud and Cid and everyone else – but especially... what I mean is, I wasn't sure you'd come, so it's like a special surprise!" she says with forced cheer.
"I'll come whenever you call me," he says quietly, so no-one hears but her.
He never wants to see her smile so sadly again.
"You know, I never thought it'd come to this." She's running her index finger around the rim of the glass, gaze boring a hole in the table. "I always just sort of hoped Godo would remarry someone who'd give him lots of baby boys or whatever, but." She swallows. "Well, now..."
She doesn't need to finish the sentence. He knows Godo's death still hurts. He knows this isn't what she wanted. He knows she's scared. He wishes there was something he could do to make it better.
"It's okay, though," she continues, like there wasn't even any pause. "Wen's good. He's... he's good. Fine. The Kisaragi line continues, everything's perfect."
It must be terrible, he thinks, for someone as free-spirited as Yuffie to end up married to someone who is merely fine. How difficult, to trade adventure for a life next to someone chosen for having fit a set of criteria. He wants to say, "I know how strong you are", but the words stick. Instead he silently covers her hand in his own.
Her head jerks up and she breathes out in a rush, and she's staring at him with eyes that scream say something!
He wants to say, don't marry him. But he can't. Vincent is not what she needs, what her country needs, and he won't make this more difficult for her by saying things he shouldn't. It'll be easier in the end, this way, he thinks.
He's spent his whole life with the weight of things unsaid hanging around his neck. One more will not be the breaking point.
His fingertips brush her knuckles as he pulls his hand away.
"Well?" Quiet, suddenly-serious Yuffie is gone; replaced again by brash, ebullient Yuffie. "Whaddya think? I mean it'll definitely be difficult, you've probably forgotten how to live so we'll have to find someone to tutor you in the lost art of living or whatever – I think trying every new flavor of soda is a pretty genius place to start, by the way; just sayin'.
Just to live a little.
"Yuffie, I..."
He trails off. Suddenly it is very hard to speak. Yuffie generously waits all of half a second.
"Come on, Vince, spit it out. Look, if you're having trouble saying something, I'll give you a tip. You say: 'Yuffie, I'... and then you keep talking."
"I was never the best at… expressing—"
"Understatement of the century, Vinners."
"I'm sorry."
For a moment he can see frustration build up in the downward twist of her lips and the clench of her fists. Then she punches him in the arm, from the sound of it fairly hard. He can't feel it, but then, his ability to feel things has been sporadic for a long time now.
"Gawd, Vincent. You're so hung up on apologizing all the time." Her grey eyes fill with anger. "You're always sorry about something. 'I'm sorry about this' and 'I'm sorry about that' and 'Oh, all of my sins.'" She stands up.
"Well you know what? On behalf of the whole world: apology freaking accepted, brother. Get over yourself."
Silence reigns. Vincent is seized by the sudden urge to laugh. Everything she has said is starkly, terrifyingly true.
More than anything, she looks tired. Even sleep does not manage to make her look peaceful anymore; her eyes are sunken and her cheeks are hollow, and her skin looks like it could crumble into ash, like burnt paper. Her breathing is loud in the otherwise silent room.
Cloud and Red XIII are on the other side of the bed. Cloud's face is grim. They both wanted to be here. For her.
Red is almost unchanged, but Cloud's hair is starting to go white. Whatever modifications Hojo made staved off aging for this long, but now the wear and tear of time is starting to show, fraying around the edges. It's a blessing: it proves that the changes aren't permanent; that he, too, will die some day – and by now Cloud has lived enough to know it for the gift it is.
Yuffie opens her eyes, and Vincent is immediately alert. He leans in, trying not to grip her hand too hard.
"Yuffie," he says.
But she doesn't hear.
Yuffie settles back down, drums her fingers on the handrail. Her heels resume their hollow thudding against the Highwind's metal side.
"What was it you wanted to say, anyway?"
He takes a breath and blinks away the afterimages. Yuffie's eyes are not sunken; her hands are not hooked and frail.
"I never told you that I… appreciate how different you are from me."
"Well, gee, thanks a bunch, Vince –"
I love you. He doesn't say it, only thinks it – or maybe he said it out loud after all, because Yuffie suddenly goes very, very quiet and just looks at him, lips slightly parted. She's leaning toward him, and he can see every detail of her face so, so clearly, so clearly it hurts.
"You have to stop this," she says at last.
"Stop...?" He doesn't know what she means. She swings her legs back over the side of the deck and raises herself onto her knees, drawing closer so she's practically looming right over him.
"Oh, Vincent. You dumbass." She pitches forward suddenly, and their foreheads bump together, hard. On purpose, he thinks, but it doesn't matter because all he can see now is her eyes (smooth, dark grey, like pebbles in a riverbed), and all he can feel is her hands moving past the collar of his cloak to rest on either side of his face.
"You're only hurting yourself," she insists.
"I don't care," he admits, voice low and hoarse.
"Do you think I'd want to want to be kept alive like this?"
The question robs him of his breath. He can't answer; and he's gripping her elbow like it's the only thing preventing him from drowning, and he can't think with the warmth and closeness of her — can't think how to describe that this is better, better than the alternative, better than a place where he could never once come to terms with his feelings until it was too late; better than a place where Yuffie wasn't even Yuffie in the end, but faded away like a plant growing grotesquely in reverse.
"I –"
She sighs, and shifts, and her lips brush against his for a moment, a moment—
Vincent Valentine opens his eyes.
The late afternoon sun is shining through the leaves of the tree he's been lying under, casting dappled patterns of light and shade; the air is heavy and warm with summer. There is no-one at his side.
His lips keep moving, trying to finish the phrase I'm sorry, but he grabs at the words and stops them before they can come out. He shuts his eyes, hands clutching at the grass, points of his claw digging furrows in the dirt. And he realizes –
"I'm not," he says. (He can't bring himself to be.)
The breeze tugs at the branches of the trees that grow where Rocket Town once stood. It's all gone now; Cid and Shera's descendants, if ever there were any, have long moved on. The Highwind has turned to rust, and it's been three hundred and seventy-three years and nine months since he last saw Yuffie Kisaragi...
No.
It has been one minute and forty-two seconds since he last saw Yuffie Kisaragi.
And Vincent Valentine settles back against the sunlit tree—
—and considers that, for him, this is closest to happiness—
—which is the saddest thing of all.