Author's Notehs: Funny thing about this story... I considered making it into a little more than a one-shot. I mean, the end leaves tons of possiblities open for things to happen. Look, it SPELLS kidnapping, which leads to a furious Vincent and an epic romance bound by their distance. They do say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Anyway, I'm contimplating the idea.... If you like it, tell me in a review, please. And don't forget to favourite because you love me. Wanna know how I know you love me?

Didn't think so.... I'll tell you anyway. Everybody Loves Wilder!

So, for all you raving Vincent fangirls who would really like to pummel me because I only ship Yuffentine because I cosplay Yuffie better than anyone on the Planet thought possible, this is for you. But mostly for me, because I'm Yuffie, and you're not. Well... you might be... I don't know that. Or... do I?

Whatever, I'll stop now. Enjoy!

Yuffie: Wow, Wilder! That was a good run-on sentance!
Wilder: I know, I'm proud of myself.
Yuffie: Betcha couldn't do it again!
Wilder: Betcha I totally could.
Yuffie: You're on.
Wilder: Later.
Yuffie: WHAT! Why?
Wilder: Because people are trying to read the story and this A/N is getting in the way and you're really starting to annoy me which is really like annoying myself so I might as well end this so I can add the story and then go see a psychiatrist.... Tah-dah....

Love, Losses, and Broken Promises

Pale skin glowed in the silver moonlight that bathed most of the room with an eerie glow. The room was silent as the grave, but it was a comfortable silence filled only by her soft, deep breaths. She was asleep; he was sure of it. His breathing, he had noted at one time or another, made no sound, it was as if he drew no breath at all. The only indication of this vital sign was the gentle rise and fall of his chest — every time he breathed in he could feel her skin against his own, warm and smooth.

Propping himself slightly on one muscular arm, he could just make out his own features in the mirror from the light that filtered through the thin lace curtains over the flawless glass they covered. He could see. . .his eyes. Striking pools of crimson, they were like fresh blood on the pallid snow of his finely sculpted visage. Under high cheekbones, his face was thin, almost feminine. . .yet with a certain masculenity — maybe the way his nose curved or some such — and his thin lips were a misty purple as if his body's circulatory system ceased to work to carry colour to any part of his being. Or maybe as if his body temerature was rapidly decreasing. . . .

He pressed said lips to her bare shoulder, drawing back gently to watch her eyes flutter with some reverie only she could find fascinating — probably including Materia and her obssessive kleptomanic tendancies. He wanted to smile at the thought. . . . And yet, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He couldn't admit that he was happy. Happy to have the beautiful, young Wutaian Princess beside him. Happy to finally have friends and the possibility of a family one day. Happy to finally be loved.

And the hardest of all was to admit that he loved her in return.

He reached back toward the side table to grab his new cellphone and check the time. For the past two and a half hours he had been telling himself that he'd leave at midnight; and yet he couldn't. He frowned and let his arm fall back to her waist where the blanket also rested on that sweltering summer night. This was what he had wanted, right? His heart full of joy and an overwhelming buzzing that warmed his body? He was in love again — he had moved on. Wasn't that what he had tried to do for so many years, while actively attempting to avoid it?

Part of him still wanted to love Lucrecia, and only Lucrecia.

Part of him told him that right where he was — that was perfect.

And some voice in the back of his head, some violently twisted rose that somehow managed to grow in a dark corner of his conscienceness, told him it was time to raise Cerberus' triple-barrelled mouth to his temple and take the coward's way out.

At one point, that had been an option.

Now, one look at the sleeping beauty that lay in his arms made him crush that hideous flower. Suicide was a sin, was it not? That would only be one more to add to his list, and that — he knew — was the last thing he wanted. Then. . .that sleeping beauty. . . . He could see her face contorted in pain with tears running in steady rivers from her stormy orbs. He could hear her cries, pleading for him to awaken as the blood, quite reminiscent of his own eyes, leaked over the white sheets, staining the room with his memory. No, he couldn't do that to her. He knew she loved him very much — he refused to break her heart, because frankly —

"Vinnie? Are you alright?" A soft voice picked up from beside him and she turned to reach for her cellphone. "It's two-thirty in the morning, Vinnie. You should rest."

"I suppose so," he answered in that dark voice of his. But it was a baritone dark; a soft, breathy sigh, barely a whisper.

"Goodnight, Vinnie," she yawned, rolling over to face hi,. He shifted his left arm under the pillow that covered it so that she wouldn't have had to cuddle up to cold metal. She was grateful he had thought of this; he could tell. "Love ya."

She was a heavy sleeper. If he had somehow plucked up the courage to leave, he would have very easily escaped, seeing as moving her off his left arm could have played a huge roll in aforementioned consideration. But he couldn't do it. She loved him. And it wasn't that he felt obliged to stay because of this; he was just finished. He was done with being scared that if he were to love again that something would happen to her. Or that someone would tear them apart. After all, this was his fault. He had allowed her to close in on him and jumpstart his once still heart.

And then, once he had made her cry. He remembered yelling at her - not yelling persay, but trying to force it into her head with his steely voice that she needed to stay away from him. He never wanted to see that again. He never wanted it to happen. Her tears. . . . He feared them as well. He was scared that he'd do something wrong, or say something stupid and lose her. He was scared that she would become frusterated with his resigned, quiet nature, mistaking distance for ignorance. He was shy, and that was another thing he couldn't easily admit. He always, really always had been afraid of screwing up, or afraid of how his witnesses judged him. So, he his himself as best he could, whenever he could.

But maybe she understood that about him. She understood his love for Lucrecia. . .like no one else could have. . . . "I won't try to take her place in your heart, Vincent. It's your own choice if you want to allow me in or not. . .and if you don't, I'll still be here for you as a friend, or a fellow AVALANCHE member. . .'kay Ex-Turkie?" She could be so suseptible to other peoples' emotions, no matter how complex; and though she tried to hide it, she was comparing them to her own. Shifting, molding, examining, until she could say she knew how they felt — sincerely — and mean it.

Amazingly enough, she concluded that they had both suffered love, losses, and broken promises — isolated lives. And he wondered how in the Lifestream he could have turned into an anti-social vampire where she ended out as an energetic, loud-mouthed, obnoxious, upbeat, kleptomanic little ninja brat. Different people, she had explained. Different people, different worlds and experiances and pains; same emotions. Different outcomes.

It was a side of her hardly known to exist. She was sensitive, romantic, intelligent, and slightly less energetic; and that part of her was only for him. He took pride in that she trusted him to know who she really was — the true her. The her that was her before she became. . .herself. The woman that, maybe, she was supposed to become. . . . And yet after talking to her for a short time, he wished for the bouncy girl back. The one that often tricked him into slipping a smile, and stole his Materia. The one he had originally — dare he admit it?

He adored her intellect, but he loved her energy.

"Goodnight. . .Yuffie," He pushed a piece of her hair back behind her ear, but it fell back again as stormy eyes fluttered back closed once more.

"You're. . .warm, Vinnie. You really do feel warm," she said sleepily, resting her cheek upon his chest. She was nearly unconscience now, yet she managed another garbled sentance. "You look dead, but you really feel. . .alive. . . ."

And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop his eyes from burning and producing that salty liquid that ran like pure glacial water down his pallid visage. Surely in their beauty these were the tears of the moon, not his own. . . . But they were, and he couldn't understand how something so simple could move him to tears. He was alive. He was far from human anymore, but alive nonetheless. . . . Such a simple admission of hers. . . .

And it made him think. . . .

Frankly, he was able now to admit that he was real. This was real, and the ability to admit just that left him open to new possibilities, greater horizons of things that could, in turn, make him a better person, or —

No. She loved him. That was all that mattered now. Because now that he was able to admit he was a being, he was able to come to terms with more than that. His human emotions.

"I love you, Yuffie."