I'm back! Have you all missed me? Well, I don't expect this to get many reviews since I'm not very well known in the games section, but if you happen to read this… do the young teenaged writer a favour and drop me a review! I'd really appreciate it! Thanks!
"What are you afraid of, Cloud?"
The question caught him off guard. Turning to Yuffie's face and windswept hair alongside him, he wondered what she wanted now.
"What?"
The materia thief rolled her eyes and repeated her question. "What are you afraid of?"
It was a bizarre question. What was he afraid of…? He would have laughed bitterly if he were someone else. There was an extensive list. There was himself, to start with.
"Yuffie, that is possibly the strangest question you could have asked me."
She yawned. "Yeah, well, I'm bored! Cid and Barret yelled at me, Vincent walked away, Cait Sith is a robot so he doesn't really count, Red is asleep, and even Tifa won't talk to me." She shrugged. "Anyway, I was interested, ok?"
Tossing a materia from her pocket into the air, she carried on. "So, tell."
"If you ask questions like that, it's no wonder they've given up talking to you."
"Hey! That's not fair!" she pouted.
Cloud sighed. Better to talk to her before she went and bothered Vincent again. Or Barret. Or Cid. Hell, at the minute he didn't think he could handle Cid yelling, his cigarette flying out his mouth, while Yuffie yelled back just as loudly about the sexist and ageist attitudes of some members of the group.
No. It was definitely the lesser of the two evils.
He smirked. "Well, why don't you tell me?"
"When I asked you first?" When Cloud made no answer, she shrugged. "Well, you're a pain in the ass, like always." They walked in silence for a moment.
"I dunno. I guess I'm afraid of bugs. I can't stand the way they move. And all of those legs! Eurgh!" She thought about it for a moment, a look of disgust on her face. "Hey, you reckon that Jenova is actually an insect in disguise?"
Cloud shrugged. At this rate, and with luck, Yuffie was going to go off on one of her tangents and forget about her original question.
"You know, when I was a kid I had a thing about squashing bugs -"
Yup.
"- in fact, one time, I got stung by this giant wasp thing! It was huge!"
On and on and on…
"It was so bad that I think I had to get a jab. Some sort of mako insect or something. I can't remember too well, but I think it must have poisoned me or something like that. Well, whatever, I'm gonna kill that bug… weird though, huh? I was more scared of the bug that I was of the needle!"
She looked about ready to laugh, glancing his way with her cheeky grin on her face, but she suddenly cut herself short. "Hey Cloud, are you ok? You look a bit pale."
It took him a couple of seconds to realise that his hands were clenched by his sides. What the hell was the matter with him? He unclenched his fists quickly before Yuffie had a chance to notice. Surely he wasn't…
He almost choked. He was.
He stopped walking. "Yuffie. You wanted to know what I was afraid of?" He wasn't meeting her eyes, but somehow he knew that she was staring at him. "Truth is… I'm absolutely terrified of needles."
He laughed shortly. "It sounds so childish, doesn't it? Thing is, I was never scared of them as a kid - I mean, I was never scared of them before, but…"
He hesitated. Yuffie hadn't been in the mansion when he'd remembered… everything, and he still hadn't got it quite straight in his own mind yet.
Let's get out of here…
'Feeding Time' … It's our only chance.
"After everything, I just… I don't know, they just remind me of things… that I'd rather forget about." Again.
"What the hell are you doing to him -"
"- What shall we do with this one? -"
"- …carry on the experiment as usual. It hardly makes any difference now -"
"- Please, don't…-"
"-…We're friends…right?"
"Cloud?" He mentally shook himself out of his reverie and looked at Yuffie's face, a slight frown creasing her features. He gave her a small smile. "Don't worry. I'll be alright."
She brightened almost instantly. "Well, I supposes that solves the mystery of the dress shop!"
"What?"
"Tifa told me - when she was still talking to me. Apparently you made a VERY cute girl." She smirked at his obvious discomfort. "Although she did say that she heard you were a bit nervous in the shop - I thought that it was just about the dress like any other self-respecting guy, but… now, it makes a little more sense." Her expression turned unusually thoughtful, and Cloud thought to himself that she actually looked quite beautiful…
Did he just think that?
The moment didn't last long. A wicked grin appeared on Yuffie's face.
"Mind you, I'd love to see you as a girl! That would be so cool!"
"No," he refused, flat out.
"…You do realise that Wutai is famous for acupuncture?" she said slyly.
"Yuf, you wouldn't dare!" he replied, slightly panicked.
She laughed. "Hey, you know I wouldn't. But would you consider dressing as a girl?"
"No."
"Not even once more?"
"Not interested!"
"Aww, come on…"
Even as he opened his mouth to argue back, he was glad. It was pretty strange, he thought. If you'd asked him if he was going to tell anyone, he wouldn't have said Yuffie. But she hadn't thought it too weird, and even her teasing had been kept to a minimum.
Perhaps he would surprise her a bit.
Just to say thanks.