At a Walking Pace
By: The DayDreaming
Warnings: AU Pink overload. Girly phone conversations. Demonic taco shells. Yuffie really should clean her room.
Summary: AU "Hello, Yuffie." Yuffie never believed there was anyone quite as unattainable as Cloud. He was a distant star, and she was microscopic space dust on the bottom of his shoe. But she was still foolish enough to fight for a happy ending. YuffiexCloud, Zemyx, one-sided YuffiexZexion
This chapter has not been edited for mistakes. If there are any, please notify me and I'll try to rectify the situation whenever I get off my lazy ass.
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chapter two: to be lonely after the lights go out
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"…sponge up the crack, it might have been better…"
Sometimes, it wasn't pleasant to speak on the phone with Yuffie. Or, to be more precise, to pick up the phone to speak to Yuffie.
It wasn't easy to keep Yuffie's attention span for long, with certain exceptions to that rule, such as watching Disney movies or Sailor Moon, playing chess with Merlin, and when enacting a particularly clever or amusing prank on some poor fool. Unfortunately, the exceptions did not extend to waiting the five or eight seconds needed to listen to the dial tone while calling someone.
Of course, talking to one's self is a perfectly suitable distraction when faced with impending boredom, especially if it's the kind of boredom brought on by a recently placed call that has yet to be answered.
All things considered, it wasn't as bad a phrase to walk in on as it could have been, Aerith thought to herself. All the same, though, it had her raising her eyebrows, partly in exasperated acceptance (because it was common knowledge that anything nonsensical spewing from Yuffie's mouth was most likely true, in one form or another, and that it should be expected), and partly in mild curiosity as to why a sponge had been up a crack in the first place.
Aerith slid a notepad in front of her from the corner of her desk, quickly grabbing a pen as well, before writing the phrase on the pink pad in neat, curvy letters. As useless as the gesture seemed to her, Aerith wrote down most of the odd phrases or stories Yuffie would blurt out at her over the phone. It was mostly for Leon's benefit, since, though outward appearances would indicate otherwise, the man was constantly amused by the young girl's 'Yuffimisms (despite the fact that it was completely the wrong word relation to use in this situation, it was a convenient enough pun, mostly because almost no one fully comprehended the meaning of the actual, proper word),' and it was of Aerith's belief that he was compiling all of these small notes into a conglomerate to be included in the secret book she also believed he was composing.
She pulled the note off of the pad and stuck the adhesive paper to the top of one of her nearby school binders, so as to not forget to bring it in the next day to show Leon and the rest of their group (when Yuffie wasn't there, of course. Something in the back of Aerith's mind said that it wasn't very fair to Yuffie, to be exposing her private telephone conversations to everyone she knew, behind her back). The phone rested sharply in the crook of her neck as she turned back to her desk surface.
"Hey, Aerith! You there? Dammit, woman, don't ignore me!"
Aerith jumped at the screech penetrating her inner ear, dropping the phone onto her pink, plush carpet. She quickly grabbed the plastic device before steadying it against her ear again, wary of any more impatient squawks from the other end of the line.
"H-Hello, Yuffie. Sorry, I was…distracted," She stuttered out, eyes roaming to her left as she subconsciously turned to the voice emanating from the phone.
"Yeah, well—
-x.-X-.x-
--I hardly think there's anything in your room to keep you distracted for that long—unless!" Yuffie gasped, "You don't have a boy over, do you?! You better not! Your mom's gonna kill you! Are you wearing the chastity belt I gave you?"
There was nothing but silence on the line, except for the faint sound of a half-dried-out pen against what was undoubtedly pink paper. Yuffie rolled her eyes at the mere thought of the older woman's room; the place was practically covered in pink, girly things, spanning from objects such as the baby pink bedspread, to the salmon colored desk top, all the way to the hot pink mascara containers littering the bubble gum dressing table. It was probably one of the most toxic places in the world for anyone with an X chromosome.
There was silence on the line for another couple of seconds before Aerith's static voice permeated the air in Yuffie's bedroom.
"Ah, no, Yuffie. No one's here with me." Aerith didn't expound upon the chastity belt issue, "Why did you call?"
Yuffie let out a grumpy sigh, irritation lacing the exhalation, "Aerith! Why do you always ask that? I think I've called enough times by now that you would get the idea that we're chatting, you know that girly thing where people gossip about the latest couples and bash on their ex-boyfriends and girlfriends?"
She heard a soft laugh on Aerith's side, indicating that the woman was teasing her, "Yes, I know. You just sounded upset when I picked up the phone, that's all."
Yuffie sighed before getting up from her messy bed, where she had been previously sprawled, kicking idly at her pillow. She walked over to her desk, opening one of the drawers disinterestedly and examined the contents held within the wooden abyss.
"Well," She scoffed, "It's just been a bad day. Really bad. Like, super-atomic-wedgie-on-a-flagpole bad."
She flung the drawer shut upon finding that there was nothing of interest, before moving on to the drawer beneath. The sound of scratchy-pen-on-paper was again heard.
"What'd you do this time, Yuffie?" Aerith sighed, already expecting a far-fetched answer.
"You know that guy I like, right," Yuffie picked out a sharp metal knife from the mess in the drawer, "Hey, I wondered where my kunai went!—Erm, anyways. Well, I thought I would help him out, y'know? He likes riding that motorcycle a lot, right? So, I thought I would clean it for him."
"Uh huh," Aerith muttered into the phone, "And what do you mean by clean, exactly?"
Yuffie shut the drawer and moved on to her lopsided bookcase, dusty children's books lining the bottom shelves, while unread books of the recommended college reading list were piled haphazardly at the top. Dark nooks and crannies littered the shelf space, and she began to rummage through the holes in bored interest.
"I mean, like, well—I meant to…hmm. What the hell? There's a tortilla in my bookshelf," Yuffie delicately picked up the rock-hard shell, examining the strange, dust covered surface, where some peculiar bite marks aligned to form large circle eyes and an almost demonic-looking grin, "And it's smiling at me. Ugh—Anyways. I did try to clean his motorcycle when he wasn't around. I thought it would be super nice if he came out to find a nice shiny motorcycle waiting for him!"
Aerith 'hmmed' while the grating pen-on-paper noise began anew. She had the distinct impression that there was more to the story, and that Yuffie was probably giving her the very watered-down version of the tale. She waited expectantly for Yuffie to further her explanation.
"It…didn't work out that well."
Yuffie remained quiet for a long time after this statement.
"What happened?" Aerith asked, almost sounding impatient and yet not, because it was just impossible for someone like Aerith to be anything but eternally patient and kind.
Yuffie bit her lip, wondering if it was a good idea to confide in Aerith, whom she had only known for about eight months now. The thought had never occurred to her that Aerith might not care about her romantic woes. Then she wondered why she had started to question how much her friends actually cared about her life when she had always assumed they'd listen and pay attention, no matter what. She decided to bite the bullet anyway.
"I accidentally scraped it up. Pretty badly," She wouldn't say that she had done it on purpose, not even for someone like Aerith, "He found out."
Aerith heaved a long sigh of exasperation into the phone, "Yuffie…"
"Oh, Aerith!!! What am I gonna do?! My parents aren't going to pay for it and he's gonna hate me! Forever! I ruined his precious! His PRECIOUS!!!"
Yuffie began to hyperventilate, stopping her sifting through another pile of junk that had culminated in a long forgotten corner of her room.
"Calm down, Yuffie! It can't be that bad. He'll forgive you eventually."
"No, he won't! You should have seen the way he was glaring at me, I thought I was going to spontaneously combust! Not only that, but I'm gonna have to pay for the new paint job. Out of my own pocket."
The phrase was spoken ominously.
"That's not too bad."
"I don't believe you grasp the gravity of the situation," Yuffie rolled her eyes, her panic attack promptly forgotten, "Out of my own pocket. Aerith, I don't have any pockets!"
The scratching of a pen was again audible over the phone. Aerith gave a light laugh when Yuffie gave an aggravated growl at the pink woman's supposed ignorance of the situation.
"Why don't you get a job? And, what exactly are you doing right now? It sounds like a construction site in your room."
"A job?!" Yuffie squawked indignantly at the thought, trying to kick away the monstrous avalanche of assorted crap and useless junk that had just fallen on top of her after she had foolishly opened her closet door. "As if!"
She pulled herself up from her fallen position within the debris, the faint voice of her mother rising from the lower story of the house, shouting at her to keep the noise volume to a minimum. She glanced down warily at the mess on her floor.
"Ooooh," She squealed, lifting an unopened bag of gummy paupu fruit bites from the disastrous pile at her feet, "I can't believe I haven't eaten these yet!"
"Yuffie?" Aerith muttered uncertainly into the phone, "Are you exploring your room again while talking on the phone? You really shouldn't. Remember what happened last time?"
"Ah, but Aerith," Yuffie whined around a mouthful of the gummy paupu sweets, "It's so boring to just sit and talk on the phone."
"So you decide to destroy your room?"
"I find a lot of cool stuff, thank you very much!" Yuffie pouted. She popped a few more treats into her mouth before asking, "What am I gonna do?"
"About what?" Aerith thought that they had already cleared up the situation with the bike.
"About him," Yuffie let out a depressed sigh.
Aerith 'hmmed' thoughtfully, taking a few moments of consideration before stating, "Maybe you shouldn't think about it for a while. You just don't sound like you when you're talking about 'him,' whoever he may be."
Yuffie hadn't given her confidant any indication as to who her crush (Yuffie claimed that he was more than a crush, probably the love of her life) was, and had only fed Aerith minute details about him. The woman was constantly aggravated by the lack of information on this man who had enraptured Yuffie, and who was the constant subject of all of Yuffie's conversations nowadays.
"I…maybe," Yuffie muttered thoughtfully.
"C'mon, Yuffie. Forget about him for a while. Let's just talk about something else, like Leon's scar or aliens and monsters, or whatever. It'll do you good to get your mind off it. Then, maybe later, you'll think of a way to snag 'im," Aerith smiled into the phone.
Yuffie laughed and nodded, though the other woman couldn't see her; she doubted that that would be what happened. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get her mind off Cloud, and she probably wouldn't be able to think of anything to get Cloud to notice her. Her heart panged deeply within her chest, the smile on her face wavering until it withered into a thin line.
"Okay…"
For the next three hours, Yuffie chatted amicably with Aerith on the overheated portable phone, pacing her chaotic room and upsetting about a dozen other piles of junk. She laughed at Aerith's not-very-funny jokes and talked about her week, like nothing was wrong and she could easily shut out all her thoughts and problems like closing an open window, stopping the tide of her emotions from running past.
She wondered if this was what it was like to be normal. Normal as in what other teenagers did, make stupid jokes and laugh at nothing and pretend that everything was okay when in actuality things were very, very wrong.
It was towards the end of her and Aerith's phone conversation, when the poor, overused portable was beeping plaintively from an almost dead battery, that she realized something was astray.
It hit her like a brick wall, while her cracked and tired voice bid goodnight to Aerith, that she never thought about things or others being normal, and that she, currently, was not in such a state. She had always known what to do, uncertainty being a foreign word in her vocabulary. Now, she found herself hesitating, looking around, and seeing.
Was this what Cloud was doing to her? Her head grew dizzy at the thought of the blond, dazzling blue eyes flashing in her vision.
At these thoughts she crawled into bed and shivered, trying to unsuccessfully remove the man from her mind's eye.
Something was changing, shifting and staggering out of place. It scared Yuffie, especially since she realized that it, in fact, wasn't the thought of Cloud doing this to her, but something else entirely. It seemed to have started a while ago, creeping along, millimeters at a time; it was only now that she turned around and could see that whatever the incomprehensible change was, the awareness of her situation, though she wasn't quite sure what exactly that was yet, had moved beyond repairable or understandable borders.
She quietly gripped her rumpled, green bed sheets. Her chest ached and she felt a terrible, crushing loneliness settle around her like a shroud. It was bad, she realized, to feel this way, that these thoughts should never be uttered to another.
Yuffie desperately grabbed for a hand, something warm and solid, and found only cold, empty space where the body of another with dazzling blue eyes could have been. The loneliness pulsed around her, and she sobbed.
-x.-X-.x-
"There's a tortilla in my bookshelf and it's smiling at me."
This is hands down my favorite quote of the chapter. Someone really should go out onto a crowded street and shout this phrase.
Don't expect anymore quick updates like this, of this length. I thought this chapter would be a maximum of two pages, and here it sits at five-and-a-half. I'll try harder to not make it so long. I think my depressing thoughts are coming out in Yuffie. Sorry if she seems OOC. Also, sorry if Aerith is OOC, I've never really written her character. I'm trying really hard to add a lot of detail to my writing, to kind of give the illusion of being there, so, sorry if everything is a bit long-winded. Please tell me if the details I include are annoying or not, I'd like to know if I'm doing it right.
This story is actually kind of fun to write, really very therapeutic, so this will probably be plaguing anyone who's put me on their author alert list for a while. And, sorry that there isn't a lot of Cloud yet, this fic is centered mainly around Yuffie and the struggles she goes through to try and reach out to Cloud. I won't say whether or not she'll get her wish, but for anyone who still believes in dreams coming true, the answer should be fairly obvious.
I'll try and to get a couple more chapters typed up over spring break and post them; it should be fairly easy since it only takes about four or five hours to type up a chapter to this story (which is fairly quick compared to my other fics, which mostly span out into the 4,000 to 7,000 word range and take days to complete). I'll try hard to maintain this story!
I feel like I'm forgetting something, but I'm not sure what. Anyways, happy spring break, and please review! The DayDreaming out!
P.S.: Whoever spots the Lord of the Rings reference first gets the next chapter dedicated to him or her. The quiz from the first chapter is still open for guessing and the prize, also!