A/N: I've made a decision regarding this story. I was going to make it into a full-length fiction, but after discovering that it has been archived in the C2 community "1," I realized I didn't really want to write another novel-length story. So as of now, "Running Away From The Sky" will be a series of one-shots, each of them written as a stand-alone with no intention of continuing. All of them, however, will be Yuffentine. Woohoo.

Running Away From The Sky: Blue Skies Breaking

THEME: "The Distance," Bon Jovi

Yuffie had never lied to her father. Not once, in all her eighteen years, not even a white lie, not even when she really, really wanted to. She prided herself on her honesty, among other things, and would never think of disrespecting her mother's memory by fibbing even a little bit to her dad.

She stared at the blacktop that stretched on for miles in front of her, seeing only the guiding lines to keep her from veering off into the trees lining the highway. Two weeks on the road, sometimes driving for sixteen hours at a time before she finally gave in and stopped at a roadside motel, tracing and retracing her own tracks because she didn't know where to go or how to escape the image that was burned into her mind like an ugly scar.

Walking in from work, dropping her knapsack on the table beside the door. "Dad, I'm home!" No answer, but she didn't expect one, and ambling into the kitchen to look for something to eat, she stopped dead in her tracks, stunned into stillness.

Dear Dad,

Her dad-

I'm leaving for the summer. I need to figure some stuff out, and I know you guys could probably use some alone time.

kissing-

I'll call to let you know I'm okay.

her mother's sister.

Be back in August. Congratulations!

Love,

Yuffie

Chekhov had turned to face her, holding her hand up, a glittering diamond on her ring finger. "Yuffie," she'd exclaimed, jubilant and beautiful, you TRAITOR how could you do this to me and Mom when I didn't even KNOW-

Yuffie pounded the steering wheel angrily now, still unable to put any kind of wording to her rampant emotions. Her mother had been dead for almost two years- granted, they had divorced when Yuffie was small, much too small to remember what it had been like to have two parents living in the same household. But somehow the sight of Godo and Chekhov had seemed so incredibly disrespectful. She'd known they were close. Even after Yuffie's parents had divorced, Godo had maintained his friendship with his ex-wife's sister.

Now that Yuffie considered it, she realized how stupid she'd been. Why hadn't she seen the signs? The sideways glances, the 'platonic' dates on New Year's Eve, the way that they always seemed to be gone on business trips at exactly the same time? She had years of clues and obvious hints to sift through, and looking at all the evidence right in front of her, Yuffie knew that the idea of Chekhov and her dad being involved hadn't occurred to her because it had seemed so incredibly outlandish. It was unthinkable.

...Though apparently not to them. Hmmph.

When she'd turned eighteen, Yuffie had inherited a portion of her trust fund. The majority of the money would be released to her on her twenty-first birthday, but what she had now was more than enough to fund her summer road trip. More importantly, it was enough to get her away from her dad so she could make some sense of the tangled jumble of thoughts in her head- and the swirl of betrayed emotions in her heart.

Blah. The only problem was that she didn't particularly care to think about anything right now, much less dear old Dad kissing her aunt.

Oh well. It was only June. She was only in Colorado. Which meant two months and forty-six more states in which she could clear her head (she figured that Alaska and Hawaii were eliminated from her agenda purely because she got motion sickness like crazy and didn't want to bother with planes or boats), and she had several thousand dollars to blow. She was reasonably sure that her father wouldn't try to track her down, but if she didn't call soon then she wouldn't blame him for worrying.

Her keen eyes picked out a movement further up the road, and Yuffie frowned. She hadn't seen a single animal in her hours of driving this highway, despite the million and five signs warning her to beware of moose- but then, she could tell already that this wasn't a moose.

No antlers, for one thing.

Instead, it was a man, with midnight hair that spilled down his back like a velvet waterfall. As Yuffie drew closer, her eyes picked out the fine details of his appearance: black jeans over faded brown boots, beat-up leather jacket, the red bandanna he'd tied around his head to keep the sweat from his eyes. She was close enough to see the straight, unsmiling line of his mouth as he turned and stuck out his thumb.

She never picked up hitchhikers.

Don't even go there-

She never lied to her father, either.

Forget it, Yuffie, she told herself as his features sharpened in her line of vision. Oh, heck. Even at this distance she could see his eyes, mahogany and burning and bright enough to land a 747 on a rainy night. Nope. Don't pick up hitchhikers.

She drove straight past him, unable to avoid staring at him like a lovesick puppy as she steered her car to the opposite side of the road. His eyes followed her, clear-cut features impassive. He'd expected her to drive by. He'd known she wouldn't stop; she could tell from his dejected expression. Yuffie kept driving.

Twenty yards down the road, she edged her foot onto the brake and slowly coasted to a halt.

She was predictable. Boring, even. Straight A's in high school, captain of the volleyball team, a real, honest-to-God second-degree black belt in aikido. She even had scholarships to her three top picks for colleges. She was going to be a marine biologist because her mother had been one. She was going to get married to a successful businessman because her father wanted her to. She would have children because he wanted to die a grandfather. She was congratulating her dad on his engagement even though she hated the fact that he hadn't even told her he was seeing anyone, much less her aunt.

Two years of trying to make it work with her dad, two years of healing from losing her mother so unexpectedly, two years of him lying to her. You just didn't do things like getting married to your ex-wife's sister without telling anyone. Without telling your daughter.

Yuffie chewed on her bottom lip, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel and watching the stranger in her sideview mirror. She was going to pick up this guy anyway. Predictability be damned.

She put the Cherokee into reverse and backed the short distance it took to reach the hitchhiker. The window was already half rolled-down, saving her from having to splay herself across the front seat to use the manual controls.

"Need a ride?" she asked, leaning over and down so he could see her face. Belatedly she realized the stupidity of the question, and the possible sarcastic answers he could give her. No, lady, I'm just trying to catch free-falling Fruit Loops with my thumb.

But he only nodded once, wordlessly. Yuffie's interest was piqued at the quiet fire in his eyes.

"Where you goin'?" she pressed.

The stranger shrugged. "Anywhere."

"Perfect, me too. Get in." She reached over to unlock the door, and he unshouldered his bag before ducking inside.

"Don't forget your seatbelt. Oh- um, you can throw your stuff in the back if you want," she said, looking at the duffel bag. The letter V was monogrammed on the side and was nearly threadbare, stained and faded from years of exposure. "I'm Yuffie, by the way. Yuffie Kisaragi, but I don't expect you to remember my last name. No one ever does." She dared a brief glance in his direction. Although his features were nearly obscured by raggedly cut locks of black hair, the perfection of his face marred by the perpetual frown he wore, he was every bit as striking as she first thought. And a bit familiar-looking too, although she had no idea when she might have seen any hitchhikers, especially raven-haired, gorgeous ones with eyes like a ruby in sunlight.

Keeping her eyes on the road, she struggled to find something to say as the wind from her open window whipped her hair. The absurdity of her eagerness was not lost on her; Yuffie Kisaragi was not clueless and never had been. Starting a conversation with a random hitchhiker may have been completely ridiculous, but she was tired of conforming to standards, exhausted of wondering what other people would think.

And lonely, as much as she didn't want to admit it.

"So, nameless man, what's the V stand for?" she asked, nodding her head towards his bag.

His gloved hands tightened visibly on the canvas straps, the well-defined muscles in his forearms flexing. "Valentine," he said.

"Valentine?" She stared unseeing at the blacktop that stretched in front of her, a thousand thoughts racing through her head in less than a second. Valentine- passion- heat- red eyes- stop it, Yuffie- "That's your name?"

He glanced at her, then at the bag, and finally directed his crimson gaze out at the road.

She realized belatedly that the bag probably wasn't even his. A man that begged rides off of eightteen-year old girls and carried all his belongings on his back probably couldn't afford a custom monogrammed duffel bag.

He probably, she thought with a wry smile, wasted all his money on that accursed leather jacket. Damn leather and the appealing way it clung to his shoulders, anyway.

They traveled in silence for a few moments longer, and then Yuffie couldn't stand it anymore. "Music?" she asked almost apologetically. Gee, random hitchhiker dude, I'm so terribly sorry for not being able to tolerate your severe lack of conversational skills. Mind if I listen to Audioslave for a bit?

He didn't answer.

"So what are you doing in Colorado?" she asked, turning the volume low as Chris Cornell began to bellow mournfully.

He sighed. "Nothing much."

"Me neither, I'm just kind of passing through. Denver's my next stop. Where are you from?"

"East."

Pause.

"I'm from Texas," she said affably, choosing to ignore his vague, monosyllabic answers. "I graduated high school last month and decided to take a road trip. I don't even know where I'm going- it's stupid, I know. But I couldn't stand to sit in Austin and stare at my dad's high school football trophies all summer, so I'm headed to Nevada. Or California. I haven't really decided yet."

Another pause.

"You don't sound like a Texan," he said finally.

"Huh?" She was surprised that he even spoke, much less initiated something like a conversation. "Oh, you mean my accent. I grew up in Seattle with my mom, and only went to live with my dad after she died..." Yuffie trailed off, hesitant to continue if he thought she was looking for sympathy, but eventually shook it off and said, "I'm really not so crazy about Texan accents anyway. You can never understand a darn thing they're saying. 'Wire' becomes 'wahr;' 'that' is 'thay-at,' and I'm like totally lost most of the time. My dad's friends...oh my gawd, you'll die laughing at this story. When I first went to live with my dad, he had this big barbeque at his house, sort of a welcome home gig, you know?

"So afterwards, me and him and a couple of his friends are sitting around and blabbing or whatever, and somehow we got on the subject of boils. I don't even remember how. My dad's friend Gorki starts talking about how he used to get boils when he was a kid. You know what boils are? Those big, huge, like totally nasty sores?"

She saw a shadow of a smirk flitter across his lips, and felt a grin creeping onto her own face.

Encouraged, she went on, "Well, apparently Gorki used to get boils really bad all over his back and shoulders- I know, serious grossness- and he couldn't figure out how to get rid of them. Finally, some old man tells him to eat roadrunner meat. Swear to God, that's exactly what he said, as in Wile E Coyote and that ugly bird he was always chasing. So Gorki, he figures he doesn't have much to lose anyway, he goes out and kills a roadrunner, cooks the meat, and eats it. Lo and behold, his boils disappear."

"No kidding."

"Yup. And I'm just sitting there, listening to Gorki, and everybody around me is nodding and talking about how there must be some kind of toxin in the roadrunner meat to get rid of boils. And I was totally confused. Finally I spoke up, and I was like, 'So roadrunner meat gets rid of balls?'"

The hitchhiker glanced at her incredulously, and Yuffie nodded. "Yeah, I spent the whole conversation thinking he was talking about balls instead of boils. I was a little shocked, but I didn't know if Texans were just more open-minded or what. I was thinking Gorki was saying, 'Yeah, these balls kept coming back and I didn't know how to get rid of them,' and 'After I ate roadrunner meat, my balls just disappeared.' I felt like a moron."

He snorted, raised his gloved knuckles to his mouth to keep- at least, she assumed as much- from laughing.

Yuffie smiled wryly. "It's okay. I know it was stupid of me. I'd just never heard a Texas accent before. My dad's isn't all that pronounced."

"Balls," he said. His voice was choked from restraint.

"Yes. Balls. Go on, laugh. You know you want to."

Valentine- or, uh, whatever his name was- chuckled. "What did Gorki say?"

"There was a really long silence, and then my dad said, 'honey, he means BOILS.' I turned beet-red and managed to squeak out some excuse about bedtime. I could hear them laughing from my bedroom, which is all the way on the other side of the house."

He laughed, genuinely this time. His voice was rich and low, a deep baritone interlaced with tendrils of silvery gruffness. Gawd, he was hot. For an older guy, anyway. Yuffie's insides melted.

"So let's try this again," she said, and making sure to keep her eyes on the road (probably not a good idea to crash the jeep while she was trying to get into his good graces), she stuck out her hand. "I'm Yuffie. And you are...?"

"Vincent." He took her hand in his briefly, the warmth of his grasp surprising her as their fingers touched, his gloved, hers bare.

"Nice to meet you, Vincent." She put her hand back on the steering wheel and smiled. "We've got about an hour and a half till Denver."

"Great." He cast her a sidelong glance, and she couldn't help but feel that he was sizing her up. "You ever pick up a hitchhiker before?"

"Nope." Yuffie pursed her lips, realizing for the first time that this guy probably weighed twice as much as she and probably knew how to handle himself. "But you seemed harmless enough, and we're a long way from civilization so I figured you could use a ride." And I took my sensei down in Round Tournament two months ago, she thought but did not say, so don't even think about it.

"Yeah...thanks for the ride."

"No problem. To tell you the truth, I'm getting a little cabin fevery right now anyway. I need the company. You know what it's like to drive for two weeks without exchanging a word with anyone? I don't think the clerks at the motel front desks really count. Do they? I'm not sure. But it feels like years since the last time I actually talked to somebody. Or at somebody." She laughed nervously. "Feel free to tell me to shut up anytime."

He shrugged, the worn leather of his jacket creaking in response. Yuffie wondered briefly what good a leather jacket did anybody in this heat, but she didn't think he'd appreciate her asking.

She leaned forward and turned up the music. Maybe she was still running away from everything, but at least now she wasn't alone.