A/N: I wrote this in just under an hour, on a flight from Tucson to LA. I kept elbowing my seatmate with my haste in writing, but I didn't have my laptop and I didn't want to let the idea slip away. He was pretty nice about it, though. So I dedicate this to him. I'll probably never see him again, but this vignette would never have come into being if he hadn't been so tolerant of my being left-handed.

Running Away From the Sky: The Sky Might Catch on Fire

THEME: "Tonight and the Rest of My Life," Nina Gordon

Hojo spent most of his life searching for something to give his life meaning. He experimented and tortured, altered and spliced, mostly for reasons that he kept to himself. Shinra financed his scientific insanity, to a point, until even they realized that his intentions were not so noble as he claimed. The Jenova project was a failed experiment, as were the hundreds of Mako-enhanced clones whose growth he had so carefully monitored over the years.

Some say he was looking to create the perfect soldier. I believe Hojo was looking for something else entirely. A man like him, so disinclined towards affection and outward emotion, could only admire Lucrecia, hate himself even more for his inability to care about her. His experiments were hopeless attempts to discover the motivation for human emotions.

In the end, he found what he was looking for in a failed candidate.

Cloud Strife was not the flawless warrior science had anticipated. He was not even an acceptable SOLDIER, his body weakened by injections, his mind racked with confusion and false memories. But the SOLDIER who was dismissed into oblivion rose above his predicted failure to defeat not only Rufus Shinra, not only Hojo and his genetically altered monsters, but the invincible Sephiroth himself. A flawed, hopeless and war-ravaged man conquered the godlike entity the entire Planet had feared.

This, more than anything, proves that no one can predict the power of the human heart. No one can estimate the twists and turns it will take to ensure its own survival. No one can control the strength of its emotion.

After AVALANCHE defeated Sephiroth and Holy and the Lifestream ground Meteor into oblivion, after the dust settled and the realization slowly sank in that it was finally over, we each returned to whatever semblance of life we had trudged through before Meteor. Cloud took up his work as a mercenary once more, Cid went to Rocket Town to make the necessary repairs to his precious airship. Yuffie has returned to her scavenging and thievery, with one notable difference: she is not alone.

I am with her.

Despite her constant cheer and perpetual sarcasm, it is quite obvious that something is wrong, something that not even magic can cure. When I finally dare to ask her about it, she laughs, helpless giggles interspersed with lung-deep hacking that cuts through my hearing like a thousand metaphorical knives, and says, "It's not fair, is it, Vincent? You'll live forever. I won't even see my eighteenth birthday."

She reaches up and wipes the blood from the corner of her mouth, and the resignation I see in her eyes is enough to break even the coldest of hearts. She has been to see other healers, more experienced doctors, and they have all told her the same thing. She won't live past this year.

Occasionally I'll find myself wondering about those who die young- what they think when they find out that the future they've planned for their entire life is gone, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Is she angry for the injustice fate has dealt her? Has she considered all alternatives? The questions roil around in my mind until I want to throw them all off the edge of the waterfall and wish them goodbye forever. I want to pretend it is not happening. I want to trade my life for hers, immortality for humanity because she is worth that and so much more. I want to hold her…keep her…save her.

But I can't.

I can't, because death is not something you can deceive. Not even if your name is Vincent Valentine; not even if you are doomed to live forever while the woman you love dies slowly.

So I stay with her as she wanders the Planet aimlessly, growing weaker every day. Cities seem to materialize in front of us like magic, and she is never satisfied. I don't know what she is searching for. I don't know if she's looking for a cure, or if perhaps she feels that her legacy as a member of AVALANCHE isn't enough for a daughter of Wutai to leave behind.

Today she is crying at the edge of the lake, and I watch her, fascinated by the ripples of her tears in the water, distorting and manipulating her reflection like a disobedient child before smoothing it apologetically- is that better? Now?

The lake is a perfect mirror, stretching on for miles. Much of the city is submerged now, but I like it better this way; the ghosts of the Ancients are silent at last, buried beneath the water where no one can hear their cries.

I suppose I am cruel, being grateful for the silence- but I have never welcomed the voices of the dead, and today I only wish to hear Yuffie, watch her, comfort her in the only way that I can, simply by being near. There is nothing I can say to ease her pain, no excuses or condolences to give her hope. She is dying, and I know she hates her body for its weakness as much as I loathe mine for its immortality.

At length I make my way to her side, sitting next to her as she rocks back on her heels, then forward again, her head in her hands.

"I wish Aeris were here," she says, her voice muffled.

There is no suitable response for me to give to her admission. Aeris is dead, and her sweet voice has become a distant memory in the wake of all that has happened.

"I wish my mother were here," Yuffie continued. "Or Tifa."

"I have the PHS," I say dryly, taking no offense to her dismissal of my presence because I know as well as she does that she is winding up to ask me something.

But, strangely out of character, she doesn't ask. She scoots back on her hands until she is next to me, and then sits, curling into my side like a cat looking for warmth. When she somehow manages to wriggle her shoulders under my arm so that my cloak is draped over her slender frame, I have to smile, if only at her ingenuity.

"What's it like to die, Vincent?" she asks softly, and her small hand clutches at mine as though she is scared to hear my answer.

I thread my fingers through hers, tarnished gold against porcelain. "I don't know."

"Dying can't possibly be anything like living," she says, without pause as if I hadn't spoken. "Life just happens. Death sneaks up on you from behind." She pauses. "Except for me- I guess it's made itself pretty apparent by now, right?"

The silence stretches on as she waits for an answer.

I don't know what to say to her, but I notice that her breathing has grown labored, as though each breath has become a battle against the slow demise of her body. I hold her tighter, wondering if the time has finally come or if this is merely another episode like all the rest.

"I'm so scared, Vincent," she murmurs, and stops to inhale, then exhale deliberately. "When my…when my mind dies…will I remember you?" She gulps, almost a sob, and says, "And when my heart dies, will I still…will I still love-?"

The gravity of her admission, so ridiculously out of the blue, so Yuffie-like, hits me harder than I thought anything could, and my vision blurs.

"I don't know," I said, and suddenly it's not enough to tell her the truth- no, more than that, it's cruel. She deserves more than my flat responses, more than the simple truth as I know or don't know.

"Your heart won't die, Yuffie," I say, a sweet and blatant lie. "It may stop beating, but it won't die. Your body is just a shell- a temporary dwelling. Your heart, your mind, your soul- they live forever."

There's so much I want to say to her and I can't, I can't tell her these things because there are no words. To say that I love her would be a deception; what's inside of me is so much more than that.

"I don't want you to go," I finish dully, feeling as though the weight of the world is upon me once more.

She doesn't answer, and after a pause I look down at her. She is staring at me, her eyes wide and shadowy in her small, pale face, her breathing shallow. She is so beautiful that I feel a catch in my throat, a throbbing ache in my heart. For a moment we are suspended in time, and she is so perfect that I am inwardly still. The water could rise up and drown us both, the sky could catch on fire and I would still be staring into her eyes helplessly, a lost man finding salvation for the first time in half a century.

Then the moment is over, and she smiles faintly.

"Don't get mushy…on me just yet…Valentine," she whispers, her voice so soft I have to strain to hear. "I've got a few…years left."

She falls asleep like that, leaning against me, latched onto my arm as though she is afraid I will leave her there alone.

Somehow I know I can believe what she has said, because she has been close to death before and has always evaded it. I stand and gather her up in my arms, ready to take her inside, away from the cold.

She'll need her rest. Tomorrow will be her eighteenth birthday.