35. The Meaning of Gifts

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. -- Kahlil Gibran.

Leon is knocking on the door when Cloud arrives home. When the door opens he mutters about needing to speak to Yuffie, who sheepishly appears after a moment. Cloud, still unnoticed on the stairs, wonders what the heck happened while he was away. Yuffie doesn't do sheepish.

Leon hands something to her. "I thought you could use this."

"Huh?"

"It's from Merlin."

"That old coot?" Yuffie peers at the blue glass pot, unscrews the lid and sniffs at the cream inside. "Is this gonna, like, flay off my skin and leave me looking like a boiled potato? Or shrink my mouth in my face so I can't dazzle him with my wit anymore? Or -"

"Read the label."

"Oh, great. So this is actually just a test of my reading abilities." Nevertheless, she peers at it. Cloud notes the colour in her cheeks with surprise. "Zit cream? You told Grampy McGrumpypants that I needed zit cream?"

Leon grunts noncommittally.

"How could you! Now I have to, like, flour bomb his house to repair my rep, and Ponytail made cake for Cloudy's homecoming, so we have no freaking flour, which means I'm gonna have to liberate that as well!"

"Yuffie, you'd better not be thinking about stealing things again." Zack's voice floats towards them even though he's somewhere inside the apartment, out of the sight of the stairwell.

"I'm not thinking about it."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Yuffie pouts at Leon, keeping him on the doorstep. "You're really bad at the whole gift thing. I mean really, awfully, super bad at it."

He grunts again. There might be words in there, but Cloud can't be certain.

Yuffie stares at the pot, sniffs it experimentally again, and looks back at Leon with an overbright smile, "I hate you with the passion of the thousand supernovas. Just so you know."

"Whatever."

"Hey, I'm the teenager. That's my line."

"Hello Cloud," Leon says without turning around, effectively ending the exchange.

Yuffie pockets the cream in one of the innumerable pouches on her belt. "I'm going to get you for this," she mutters. "You do realise that, right? That old coot is probably laughing into his teacup right this second. My mystique is in tatters."

Leon ignores her. Instead he continues to speak to Cloud. "How was your trip?"

"It was … eventful."

"I sense gossip!" Yuffie, apparently having forgotten she has just sworn vengeance on Leon, barrels past him and leaps at Cloud. "Spill or face my super-keen ninja wrath!"

"Grah!"

The thumps bring everyone to the doorway. Leon pinches the spot between his eyes, while they go past him to lean over the banister, staring down at the flight below the one Cloud was on only seconds ago.

"Yuffie!" Aerith cries. "Let go! He can't breathe!"

"She sent something extra for you girls," Cloud says when he has finished his story. Both Tifa and Aerith's backs arched a little when he said how she went to fight for him when his chocobo was stolen by the fabled Thief King.

"For us?" Yuffie bounces like a chipmunk that has drunk a saucer of coffee. "Whereisitwhereisitwhereisitwhereisit?"

"Hold your horses." Cloud unzips a special plastic jacket attached to a hangar and pulls out three items so spectacular they rob even Yuffie of her breath.

For about five seconds.

Which is a new record, actually.

"Which one's mine?" she demands in such a high-pitched squeak that Zack grabs his ears and Leon's jaw clenches tighter.

Cloud hands over a pair of brown gloves. They're made soft-as-butter leather, carefully sewn at the seams so it looks like there aren't any. They're fingerless to allow maximum movement for gripping things, and the wide ends have funnels of black fishnet attached to keep them from flapping about. They're secure and comfortable, and Yuffie immediately tosses aside her old gloves to pull on the new pair. They're practical and comfortable, but hodgepodge verging on ugly the way that only high fashion clothes can be.

"Check me out!" she crows, striking poses with fists clenched and fingers dramatically splayed like a gymnast after a perfect routine.

Tifa is too focussed on her own gift: a pair of black shorts with a cross between a dungaree top and a cape attached at the waist. Cloud was most dubious about this item, since he can't see any point to the extra material. It doesn't contribute anything by way of warmth, and might even be hindering to movement, but Tifa is nonetheless delighted. Maybe it's a girl thing.

"It's gorgeous," she breathes. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"Esmeralda designed and made it herself. She made all these things. They're each one of a kind. She gave them to me as repayment for all the troubles her old friends put me through, even though I said there was no need. She only makes clothes for women, though," he apologises to Zack and Leon.

Zack holds up his hands, palms outward. "I've had more than enough of wearing women's duds. I'll just settle for a handshake and a kiss from her."

"And a quick grope if she's as pretty as Cloudy says."

"Yuffie!" Aerith and Tifa exclaim in unison.

"That's my name, don't wear it out."

Thankfully Tifa doesn't strip off what she's wearing to immediately try on her gift like Yuffie, but she folds the shorts over her arm almost reverentially. "I don't have many things that aren't bare-bones practical, and even fewer that make me feel girly."

Cloud's not sure how shorts are girly, but he decides not to comment. There are so many things he doesn't understand about how females think. Instead of making things clearer, living with them just makes him even more confused.

Tifa's grateful expression, however, makes him thrust Aerith's gift out at arm's length with much less ceremony. "Here," he manages. "For you."

At first Aerith's gift looks like just a blob of pink fabric. Anyone would be forgiven for thinking it's a nightgown. A line of impractical buttons trace the front from hem to neckline. When she shakes it out and holds it up they see it's actually a dress with thin straps and slightly darker pink stitching around the edges. Otherwise it's surprisingly ordinary compared to the other two gifts.

"Wait a second." Cloud burrows in the plastic and excavates a purple leather thing studded with decorative metal circles. Rather than a buckle, each end is threaded with a length of thick twine. "I … think it's a belt."

"It's lovely. Did you tell her my favourite colour is pink?"

"No, she just said you sounded like a pinkish kind of girl when I described you."

"You described us to her?"

"I hope you made out that we're all ten times more beautiful than she is," Yuffie pipes up, still throwing shadow punches in her new gloves. "No, twenty times more beautiful. Fifty. A hundred! We're butterflies and she's a stinky old moth who tried to steal you away from us."

"Yuffie!" Tifa frowns at her. "You can't say things like that when you're wearing the gift she sent for you – a gift she sent when she doesn't even know you."

"Can too. That just means she knows when she's beat and is paying tribute to my stunning stunningness."

"Don't be so vain," Aerith scolds.

"It isn't vanity if you're telling the truth."

"Thank you, Cloud." Tifa reaches to hug him. He freezes up in shock, suddenly and horribly conscious of her breasts against him. She pulls away again.

Covering the embarrassment at his poor reaction, Cloud bends to Kairi's level and murmurs, "Hold still." He fiddles with her hair for a few seconds, and then stands up to admire his handiwork. "There you go. Esmeralda didn't want to leave you out after I told her about you."

Kairi pats the tiny embroidered butterfly threaded through a lock of her hair, tied off with a silky piece of ribbon. The butterfly has antennae that bob as she turns her head. She giggles wildly when Zack picks her up and shows her what she looks like in the mirror.

"Kairi's pretty. Pretty butterfly! Kairi is a pretty butterfly!"

"Hey, she's already mastered metaphor," Yuffie quips. "You'll be a teenager turning boys' heads and breaking their hearts before we know it, Small Fry." She digs her fingertips under Kairi's armpits so she dissolves into giggles and nearly falls out of Zack's arms. Yuffie catches her and the pair spin away, whooping and laughing like life is good and nothing bad can ever happen to them.

Zack watches them with a smile. "At least she's in a good mood now. We've had complete chaos while you've been away, Cloud. Yuffie got a zit on her nose and the whole world was ending."

"I didn't see any zit."

"Exactly. But this has taken her mind off it, and by the time her hummingbird attention span remembers she's supposed to be acting like a moody teenager, whatever blackhead she did have will be long gone and we can live in peace again." Zack considers what he's just said. "Well, we can get back to normal, at least."

Cloud just boggles at him. "Yuffie was acting moody? Our Yuffie? The girl who laughs at danger and flicks snotballs at fear? The Yuffie who, when I asked her what she wanted to be when she grows up, replied 'standing on top of a pile of shiny things and stuffing my face with chocolate cake'?"

"Yes, yes, yes and yes."

"I was only gone for two days and the universe has already stopped making sense."

"You have moogles."

Cid doesn't even look up.

"Cid," Tifa says sharply.

"Yeah?" Still no eye-contact, but he's talking, which means he isn't really working at all. For Cid, proper working is becoming deaf and blind to the rest of the world. If he's aware of what's going on around him, he's just playing around and calling it work. His fingers fly with unsuspected deftness, spinning nuts and bolts into place like this is what hands were made for and everybody else's have just forgotten their original purpose.

"You have moogles."

"So?"

"You have moogles upstairs."

"Fuck, Tifa, they ain't rats."

"Why do you have moogles building a second storey to your shop?"

"Easier access for me to kick their fuzzy little asses when they're late with the orders I place. You know how hard it is to grab a moogle by its bobble and hold it up to ask why the hell your sprockets are overdue and your carburettors behind schedule."

"No, I don't."

"Damn hard."

"Cid."

He sighs, or at least he'd sigh if he was the type of man who sighs when he's being henpecked. "Their place got hit by lightning in the storm last week. Burned to the ground. They were trying to rebuild and I told 'em they could shack up here and set up a new synthesising shop on top of mine. I got me a lightning rod and everything, and it's due to piss it down again soon, so they'll at least have a roof over their heads. They'd probably fucking shrink like kids' toys if they got wet, little crapworthy fucktards." He notices Tifa's silence and finally glances at her. "What?"

"Softy."

He tells her to do something even her flexible body would have trouble with.

"I'd rather not," she grins, completely unperturbed. "And you're still an old softy."

"Oh just fuck off."

To Be Continued …