Sunshine In Winter
the first month
You know, Vincent's a fascinating person. Talking to him or learning
about him has never failed to get a rise out of me, whether it's been
wide-eyed anger at the entire universe that it allows people to do
things like that to other people, or the urge to grab him by the
shoulders and shake him until all his bottled-up hurt fell out into his
lap.
We're two incredibly different people that way, almost completely polar
opposites. Like Wutai and Icicle Inn. Or Midgar and the City of the
Ancients. Black and white, winter and summer, any other lameass
contrasts I can come up with. He's introverted and I'm extroverted,
which is a fancy way of saying that he's dead quiet and I'm annoying.
Vincent keeps all his thoughts and complicated shit on the inside,
whereas I shout it out to the world and wear it like a medal on my
chest. He doesn't get hurt because he doesn't tell anybody anything. I
don't get hurt because I tell everybody everything and nothing can
surprise me any more after that.
...Neither of us want to get hurt. Similarity number one.
I get angry like a thunderstorm, one moment sunny before rolling over
into a nightmare-black spurt of wild anger before it dies down again
into fluffy white clouds. Vincent's more like a volcano, simmering
beneath the earth slowly, then exploding forever relentlessly when he
can't hold it in any more. We both get angry, but it's seemingly the
only emotion he carries willingly; the rest of the time he's stuck
behind some sort of wall that nobody can breach. But, like I said, we
both get angry, so that's normal, I suppose? Human?
Maybe that's what makes me so interested. I've always been as curious
as a wild ferret, and he gives the impression of a wall with ten
million desperately amazing scary things behind it. That's not a good
impression to give to me. I'll be attempting to pound against the wall
and shove myself over it just to see whether I get burnt. That's why
I've always found Valentine so interesting. I want to tug him open to
see how he ticks, his motives, his wants, whilst still leaving him
intact at the same time. He's the complete opposite from the ol'
Yuffster, but I see flashes there - within him - that sort of remind me
of me.
...Gawd. I must be sick, if I'm going on like this. Next thing you
fucking know, I'll be wearing a cape and starting to have a red fetish.
I'm already using the bad metaphors, so I'm half-gone anyway.
Anyway, back to more interesting shit than the ramblings I'd never
bother to tell him myself. I think he already knows them. I mean, when
you live in a coffin for a bunch of years, you must exhaust all forms
of thought, right? Maybe that's why he's so quiet. He doesn't have
anything to talk about!
...I'm an idiot, aren't I? Yes, I thought so.
"Aghhhhh," I moaned incoherently, followed up by the witty "Uhhhhhnnn,"
and the articulate "Oh, gods."
There are many things I've done in my life that have not been exactly
fun. I have fought monsters, fought men, fought calamities from the
skies, fought one-winged angels; now, the most vicious monster of them
all, I fought the raging desire to vomit up everything I'd ever eaten
into my toilet. My ribs ached with dry heaves, nausea still assailing
me even when I'd let go of everything I could possibly let go of. There
was nothing left to cough up.
My stomach told me differently and one more I coughed and hacked over
the brown-cracked porcelain, leaning back against the wall with a low
groan. At this rate my teeth would be dissolved by my own stomach acid
and they'd have to make me dentures to bury me with.
"Yuffie, where are you?"
I panicked and my stomach immediately found something else to get rid
of. "I'm in the bathroom," I squeaked. Damnit! I'd managed to hide the
fact that I couldn't keep anything down for weeks by wearing baggy
clothes and trying to keep my vomiting schedule to when he was out -
the bastard -never- slept - and if Vincent knew about this now he'd
haul me off so quick to Asa you wouldn't see my butt for a trail of
dust.
His hand tried the handle, pausing as he found it was locked. "What are
you doing?"
"I'm having a bath."
Pause, and then the sigh I'd been hearing so often lately, his fingers
most likely rubbing at his temples. "Yuffie, you are not having a
bath."
"How do YOU know, huh? Do you have x-ray vision? If you do, you're
getting out of my house, you pervert. Imagine, all the times I let you
see me dressed and you could peep through my clothes - "
"Yuffie, I know you are not having a bath because the tin bath is still
hanging up over here on the hook. That, and I have no idea how you
would get yourself in a bath with your leg. So you have just lied to
me."
"Well, DUH!" If he badgered me any longer I was just going to have to
vomit, not giving a damn whether he heard me or not. Oh, damnit, it
hurt. Fuck off, Vincent Valentine.
With great effort and quick thinking of un-retchy thoughts, the desire
to vomit was subsiding, so I tried to innocently pull the chain on the
rickety old toilet and unlocked the door, waltzing out as gracefully as
when you're on crutches will allow you. Godo had made 'em for me. He
really didn't have enough to do. "See? What're you worrying about? I
was just in the loo, for the love of everything holy. You're becoming
paranoid as well as overprotective."
Vincent had eventually given up all pretense that he was going to leave
and moved in semi-permanently to my little house. Asako had reasoned
out that he was worried about my welfare. I reasoned out that he was
either nuts-nuts-cuckoo or a budding masochist. He'd had a good job
back in Gongaga, and he'd told me he had been quite happy there, which
was an unusual experience for him. Why had he given all that up to
babysit a foul-mouthed corpse who was obviously not grateful at all
about the situation?
He'd even taken to wearing some of Godo's old clothes from when my
father had actually had abdominal muscles, to fit in with the rest of
the community. Dressed in the yukata and with his hair up in a
ponytail, there were many Wutaian women who definitely considered him
fitting well into the community and probably entertained thoughts of
fitting him in closer than that. (I wasn't among them.)
"Now, there's a boy who can leave his shoes under my bed any time,"
Asako had pronounced gleefully.
I hobbled over to the counter and downed some water to take the
disgusting taste out of my mouth. Damnit, these crutches weren't
working any more. The pain seemed to be spreading to my hip as well.
Spreading, spreading, just like Bannon had said. Damn doctor, why'd he
have to be right?
"Whuddid - " I swallowed. "What did Grandma say about my medication?"
"You have to take new anti-infection pills. Asako wanted them taken
right away - she says that the poison's beginning to spread."
Hmph. Asako. I hadn't even hobbled in front of her yet. She could
probably smell pain from another island.
"Like a bad genital disease." I stretched and huddled into my crutches
painfully. "That's just depressing, Vincent."
He unfurled his hand, three white round pills laying in the palm of it.
"Take these. They'll be what's going to keep you from fainting when you
move too much."
I popped them down deftly and swigged my water, watching his eyes
carefully. The words were horrid, but he was like a creature made out
of marble, watching me as if to make sure I didn't keel over any
moment.
"Oh, God!" I choked slightly as I accidentally tasted bitterness,
gagging as I attempted to swallow. "Ugh! This tastes like shit! Why
does medicine always have to taste like industrial waste?" I saw his
eyes begin to twinkle, the closest Vincent approximation of a slight
smile, and I choked at him pathetically, drinking even more. "You're
just horrible. You made them taste bad on purpose. You get off on it."
"...I've taken a good few pills in my time, Yuffie." He sat down in the
chair by my bed, his usual haunt; I had this horrible feeling that he
sometimes watched me sleep there. "None of them have ever tasted good."
"Pills?" I was immediately interested. "You? When?"
I could see him hesitate. "The Turks have a strict regimen."
Now, that was cool. If he never talked about his history he talked
about being a Turk even less. I could see him as a Turk; smooth and
deadly and lethal. I hobbled myself over to his chair and collapsed on
my bed, ignoring the twinge of pain from my leg. "Vitamins and things?"
"Yes. And stimulants." Vincent looked like he regretted telling me, his
eyes going faraway, back down the years when he had obviously donned
the suit. "I never liked that part of it much... why are you so interested?"
"Don't know." My hand went up to tug at a lock of his hair; it was to
his credit that by now his immediate reaction wasn't to back away when
somebody had the gall to touch him. It was probably because he knew he
wouldn't have to put up with me much longer. "Just wondering what you
were like. You wore a suit? How'd you wear your hair? Did you wear a
tie?"
"Yes, short, yes."
"You killed a bunch of people, right? Was it short cropped or all that
gross style where you shave it at the bottom and have a big hunk of
hair at the top? Did you wear funny ties? No, wait, you're Vincent,
you're not funny. Wait. Were you funny back then?"
He sighed. "Yes... um... no, and no. You would make a rather good
interrogator, Yuffie."
"Ooh! You made a funny! Look, look, Vincent made a funny! It wasn't a
very good funny, but it was still a funny!"
Vincent looked at me piercingly.
"Sorry. I know you don't like talking about it."
"Remembering about it, Yuffie," he said gently. "Being a Turk wasn't a
noble job, or an easy job, or even a very good job. It's the part of my
life I would prefer to leave behind." He looked above my head, off into
the distance. "Although every moment of my life I may be a trained
killer, I will treasure the moments I manage to place it out of my
mind."
Whoooooooah! It was a friggin' SPEECH!
"Well, you don't look like a killer." I looked at him seriously. "Not
even the dark hair and the red eyes and the big claw and the I'm-gonna-
kill-you look you - well, um, actually..."
"I frighten people."
"Not me," I assured him. "Nothing frightens me any more."
For some reason, he took the effort to move his good hand out and pat
my shoulder cryptically. "Then I have achieved much. Asako wants to see
you at lunch. Why don't you have a bath?"
"Are you saying I smell?"
"...Yes."
"You know, Vincent, friends lie to one another."
"Ah. Then, you don't smell."
"...I hate you."
Two funnies in one day! He was on a roll!
Like I said, he's fascinating - both to talk to and to look at. Oh, not
like that; I mean, he's hot and all (but he's Vincent to boot), it's
just that every time I look at him carefully there's something more
about him I want to know. Who gave him -that- scar? Why does he carry
his hand that way? Is that the flash of a tattoo I saw? A lot of
things.
I guess when you're stuck in one place a lot of the time with the same
people you become obsessed with dissection of the tiny. And when you've
got a little death clock ticking over your head, you have a raging urge
to find out the why now instead of the vague later.
Nobody would have ever pegged me and Vincent as friends, I suppose.
They would say, well, Yuffie's going to drive Vincent bananas, and he's
going to make her insane because of his long depressed silences.
Besides, my history's consisted of mainly learning to steal a lot and
putting up with my tourist trap of a city, and his is more full of death
and blood and lust and passion than a bad romance novel where the
hero's called Biff. We haven't got anything in common...
Except that we're both very contrary people. So we ignore the fact that
I'm more obnoxious than a barrel of monkeys and that he's more angsty
than a female preteen and decide to get along just for the hell of it.
Which is why I thought he should go home. Out of all my friends, out of
AVALANCHE, he is the one I am most rubbed up the wrong way by seeing me
wither. I don't want him to be my nursemaid, watching me blow away into
dust. Can't he remember me the way I was, instead of a bundle of ribs
and materia?
Ribs and materia - hah! That was all I was nowadays. Gone were the days
when I'd looked myself in a mirror and actually believed I had come to
maturity. Now my body looked like I did when I was twelve again,
stick-thin legs (well, ONE stick-thin leg; the other one was swollen so
bad it actually looked normal) with no waist and no hips and my breasts
looked incongruous, something healthy and full stuck on a little-girl's
body. I'd lost my tan, too. I bloody looked grey.
My mother had looked like that before she died.
Back in the days when you couldn't even hope for a cure for double
pneumonia and by the end of it she looked like a scarecrow, that
beautiful long dark hair lank and heavy against her pillow; her wrists
were even slimmer than mine and I remember somebody crying "Oh,
Michiko, it's an ugly, ugly way to die."
The unselfish road.. to order him home and not ever having to watch an
ugly slow death. Not to have even more fucking reason to atone
another goddamn sin and mope the rest of his too-long life. Spare him a
truck full of pain.
But I'm Yuffie Kisaragi, and I was born to be selfish. And, in the end,
I'd rather have him than anybody else hold my hand. I hope you're up to
it, my friend.
...I've gone off topic again. I never could hold my concentration for
more than five seconds.
Bugger!
"Yuffie, you aren't eating."
I looked up in surprise. I hadn't thought she'd noticed. I was using my
specialised technique from my childhood years when my father and mother
had forced vegetables on me.
"I'm... not very hungry, Grandma. I had a big breakfast."
Asako put down her chopsticks and raised a smooth white brow at me
before turning to Vincent. "She did?"
"I saw her making noodles this morning."
Oh, good for Vincent. Then he'd gone out and I'd barfed them up. "See?
I ate! Stop trying to mother me! I'm totally okay and everything!"
"Have you been drinking my tea?"
Yes, though it wasn't exactly working any more. "Can I up the dosage,
Grandma? It hurts."
"Half a teaspoon extra. No more than that. You've taken your pills?"
"Yeah. They tasted like shit, Grandma."
She sniffed. "Obviously. Doctors think that to make good medicine it
has to taste bad. I've always considered mine tasty."
"Except that tea," I muttered, and rearranged the noodles in my bowl
into interesting shapes.
Vincent turned around to me, pushing my bowl firmly towards my
chopsticks. "Yuffie, just one spoonful. Please?" he added, unnecessarily.
Perhaps I could do it. Gawd, I was hungry. My stomach felt pinched and
tight but at the same time I knew that at any moment, with something in
it, I could be examining my guts again. My blood was pounding in my
veins unnaturally hard, making me bilious.
I carefully lifted the bowl closer to my mouth, teasing a small portion
of noodles out and popping them between my lips. Chew chew chew.
Attempt to swallow -
My only defence was to spit the noodles out immediately, flailing back
in my chair until I hit the ground. It didn't hurt much, not anymore;
my leg's pain was a pounding drumbeat whose rhythm was now blended
inexorably in my mind with living. I lay on my back and dry-retched
until Vincent picked me up, fumbling with me slightly because he had
prepared his arms for a much heavier weight. I was featherlight. Ribs
and materia, ribs and materia -
"Bring her over here," Asako snapped. I could barely hear her as I
closed my eyes, dizzy and half-fainting. "Put her on the bed, Vincent."
He did as he was obeyed. Couldn't care less any more; just like a
million other times over the past few weeks, I just wanted to die and
get it over with, to stop being tired and ill and utterly, utterly
pathetic, to stop seeing Vincent's darkblood eyes pierce into me
wherever I went, as if trying to see the sickness; wanted to stop
taking medicine and pills. Was this some sort of retribution? Destroying
Sephiroth? Not being able to save Aeris? Getting anywhere close
to Jenova? Hell, maybe it was just payback for all the times I'd
gone to vending machines and slipped my hand up them to get a
free drink -
There was a thin, keening, giggling noise from my throat, a weird sort
of laugh.
"She's half-hysterical," my Grandma muttered, unbuttoning my shirt,
then taking a knife to decisively cut through the three vests I'd put
on so that nobody would notice my lack of shape. "She's - Gods above!
Little more than bones! Vincent, how long has she been unable to keep
down food?"
"I have no idea." His voice was tight. "She's been trying to keep it
from me. I think she was doing this this morning."
"She looks like she's been off food for weeks! And she told nobody!
Fool! Silly child!" To my utter surprise and not a little despair,
Asako burst into tears.
I forced my hand into hers, fluttering my eyelids open, smiling at her
weakly as the nausea ebbed. "S'okay, Grandma. Don't cry... don't tell
Dad anything 'bout this, though? Please?"
"It'd probably kill him as well as you," she gasped roughly, drying her
eyes, her hands running down my oversized ribs and slightly swollen
stomach, angry because I hadn't fed it. Fragile bones and twinges of
pain when she ran her hands over my bandages on my leg.
"I had no idea." It was Vincent's voice. Deep normally, now it was
husking so low as to be almost inaudible. "I failed - "
"Shut up, Vincent! What're you talkin' about? None of it your fault,
silly bastard." I tried to sit up, but then realized I was sort of
half-naked and blushed. "Gawd! Can't a girl get some clothes over
here?"
Vincent buttoned my shirt back up briskly, his warm fingers brushing up
against my ribs with every button, managing to do it admirably quickly
with one hand and serving to make me twice as embarrassed as I was
before.
"Have you been vomiting up everything?" Asako asked me softly, brushing
my dark hair away from my forehead.
I nodded. "Can't keep it down. I tried. Just won't work."
"Well, no wonder your tea hasn't been working. You need to take it with
food as well."
"Am I gonna die, Grandma?"
"If you don't eat soon? Most likely yes. And starvation isn't a nice
way to go."
"At least it'd be quicker than dragon infection," I said mournfully.
There was a sharp pain around my wrist as her hand encircled it
tightly. "You're a fool, Yuffie-chan. You think we're going to let you
die so easily? Die at all? Never! So put those silly thoughts out of
your head and stop hurting everybody with them."
As if I was a little girl once more, I hung my head in shame.
"What do we do, Grandma?" Vincent once more, soft and not a little
worried.
"I'll make some new tea. And change her bandages, at least." Oh, yay.
More cutting. I hoped Vinnie's fingers were ready. "Then, it's up to
her. The tea will help, but she's got to make herself hungry and stop
believing she's going to throw up. Sickness is three-quarters belief,
Vincent Valentine."
He nodded, soft and fluid.
"Cynics shouldn't get sick, then," I grumbled. "No wonder Cid's so
healthy, even though he drinks and smokes like a chimney - "
"Shush, you." She began unravelling my bandages and I immediately
gripped Vincent's good hand. "After this, Vincent, take her home."
I think I was imagining things, but Vincent's fingers in mine were even
more tense and nervous than my own.
The next few days could, most likely, be counted as some of the most
dreadful in my life. Worse than the first re-adjustment to the pain in
my leg; worse than camping out in the Northern Crater, listening to the
howls of monsters; worse than the time I fell off Da Chao and hung by
the seat of my pants on a bush for a couple of hours until my father
found me. Then again, when you're going through mind-numbing pain, it
always seems worse than the times before - and being found squalling at
ten years old on a bush, crying your eyes out as your father took you
home, was pretty horrid at the time.
I attempted to eat, I really did. I tried hard, but even forcing myself
to swallow just brought on pain and nausea and me vomiting once more. I
drank Asako's tea, lying on my bed most of the time as moving didn't
help the nausea any, and I caught a cold because of my defenceless
immune system.
Damn my stupid body!
Vincent was a constant shadow by my side, handing me bowls, taking them
away, watching me intently as I broke into cold sweats. The poison and
the starvation melded into one glorious whole until I was delirious
when I slept, rolling and crying and scratching until things bled. He
used to hold my hands so that I couldn't get at myself, as if I was a
mental patient. Vincent was my straitjacket.
It could have only lasted a week, but it seemed like a dozen years, and
I think I aged that much. By the end of it, I was convinced that I was
dying (I probably was), and shook my head no whenever Vincent brought
me food. Sleeping most of the time helped, a little, but sleep was
sometimes just hallucination as the poison pumped through my fevered
veins.
Sick, sweat-stained and skeletal, I lay in my bed as my skin hurt,
slipping in and out of sleep. I can't even begin to tell you what I saw
in my visions - old memories, new memories twisted, just natural horrors
that little children conjure up as the monsters under their beds.
Imagine, Yuffie Kisaragi, brought to her knees like this when even the
WEAPONs had not achieved the same?
I think that by the end, my dearest wish was to get up, search among
Vincent's things and blow my brains out with Death Penalty. I'd imagine
my nurse probably sheltered those thoughts too, but he never got angry
with me, not once; just held my hand when I sobbed and kept me from
hurting myself when I slept. It must have been a job that didn't let
him sleep, full-time Yuffiewatch, boring and sad as hell. I couldn't
have done it myself.
"Yuffie."
The voice came from far away, but the slow stream of consciousness
reassured me that it could not be delusion; something was pressed
against my lips. Not quite knowing what I was doing or even what the
hell was happening, I opened my mouth and tasted what was there, just a
little.
Apple was there, warm, and sugar, and a spice that was tantalizingly
familiar but I could not name. Wait, cinnamon; there it was. Cinnamon.
"My mother used to feed me this." Velvet and soft, his voice was like
music. "When I was young and I was sick. She'd let me cut the skins
off, because I didn't like them."
I let the sweetness of the sugar and the warmth behind of the fruit
ease my mouth, which had previously felt like a bag of gravel.
"When I was sick, and when I was unhappy, as a child... it always went
away. Just eat a little, Yuffie, please..."
Well, what the hell. Close to the end here. Why not? My teeth
moving down with effort, I broke off a piece of the warm fruit, and
chewed it just slightly. Warm and soft and fragrant, it didn't need
much effort, and I coughed as I swallowed my first piece. Gods knew I
wanted to eat this, probably more than anything else, and although I
felt the first pangs in my stomach I clenched my fists to help me force
them back.
His fingers were warm, hand-feeding me, urging me onward. "I was much
smaller than you, ten years younger, and I think you were much stronger
a child than I ever was. Dropped things - only thing I had was my aim."
I finally managed to open my eyes. His own were intent, pleading, his
face set with worry. Vincent was wearing a black shirt with the sleeves
rolled up, and his long hair was loose but for a meagre attempt at tying it
back with a white scrap bandanna. A small plate was gripped in his
claw, held in his lap, and he sat on my bed. With great effort, I took
another bite, because every time I did his face relaxed. I'd never
heard Vincent talk so much, or seen him let his face show so very much
emotion, or be so gentle.
"Yes... that's it, Yuffie." More, slowly, into my mouth, until he just
gave me the whole piece. "Eat."
The effort of it was killing me, but I opened my lips again as he
brought another piece to them. I ate like a helpless kitten, from his
hand; not a romantic action, as some might think it, but a mere grasp
just to stay alive. Barely tasting it after a while, I was crying,
tears running slowly down my cheeks. I didn't even know why. I just
think that he was so soft, so very un-Vincent, I had to weep.
I finished all he gave me and he wiped my tears away with the back of
his hand as I swallowed. "Are you going to be sick?"
No. I shook my head.
His response was to nod grimly, a little bit more Vincentness creeping
back as the crisis was averted. "...I'm proud of you."
"T-thank you," I rasped, pathetic. My eyes were fluttering shut again.
I was so very tired.
"Go to sleep. I'll be here."
I knew I loved him then. Not romantic love, not exactly, because that
was too trite and too silly for everything he had given up for me; I
don't think any part of it was physical, what I felt. Just love, in
undiluted form, and gratitude, and - it's impossible to describe: just
the knowing that somebody is there who you've wanted there all your
life. Don't get the wrong end of the stick - it wasn't the sort of
feeling you reserve for your lover. It was... argh! Why do I have to be
so awful with words?
Forgive me. Get the wrong idea if you want. All I knew, before I
drifted off into delirium-free sleep, was that Vincent Valentine was my
most favourite person in the world.