Sunshine in Winter
chapter three
A/N: For Tochira, who made my inner Yuffie insist Vincent was throwing off her
groove; for Demeter, who reminded me of something I'd completely forgo – uh, I
mean, put off; and for all of my warm, encouraging, amazing reviewers, who can
get a warning that it ain't over till it's over and that I'll get to thank you
all eventually for your eternal enthusiastic kindness and divine patience.
I have always loved sneaking out in the middle of the night.
There's nothing quite like it. There's that expectation as you lie awake
beforehand and know, just know, that hey, you're about to leave and everybody's
going to have kittens in the morning. You wear all black. You tiptoe over
floorboards which makes no sense as your father doesn't even live in the same
house as you. You run over people's rooftops, just because you can…
… all when more would have been accomplished just by leaving the back way in
your house and tramping out into the forest, which is what Vincent Valentine
did.
"Look, it's the style of the thing," I groused the night before, practically
all in shivers with excitement and sick to my stomach with hope. "I mean, it's
all right for you, you dress in black anyway, Mono-Valentine, but me, I'm
leaving in… in… in not the right clothes. It's just not the style of the
thing."
"The style of the thing will be getting you into the forest; hope that we do
not encounter something more vicious than me, Yuffie. Cid is landing on the
other side so that Godo does not hear the Highwind and smell a rat; frankly, he
will be smelling a rat the next morning and I doubt that he will ever forgive
me for doing this."
"Vincent, my honey, nothing's more vicious than you are – and look at it this
way; if he never forgives you, you never have to rule Wutai."
"I never want to have to rule Wutai anyway," he said softly.
"C'mon, Vinnie." I sat up on my bed; it was late afternoon. I was watching
Vincent pack, the autumn sunlight dappling his hair liquid pitch as he fussed
over my winter clothing. We were drinking tea; I strained forward to put my
empty cup on the bedside table. "It won't be that baaaarrrgh!"
Vincent caught me just in time from falling completely off my padded chair and
I toppled him to the floor, landing in a painful squawking tumble as he ended
up flat on his back with me on his chest. Nothing hurt that much – my bad leg
hadn't taken a blow – so I exploded into giggles and ignored the fact I had
just fallen off a chair because my body didn't work. He propped both of us up
gently with a long-suffering sigh and held me in his lap as he folded a packet
of pills into a vest.
I rested my head on his shoulder, leaning into him and feeling the muscles work
underneath his skin as he moved. Hideously uncomfortable. I loved it. "What're
we gonna do if I get well?" I asked for the millionth time. Some people ask
what they do if they win the lottery; I ask about my health.
His cheek brushed my hair as he leant down slightly, careful not to shift me
and thus my swollen disgusting limb as he tucked it into a knapsack. "Many
things, I suppose, Yuffie."
"I'm gonna get some new clothes. Ones that show off my legs. You know, like
miniskirts and short-shorts and, hell, why bother, I'm just gonna go naked for
a week."
A blush stained his cheeks, which was a bit stupid as he'd seen me naked twenty
thousand times. It wasn't exactly the most erotic sight unless one was a
necrophile and into very fresh corpses. Then again, he did used to sleep in a
coffin… "I'm sure."
"What're you gonna do? We'd go out and celebrate, right?"
"Of course."
"How?"
He pondered over that for a while. "… I would take you hiking out to the
waterfall that flows down from Li Xue," he started, naming the hilly scrubland
a bit south from Wutai. "We could sit up top next to the rocks and watch the
water fall."
"And we could eat icecream."
"… Yes, we could eat icecream."
"What kind of icecream?"
"Fudge ripple," he said promptly. God, the man has so many facets I could cut
myself on him. He's an ex-Turk and has demon blood and a many-times-over
murderer and a rejected lover and a paranoid self-flagellating sinner but he
can still have the humanity to like fudge ripple.
I mean, you'd at least expect that much angst to prefer mint and chocolate chip.
"Would we eat it with spoons?"
He quirked his eyebrows at me, turning his head and absently running one thumb
across the skeletal sticking-out bone of my cheek. Someone accidentally gave me
a mirror a week ago and I broke it into pieces. My flesh is stretched so
tightly over my body I'm like a kite on a frame. My soul is beginning to want
to break away from the imperfect chains that bind it to earth. There's a
dangerous bit in me that just wants to sleep. "How else do you eat icecream?"
"With your fingers. You scoop it out an' you eat it with your hands and you get
all sticky and half your face gets covered and you spend the next half hour
sucking it from your l-li-lips – " I explode into coughing again and turn my
face away to do it on the pale blue cotton of my button-up shirt. It flecks
red. Once again I have broken my throat; or maybe it's the blood from my
stomach sores, I forget.
Vincent's fingers wipe the crimson from my lips, almost absently. We're so
steeped in death it's no big thing any more. "What would we do after the
icecream, Yuffie?" he urges on gently.
"We'd s-swim in the r-river." My coughing fits can go on for hours. "A-a-a-and
dry on the r-rocks. And…"
He wipes my mouth, over and over. The racking convulsions subside. "And?"
"And we'd…" I pick my brain over the area. I haven't been there in years. "And
go eat the blueberries from the bushes if they were ripe and eat them even if
they weren't and sit there getting stomach cramps for hours and probably barf
in the bushes. At least, I would, you'd be there saying, '… You shouldn't have
eaten those, Yuffie, I told you not to,' and rubbing me on the back."
Unconsciously, he does begin to rub me on the back, then stops when he realizes
what he's doing. I shift my back impatiently to make him do it again, and he
does, albeit slower. "I promise not to let you eat the unripe blueberries."
"They won't be unripe. This is my future-fantasy, all right? They'll be
perfect. I'll have purple stains all over my mouth. They won't even have bugs.
Then we'll strip down to our underwear – well, I will, and in my future-
fantasy, I'll kick you with both legs until you do – and go swimming in the
water and I'll try to catch the fishes and never make it. Then we'd hike back,
right?"
"Right." His fingers rub over my upper back; my lower doesn't feel it. "And
watch the sun set."
"Red and gold and purple and orange."
"Of course."
"Vinnie, if I get well – "
"When, Yuffie."
"Okay, okay, pedant – when I get well, can I dress you up sexy and take you to
a resturant in Junon?"
Crimson eyes are so bemused. He has amazingly long lashes. "You'd find that
fun?"
"Yeah! I'd do my Chocolate Mousse trick."
"… I hesitate to ask…"
"… It's when I dare you to a competition to see how many bowls of chocolate
mousse you can eat, then I eat too many and I barf. Everywhere."
"… Yuffie, how come many of your dreams involve you throwing up?"
I ponder that. "I dunno. It just seems to happen in real life. Okay, no
throwing up. I win the competition and you have to carry me home because I'm so
stuffed full of chocolate mousse I can't move. All right?"
There's a twinkle in his eyes, like a starry night in summer. "All right." He
zips up the stuffed knapsack, and I see the glimmer of one of his revolvers in
it. He taught me how to shoot a couple of days ago. The recoil practically had
me blasting my own face off.
"… Vincent."
"Yuffie."
"You're not going to go back to Gongaga if I get well, are you?"
He blinks softly at the question. "I… no, Yuffie, I'd be here, I'd want to
share in it."
"But eventually?"
"Yuffie," my sharpshooter says wryly, "you're counting your chickens so much
before they're hatched that they're already laying eggs of their own."
"But?" I insist.
"… But… Yes. If you wanted me to. You may not after… after you get well."
"I want you always."
"Then I want you always as well, if you wish."
I don't know what we've just said to each other but I have a feeling if I
sneeze the world might collapse. Gods above, I wish that everything Vincent
said didn't have to be some sort of metaphor. You ask him if he wants tea or
coffee and he goes on about sun shining on the snow in the mountains. I suppose
it's better than "…", though, which is what I would have gotten a year or so
before. Or a lugubrious comment on sin and caffeine.
"Always is a bugger of a time. Are you packing my woolly chocobo?"
"I would never forget Woolly Chocobo."
"Then we're set, aren't we?" I loll back in his arms, suddenly feeling slightly
woozy and ready to cuddle up against him and go to sleep. "I don't know how I'm
gonna get to sleep tonight, Vince."
"I do," he mutters, standing up and walking forward to put me on my bed. "I put
sleeping tablets in your tea."
"You fucker," I manage, and I think I was asleep even before it all went black.
There are so many different types of love. The one I have with Vincent I can't
even categorize.
I used to get read fairytales as a child and thought that love would be Prince
Charming. Love would be a hunk. Love would argue with me incessantly and there
would be passion and sex and all that stuff, with a couple of burning lusts
thrown in and maybe Angst to mix it all up. Cue Happy Ending, maybe some kids
who look exactly like me and Prince Hunk. Then…
Then what? Yuffie Kisaragi, Materia Thief Extraordinaire and… Settler Down With
Two Children. Something inside me would always be screaming to go out into the
wilderness sans Hunk and go out travelling once more.
Or would it? I don't know what my soul longed for any more. To settle down? To
go back to my life the way it had been, a shiftless wanderer? To break free of
my body and join the Green? Gods, would I be allowed to choose? Would I get an
ending? I knew the Lifestream existed, but would I like it all that much? I
didn't think I would – not if Vincent wasn't there.
Vincent…
My love for him is uncontrollable, because I can't stop it from welling up
inside me like nectar in a flower and because I don't care any more if he loves
me the wrong way back, just so long as he keeps on being mine forever. Mine. In
me. One, only, all. I'm not sure whether I care about anything or whether there
is a right way or a wrong way to love somebody; he's so deep within me. It's… I
can't describe it, not properly, the way it should be described. It's like
having your shadow suddenly talk… it's like having a tree take root around your
heart and germinate. It's… it's like Vincent is the Lifestream, for me. I don't
think heaven could get any better. I'm close to tears and wishing I could say
it right, because I don't know what I want. Am I in love with Vincent? (Stupid
shit of a term, as if one can love and be out of love.) Do I want to make love
with Vincent? Being a complete virgin, I couldn't explain my passion very well,
or whether it was even the right sort of breathless passion. When you have
somebody touching your nude body on a daily basis, that sort of immediate lust
isn't easily translatable. The thought… the thought of being properly naked,
though (properly?), in his arms, in his equally naked arms, well… Cold shivers.
Ha. I'm still a teenager. I like that.
It'd mean nothing, though. It would just be another note in our hundred-string
symphony. Was all love like this? Did he love like this? I could tell what Vincent
was feeling at almost any given time, but not for me. Goddamn confusing.
I don't want to go without kissing him.
I'll kiss him like a girl kisses a boy she has the hots for. I'll kiss him like
a woman kisses a man, a man she loves. I'll kiss him like a soldier kisses
another soldier when they're in the trenches and one of them is about to get
exploded with a high-level Fire spell. I'll kiss him like two friends kiss each
other, soft and on the mouth, bodies so attuned it holds different symbolism.
I'll kiss him like a suppliant might kiss a deity, and like how a ward might
kiss a guardian.
I'll kiss him how Yuffie Kisaragi wants to kiss Vincent Valentine when nobody
is looking but him. That, at least, I owe him.
… please, High One, my God. If you have to take me, then don't let me go not
saying what I want to say.
Why do I acquiesce?
Trust Vincent to overdose. I only woke up halfway through him in the morning
carrying me through the forest, nightsky still intact through the tops of the
trees as I nestled in the warmth of his arms. He could carry me and two heavy
backpacks and still look serene and practically celestial. Noticing me shift,
Vincent tucked me more securely against his chest.
"You suck," I sulked. "I wanted to be awake when we escaped."
"I know."
"And you drugged me anyway."
"We're escaping now, aren't we?"
"Yes, but this is the best part. Did you meet any monsters?"
"I would have had to have tried exceedingly hard if I'd wanted to meet one."
"And you didn't even try?"
It was such a short walk to where the Highwind was waiting it didn't even seem
like a journey; Cid was waiting for us on the crest of the hill, a little star
of orange in the darkness where he was smoking. There was something written on
his face – I don't know what it was, but Vincent saw it too – that made him
stop as he reached the gangplank. He didn't ask; he just turned around and
looked.
Cid shifted from foot to foot, eventually pulling out his cigarette and
spitting on the grass. "… You look a million gil, kid," he addressed me.
"I didn't know the economy had gone down so bad."
The joke died in the air and eventually he stuck the cigarette behind his ear,
blue eyes training on Vincent. "I tried to tell them, Valentine, damn it."
"…What?" He shifted me in his arms like a baby.
"It was Strife and #ing Tifa, bleeding-hearts, wouldn't take no for an
answer, jingoed it all up – "
"… You weren't supposed to – "
The cigarette got flung out of his fingers. "I know I wasn't supposed to
goddamn tell! But there's them on the PHS every day talkin' about it to me and
Shera slips once and then the cat's so out of the bag I can't do anything about
it."
I shifted uncomfortably, looking from face to face and stifling another body-
wracking cough. When had the nights gotten so cold? "Vinnie? Cid? Can anybody
kindly give me a cup of what-the-hell-is-going-on?"
Cid shook his head in disgust, sticking his hands in his pockets and stomping
over to the nose of the airship. "You just go on in there," he hollered, voice
floating up to us, whipped gently by the nightwind. "Remember - #!&ing big
smiles now."
I hauled myself up with difficulty in Vincent's arms, my thin sticks of bone
and skin wrapped around his neck to pull myself back and up and stare into the
sulfur glare of the ship's insides. I was blinded by the light, momentarily, my
eyes too sensitive, but the moment they adjusted I blinked.
"Oh, my Gawd! What are you guys doing here?"
They were all there. Every single one. Tifa, looking a trifle smug, happiness
glowing off every pore of her with Cloud sitting behind and sharpening his
Buster Sword; Barret, coffee-coloured in the light and grinning at me stupidly
as if I was the world's biggest joke whilst fixing something to do with a smirking
Cait's back; and Red, on his haunches and dignified, pain pain pain oh my heart
was breaking in confusion and gratitude. Their eyes all fixed on me as
if I was something terrible to behold, a wreck, mangled and ripped – then the
gaze was gone as if it had never been there and the smiles were back.
Stupid morons. Who couldn't adore them?
"Heard you needed a trip up to the mountains," Cloud said, mild and smooth. "We
came along for the ride."
"Y'know, just for the scenic aspect," Tifa piped up. Bloody twin puppets, those
two.
Vincent had frozen behind me. I could feel his tension in his chest and I
didn't know why; I tried to ignore it. Maybe he was just surprised too and was
trying to express it through large tracks of '…'.
"Red. Guys. Aw..." Despite the reaction from my vampiric brunette, I still felt
like crying; Tifa had come closer and I smiled at her as best I could manage.
"Oh, why the hell'd you do this?"
"As if we would miss out on this, Yuffie?" Red's voice was still so gentle.
"It's an adventure, ain't it?" Barret demanded. "AVALANCHE is gonna rock your
world! Like we'd let yo' skanky little Wutaian ass fall around a mountain when
you can't do jack shi – "
"No."
Heads craned as their eyes fell on Vincent instead of me. It was probably a
relief. "Huh?" Cloud said intelligently.
"This is not the time to discuss this." His voice was whip-sharp. What the
hell? Cid had come back up the ramp, standing a little behind the ex-Turk.
"… Highwind. I'm going to take Yuffie up the front and put her under. If you'd
please – "
There was an immediate babble of protest, the only thing stopping Vincent my
hand reaching out to tug on his ponytail as hard as I could. "Vinnie, don't! I
want to talk to them during the trip! Awww, c'mon!"
"Valentine, you can't do this without us," Cloud demanded, having finally
cottoned on to Vincent's earlier statement. "Look, our hands are better than
yours, okay? It'll be a breeze, we know our way around. It'll – "
Vincent deposited me in Cid's arms as if I was just so much clothing. "No. We
must confer. Take Yuffie up front, please, she doesn't need to be a part of
this – "
It was only then that my disquiet turned into fully-fledged horror. "What?!" I
squawked, my surprise making me have a coughing fit. "Vincent! I want them
along! Don't make them go away! Vincent!" Cid had already begun carting me
grimly to the bridge, walking away from the others. I squirmed like a
cat. "Stop! STOP, damn you! Vincent!" He raised his head to look at me,
bloodeyes burning. I was in tears like a thirteen-year-old. Cloud was shouting
at Vincent already, using his Big Bad Leader voice, and I couldn't be heard
over him. My heart beat in wild desperation, helpless and genuinely frightened.
I tried to raise my volume to something like my old normal shriek, my throat
aching in protest. "Stop! Vi – vi - vi – "
The coughing fit throws me. The force that racks my chest is like an earthquake,
my tectonic plates shifting, my body trying to tear apart. Cid lets out a long
litany of abuse as he clutches me close and I can smell and taste his cigarette
smoke; I'm dying, dying, trying to break free. He falls to his knees to hold me
and I buck back, my lower half lying lifeless but my leg and arms flailing and
my eyes roll back in my head as I see white things. I turn head to the side and
I'm noisily, embarrassingly, shamefully fucking sick, only the fluid that comes
out is too thin and sticky and wet to be anything but a long slick wash of
blood. I do this every time, don't I? Everything has gone blank black nothing
and Vincent's hands, they're on my own, I'm light as fairies, Vinnie -
"I brought you some roses. From the gard'n."I came to and woke up staring into blue eyes wide as the sky, and blinked in
utter confusion. Cid shifted a fresh cigarette over impatiently to the other side
of his mouth; it was unlit.
The roses are the roses of early winter, subtle flushed pink, full of thorns to
prick small hands. These hands are calloused and tough, so they do not mind the
thorns, though they watch out for the pale soft hands that seriously take the
roses from them. They do not have blood to give.
"Thank you." The voice is pure and sweet and thin, like she is. "Flowers from
my little flower. You'll fetch me a vase, won't you? Dump out the marsh
goldings from that one, they're wilting and it'll do. Thank you, my lovely."
"S'cold outside." She tries to make conversation. "Mama, do I hafta wear Nami's
coat? It's all old and grey and grossness."
"Yes, love. I'm so sorry; my fingers couldn't make you a new one this year."
She looks so apologetic she is forgiven forever. "I'll get your father to get
you one on one of his trading runs."
"Can it be red?" She loves red.
"It will be red as strawberries and sunsets, little flower, as red as you could
ever want."
The hands twist in the lap. "Are your lungs better yet?"
The truth. "I don't know."
"They will get better, won't they?"
A lie. "Yes, lovely."
"Because you've got to get better for the Festival. You make the best
watercakes."
"You compliment me too much, my little flower. The gods will get angry." The
smile is amazing. "So will Grandma Asako, who is a much better baker."
"Is not," she defends loyally. "You're way better. I better go, mama, I gots
lessons. With Shake."
"Will you come and see me afterwards?"
"'Kay." The kiss on the cheek, the scampering. "Love you lots, Mama."
"I love you, Yuffie."
"God, kid," he muttered. "Thought you'd carked it on me there."
"Me t-too." The situation came back to me. "Cid, what the fuck is happening?
What's Vincent playing at? Summon's gonna be much easier to find with a bunch
of us, he's crazy if he turns down their offer, I – "
I should have known then. I think I should have known all along.
"Shhh, kid, just a misunderstanding," Cid soothed. "You know Valentine, he's
already got something sealed the # up. Stupid !&ing Cloud, he shouldna - "
"Nobody tells me things." Grief washed over my face and pained my features. "He
still treats me like I'm twelve."
"'Cause you still act like it," Cid said tartly. "God help me if I have
daughters like you."
"How's your small one?"
"Kain?" The features softened, just slightly. "He got his head stuck in a pot
yesterday. We had to completely rub his head'n butter until it popped off."
This, of course, had me laughing so hard my back ached. "Taking after his dad
already, huh?"
"Oh, just you shut the !# up."
"You kiss Shera with that mouth, you oil-haired old b-bastard? Gawd! You do
realize your kid's going to be swearing before he's ten?"
Cid looked righteously embarrassed. "Can't swear," he muttered. "Have to fork
out five gil each time in the Swearing Jar."
Unable to help it, I laughed even harder.
"Yuffiegirl? Can I talk to you?"
That made me stop laughing abruptly. "I'm all ears, Highwind. They work."
"No, I mean – " he looked frustrated. "Aw, shit, I…"
"Don't know what you mean?'
"Yeah."
"Happens to me all the time."
He looked at me then, calm and cool, and I saw him as the old pilot who was the
father of one and the man of many dreams, some of which had even come true.
He'd complained about me bitterly, talked tough, driven my nose into the sand
and picked me back right up again whenever I fell. I loved Cid, I suddenly
realized. I loved him desperately. I just wished I was able to –
Hey, why the fuck not? Nobody should ever have to hold their tongues when
there's an affirmation needing to be said.
"I love you," I smiled at him, and got the privilege of seeing the cigarette
dropped from hastily-parted lips.
"That wasn't fair." His voice was a gritty mutter, and the sky was suddenly
filled with raindrops. "You have to kind of prop a man up for that sort of
shit."
"You love me back, don't you?" My voice was a soft, tiny, kittenish thing. I
have realized that all my life all I have ever wanted is to be loved.
"What do you fucking think?" he demanded. I look him over, the rough stubble
gracing his cheeks, the blonde hair that is rapidly turning as grey as the
Highwind. "Oh, help me if I have annoyin', rude, stubborn, idiotic daughters
like you, Kisaragi!"
"I hope they take after me and are as beautiful as they are foulmouthed," I
whisper. "I hope the males come to you and tell you they want to be dancers in
rude bars, and that the girls wear overalls and think denim is a fashion
statement."
"Love y'," he mutters, in bass so low it lost itself, and I have realized that
all my life I was.
Another face entered my vision, one too familiar for thought. Vincent's face
was as tense as a coiled spring, and in his hand he wielded a full tranquilizer
syringe. Knowing exactly what this meant, I curled back.
"What – " Cid began.
"Never mind." Gawd, I'd not seen that fury in, I think, years – "Yuffie, your
arm – "
I just Looked at him.
"Please, Yuffie, you'll understand later," he said tersely. "Later. Please.
Cid? We're behind schedule."
I don't know why I felt so utterly betrayed. I didn't know what was happening.
I sort of felt like the core of my world was breaking apart and mushing
together and my brain, it was making it so hard to think, all I could do was
look at him. He picked my arm up himself, checking the syringe, and I looked
away from his face.
"G'night, girl." Cid stuck his cigarette back in his mouth and grumbled,
stalking off to his bridge.
"G'night," I mumbled back, and the needle slipped into the vein in my left arm
because the right one had veins that were all tiny and shut and I fell asleep,
and I wished I had Cloud, because even though he lead me to Sephiroth and knew
that we were probably all going to die he told us so.
I've woken up a lot of places.
One time I slept in a tree and I fell out during the night, must've hurt my
head pretty badly, but when I woke up there were all these stupid mutant death
frogs sitting on my stomach. That was pretty funny, when I stopped screaming
and wiped the frog guts off my bare hands. I don't think that story's funny,
actually. You had to have been there.
I'm a traveller. I think part of the reason I stayed out in the world for so
many years is that I loved being independent so much. I crawled before I spoke
properly. It's all a matter of independence. Then again, I learnt how to make
my father's Lightning materia throw sparks at the cats before I learnt how to
formulate proper sentences or to not stick the food up my nose, but it's the
thought that counts, right?
But when I woke up this time it was in a small dark tent and the wind was
blowing outside, huge and cold and biting. I was safe and I think my body was
warm, nestled deep in a pile of blankets while I watched Vincent tend a small
mechanical heating system and muttered out-of-date curses under his breath, but
my inside was ice cold. He turned around to notice me awake, then turned back
to his machinery, his fingers pricked and bleeding and his hair still full of
snow.
I stared for a long while. Shit. "We're… where?" I asked stupidly.
"We arrived."
"But what – "
"You slept through it."
"Did – "
"Gave his well-wishes."
"I – " I began to cough violently again, racking my body, eyes rolling back in
my head as we both patiently waited for it to be over. It took a while for me
to recover, and I began to bat very weakly at the blankets, not wanting them so
heavy or thick or there. "Vincent, I – "
"Medicine," he said curtly. Medicine was different this time, the usual
assortment of stabbed needles in my arms, but there were no tablets. There was
hot tea, though, thin and sweet and pungent with peppermint. My breathing
eased, formerly loud and wet in the icy howling teeth noise of the wind. It
bubbles in my lungs.
My head tilted back on the pillows packed underneath my head, a warm soft
drugged glow spreading through my body as the things took effect, and I opened
my eyes again when I noticed something. My pulse felt odd in my ears; too fast,
a different rhythm, dancing to wardrums.
"Vincent," I finally said, slow and ready and measured. "How are we going to
look for Aesculapius in this snowstorm? Y'know, on the map, I located some
caves, we really should've hidden out in them – "
"Blocked over," he said, flat and slow.
"Bl – what do you mean? Vincent, you're not making any sort of fucking sense
here! You sent away all my friends – your friends too, you, you ungrateful
jerk – and an Earth materia's going to get you past any sort of blockage, you
know that, were you afraid of avalanches? Ha, you are, you sent our one
away!"
There was a moment of silence. Who for?
"Vincent?"
His voice was heavy and soft like the snow outside. I could see his face by
flickering electric light, and I studied it for a moment. Thick black brows,
coal-coloured, ebony hair scraped off his face with sweat. Pale face slightly
chapped from the wind; nose strong, straight, elegant. Cheekbones high and jaw
diamond-shaped, clear-cut and delicate and beautiful. His eyes are red like
blood on roses and his pupils are dark as sin. "Yes?"
"What's happening?"
He studies me in turn, and sits up. He is wearing a long-sleeved shirt with the
sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and the thin thermal vest he wears underneath
peeks out at the area at his neck and at his forearms. The hands, strong and
scarred and capable, peel back the layers of blankets – there's a crinkly foil
one I know I used to take for camping up in the mountains that I used to bounce
on because it made the neatest noises – and takes his fingers and rolls down
the thin fabric of my sweat-stained cotton top down my shoulders until it's
rolled to my ribs. Oh, gawd, ew, my breasts have shrunk, haven't they? I don't
know, I haven't looked at myself like this or thought about it in so long. I've
been sick for… it feels like my lifetime.
I'm fascinated. The little curving poisonlines are up, over the hard lumps of
my chest, and if I tilt my head back, further. My neck. Over my back and my
spine, I think. They all cluster over to the right, in the center, there's a
little writhing wriggly mass of them. My heart murmurs a beat again. They're
there. The dragon's in my heart.
This prompts another coughing fit, Vincent's hand at my mouth, coming away
covered in bloodied mucus as I settle back. "How much longer?"
"A few days." His voice strains up from his stomach and looking at his eyes is
agony. Everything is agony, I realize; it's like there's two selves of me, my
body and what makes me me. The me is seperated from the body by threads, and
sometimes I remember the threads are there and it cuts all over and stabs from
the inside.
"Aesculapius?"
"The cave's blocked." He is despondent.
"You're giving up that easy?" I am suddenly furious. This is the man who
cradled me in his arms and told me that we would win. This is the reason I've
been holding on so long. Him and his hope. "Fucking bastard, the cave – "
"I blocked it myself." Despondency turns into lead. "I accompanied the
scientists here who went looking on the Aesculapius expedition. We blocked the
cave. There was nothing inside, just an altar, no Summon. The real worshipping
place was beneath the mountain and we never found it. So we blocked it up and
left it. Shinra's orders."
The planet revolves. "You lied. There wasn't anything ever there, was there?
The books were right. You lied."
"Please." Vincent's features are screwed up, agonized. "Yuffie, don't make
me – "
"Lie? Lie lie lie? L, I, E. How about a big help of lies? If you don't want to,
you can just lie. Got caught up in your own spiderweb of lying, didn't you?" I
see with perfect clarity and my own poison spits out my mouth. "You didn't want
anybody else along on this little trip 'cause then they would've figured out it
was untruth all along. So Aesculapius was a lie and I'm going to die here. Was
it all lies, Vinnie? You just kept on telling me stuff so that I wouldn't go to
sleep and end it all sooner, didn't you?" My heart is rolling around in my
chest like a dying bird, flapping. I imitate his soft monotone. "'I won't let
you die, Yuffie.' Lie. 'It'll be all right, Yuffie.' Lie. 'I love you, Yu – '"
He hits me.
It's not a slap, it's a blow, hard against my mouth, to staunch the flow of
vile filthy pain, and I just lie back and stare. He's gasping, rough-hard like
an animal, eyes wild.
"How can you say that?" he manages, low and gravelly. "How, when you know your
life is dearer to me than mine, than… anything, and how can you say that when
this is happening – when you know what's happening? I took you for more than a - "
He can't talk any more and neither can I listen, shivering though I'm not cold.
I take big hiccuping breaths in and cough, until my heart palpitates and I know
I'm beginning to start a fit again and he's scrabbling in the backpacks and
forces my mouth open, placing a tiny pill under my tongue that makes everything
burst into odd limbless delirium.
Her mother – she's sitting there, doing the laundry, as she sits up on the
countertop and watches the bubbles. This scene is wrong; she should have been
six, but instead she's nineteen and swollen and thin. Her mother is wrist-deep
in suds, and the water is slightly brown with blood.It's hours before I gain lucidity, though it feels like five seconds. I blink
my eyes at him, feeling slow and dull and heavy, my tongue fuzzy and too big.
Already I knew when I looked at him there was still anger between us, sharp and
dry and despairing.
"Mama," she asks, dreamy, noticing that the blood's all from her mother's
wrists and that it's dripping sticky-sweet, "what's death like?"
"You might as well ask how the stars sing, my precious." Her mother continues
to patiently wring the clothing.
"Does it hurt?"
"It always hurts."
"I feel like a bird in a bag on the river, Mama."
She turns to look at her, amused. "Then peck a hole and fly, little flower.
Given the choice to drown or fly? Fly."
The snow still raged outside, and I couldn't tell whether it was night or day.
Dying up on a mountain in the snow. Pretty cool, actually. Dying up on a
mountain in the midst of a raging blizzard is right up there next to 'dying in
the rain' and 'getting shot in the middle of a parade'. I'd always had a kind
of hankering for 'battle' or 'blown up in materia accident' or 'smothered in
gil during freak rainstorm whereupon it rained money', but this would do.
"What'd you give me?"
"… brain drug," he says. "Mahoucine cetrinide. Calenture."
I stare. No wonder there was no pain, only soft tingling in my limbs,
comfortable heat. "That stuff fucks your brainstem. Y'know, I've heard of more
deaths due to that than – " He stares at me pointedly, but I ignore. "Anyway,
where the hell did you get that shit?"
"Bannon. He said you'd need it before you died." His voice is plastic.
Emotionless.
I am a lost case now. If he got this stuff from Bannon, it means he'd been
planning for this for months. "You bastard. Always know what's best for me,
don't you? Took me back to Wutai, decided how I'd be treated, drew this fucking
illness out for months and months and – " His hands clenched, but I just
scoffed, voice weak and leaking blood. "Going to hit me again?"
Vincent does worse. Something wet drips down his cheeks and lands on my hands
and I realize he's crying.
"I have watched," he says raggedly. "For months. I've been watching you die.
I've been watching you wither into nothing. Every night I've watched you sleep
and I've watched you bleed. Is that good enough for you? … I had not touched
anybody in years and I touch you, and no matter what I do, nothing works. Too
many times I brought you back from dying of fever when you were insane with it
and felt nothing and it would have been painless and I will be atoning for this
my entire life. I don't know what to do. I. Don't. Know. What. To. Do."
"Why? Why'd you take me up here if you knew there wasn't any hope anyway?"
"Because I didn't know what else I could do. When you found out – about
Aesculapius – there was this light in your eyes that got extinguished months
ago, Yuffie… I… and when Strife came, he would have ruined everything.
Searching for a miracle that never was. Like I have done." Vincent shook his
head, curling in on himself, hugging his arms close to his lean body as he
spits, teeth gritted hard. Oh, my mother, never a demon, just human. "And it
fucking hurts, every cell, every part of me."
I'm sobbing too now, with him, every part of me. Like I could blame him or the
lost look in his eyes when he was just as mixed-up as I was the entire time,
only he was the one who put on the bravest face and a layer of ice. "Oh, Gods,"
I weep. "I'm so afraid, Vinny. I'm so afraid. Please don't get mad with me, I'm
not mad with you, it hurts - "
He melts into my arms and we cling together, a tight ball of tears, his own
melting into my shoulders as I grasp him to me as tightly as I can. At least
now I can die with him, alone, my last breathing with this man. He smells like
hot metal and sweat and he's shaking. The love I have inside me is like a
supernova, a star inside a cage, alive and burning until I think I'll explode.
"Don't leave me," he murmurs brokenly.
"I don't want to, I never wanted to, gawd, Vincent – " I tilt my head so that I
can press my forehead to his, our tears slipping hot and heavy down our cheeks,
mingled. "I don't want to die, Vinnie. I don't but it's happening and I can
feel it happening and, and, there's not enough time – "
"Never enough – "
"I jus' wanted to – "
"So much to tell you – "
"But I was such a moron – "
He pulls his head slightly away from me. He's so young. My trained killer, my
Turk, barely a man in body, really, but ancient with tears. The best thing in
my life. "It was worth it. It was worth it because you were there."
"Yuffie." Vincent shudders, eyes half-closing, and I can practically hear his
heart beat. The storm has stopped outside. Oh, great. My dying moment and the
weather has to go all fucking undramatic on me. Lucky thing I'll never make it
to my wedding day. There probably would have been an earthquake. "You… made me
feel like I was… more than I am."
"You are more than you are," I whisper, still weeping, affectionate. "And d'you
know what, I don't know what the hell I'm saying, and that sounded really
stupid, but you know what I mean, don't you?"
He nods, swallowing.
"Just… c'mere, Vincent. Hold me."
We fit like puzzle pieces, his long legs sprawled across the blankets in the
tent as we lie together in the slightly-chilled air. His face tucks itself
underneath mine, on the pillows, his hand at my neck and two fingers on my
pulse. It dances and skitters and misses, but it's still there, and I know how
much he needs it. Oh, High God, oh, Mama, oh, Aeris, I'm dying, I'm dying,
please, just a little bit more, give me all the time in the world for this and
then I'll go. Fuckers. I don't know how the Lifestream works, but I'm going to
give somebody hell there when I go. "Vinnie? Listen?"
"… With all my heart."
I shift slightly, clumsily, my body confused. "… There was a girl called
Yuffie. She was stupid. Her mind was so one-track it shouldn't have even been
allowed a track. It should've had a small, muddy footpath, and been covered in
frogs. She was really loud and annoying, though charming and sexy at the same
time, and she gets to help save the world. Because, obviously, that's what
Yuffies do. She met a man called Vincent who tried to do everything he could
not to be seen as a man, because he didn't feel like a man on the inside,
'cause a long while ago things got done to him and happened that made him feel
like a demon. Kind of like how Yuffie didn't feel like a warrior, or clever,
or good enough on the inside. Vincent coped with this by acting like the
demon he thought he was, kinda, not a man, and Yuffie coped by acting as clever
and as warrior-ish and better than she was, which wasn't very but made a
good front."
My voice catches. "They never talked that much. They just knew that they were
there. And then, one day after the world gets saved and everything is supposed
to be having a happy ending, Yuffie gets sick and this Vincent protects her
because it's what Vincents do, I think. Protect Yuffies. And he acts like a
man, though she acts stupider and stupider every hour of her life 'cause she's
so afraid because she's gotten really sick and she's going to die, but he helps
her. And she realizes he's not a demon, or frightening, he's the most wonderful
thing in the world, and she's happy."
Silence again, gentle quiet silence, just a pause for us to catch our thoughts.
"And then they both lived happily ever after," Vincent says softly.
"Happily-ever-after's for bears and princesses."
"So what's our ending?"
"Pretty tragic, the way things are shaping out."
His fingers stroke my neck, warm and sweet and deft. There are tears in his
voice, months' and months' worth of tears. "Vincent failed Yuffie. And when she
dies, he'll live the rest of his life waking up each morning and wondering why
he can't."
"No," I say forcefully. "No dice, Kisaragi Vincent. Vincent will wake up every
morning wondering what he's going to have for breakfast, or possibly whether
brown is the new black, or whether capes have really gone out of fashion."
He shakes his head.
"That's a shitty end to the story, then, you know." I wind my fingers around
the black strands of his hair, beautiful, the colour of night and shining
beetles and leather. "Vincent?"
"Yes?"
"What's love like?"
He lets out a breath, and I'm finding it hard to suck in mine. I know that I
should feel like my body is hot, and burning-up, and that I should be blacking
out, but I'm not. My pain centers have been cut off. "It's like… having warmth
inside you. That nothing can ever take away. That you carry around in your
heart, and that you would do anything for. Kill for, fight for, die for. It's
intensely beautiful and it's always full of pain, mingled, because you bleed
it. But it's like… bullets and flowers and sunshine in winter."
My hands tighten in his hair. "Take me outside," I beg.
He does not argue that I'll freeze, or that it's foolish, or even asks why. He
just bundles me up and opens all the ties and pulls me out into the clean white
snow, in his arms.
It's daylight. A morning, I think. Morning just from night, so that if you look
up high enough there's deep velvet blue and some stars are still there, but the
sun is clear and the light is thin and beautiful. He walks us over to the edge
of the cliff and sits down abruptly in the snow, never mind the cold, so that I
can look over the sheer drop into the cloudy abyss below and see the sky above.
The world is too beautiful to bear. It always was.
This is more damn like it.
I press myself back, lightly, curled in his arms so that we're cheek to cheek.
He's more beautiful than the landscape and he's not looking at it at all, eyes
fixed on me, hungrily devouring every line of my face as if he's committing it
to memory.
"I love you, Vincent," I say, and he knows what I mean. "Always."
More tears, freezing on his cheeks almost, the wind whipping at his hair. "I
love you, Yuffie. Always."
He did all along, didn't he? His love screamed itself every day to me, in every
action, every time he picked me up and stroked my hair back and gave me my
medicine and gave those small tiny smiles that burnt. "Do you wish you didn't?
It hurts, bad."
"It's worth it, my Yuffie Kisaragi. It has always been worth it. Every moment,
every day."
"After a speech like that, you better be prepared to kiss me. You don't make
that kind of statement without bothering to pash the person in question,
Vincent Valentine."
"Kisaragi," he corrects, and I'm proud and aching and he kisses me. Our lips
brush like butterflies, soft, and I'm clumsy and I don't know what I'm doing
but suddenly it all comes together. His lips are chilled but his mouth is the
warmest thing that's ever belonged to me, my heart screaming his name as it
turns hard and deep and needy as we taste each other, last and loneliest. He
kisses me until I can't breathe, dying in him, trying to steal his breath from
his mouth as my eyes close tightly and I know I'm going to black out soon from
the fever I can't feel. It doesn't matter. He's kissing me like it's the only
thing that matters. I taste my blood on his tongue.
When he pulls apart from my mouth, it's been a thousand years and a few
skittery heartbeats. I smile at him, full and bright, and one begins to creep
along his mouth in return. It's all for show, my silly noble Vincent, because
there are tears in his eyes and his hands have gripped my wrists so tightly I
think they cracked.
"Tell my father I love him." My fingers curl around his, limp, weak. "And
Asako. And the others. Everybody. I think I love everybody. Except Cid." Oh,
Cid, you'd know what I'm doing. "Tell him he can go to hell, okay?"
He nods, the gesture tight and reigned-in and sharp.
"Now let go."
"What?" Crimson eyes immediately open wide, nervous, no. He doesn't want to let
go. Love you love you love you. "Yuffie – "
I begin wiggling back from his arms, the wind whipping at my face joyously,
tugging at my longish thready hair. "Leggo, Vince. Please. Last wishes, okay? I
want you to go to Li Xue and eat the blueberries for me, and get sick, and
squish mud between your toes, and listen to my dad's boring war stories, and I
want you to let go of my arms."
"What are you – " He already knows.
It's getting hard to talk, or even concentrate. Dizzy. "Flying, Vincent. I'm a
ninja. Corpses are just so tacky."
His heart is in his eyes. He knows I'm terrified. Unwillingly, he loosens the
fingers on my wrists, his tears falling like rain. "… goodnight, ninja."
"'Night, vampy," I grin at him, cocky and warm, and I fall back. "Whoo-hoo,
here we go!"
It is like flying, my limbs spreading wide, catching the stars and the blue sky
and everything in it as I tumble in a flightless abyss. He lets go and I let go
and I arch back, I've been taught to fall and I'm going to land on all four
legs. The last thing I see is chaoswings and the air is screaming.
And Vinnie, it's like bullets -