By Word of Mouth,
By Ealinesse
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DISCLAIMER: I own nothing of the Final Fantasy series - characters, items, ideas, nothing. I do not claim to. I do own Carlos, and his little goonies, however, even though I may not like them much at times...
WARNINGS: Maybe a little language.
FEEDBACK: Yes please! Reviews are always welcome ^_^
(very short) AUTHOR'S NOTES: ... at end of chapter.
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Chapter Twelve: No Guts, No Glory...
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"You're not going in there."
Reno smirked. "You've said that already, what I haven't heard yet, is why."
"Because Master Staniv said so."
"And why should he say so? I brought the brat here, not to mention saved her life. I could be of some use to you-"
"Brat? How dare you call Yuffie by that name!"
"And why not?"
"Because that is not her name, and a commoner such as you - especially you - is not at liberty to say otherwise."
"I'm not at liberty to say otherwise," Reno repeated bluntly, deadpan, staring the shorter man directly in the eye. He pulled his Shinra ID from his pocket and stooped mockingly to the shorter man's rather stunted height, shoving the small plastic card in front of his nose. "I'm not at liberty to say? I'm Shinra-"
"And I'm of Wutaian descent, and therefore of more authority than you in this place. You have no say here, now leave."
The Turk frowned and stood again, pocketing his identification tag. Perhaps if he told him that he'd save his charge's sorry ass they'd let him in. He stepped forward, a surprisingly earnest look on his angled face. "Look, Shake-"
The other man recoiled at the closer proximity, and it was all Reno could do not to scowl. He stood straight again, his eyes burning with annoyance as the other aide began to head inside. "No, you look. I am done with you, Reno. Yuffie once said she'd never touch you with a ten foot pole. Quite frankly I'm inclined to agree with her. For that very reason, under Staniv's discretion, you are not entering this pagoda without her consent."
"You don't understand a single thing that's going on, do you?" Reno asked, shaking his head. "You don't understand how much you might need our help with this guy-"
Staniv stopped and turned, his ebony eyes cold. "We do not need any help from you! Now leave!"
Reno winced and clenched his teeth together at the sheer volume of the words. By the noise, and the tone, he could quickly see this had become personal, and not only that, but a matter of the past; a prejudice which had yet to be forgiven. That needed to be rectified. "Reeve has helped you a lot in the last three years, and now you turn down his help? Do you even know what happened tonight?"
"No,I don't know, but if you'll let me go that's what I intend to find out. You can't possibly be of any assistance to us right now."
"And why not?"
"Because this is Wutai's problem, not Shinra's. You've read the papers. I don't know why you're still here, Turk, but I care nothing for your business here, though I have no doubt that it severely disrupted Yuffie's task tonight. I believe you are dismissed. I do not need your help, and I don't believe it will ever come to that."
This time Reno did scowl at the look of loathing on Shake's face - a look that was brought on only by his fellow aide's decision. Reno took a careful step forward, pushing the boundaries of Shake's space only a little. He leered at the man, whose expression mirrored his own. "And what if one day you do need my help?"
"I said it will never come to that."
Reno let out a bitter laugh. "I hope not." And with that last comment, Reno turned to walk away, a deep frown on his face. Why did everything have to be so personal with these people?
As he walked down the small decline to the streets below, Reno shook his head in disbelief. "Now I see why Tseng left. You're all a fuck of a lot more stubborn than he was."
* * * * *
Staniv rounded the curved set of stairs with a red face, and placed his hands on his knees as he halted to catch his breath. He watched as Yuffie disappeared ahead of him into a room, and sped to catch up, only to have the door slammed in his face. Cursing the dress robes he was required to wear around the pagoda, Staniv raised his fist and banged on the door. He didn't even try the handle, he had heard the door click as he'd approached it. No key in the pagoda but Yuffie's or Godo's could open these private doors, and he didn't bother.
Staniv frowned, and turned to lean against the heavy wooden door when there was no answer. He knew he shouldn't disturb her, but no other such experience had ever mounted up to this. He needed to know what was going on, and he needed to know now!
He spun and knocked loudly on the door as his breath returned to him. "Yuffie! Open up now!" He winced at the racket, but hoped that the young heir heard the urgency in his voice despite his blunt attempts to get her out.
There wasn't so much as a sniffle for an answer.
"Yuffie! You have to tell me what happened."
Again there was nothing, and he shook his head and eyed the chair just down the hall. If she was going to come out this way he'd see her do so, and until then he could at least be comfortable, if not overly anxious. And at least then he didn't have to worry about tripping over his own damn robes.
* * * * *
Yuffie screwed up her eyes as she lay on her bed. The tears wouldn't stop and her courage of hours before had melted away into a weakness she could do nothing to dispel. She did not feel like a ruler, and nor did she feel strong. She was a failure.
Yuffie thought about her window, knowing it accessible to her at any time. She wished she could run away and not worry about this; hope that it would all get better by itself. But she didn't. She was going to have to face her aides sometime, and she had most likely made things a lot worse by running off. She wondered whether Reno had told them everything, but then shoved the thought aside. Her aides would have dismissed the Turk without so much as a second thought. She scowled at what she perceived to be a bitter weakness, though she knew under the circumstances that she had every right to cry...
It was just that crying did no good. If Carlos chose to punish her father for her own disobedience, then there was nothing she could do about it. If they killed her father tears would not bring him back. But tears made her feel so… human, when she knew she had to be strong...
Like her father...
Another wave of sobs wracked her body and Yuffie rubbed at her eyes, blinking them rapidly as she pulled herself up to lean against the timber wall by her bed. She watched as her mesh curtains whipped in the breeze, illuminated by the emerald lighting from below. She stood and moved to look out the window, hoping to see some movement, but was unable to see anything beyond the confines of the courtyard. She scowled bitterly, knowing that Carlos was out there somewhere.
Hastily, her hazel eyes drifted across the room in an effort to drag her very thoughts from the world around her. Instantly she spotted the right item to distract her - a music box her father had given her when she was younger. According to her father, the ancient music box had once been her mother's - someone she'd never met.
Yuffie scrambled over to the small object and wound the dial. Faint music instantly began to play, rising out of the tiny speaker box, calming her raw nerves. Suddenly simply hearing the music wasn't enough. Yuffie pulled the item off the table and into her grasp, clutching it tightly to her chest as she couldn't help but mull over her losses.
As she sank to the ground a faint rustling nice made her look to the window, and she couldn't help but stare through bleary eyes as a small scrap of paper floated in through her window. Shoving the tears aside, the ninja placed the music box on the floor and took a step forward, catching the note as it drifted languidly over to her.
As she read it she began to shake, cold not only from the breeze of the open window, but the chill that had been instilled inside her. Suddenly not even the tranquil tones of the music box could soothe her mood, and a fresh wave of anger washed over her. With a sharp intake of breath that only just withheld the sound of another sob, Yuffie crumpled the note tightly in her fist until it couldn't compress any further, and threw the horrible sheet of paper out of the open window and into the streets below, before collapsing to the floor in a grief that she knew she would never be able to contain.
* * * * *
Reno had barely begun walking down the pagoda's steps when something light and feathery hit him on the back of his head. He stopped and turned, confused as to what would be flying around in the dark at this time of the night - no birds, that was for sure, the night was too cold. He narrowed his eyes and finally found what he'd been looking for, focussing on a small half-crumpled object that lay before him on the cobblestones.
Stooping to the ground, Reno picked up the small item and began to peel it open even as it began to unfold upon itself. From under the dimly-lit base of the pagoda's steps he could only just make out a few words, but those few he could were more than enough to indicate the subject that was on the paper. Yuffie's father.
Curious as to what such a message would be doing out in the darkness of the night - or even outside at all - the aquamarine-eyed Turk raised his head and tried to imagine where it could have come from. His first two theories were no good, but finally, when he realised such an item could not have simply drifted so far from a first floor building, he dragged his eyes up even further. It was there he saw Yuffie's figure hunched behind the curtains.
Reno frowned. Her window was open, could it have drifted outside? Or had she thrown it? He squinted his eyes past the thick barrier of darkness, and unconsciously took a step closer in the direction of the window. Trying to figure out just what Yuffie was doing he watched as she seemed to list over to one side of the room, and then to the next. For a second she disappeared completely from sight, but then she was back again, leaning on something in front of the window - a desk or a windowsill? Whatever it was, he couldn't tell, but he quickly moved past that, onto more relevant things.
And then, belatedly, it clicked. She was crying. He could see it in the way her shoulders slumped, and in the spasmodic way they moved as she inhaled with ragged breathing. He could see it in the way she had been acting at his room, and in the way she wiped angrily at her eyes. For some reason Reno shook his head, though he could not tell why. Unable to do anything about it, he was about to walk away when he realised he still held the paper in his hands.
Would that warrant entrance into the Pagoda?
Reno thought hard, knowing that Shake would quickly find reason to throw him back out. But he did know what he could do.
Fishing around in his pocket, Reno pulled out a pen he'd stolen from the skycab station in Midgar. He seated himself on the cool steps, placing the paper down in front of them. Inspired for some odd reason, he began to scribble hastily on the back of the sheet.
"Bingo," he muttered when he was finished, picking up the object to admire his handiwork. As he made his way closer to the building he noticed the guards, but quickly found a way around them, scaling the tall fence and ducking in and out of trees. Idly he wondered of the consequences of getting himself caught, but instead focussed on his small task as he reached an area relatively close to her window.
As he stood there, ignoring how cheesy he realised this all looked, he heard the sound of familiar music playing in the background. He looked up, frowning as he recognised it as the same piece Tseng had once listened to in the office to calm him. Before he could stop them, old memories rose to the surface of his thoughts, and he winced, picturing Tseng sitting in his office.
'A lot of good that music did him.'Shaking off such thoughts, Reno crossed the last patch of garden required to get to Yuffie's room, then pitched the small, crumpled note as accurately as it could. He watched, pleased with his shot as the paper flew through the open window with no qualms whatsoever, before he heard it scuttling across the floor of the room.
Satisfied that his aim had been well enough, he jumped the fence and headed out of the immediate area before anyone caught him. He looked back just once as he was making his way down the steps, only to see Yuffie's silhouette holding the small sheet in her hands. She was still now, he saw, and quite puzzled.
He grinned, shaking his head. "Well at least I got a reaction," he muttered, massaging the soon-to-be-bruise on his jawline, where one of her earlier punches had connected. "Some princess."
* * * * *
A small rustling noise made the young ninja look up from where she sat on her bed, distracting her thoughts momentarily. Through her tear-clouded vision, she saw a small object scatter across her desk below the window, only to fall onto the floor with a final thud. Brushing away any thoughts of déjà vu, she hastily wiped any moisture from her cheeks and retrieved the small object.
"How in the hell did this get back up here?" she whispered, wincing at the hoarseness of her own voice.
Unsure why, she opened the object and began reading. She frowned upon seeing the same message and began to screw it up, but stopped when she caught sight of the red ink on the other side of the paper. That hadn't been there before…
Not sure what to expect, Yuffie turned the note over and began to read. When she was done, she read it again. And again.
"How in the hell…" she muttered, shaking her head in awe. How had Reno recovered this in so short a time?
Craning her neck to see out the window, Yuffie searched, her blinking frequently to stop them from watering. Eventually she found him, right at the end of the cobblestones, toward the town entrance. She cocked her head to the side, shaking it slowly in disbelief. How had he managed that? How had he got past the guards?
She was about to open her mouth to call out to him when he turned to her window. A strange feeling of elation pooled at the bottom of her gut. She watched as his teeth flashed her a grin in the darkness. She caught him shrug, and then he turned and was gone behind the hedging in the distance, rubbing idly at the right side of his jaw as he went.
Dazed, Yuffie headed back over to her bed and sank down onto it slowly. Pressing out the creases on the note as she placed it on her bedside table, she began to read it out loud, her voice quiet, her tone one of incredulity.
"Yuff," she read. "Tseng once said, 'Nothing is ever as bad as it seems'. Though I'm inclined to believe that these words of wisdom are utter bullshit, and that they didn't do him any good when I bet he was thinking that back in the Temple of the Ancients, I thought I'd better pass them on.
It means, 'Have a little faith'. I vote the same.
You're a tough chick, you can deal with this.
~R.
PS: Nice left hook. Wasn't expecting that one."
Again Yuffie turned and stared out the window and into the empty darkness. She blinked, rereading the last line as she realised she had perhaps hit him a little harder than she'd thought. The thought was gone, though, as she flopped back down onto her bed, and lay on her stomach. Would it actually do any good for her to stay in here and sulk? Wouldn't it be better for her to tell Staniv and Shake what had gone wrong so they could do something about it?
Have a little faith…You are strong…
When had her tears had stopped flowing?
Wiping the last of the moisture away from her cheeks, Yuffie shoved the note into her pocket and made her way over to the door. "Better sooner than later," she whispered to herself. Squaring her shoulders she unlocked the door and left the room, turning to see Staniv suddenly before her, his face an expression of worry and relief.
"Get Shake and the others, and meet in the main conference room."
Staniv's eyes narrowed. "Are you ready for this?"
"Of course I'm sure," she replied, her voice through some miracle perfectly steady. After shooting her a piercing look, Staniv nodded, satisfied with the answer, then bustled away to retrieve the other members of the Council.
Yuffie turned and made her way to the conference rooms on the fourth floor. Shoving her hands into her pockets she formed a fist around the note. Reno was right, after all, a little faith could go a long way. And there was still a criminal to catch… and since when did she pass up the opportunity to kick so ass… Turk or otherwise?
* * * * *
Author's note: Shorter chapter this time, oops. Couldn't be helped, though, this was the only logical place to break it up. Anyways, tell me what you think. Thanks so much to those who review, you're sentiments are *so* appreciated! The next chapter will be up within about a week.