Disclaimer: The blonde was Quistis. I think about 98% of the people who guessed got it right, so I'll just put out a big box of mixed plushies and let the winners choose.
Yuffie found out very quickly that Leon was not someone to fast accommodate to her perky style. In fact, he seemed to deny her on purpose just to annoy her, which it did quite easily – she also found out that it was really easy for him to get on her nerves. Whenever she was sure steam was spouting out of her ears, she would look at him and see him snickering into his shirt, and that alone was enough to make her call off the day's session and storm back to her room in an angry huff. Aerith would eventually learn of their fight and would send him knocking on her door to apologize, and Yuffie was surprised to find that she gave in quickly to his grudging apologies.
Walking past the round mirror on the bureau and stopping for a minute to run her fingers through her short hair, Yuffie wondered why she caved so easily when he started in his halting, stuttering apologies. Since their fights happened a lot over the past two weeks she'd started helping him, finding him at her door wasn't too uncommon, and she found, unnervingly, that she would sometimes initiate a fight just to see him grovel to her. But it wasn't the groveling she liked...it was just the way he stood on her doorstep, head down like a punished puppy, and said "I'm sorry for being such a jerk."
Shaking her head, Yuffie tried to get a grip on reality. "C'mon, Yuf, pull yourself together. What are you saying?" she muttered disgustedly to herself as she quietly opened the connecting door to Leon's room. He was sitting on the round table in the middle of the room, reading the same book he had the day she offered to train him.
"Let's go," she prompted in the quiet room, and he jumped, nearly falling off of the table. A wide smile spread over her face as she realized that she'd gotten past his military-trained super-sonic hearing, and she did a few roundhouse kicks into the wall to celebrate her victory. Leon, however, was not as happy.
"Don't do that," he growled, closing his book. He was about to put it on the table when he examined it closer, like he saw a stain on a page or something. Then, before she had time to react, he threw it clear across the room and hit her forehead with it.
"Hey!" Yuffie shouted, immediately clapping her hands to the big red spot on her forehead where the book hit. It fell at her feet, and she kicked it angrily into a corner. "Just because I showed you up once doesn't mean you have to act like a spoiled brat!" she told him matter-of-factly, dropping one hand and using the other to massage her smarting forehead.
Looking around, Yuffie snarled when she saw he didn't have any mirrors for inspecting her bruise. "Why don't you keep mirrors in here?" she snapped testily, going towards the bathroom door at the other end of the room.
"It's my room. I don't have to have a mirror if I don't want to," he said blankly, shouldering his gunblade and walking over to lean against the wall next to the balcony door. Apparently he wasn't about to cancel his training session for a flying book and an outraged Yuffie.
"Yeah, well, it's annoying," Yuffie replied, knowing that she was sounding more like a sulky kid than the Greatest Female Ninja Ever. Why should he have mirrors in his room if he didn't want them?
He ignored her comment and stood there while she probed her bruise from every angle, trying to find the best way to disguise it. It was right in the center of her forehead, so she couldn't pull her bandana lower or she would look stupid. A kerchief would have fixed the problem if the bruise was a little higher up, but it still remained that she would look like an idiot with a kerchief that low. Playing nervously with the ends of her hair, she finally stormed out of the bathroom and out of the Green Room altogether (much to Leon's dismay; she couldn't leave without training him first!) and came to the door of the Blue Room.
Knocking quickly on the door, she was relieved when Cloud answered and not Aerith. His girlfriend worked in a flower shop in a hospital in the back of the Second District, interestingly enough, where she also doubled up as a healer since that was where her expertise in magic was. Why she had to wear such clothes for a job at a hospital was beyond Yuffie, though, and so she never asked. Cloud often referred to Aerith as his Flower Girl, though, so Yuffie thought that Aerith probably just stayed with the job simply to have Cloud call her that.
Rubbing one arm across his eyes, Cloud blinked sleepily at her. "What?" he mumbled, nearly incoherent.
"Do you have a beanie I could borrow, just for a few days?" she pleaded quickly, knowing her request sounded weird. Cloud blinked a few times, trying to get his sleep-fogged brain to understand what she was asking. When her words finally sunk in, he nodded like a door with a broken hinge.
"Waitasecond."
With his jumbled answer, Yuffie stood in the doorway, tapping her foot impatiently on the carpet. It took an eon, but Cloud finally returned, a grey beanie in hand. Yuffie snatched it before he could try and say anything to her, calling a quick "Thanks!" over her shoulder and returning to the Green Room.
Leon was in the same place as before, but when she came back in with the hat firmly covering her bruise and her bandana tied around her arm like Japanese wraps[#], he rolled his eyes and muttered, "Finally." Yuffie made herself not say something sarcastic or rude in response and merely followed him out of the balcony and to the sewer (which he called the Waterway), where she started the training with stretches (that had severely improved his knee, which he stubbornly refused to admit) and then moved into a sparring match.
With his leg improving, Leon was an even more dangerous opponent, now prone to jumping around her or diving quickly into the shadows to avoid her deadly aim. Although she never purposefully tried to hurt him, he didn't seem to have any trouble slashing at her, and most of the time she came back to the hotel with her hands covering gashes he'd left with that stupid weapon of his.
Trying to distract him from cutting her head off, Yuffie asked quickly, "Why don't you have a mirror in your bedroom? I mean, I know guys don't do a lot of primping, but don't you think that with a busted up knee, it would be easier?" Leon growled, thrusting out hard and jumping out of the way quickly. He landed hard on his bad leg, but he didn't seem to notice the pain, if there was any. Working the joint every day had helped him get used to it ("Suck it up," as Yuffie had referred to it) and now he didn't seem to react badly if he landed on it.
"What is with you and those stupid mirrors?" he snarled, jumping back in and parrying one of her larger shurikens quickly. Yuffie dodge-rolled around him and sliced him up the back with the edge of one, not cutting deeply but leaving a thin trail of red seeping out under his jacket, which she'd successfully cut through.
"I want to know!" she persisted, jumping high as he aimed his blade for her stomach. She came down with one foot on his shoulder, and he dropped to his knees, causing her to fall off balance and splash into the cold sewer water. She swam back to the surface and crawled onto the pile of rocks before jumping up and sending out a whole bunch of shurikens and once, trying to catch him off-guard.
"You really want to know?" he asked, his voice no longer loud, but soft, with a deadly chill in it. Yuffie nodded defiantly anyway, her indigo eyes hardened as she slashed at his leg. He nicked her elbow, causing her blood to splat onto the rocks briefly. His eyes narrowed dangerously, he said calmly, while fighting immaculately, "Okay, fine. You want to know why I can't stand to have more than one mirror, and even not in my room? Well, here's the thing: I used to have a mirror in my bedroom, right on the wall by the bed. After I busted my knee, though, I couldn't stand to look in it because I kept seeing a big crack in the glass. I wasn't the best fighter, anymore, and I couldn't do what I was supposed to – so I saw myself as lacking. I smashed the mirror after my first week in the room, and a piece of the glass caught me between the eyes and gave me my scar. Just another imperfection," he spat, slashing out foolishly and leaving a big gap in his defense. Yuffie slid a large shuriken in just above his gut.
"I win," she said breathlessly, not really intent on giving him a mortal wound at that point. His ice blue eyes bored into her dark ones for a minute before he muttered something and pulled away, shouldering his blade and wading out into the water. Yuffie followed him, mulling over his story in her head. Although it sounded a bit childish, she knew that she would've reacted the same way, given time. Being a fighter was everything she was, and if she wasn't able to do what she was born to anymore, she would feel like a piece of herself was stolen. So, when it boiled down to it, she sympathized.
They had slid between the bars and were walking towards the doors to the Second District, preparing to go the hospital and get Aerith to heal them, as they had been doing lately since the amount of injuries had grown during their fights. He pushed through the connecting doors of the hotel and started down one of the cement streets, Yuffie trailing a few feet behind him. Her head snapping up with an idea, she sprinted to his side.
"Hey," she said softly, looking up at him with a small smile. "I understand what you mean. When I was in my first year at the Academy, I broke my arm and couldn't fight for two months. It was the longest, worst part of my life, and I felt really stupid with all of the fighters around me, since they could do what I couldn't. I never really compared our situations before, since your problem is like mine times ten, but I realized just now that we're kind of the same. I healed, and so will you," she finished, laying a hand on his shoulder.
Yuffie had been prepared from the moment she made up her mind to touch him for the blow or the verbal abuse that was to follow. She'd tried to touch him in a non-training way before and he'd reacted as if she'd burned him, either smacking her wherever if hurt the most or just embarrassing her publicly, (which resulted in more Aerith-induced puppy-dog apologies, so Yuffie benefited in the end) and so she figured this time would be no different.
The expected hit or shout never came, though. Whether he was lost in his own thoughts or really felt better knowing Yuffie had suffered the same kind of thing that he was going through, Yuffie didn't know, but whatever it was, he merely flinched slightly and let her hand remain, his eyes on his feet. He took a deep breath, and Yuffie tried to stop her heart from beating so fast. What did she care if she had those muscles, his arm, under her fingers? Why should she care that an extremely good-looking guy was physically connected to her at that moment? Why should it...
Yuffie stopped her train of thought. Screw that, she thought; this guy's gorgeous, and I'm not wasting a minute of this luck!
Stepping in front of him, Yuffie switched her hand positions, placing one on either arm and looking up at him. He crossed his arms uncomfortably, but didn't try and remove her hands, so she kept them where they were and took a step closer.
"You're going to be able to fight like the old you, Leon," she told him sincerely, and for the first time at all since they'd left the Waterway, his eyes actually met hers. For several long minutes they merely stared at each other – not with the fierce intensity of warriors, but as finally reaching an understanding that had been there the whole time.
"Thanks, Yuffie," he said, barely loud enough to hear. "I don't feel sorry about my attitude, but...I guess you've gotta be something special if you can deal with it."
Yuffie smiled. In fact, she laughed – and it was a laugh that was loud enough to disturb a poker game at a corner streetlight and make Sora and Kairi, talking hastily about food arrangements outside of the casino Kairi worked as a waitress at, stare at her like she was a complete lunatic.
And with that ridiculous hat on her head and laughing like she had gone crazy, she couldn't blame them in the least.
Squiffie next chapter, I promise! Thanks to everyone who reviewed – your encouragement got me through my finals and this last week of school. I get out on Wednesday, so expect updates to come more frequently, since I have an entire summer off to work on this! (although I don't think it'll take that long, honestly) I know I'm repeating myself a lot, but you guys are seriously awesome! And thanks to everyone who participated in the Guess the Blonde challenge – it was an overwhelming response! I feel rather loved, if you ask me : )
[#] – Japanese wraps. Uhh...usually cloth tied tight around the wrist that you use to wield your weapon, to keep your arm straighter and therefore your aim better. Ever see Sanosuke Sagara from Rurouni Kenshin? He's got wraps on his right arm, I believe, because that's the hand he used to wield his Zanbato before Kenshin broke it.