A Dream's End
[a.n.] Aniiston, you're a LIFESAVER! Those tips on Yuffie's personality help me more than anything else. Huggleshuggleshuggles Wanna know a secret all? I actually based my Yuffie on the brief instances of Yuffie-ness that I saw in KH, with a pinch of my own ideas plus a bit of Deplora's. I adore Deplora's Squiffies; they are absolutely delectable. Props for Miss Deplora!!! Muahah.
Luvkishugs: To 'most', my friend? Ah, how much of a dream you speak. I'm happy that you like it, however. You're kind words are music to my ears. Please, if you have any suggestions at all, don't hesitate to let me know.
Astaldothlwen: As a matter of fact, Yuffie DID read it in a book, one called 'Cid's Colorful Array of Wordings', lala! And of course, being the little itch that she is, she just had to throw it in Squall's face. Your assumptions aren't too far from the line, either, and with Anii's helpful take on Yuffie, there's sure to be some hilarity involving one ticked-off Yuffie and one hell of an argument.
Also, forgive me if you will for the delay again. I've got to study over the summer, much as I hate it. And it keeps getting in my way. Hopefully this chapter will make up for the week missed? And another soon to come, la!
Now on with the show! [araclyzm]
To Dream the Untold
p.o.v. Yuffie
The sun slowly began to sink below the horizon, streaking the sky with stunning carnation pinks, blaze golds, fiery oranges, melting reds, and soft purplish-blues. Cottony pearl clouds sailed across the eternal sea of sky, reflected in the glassy surface of the many windows of a magnificent castle standing so lonely amidst endless gardens and waterfalls of crystal falling up.
But the castle was…broken, somehow, no longer a beautiful sight to see. A young girl was looking out of the topmost window of the castle. She looked as broken and lost as the castle itself, her innocence gone just as the castle's beauty had faded away.
An older version of the young girl looked up from the icy landings of artificial water. Water that fell up into an endless sky.
What was wrong with the child? The older girl did wonder. Yet she knew the castle was dismal…abandoned and dismayed. Nobody has lived there. No one ever will again. It died, along with all those who have lived there. Everything died. Perhaps that was why the watching child cried. Watched and cried.
"Yuffie!"
My eyes fluttered open, to be met unpleasantly with a light so bright that I thought some sun was actually shining through the dark breadth that was supposed to be the sky of Traverse Town.
And just when I thought that maybe this miracle was possible, the light clicked off and Aerith stood over me, looking relieved.
"What…?" I sat up, rubbing furiously at my eyes in a vain effort to get rid of the blinking colorful dots. "Oh…gawd, Aerith, wanna make it just a little bit brighter!? Maybe you'll actually succeed in blinding me next time!"
Aerith stood back, smiling. "Yep, you're perfectly fine."
I glared irreverently, biting back the urge to say something that Cid would have been proud of. "What's with the light?"
Aerith clicked her pocket flashlight on and off in response, that smile still on her face as she stuffed it in her purse. "Trying to wake you up. You have no idea where you are, do you?"
I blinked once, then twice, and took in my surroundings with a glance that almost went unnoticed. When had I fallen asleep? I looked down at my lap, where I was sure Patch had lain napping minutes before. But she wasn't there anymore. What was probably disturbing was that, as I had been lying reclined on the couch of the anteroom, my and Aerith's presence were the only ones in the room.
"Where're the Dalmatians?" I blurted out, feeling slow and bemused. "And Pongo and Perdita?" I stumbled to my feet, rubbing my head as the familiar numb pangs of a headache began to make themselves known. "How long was I out?"
Aerith giggled, which I was now finding to be a little more than just bothersome. "Pongo, Perdita, and that adorable little one you call Patch went with Charlie to the kitchen when I arrived half an hour ago." It took me a second to remember that Charlie was Mr. Lucas's first name.
"And how long was I asleep?" I repeated with a truly wondering tone. I didn't remember when it was exactly that I'd come to the Dalmatian's, though I did remember it was just after I encountered Squall in the Waterway. Patch had definitely been asleep in my lap when I explained my day. And, vehemently forgetting the fact that three clocks adorned the anteroom walls, I hadn't been paying attention to the time when I fell asleep.
"Not a clue, Yuf," Aerith answered pleasantly. "But it has been about seven hours since I last saw you." She gently picked up her arm and showed me her watch. "See? Nearly eight."
Feeling the deadened signs of an oncoming headache fade to the dark recesses of my mind, I gave the watch a fleeting look before pushing her wrist away from my nose and stretching, cracking three places at once. Turning a cartwheel in the large foyer to see if my limbs were in working order, I jumped into another puffy chair and grinned a little impishly at the flower girl.
"Well, why did you come looking for me then? And how'd you know I was here?" I relaxed with my legs hanging over the arm of the winged chair, my hands clasped behind my head with my torso leaning not-too-elegantly on the other arm. It was the pose of someone completely and one hundred percent undisturbed with the circumstances of the world.
Yeah. As if.
Aerith's smile stayed pasted to her face even with my impolite rash of questions. She didn't seem the least bit phased, which I found slightly disturbing because it proclaimed her eternal patience, as her actions often did. Something I also found to be disturbing because it couldn't be possible.
"I figured you'd be here," she said lightly, answering the second question first. "Remember the favor I asked of you this morning? I'll be needing you to take up on that offer now." She cocked her head to the side slowly, her features much softer than they usually were.
I eyed her from a sidelong view, my face towards the door leading out of the house. "I didn't 'offer' anything, Aerith Gainsborough," I said coolly, untangling my clasped hands and fingering a plastic bracelet I didn't remember putting on, the back of my mind stating that I didn't wear jewelry in the first place. "And yes, I do remember the favor you 'asked of me' this morning." I smirked, but Aerith's serene look didn't waver.
"Good." She motioned with one hand toward the door I was supposedly staring at, and it opened. Trying ineffectively to not look surprised, I faced the opened door entirely, the motion more or less meant to express my surprise, rather than to urge Aerith to continue. Which she did just then. "Come on then." I heard her walking toward me and she took my hands in her own. "We've got to go back to the Hotel." She pulled me to my feet again and I grudgingly decided I had no choice but to go. There was nothing for me to do in the Dalmatians' House, and if I didn't like what Aerith was going to make me do, then I could just as easily sneak away somewhere.
Pulling my hand from her grip-of-doom as I so dubbed it, I fell in pace a few steps behind her, with one or two glances from her to make sure I wasn't going anywhere, as I was known to do. Ignoring the mistrustfulness that came with the glances, I looked around the nearly empty Second District, skipping lightly and wondering where everyone went so early in the evening.
But that particularly unimportant subject wasn't really plaguing my brain. I was thinking more of the gleaming castle and the abandoned grounds, with the dead little girl staring out of the topmost window…
"Huh?" Caught again at my drifting thoughts, I looked at Aerith. She'd stopped short and was staring at me with mirth in her eyes. "You say something, Rith?"
Aerith giggled at my absentmindedness and overlooked her nickname. "I said, how are the Dalmatians doing?"
"Oh." I nodded, looking edgy and bouncing a little with my steps as the Hotel's front doors came into view. "They're fine, I guess." I shrugged a little. "I mean, I only saw Patch, Pongo, and Perdita, but it's safe to assume the lot of them are okay, right? Pongo and Perdita didn't seem worried and Mr. Lucas didn't go ballistic while we were there, did he?"
Aerith shook her head with silent laughter, pushing open the Hotel doors and leading the way to her Red Room. Once there, I lazily flopped belly up onto her perfectly made bed as she went over to the desk that sat in the corner near the door to my own room, dropping her purse on a chair in the process. When she returned, I was fiddling nonchalantly with a thread sticking up from the comforter on the bed, my head facing the hallway door so I could successfully pick at the said thread.
"Here." Aerith stood above me, holding a stack of papers held together by a paperclip. I sat up and crossed my legs Indian style as she dropped the stack in my lap with a surprisingly heavy thump on my knees. I gasped loudly and muttered something rude, to be rewarded with a nearly hidden look of disapproval on Aerith's part.
"Good gawd, Rith, what's this? Bricks made into a paper?" I asked, knowing how lame the comment sounded but forgetting it forcefully as I studied the pile of documents. There were around a hundred or two hundred pages, each with minute typewriting from top to bottom, including several hand-written footnotes and comments in Aerith's petite, orderly script. The writing itself, I noticed, was in screenplay form – a play meant for a theater.
Aerith smiled, sitting on the floor and looking up at me. "Actually, no." She flicked a tress of hair out of her face without actually meaning to or knowing she did so. "It's the re-written version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet."
I raised an eyebrow at that. Romeo and Juliet? Shakespeare again? "Dead guy, right?" I asked her, shuffling the papers purposely to pretend I was actually considering the texts. "About so high," I continued, raising my hand to a space a few inches above my head, "with a gray beard, black mustache, and a fetish for writing with words that nobody in the twenty-first century have any hope of understanding since they long ago deleted them from all understandable vocabulary?"
That comment drew another laugh from Aerith. "The one and the same," she answered smilingly. "And here," she picked up some more papers I'd had the grace – and the gall – to overlook before. This particular set was written in just Aerith's pretty handwriting rather than in the type from a typewriter or computer, and much unlike the heap in my lap, there were only around five or six sheets. She handed these to me in exchange for the overly large mound sitting uncomfortably and unwelcomingly on my knees. "This is the shorter version so that you may understand exactly what's going on."
"I have to understand it?" I asked with restrained anger that came from a part of my mind taking offense to the fact that Aerith expected me to do something without actually asking first. And when Miss Rith 'expected' me to do something, normally, it was something I probably wouldn't be caught dead doing, even though, normally, I usually wound up doing it anyway for the sake of my friendship with Aerith.
"What do I have to understand?" I continued.
Aerith's smile shrunk to a mysterious grin that was so unusual and so unexpected – and so unlike my dear adoptive sister, Aerith – that I cringed in its wake.
"Ah-ah! No questions, Yuf," she replied with a shake of her head. "Just read it, please? And when you're finished, I want to know your exact thoughts on it." In saying that, she rose to her feet, taking the larger bundle of paper that was her revision of Romeo and Juliet – according to her, anyway – and, pausing by the door to the hallway, she looked back at me and smiled another time. "Thank you, Yuffie." Again with that gentleness, good lord, it couldn't be possible. "I'll see you later." She left the room.
As soon as she vanished into the hallway and her light steps disappeared from my range of hearing, I let out a long imprisoned snort of amusement at her optimism that could have rivaled my own, stubbornness that I wouldn't do as she said, and resentment that I couldn't resist Rith's benignly manner and considerate character. Especially when she had to ask so 'nicely'.
Hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it.
Sighing, I glanced unwillingly at the few papers Aerith requested I read. Much as I hated being told what to do – which was probably more than I hated my inability to tell Aerith no – I didn't really see what was wrong with just reading the stuff, save for the little issue being my own determinedness to not do as I'm told, a factor that added to my immaturity.
Why couldn't I just throw a temper tantrum instead of let Aerith get the best of me again? With that thought in my head, I collected the sheets and left her room to go to my own. And was I crazy, or did these undeserving dead trees in my hand cling to a faint scent of Aerith's Breton lilac aroma?
Growling at my own insecurity considering Aerith's unknowing ability over me, I sprawled on my stomach comfortably, taking up all of the bed that I happened to share with Squall Leonhart, the bunch of papers – oh those galling things – in a semi-neat pile in front of me.
But once more, my head wasn't truly coming to focus on the task at hand. My brain was returning to that short-yet-not dream I'd had before. Of course I knew which castle it was – the Hollow Bastion. But the little girl staring down at me…I didn't know who she was. For some reason, she seemed familiar, and my first thought on that was that she was I as a child. That line of reasoning would explain why she was in the topmost window of the castle – I used to spend all my time staring out of that very window marveling at the beauty of the dawn and wondering what it would bring. But it didn't add up. The child at the window wasn't me, and, as recognizable as she seemed, I didn't know her, period.
I closed my eyes, attempting to remember how she appeared. She looked about six years old, maybe seven – whenever I met someone new, I always tried to decipher their age before actually asking. It's an unneeded habit, but eighty-five percent of the time I was correct in my guessing – and she had really, really dark, dark fire-black hair that fell far past her shoulders, with the most incredible blue-blue eyes set in tender, pale skin. Her face was as a fragile and docile as Rith's, but, unlike Rith, her sadness was etched deep into her features with a kind of wise-ness in the eyes that surpassed her years by far. It was as if she'd seen all too much of the world and knew everything there was to be known, but had a burning desire to not be that catalyst of information.
Blinking uncharacteristically, I realized that I remembered more from this particular dream than others I've had over time. I didn't go out of my way to remember them and so it wasn't usual for me to do so – dreams weren't important, really. I mean, aren't they generally for the sake of giving the wakeful part of your mind something to do while the rest of you sleeps? But forgetting that, I sunk back into my thoughts.
With an unanticipated jolt, I realized that that little girl could be only one person. It wasn't me; that was for sure. It was…
Bang.
"Great timing," I mumbled, looking up from the hole I'd stared into the comforter as I had thought. Squall edged into the room, carrying a medium-sized brown paper bag in the crook of his left arm, while the other hand tried grasping his Gunblade and his keys (one for the Hotel, one for the room, some for his gummi…you get the idea) at the same time.
I watched him struggle for a few seconds, watched him drop both his blade and his keys as a final resort, and watched as he closed the door and locked it with a satisfied-sounding click.
He turned to me, glaring as usual with the rest of his face as blank as a sheet of paper. Oy, now Aerith's got me using paper similes.
"Oh, don't worry about me, I didn't need any help at all," he grumbled rather loudly with his inimitable sarcasm as he set the paper bag, his keys, and the blade on the lone table in the middle of the room. He crossed the room to make sure the door between the Red Room and Green Room was shut and locked tight, and walked back to the table looking displeased.
"I didn't think ya did," I said in answer, adding a smirk to see if he would get more irritated with me. "I thought the great lion could handle himself."
He pretended to look contemplative at my response for a millisecond before retorting with even more cynicism, "True. Didn't need a mouse in my way, now did I?"
My cheeks flushed. A mouse? Was that the best he could come up with? Yet even as I thought this, I felt discomfited that he would sink so low as to call me a mouse, of all things. I could have taken it as a compliment – mice are nimble, quiet creatures, rather like a ninja – but I wasn't about to let him get the upper hand. Again.
"Aren't lions afraid of mice, ya big dolt?" I whispered haughtily. "You would've dropped everything and ran for cover if I tried to help ya, wouldn't ya?"
"How did we get from you not helping me to the Lion and the Mouse?" Squall asked, raising an eyebrow, not the least bit deterred by my quick counterattack on his well-known pride. He pulled another rather mangled brown bag from his jacket before removing the leather thing and clumsily draping it over the chair.
Taking a quick moment to think about the whole 'lion and mouse' metaphor I could get into with Squall as my audience, I decided I was too tired to start arguing with Squallie again anyway, and so let it drop. For now.
Instead, I nodded at the larger brown bag. "What's that?"
He glanced at me to see what I was referring to and said simply, with that irksome, careless air, "Dinner."
My eyes widened a little at that. Squallie brought me dinner?
"Squall, you feelin' okay?" He looked at me, his blank expression changing only the slightest bit to one of petty displeasure – the same look he'd given me a hundred times before.
"Leon, as I've said before," he ground out. "And it's my dinner, not yours."
"Oh…" Well, then that changes things. Should've known 'Leon' wouldn't be that kind. He couldn't be that kind. But a low rumble from my stomach reminded me that I hadn't eaten a thing since breakfast.
Squall turned his face away from his Gunblade, which he'd been examining carefully. "Was that thunder?" he said uninterestedly.
I turned a glare on him. "No," I muttered, seething, my hands clutched over my midsection, adding with a whisper, "You moron."
A mockingly disappointed feature added to his unconcerned face. "Cid's teaching you new words, I see."
"Oh, shut up, you dolt. At least I know some new words." In my brain, I added, like 'idiotic insinuation', for instance, even though I knew I'd heard those words when Cloud and Cid had fought once, and knew even more how much of a weak retort it was.
Another loud rumble announced that I was still hungry, but I grit my teeth against it and clutched my stomach even more, watching Squall with silenced but obvious disgust as he continued to polish and probe his precious blade, having left the bag of dinner and the messed up bag alone.
At a third growl from my stomach – which I was firm in thinking it would not force me to break and ask Squall for food – said man finally looked up from the Gunblade and motioned with the hand not holding the blade but a rag toward the bag.
"If you're hungry, you better eat something."
My eyes narrowed dangerously at the smug look he got when another sound emitted from my abdomen as though to say 'gladly!', and proving to him that I would've jumped at the offer if I weren't so willful. "If I'm hungry, I would have said it, Squall," I proclaimed loudly.
"Leon," he answered, returning his stormy gaze to his weapon. "Well, if you don't want to eat the ramen noodles and rice and wanton and chicken and shrimp that I have…then feel free to go to the café and get your own." Damn, he was doing that on purpose! I felt my mouth watering a little as he named the food that resided deliciously in the abandoned paper bag, save for the shrimp, which was at the top of my list of things to hate. But the idea that I hadn't thought to get my own food pushed itself to the front of my mind, as though some subconscious part of me was resolutely trying to point out that I was as brainless as I accused Squall of being.
I stood, both hands still clutched around my belly. "Fine, I think I will, thank-you very much." I wanted to add something else that would have sounded like, "Selfish little git," but the thought that maybe I still had a chance of staying in the Hotel room and getting free food nagged me as much as the first thought about my stupidity.
Squall shrugged. "Sure. But you may want to wait until morning." I turned toward him, but his careful eyes were now focusing on a shredded piece of leather that could only be the sheath to his sword-slash-gun. I knew it had to be, for there was a faded lion's head near the opening at the top. The other paper bag was folded neatly on the table.
"What do you mean?" I said warily, gulping to try and still the growls from my roaring tummy.
"I mean, the café closed just after I left," he said.
Oh, that's great, thanks for suggesting it, Squall Leonhart, I thought angrily, and was about to voice my thoughts when he rose from his seat and began opening the bag, setting out enough utensils for two people. Which could have meant that he was going to let me eat the dinner I missed after all, unless he was expecting company, which I severely doubted. And hoped that my doubts were correct.
I watched still as he settled into his seat again, gently placing aside his beloved sheath and sword in place of chopsticks and a bowl of ramen.
After a few minutes of my hungry gawking, he looked up, clearly relishing his food as I did my waffles.
"Well?" he asked. "Are you going to stare at me eating or are you going to have some?" He pointed to the chair opposite him.
Deserting my pride and the screams of rage from deep inside my mind telling me I was being even stupider and yielding than usual – and I was most definitely allowing Squall to win – I jumped up in response and raced to the other chair, nearly knocking it down in the process of sitting. But I hardly paid attention to my inelegance and made a point to ignore Squall's look that could have been amusement at my appetite and me as I picked up another pair of chopsticks and helped myself to hearty amounts of everything except the shrimp, which I turned down in disgust – seafood always made me gag.
After eating more than my fill – and like a pig, might I add – I placed the chopsticks aside (though not without licking them clean first) and sat back in my chair, relaxing happily. Squall had long since finished his own dinner, and had returned to inspecting his torn sheath.
I eyed it with curiosity. "What happened to it?" I asked him after some moments of something bordering a comfortable silence.
He didn't look up, but he seemed to hesitate in answer. "A dog." I waited for him to continue as he pulled at a huge rip, causing it to rip even more.
When he didn't, I added my own comment to his answer, "As usual?" He didn't respond, and barely paid me a glance, but I decided I'd rather like to know exactly what happened. "What about a dog? Did it ambush you or something?"
He sighed in exasperation – at me or at his better-left-dead sheath, I didn't know.
"Shouldn't you say 'thank-you' when someone gives you food?"
I almost laughed. "No…" I answered, drawing the word out to its climax, "You bought me food, Squallie, you didn't give me food." I smiled knowingly as he glanced up for longer than before, showing that he thought I was an idiot. "There's a big difference."
"Oh really?" he murmured to himself.
"Yes really!" I pretended to sound overjoyed that he was taking an interest in what I had to say. "You see, when someone buys you food, you don't say thank-you, because munny is a small and – what was that word? – insignificant feature of life, or so Nichi says." Nichi was the Traverse Hotel's bellhop who rarely lived up to the terms of his job and would've served better as a hippie than a Hotel staff member. "And when someone gives you food, they take it out of their own little savings or whatevers, they don't actually spend munny for the sake of a person."
"Yuffie, I don't care," he said as though telling off a five-year-old.
"Well then you shouldn't have pretended you did," I answered like a teacher to her student. Squall didn't say anything else, but I still wanted to know what happened with that dog. "So, what about the dog?"
He stirred just a little and I knew I was getting to him, but if he didn't answer, he'd probably have a headache before bedtime. "I was in the Third District when I left the waterway and some little bugger took me by surprise."
Oh, wait, let me guess – he thought it was a Heartless and brandished his sword, and when it turned out to be a dog, the little guy tore the sheath in three?
I voiced this to Squall and he finally looked up, his expression telling me, 'How did you know?' but I just smirked and shrugged a little.
"Predictable, as always," I mumbled, folding and unfolding a napkin. "It wasn't a Dalmatian was it?"
He shook his head, still looking as though I could read his mind – that would be really cool, but of course, I couldn't. "They're too tame. It was a street mutt."
"Bulldog?" I teased, pushing the napkin aside to pick up the would-be empty paper bag in search of a fortune cookie. Finding one, I opened the plastic around it.
Squall shrugged indifferently. "Don't know, don't care."
I shrugged too. "Oh well. Let it prowl the streets in search of more leather cases to rip apart, huh?" I broke the cookie in two and pulled out the fortune, popping one of the halves in my mouth. "You will find true love soon – just believe in your dreams." I coughed in all awkwardness and ridicule. "Says who?" I mumbled under my breath, glancing at Squall fleetingly before throwing the fortune into the trash bag and popping the other half of the cookie into my mouth.
My companion merely raised an eyebrow as he always did and threw his favored sheath into the bag along with everything else on the table – leftovers, used utensils, and the like – before shoving it into the bin in the corner. He set his Gunblade beside the bed to lean against the wall alongside the nightstand, and headed over to the bathroom, closing the door firmly behind him.
I stared at the door for a few minutes before hearing the faucet of the shower turn – it was so squeaky, I bet even Aerith and Cloud in the next room would've been able to hear it – and the water as it began to pound against the ceramic floor of the bathtub.
Wasn't this Squall's second shower of the day? He always got up much earlier than I, of course, but I distinctly remember hearing someone in the shower that morning. I'm kind of strange when it comes to sleeping – it's hell to wake me up, but I'd probably be able to hear a pin drop whilst I sleep. Squall must know that better than anyone – he's my roommate, after all.
Come to think of it, it's been a while since I actually became his roommate. One year, to be precise. Before Cloud came along, I was roomed with Aerith while Squall had his own room. It was to be expected, of course, as Squall pretty much wanted nothing to do with a child like me. Sure, he risked his life – at the time, it had just been a spot on a gummi commercial flight ship – for me, but most likely it was a chivalrous act as Aerith and I were the only 'women and children' left in the Titanic-like scenario that took place ten years ago. At any rate, I shared the Red Room with 'Rith' while Squall occupied the Green Room for nine years.
Before this time, the Hotel was already getting many guests as the Heartless began invading different worlds. The Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow Rooms were the only rooms residing on the first floor, and the Purple, Orange, Pink, and Silver Rooms took up the second one. There were so many people having to take refuge in the Hotel that there was a one-month period three years ago where Aerith, Squall, Cid, and I had to share a single room – the Silver one on the second floor – with two more teenagers, each a year older than I, until the mayor of Traverse Town, Mayor Creslyn, could situate all the newcomers in various condominiums all over the town.
But once that issue was settled again, Rith and I went back to the Red Room, Squall returned to his Green Room, and Cid went to his Orange Room; the two teenagers, one boy and one girl, went to another place somewhere on the other side of the town. Then two years ago – a year before Kingdom Hearts – Aerith began training me in the art of magic, as I was familiar only to the ways of a shinobi. When her job at the Infirmary as Chief Healer and Head Nurse took all of her time, she managed by a long shot to convince Squall to take her place as teacher.
Of course, once that was managed, Cloud was returned to us one day right after Kingdom Hearts. We'd been going back and forth between homes – the Hollow Bastion and Traverse Town – continually throughout the Kingdom Hearts era. And one day, while we were staying at the Hollow Bastion to collect whatever belongings remained, Cloud showed up with a cursing Cid and one complicated story – must be complicated, considering it'd been nine years – that I still haven't figured out.
After one hell of a reunion, Cloud Strife came back with us to Traverse Town, and that was when he and Rith 'confessed their undying love' to each other and we had a problem on our hands.
Because of the situation, Aerith and Cloud resolved that they would now share the Red Room, and I would have to be moved in with Squall because none of the other rooms were free and wouldn't be for quite a while. There was no way in hell I'd be sharing a room with Cid, and I knew Squall better than anyone else, so it was decided as the best way to go, though I faced a lot of ordeals from Squall for weeks to come over this horrid – in his opinion – arrangement.
Standing from the spot I'd been sitting in for the last couple of minutes, and hearing the shower still going, I took out my pajamas – an overly large t-shirt stolen from either Cloud or Squall, I'd already forgotten who, and tiny shorts I'd found hidden at the bottom of Aerith's drawers. Setting them on the bed next to myself, I settled for staring at the Gunblade to still what went on inside myself.
I love Squall.
I blinked, almost growling at the thought that came way too easily for my taste.
Do I really? Yuck…
At that, I actually laughed out loud, but fear that was I going insane made me muffle the laughter as much as I could.
.
Much later, when Squall had finally gotten out of the shower (I shouldn't really say that, since I take ten-times-longer showers than Squall does, but I'll say it anyway), dressed again in leather pants but no shirt or footwear, he lay on his side of the bed near his Gunblade while I went into the bathroom to dress, brush my teeth, and do whatever else habit and good hygiene called for before bedtime.
When I walked out, running my hands through my tousled hair in an effort to comb it so it wouldn't get even more tangled as I slept, Squall appeared to be asleep, his back to the wall, – and my side of the bed – his eyes closed, chest rising and falling evenly. As always, he slept on top of the warm blankets, which would prove an obstacle if I needed them. Traverse Town was rarely warm, even in summer, due to the lack of a sun, and the temperatures could drop to well below zero before midnight. As our bedroom didn't have a fireplace (the second floor rooms did, however, the lucky bastards) and the Hotel manager was a cheap little git, the Traverse Town Hotel could become freezing over night.
And since I was unaccustomed (more appropriately, didn't like) to sleeping in the cold – even though I'd been living in Traverse Town for a long while – I would have to fight for the only blankets we were allowed (even blankets were rationed, can you imagine?).
Gazing at the sleeping man who was my partner, teacher, babysitter, roommate, and semi-friend, I tried to figure out how I would retrieve the blanket for myself without waking him – and getting an earful of threats to throw me onto the streets or furious training for the next couple of weeks or something along those lines. But it was kinda hard when your imagination tends to run a little wilder than it's supposed to for a nineteen-year-old ninja.
Casting my look at the wooden balcony door, I checked the clock on the wall. Nearly eleven. It had been getting colder, but with the looming threat of a quiet battle between me, the blankets, and the monster SeeD soldier 'protecting' them, I suddenly wasn't so tired.
I certainly had no wish to toss and turn until I either froze to death or fell asleep. And to give myself something to do until I was sleep and/or came up with a plan to get that comforter, I quietly picked up Squall's jacket which still hung behind the chair, slipped it on, and snuck to and out the wooden door of the balcony, leaving it open behind me in case I had to make a quick exit – or entrance, however way you look at it.
Sitting myself on the little barrier meant to keep anyone unwary enough – or blind and about waist-high – to topple some feet to the shadowy alleyway below, my back met the tiny bit of wall beside the almost-open door. Not knowing I'd encircled my hands around my knees, I closed my eyes and allowed the cold air to try penetrating Squall's thick jacket.
Smiling when I knew it couldn't, I kept my eyes sealed, training them on the white light that appeared behind shut eyelids.
And to continue with my empty conversation from before: I. Love. Squall.
'Yuck' is the first thing to come to mind when I think of that particular…phrase. I mean, is it an Aerith-and-Cloud, romantic-to-the-core, forever-together, happy-place kind of love? Or some kind of dismal, hopeless, it'll-never-happen-in-this-universe, morbid kind of love which included spilt blood and scars?
That was a stupid question, Yuf.
Okay, maybe it was. But anyway, what was love to me nonetheless? I was only nineteen – I hadn't truly changed since I turned twelve, to be truthful (which I'm usually not, mind you) – and love was a new concept I'd yet to be taught about. I've seen movies, for sure, and read books and heard tales and I suppose I've seen true love, with Cloud and Rith as my subjects. But to actually define the word – that's probably as hard as writing an autobiography on Squall Leonhart, if you get my drift.
But here, maybe some incredibly insane-yet-not, psychic person honing in on my personal thoughts can answer this question if I explained how exactly I feel.
Uh…
How about…every time I hear the guy's name, I feel like a slop of pudding mixed with Jell-O having been stamped on and rolled about one too many times? It's true; I can see the mental image in my mind now: my knees become putty, my face turns garnet red (has anyone figured out how that works yet?), and I become an idiot with no control over her tongue and no good derisive remarks to get on his nerves, which is apparently my way of dealing with things. I was quite good at it before I came to find I had more than just a 'crush' on Squallie.
Then again, why didn't I just tell the guy – or tell someone – before my brain explodes with furious abandon, as striking as the fireworks on the fourth of July? That's quite simple, actually, as easy and obvious as one plus one equals eleven: have you considered who Squall Leonhart was? 'Love' to him is a feeling, and since Squall died along with the Hollow Bastion ten years prior to this moment, I do believe that Leon believes any feelings are a weakness – which is why he doesn't have any, save for his contemptuous retorts and a temper that quietly seeps through whenever I – or anyone else, though I'm probably the only one who dares to do so – pushes him too far.
It actually wasn't that I was afraid of admitting my love (whatever that was) for the inexplicable man with a name to match his heart in my thoughts. My thoughts were private and for me (unless that person peeking unbidden into my brain is still here…), so no one but myself would ever know. No, what I was afraid of was saying it out loud, even to myself, and having someone – particularly him – hear it, then either abandon me altogether or berate me for stalking him or something. That would be even more mortifying than anything, and even more hurtful as well, what with him and my mind telling me how stupid I was for falling for someone who was well out of my reach. Or anyone's, for that matter.
He really wasn't interested in love anymore. Not since what's-her-name disappeared into a lifeless world as all the rest before and after her. As far as I could see, 'Leon' no longer cared for the rest of the world. To me, however, I believe he chose to stay with Aerith, Cloud, Cid, and myself simply so he could still have something that could channel the times gone by. He clung to the past without knowing that he did, because some part of him – the part that was and forever would be Squall Leonhart – still wanted to remember, while the new him, the Leon Leonhart, wanted to forget it all, along with his pain.
Maybe Squall's as naïve as he claims I am, because pain isn't something that can be forgotten with the changing of a name and the will of a mind. I'd read that once in a book I found beneath Aerith's pillow, some of her late-night reading taken from the Bastion library, called Tinder and Trees. It said that the mind, no matter how evil or corrupt or different or hard it was or made itself into, no matter who it happened to be, it could never truly forget. There was always a part that clung to what was supposed to be forgotten and one day, that little remembrance would be poked at and prodded until it triggered the rest of the mind to remember again.
Sighing out loud – maybe louder than I should have – I opened me eyes and raised them to the heavens above. Squall was weird. And he provoked weird feelings inside the people he encountered. Hey, I'm only nineteen, and since I was twelve, he's intrigued me to no end.
It was strange, really – Squall was strange. The mask he chose to wear all the time fascinated me as much as the person beneath it. But it wasn't as if I could explore these fascinations or thoughts any farther than assumptions would allow. I mean, hello, Squall was twenty-seven, I was nineteen, and our relationship hung precariously on a tightrope between enemies and friends: one slip-up, and we would shoot each other down like dogs. Not that we tread that line lightly and carefully: neither of us ever really cared. Except maybe me, now that I realized I loved him.
With another too-loud sigh that I failed to notice was too loud again, I came to think that that I would never tell Squall Leonhart what I felt for him. I'd have to live the rest of my life with that thought, but who cares? Anything's better than him quite literally leaving our group forever, no matter how much he wanted to cling to the past through us.
Y'know, sometimes I doubt that I love him and wonder if I really do. He gives me no reason to, right? It's pretty certain that he hates me and thinks me immature and quite stupid with no goals for life and no future. Maybe that immature thing is true (and I pride myself on it, thank-you!), but I do in fact have goals for life. In any case, the fact of the matter is that my situation is a hopeless one and my nineteen-year-old juvenile self has no idea how to handle it.
My ears twitched as I picked up a sound with the ability only a ninja could possess. Footsteps. Proverbial ones – the ones of Squall.
He was up?
The door creaked the slightest bit as it opened even more and Squall's face appeared, followed by his body, his once-naked torso now adorned with a regular t-shirt.
He looked around the empty part of the terrace – the glass table and metal fold-up chairs – before coming to me, sitting so quietly on the edge, where one push could send me sprawling.
His look became a glare.
"Yuffie, are you insane?"
Probably, I was tempted to say, but didn't, and shrugged instead, forgetting I was wearing this man's coat.
"Do you want the Hotel to get even colder than it is?" he growled, motioning to the door. "Maybe you should try leaving all of the doors open next time."
I glared back, exasperated at him more than myself. "Stop worrying about the rest of the Hotel, Squall, they'll take care of themselves. A little more cold than usual won't kill them."
Even as I said that, I knew it sounded a bit dumb, but I didn't look at him for fear that he'd be able to see something in my eyes.
"I wasn't worrying about the rest of the Hotel, I was worrying about how cold the room is at nearly half past midnight."
I sighed, this time noticing how loud my exhales were and quieting it for my own sake. "Yar, yar, I heard ya. Go to bed, Squall," I mumbled, hugging my knees closer to my body.
I felt that damned penetrating gaze of his sweep over my form – it was hard not to feel the very intensity that his stormy and unsettled eyes could produce with one hard feeling – and I knew he saw his jacket on me, knew that he'd chide me for wearing it later, knew that I would have to get my own jacket if I wanted to do this ever again.
But instead of the hoped-for overlooking of his name, he said, as automatically as ever before, "Leon." And he turned around with a final glance at the open veranda – and me – as he reentered our room and closed the door. Not a word was spoken about his jacket or my non-obedience at his 'command'. Not a word at my being out in the freezing cold in the middle of the night or my lack of any witty replies that – while not always witty – I hardly ever failed to give him.
Muttering a soft goodnight to the sky I hated, I opened the door a few minutes afterwards and closed and locked it behind me with some final thoughts including my dream and my robot-of-a-partner.
"Squall?" I whispered into the dark of our room. The curtains for the single window had been drawn closed, and with the closing of the balcony door, the room was flooded into darkness. And Squall was right – it was freezing.
"Leon," came the maddened reply. "Stop calling me 'Squall', Yuffie."
I could use that…
"Why?" I asked, picking my way through the dark with measured precision until my knees bumped into the foot of the bed, though not hard, and I climbed in beside 'him', noting without real consideration that he wasn't lying on the blankets anymore.
When I realized he wasn't going to answer, I crawled into the extra-warm comforters and wrapped them tightly around me, with another murmur to him because I didn't want him to answer me and have me not understand or hear the answer because I was too sleepy to do so. My mind began to lapse into other things, things like a gleaming castle and a dead little girl.
"Never mind…just goodnight, Squall."
"Leon."
Y'know…Leon Leonhart does sound really stupid.
{tbc}
[a.n.] This chapter should actually be titled 'Love: Whatever That Is', but since I want to stick to the 'To…the/as/from…'-type of chapter titles, 'To Dream the Untold will have to be sufficient enough for ya'll. Just remember that, huh? In case I ever decide to break this chain and just re-title the damn thing…
Anyway, this took me a while because I'm lazy and my muse went on vacation (again!). She's a traitorous little bitch who leaves me when I need her most and doesn't come back until she knows I've given up or will force myself to get a vacation as well.
Should I name her? –ponders that–
I tried going in depth with everything, including an expansion on the Hotel and a new history (though it's probably like all the others, I'm not afraid to admit) for Yuffie and her rooming arrangements and all that jazz. I also used Anii's helpful notes to my every advantage (what do you think, Nii?). I hope I pinned her personality down. I know what you said about her, but I just got to thinking: sure, she's an anything-but-spineless little brat with a small vocabulary and plenty to say, but she's nineteen. Maybe love or something else should change her, if even for a little bit, ne? I'll still base a lot of her oncoming self on what you said, as well as my own little tidbits, but tell me what you think. All of you: tell me what you think, la's!
Length of Chapter III: 7, 684 words, 17 pages excluding author's notes and chapter/story titles.
I'll write another chapter (or maybe two!) to make up for the delay; if not, I'll write ya'll a pretty little one-shot filled with total Squiffieness and maybe a songfic-slash-plot that hasn't been done yet! Gasp!
Muaha. See ya. [araclyzm]