Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or concepts from FFVII. They belong to Square Enix. No infringement is intended.
Chapter Two
It took longer than it should have to get out of the crater. The monsters that were brave enough to venture out in search of prey were powerful and sure of themselves. It scared Tifa to admit that Yuffie and Red were their best assets. She could barely move at anything faster than a walk. Barret and Cid were out of the picture as far as battling was concerned. Vincent could make use of his Limit Breaks, but his gun was nearly useless dangling from his claw. He could pull the trigger, but he couldn't have hit the broad side of a Behemoth. (Though Cid had made the sarcastic comment that being blind might actually help the black man's aim.)
By the time they reached the edge of the crater, Yuffie and Red were sore and gasping. It would have made Tifa feel better to hear Yuffie complain, but that was impossible now. They had tried to use materia, but even though Tifa knew she had plenty of MP left, she couldn't use it. They had to find somewhere to rest and heal.
When they finally clambered over the edge, Red let out a startled bark, and Cid gasped so forcefully that he started coughing again. The Highwind looked like a forcefully deflated steel balloon – a twisted heap of metal lying smoking and ruined on the black rocks of the North Continent. The deck was tilted crazily to one side, and the still body of one of the crew members was doubled around one of the safety bars. Cid made a choking sound in his throat through his coughs. Tifa tore her eyes away from the wreckage to see tears tracking down his weathered face.
"Oh Cid...!" She said, voice filled with sympathy. She wrapped her arms around the old pilot, and he clutched at her back with one arm, pale blue eyes fixed on the crushed shell of his beloved airship.
Yuffie couldn't bear the emptiness in his eyes. She looked away, down the slope of the crater, and she blinked. She waved her arms frantically at Vincent, since he seemed to be the only one looking in her direction. He blinked. "What is it, Yuffie?"
She pointed down the slope, and the group peered in that direction. Down below them, amidst the dark chunks of rock and rubble, they could see five coloured blotches and one darker patch moving around in an odd bouncing rhythm.
"Are those...?" Red asked slowly.
Vincent confirmed the suspicions of everyone who could see the blotches. "Chocobos."
Yuffie started to move down the slope towards the birds. Red bounded from rock to rock, a triumphant expression in his eyes. He darted around behind the birds and guided them towards AVALANCHE. Yuffie's bird, Falla, let out a delighted squawk as soon as she saw her mistress and raced up the slope towards her. Yuffie flung her arms about the Chocobo's neck and did a little victory jig as Falla warbled conversationally over her mistress' head.
The other Chocobos milled uncertainly before their owners. Tifa moved forward to give her green a reassuring pat, and then moved to stand before Cloud's golden bird. She worked her hands into the feathers on its neck and scratched it gently, making the bird dip its whole body and coo encouragingly. Her eyes were closed, but her lips were trembling as she fought to keep back tears. She leaned into the bird as her hands fell to her sides. The gold glanced about in confusion and let out a querulous warble. Tifa wished there was a way to tell Boco that Cloud was not coming back.
The remaining three Chocobos greeted their respective owners with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Cid's blue knocked the pilot's head back and forth obnoxiously with his beak until he was forced to come out of his stunned state and wrestle with the bird's bridle to stop it from annoying him. Barret's – well, Marlene's – Mr Fuzzy stood impatiently before his owner until, fed up, it bent to bat Barret's good arm about with its head. Barret flinched, but rested his hand on the bird's feathered crest and smiled grimly. Vincent stood in front of Obsydia, his black, and stared at her a little helplessly. How could he make her understand that he couldn't touch her any more for fear of harming her or himself? The bird turned her head on the side and regarded him with one large, placid blue eye. She lowered her head to rub her beak against both sides of his face affectionately, and stood by patiently, apparently unaffected by the crash.
Tifa finally gathered herself and said, "I suppose we should head for the coast... or Glacier Village. What do you think, Cid?" She turned purposefully to the pilot, trying to get his mind away from his destroyed airship. Cid made a lukewarm sound, and then grit his teeth.
"'s probably useless to go to Glacier Village. Their shipments were cut off when Reeve evacuated the plate." He grunted. "Let's just head straight for the coast."
Tifa stroked Kirato's neck for a few moments, then nodded and swung herself onto the Chocobo's back. "All right then. Are we all ready to go?"
Barret snorted. "Ain't much else t' do, now, is there? Y'all have to make sure to keep me on track, now, y'hear?" Cid and Yuffie climbed onto their Chocobos. Red prowled behind Boco and Mr Fuzzy, trying to get in position to herd the birds.
Vincent was left standing next to Obsydia, staring hard at the bridle and wondering how he was supposed to mount. And, if he managed to do that, how he was supposed to hold on to anything. His shoulders slumped slightly. "I... do not think that I can do this alone." He muttered, lowering his eyes. Tifa looked as though she wanted to punch herself.
"Oh, I'm sorry Vincent." She murmured, eyes stricken. "I'll help you on..."
Vincent shook his head. "It will do no good for you to strain your back... and I do not think I can ride by myself either." He said defeatedly. "I am sure you will have to return here. I will walk to Glacier Village and wait for you there."
Tifa started to protest. Yuffie slid off Obsydia and walked over to Vincent as he stared blankly into the distance, obviously disquieted by the depth of his uselessness. She then made it her mission to get in his face until he finally made a sound of annoyance. "What are you doing?" He demanded irritably. She pointed to Obsydia, her eyes narrowing threateningly. Her lips moved, and she stomped her foot pointedly.
Don't even start.
She waved her arms at Cid until he too slid to the ground, and then she herself clambered onto Obsydia. The bird and rider each shifted uncomfortably for a few moments, each unaccustomed to the other. But Obsydia eventually settled down, and Yuffie grabbed a handful of Vincent's cloak to keep him from sidling away from her while she mouthed and made gestures at Cid to the effect of 'help me get Vinnie's fat butt onto the Chocobo'. Vincent was sure he had never been more wretchedly embarrassed in his life as when Cid and Yuffie started to heave him onto the bird. Yuffie had to twist herself very oddly to make sure that the gunman was settled behind her and then she placed Vincent's claw comfortably about her waist, completely unperturbed by the blade-like digits that were very close to her vital organs. She clicked her fingers and made a clicking sound with her mouth, and Falla cocked her head at the sound. She pulled up alongside Obsydia and Yuffie rummaged for a few moments in the saddlebag. She finally came up with a short length of rope, and with this proceeded to knot Vincent securely to the saddle and to herself. When she was finished, she flung out her arms in a 'tah-dah!' motion, and Tifa smiled.
"Good idea, Yuffie. Are you okay, Vincent?"
The gunman nodded morosely. He had flung out his newly severed arm in an attempt to gain some stability and balance, but as Obsydia shifted nervously in accordance with his own emotions, he found that it was a useless battle. Still, he could feel the firmness of Yuffie's practiced knots, and the confidence in the ninja, and he slowly calmed. As he relaxed slowly, so did Obsydia, finally standing placidly beside the blue and glancing about in blithe disconcern.
Cid swung himself back aboard his blue and coughed several times. After that, he tucked his chin down and stifled them stubbornly. "Let's get this show on the road." He muttered hoarsely. Tifa kicked Kirato into action, and the group started off over the snowfields. Yuffie waited patiently for Vincent to relax for the first mile or so as he crushed his claw arm paranoidly about her stomach. He was so tense, she could have shattered an axe on him. She let go of the reins with one hand and started tapping a pattern on the metal of Vincent's claw. It took him a few minutes for him to recognise 'SOS', at which point he abruptly loosened his grip. Yuffie gulped in a deep breath of air and glanced back over her shoulder at him. Vincent sighed.
"Sorry." He muttered. She shrugged and patted the claw reassuringly. She left her hand there until they needed to climb the next ridge on their way south, then moved it to Obsydia's neck to scratch it reassuringly as they climbed. Vincent felt the lurches and lapsed into disconcerted misery. Why were the gods always so very much against him? It seemed that every time he was near to succeeding in whatever goal he had ascribed himself, he suffered a crippling loss. It was no wonder he had slept for so long in the Shinra Mansion. What could a man lose in slumber?
The demon, being the obnoxious smart-aleck it was, noted that he could have gone into entropy, died of a number of environment-related conditions, or just suffocated. Vincent whole-heartedly wished that he was dead.
Well, he reflected as Yuffie returned her hand to resting companionably atop his claw, perhaps not quite whole-heartedly. Though it had no doubt been unwise, he had attached himself to these people, and he owed it to them not to die or be further maimed. He didn't quite understand why, but they did care for him.
His thoughts drifted to Cloud and Aeris, lost to this cause. Vincent found himself hoping that Cait Sith's creator lived still, though it was nearly impossible. Meteor would have destroyed the city by now. Vincent stifled his hopes firmly, knowing that at any time he could be horribly disappointed. Obsydia paused to rest at the top of the rise, and Vincent's eyes scanned the coastline for any hint of life. Away to the west, smoke still rose from the fires in Glacier Village. That at least was something. Yuffie let out a sigh at the sight, though it sounded mostly contented. He opened his mouth to ask her and memory stopped him. He was a fool to forget her affliction. It would make things very difficult.
"We'll purchase some paper, so that you can write your words down." He said without preamble. Yuffie seemed to snap to attention, as though her mind had been wandering, and then she shook her head sadly. "Why not?"
Her fingers resumed their tapping. I... only... write... Wutaian, Vincent translated from morse code in his head. He blinked. "You know the language, or you wouldn't be able to talk like this."
Know... equivalents. Can't... read... or... write... letters.
Vincent tilted his head. "Write in Wutaian."
This time Yuffie turned to look at him as though he were crazy. How is that going to help? She mouthed, bewildered. The part of Vincent's mind that was in control came to the slightly belated realisation that she did not know everything about his occupation as a Turk, and was not likely to know, ever. His eyes lit with bitter amusement.
"I understand Wutaian." He told her in an offhand manner, enjoying the sight of surprise and then the delight in her eyes. She grinned widely at him and, to his very great surprise, twisted to snuggle her head into his shoulder briefly. Her eyes were shining when she retreated. Her mouth moved in strange Wutaian syllables and it took Vincent a while to comprehend what she was saying. Oui'na cu luum, suhcdan syh. You're so cool, monster man. It was the more affectionate nickname she used with him, when she was in an exceptionally good mood, or when he was being particularly sociable. Vincent sighed, at once chilled by the thought that she belived him to be 'luum', and warmed by it.
"Frydajan, Yuffie."
Her back shivered in a silent giggle, and she spurred Obsydia into a dash, passing all the other Chocobos – at least until Boco and Falla rose to the challenge. Without riders, they were much faster than the rest of the group, stretching out their necks before them to minimise air resistance and leaving Red to lope patiently in their wake, still carefully guiding Mr Fuzzy as Barret clung nervously to his bird's neck. Yuffie gave the lion-like creature a long look before deciding that he could go at a faster speed for much longer before he had to rest.
Vincent hung on as tightly as he could without hurting her. Though he was usually perfectly comfortable astride a Chocobo, without at least one hand to control things, he was at a bit of a loss. Still, eventually he grew to trust Yuffie's careful knots and relaxed against them, and against her.
That made Yuffie happier than he could see. She'd been sitting against a washboard for the whole trip, and then slowly she had noticed the muscles unknotting. It was much more comfortable with Vincent sitting comfortably than it was with him twitchy.
She was equally glad of the Chocobos on which they travelled. The fiends on the way to the edge of the crater had totally wiped her out. She wasn't so used to fighting with Red XIII, and that made it hard. She also wasn't used to not being able to use her materia, and that made it harder, particularly after all the trouble she had gone to in order to secure the lot of it for Wutai when the war was over. She pouted at no one in particular. Just her luck.
Still, just how lucky was it that Vincent understood Wutaian? That was so totally cool it made her feel like she was going to explode. She'd always known that Vincent was the cool one. Even when he was being stupid and boring and mopey and... okay, maybe cool was the wrong word. Still, she was happy that at least he would understand her. Not that he'd been having trouble with that before she worked out he could speak Wutaian... she gave him a curious look over her shoulder and felt him stiffen slightly under her scrutiny. She smiled and patted his claw and felt him relax again.
She wondered if his other arm hurt him. Her throat felt really... weird, and it ached sometimes. But she wasn't sure if that was from trying to suppress tears about Cloud, about the rest of the world, or from the wound itself. She tapped out another message for Vincent as they rode.
Tuac ed rind?
Vincent was silent for a while, and she frowned and tapped the question out for him again, in case he'd missed it the first time. He stopped her halfway through.
"It does hurt, Yuffie, but not as much at used to. More than that, it feels strange."
Tet dryd rybbah fedr dra udran uha?
"...yes, it is a similar sensation to when I lost my other hand." Vincent replied, a little sadly. There was a lengthy pause. "I find it amazing that you still manage to speak so much without your voice." He said, a hint of amusement working its way into his voice.
Yuffie was about to tap out a scathing reply when out of the corner of her eye, she saw the barest glimmer from the ocean away to the east. She stared hard at it, and then hammered her hand down on Vincent's claw excitedly, pointing out to sea. She tugged hard on the reins and Obsydia stopped with a loud squawk of protest. She heard Barret swear loudly as Mr Fuzzy took his own cue and slid to a stop as well.
Vincent craned his neck and followed her line of sight. He squinted at a strangely metallic glint on the ocean, and focused hard on the metal object. What...?
Cid let out a loud whoop. "That's my baby! It's the T-Tiny Bronc-co!" He errupted into loud, heavy coughs, but his expression had lifted once more into stubborn cheer. "Damn, Shera's a smart one." He practically glowed with pride, but whether in his ship or his housemate the rest of AVALANCHE wasn't quite sure. "Hey, let's go!"
Barret started to yell in protest, but Cid took off down the slope without paying any attention to what the massive black man had to say. Unfortunately for Barret, Mr Fuzzy was a particularly sheep-like Chocobo, and he followed straight after Cid's blue, Barret bouncing and swearing on his back all the way down the slope.
Yuffie's breathing went suddenly pear-shaped, and Vincent was alarmed before he realised it was another silent giggle. She took off after Cid, one arm shot up into the sky triumphantly. Vincent gripped her waist more tightly as they descended the slope at roughly the speed of light, and continued to hang on tightly until they had reached the cliffs at the edge of the continent. They then turned east to travel along the cliffs to the only bay on the continent.
Shera had been far closer to the bay than they were, and when they arrived, she was dragging a large backpack and a small vehicle laden with other equipment from the Tiny Bronco. Cid hollered to her as soon as he broke from the forest on his Chocobo. She turned, eyes wide, barely daring to hope.
"Sheraaaa!"
It was like a scene from the sappy movies Tifa loved so much. They ran towards each other across that vast expanse of green, Shera's hair streaming out behind her. Now admittedly, since Shera always kept her hair in a tight ponytail, there was not much streaming involved, and had Cid been running and not on Chocobo, he would have had a massive coronary after the first hundred metres. But when they finally reached each other and Shera leapt at Cid and dragged him off his Chocobo to envelope him in a tight hug, it was like the final scene in an exceptionally bad romantic comedy.
Tifa wiped at happy tears and cursed her bleeding heart.
Shera was crying, too, hanging from Cid and sobbing his name over and over again. "I knew it! I knew you weren't dead. I knew you couldn't be dead. Oh, Cid!"
He held her quietly, his chin resting atop her head, his eyes closed as though embracing Shera was the most comfortable, easy thing in the world. "It's all right, Shera... it's okay..."
Yuffie would have given both her arms and her left leg to be able to make a loud, disruptive 'aww' at that moment.
Instead she grinned as widely as it was possible for her to grin, her cheeks aching with the pressure, and swung herself off of Obsydia. She couldn't seem to bring herself to take her eyes off Cid and Shera, even as she untied the knots that held Vincent in the saddle. She frowned slightly when she realised that she had somehow managed to knot her fingers into the mess, and then decided it might help to actually watch what she was doing. Vincent shook his head at this, and tried to avoid watching the pair. It seemed to make things deep within him hurt.
Shera could not be pried completely away from Cid, particularly after she discovered how bad his lungs were. However, once they had calmed her down and let her confiscate all of Cid's cigarettes, she seemed to have a lot to tell them.
"As you can see, Meteor isn't a problem any more. However, there have been attacks on several towns by a large monster that Reeve thinks is Jenova-based." She informed them, adjusting her spectacles on her nose. "I came to see if I could find you... but that's not the only reason. Mr Wallace, after Meteor was destroyed, Marlene sank into a sort of fever. She's fine, she's absolutely fine," she added at Barret's dangerous expression, "But she told us some things... we have to go straight back to Midgar. She said she needed to tell you all in person. Something's wrong."
"Damn straight somethin's wrong. My baby don't say nothin' about 'in person'. She's too young." Barret growled. "Is that you speakin', or her?"
Shera sighed worriedly. "That's what I meant. Those were her exact words. She woke up from the fever long enough to say she had to tell you something, and then she went back to sleep."
Barret scowled. "Then what the #$% we standin' around for, foo'? Can you get me t' Midgar in that rust bucket?"
Cid gave the man a look the rest of the group was glad he couldn't see. "She ain't a rust bucket, she's my baby, and she can take you wherever the #$% you want to go!" He declared loyally.
Yuffie jumped up and down a few times and pumped her fist in the air. She then walked over to Vincent and tapped repeatedly on his arm. He gave them all a wry look. "Yuffie would like us to move out." She gave him an evil look and pulled back her arm to threaten him with a right hook. Vincent closed his eyes primly and said, "Her exact words were, let's get this party started."
A/N: Please review and let me know what you think. Next chapter is on its way fairly soon.