A/N: My goodness, I'm awful. It's been years since I actually wrote this now. Ahem. Anyway! Last chapter! Cue brief ridiculous fluff... Enjoy!

(Ohh, look, you can do horizontal lines now! Just now little squiggly things. ...Agh, formatting will be the death of me...)


Part 12 : Bring On Tomorrow

"I've got something to tell you before I die..."

"...urghwhat?" Yuffie responded out loud, not entirely sure what the question had been.

"Yuff - you awake?" Tifa's pretty, concerned voice.

Yuffie tried to open her eyes, went "Aaaag, it's too bright," and immediately shut them again. "Hey, Tifa! This makes for a role-reversal... You sitting at my bedside. Still, you must be pretty used to it... what with Cloud and all his comas and stuff..." She could practically sense a Tifa-Glare. She changed tack hastily. "How long've I been out?"

"Just a couple hours."

"Bummer! You get to go all dramatic with three days and I get a couple hours? So unfair!"

"It's still pretty serious! You really overreached with your magic, you know."

Yuffie giggled, eyes still shut, at some private vision. "Hehe, it was worth it though, wasn't it? Swooning in Vincent's arms... always wanted to do that."

There was a polite cough from her other side.

"...and he's right here, isn't he? Oh man..." She opened one eye and squinted around. "Hey, Vinnie," she said over-cheerfully. "How've you been?

"Hello, Yuffie."

"'Hello Yuffie'? That is such a you comment... Ohh, who else would go 'Hello Yuffie'? when I'd just said - OOOOH, you're blushing! Vinnie's blushing!"

"Shut up!"

"OK, OK. ...Erm, Tifa? Could you like go out of the room for a minute? Got something private to say to Vince here."

Tifa, rather amused, said "OK..." and left.

Yuffie nodded to herself. "Vincent, I've got something to tell you before I die," she stated matter-of-factly.

"Er - Yuffie, you're not about to die."

"How do you know? I might!"

"No, really-"

"I might," she insisted. "You never know, any second now I might just die and then you'd never know what I was going to -"

Silence.

"Ha ha, Yuffie."

Silence.

"...I know you're faking it."

Silence.

"Yuffie?"

Silence.

"If you're pretending I knew all along!"

Silence. Vincent stared at the motionless figure.

"Yuffie...?"

Silence.

"Yuffie? OK, now you're scaring me, please wake up..."

Not a twitch. Not so much as a dimple to show she was just bottling up giggles.

"Please-"

Silence.

Then -

"Just kidding!"

Vincent fell back in his chair. "DON'T do that!" he said ferverently.

"Teehee! OK, but I do have something important to tell you..." She closed her eyes again. "Um... OK... Well. OK. Right, um. OK, I'm starting to sound like Tifa..."

Tifa, eavesdropping from outside the door, fumed silently.

"OK, Vinnie, the thing is... I think you're really cute and um... yeah, kinda more than that - you get it?"

"Let's say I don't," said Vincent evilly. "Humour me. Do tell."

Yuffie opened one eye to Glower at him. "I hate you," she said.

"Oh," said Vincent, "that wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear... Well..." He took a deep breath. "Yuffie, I think I - I love you, if that makes any difference."

"Good," she said, surprisingly calmly. "OK, Good." And suddenly she was grinning all over her face and seemed to be strongly resisting the urge to bounce around the room going "EEEEE!" "Vincent, I... me too, I mean, I love you too! So much, I -" She lay back on her pillows and tried to calmly deep-breathe. "You - knew that, right?"

Tifa grinned to herself and walked quietly downstairs.

Hence, she missed Yuffie saying happily:

"OK, cool, that's that sorted out. Now we've just gotta do something about Cloud and Tifa..."


Cloud and Tifa were by now engaged in the council of war that was happening downstairs. Council of war as in: basically, the rest of the mismatched group was sprawled over Cid's living room, drinking tea, eating cookies and... actually discussing serious matters.

"The only thing I can think of," Nanaki was saying quietly, "is... Hojo. Something to do with all those Jenova cell samples and specimens and everything he had back at that lab..."

Cait Sith was the first to nod. "I think so too. I was kinda hoping someone else would say it."

Red continued. "These seem like... mutated forms? Whether Hojo's alive and doing it himself or not... we don't know..."

"OK..."

There seemed to Tifa to be an awful lot of awkward silences lately.

"Should someone tell Yuffie all this?" Shera asked nervously. "She's still in bed..."

Tifa shrugged. "Vincent's there with her, right?"

Cloud looked at her and nodded. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure one of them will will have guessed by now."


In fact, they'd just overheard.

"So... what, this was one of Hojo's weirdy creatures?" Yuffie asked brightly, "Like a Jenova imitation?"

"Oh... I hope not..." Vincent sighed deeply and rubbed his forehead.

"Look," Yuffie said, more gently, "don't worry too much about it, OK?"

"..."

"O-Kaaaay, Vincent?"

"...OK, Yuffie."

She fixed him with a new, serious, brand of Kisaragi-Look. "We'll deal with it," she said. "If there's more of them we'll get them too, and maybe we'll go back to Midgar or wherever you think, but you can't go now cos I'm sick in bed right now and you're not going without me! And I'm not going without the rest of them, OK? They're all staying here anyway, aren't they?" She looked out of the window into the dusk. "Camping in Cid's living room, I think. We'll drag them along if we need a bit of help to save the world again."

Tifa, outside the door again, should perhaps have felt more guilty about the amount of eavesdropping she'd been doing. She didn't feel guilty. This time, she'd even brought Cloud along too.

"Inspiring stuff from Yuffie, no?" she whispered.

"Yeah..." Cloud grinned, but worried. "Hojo?" he couldn't help saying again. "He's - dead, right?"

"I sure thought so..."

"Then -"

"Look, Yuffie's right. We will manage. OK, I know this is very difficult for you, but try not to let it get you down." ...and stop him being all morbid and mopey... and try to make him happy...

Cloud shrugged helplessly. "OK. Thanks, Tifa."

As they walked down through Cid's living room, Tifa smiled to herself. The scattered sleeping bags and travelling kits were oddly reassuring. They'd see it through together this time.

Thanks, Aeris, she thought.

The End


A/N: And here we are. Why could I not get up the motivation to post this sooner?

Anywayzy. Thanks to anyone for reading; I hope you had fun :)

I remember I had a lot of fun writing it - I liked including loadsa characters, I liked including Shera... and Cid was an unexpected pleasure to write, and Barret too... (and I even mentioned Jessie! Vindicated! XD) Uhh... I have to say that the unashamed Yuffentine fluff worried me a bit on a brief reread (not the uh, fullest chararacterisations I've ever written!) Well, it was meant to be that way - silly.

FFVII rocks. Yes yes. Coming not-so-soon necessarily from Jesta - pregame epic alternative to Before Crisis. Muahaha.