DISCLAIMER: Not mine, nuh-uh, no way.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Amazing what some window-rattling can do, huh? Yeah, this was inspired by the weather where I am; for some reason it's been awfully windy this year. And when I say windy I mean trees thrashing against my window and me honestly wondering if the glass was going to break. It's happened several times in the past month, so I decided to do a little fic about it. And since I'm me, it had to be a Squffie.
Funny thing is I was playing FFVIII right before I wrote this. Tonberries suck so much. I originally had a slightly different ending in mind where Cid got pegged with a flashlight, but I decided to leave it out. Maybe some other time... Ahh Cid, what would we do without you?
(Soundtrack: "Passion" by Utada Hikaru)
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"Can we leave yet, Squall?" Yuffie pleaded, trying to keep the whining tone out of her voice but not really succeeding.
"It's Leon, and no we can't. We'd get smashed to bits out there." Shaking the match out, Squall sat back on his heels, watching the lantern carefully to make sure it didn't blow out yet again. This time their luck seemed to hold, at last, and he carefully put the matches back in his pocket, not wanting to lose them. The kerosene lantern wouldn't last for very long, but it gave more light – and more comforting light – than their small flashlights.
Yuffie, bundled in her collapsed tent like a blanket, made a pitiful sound in her throat and tried to huddle deeper in the nylon to conserve what little body heat she could still feel. "Camping. In the winter. Why in the hell did we let Cid talk us into this?"
Pulling his own jacket tighter around himself, Squall shook his head. "I have no idea."
It had started out simple enough, of course. When the question of getting away for awhile had come up, all five of them had welcomed the idea with enthusiasm. There was just way too much to get done sometimes… And for some reason the idea of three days without any company but each other sounded fantastic, even at the beginning of winter, once Cid had assured them that there would be no rain or snow to make them freeze to death.
Of course, he'd forgotten about the wind.
More like hurricanes really, shaking the trees and bringing down limbs and chilling them all to the bone. And of course it hadn't started until after dark, just when Yuffie had been setting up her tent to go to sleep. And of course it had to grab the tent and send it flying away from her, and of course she had to go chasing after it, and Squall couldn't just let her run off on her own, though he'd had the presence of mind to grab a lantern before he left. Cid, Cloud, and Aerith had been off somewhere else at that point – well, more likely Cloud and Aerith were not with Cid, but none of them were at the camp, which meant that none of them knew what had happened to their companions.
And of course by the time they'd caught up to the tent, which had been dragged in every possible direction by the wind that seemed to change direction every second, they had completely lost sight of the camp, the truck, and anything even remotely manmade.
Between them, they had two packs of matches, the lantern, two flashlights and some spare batteries, five granola bars, two chocolate bars, and a pack of gum, plus the clothes on their backs, which were fortunately warm. But their situation was still dismal, and the wind didn't stop. It completely messed with even their excellent senses of direction, and in the end they'd simply run, tent and all, the way it seemed to be pushing them.
The cabin they'd found who knew how much later seemed like a haven at first, and they gratefully ducked inside. But they'd quickly discovered that the previous occupants had stripped it bare down to the floor and the walls and ceiling had a disturbing habit of rattling loudly in the gusts.
That rattling was why Yuffie did not want to be there.
"What if the place collapses on us?"
"It won't," Squall said for what seemed to be the tenth time. "It sounds bad, but it's only sound. This thing's probably stood through several of these windstorms."
"All the more reason for it to fall!"
"Yuffie," he said with a little exasperation. "Would you rather be in here, where that might happen, or out there with a guarantee of freezing?"
She groaned, pulling the makeshift blanket tighter around her shoulders. "I'd rather not be out here at all."
"Me neither, Yuf, but we're here. It'll probably die down by morning, though, and then we can find the others." He stood, pulling out his flashlight and clicking it on.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to go see if I can find something to make a fire with."
She shook her head. "Don't bother, this place is so old the chimney's gotta be blocked."
He paused. "Damn." Turning off the flashlight, he sat down again against the wall, watching the lantern in front of them and wondering how long the kerosene in there would last.
Yuffie flinched as another gust rattled the rafters. "I'd just like to say again that I do not like that noise."
"Duly noted." Squall wasn't too big a fan of it either, but right now it was vastly preferable to having to fight against that pseudo-hurricane out there, not finding their camp or their friends, who by now had to be huddled in the truck.
If they'd gotten back. Maybe all of them were lost somewhere. That was a depressing thought, one he certainly wasn't sharing with Yuffie-
"Squall, what if the others are lost, too?"
Too late. He could do nothing but shake his head, admitting he didn't know. "They had a compass, at least… As long as one of them was keeping track of direction there's a good chance they're back."
"Damn Cid and his stupid ideas…" she grumbled, pulling the tent up over her head like a hood. He shook his head once more, hiding a small smile; she looked like some doll a little girl had tried to make a dress for and had failed badly – but still went ahead and put the dress on the doll anyway.
"Don't laugh, it conserves body heat." She knew him too well.
"I wasn't laughing." Which was true. Yet another gust shook the walls and Yuffie flinched again, looking up at the roof as if she expected it to collapse on top of them any second. Which she probably did.
Neither of them were getting any sleep like that. "Come here."
"What?"
"Come here or let me in there." She continued to watch him as if he'd grown a second head, and admittedly he couldn't really blame her. "Two is better than one, right? If we can't start a fire, that's the best way to save heat."
For one long, wind-rattling moment, he was sure she was going to refuse, but then she finally flipped out one side of the tent, shifting so she was no longer sitting on it and they could use it as a blanket. "One hand in the wrong place and you lose it, got that?"
"Perfectly."
They made themselves as comfortable as they could on the dusty floor, still huddled in their sweaters, jeans, jackets, and boots as they pulled the waterproof nylon around them; a feeble blanket, but the best they could do. Squall settled down with his head resting on his arm, only briefly debating sacrificing his sweater for a pillow, but gave up the idea as Yuffie lay down as well with her back to him, copying his actions by using her arm to support her head as well. Neither of them would sleep if they had to lean against those rattling walls, so this was the best they could do.
A loud CRASH from very nearby made Yuffie shriek and somehow jump back into him, nearly cracking him in the nose with the back of her head. Squall had no time to pay attention to the near-injury though as he tried to calm Yuffie's shakes. "It's all right, it was probably just a branch."
"That's a pretty damn big branch then!" she half-yelled, still shaking. "Squall, are you sure we can't go back to camp and-"
He cut her off by putting one arm around her waist and pulling her into him, giving her a steadying support, and she was stunned enough by the move to stop both talking and shaking. "It'll be okay, Yuf. You'll see; it'll be calm in the morning."
A non-articulate grumble was his only answer, but the girl had stopped shaking at last – and when she settled down again, it was with her head on his chest. And apparently his arm around her waist wasn't in the wrong place.
It took a long time for them to finally fall asleep – and not too long after they had, the perversity of the weather was once again confirmed as the wind began to die, fading out entirely within a few minutes. So when they woke in the morning, a little cold and a little stiff but otherwise all right, it was to the blue skies of an early winter early morning, a sight they'd seen many, many times before.
But this one… something made this one just subtly different.