Title: 72 Hours
Pairing: Leon/Yuffie
Rating: PG
Genre: general
Warnings: oo; atleast played/KNOW about Yuffie and her past involving FFVII. Also, this story hings on being a full crossover into Final Fantasy VII but isn't…sorta imagine FFVII has its own world/or even a smaller part in Hollow Bastion.
Author's Notes: Also an obi, is rather the large 'belt' that goes across a kimono, its often brighter then the actual kimono itself. Also, thank you generic sode for reviewing!
Synopsis: Yuffie waits for Leon to return after he mysteriously disappears.
Disclaimer: Characters © Square-Enix and Disney, I claim no ownership.

Seventy-two hours.

She stared at the clock before her and felt her agitation grow. A few of her father's subjects looking nervously at her, as she sat kneeling in front of the large clock on the smooth floor, waiting. A few of her father's subjects left, mumbling how focused she had finally become, only to have it wasted on a man, who just got up and left one morning without a word. Behind her an expensive piece of china shattered on the low table where her father was trying to discuss business, trying to ignore his fuming daughter just a few feet behind him.

Her whole body twitched and she gripped the mat underneath her body tightly in her hands, balling it. The last few people in the room gave up on what they were discussing and left. The servant girl, who had accidentally disrupted the meeting, was apologizing quickly to both her father and herself. Yuffie ignored her and continued to stare as the old clock's hand smoothly went in it final arc and the bell tolled in it.

He had been gone for seventy-two hours and three seconds. Grunting, she got up, stumbling slightly as the blood rushed back to her legs, her father without looking raised an arm of support for her. She stretched, many bones in her body popping. Godo dropped his arm and drank some tea, the servant was now nervously pouring while glancing at the Little Mistress.

"Is he coming back or do I need to start asking families?" The question was monotone and quiet, she stopped stretching, her toes flexing and stopped popping. She stared at the clock on the floor and turned to head for the sliding door.

"Answer me," The expensive ceramic hit the table hard yet didn't splinter or break. She held the edge of the sliding door and looked back at her father, her hair mused and rings under her eyes. "Is that boy coming back?"

She gripped the door and slid it open and quietly left, the door slamming on the way out. Godo sighed and stared into his tea and then to the servant.

"Please go tell the messengers to send word to the other families."

"Yes, sir."

For the rest of the day she slept, her room was quiet as she fell into an almost drugged sleep as the fatigue caught up to her. A few minutes later, someone came into the room and properly put the blanket on top of her and turned off any small lights or trinkets and left. An hour before dusk, she woke from a prod from someone telling her to get and be ready for the party. She groaned and tried to stay under her comforter in vain. Soon she was up and thrown into the bathhouse, taken out and was in the middle of getting dressed. She stifled a yawn as she looked at herself in the full-length mirror as her obi was being tied and finished.

She rolled her shoulder experimentally; maybe sitting in front of the clock for the last day had been a bad idea. She mused quietly as she played with the inner fabric of her kimono, the deep green color showing brightly against the black robe on top. The black robe on top, she remembered her mother once wearing it and smiled softly. The pattern was that of rolling hills and a mountainside, in the foreground was a small pagoda stretching across the bottom right and a cherry blossom tree to her left, having stray blossoms crawling up the back and over her right shoulder. Turning around she could see the family crest splayed in the middle of her back. A soft rap on her shoulder made her turn back forward and hold her arms out as the obi was adjusted and as a pattern was being created.

Things can never be simple can they…

A watching green fabric was pulled and wrapped around her waist and held together with small latches. An assistant came with another fabric but gold and thus they were finally nearly done, some time past and Yuffie felt her feet become numb and her knees tired from standing all this time. A soft "finished" let her move around in the robes and look at herself before getting make up done. She turned and looked at the design of her obi.

"A…flower?"

"Its what your mother wore."

"Wore for what?"

"When she chose her husband, your father."

"…"

After that she was lead away and into another room where a woman began applying her make up for the night. She frowned in front of the mirror one of the servants was holding and the make-up artist polite shushed her and told her to sit up so they could finish. While the make-up artist did the finishing touches, another woman brushed her hair and tried to put an ornate comb in her hair. Yuffie, as politely as she could, refused it. The make-up artist and hairdresser, but not after spraying a small fragrance into her hair, left and the servant still knelt before her, holding the smooth surface of high tempered sand and minerals.

"Umm…can I say something, Little-"

"Yuffie, just call me Yuffie." She sounded tired even though she didn't look like it, at the moment she felt like going out and throwing shuriken and training, not try to entertain a bunch of men.

"Y-Yuffie-sama, I think you look v-very pretty tonight. Do not look so glum, what's wrong?."

"Seventy-two hours." The younger girl lowered her mirror, and looked at her confused.

"Squall…Leon has been gone for more than seventy-two hours, that's what's bothering me."

"The man with the scar?" Yuffie smiled faintly.

"Yes, the man with the scar. He disappeared three days ago and no one has heard from him since."

Yuffie didn't say anything as the young girl's face heated at the thought of him.

"Maybe he'll come back tonight…?"

Before she could answer, the servant girl was lead away and she along with the other women joined the dinner party. To say the party was unpleasant was a lie, she did enjoy herself though not as fully as she could. She would make others laugh and smile brightly throughout all of it. Without really realizing it, she brushed past or ignored the faint and some none to subtle hints of marriage and for the rest of the night she enjoyed the warm sake that was passed around until she felt quite warm and happy like the rest.

As the end of the party drew near, she was laughing and was acting as if nothing was wrong, as if Leon hadn't disappeared or that she wasn't nearly sick to her stomach with worry. The more sake she drank, the more she felt warm and welcomed in the fray of it all. The men around her were all her age, though one or two were nearly twice that, but it reminded her all of her days in Traverse Town and hanging out with the others and her almost surrogate family with Cid as her father of sorts.

She missed those days. Maybe she'd return to the Bastion and see how Cloud and them were fairing but at the moment she was caught up in the haze of warm alcohol.

It was nearly four in the morning when the party ended, the merriment died when she finished the last bottle. She bowed and was lead out of the room, only then slightly stumbling as she was silently lead away to have her robes removed. The process took another hour and by then she was more than half a sleep, more a zombie than awake.

When lead to her room, she collapsed onto her bedroll and fell deeply and happily into the arms of sleep. While she slept, the old clock she had sat in front of tolled quietly in the night.

She cursed herself when she woke up four hours later. Her limbs felt heavy and she tiredly whipped the sleep out of her eyes. She cursed more at her internal clock for waking her up earlier and lied there, hoping to fall asleep again. Her stomach making a protest, she got up and put on her yellow shorts and green top with blue straps. She eyed the watching blue belt, and decided to leave it and went to search for the kitchen without knocking her feet into anything.

Finding it, she asked for a pork bun even though she knew it was way too early for some. On her way back and half way through one, the other in her other hand, she heard something. Going a hunch she slid open the sliding door to a small pavilion, the pork bun in her mouth falling out and hitting the ground with a soft thud and rolled.

He was sitting there, on a rock, meditating.

She blinked dumbfounded for a moment, before taking her other pork bun, aimed and threw it at his head, earning her a confused puzzlement before she tackled him into the small pond his rock was close to. The koi in the pond swam to the other side in a group, and he was half buried in mud and other stuff, looking at her. She was on her knees and in between his, soaking wet and looking none to nice and stared at him, his bare chest holding a thin mixture of soot as well.

"…What?"

"LEON!"

"Yes?"

"WHERE WERE-" He covered her mouth with his mud hand, he removed it though, she spat out the pond water to the side and looked back at him.

"Three days. Three. Days. Squall."

"I know that."

Her patience was wearing thin.

"WHERE WERE YOU!"

"…Doing things." She scowled and pushed him.

"What things! What could be so important, that you had to disappear for three…" Her voice got quiet. "…days?" She saw some inked into his skin, a part of it curled into his side. "What's that?"

"Why I was gone for so long."

She sat up and crawled out of the water and stared at him. Leon stood up in the almost knee deep water and turned his back to her and her breath caught. In an intricate and elegant tattoo, was a leviathan. It was curled and its serpentine like body was thick and waved up from what seemed to be the small of his back to the base of neck. It almost zigzagged up his back, the creature's head almost resting peacefully up top were its tail cured at his tailbone. The fins and others were like wings and expanded there but never toughed his sides, or went past his shoulders. All and all, she was speechless staring at it.

"Yuffie."

"Yeah...?"

"It's not exactly traditional but…" He knelt at the base of the pond, a few koi came back to that area of the pound and swam around his feet. Out of his pocket, he took out a small ring and held it out. "Will you marry me?"

She stared at it for a moment, in almost childish wonderment, turning his head to the side slightly, before her eyes had almost literal stars in them and she tackled him again, scaring the fish yet again away.

"YES!"

Leon shoved himself out from underneath the surface of the water, after he realized that if he didn't soon he'd drown. He didn't know what would drown him first, the water or her love.