This piece of fanfic is one heck of a freak. But here goes.

A centrally Yuffie/Kairi fic, set in a D.C.-spoofed-Traverse Town/City/whatever. Before you ask-- no. RENT was not, by any means, an inspiration for this fic. Instead, that credit can be given to the splendid sounds of Indigo Girls' "Everything in Its Own Time." So without further ado, here it is, another little creation. Not as messed up as My Oh My, but considerably messed up all the same.

Enjoy!

(x) (x) (x)

Everything In Its Own Time

'Prologue: Arrival of a Gentlewoman'

"Remember everything I told you..."

-Y-

I often find myself being stupid.

I don't wonder why I'm stupid, really.

Perhaps 'stupid' isn't the right word here.

Spacey. Shallow.

I sit in church and they play some song on the piano, some jiggy New Orleans dance tune with the old woman's vein-spun fingers flying left, right, up, down, feet pressing the peddles, legs pressing the feet. I sit silently and I wonder why they play so loudly. They play loudly because they don't want to hear the girl in the back row screaming, screeching, begging for answers that no one gives her.

What is the reason for all of it? What is the reason for any of it?

Is there a reasoning backing reason or is there no reason for reason at all?

She screams, shouts, fists in her hair and eyes squeezed shut, lungs bursting, blood rushing, veins trembling. Mouth open, noise spills but not enough—no, never enough to carry over the piano.

Picture yourself in a noisy bar. You're a nun and you want to sing, but no one cares. Are you religious or are you just sentimental? Now then, sing. I want to hear you over the din and the drunken men. I want to see your song through the cloudy room, the smoky air, the choking death. I want to hear you sing a song the hallowed halls of worship would never stand, never tolerate. I want to hear it and I want to hear it now, right now. I want it to be so loud and so pure that it makes the earth tremble unforgivingly, the sky open up and declare that you—yes you are the one, the only one who dared and did, who tried and triumphed. I want that glory for you and I want to see you basking in it, spreading your arms wide and facing towards the sun.

And yet I do, I truly do find myself as stupid.

Spacey. Ignorant. Vapid. Shallow.

Because I don't have the sense to see and I don't have the patience to wait for you to start screaming, singing and clambering your way to the top. I'm in love with humanity if for no other reason than because I myself am so human, lacking in the tolerance I preach about so wildly, coming up short in the love and kindness I selfishly clasp between my own two scorched hands.

Oh, how she screams now, her great angry sobs never ending as her voice pierces the stillness around them, around me, anger and hurt clamping down upon the sanctuary, some painful death hold that no one can hope to free themselves from.

"I hate you!" she screams.

Such foreign words as her voice begins to change, to writhe between my ears, to slice apart her throat and leave it torn, raw, bleeding from the inside out. No longer is her voice her own, no longer is my body truly mine. A demon, certainly. The crone, the witch, as my gnarled fingers clench into fists and I pound mercilessly against the chair, screaming for her to stop, her own wild shrieks of anger still bursting from within her like a river finally breaking through the dam.

"I hate you!"

Hatred, hatred, hatred. Who am I to ever love such a vile little monster, to take it into my arms and whisper such sweet nothings in its ear? Its putrid breath ghosting across my face, talons buried deep within my neck, sharp and hawk-like face pressed against my cheek. Soothing, this hatred, this horrid hatred. And yet at the same time, a thought occurs to me, the old woman with bones in her hair and a cross to her back.

"Hate… hate you…"

In every story, you will find elements of truth, love and justice, these figureheads of humanity. Some fool of long ago must have taken it upon himself to free them from the marble, these lovely things, these precious things. To dig deep beneath the surface and to declare he'd found humanity in such powerful glory, such strong and moving statues held high for all to see.

That is original sin, if there ever was one. That disgusting ignorance, oblivious to the other half—truth, love, justice? What are they to mankind—what kind of virtues, really, are they without their darker sisters? Without the cold rain-slicked granite, the gargoyles poised upon the pillar, the pinnacle, engraved into our flesh alongside the others?

In all honesty, they are nothing without their darkest counterparts.

Falsehood, hatred and ugliness—are these not also human virtues?

I know. I, the wraith on the curbside, hate clinging desperately to her neck, arms reaching desperately out for love, for attention, for a glimmer of any hope, of any goodness left. I, the student of the demons who sing so powerfully, so emotionally, screaming their hate in the halls of the church.

And yet the words do not leave my mind…

"I hate you!"

Still as powerful as they were in their first hour, still as pitiless and deadly as the monster at my throat.

And here I stand now, towering high above the heads of my fellow man, alongside their best of qualities, dark and light, just like them. A virtue.

At the end of the day it is me who blocks you out. I am the mountains that move you towards the ends of the earth, I am the clouds that shift and spin to hide all light from your desperate eyes, your pale and lifeless face.

I am the blind man. I am the seer. I am the madman. I am the loving father.

That is why I am what I am, stupidity, clarity, and everything that falls between.

- - - - - - -

"--received no word from the police on whether this is a suspected homicide or a suicide. Though they have not made a statement, the police confirm that no clear-cut suspects have been found--"

The two women sat side by side, one hunched over her bowl of cereal, the other hunched over her bottle of nailpolish. The older of the two, the nail polish woman, looked at the television skeptically and declared, "I swear to God, the world's going more towards the pits every damn day. It's you kids, I swear. Why can't you kids just be-haaave, for God's sake? Poor little girl probably got raped or something. Poor little girl." Her voice sounded like some sort of horse, high-pitched and whining, matching her outward appearance perfectly. At that moment, she looked towards the young woman beside her-- the young woman who just happened to be her daughter.

"Come on, Yuffie, whaddya say, huh?"

Yuffie looked up from her bowl with a scowl on her face, one single little droplet of milk dribbling from the corner of her mouth. She blinked twice, morse code for "Fuck off" and went back to her breakfast.

"I swear to God, Yuffie. Have some manners, for God's sake." Her mother rolled her eyes dramatically and brushed another layer of polish over her nails, admiring them in the light for a moment before turning a critical eye towards her daughter and adding, "Weren't you gonna get rid of those weird stripes in your hair, dearheart?"

Yuffie raised her bowl to her mouth, spoon clattering obnoxiously against it as she slurped down the remenants of milk. The stuff had some weird brownish-blue tinge to it, no more than an after effect of the Cocoa Puffs, Yuffie hoped.

"When's the last time we went shopping, Yuffie? Just the two of us, yanno? A sort of... Oh, what do people call it...? Mother-daughter-bonding-thing. One of those. It's been so long since you got a new pair of shoes, dearie, and all I've seen you wearing are those battered little... sneaker. Things."

Heaving one hell of a mighty sigh, Yuffie shoved her chair away from the table, scurrying over towards the sink and purposely allowing her 'battered little sneaker things' to squeak against the floor. But she couldn't escape her mother's stare-- when the old bat got going, she really got going. And no amount of reported homicide, suicide, or otherwise could keep her off of her daughter's back.

"They're just sneakers, Mom. People wear sneakers because they're comfortable."

"But they're hideous."

"They're orange!"

"I know."

Narrowing her eyes, Yuffie snapped, "And the 'stripes' in my hair? Yeah. They're not stripes. They're called highlights."

Pursing her lips together, Yuffie's mother looked almost as though she'd bitten into a rather nasty fruit. "Since when is blonde a color that highlights black? Honestly, dear. Did you learn nothing from those art classes you took?"

"Those were in fifth grade!"

"Well I notice you never forgot how to ride a bicycle."

Flinging her arms up in defeat, Yuffie groaned and whined, "I don't have time for you today, Mom! I swear to God!"

"I swear to God--"

"You always swear to God." Stare finally hardened into a glare, Yuffie stormed out of the kitchen, cursing in her head and snapping her fingers out of a nervous habit. One look through the window was all it took-- she hollered a half-hearted goodbye and rushed outside, the door slamming shut behind her.

Ah yes, her boy had finally shown up.

Yuffie was a curious girl. Much to her mother's dismay, she was no pretty wallflower of any sort and she had virtually no sense of style embedded anywhere in the bucket of wits she hauled around inside her. And yet if you were asked to, I assure you that you would be hard pressed to find another person on the face of this earth so delightfully human.

To Yuffie, gender was nothing more than a word. It was not something to base any choice off of, though there was that whole issue of pregnancy to consider-- but that was a minor thing, she was sure. In her mind, the best things the world had to offer were not only free, but easy to find. Nothing could make her fall in love faster than seeing someone who left their Christmas lights up outside all year round, who walked around with their hands tucked in their pockets, or who had the confidence to laugh insanely when no one else was uttering a single sound.

"Squall! You better have the damn air conditioning turned on!"

"Hm?"

"Fuck, it's boiling out here!"

Of course, he didn't have the air conditioning turned on. Nor did he waste any time in correcting her with a drawled, "It's Leon, Yuffie. Leon. Not Squall. Leon." But all in all, it was hardly much of anything to Yuffie, who spent the entire ride into the downtown district drumming her knuckles against her windshield and jumping from topic to topic without a care in the world.

"Hey, you remember that book we read when we were kids? Uh... What was it called... Hm. The... The Great Gatsby! Yeah! About that guy who was a total pathological liar. You remember that book, Squall?"

"Leon."

"You remember that book, Leon?"

"Sure."

"You liked it, right? I think I remember you liking it. Then again we had that bitch of a teacher, ol' What's-Her-Face. You know. The one who'd take off her damn stilletto and really whack the heel on your desk if you started spacing out. She always did that to me, man! Freakin' annoying."

"Mm."

"You were a good kid. She never did it to you."

"...Yuffie, it wasn't that long ago."

"Uh, hello? Senior year? Heck yeah, it was long ago."

"...Whatever."

"We sure read a helluva lotta depressing books in school, huh? Hey, how come we never read any happy books, anyway?"

"Happy literature doesn't exist."

The car remained relatively quiet as it rolled lazily towards a stop light. Yuffie took advantage of the opportunity with obvious glee. "So whaddya say, Squallie? Will you be my gold-hatted high-bouncing lo-ver?" she crooned.

"Um, no."

"...Come on, Leon, it was a line from the book. ...Come on, even you aren't that lame! Like... you know. Wear a gold hat, if it pleases her, and bounce high, should that please her, too-- until she says 'Oh gold-hatted high-bouncing lover, I must have...'" One look at Leon's expressionless face was enough to stop Yuffie mid-sentence. "...You don't remember, huh?"

"No." Green light. Yuffie carefully mulled over the idea of mentioning the green light the book held, but decided against it as the car puttered along underneath it. "That book had a great ending, don'tcha think?"

"Yuffie, I don't remember it," Leon replied, obviously not making an effort to keep the annoyance out of his voice. "I don't remember all the endings of all the books we read back in high school, alright?"

"...Hpmf. Well, who gives. No skin off my nose, that's for sure." Red light. They were deep into the heart of the city now, a regular concrete jungle stretching out around them, the road a narrow black Amazon winding through all the hubbub. But Yuffie caught a glimpse a a certain someone who just may have had the ability of making her day a hell of a lot brighter in a split second. Blonde hair, blue eyes. "Oh, what do we have here?"

"Yuffie," Leon's voice took on a sharp tone that, though Yuffie had heard it before, still successfully managed to scare the hell out of her. Determined not to let it show, Yuffie simply rolled her big brown eyes in a wild circle proceeded to eagerly roll down her window, a wave of warm, sticky air rushing in as she stuck her head out the window, much to Leon's dismay.

"CLO-OUD!"

There was a brief moment in which the man looked up, a quiet puzzled expression written across his features. An old blast from the past, a certain little someone who had once had a certain little crush on certain other someone who was most certainly not named Squall. Yuffie grinned in triumph. Ah, 'lo and behold, fate was still with her.

The young man came loping over, carrying an easy grace about him, a plastic shopping bag dangling from each hand, a timid sort of grin etched on his face with care as he looked up at her companion in the driver's seat. Noticing Yuffie was there, the boy laughed nervously and nodded towards her, a gesture she exchanged with just a bit too much enthusiasm for Leon to not be annoyed.

"Hi there, Cloud!"

"Cloud."

"Hey."

Leon glanced anxiously toward the light, praying for it to change. Meanwhile, Yuffie had her fair share of fun, her words making both men turn various shades of pink all the while--

"Man, I haven't seen you in forever, Cloud! How's school goin'? You find anybody better than dumb ol' Leon here? He's still a big old stick in the mud-- dunno what the hell it is you saw in him. Doesn't even appreciate a decent book, did you know that? I mean, what kinda guy do you have to be to not appreciate a good book any day? Oh hey! That reminds me! Do you remember that book we read in English called The Great Gatsby? Do you remember how it ended? I was wondering if--"

"Oh, look at that." Leon raised an eyebrow at Yuffie as he pressed down on the gas, shooting the car through the stoplight and leaving poor Cloud on a curbside scratching his head.

Nothing but a big dumbass, Squall. You're nothing but a big dumbass.

"You can't stay unemployed forever, Yuffie."

"I'm not unemployed. I'm between jobs."

"And collateral damage doesn't refer to all the dead children on the sidelines of a war. Listen, if you want to live with your mother forever..."

"I know, I know, okay? God, don't you think I know?" Yuffie's head met the passenger window with a dull thud, her eyes dropping shut as she murmured, "Man, if I spend one more day in that house, I swear to God..."

"...You always say that."

"What?"

"'I swear to God.'"

"Well go write a goddamn book about it if it's so goddamn fascinating." Thud. "Man."

"Yuffie..."

But they had reached the parking garage and Yuffie was already grappling with the door to force it open. Her sneakers hit the greasy asphalt with a slick sound, a strange sound that Yuffie, for some reason, found herself hearing through all the banging, clanging uproar of the city streets. She shook her head, pushed it aside, leaned back towards Leon's car and tapped on the window, leaving him with a little message.

"Pick me up in four hours, man. I swear to God, I'll have a job and buy us a fucking lobster dinner, okay?"

"You hate lobster."

"Yeah? Well I'll be rich enough to buy myself some grub I hate, got it?"

But as the day went on, Yuffie's lobster dinner began to dissolve into nothing more than a half-cooked burger and fries. ...Meaning that not only was she not having any luck in finding a job, but she was getting severely burnt out in the process.

"You mean to tell me you've never worked a day in your life and you expect to get a job in my firm?"

"You can't honestly expect me to hire you... Miss."

"Hey, lemme give you a tip, kid. Go back to school, wouldja? The only people who can get work in this town are college grads. Get it through your head."

It was because of all these rejections that Yuffie found herself walking the city streets, hands in her pockets and eyes downcast. Her old defensive machanism seemed to be malfunctioning-- she didn't feel the million-watt grin springing up to cleanse her face of failure, she didn't hear the snarky little remarks flit out of her mouth without second thought.

What she saw and what she noticed were the things outside herself, and it was because of this that Yuffie began to worry for her own mental stability, for it is a well-known fact that in Yuffie's eye, there was no world outside herself.

Well. Talk about confusion.

A wrong turn here, a wrong turn there. She found herself in a branch of town she'd never been to before, a dirty, mud-streaked corner of some abstract Tinsletown, far away from anything and everything. At first glance, Yuffie believe the place was practically deserted. Gone was the chaos of the city streets, instead replaced by silent alleys and only an occasional hurried passerby. Ah, but then...

Then she began to see them.

The lucky ones out on the streets had wedged themselves in the countless doorframes of the old abandoned bulidings of the city, some cool kind of shade that they could find and claim as their own. The others littered the sidewalks right alongside the discarded McDonald's meals and Wendy's utensils, silent and still and dead by almost any definition. Some of them sat with their eyes glazed over, looking up at the sky as though waiting for something-- others held their eyes shut, fingers clasped-- and still others did nothing but sit and watch the dust rise and fall on the streets.

It was there Yuffie first saw her, leaned up against a brick wall, just inside the shadow of an alleyway. She held a cigarette to her lips and ran a tiny, nervous hand through her scraggly hair. Probably just some junkie of some kind. Probably just some lame ass kid who figured she could get away from home real easy.

And yet there was something about her that Yuffie found rather disconcerting. She had no clue what it was at the time, but she assumed it was in the girl herself-- her attitude, her vacant stare. Some way in which she leaned against the wall like she was so fit to be there and only there.

The girl looked towards Yuffie. She'd felt her staring. But she didn't glare, she didn't flinch. She just simply observed. And so Yuffie felt curious enough to move in closer, to wave one hand in some semblance of a greeting, as though this girl was just some childhood friend she hadn't seen in a long time.

"He--" The girl had to clear her throat, coughing harshly into her hand before trying again. "Hey."

"You, uh... have someplace to go? It's... it's gonna be really hot today-- a scorcher, yanno. I mean, that's what I've heard."

"Yeah, well, I've heard it too."

"...You don't have a home or anything?"

She stared pointedly at Yuffie then, looking almost as though she teetered on the edge of bursting into laughter. "What the heck makes you think I just sit out here for the fun of it?" she asked. She started to laugh then, but it gave way to another small coughing fit. The cigarette was tossed to one side, left burning itself down on the alley floor.

"You run away or something?" Yuffie asked.

"Is it really any of your business?" the girl asked.

"Well, I mean... if you had parents or something... you know. I'm sure you could go back," Yuffie rambled on. But no, the girl just smiled sweetly, calmly. She had given the answers countless times and came off as being mature and well-rehearsed to Yuffie in such a way that it was even more bothersome that her casual posture against the wall.

"No, no. No parents."

"You have parents."

"When I was born, there was no doctor around. My mom had to bite my umbilical cord off with her own teeth, you know." The girl leaned in closer towards Yuffie and for the first time, there was a glimmer of something other than complete nothingness behind her eyes as she said, "But when she was doing it, she missed. When she was biting the cord, she missed, and instead she bit out my entire heart."

Fighting to ignore the unnerving skitter of nerves walking along her back, Yuffie crossed on arm over the other and pretended she's never heard the comment. She wasn't quite sure what came across her then, but she heard the words spilling from her mouth before she could even think to hold them back. "...Hey," she said. "I'll, uh... I'll give you this twenty for a kiss and a good read of poetry. Whaddya say?"

For all that she looked like one hell of a chain-smoker, the girl's voice was surprisingly soft, taking on a strange, liquid-smooth tilt to it. Perhaps it was forced, overcompensating for a smoker's hack.

"...I don't do poetry. And I'm not a whore," she said evenly.

"Did I ask to sleep with you? No. You've probably got herpes for crying out loud. I'm just trying to be a fucking good Sumaritan. Sue me."

"I would if I had a lawyer."

"Fuck you."

It was a strange thing, really... As Yuffie turned away, she was more disturbed than she was angry. She'd had the essays crammed down her throat in highschool-- hell, she'd witnessed it herself. She'd seen and experienced enough to know that there was nothing stronger than the hate of the hated. And she'd seen and experienced enough to know that, sad as it was, homeless bums were hated in Traverse Town.

So had she wanted the other girl to lash out? Hit her, give her a bloody nose, scream profanities and wail like some nutty old banshee?

Yuffie didn't know. But she somehow found some disgusting part of herself which said, "Don't worry about her, don't worry about that freak. The heat'll knock her off by the end of the month. You'll see."

When Leon found Yuffie, he was not in his car. He was seated on a park bench with two fresh ice cream cones held awkwardly in his hands, and as Yuffie sat down beside him he wordlessly passed one on to her. Pistachio, of course. Her favorite flavor only her boy would know.

They sat in silence for a while, a silence that grudgingly acknowledged Yuffie's complete failure and Leon's complete triumph in the infamous argument of--

"Yuffie... what's so wrong with just finishing up school?" There he goes again.

"Squall, cut it out."

"No," he said blandly. He wasn't angry, he wasn't scathing. But he was as firm and demanding as ever, something similar to a father, a friend, and a brother, all rolled into one. "You can't make a living like this. You don't want to spend the rest of your life living with--"

"Christ, Squall! Don't you think I know that!" Yuffie hung her head for a moment, her face prickling with the heat of the summer day and with the shame of knowing that she was still trying to fight a losing battle. "I hate this system. I've told you it before. I hate this system, man. No one's going to get anything fufilling out of learning crap we'll never use. I wanna go and experience things. Not learn about what other people have experienced for themselves..." she mumbled quietly.

She wasn't sure if Leon looked at her with sympathy or aggravation. But she felt an awkward hand on her shoulder and it was that awkwardness which burned her skin in a way the sun just couldn't. That realization that, despite all their years growing up together, despite all their differences they'd overcome... Leon was no closer to understanding her than he had been the first day they'd slapped each other upside the face with their completely opposite natures.

Needless to say, Yuffie was no closer to understanding Leon, either.

x x x

"Mom, I think I want to be a writer."

"...You're kidding me."

"I... well, no. No, actually I'm not."

Another seemingly uneventful evening in the Kirasagi household. Or rather... it had been. Yuffie narrowed her eyes at her half-empty plate before her, suddenly seeming very focused on mashing her remaining peas mercilessly beneath her fork. Shouldn't have said anything, shouldn't have said anything... She could feel her mother watching her, judging her, picking her apart with her beady little eyes and damn, it was enough to drive anyone straight to an early grave.

A thick sigh, a dry clack of dishes meeting the surface of the marble counter. Nails clacking against the surface and a silence that was anything but-- Yuffie gnawing her bottom lip and killing, killing, killing her food over and over again. Then came words-- always with the words.

"I swear to God, Yuffie. I mean, I know you have your off days, but you're not stupid, for God's sake! I mean..." Here it comes, I asked for it. Damn, damn, damn, but I should've known better than that... "Oh, Yuffie. Get it together, would you? And once you've got it together, do us all a favor and keep it together."

"...I wasn't joking, you know!" Yuffie's resolve began to crumble and she looked away angrily as her mother paused in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. She said softly, "I like writing, Mom."

There was a pause. And then came the question, "Do you like eating?"

"Oh Mom, for crying out loud..."

"Do you like sleeping in a bed, wearing decent clothes? You go on and be a writer, hon, lemme tell you something-- you be a writer, you better write all that stuff off!"

In her attempts to not flinch at the cold lash of the words, Yuffie's hands curled into stubborn fists, nails biting into her palms as her teeth bit into her bottom lip. Tie down her fists, tie down her tongue-- you've got her all bound up with nowhere to run.

Whether or not she sensed her daughter's pent-up rage, Yuffie's mother made a significant effort at making her tone a little less sharp, though it only came out as more of a listless drawl rather than much of anything else. "I don't want you living in the basement forever. I want you to have a life, hon. I want to have a life. Is it really all that hard?"

Yuffie didn't say anything. Instead, she studied the mush of peas beneath her fork and found herself fighting the sudden urge to be sick.

"Listen, hon. You just... you don't have the nature of a true writer. Come on now, all of them are either stoners or manic depressive freaks who sit in second-rate apartments all day with a musty old typewriter and last week's socks. You aren't one of them, Yuffie. I know it. You know it. You're not fooling anybody in this house... or anywhere else, for that matter."

At the end of the day it is me who blocks you out. I am the mountains that move you towards the ends of the earth, I am the clouds that shift and spin to hide--

Once safe inside her own room, Yuffie closed the screen open and waiting on her computer, didn't save, moved it all straight to the virtual recyling bin lying in a hungry wait on her desktop. She could make out the little digital paper scraps and made a serious effort to entertain herself by imagining their little scrams, begging for mercy as they were ripped to invisible shreds.

There was a piece of driftwood that hung over Yuffie's bed. She couldn't remember when or where she'd come across it, who she'd been with or why she had decided to keep it. But there it hung like some childhood trophy, suspended from her ceiling by four transparent little cables, giant, smooth, and hollow. During daylight hours, the driftwood had a lovely sandy color to it, its size stretching far enough to nearly lie completely parallel to Yuffie's entire bed. When the lights were out, the driftwood grew. Some shadow cast by moonlight or lamplight was sent flying down, up, left, right-- stretching the wood to distorted porportions, far more hollow than ever before.

It was that driftwood that Yuffie studied that night before she fell asleep. Her eyes walked the line of shadow and she focused so hard, somehow getting it into her mind that only this one magical piece of wood could hold the answers to her questions.

Will I ever really have what it takes to make it out of this house and on my own? Why does it seem like I'll only have what it takes if I do it someone else's way? What's wrong with my way?

But before the wood could answer, Yuffie was fast asleep, her dreams clouded with screaming paper, crooning gargoyles, and girls with bloody teeth and wicked smiles.

(x) (x) (x)

Love it? Hate it? Want it all to be over with? Lemme know.