And When That Day Comes Chapter Ten, a final fantasy vii fanfic

Disclaimer: I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

Claimer: I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the concept of materia beading, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of Da Chao into Da Cha O, the Lady Cho Lin Chang, and other things not found in FF7. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

And When that Day Comes

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—Insomniac, Straight No Chaser

Chapter Ten

And When that Day Comes

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—Insomniac, Straight No Chaser

Summer, Year of the Star that Did Not Fall

City of Wutai (formerly Da Cha O) --- Palace

"Blessed be Leviathan, who opens the gates of our birth and welcomes us in death," Yuffie mumbled as she held the three boxes under one arm. "All blessings upon Da Chao, who sows to reap, who gathers beads to string, who stands fair judgment over all."

"Blessed indeed," a soft voice echoed her, "be Leviathan, who opens the Great Gates at life and death, and welcomes us in his mouth."

She knew that voice. Months of fighting alongside its owner, of listening for it, of observing as everybody around her— including her— listened to it made it impossible for her to fail to recognize that voice.

"Vincent?" She asked. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you."

"Why in the name of the Planet would you be doing that?"

"Because I need to hear your explanation for this. It is out of character."

"Oh, are you another member of the There's Always another Choice team? Because let me tell ya, there ain't another choice!"

"You have a choice between marriage and Honour. You, of course, chose marriage."

"I'm too young to haul off and commit ritual suicide, Vinnie. Besides, me committing suicide over you is a little too ironic to handle."

"...Ironic."

His tone said he was considering something.

Though his voice usually contained no expression, Yuffie had never considered it a monotone. He spoke in tones— the dialect in Southern Wutai was heavily dependent on tones to convey meaning— it was just that the tones he used, you could never identify.

Her mother, she remembered, had possessed a very singsong voice, with similarly unreadable tones, when she had spoken to Sephiroth.

"Who is Lord in Le Phe Tan?" Vincent asked.

"Mao Li Shu. He threatened to take us to war, Vincent. Either my father issues a public apology for his father's deceit of South Wutai, or I marry his son and make Wutai a vassal state with my father's death."

If it hadn't been so damned dark, she would have sworn that she'd seen Vincent's expression change. The problem was that it could have been a trick of the shadows. The shadow-trick theory, she decided when Vincent unleashed one of those tangible silences, was looking less and less likely.

He was only silent like this when he had something to say.

"I am... sorry, Yuffie."

Tangible silence.

"This all my fault."

Somehow, she couldn't bring herself to accept (or even care about) his apology. Instead, she found herself saying, "He has four pictures of you. He carries them around with him everywhere."

"Is my father alive?"

"If he was Nao Hei Shu, he isn't. Nao Hei committed Honour twenty-three years ago this winter." She paused. "I think it's twenty-three years. Could be twenty-two."

Vincent gave no hint as to his feelings.

Yuffie didn't want to think about what Vincent was feeling. It was probably guilt. Not just because guilt seemed to be Vincent's default emotion, but also because he was responsible, in a way. Perhaps not directly— twenty-three years ago, Vincent wouldn't have been able to return to Wutai, but his father had killed himself over Vincent's absence.

Tangible silence.

"Why don't you issue the apology, Yuffie?"

She resisted the urge to just cry. She should have issued the apology. But her father had made her sign that damned scroll, and then kept her under house arrest until they received Mao Li's reply.

"It's too late. We've made the announcement... Signed the contract... I can't back out. That's the worst part. I mean, if I wanted to, I could. But I shouldn't, because if I back out of marriage, what's to say I won't back out of business deals?"

"Business deals?"

"Okay, you know what Wutai used to be known for? And I mean the Da Chao region."

"Materia beading."

"Yeah. Well, Shinra confiscated all our materia after the war. Not only did those bastards kill my mother, they stole our livelihood. Kinda hard to make materia beads if you haven't got any Mastered materia."

"Is that why you stole materia?"

Yuffie nodded. "I'm trying to rebuild our business in it. After all, we're the only ones who ever did it. I'm thinking, maybe, if Tifa's not too mad at me after this, I could get her to wear some of our stuff. Maybe Cloud, too. I know I can get Elena to do it. And Reno's got an earring, right, so I could probably convince him."

Vincent went quiet again.

"Bad idea?"

"Why not Cid or Barrett?"

"Cid's not likeable. I don't hear about all that many people wanting to emulate Cid. Nobody's going to care if he wears it. And Barrett... Well, Barrett doesn't seem the type."

"Advertising."

"Yeah. Why do commercials when you've got friends in AVALANCHE who are willing to swear by your stuff?"

"Would they be?"

"Well, yeah! Vincent, okay, look at this." She took out her mother's bangle. "See this? Sephiroth hit this with a Fire3 spell. I saw it. Do you want to know what killed my mother? His sword in her stomach. Not his magic."

"Your mother wore that?"

"Yeah."

"When she died."

"Well, no. See, Sephiroth hit it with a Fire3, she tried to call its power but did it wrong, so it got kinda melty, and then she gave it to me and told me to run."

Vincent just looked at her. She sighed, walking towards the Palace doors. "Come on in, Vinnie. Since you're not here to try and talk me out of it, we might as well do a little catching up."

"The only thing I needed to know was why, Yuffie."

"Well, now you know. I have a couple of things I want to know."

She watched him shrug. For a moment, she thought he would stay where he was. She thought wrong— he followed her almost immediately.

She led him through the Palace. The currents that had led her to Chekhov's home had vanished. No, this time, she moved of her own will through the dark and almost-silent halls.

She found her room, slid open the shoji door. She didn't bother to ask questions until she'd lit the paper-covered lamps.

When she turned back to face Vincent, she nearly screamed.

His cloak didn't cover so much of his face anymore; he'd trimmed off part of the collar that had covered his face. Not only that, but Yuffie could immediately tell, once she had sufficient light, that he'd cut his hair.

It was short, now; a "respectable", "professional" length.

That haircut was why she nearly screamed. It wasn't Vincent. Vincent was dramatic, dark, brooding. Very much the type of guy to have long, beautiful hair. And now it was short. Professional. Not Vincent.

"Vinnie, your hair!" She cried. "You cut your hair!"

Vincent's eyes crinkled a little. For an instant, the corner of his upper lip twitched upwards.

"Cloud noticed that first, too."

She couldn't resist. The urge overpowered her. She hated herself for doing it, because she'd hated the idiot girls who'd done it to her, when she'd first cut her hair.

She stood up on the tips of her toes and stretched out a hand. Vincent, not knowing what was coming, bent down a little. He didn't actually need to. She could reach the top of his head while standing on tiptoes.

Her fingers slid into his hair. She tousled it a little, just getting a feel for how different it felt and looked.

A year ago, before she'd honed her people-reading skills, she'd never have noticed his faint blush. Even though his skin was ultra-pale in the dimness, thus making any red tint in his skin stand out, she wouldn't have noticed it. She wouldn't have noticed it because she wouldn't have known to look.

And now, she couldn't stop looking for things like that.

He shifted slightly away from her, and, blushing herself, she dropped her hand. She backed away a little.

"Sorry," Yuffie mumbled. "I swore that if anybody I knew ever cut their hair, I wouldn't just run my hands through it, but I guess that was a promise I couldn't keep."

"Tifa and Shera did that too." He made a small sound, something Yuffie figured equated to a chuckle. "Repeatedly."

"The first time I cut my hair, before I'd even put highlights in, people on the street would just walk up to me and put their hands in my hair. It was really annoying."

Vincent's eyes crinkled again. His upper lip twitched again. It stayed twitched for exactly six seconds.

Yuffie counted them. One-Materia-Two-Materia-Three-Materia...

Gawd, he really had a smile that choked up her breathing. It was every bit as perfect as those glares he absolutely had to practice in the mirror everyday. No, it was even better, because it wasn't designed to make her want to pee her pants.

Vincent reached out his human hand. It found its way to the side of her face, moved to approach her hair.

Yuffie reached up with her left hand and pulled the ribbon. Her hair fell out of the simple braid.

Vincent's eyes widened. "Your hair."

"Yeah. Dad kept bugging me about it, so I wound up not cutting it. That was about a year ago..."

The longest portions of it brushed just past her shoulder-blades. It was nowhere near as long as Vincent's had been when he'd cut it, but it was a decent length.

Her hair grew like bamboo. Actually, a rather lot like bamboo, because bamboo grew quickly and everywhere. Nothing stopped bamboo from growing except death, and it was almost completely beyond control, because it had an underground root system.

Gawd, she hated bamboo. They had bamboo forests just north of the city. Planting bamboo anywhere within the limits of a city or a town was illegal, now. You just couldn't control bamboo. One summer, you had a cute little miniature bamboo forest. The next summer, you didn't have a miniature bamboo forest; you had a full-grown bamboo forest that was growing fucking everywhere.

"Speaking of irony."

"Huh?"

His hand was still in her hair. He was still brushing his fingers through it. Playing with it.

"I cut my hair, you grow yours."

"I don't think that's actually ironic."

"Fitting, then. We seem to have... traded places. It is I who joins AVALANCHE, and you who turns them away."

"That is fitting."

"Grossness," he said.

Yuffie laughed. That word, coming from his mouth! It was both endearingly funny, yet obviously foreign to him. "You know, you've gotten better at this whole socializing thing."

"Necessity is the better part of genius."

"Meaning you had to?"

"Meaning I had to."

Yuffie laughed again. She saw his eyes crinkle at the corners again. His lips twitched upwards. This time, they stayed up for the count of thirteen seconds.

"Why did you have to?" She asked.

He still didn't take his hand out of her hair. "The same reason I cut my hair."

"Okay, then, Mr. Evasive. Why did you cut your hair?"

"I had to."'

"And why did you have to?"

"Because I had to."

Yuffie took a different tack. "Vinnie, why are you being so evasive? It's not like you."

"Yuffie, the answers I have to give, would you believe them?"

"Well, yes, because it's you giving them to me. I'm the liar here, not you. So tell me: why did you cut your hair? Why have you had to get better at socializing?"

"For the past eight months, I have been a blackjack dealer in a casino in Gold Saucer."

The first thing that struck her about this was not the fact that Gold Saucer had casinos. It was the fact that Vincent had set foot in Gold Saucer without being dragged. Her wonder at Gold Saucer possessing casinos came second.

"Vincent, you went to Gold Saucer. And nobody dragged you. That's a freaking miracle."

Tangible silence. Vincent continued to play with her hair, although his grip tightened for a moment. He was studiously watching it pass through his fingers, deliberately not looking at her.

"Sorry." She paused. "I never knew Gold Saucer had casinos..."

"They are hard to find... They only open at night, and Gold Saucer no longer advertises them the same way they advertise the rest of its attractions."

"You mean it's always had casinos?"

"Forty years ago, it had nothing but casinos."

Yuffie blinked. She tried to imagine Gold Saucer without the Chocobo racing and jump portals and the battle square and other stupid games.

She failed.

"Hard to imagine, isn't it?" He smiled at her again.

That was what, four times in one night? She wondered briefly if he had hit his head somewhere, or if Cloud had dosed him with Hyper. Vincent's willingness to socialise had improved, but even so... Could he change this much in just a year?

Still smiling, his eyes met hers. The way they crinkled at the corners made his face seem more human.

She almost, almost smiled back.

"You're smiling," she said.

Not the brightest thing she could have said. But, well, Vincent already knew Gold Saucer being nothing but casinos was hard for her to imagine. Why not just cut straight to the chase and ask what was on her mind?

"Yes," he replied. "I am."

"That was four smiles in one night." What did I do to deserve them? "And I've only ever seen you smile once before. One smile in three months, Vincent. And then four smiles in one night? That's... Out of character."

"And you've only smiled once. When I last saw you, you almost always smiled."

"I've laughed."

"And even your laughter has changed. Neither of us are the people we came to know."

His hand stilled. His gaze travelled from her eyes to someplace behind her head. His expression changed from the warmest she'd ever seen it become to a study in non-emotion. It was so emotionless that it seemed to radiate anti-emotion.

Yuffie felt eyes drilling into her back. Somebody was giving her a death glare so potent she could physically feel it, she could feel the die, die, die rays punching holes into her shoulder-blades and she didn't know who it was.

She turned around.

Vincent's hand dropped from her hair.

Three men stood on the other side of the still-open shoji door.

Tsen Li had a very forced look of apathy on his face. Mao Li wore a grin that Yuffie thought had to hurt his jaw, it stretched so far.

And her father...