e's notes: tense changes are purposeful, as is the overdose of italics. it's not always rainbows and butterflies, baby.
--
Walking on Water
should you stay or should you go?
Yuffie understands the word 'distance.' She had to learn it at a young age, when she crash-landed in an empty town with a black sky and no parents or family members, just a couple of teenagers who knew as little about childcare as she herself did. Distance from her home – distance from other people.
Distance from him.
Her unwilling babysitter, often saddled with her because the others were busy trying to, ugh, help other people, taught her words she should not have had to know at that age, like alone
"Leave me alone"
and ass
"You're such a pain in the ass, Yuffie"
and abandon
"Can't believe we just abandoned them like that."
She whined and complained, but he told her that he needed time alone to collect himself, to really understand what had happened, to decompress and breathe and grieve.
He claimed that more time alone was what he needed, but Yuffie thought that more time alone was the one thing that he definitely did not need at all.
--
When they got their home back, he tried to hide just how hopeful he was. Yuffie was older then, and understood more – understood the far-off gaze in his eye was not him being an asshole; it was him looking, always looking, for the one person he had lost. They got it back and for a day, a week, a month, he was not Leon – not angry and bitter and scarred – but Squall, who was angry, yes, but also supportive and strong. He was who she remembered from when she was so little, the person she had looked up to and loved because of how long the shadow he cast was. It seemed like they'd never left.
And then, one by one, they started coming home – Cloud, Tifa, Reno, Locke, and even Sephiroth. The people that Yuffie and Aerith and Cid had so loved and missed, the people that they had left behind, were returning, and they were getting everything they'd ever wanted.
Except no one was coming back for him. He had to sit and watch Aerith and Yuffie be happy as they regained what they'd lost, and he could do nothing.
Yuffie pretended not to notice his longer hours at the postern, at the reconstruction site, at the marketplace.
Time alone.
Distance.
For him, there was too much distance for anyone there in Radiant Garden to close.
--
Yuffie understands the term 'self-loathing'. Aerith taught it to her when she was seven years old after she asked why Squall was so angry at all of them.
"I don't do anything to him," she'd spat, stamping her foot in the way only a seven-year-old can.
Aerith had put an arm around her shoulders, squatted down beside her, and whispered in her ear, "He's not angry at us, Yuffie. He's angry with himself."
"Why?" The infinite question, posed only by children with such conviction, tripping off her tongue before she was ready to let it go. It surprised even Yuffie that she asked – she didn't invest much thought in things like that; once she got an answer, she was off, onto the next subject.
Unstoppable.
Insatiable.
That is who Yuffie is.
"He's self-loathing, sweetie. He – well, he thinks that it's his fault that we got out okay. He feels bad that we left our friends behind, and he blames it on himself," Aerith confessed to her. She nodded sagely.
Harsh.
Rough.
That is who Squall is.
Even now, at eighteen, she wonders what drew her to him in the first place, and what deep, hidden part of himself allowed him to keep her.
--
He'd gotten so used to disappointment by the time she really did come back that he didn't go down to the runway anymore. He was in the postern, in Ansem's computer lab, trying once again to figure out the machine that so eluded him. He dedicated himself to figuring out the computer and the way it worked, but all the instruction from Tron and Sora could not reverse his computer illiteracy. He seemed to take it as a personal offense that he just could not master it.
Aerith ran all the way to the postern to grab and tell him. Yuffie had been in the marketplace, getting one of those new ice creams with the older woman, when Rinoa walked past them, hands clasped at the small of her back and her eyes taking in everything. It was clear that she wasn't admiring the way the town was restored – she was looking for someone, for him.
The look in her eyes matched the one that Yuffie had seen in Squall's so many times.
Aerith took one look at Rinoa and ran. Yuffie bowed her head and ordered the ice cream, trying to be invisible, trying not to think about what was going to happen.
When they came back, Squall was running. He called out her name, and Yuffie cringed and tried to melt into the stones.
He noticed Yuffie standing off to the side, grasping the popsicle stick tight enough to burst her knuckles through her skin. He noticed her and saw her and remembered her, remembered him and her, remembered that he was supposed to be in some sort of a relationship with her.
He noticed her, and he ran into Rinoa's open arms.
--
Yuffie understands the word 'impossible'. After all, that was all she ever heard as a child – that one word, tossed around so effortlessly. Nobody noticed how final it sounded, especially to a young girl; nobody realized how lightly they were using it, how foolishly.
"We'll never make it back. It's impossible."
"Impossible that anybody who stayed survived."
"Unlikely to ever see them again. Impossible."
"Yuffie, hon, sorry, but it's just a crush. You and Squall – well, even you know that's impossible."
She never told Aerith that her desperate hopes of ever seeing Cloud again were impossible. She never told Cid that getting back his workshop, all the ships he'd built and cared for, was impossible. She never told Squall that Rinoa finding them was an impossible idea.
So why did they have to tell her that everything was impossible?
--
Squall and Rinoa looked so natural together. Yuffie watched them and wondered how she ever could have seen herself with him; wondered if the past two years had all been some sort of joke, some kind of playacting – the kisses, the fights, the sex, the sparring, the jokes, the nights, the mornings, the love.
She wondered who Squall had seen when he looked at her under the glow of the Traverse Town stars.
Sora tells them about when he watched Sally and Jack dance under falling snow and how he pictured him and Kairi in their places. That makes Aerith gush about how romantic things like that are and beg Cloud for a dance, which he promptly refuses. Squall, sitting beside Rinoa, glances over at her, and even though he isn't saying anything out loud, the look on his face, in his eyes
So, what? You want me to ask you?
is enough for Rinoa to know exactly what he is thinking. She grins in response (a mischievous, happy, sly, excited grin all rolled into one, which is the way Rinoa always grins and Yuffie hates her for it, hates her charm and her mystique and everything that draws Squall to her) and holds out her hand. Squall slides his gloved fingers into hers and together they hop down from the ledge they are sitting on. He guides her out into the middle of the square and, in front of all the vendors, all the people, all of his friends, he and Rinoa begin a silent waltz.
The worst part about it, worse than how romantic it is and how almost magical it is that they both have the same tune in their head to keep time to, is that Yuffie knows Squall never would have agreed if it had been she who asked him.
--
"Who are you?" Yuffie asked desperately as he went to walk out of the door, went to follow Rinoa. She was tugging on the hem of his shirt, trying to hold him back, trying to keep him.
"What do you mean?" he returned, peeling her hands off of his clothes.
"Who is this guy? Where was he hiding for all of those years? How come I never knew that you were nice, that you were fun, that you were – that you were a real person?" she begged, hoping against hope that she wouldn't start to cry (impossible).
"Yuffie," he started, rolling his eyes, in the condescending way that he used to when she was little and asking him about something that he'd rather not explain (like sex).
"I want to know!" she shouted, stamping her foot again, in the way only an eighteen-year-old can. "I want to know why you didn't treat me the way you treat her. I want to know why you told me you loved me when it was obviously untrue, I…I want to know how you said we were in a relationship when you were still in love with a ghost!"
"She's not dead!" he screamed suddenly, and that was the one thing she had not expected. Her eyes widened, and she looked up at him the way she had when she spilled her milk and he had to clean it up – she was afraid that he would hit her, always afraid that he would go just a little bit farther this time. He went on, yelling, "They all told me that they were dead! They said everyone was going to die because we took the last ship out! Everyone I cared about, everyone who cared about me – suddenly they were all dead! But she's not, she's not, she's here and she's with me and they said it was impossible but it's not because –"
We pray for our sorrows to end
He broke off, realizing that his run-on sentence was becoming frantic and harried and completely unintelligible, and took a deep breath. He let it out slowly, ran a hand over his eyes, and then said, "I loved her – love her – Yuffie. You don't just…get over something like that."
"Don't even tell me that I was your – your 'rebound girl'," she spat, glaring up at him through the tears in her eyes.
He turned around and started walking out of the house again. Rinoa was standing in the courtyard of stone, her hands behind her back, grinning at him and waiting.
He'd waited for her for so, so long.
"I love you," she whispered, and turned away, ashamed that, in her weakness, she admitted it.
He paused for the briefest of moments before continuing out of the door. Yuffie spared a glance back and saw that he had met up with Rinoa and they were now heading to the marketplace, their hands linked.
and hope that our hearts will blend.
--
Yuffie understands what Kairi means in her letter, the one that Sora sends them a copy of. She understands that it is about Kairi and Sora, but also that it is about Squall and Rinoa, and how two people don't just forget one another when they're separated. She understands that people who love each other, who really, really do, will always be together.
She also understands that she was the only one who didn't realize this from the start.
Cloud and Aerith realized it.
Sora and Kairi realized it.
Squall…and Rinoa realized it.
Why didn't she?
Why didn't she see that the reason she couldn't get into his heart was because it was already blended with someone else's?
She knows what Squall was thinking when he paused for that one second after she confessed to him.
I love you, he had thought, but I loved her first.
--
One night, she dreams about the old days.
She's a little girl again, running through the streets, being chased by Aerith, who was asked by her mother to look out for her. She's laughing, sparing glances over her shoulder to see if the teenager is catching up, and then she's looking forward again, focusing on running between the legs of people in her way and around carts and other children her age. She runs up the stairs to the ledge by the crane, with Aerith huffing and puffing behind her, and then she darts down to the bailey.
Yuffie runs in the semi-darkness, looking for a nook to hide in. She goes to dart into one of the alcoves, but the one that she chooses is already occupied.
Squall's standing there, and so is Rinoa. He's leaning on his elbows on the ledge, overlooking the Great Maw and the castle in the distance, and she's beside him, her head on his shoulder. She says something to him and he looks over at her and laughs, sounding surprised, as if he hadn't expected to. Yuffie stops in her tracks and looks up at them; they do not notice her.
Rinoa pushes a hank of his hair out of his eyes and then traces a finger down the scar across his nose. She flicks the silver stud in his ear, trails her fingers down his heavy necklace, touches the armguards he's wearing.
He says to her, "What are you doing?"
She replies, "I'm committing you to memory, in case we get separated."
He laughs. "How could that ever happen?"
Yuffie understands distance.
"Things happen. Something might come up, and we could –"
He takes her hand and squeezes it tightly, tightly. "I won't let it. I wouldn't forgive myself if I did."
Yuffie understands self-loathing.
"Never say never, Squall," Rinoa chides lightly, waving a finger under his nose. He swats it away.
"I swear to you that I won't." He reaches out a finger and touches the rings on the chain around her neck. "That's what this meant, right? Remember that?"
"I remember that," she agrees, thumbing the rings herself. "You promised me that you'd –"
Yuffie understands impossible.
"Yuffie!"
All three of them turn around as Aerith skids, finally, into the bailey. She's gasping and hyperventilating, doubled over, her hands on her knees. She glares darkly at the little girl, and then looks at Rinoa and Squall, who have the guilty look on their faces of forbidden lovers.
Yuffie and Squall, who share a nine-year age gap, make eye contact. He blinks and turns away first. Rinoa looks at her and smiles, but touches Squall's arm. He takes her hand and they disappear, headed to the postern and privacy.
Yuffie wakes up.
Yuffie wakes up.