Title: Three Times
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Characters: Yuffie, Axel, alternate Yuffie
Prompt: #6 Hours
Word Count: 713
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Yuffie… is not Yuffie any longer.
Author's Notes: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Somewhat suicide warning.

For six hours he sat at the restaurant waiting for her. It hadn't sunk in yet that she wasn't coming. She never came, but still he waited. They weren't lovers, they weren't dating, they weren't even friends. They were somewhat acquaintances, more like fellow members of Organization XIII. Apparently, she had turned into a nobody only a few days before she had found them. Most nobodies didn't know their 'other name', who they were before they turned into a nobody. She did. Her nobody name is Luciusia. Her real name was Yuffie Kisaragi.

He knew why she didn't come to any of his dinner meetings. She wanted her body back and she wanted to get it back her way. She didn't believe in what Organization XIII was doing, yet she joined anyway. He believed it was actually because she didn't want to be completely alone. It had nothing to do with the actual Organization XIII. But she soon discovered that the members rarely saw even each other. Now he had tried to make an alliance of sorts three times, and each time she blew him off.

Once he had met her before she turned into a nobody. Well, he hadn't met her, but he had met Yuffie Kisaragi. She was…flamboyant, wild, and pretty funny. She tried to kill him. She didn't remember. Although they were similar, Luciusia was much different. She was a little bit more calculating and she didn't seem to care for her companions. Not that she had any companions. He supposed he would say she didn't care about anyone, only her own selfish loneliness. Once she had told him that without being human again she would never be happy. In many ways she reminded him of Roxas.

Roxas didn't really care either, not after he became a nobody. He didn't care if he died or anything. What the two of them didn't know was that he cared. Roxas was his best friend. Without him life was lonely. Luciusia…Yuffie was…if he possessed the ability to blush he would have. There was just something about her that made him giddy. Giddy was not normally a word used to describe Axel. She really was pretty, if you looked at her from the right angle, and she was fun at times, and she was defiant.

It was then it hit him. It was like a sudden pang of dread or something in the bottom of his stomach. It was an odd feeling, like pain dulled out by something. Something bad was going to happen. And that bad something was going to happen to Luciusia. To Yuffie. He had to find her before she destroyed all her chances at life. He couldn't let anything happen.

When he found her she was on a tall cliff, looking at the sharp rocks below. She looked up when she heard him coming, "Once," she smiled sadly, "On a distant world I heard that people who willingly die get their one wish. That world was kind of weird, but it's all the information I've got." She stood up and walked towards the edge even more.

Axel shook his head, "That's not it- that's not the way to become what you once were."

"It's just an experiment."

"You could die!" He was desperate. He couldn't lose her so easily.

The sad smile crept back onto her face, "Would that really matter? Would anyone really care?" Now she was tottering at the edge, "I once had a family. I think I was even in love, too. But that was all ripped from me in a single battle. Would it really matter?" With that she fell down the ridge. But, as her foot left the surface she realized that she wasn't ready to die. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

Something closed around her wrist and hauled her back over the edge. Luciusia looked at Axel through teary eyes, quickly flinging her arms around him, burying her face in his chest, "I would care. I would care more than you'll ever know." He ran a hand through her hair, "We'll figure out how to become real again together. Do you hear me? I said together." And like that they sat for hours, sobbing, talking, and, occasionally, kissing.