We parked down in the wilds that night. No nice, fluffy bed in Costa De Sol for Yuffie. No inn in WuTai. Just a canvas tent, bread rolls for supper, and a bed roll to sleep on – both rolls equally thin, paltry, and unsatisfying. Maybe that was why no one went to sleep; those sleeping bags make for restless nights, particularly on an empty stomach. We all sit there in our clearing in the woods; it's a dark, moonless night, we sit on fallen logs and on boulders, staring into the flames, lost in our thoughts. It's kind of emo, really. We must be the world's most morose band of traveling universe-savers.

"Want me to tell your fortune?" Cait Sith says hopefully, into the darkness and is greeted with chorusing "NO"s and one "Shut up, Cait Sith!".

Cait Sith shinks in on himself, looking more cold, hungry and tired than a stuffed toy has any right to. "It was just a question," Cait Sith says, sounding injured. "You don't have to bite my head off."

Red XIII stirs at that. "They couldn't," he says, wearily if peaceably, from where he sits staring into the flames, "And I didn't intend to." The big cat paused. "Not until you actually started on our lucky colors," he added.

"It was just a metaphor," Cait Sith says, with offended dignity. "You didn't have to – "

"Drop it, Cat A and Cat B," Cid grunts warningly. "You're giving me a headache."

So said Cid, and we all dropped off into gloomy silence again.

It was totally because Vincent was there. No one had to say it, but I could tell. He was pretty much the most depressing person ever. He didn't have to say anything. Just his presence did it. Yes, I was ignoring the fact that most of our nights had been like this recently -- I mean, we were potentially facing apocalypse – but it was sort of comforting to put a name and a face on it. Goryo.

When Aeris begins to speak, of course, no one tells her to shut up. That would pretty much be like killing a kitten. She's so impossibly sweet, no one would ever hurt her. "Not long now to the Temple of the Ancients," she says softly. Tifa – sitting beside her, the best friends closer than ever now, in the face of all this danger – nods softly. Aeris laughs a little. "The closer we get," she murmurs, "The more I think about the Gold Saucer. Isn't that silly?"

Cloud glanced at her. Something softened in his hard blue eyes. "I don't think that's silly at all," he said in a low, hearty voice.

Ugh, mush. Aeris smiled her angelic smile at him. "We had good times there," she said with a gentle mischievousness. It's rubbing Tifa the wrong way, I can tell; she's shifting, looking uncomfortable.

Well, so would I. Aeris should know better than to bring this stuff up right now. She's a great person, a lovely person – I'm all about Aeris, don't get me wrong – but this is the one flaw of hers I've always noticed. She's sure she's got Cloud, and she either doesn't mind dangling it before Tifa's desperate eyes or doesn't realize she's doing it. I'd go for ignorance over malevolence, with Aeris – she's too nice to actually want to hurt Tifa – but that doesn't change the fact that it does hurt her. I wonder if anyone else is noticing this;

Cid, at least, looks a little grim. Then again, it's Cid, so it doesn't prove anything.

"What is the Golden Saucer? I've never heard of it." Vincent speaks for the first time that night. We've all heard the director's cut of his life story, now; he's been locked in a coffin for years and years while the world went by. How exceedingly goth of him. Now he doesn't know what anything is or where anything is and asset to the team my ass.

I realize he hasn't eaten his roll; it sits, untouched, on the boulder beside him. My stomach rumbles a protest at this and I narrow my eyes. Hospitality-shirker. I'd pay good money for those empty carbs right now, but I know I'm not going to get them. It's not even that I'm too polite to ask; I just have too much pride to go crawling to that freaky goryo for food. I'll starve to death, and when people go "Whatever happened to that lovely, kind, spunky, intelligent, charming girl Yuffie Kisaragi?" Vincent will have to answer, "I was too enveloped in my own creeposity to notice that she was dying of malnutrition." Ha ha!

Oh, whoops. The conversation is carrying on without me and I grimace, trying to catch up. "—those phoenix chicks on the mountain," Tifa is saying. "Remember, Aeris?"

Aeris giggles an affirmation. "Do you remember? I told Cloud his hair looked like a chocobo."

Cloud coughs a little bit, looking away, while Cid grins at him maliciously.

"Well, your hair does look like a chocobo," Tifa says judiciously, with a rather similar grin. "You can't blame Aeris for saying so."

"I miss those times," Aeris says, and everyone falls silent, because we can all suddenly see tears glinting in the firelight, in her eyes. "Those early days," she says awkwardly, "When we were just starting out, when anything seemed possible. Do you remember when we met Yuffie in the woods?" Her stained-glass laugh shatters when it hits the ground. She wipes at her eyes. "How we'd just been fighting those – those stupid frogs – for days, and all of sudden we see this random ninja girl threatening us with –"

"Dismemberment," Tifa replies, laughing softly. I can feel a slow flush creeping up my breastbone. I don't like being talked about like this, as though I'm not here.

"She looked so young," Aeris murmurs." She's close enough to reach out, touch my knee. "You reminded me of myself right away, Yuffie," she says. There are little tears sliding down her lean cheeks. Cid, Cloud, everyone looks deeply uncomfortable, and I feel exactly the same way. Only Vincent watches like it's a show, a movie, like he – needs some damn popcorn or something.

Aeris pauses. "When this is over," she says to me hesitantly, "When we've done what we set out to do, I'd like you to come with me, Yuffie. After you collect all the material that you possibly can, of course." She laughs, but her voice is vulnerable. She's making me an offer I can barely stomach to refuse. "Stay with me in Midgar, with my stepmother. Just for a few months. It'll be lovely."

I can feel myself just kind of looking at her. I must look so stupid, gaping at her, not saying anything.

"You're like the sister I never had, Yuffie," Aeris says softly. Her eyes, so shiny with tears. "I'd love to spend some real time with you. And we will have time, once this is done – all the time in the world."

I feel a sick sense of foreboding, then, without quite knowing why. Some dark inkling that what Aeris is saying – and it sounds wonderful, and so right – can never possible come true. It's like a premonition. I mean, I want to tell her yes, of course I do. I want to grab the invitation with both hands and haul her after me to Wutai too – show her the real WuTai, not the tourist trap. I want to invite her too, I do, I do. But the sick clenching in the pit of my stomach is telling me it's never going to happen.

I can feel Vincent's gaze on me. Goryo. Bringing of ill luck, of misfortune. Omen of bad tidings.

I stand up, with a jolt, brushing Aeris' hand off my knee. "You are so damn depressing!" I exclaim. "All of you. Sitting here talking like you're in a nursing home. I'm out of here. BED is more interesting than you people. I'll see you around."

I spin and turn on my heel and stumble off, away from the bonfire, and I can feel those red goryo eyes burning a hole into the small of my back, I can feel them long after I know I'm out of sight.