Two Roads
It could, she figures, have gone either way. Maybe Vincent wouldn't have stayed up with her after Aeris died, or maybe...
Well, let's just say, they might have killed each other five minutes into the quest.
Opposites do not always attract. Sometimes, they repel, and when forced together, will not adapt and learn to love each other, but reject, and, snarling, and destroy each other in futile attempts to get away.
Yuffie is wild, bright and boisterous and everything Vincent cannot stand. She screams and laughs and moves like a monkey, capering around him with grace and style, until she trips and goes flying headfirst towards the ground. She calls him a vampire, finds all his weakest points and sticks pins into them, drives him insane.
Vincent is calm, quiet, and morose. He prefers to sit and brood, and his silence turns Yuffie's skin to insects, making her babble and dance with greater intensity, as if to make up for it. In his cabin, he broods, on missions, he fights. That is his mantra, his routine and security blanket.
Then, she becomes the security blanket.
It happens, one night on a mission. Yuffie wakes up screaming from a nightmare, and Vincent runs in, finds her cold and crying and shivering in her blanket, and he knows the feeling. His nightmares are always quiet ones, and he wakes alone and terrified in the dark. She is lucky, he thinks, that she is loud in her nighttime terrors; someone will always hear, always come.
So he comforts her, and they sit outside the tent that night, on watch together. She cannot sleep, he doesn't dare to try.
After that, it's only a matter of time. Yuffie's cries draw Vincent before anyone else, and by the time Tifa and the others have arrived he is already soothing her. She clutches him and sobs, and the others leave, bemused.
This goes on for months. Then, one night, Yuffie wakes, no scream on her lips. She makes her way to the ship's canteen, looking for tea. Usually, on nights like this, Vincent is there. She doesn't know why, or how, but her sleepless nights line up with his.
Tonight, he is absent, his empty place conspicous. She doesn't know why, but she is driven to find him. She is used to following her urges, so she doesn't question.
She ninjas her way to his room, which he shares with Nanaki. The door is not locked, but a tiny theif-y part of her wants, really, really badly to pick the lock anyway.
Thank god, the hinges don't creak as Yuffie pushes open the door, and she steals into the tiny room. Nanaki is curled on one bunk, and on the other is Vincent.
He is...well, he's a sight. Vincent lies, bare chested, his gauntlet piled on top of his leather shirt and cloak and boots. His skin is so white it glows; she knows he doesn't produce melanin properly, an unexpected side-effect of the experiments. Like the snow princess in one of the fairy tales her mother had told her, his black hair laid against his skin, ink black. In this moment, he is monochromatic, his eyes closed.
His breathing, she notes, seems laboured, and he is tossing, his legs tangled in his very thin blanket. Then the tiniest noise, and she is suddenly terrified for him.
A whimper.
It is all of a second before she is across the room, soundlessness forgotten, shaking him awake. He resists her, at first, shoulders tightening, but then he wakens to her pleads, and his eyes open.
Yuffie has never been happier to see them in her life. White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony, and she grabs them all close and cries.
Vincent holds her as she cries. It is strange, but holding her is a comfort. As Nanaki awakens to find Vincent and Yuffie curled in each others' arms, he finds that her crazy, wild colorful life is all he needs to pull himself out of his nightmare.
Years later, at their wedding, Yuffie flounces her way down the aisle, leading Cid, with her father scowling in the seats to one side, and Vincent hears her mutter to her favorite foul-mouth pilot, "You curse and I'll kill you," and smiles.
She could have driven him crazy. He might have let her cry alone. Things might have been different. But really, they're both glad that they aren't.