All Through the Circling Years (Part Three)
Part One
Part Two
Nobody has any idea how long they travel for. There is no clock and no way of measuring time out h ere in space, where it’s all just hot white lights drifting by too far away to reach. There is little to do, nothing to talk about, and mostly, they sleep. They sleep because they’re hungry and have no food, they sleep because they’re bored, they sleep because they’re all still young and scared. Yuffie sleeps because Aerith has to keep casting a spell over her; she gets air sick something fierce when she’s awake.
Cid won’t let any of them try to pilot the ship so he doesn’t sleep, doesn’t trust the auto-pilot not to get them smashed into a meteor. “And wouldn’t that be shitty?” so he stays awake out of sheer stubbornness and tries not to think of what to do next with a bunch of kids he doesn’t know from Adam.
They are dirty and starting to smell. It’s familiar to Yuffie, the scent of desperation and unclean-ness that only comes from sudden and very long trips. The ship was not meant for situations like this; it’s small and was mostly a local cargo ship with none of the amenities a larger transport would have.
“It was a project of mine,” says Captain Highwind, “to see if we could achieve space travel.” He pats the wall lovingly. “Looks like it worked; ain’t she a beaut?”
“Great, we’re trapped in a tinker toy,” snarls Squall. Everyone ignores him; it’s just easier that way, otherwise Tifa would snip back and it’ll devolve into a shouting match soon enough and they’ve had enough of that already, thank you very little.
-
Finally; after days and days and days of drifting and starving and slowly dying, a voice comes to them over the radio. It’s kind of squeaky, and sounds very sad, the voice gives his condolences for the things they’ve gone through, and gives coordinates to a World. “They’ll have a place for you, no worries.”
It’s another two days, at least, before they reach the World. Nobody has the energy to move much. Cid parks the ship just outside a city gate, a big neon sign reading Traverse Town lights up the entrance. He eyes the gaggle of kids he’s amassed, scratches at the side of his nose and says, “Sit the fuck down and wait.” He wags a finger disapprovingly at Squall who had already half-risen from his place against the wall. There’s no point in protesting; nobody can really seem to muster the required strength to stumble their way to the door even if they wanted to. But then Cid smacks the release for the hatch door and a breeze drifts in and the fresh air feels so good.
They sit, waiting, trying not to hold their breath. Trying not to wonder if they’ve come all this way just to die. Cid finally comes back with a whole entourage of people that are poking and prodding at everyone, asking all sorts of questions and not giving anyone a chance to get their bearings enough to answer. Someone comes up with huge bowls of clear broth that smells amazing. “Take it easy,” says the man when Yuffie tries to gulp most of the bowl down in one go. “No need to make yourself sick.”
They want to take Cloud away, to a clinic so they can try to help him because he is so obviously broken that even these strangers can recognize it. But as soon as one of the people try to move him, he makes a sick little grunt and Tifa doubles over him protectively. There’s not much for it, so they leave him in her care and do what little examination they can right there on the ship.
The final diagnosis is shock; there’s not much to do there. The examiner asks Tifa if she will be able to bathe him, or if she’d like some assistance. The way her face turns pink at the cheeks would probably be funny, if they weren’t sitting exhausted and half starved some light years away from home.
Squall is the one who pipes in and saves her any embarrassment. “I’ll do it.” Everyone who has been travelling with him pauses to stare in mild confusion at his general vicinity. He doesn’t quite shrug and says, “We roomed together, at the dorms.” As if that explained anything at all.
Aerith comes to Yuffie, a quiet smile on her face, asks the younger girl if she’s okay to walk. “I’ll carry you, if you’d like.”
But Yuffie shakes her head so hard she makes herself dizzy and forces herself to stand up, stumbles a way to the door. It’s not easy; for all their days on the ship, they hadn’t been required to walk farther than a dozen steps either way. Her body aches and she has to focus on each step she takes. Yuffie falls, once. Trips and lands on her hands and knees and bites her tongue against the hiss of pain. She’s a ninja. Ninjas don’t cry over scrapes. There’s a little blood, on her left knee, but otherwise she’s fine.
Aerith murmers a quiet heal and the pain in Yuffie’s knee is gone. She doesn’t say thank you, can’t seem to get her mouth to form the words, so she stares up at Aerith with wide, dark eyes. Aerith ruffles her hair a little, says, “Come on. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to a shower.”
-
Traverse Town has a shelter for the Newly Lost. Apparently, they are not unfamiliar with the Worldless. There’s a desk at the entrance, with a kind-faced woman seated behind it, on her chest a name tag that reads Elisa. The very first order of business is signing themselves in. Names, ages, brief physical descriptions are recorded in a ledger and then they are shown down a hallway to the bathrooms.
The whole shower thing is separated by genders, but beyond that it’s two identical rooms divided by a flimsy wall that is only thick enough to keep prying eyes away.
Yuffie has never been naked around near strangers before. She remembered a time when her sobo would give her baths in tubs full of frothy bubbles, but she almost doesn’t count that. Sobo was family, and besides the bubbles hid everything. Here though, there is only a room full of showerheads, a drain in the middle, and the ugly florescent lights overhead.
Aerith and Tifa do not hesitate to strip off their clothes, dirty and sticky with dry sweat and shadow dust and other things they’d rather not think of. They dispose of the used clothes in a trash bin; a fresh set has been provided by the people that welcomed them. Simple, non-descript homespun tunics and skirts in matching shades of grey. Yuffie’s provisions are smaller versions of theirs. There is shampoo and soap provided for them, and the older girls get down to business right away.
Their voices are bright, falsely cheerful as they scrub down, pausing to wash each other’s back and help each other detangle their hair. Yuffie stares at the soap in wonder, trying not to blush at the other girls. She’s never seen anyone else naked before, isn’t sure how she’s supposed to feel about so much exposed skin. She gives the soap a compulsory rub against her arm, frowning when it fails to lather well.
The girls finish washing and look over to see Yuffie’s mild state of confusion. They head over to her and, gently, as if she’d like any help. Yuffie still can’t seem to find the words in her throat, so she nods silently.
Tifa helps her wash her little body while Aerith scrubs at her hair for her, dragging her nails lightly along her scalp; it makes Yuffie’s whole body tingle. “You have very pretty hair, Yuffie.” Aerith says sweetly.
They towel off, dress in their matching clothes, and head out to their new temporary home.
There is a dorm, once again divided by gender, a dining room where more fresh and hot food waits for them - a thicker version of the soup from earlier - with tiny blobs of something white floating in it, and thick, fresh bread with a healthy dollop of butter.
“It’s tofu,” explains one of the refugees who has been here for a few days already. He introduces himself as Hope. He’s younger than Tifa and Aerith, but older than Yuffie and has a kind smile for everyone, except for the man who came with him from his world. “They aren’t big on meat here, or seasoning for that matter. Too many people with too many weird allergies,” he says, “and it looks kind of awful, but it doesn’t taste that bad.” Hope takes a big spoonful as if to prove his point.
Yuffie thinks it does taste that bad, it’s squishy and kind of flavorless, but she’s so hungry that she gobbles it up before she’s really thought about it and is left staring at an empty bowl, wanting more and not knowing how to ask for it when Aerith tips some of her own soup into Yuffie’s bowl.
“Eat up,” she says, tearing chunks of her bread off to sop up the remains of her soup with. “It’s probably better while it’s still warm.” She looks to Hope, who nods in vigorous agreement.
“Definitely.”
They are shown to the dorm room after briefly touching base with Captain Highwind and the boys.
“For fuck’s sake, girlie, just call me Cid and get it over with, ya hear? We’ve been through too much for all that polite bullshit.”
There are a few other girls already in the dorm, curled up with their backs towards to door, so Aerith and Tifa lead Yuffie over to three beds side by side quietly. Aerith tucks Yuffie in, asks if she’d like a bedtime story. Yuffie thinks it over for a minute before shaking her head no. “Okay,” says Aerith. “But if you change your mind, I’m in the bed right next to you.” She brushes Yuffie’s hair back and whispers, “Sweet dreams.”
The bed is uncomfortable, kind of lumpy, and the pillow is flat and the blanket itchy. There is no one familiar around her, two semi-strangers and several more perfect strangers and for the first time in months, Yuffie sleeps.
-
At breakfast they are approached by a Man. He smiles congenially, greets them with a cheery, “Good morning! You’ve probably heard this a lot, and you’ll probably hear it a lot more, it’s kind of part of the package, but, welcome to Traverse Town!” He introduces himself as Eugene. “I guess I’m… well... kind of the director of this place?” He pauses to scratch self-consciously at the back of his neck.
Eugene has a clipboard tucked under one arm, and explains that everyone will need to be assigned jobs. “It helps balance everything. That way we can still have the resources to help you folk and others like you.”
He asks if they have any specific skill sets, is genuinely pleased to learn Aerith is a healer. “We’ll send you to the clinic, if you don’t mind. I have a friend there that sure could use the help.”
He’s mildly befuddled as to what to do with Squall, is completely lost as to what to do with Cloud. But he seems to know exactly what to do with Yuffie. One look at her and he shakes his head. “She’s too young and already been through too much for that age. I’d suggest therapy, best to try and curb any psychotic notions while she’s still fresh-faced. Seriously, we haven’t been here that long and already have more than our fair share of the mentally unbalanced. Not that we blame anyone, really. I mean, this is a really bad situation no matter how you slice it.” He eyes Yuffie carefully. “You got that, pipsqueak? You are officially forbidden from going crazy.”
Yuffie sticks her tongue out at him and earns a laugh in return.
It’s finally decided that Cid, who is good with his hands and various tinkering type things, will work with the local electricians. Aerith is, obviously, going to the hospital to work among the doctors, even after she protests and says she’s only a healer in training. Squall is assigned to a group of people who are dedicated to building more permanent homes for everyone (for the refugees, and geez, Yuffie thinks, this is all so very familiar.)
“I know it’s not what you want to do,” says Eugene, “but I can’t let a kid like you go around with a great damn sword like that. People don’t trust the youth, not your fault. Not even really their fault and it’s for your own good that you keep that locked up for a while, you hear?”
After some deliberation, Tifa is assigned temporary guardianship of Cloud and Yuffie. One is currently too stupid to do anything for himself, and the other is too young. Tifa volunteers to do some cleaning around the shelter. She hauls Yuffie and Cloud after her. It takes several minutes of quiet coaxing, like dealing with a bunny, before Cloud responds and makes a shuffling step to follow. Yuffie is instructed to hold his hand, and she doesn’t enjoy it at all. He’s clammy and doesn’t grip back, just hangs against her palm limply. He stumbles forward when she gives a light tug and if he wasn’t so pathetic, she’d consider seeing how much control she really has over him
Tifa runs around dusting things and rearranging furniture and taking cushions out to be beaten in the fresh air. She asks Yuffie to help with things, like putting her hands in the small places she can’t reach, and the super low places that she can’t see under, and suddenly the whole shelter is spick and span and clean and everyone is a little in awe and a lot of frightened by Tifa’s energy.
She tries to cajole Cloud into helping but all he does is stand there, blinking slowly and letting his hands slide back down to his sides anytime they try to rearrange him into something useful. He makes those strange little grunting noises if they move too far away from him. Yuffie takes to subconsciously dragging him behind her, just to avoid those awful noises of his.
Lunch is the worst. Cloud can’t feed himself, so Tifa gives him little spoonfuls of the broth, tips his head back so it slides effortlessly down his throat. She soaks his bread in the soup in small pieces and lets it dissolve in his mouth. “There,” she says, “Tasty, right?”
He doesn’t respond, just keeps up his vacant expression. Yuffie tries not to look at him, focuses on her soup. It’s the same stuff as it was yesterday, still with the squishy bits of tofu in it, but at least it’s something in her belly and the bread is good.
Aerith comes in near the end of their lunch to begin her own. She’s wan and exhausted but she still manages to smile at them, ask how their day was. Tifa inquires as to how work in the clinic is going and Aerith becomes uncomfortable. “There’s so many people with so much hurt,” is all she says before quietly tucking into her soup.
They finally find a wheelchair for Cloud; Eugene brings it to them. “We thought this would be helpful.” He eyes Cloud sadly as Tifa leans over to wipe a bit of drool off his chin.
“That’s very thoughtful of you, thank you.” Tifa wheels Cloud away, calls for Yuffie to come on.
They find a spare blanket to lay over Cloud’s lap, a pillow for behind his head. He lolls either forward or backwards and Tifa thinks he looks slightly less desperate with his head leaning back.
Afternoon finds them in the kitchen with Hope, scrubbing pots and making the next batch of soup for dinner. They find a stool for Yuffie to stand on and Hope lets her help dry the silverware.
Tifa has volunteered for dinner duty: they show her the recipe for the simple soup, the bread is already baking, and she is a flurry of activity. Banging pots a little too loudly, sashaying across the kitchen, humming to herself. Tifa prods Hope with gentle questions, asks what his world was like, if he doesn’t mind talking about it. They start trading stories about being chased by great beasts and suddenly, Hope opens up and is laughing. Yuffie even catches herself smiling a little and stares hard at the spoon in her hand, wonders how she should feel about this development.
“Then, Vanille is all, ‘it’s okay, we can do this!’” He raises his voice to a falsetto and bats his eyes. “Needless to say, we couldn’t do it. We ended up hiding on top of a boulder all afternoon until the beast lost interest in us.” Hope rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “It was a crazy adventure, that’s for sure.”
“It sounds like you were surrounded by good friends.” Tifa doesn’t look at him, focuses on stirring the pot in front of her. Hope nods, pauses in his dishes and removes a folded knife. He stares at it, quiet, and strokes the length of it.
“They really were. I wouldn’t be alive without them.” He pushes his glove down a little; stares at a patch of skin just above his wrist with a distant, fuzzy expression. Yuffie splashes him with a bit of the soapy water by “accident” and when he jumps she has a smile ready and waiting for him. “Okay,” he says, “I get it, back to work for the slacker.”
Tifa offers to serve dinner, parks Cloud right next to her at the serving table, a huge cauldron of the soup simmering in front of her. She encourages Yuffie to go sit, Aerith even waves her over and ushers towards a chair next to her, but Yuffie hesitates. Tifa recognizes this and offers an alternative: “Or, you can help me serve everyone, if you’d like?”
Yuffie is parked next to the napkins and silverware and hands a spoon and napkin to everyone as they cross her in line. They smile and ruffle her hair and tell her how cute she is. Someone stops to ask Tifa if Yuffie is her daughter, or sister and Tifa smiles in response. “Oh no, she’s just a very dear friend.” Which makes Yuffie’s heart feel funny. She barely knows Tifa and she already considers her a dear friend? She smiles a little wider as she goes on with her job.
Once everyone else is served Tifa makes up bowls for herself, Yuffie, and Cloud, and seats them in the little wedge of space Aerith saved for them. Cloud is at the very end, Tifa next to him, and then Aerith and then little Yuffie with Squall on the other side and Cid just beyond him. There are other people at the table, Hope sits right across from them and the man he’s with a few people down, they’re very careful not to make eye-contact with one another, but both smile readily enough at Yuffie and the others from Radiant Garden.
It’s crowded, and the lingering tang of melancholy hanging everyone is almost more palpable than their soup. Most everyone talks with a funny accent that requires a lot of listening and straining of the ears to understand, but it’s strangely warm and comforting, here at this over-stuffed table with these strangers.
-
Today Tifa is on laundry duty, which means so is Yuffie. The washroom is vast and hot; Tifa won’t let Yuffie near the tubs full of boiling water, but she lets her bring the lines that need to be cleaned and they make a game of it. Can Yuffie get the washings to Tifa before she’s finished scrubbing what’s currently in the tub? Every time Yuffie tosses another sheet her direction, Tifa clutches her chest and shouts, “Oh no! I lose another five life points! Aaargh!” and once in a while she grins and says things like, “Uh oh, looks like I found a power up!” and goes into a super fast washing mode.
They fold all the newly washed things and bring them to another group of people who hang them on lines in the back of the shelter. Tifa offers to take the clean, dry linens to the clinic for the women at the drying lines.
“Ach, please, dearie, I’m the Lady Cluck, at ye services.” She leans up and pats Tifa on the cheek with one wing. “You are a wee sweet thing, aren’t you?”
Tifa beams in response. “We don’t have anything else to do right now.” She leans over to ruffle Yuffie’s hair. “And we can say to Aerith while we’re there!”
The clinic isn’t quite as busy as Yuffie had been expecting. There are a few people there, most of them staring at the wall blankly, much like Cloud, but they respond easier and when someone walks up to them and speaks to them, repeats themselves a few times, eventually they come back to themselves and are able to answer.
They meet Rapunzel, a pretty, young woman with an impossible amount of hair that is twisted into a complicated style on her head and who smiles happily at them. “Eugene told me there was a whole group of you! I’ve met Aerith, of course, and it’s so nice to meet you, too! Please, come in.” She swings the door open and there are a few more people, some with their arms in slings and other things. Rapunzel explains, “We try not to over-do it on the magic healing around here. It’s better for the body if it can heal naturally, so as long as it’s not life-threatening. I can’t even begin to tell you how nice it is to have Aerith around! She knows so much, I’ve been making most things up as I go along.” Here, her eyes are distant. “I’m not very good at this, I just wish there was more I could do for people.”
At this time Aerith comes out, “Hush, you. Don’t let her lie to you, Rapunzel has done some amazing things. Do you know she has been running this place single-handedly? There are medics from other worlds, but everyone has varying levels of skill and Rapunzel is the one who organized all this. And come see this.” Aerith drags them through to a back room where huge murals are being created by patients, all of whom are concentrating very hard and smiling and occasionally sharing things with the person next to them.
“Therapy. All her idea.” They try to convince Cloud to paint something, give him a brush, dip it in a color for him, and even make a few experimental strokes on the wall while holding his hand. But as soon as they let go, he drops it back to his side and the brush clatters to the ground.
“No rush,” says Rapunzel, petting Cloud’s hair back. “Just get better, okay? We’re all here for you.”
Rapunzel and Aerith walk back with them. It’s almost the end of the day so they tuck their patients in and leave them with the evening watch, a large dark man with a booming voice that introduces himself as Doctor Sweet and who is more than happy to shoo both the girls out.
“You all work way too much. Go enjoy dinner for once, you hear?” and with that the clinic door is firmly shut behind them.
The walk back is quiet, almost peaceful.
“It never gets very sunny here, does it?” asks Tifa.
“It’s kind of a sleepy world,” says Rapunzel, as if that actually explains anything. “If you climb up the city wall, you can actually see the sun when it’s up. It’s almost like it’s shy. It peeks out just enough to lighten the color of the sky and then it just slips back down. Sometimes I feel like it’s a protective mother, checking on her young while they sleep but she doesn’t want to come all the way in the room in case she wakes them up.”
And they share a laugh, all of them and Tifa pats Cloud’s head. “Maybe we should make a trip one day. I think some real light would do us good.”
Maybe it’s the talk of the light, or maybe it’s the comfortable warmth of camaraderie blossoming, but there comes the undeniable hiss of something foreign materializing in the air. It’s such an ugly sight, this dark blot in the midst of their safe harbor that Yuffie forgets to breath for a moment.
Then Rapunzel is moving, spinning into action and pulling something out of the bag at her side and she whacks the shadow a good one, and another good one, and once more until it finally gives up and dissolves into a little pile of dust and Rapunzel holds up her frying pan triumphantly.
“How can those things be here?” asks Aerith, compulsorily checking on everyone to make sure nobody got hurt.
“Don’t you know? The heartless are how we all ended up here.” It’s a term they hadn’t heard 'til now. “King Mickey is the one who explained it to us. The heartless, that shadow and the ones like it, are constantly seeking hearts, trying to lay claim to them. In turn, this creates more heartless and eventually, they destroy the world. The survivors inevitably end up here.”
“Always?”
“Almost always.” Rapunzel looks at the sky. “We don’t get many heartless around here, unless another world has fallen. We should head back to the shelter.”
They do. There’s a young couple who introduces themselves as Eilonwy and Taran and a something named Gurgi. They stay for dinner and then they wave off the warnings of danger outside the city walls and they leave.
-
They get a visitor a few days later. He’s hardly taller than Yuffie and he greets Eugene and Rapunzel like old friends. He looks around the room with a sad little smile, his tail hanging limply behind him. “Golly, looks like you all have a full house here.”
Cid leans over the table and stares at him. “You the guy from over the radio?”
The mouse grins wide. “Yup! Name’s Mickey, nice to meet cha!”
They shake hands and exchange pleasantries. Introductions are made around and Mickey shakes hands with everyone; he even goes over to Cloud, touches his hand, smiles kindly and tells Cloud how happy he is to meet him. Aerith introduces him to Yuffie and he smiles and says a chipper, “Hiya!”
Yuffie smiles, shakes his hand, and Mickey manages to ask only yes or no questions so she can give a quick jiggle of her head either way.
That’s something they learn about Mickey: he has a weird sixth sense for how to deal with people and makes everyone obnoxiously comfortable around him. Perhaps if Yuffie had been older she would be more skeptical. But the fact remains that she’s not, she’s only barely a little girl and there’s a giant friendly mouse chatting her up and she still can’t find her voice but Mickey makes that seem okay.
Mickey wants to know what kind of ship they were in so Cid takes him out to where the transporter has been parked. They talk tech for a while. Alloy this, engine that. Lots of nodding and “yeah, but did you ever try…” happening. He stays for the afternoon, makes rounds and talks a little to everyone at the shelter, even the people he didn’t direct here.
“I’m so happy you guys made it okay.” He tells Cid and the others. “And if you need anything, anything at all, so long as it’s in my power to help you let me know.” He gives them a radio code to contact him at. “There’s someone watching it around the clock, you just ring me through there and they’ll find me.”
Mickey is a hugger, embraces them each tightly with a pat on the back (and a ruffle of the hair, for Yuffie) and returns to his ship.
-
The time has come to say goodbye to Hope and Snow and the woman Fang. Yuffie doesn’t know Snow or Fang that well but she’s already missing Hope and he hugs her tight. “I know, but we have other friends that we have to find. They’re still alive, you understand, they have to be. No way would Light let something like this stop her.”
Everyone has come out to see them off. Eugene and Rapunzel shove a ton of food at them.
“Where will you go?” asks Rapunzel and Snow shrugs.
“Wherever we can, I guess. We don’t really know where to start, but we can feel them, in our hearts. They’re out there and they need us.”
With a smile and a wave, they’re gone. Disappeared into the night.
-
Home units are assigned. Two bedroom, one bath, but hey, the kitchen is kind of big, for the six people that came hurtling lightyears away from Radiant Garden. Eugene smiles apologetically at them. “It’s cramped,” he says, “and I am sorry about that. But hey, it’s cozy!” He looks exhausted, dark circles under his eyes and he doesn’t joke as much as normal. “It’s something, though. I wish it were more.”
Then he explains about everyone getting jobs. Real jobs, to earn real munny. “The housing is complimentary; honestly, it’s more for our benefit than yours. We’re still getting a steady stream of the Lost in, and need the room while they recover. If you can’t find anything suitable as far as work, you can always come help out at the shelter.” He shows them the meal tokens that they’ll earn. “It’s good for food in your bellies. For the day, at least.” He gives them one each to start them out.
Nothing, as far as Yuffie can tell, has really changed. Aerith is officially signed on at the clinic, earning a measly two munny an hour. Cid becomes something of a general handy-man around town, since apparently a lot of shit was broken and nobody had the foggiest idea of how to fix it. People pay him what they can, or at least send him home with enough food to feed a not-family of six. Squall disappears for hours a day and comes home, dripping sweat and not talking and not eating.
He and Tifa finally sort of get into it when Aerith asks him how his day was once and he doesn’t respond, just stares at her like she’s someone explaining, “It’s dark at night.” Tifa can’t take it anymore, slams one fist against the wall, a spiderweb of cracks appear and oh yeah, she’s really strong, isn’t she?
“Is it so hard for you to be halfway decent?” He doesn’t look so much abashed, not in the conventional sense, but the very tips of his ears turn pink and he looks away.
“It was fine.” He finally grumbles before slamming the bathroom door, closest thing to a victory with him.
-
They find out, from a third or fourth hand source, that Squall has been going around with a huge ledger, taking a census of Traverse Town. Eugene shrugs, says he came to them with the question and, upon realizing that they were more than a little disorganized, planned everything out himself. He’d even drawn up a rough map of the town; that’s what he spent the first few days doing. Since then he’d been going door to door, inquiring about how many people, adult and children lived there, did they have any pets? And most of the people, still heart-broken and mourning, would drag him inside and sit him down for tea or milk and cookies and share their stories. Because that’s how most of them healed. They talked about it and cried it out and Squall was either too polite or too horrified to say anything and Traverse Town was way bigger than Yuffie and the others had originally thought.-
“It was never meant to be a town,” says Squall, after he’s outed. “It was just people, trying to get by until something changed. Then more people showed up, and more. Then, all of a sudden, they went from trading and bartering to buying and selling. Then all these stores and shops and restaurants cropped up. It’s all just a huge mess. The streets aren’t even named, there’s no mayor or anyone in charge, beyond the shelter guy. This isn’t a town. It’s a joke.
Everyone is still thinking about the fact that Squall walked all over and talked to people, or rather had them talking at him, to take anything he said seriously and Tifa was still giving him this dopey “I totally see through you” smile that made him glare harder at the wall he was staring at so he wouldn’t have to look at any of them.
“So.” says Cid, hunched over a pair of pants that had blown a hole in the knee and darning it shut rather expertly. “If yer so concerned, do something about it.” Squall left for the bathroom then, his favorite hiding place, slamming the door behind him.
Somehow it wasn’t as effective as the first hundred times.
-
Months roll by; everyone has fallen into a sleepy pattern. Wake and dance around each other to get ready for the day, go their separate ways and come back together at dinnertime. It’s late, or early, or kind of hard to tell since there never seems to be much sun in this place. Just a little peek of it at the horizon, lighting the sky from darkest blue to something paler, something a little violet and pink at the edges before slipping quietly back down.
There comes a sound and, if the occupants of the house were pressed to describe it, they’d probably say it was the sound of a mind breaking. It’s guttural and pained and Yuffie wakes with her heart in her throat and she’s on her feet before she can think about it, they all are. All three girls go tearing out of the room, Tifa pausing to scoop Yuffie up before hightailing it to the boys' room.
Squall has Cloud restrained, the blond thrashing and flailing and clawing at everything, trying to get away and Squall is yelling at him and Cid is yelling at him but he’s not responding and then he sees Aerith and he cries, just cries and sobs and goes limp in Squall’s arms and nobody can figure out what to do and then just like that, as soon as Squall relaxes his grip, Cloud is gone, jumped through the window and there’s another scream and they see something, something black and impossible ripping from his shoulder blade, just the left one, and the wing swings open with a leathery kind of snap and Cloud jumps and then that’s it. There’s the sound of something Wrong happening, the air being rent open and Cloud is gone.
-
It’s only been two days since Cloud ran away. At that late hour again, Yuffie wakes up because something is off, something is Wrong and she’s not sure how she knows it, but she does. So she’s awake and goes padding through the house on near silent feet, she doesn’t even need to touch the wall to guide herself, finds herself in the kitchen and sees a familiar silhouette bent over the table, long spill of inky hair draped over a shoulder and Tifa looks up, flashes a smile that is dim in the darkness. Comes over to kneel by Yuffie and kiss her forehead, her lips are cool and her hand is warm when it brushes Yuffie’s hair back. “Be good, okay?” and she slips out the door, quiet as a mouse.
Yuffie watches with a sense of finality before she snaps to action, runs back to the bedroom and shakes Aerith. Aerith grumbles and rolls over, tells her to go back to bed. Yuffie shakes her harder, panic building in her throat and finally, “Aerith, please wake up.” And just like that, Aerith is up and out of bed and kneeling next to her, touching Yuffie’s face and brushing her hair back and asking, “What? What’s wrong?”
“I think Tifa is leaving.” They run back to the kitchen, Aerith snaps on the lights as they go and eventually Cid and Squall come stumbling out. “Whazza?”
Aerith and Yuffie are already at the table and Yuffie can see the glass holding the note down, condensation still beading down its side and she realizes that it hasn’t been that long that there’s still a chance, they could catch her.
Aerith scoops Yuffie up, runs out the door and they can hear it, the groan of the gummi-ship and they’re just in time to watch take off. Nobody can believe it, that Tifa just did that, that she could do that. Cid is outraged, swearing a blue streak and takes to throwing things at the sky in an effort to relieve the tension in his heart. Squall is silent and unimpressed but Yuffie watches him, carefully, and has done so for enough days now to see the tight line of his shoulder and how he’s carrying the hurt close to himself.
Yuffie watches the sky, wonders which twinkling light is actually Tifa, on her way out into the great wide somewhere. “She’s all alone.”
Aerith sighs, forces herself to smile and scoops Yuffie up, kisses the smaller girl on the cheek. “She’s Tifa, she’ll be alright.” They sway their way back into the little house, leave the light on for Cid so he doesn’t stub his toe on anything, he’s already in a bad mood, no need to make that worse.
Aerith says, “Hey, since we’re already up, how about a thing of peanut butter toast and a glass of milk?”
Yuffie eyes her carefully, wonders when she’s going to say something about the lost voice suddenly being found but she doesn’t, just goes on about how hungry she is all of a sudden and Yuffie smiles and says, “Me too!” and Aerith even lets her help butter the bread. Aerith hums under her breath and starts singing, a simple little ditty. They keep it quiet because Squall is in the living room, sharpening his gunblade and Cid is just outside the house, puffing away furiously at a cigarette. They can see him, mark his location by the glowing arc the cigarette makes as he puts it against his lips, puffs, and brings it down. Up and down up and down, it’s simple and repetitive and Yuffie has to focus on the butter knife in her hand, she’s already accidentally buttered her thumb and Aerith finds a chair for her to stand on, so she leans against the counter and watches the bread toast in the pan and Aerith teaches her the words. Yuffie’s voice is a little too high but she catches the melody easily enough and they sing softly to themselves as their snack is readied.
Aerith makes a little bit of extra toast and pours an extra glass of milk and just as they sit down at the table, Cid comes ambling in and doesn’t even ask, just sets himself down at the table and glares at them. “Damn kids.” Grabs a piece of toast and slathers peanut butter on it and takes a huge chunk out. “Always thinking they know best,” he says around a mouth full of toast.
Yuffie fusses at him. “That’s rude, you’re not supposed to talk with your mouth full.”
He growls at her and she sticks her tongue back at him and Aerith hushes them both. “Eat your toast.”
They do and it’s warm and a little sweet and tastes delicious with the milk.
-
Aerith brings Yuffie to the shelter the next day. Yuffie runs up to Eugene, all smiles. “Hey bossman, can I help out today? I’m all on my own and Aerith says I gotsta be a growed up and I promise I’ll be good and you don’t has to give me a token or nothing, just let me help, okay?”
He stares at her a little bemused. “Uh-oh, the creature has learned to speak!” He pretends to thinks about it for a second and says, “Yeah, actually. I could use your help today.” He tells Aerith not to worry about it, he’ll keep an eye on her.
As soon as Aerith is around the corner Eugene squats down next to Yuffie. “So, how do you feel about heights?”
-
Cid has been hired to help clean out a stockroom at the accessory shop. The previous owner had certain…eccentric tastes and the current owner isn’t sure about anything and just needs it organized and seems too frail himself to do anything more than offer a simpering smile from behind the register. Nobody is really sure why he asked for Cid, except maybe because Cid is mean enough that if it turns out anything is living in the pile of muck back there, chances are he’d shout it into submission.
Yuffie ends up tagging along because nobody really knows what to do with her anymore. She would be with Tifa and Cloud except… well… there is no Tifa and Cloud and so she’s spent the last few days hanging out at the shelter with Eugene and he doesn’t mind, per se, but she always feels a little underfoot and she can’t go to the clinic with Aerith, because the smell of sick people turns her stomach, and Squall wakes up before anyone else so nobody knows where he goes during the day, so Cid is the lucky winner today and has a small, humming shadow tail behind him.
“Sit.” He points at the stool and Yuffie sits. “Stay,” he says and slams the door of the stockroom behind him. She counts to one hundred, as slow as she can, in her head and then backwards to one before she gets up.
Cid locked the door behind him and Yuffie gives the knob a compulsory jiggle. It’s just sturdy enough to present the challenge of her having to find something to pick it with. She goes poking about the store front, picking things up and putting them back down. There are drawers, all foolishly unlocked, full of sparkly rings and necklaces and everything is just a huge tangle and when Yuffie goes to touch a particularly shiny bracelet, she feels a zap of something foreign run through her body and steps back with a shiver. She eyes the drawer warily before closing it with her foot. Moves on, finds another drawer and when she pulls it open a handful of, of all things; knitting needles fall to the front. Yuffie smiles and manages not to cackle too loudly. Not that it would matter; she can hear Cid crashing about in the storeroom. She could probably set off a couple firecrackers in here and he wouldn’t notice.
The lock pops easily enough when the right needle is applied. Yuffie slides it into her sock-you can never tell when something like that will come in handy, and slips through the door quietly.
The storeroom is huge and requires a trip down an alarmingly rickety set of stairs to access and smells vaguely of age and disuse. Yuffie hugs the wall, moves lightly into the room. She can see things being thrown some distance, obviously Cid’s idea of “sorting” and Yuffie sneaks around the nearest mini-mountain of junk, narrating her daring adventures in her head. She brushes her hand across rusted metal contraptions, something that looks like a birdcage and something that looks like a boot and then... Oh, she smiles and it’s a short leap into the rafters and she pops down in front of Cid.
“Hey, Pops!” and he pauses, makes a face and mouths the word like it’s something dirty. She grins at him, presents her finding and barely keeps the excitement from vibrating her whole body. “Can I keep this? Please, oh please, say I can. I promise I’ll be a good girl and I won’t stab nobody with it that doesn’t deserve it and I won’t play with it at the dinner table and I won’t leave it on the floor for anyone to trip over and die. Please please please?”
Cid is turning the shuriken over in his hand carefully and Yuffie knows what he sees. It’s old and rusted and duller than a marble, what harm could it be and she can almost see it before it happens, the moment when he shrugs and tosses it back to her and she remembers Norio and what he said to her, so she fumbles for it and lets it clatter to the ground. “Knock yerself out, kid.”
Yuffie gives a whoop of excitement and spends the rest of the day tossing the shuriken into the air. By the time Cid is ready to stop for the day, the storeroom in a slightly more organized mess, Yuffie has re-taught herself how to hold the weapon.
The next day she begs to stay at the shelter with Eugene. Aerith is a little suspicious but gives in. Halfway through the day she gives Eugene the slip and finds herself in the exact place that she wanted to be: the back alley with the abandoned crates. She’s “borrowed” a can of paint and makes a sloppy target on one of the crates. Counts off fifty paces from her target and spends the next few hours tossing her beat up little shuriken at the target.
It’s awful in the beginning, and not really a whole lot better by the end of the day but any improvement is improvement and on her way back to the shelter she practices twirling the knitting needle that she still keeps in her sock.
Eugene frowns heavily at her and asks where she’s been and, a little guiltily, she says, “Nowhere.”
“Look, kid,” he says, squatting down so he can look her in the eye. “I get that sometimes, there’s things you have to do. I’m all for that, really, I am. But I have to know what it is you’re doing, so that if trouble comes up, I can find you and make sure you’re okay, got it? Aerith trusted me with you today; let’s not make her reconsider that in the future, please?”
So she sighs and holds out the shuriken and he studies it carefully. “And you know how to use this?”
“Of course I do! Papa was teaching me! I’m the princess of Wutai and we’re a proud ninja clan!”
Eugene holds his hands up. “Okay, okay, sorry. Didn’t mean to step on your toes here.” He thinks about it for a second and finally says, “What do you say we move your target practice here? We’ll hide it in the basement and then you’ll be here with me, like we both told Aerith you would be, but you can still practice and you’ll be safe and I won’t have to worry about you too much. Okay?”
“No, not the basement.” And she shivers, thinking of buildings and being beneath one and how it wouldn’t take much, just a crack in the foundation and all of a sudden you’re surrounded by it and Eugene quickly backtracks.
“Okay, I’ll store your target down there, but we can put you in the little breezeway, between here and the clinic, deal?”
Yuffie grins and realizes this is why she likes Eugene so much.
-
A man shows up tugging on something that is invisible to all of them. Yuffie loops behind and follows him for a while. He’s wearing a dress and a matching hat and his beard is so long she can’t help but wonder if he hides things in it and he keeps mumbling weird things to himself. It gets boring quick, though, and Yuffie gives a tug at the hem of his dress.
The man makes a weird noise and jumps spins around and looks something between cross and curious.
“What cha looking for?” asks Yuffie.
The man tugs on his invisible thing again and stares at her intently. “You are a citizen of Hollow Bastion?”
“Uuum, I guess I was, sort of?”
He hums and consults his invisible things. “And how long have you been here?”
Yuffie shrugs, “I dunno, a while. I guess? Is this one of those things I need an adult for?” She considers the knitting needle still snug in her sock, wonders how much damage she can do with it. She’s never stabbed an actual person before, wonders what sort of sound a knitting utensil would make as it broke the skin and the man laughs.
“No no, no need for that. My apologies, I seem to have frightened you. I am merely just arriving from the Bastion, and was curious as to how long ago the relocation took place.”
“Whoa, how are you just getting here?”
“I am often away from home. I am a wizard, you see.” He materializes a flower and she makes a face at it.
“I’m not really a flower kind of kid.”
“Ah, understandable. Well then, my name is Merlin, and whom do I have the pleasure of conversing with?”
Yuffie wipes her hand on the hem of her shirt and holds it out for him, just like Cid taught her. “I’m Yuffie Kisaragi.”
“Aaah, of the Wutai clan, then?” and Yuffie doesn’t care how shady he looks, she could kiss him right there. “Well then, young Miss Kisaragi, would you kindly lead me to those aforementioned adults?”
Merlin listens to their story, lots of nodding and humming. “Well, nothing to do about it now, I suppose, except make the best of the new location.” He wanders off, pulls a piece of chalk out of one of his pockets and scribbles something on the space of wall in front of him. There is a light and then a door and Merlin nods a brief goodbye to everyone before disappearing.
Aerith is staying home today, making something in the kitchen. Yuffie leans over, watches her quietly.
“It’s been a year, you know.”
Which seems crazy and Yuffie doesn’t even try to do the math. Just says, “I’m seven now.”
Aerith laughs and says, “I’m sixteen now.” She beckons Yuffie over. “This is a wreath my mother taught me to make. We’d make them for funerals. It’s for loss. They’re small and light and meant to be released high up, so they’ll float on the breeze. The flowers aren’t quite right; the kind we used don’t seem to grow here. Would you like to learn how to make it, Yuffie?”
They stay at the table, hunched over the sprigs of flowers as they weave them together until they have hundreds and hundreds of tiny wreaths and the whole kitchen smells of love and heartache and hurt.
“Aerith, is there something we can make for Cloud and Tifa to come home soon?”
“There is, yes. Would you like to work on that next?” Yuffie nods and they go find more flowers.
When Cid and Squall come home that night, they take all the flowers out to the far side of town where the cliff’s edge looks out onto the wilderness and nothing and unknown and they let them go into the night and hold the names of the lost close to their hearts.
-
Yuffie spends most of her time at the shelter, shadowing Eugene and listening to stories. One day, he slips her a badly wrapped gift. “Someone told me everyone’s favorite ninja girl is a year older now. Sorry this is a little late. It took the moogles a bit longer to make than expected.” And when she opens it, there are five brand new, sharp-enough-to-split-the-box shurikens. “And keep those on the down low for now, please? Keep practicing with your old one. But hey, you never know when you’re going to need a good pointy bit, am I right, kid?”
-
Someone has shown up at the center and she gives Yuffie the willies. She’s old and cranky and…. Not evil, but there’s definitely something very Not Nice about her and Yuffie takes to the shadows, watching the woman, this Gothel, carefully.
Rapunzel is ecstatic to see her, embraces her and calls her Mother and Yuffie flat out refuses to believe there is anyway under any sun or moon that these two are related. Gothel has a certain, condescending air about her and even Aerith steers clear of her.
Which is probably why things went down the way they did.
At the end of the day, Aerith comes to fetch Yuffie at the center and she’s frowning. “Eugene, did Rapunzel come here earlier?” and when he says no, Aerith comments about how strange that is; she left hours ago and nobody seems to know where she went.
Rapunzel is missing. And shortly after her, Eugene goes missing, too. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why, though: he’s gone looking for Rapunzel. There’s nobody left to man the shelter but Yuffie and Cid and Aerith and, to a certain extent, Squall. Yuffie knows where everything is the best; she’s been through every area with Eugene enough and the others are old enough that people don’t give them funny looks for running things. After the first forty-eight hours have passed, though, with no sign of either of them, Squall goes missing, too. His sword has gone with him, the impossibly big one that Eugene asked him to keep quiet because it would make other people nervous.
He finds them and comes back and there is something different. Eugene holds Rapunzel and doesn’t want to let her go and Rapunzel-oh, Rapunzel, all her long, beautiful, magical hair is gone. Shorn off around her ears and it’s brown now and it’s not that she looks bad. She’s Rapunzel and Yuffie doesn’t think she could possibly look bad but there’s a deep sadness to her now and a certain, wild look as she keeps peering over her shoulder like she expects something or someone to come after her.
Everyone at the shelter wants to know what happened, if they’re okay and Rapunzel can’t really talk, just smiles and tries not to cry and Yuffie throws herself at her, hugs her around the knees. “You’re back.”
Rapunzel collapses around her. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Good,” says Yuffie.
On the walk home she sidles up to Squall, tries to walk tall next to him despite the fact that she only comes barely to his hip. “So,” she says nonchalant. “You did a good thing today. Kind of a stupid thing but a good thing, huh?”
He doesn’t look at her, she thinks maybe he didn’t hear her and is considering saying something awful just to get his attention when he finally speaks again. “They’re good people, I was able to help. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have.”
And Yuffie is thinking about someone else, someone from long ago who was a good person, at least as far as she was concerned; and maybe Squall knows this, or maybe it’s just the moment. He lays a hand on her head and it’s kind of heavy and says, “Sometimes, bad things happen to good people and you can’t do anything. That’s not anyone’s fault. But you have to try to make up for it when you can.” And that was a lot of words to say I’m sorry your father died
-
Aerith has started a garden behind the shelter; the patients of the clinic have been helping tend it, the ones who find it frustrating trying to paint. They seem to like it, taking care of something living and growing and everyone has their favorite flowers.
Yuffie doesn’t get it. Sure, she helps out with the yearly wreaths now, but flowers are smelly and dirty and while she doesn’t have anything against dirt, she doesn’t care for the things that live in it. Not that she’ll admit that to anyone, god forbid, so while everyone is fussing over the blooms she takes this time to go exploring, something she doesn’t get to do enough.
She takes to the roofs; Eugene taught her how to scale walls and run along the peaks, how to set your feet and when to jump. “This place is fairly compact, so there’s plenty of space to run up here without having to get down.” And she tails after Squall for lack of anything better to do. He disappears into the Second District and it’s a short hop up the wall and she’s following him again, up to the point where he disappears into the waterway.
She won’t go down there, shivers at the thought of spending any amount of time locked beneath a building like that and so she settles onto the roof of the hotel, palming a shuriken and counting the stars to pass the time.
He comes back out, hours later when her legs have finally fallen asleep and she has vowed to never ever try to hold still that long ever again. Squall stops, stares directly up at her hiding place and says, “Stop following me.”
So she drops down the street, performing a few rolls on her way down and only stumbles a little and says, “It’s a free country, I can go where I want. Just like you.”
He grunts at her and walks off. She follows behind, just out of swinging range because she’s curious but not stupid. “Must be something pretty interesting in there. You were in there a long, long time.”
He doesn’t react so she keeps going. “Yup, I gotta say, I don’t know how you do whatever it is you do down there. It must be pretty boring, way down there. All by yourself.” Still nothing so she pulls out the big guns. “Pops says you probably got a stash of skin mags down there and is doing ‘what normal boys his age outta be doing.’ I’m not really sure what that means, though, why would you want a magazine made out of skin? And what does a normal boy do with it, huh Squall?” and now he has stopped, is rubbing at the bridge of his nose and says, in a voice that discourages any and all questions and comments. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
She grins “Not really! So what kind of skin are these magazines made out of? Human skin? Pig skin? I’ll bet it’s cat skin. Pops kept saying something about cats, but how do you read anything on cat skin? Do they remove the fur first?” and she chatters at him all the way home where he finally slams the bathroom door in her face.
-
Another year, another series of wreaths. Rapunzel knocks on the door and asks if she can help too and Aerith pulls up another chair for her. They do the hundreds of hundreds for the unknown and the dead and they set time aside to make the other ones, the ones for the missing. For Cloud and Tifa.
Squall has taken to patrolling the city by himself. He’s out for ridiculous amounts of time, doesn’t even come home for meals anymore and as far as they can tell, his bed has gone empty for almost a week. When he finally makes an appearance, he looks miserable and ragged, the bags under his eyes seem to have bags and he collapses on the couch with strict instructions to Aerith to wake him up in an hour.
It’s completely ridiculous and Yuffie hates having to owe him anymore than she already does so she waits until he leaves again, slips through the door after him before it can click shut and immediately takes to the roofs. Up high is her favorite place to be. She skulks along the peaked roofs, ducking out of sight when he stops and glares in her general direction. He’s smart, which is annoying, and knows he’s being followed but she’s not owning up to this yet.
Squall slides into a ready stance before the heartless even appear. It’s obvious he’s exhausted, though; his movement is sloppy and several times he’s forced to go on the defensive. Yuffie jumps in without thinking, pulling out one of those shiny, mostly untested shurikens that Eugene had gifted her with. It’s a little disappointing when Squall doesn’t look surprised, just shouts, “Keep behind me!” and keeps going with his hack and slash technique. It may be Yuffie’s imagination, no, it probably most definitely is, but he seems to have regained a little bit of his energy.
When everything is dead and gone he finally looks at her, really looks at her and it makes her uncomfortable but she refuses to squirm under his gaze. He never says, “Good job,” or “Thanks for the hand.” Just says, “You’re bleeding.” And she wipes hastily at her cheek, smearing the blood there and across the back of her hand. “Better get to Aerith, you know how she feels about scars.” And walks away. Just like that
Squall walks her home, Yuffie wonders if she’s in trouble and how that would work. Technically she doesn’t have to answer to any of them; they’re not her family. They’re just stuck with each other.
Aerith fusses a little but heals her up and pats her cheek. “Be careful next time, okay?” and when she dawdles in the kitchen, not sure of what’s going on, Squall sighs and looks at the sky and snaps, “Are you coming or not?”
-
Squall is staying in bed today. He’s feverish and mumbling to himself and nothing Aerith tries can help him. She even runs to the clinic and asks some of her doctor friends to come by and try; maybe something one of them knows from another world would be enough. But no. He is just miserable and hot and asks them to turn the lights off, it’s too bright.
Yuffie doesn’t even chatter at him, just sits by his bed because she’s the only one home, and changes out the damp cloth on his forehead every now and then. She worries he’s going crazy, like Cloud did, and wonders who will chase after him when he runs away. If they’ll manage to calm him down and bring him home, or if that’ll be two more people disappeared from their lives.
She falls asleep, curled uncomfortably in the bedside chair. This nursing people back to health stuff is hard and she doesn’t envy Aerith her job at all. When she startles awake the bed is empty, cool to the touch, which means he’s been gone for a while and Yuffie’s heart drops somewhere in the vicinity of her knees as she scrambles to the door.
“Squall?” she calls, banging into the doorframe as she cuts a corner too sharply.
He never screamed. Cloud had screamed for hours, and if he didn’t scream does that mean he’s not crazy? Does that mean he’s still the same, insufferable Squall they all know and tolerate? There’s a light on in the bathroom, she can hear the tap running but the door is locked and so she beats on it. “Squall, if you’re in there, open up right now!”
She can pick the lock, some lingering piece of sanity informs her, she can pick the lock because she’s a ninja and she’s good at lock picking, it’s the easy part. But she’s shaking too hard and is too afraid of what waits on the other side of the door to pull any of her tools from their convenient places hidden on her person.
“Squall, I mean it! If you went all nuts-o a la Cloud, I am going to be so pissed at you and I’m going to chase you to the world’s end until you come back to your senses and you’ll be all ‘oh Yuffie, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Thanks for putting up with all my batshit crazy.’ And I’ll be like ‘nah, don’t mention it. Seriously, there’s nobody here. We’re at the end of the world. Save the whole hero worshipping for when we get home and I can have an audience.”
The door swings open then and Squall looms in front of her, backlit and imposing and she feels a shiver run down her spine.
“Stop. Talking,” he growls, legit growls and the shiver is gone and she stands up as straight as she can which, okay, not her fault she’s super short and she spits back, “You, stop being a psychopath. Should you even be up? You were, like, dying two hours ago. Come on, Squall. Back to bed with you.” And she reaches to grab his hand but he beats her to it, holds her wrist and squeezes a little too tightly.
“Don’t call me that.”
That earns a raised eyebrow and an, “Okay, then what shall we call you? Princess Sparkly Diamond Nutmeg?”
He all but throws her hand when he lets it go, stalks past her and says, “It’s Leon.”
-
“He’s gone crazy, Eugene. Calling himself Leon, which is just dumb and he’s moodier than ever and what the heck are we supposed to do with him?” Yuffie is on the roof with Eugene, helping him re-shingle things and Eugene has a mouth full of roofing nails, manages to talk out the corner of them.
“Hey, people go through things sometimes. I can’t really say anything. For years I went by the name Flynn.”
Yuffie makes a horrified face at him. “That’s awful, Eugene. Why’d you do that?”
“Ah Yuffie, you have the optimism of youth on your side. Sometimes, people go through things and they don’t like the person they are. They think if they become someone new it’ll make things better.”
“And did it?”
“Nah, not at all. But I thought it would and I refused to believe otherwise. It wasn’t until I met Rapunzel that I realized being Eugene wasn’t such a bad thing. Just give him time. If being Leon is who he needs to be right now, let him go. He’ll come around eventually and realize that Leon Leonhart is the worst name to have ever.”
-
They started marking her growth on the shelter door some time ago. It’s weird to look at the scratches, the penciled-in number next to them that starts at eight. But it’s more important than ever to see how she’s changed, her perspective of the world slowly inching up year by year. Eugene does the marking for her, makes a big deal out of it and acts like he’s trying to diffuse a bomb or something. Whistles when she stands back.
“Jeez kid, you better slow down or you’ll be towering over all of us.” Which was just stupid, she’s hardly grown an inch since last year, but he puts a little mark next to her head. 9.
Part Four
Part Two
Nobody has any idea how long they travel for. There is no clock and no way of measuring time out h ere in space, where it’s all just hot white lights drifting by too far away to reach. There is little to do, nothing to talk about, and mostly, they sleep. They sleep because they’re hungry and have no food, they sleep because they’re bored, they sleep because they’re all still young and scared. Yuffie sleeps because Aerith has to keep casting a spell over her; she gets air sick something fierce when she’s awake.
Cid won’t let any of them try to pilot the ship so he doesn’t sleep, doesn’t trust the auto-pilot not to get them smashed into a meteor. “And wouldn’t that be shitty?” so he stays awake out of sheer stubbornness and tries not to think of what to do next with a bunch of kids he doesn’t know from Adam.
They are dirty and starting to smell. It’s familiar to Yuffie, the scent of desperation and unclean-ness that only comes from sudden and very long trips. The ship was not meant for situations like this; it’s small and was mostly a local cargo ship with none of the amenities a larger transport would have.
“It was a project of mine,” says Captain Highwind, “to see if we could achieve space travel.” He pats the wall lovingly. “Looks like it worked; ain’t she a beaut?”
“Great, we’re trapped in a tinker toy,” snarls Squall. Everyone ignores him; it’s just easier that way, otherwise Tifa would snip back and it’ll devolve into a shouting match soon enough and they’ve had enough of that already, thank you very little.
-
Finally; after days and days and days of drifting and starving and slowly dying, a voice comes to them over the radio. It’s kind of squeaky, and sounds very sad, the voice gives his condolences for the things they’ve gone through, and gives coordinates to a World. “They’ll have a place for you, no worries.”
It’s another two days, at least, before they reach the World. Nobody has the energy to move much. Cid parks the ship just outside a city gate, a big neon sign reading Traverse Town lights up the entrance. He eyes the gaggle of kids he’s amassed, scratches at the side of his nose and says, “Sit the fuck down and wait.” He wags a finger disapprovingly at Squall who had already half-risen from his place against the wall. There’s no point in protesting; nobody can really seem to muster the required strength to stumble their way to the door even if they wanted to. But then Cid smacks the release for the hatch door and a breeze drifts in and the fresh air feels so good.
They sit, waiting, trying not to hold their breath. Trying not to wonder if they’ve come all this way just to die. Cid finally comes back with a whole entourage of people that are poking and prodding at everyone, asking all sorts of questions and not giving anyone a chance to get their bearings enough to answer. Someone comes up with huge bowls of clear broth that smells amazing. “Take it easy,” says the man when Yuffie tries to gulp most of the bowl down in one go. “No need to make yourself sick.”
They want to take Cloud away, to a clinic so they can try to help him because he is so obviously broken that even these strangers can recognize it. But as soon as one of the people try to move him, he makes a sick little grunt and Tifa doubles over him protectively. There’s not much for it, so they leave him in her care and do what little examination they can right there on the ship.
The final diagnosis is shock; there’s not much to do there. The examiner asks Tifa if she will be able to bathe him, or if she’d like some assistance. The way her face turns pink at the cheeks would probably be funny, if they weren’t sitting exhausted and half starved some light years away from home.
Squall is the one who pipes in and saves her any embarrassment. “I’ll do it.” Everyone who has been travelling with him pauses to stare in mild confusion at his general vicinity. He doesn’t quite shrug and says, “We roomed together, at the dorms.” As if that explained anything at all.
Aerith comes to Yuffie, a quiet smile on her face, asks the younger girl if she’s okay to walk. “I’ll carry you, if you’d like.”
But Yuffie shakes her head so hard she makes herself dizzy and forces herself to stand up, stumbles a way to the door. It’s not easy; for all their days on the ship, they hadn’t been required to walk farther than a dozen steps either way. Her body aches and she has to focus on each step she takes. Yuffie falls, once. Trips and lands on her hands and knees and bites her tongue against the hiss of pain. She’s a ninja. Ninjas don’t cry over scrapes. There’s a little blood, on her left knee, but otherwise she’s fine.
Aerith murmers a quiet heal and the pain in Yuffie’s knee is gone. She doesn’t say thank you, can’t seem to get her mouth to form the words, so she stares up at Aerith with wide, dark eyes. Aerith ruffles her hair a little, says, “Come on. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to a shower.”
-
Traverse Town has a shelter for the Newly Lost. Apparently, they are not unfamiliar with the Worldless. There’s a desk at the entrance, with a kind-faced woman seated behind it, on her chest a name tag that reads Elisa. The very first order of business is signing themselves in. Names, ages, brief physical descriptions are recorded in a ledger and then they are shown down a hallway to the bathrooms.
The whole shower thing is separated by genders, but beyond that it’s two identical rooms divided by a flimsy wall that is only thick enough to keep prying eyes away.
Yuffie has never been naked around near strangers before. She remembered a time when her sobo would give her baths in tubs full of frothy bubbles, but she almost doesn’t count that. Sobo was family, and besides the bubbles hid everything. Here though, there is only a room full of showerheads, a drain in the middle, and the ugly florescent lights overhead.
Aerith and Tifa do not hesitate to strip off their clothes, dirty and sticky with dry sweat and shadow dust and other things they’d rather not think of. They dispose of the used clothes in a trash bin; a fresh set has been provided by the people that welcomed them. Simple, non-descript homespun tunics and skirts in matching shades of grey. Yuffie’s provisions are smaller versions of theirs. There is shampoo and soap provided for them, and the older girls get down to business right away.
Their voices are bright, falsely cheerful as they scrub down, pausing to wash each other’s back and help each other detangle their hair. Yuffie stares at the soap in wonder, trying not to blush at the other girls. She’s never seen anyone else naked before, isn’t sure how she’s supposed to feel about so much exposed skin. She gives the soap a compulsory rub against her arm, frowning when it fails to lather well.
The girls finish washing and look over to see Yuffie’s mild state of confusion. They head over to her and, gently, as if she’d like any help. Yuffie still can’t seem to find the words in her throat, so she nods silently.
Tifa helps her wash her little body while Aerith scrubs at her hair for her, dragging her nails lightly along her scalp; it makes Yuffie’s whole body tingle. “You have very pretty hair, Yuffie.” Aerith says sweetly.
They towel off, dress in their matching clothes, and head out to their new temporary home.
There is a dorm, once again divided by gender, a dining room where more fresh and hot food waits for them - a thicker version of the soup from earlier - with tiny blobs of something white floating in it, and thick, fresh bread with a healthy dollop of butter.
“It’s tofu,” explains one of the refugees who has been here for a few days already. He introduces himself as Hope. He’s younger than Tifa and Aerith, but older than Yuffie and has a kind smile for everyone, except for the man who came with him from his world. “They aren’t big on meat here, or seasoning for that matter. Too many people with too many weird allergies,” he says, “and it looks kind of awful, but it doesn’t taste that bad.” Hope takes a big spoonful as if to prove his point.
Yuffie thinks it does taste that bad, it’s squishy and kind of flavorless, but she’s so hungry that she gobbles it up before she’s really thought about it and is left staring at an empty bowl, wanting more and not knowing how to ask for it when Aerith tips some of her own soup into Yuffie’s bowl.
“Eat up,” she says, tearing chunks of her bread off to sop up the remains of her soup with. “It’s probably better while it’s still warm.” She looks to Hope, who nods in vigorous agreement.
“Definitely.”
They are shown to the dorm room after briefly touching base with Captain Highwind and the boys.
“For fuck’s sake, girlie, just call me Cid and get it over with, ya hear? We’ve been through too much for all that polite bullshit.”
There are a few other girls already in the dorm, curled up with their backs towards to door, so Aerith and Tifa lead Yuffie over to three beds side by side quietly. Aerith tucks Yuffie in, asks if she’d like a bedtime story. Yuffie thinks it over for a minute before shaking her head no. “Okay,” says Aerith. “But if you change your mind, I’m in the bed right next to you.” She brushes Yuffie’s hair back and whispers, “Sweet dreams.”
The bed is uncomfortable, kind of lumpy, and the pillow is flat and the blanket itchy. There is no one familiar around her, two semi-strangers and several more perfect strangers and for the first time in months, Yuffie sleeps.
-
At breakfast they are approached by a Man. He smiles congenially, greets them with a cheery, “Good morning! You’ve probably heard this a lot, and you’ll probably hear it a lot more, it’s kind of part of the package, but, welcome to Traverse Town!” He introduces himself as Eugene. “I guess I’m… well... kind of the director of this place?” He pauses to scratch self-consciously at the back of his neck.
Eugene has a clipboard tucked under one arm, and explains that everyone will need to be assigned jobs. “It helps balance everything. That way we can still have the resources to help you folk and others like you.”
He asks if they have any specific skill sets, is genuinely pleased to learn Aerith is a healer. “We’ll send you to the clinic, if you don’t mind. I have a friend there that sure could use the help.”
He’s mildly befuddled as to what to do with Squall, is completely lost as to what to do with Cloud. But he seems to know exactly what to do with Yuffie. One look at her and he shakes his head. “She’s too young and already been through too much for that age. I’d suggest therapy, best to try and curb any psychotic notions while she’s still fresh-faced. Seriously, we haven’t been here that long and already have more than our fair share of the mentally unbalanced. Not that we blame anyone, really. I mean, this is a really bad situation no matter how you slice it.” He eyes Yuffie carefully. “You got that, pipsqueak? You are officially forbidden from going crazy.”
Yuffie sticks her tongue out at him and earns a laugh in return.
It’s finally decided that Cid, who is good with his hands and various tinkering type things, will work with the local electricians. Aerith is, obviously, going to the hospital to work among the doctors, even after she protests and says she’s only a healer in training. Squall is assigned to a group of people who are dedicated to building more permanent homes for everyone (for the refugees, and geez, Yuffie thinks, this is all so very familiar.)
“I know it’s not what you want to do,” says Eugene, “but I can’t let a kid like you go around with a great damn sword like that. People don’t trust the youth, not your fault. Not even really their fault and it’s for your own good that you keep that locked up for a while, you hear?”
After some deliberation, Tifa is assigned temporary guardianship of Cloud and Yuffie. One is currently too stupid to do anything for himself, and the other is too young. Tifa volunteers to do some cleaning around the shelter. She hauls Yuffie and Cloud after her. It takes several minutes of quiet coaxing, like dealing with a bunny, before Cloud responds and makes a shuffling step to follow. Yuffie is instructed to hold his hand, and she doesn’t enjoy it at all. He’s clammy and doesn’t grip back, just hangs against her palm limply. He stumbles forward when she gives a light tug and if he wasn’t so pathetic, she’d consider seeing how much control she really has over him
Tifa runs around dusting things and rearranging furniture and taking cushions out to be beaten in the fresh air. She asks Yuffie to help with things, like putting her hands in the small places she can’t reach, and the super low places that she can’t see under, and suddenly the whole shelter is spick and span and clean and everyone is a little in awe and a lot of frightened by Tifa’s energy.
She tries to cajole Cloud into helping but all he does is stand there, blinking slowly and letting his hands slide back down to his sides anytime they try to rearrange him into something useful. He makes those strange little grunting noises if they move too far away from him. Yuffie takes to subconsciously dragging him behind her, just to avoid those awful noises of his.
Lunch is the worst. Cloud can’t feed himself, so Tifa gives him little spoonfuls of the broth, tips his head back so it slides effortlessly down his throat. She soaks his bread in the soup in small pieces and lets it dissolve in his mouth. “There,” she says, “Tasty, right?”
He doesn’t respond, just keeps up his vacant expression. Yuffie tries not to look at him, focuses on her soup. It’s the same stuff as it was yesterday, still with the squishy bits of tofu in it, but at least it’s something in her belly and the bread is good.
Aerith comes in near the end of their lunch to begin her own. She’s wan and exhausted but she still manages to smile at them, ask how their day was. Tifa inquires as to how work in the clinic is going and Aerith becomes uncomfortable. “There’s so many people with so much hurt,” is all she says before quietly tucking into her soup.
They finally find a wheelchair for Cloud; Eugene brings it to them. “We thought this would be helpful.” He eyes Cloud sadly as Tifa leans over to wipe a bit of drool off his chin.
“That’s very thoughtful of you, thank you.” Tifa wheels Cloud away, calls for Yuffie to come on.
They find a spare blanket to lay over Cloud’s lap, a pillow for behind his head. He lolls either forward or backwards and Tifa thinks he looks slightly less desperate with his head leaning back.
Afternoon finds them in the kitchen with Hope, scrubbing pots and making the next batch of soup for dinner. They find a stool for Yuffie to stand on and Hope lets her help dry the silverware.
Tifa has volunteered for dinner duty: they show her the recipe for the simple soup, the bread is already baking, and she is a flurry of activity. Banging pots a little too loudly, sashaying across the kitchen, humming to herself. Tifa prods Hope with gentle questions, asks what his world was like, if he doesn’t mind talking about it. They start trading stories about being chased by great beasts and suddenly, Hope opens up and is laughing. Yuffie even catches herself smiling a little and stares hard at the spoon in her hand, wonders how she should feel about this development.
“Then, Vanille is all, ‘it’s okay, we can do this!’” He raises his voice to a falsetto and bats his eyes. “Needless to say, we couldn’t do it. We ended up hiding on top of a boulder all afternoon until the beast lost interest in us.” Hope rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “It was a crazy adventure, that’s for sure.”
“It sounds like you were surrounded by good friends.” Tifa doesn’t look at him, focuses on stirring the pot in front of her. Hope nods, pauses in his dishes and removes a folded knife. He stares at it, quiet, and strokes the length of it.
“They really were. I wouldn’t be alive without them.” He pushes his glove down a little; stares at a patch of skin just above his wrist with a distant, fuzzy expression. Yuffie splashes him with a bit of the soapy water by “accident” and when he jumps she has a smile ready and waiting for him. “Okay,” he says, “I get it, back to work for the slacker.”
Tifa offers to serve dinner, parks Cloud right next to her at the serving table, a huge cauldron of the soup simmering in front of her. She encourages Yuffie to go sit, Aerith even waves her over and ushers towards a chair next to her, but Yuffie hesitates. Tifa recognizes this and offers an alternative: “Or, you can help me serve everyone, if you’d like?”
Yuffie is parked next to the napkins and silverware and hands a spoon and napkin to everyone as they cross her in line. They smile and ruffle her hair and tell her how cute she is. Someone stops to ask Tifa if Yuffie is her daughter, or sister and Tifa smiles in response. “Oh no, she’s just a very dear friend.” Which makes Yuffie’s heart feel funny. She barely knows Tifa and she already considers her a dear friend? She smiles a little wider as she goes on with her job.
Once everyone else is served Tifa makes up bowls for herself, Yuffie, and Cloud, and seats them in the little wedge of space Aerith saved for them. Cloud is at the very end, Tifa next to him, and then Aerith and then little Yuffie with Squall on the other side and Cid just beyond him. There are other people at the table, Hope sits right across from them and the man he’s with a few people down, they’re very careful not to make eye-contact with one another, but both smile readily enough at Yuffie and the others from Radiant Garden.
It’s crowded, and the lingering tang of melancholy hanging everyone is almost more palpable than their soup. Most everyone talks with a funny accent that requires a lot of listening and straining of the ears to understand, but it’s strangely warm and comforting, here at this over-stuffed table with these strangers.
-
Today Tifa is on laundry duty, which means so is Yuffie. The washroom is vast and hot; Tifa won’t let Yuffie near the tubs full of boiling water, but she lets her bring the lines that need to be cleaned and they make a game of it. Can Yuffie get the washings to Tifa before she’s finished scrubbing what’s currently in the tub? Every time Yuffie tosses another sheet her direction, Tifa clutches her chest and shouts, “Oh no! I lose another five life points! Aaargh!” and once in a while she grins and says things like, “Uh oh, looks like I found a power up!” and goes into a super fast washing mode.
They fold all the newly washed things and bring them to another group of people who hang them on lines in the back of the shelter. Tifa offers to take the clean, dry linens to the clinic for the women at the drying lines.
“Ach, please, dearie, I’m the Lady Cluck, at ye services.” She leans up and pats Tifa on the cheek with one wing. “You are a wee sweet thing, aren’t you?”
Tifa beams in response. “We don’t have anything else to do right now.” She leans over to ruffle Yuffie’s hair. “And we can say to Aerith while we’re there!”
The clinic isn’t quite as busy as Yuffie had been expecting. There are a few people there, most of them staring at the wall blankly, much like Cloud, but they respond easier and when someone walks up to them and speaks to them, repeats themselves a few times, eventually they come back to themselves and are able to answer.
They meet Rapunzel, a pretty, young woman with an impossible amount of hair that is twisted into a complicated style on her head and who smiles happily at them. “Eugene told me there was a whole group of you! I’ve met Aerith, of course, and it’s so nice to meet you, too! Please, come in.” She swings the door open and there are a few more people, some with their arms in slings and other things. Rapunzel explains, “We try not to over-do it on the magic healing around here. It’s better for the body if it can heal naturally, so as long as it’s not life-threatening. I can’t even begin to tell you how nice it is to have Aerith around! She knows so much, I’ve been making most things up as I go along.” Here, her eyes are distant. “I’m not very good at this, I just wish there was more I could do for people.”
At this time Aerith comes out, “Hush, you. Don’t let her lie to you, Rapunzel has done some amazing things. Do you know she has been running this place single-handedly? There are medics from other worlds, but everyone has varying levels of skill and Rapunzel is the one who organized all this. And come see this.” Aerith drags them through to a back room where huge murals are being created by patients, all of whom are concentrating very hard and smiling and occasionally sharing things with the person next to them.
“Therapy. All her idea.” They try to convince Cloud to paint something, give him a brush, dip it in a color for him, and even make a few experimental strokes on the wall while holding his hand. But as soon as they let go, he drops it back to his side and the brush clatters to the ground.
“No rush,” says Rapunzel, petting Cloud’s hair back. “Just get better, okay? We’re all here for you.”
Rapunzel and Aerith walk back with them. It’s almost the end of the day so they tuck their patients in and leave them with the evening watch, a large dark man with a booming voice that introduces himself as Doctor Sweet and who is more than happy to shoo both the girls out.
“You all work way too much. Go enjoy dinner for once, you hear?” and with that the clinic door is firmly shut behind them.
The walk back is quiet, almost peaceful.
“It never gets very sunny here, does it?” asks Tifa.
“It’s kind of a sleepy world,” says Rapunzel, as if that actually explains anything. “If you climb up the city wall, you can actually see the sun when it’s up. It’s almost like it’s shy. It peeks out just enough to lighten the color of the sky and then it just slips back down. Sometimes I feel like it’s a protective mother, checking on her young while they sleep but she doesn’t want to come all the way in the room in case she wakes them up.”
And they share a laugh, all of them and Tifa pats Cloud’s head. “Maybe we should make a trip one day. I think some real light would do us good.”
Maybe it’s the talk of the light, or maybe it’s the comfortable warmth of camaraderie blossoming, but there comes the undeniable hiss of something foreign materializing in the air. It’s such an ugly sight, this dark blot in the midst of their safe harbor that Yuffie forgets to breath for a moment.
Then Rapunzel is moving, spinning into action and pulling something out of the bag at her side and she whacks the shadow a good one, and another good one, and once more until it finally gives up and dissolves into a little pile of dust and Rapunzel holds up her frying pan triumphantly.
“How can those things be here?” asks Aerith, compulsorily checking on everyone to make sure nobody got hurt.
“Don’t you know? The heartless are how we all ended up here.” It’s a term they hadn’t heard 'til now. “King Mickey is the one who explained it to us. The heartless, that shadow and the ones like it, are constantly seeking hearts, trying to lay claim to them. In turn, this creates more heartless and eventually, they destroy the world. The survivors inevitably end up here.”
“Always?”
“Almost always.” Rapunzel looks at the sky. “We don’t get many heartless around here, unless another world has fallen. We should head back to the shelter.”
They do. There’s a young couple who introduces themselves as Eilonwy and Taran and a something named Gurgi. They stay for dinner and then they wave off the warnings of danger outside the city walls and they leave.
-
They get a visitor a few days later. He’s hardly taller than Yuffie and he greets Eugene and Rapunzel like old friends. He looks around the room with a sad little smile, his tail hanging limply behind him. “Golly, looks like you all have a full house here.”
Cid leans over the table and stares at him. “You the guy from over the radio?”
The mouse grins wide. “Yup! Name’s Mickey, nice to meet cha!”
They shake hands and exchange pleasantries. Introductions are made around and Mickey shakes hands with everyone; he even goes over to Cloud, touches his hand, smiles kindly and tells Cloud how happy he is to meet him. Aerith introduces him to Yuffie and he smiles and says a chipper, “Hiya!”
Yuffie smiles, shakes his hand, and Mickey manages to ask only yes or no questions so she can give a quick jiggle of her head either way.
That’s something they learn about Mickey: he has a weird sixth sense for how to deal with people and makes everyone obnoxiously comfortable around him. Perhaps if Yuffie had been older she would be more skeptical. But the fact remains that she’s not, she’s only barely a little girl and there’s a giant friendly mouse chatting her up and she still can’t find her voice but Mickey makes that seem okay.
Mickey wants to know what kind of ship they were in so Cid takes him out to where the transporter has been parked. They talk tech for a while. Alloy this, engine that. Lots of nodding and “yeah, but did you ever try…” happening. He stays for the afternoon, makes rounds and talks a little to everyone at the shelter, even the people he didn’t direct here.
“I’m so happy you guys made it okay.” He tells Cid and the others. “And if you need anything, anything at all, so long as it’s in my power to help you let me know.” He gives them a radio code to contact him at. “There’s someone watching it around the clock, you just ring me through there and they’ll find me.”
Mickey is a hugger, embraces them each tightly with a pat on the back (and a ruffle of the hair, for Yuffie) and returns to his ship.
-
The time has come to say goodbye to Hope and Snow and the woman Fang. Yuffie doesn’t know Snow or Fang that well but she’s already missing Hope and he hugs her tight. “I know, but we have other friends that we have to find. They’re still alive, you understand, they have to be. No way would Light let something like this stop her.”
Everyone has come out to see them off. Eugene and Rapunzel shove a ton of food at them.
“Where will you go?” asks Rapunzel and Snow shrugs.
“Wherever we can, I guess. We don’t really know where to start, but we can feel them, in our hearts. They’re out there and they need us.”
With a smile and a wave, they’re gone. Disappeared into the night.
-
Home units are assigned. Two bedroom, one bath, but hey, the kitchen is kind of big, for the six people that came hurtling lightyears away from Radiant Garden. Eugene smiles apologetically at them. “It’s cramped,” he says, “and I am sorry about that. But hey, it’s cozy!” He looks exhausted, dark circles under his eyes and he doesn’t joke as much as normal. “It’s something, though. I wish it were more.”
Then he explains about everyone getting jobs. Real jobs, to earn real munny. “The housing is complimentary; honestly, it’s more for our benefit than yours. We’re still getting a steady stream of the Lost in, and need the room while they recover. If you can’t find anything suitable as far as work, you can always come help out at the shelter.” He shows them the meal tokens that they’ll earn. “It’s good for food in your bellies. For the day, at least.” He gives them one each to start them out.
Nothing, as far as Yuffie can tell, has really changed. Aerith is officially signed on at the clinic, earning a measly two munny an hour. Cid becomes something of a general handy-man around town, since apparently a lot of shit was broken and nobody had the foggiest idea of how to fix it. People pay him what they can, or at least send him home with enough food to feed a not-family of six. Squall disappears for hours a day and comes home, dripping sweat and not talking and not eating.
He and Tifa finally sort of get into it when Aerith asks him how his day was once and he doesn’t respond, just stares at her like she’s someone explaining, “It’s dark at night.” Tifa can’t take it anymore, slams one fist against the wall, a spiderweb of cracks appear and oh yeah, she’s really strong, isn’t she?
“Is it so hard for you to be halfway decent?” He doesn’t look so much abashed, not in the conventional sense, but the very tips of his ears turn pink and he looks away.
“It was fine.” He finally grumbles before slamming the bathroom door, closest thing to a victory with him.
-
They find out, from a third or fourth hand source, that Squall has been going around with a huge ledger, taking a census of Traverse Town. Eugene shrugs, says he came to them with the question and, upon realizing that they were more than a little disorganized, planned everything out himself. He’d even drawn up a rough map of the town; that’s what he spent the first few days doing. Since then he’d been going door to door, inquiring about how many people, adult and children lived there, did they have any pets? And most of the people, still heart-broken and mourning, would drag him inside and sit him down for tea or milk and cookies and share their stories. Because that’s how most of them healed. They talked about it and cried it out and Squall was either too polite or too horrified to say anything and Traverse Town was way bigger than Yuffie and the others had originally thought.-
“It was never meant to be a town,” says Squall, after he’s outed. “It was just people, trying to get by until something changed. Then more people showed up, and more. Then, all of a sudden, they went from trading and bartering to buying and selling. Then all these stores and shops and restaurants cropped up. It’s all just a huge mess. The streets aren’t even named, there’s no mayor or anyone in charge, beyond the shelter guy. This isn’t a town. It’s a joke.
Everyone is still thinking about the fact that Squall walked all over and talked to people, or rather had them talking at him, to take anything he said seriously and Tifa was still giving him this dopey “I totally see through you” smile that made him glare harder at the wall he was staring at so he wouldn’t have to look at any of them.
“So.” says Cid, hunched over a pair of pants that had blown a hole in the knee and darning it shut rather expertly. “If yer so concerned, do something about it.” Squall left for the bathroom then, his favorite hiding place, slamming the door behind him.
Somehow it wasn’t as effective as the first hundred times.
-
Months roll by; everyone has fallen into a sleepy pattern. Wake and dance around each other to get ready for the day, go their separate ways and come back together at dinnertime. It’s late, or early, or kind of hard to tell since there never seems to be much sun in this place. Just a little peek of it at the horizon, lighting the sky from darkest blue to something paler, something a little violet and pink at the edges before slipping quietly back down.
There comes a sound and, if the occupants of the house were pressed to describe it, they’d probably say it was the sound of a mind breaking. It’s guttural and pained and Yuffie wakes with her heart in her throat and she’s on her feet before she can think about it, they all are. All three girls go tearing out of the room, Tifa pausing to scoop Yuffie up before hightailing it to the boys' room.
Squall has Cloud restrained, the blond thrashing and flailing and clawing at everything, trying to get away and Squall is yelling at him and Cid is yelling at him but he’s not responding and then he sees Aerith and he cries, just cries and sobs and goes limp in Squall’s arms and nobody can figure out what to do and then just like that, as soon as Squall relaxes his grip, Cloud is gone, jumped through the window and there’s another scream and they see something, something black and impossible ripping from his shoulder blade, just the left one, and the wing swings open with a leathery kind of snap and Cloud jumps and then that’s it. There’s the sound of something Wrong happening, the air being rent open and Cloud is gone.
-
It’s only been two days since Cloud ran away. At that late hour again, Yuffie wakes up because something is off, something is Wrong and she’s not sure how she knows it, but she does. So she’s awake and goes padding through the house on near silent feet, she doesn’t even need to touch the wall to guide herself, finds herself in the kitchen and sees a familiar silhouette bent over the table, long spill of inky hair draped over a shoulder and Tifa looks up, flashes a smile that is dim in the darkness. Comes over to kneel by Yuffie and kiss her forehead, her lips are cool and her hand is warm when it brushes Yuffie’s hair back. “Be good, okay?” and she slips out the door, quiet as a mouse.
Yuffie watches with a sense of finality before she snaps to action, runs back to the bedroom and shakes Aerith. Aerith grumbles and rolls over, tells her to go back to bed. Yuffie shakes her harder, panic building in her throat and finally, “Aerith, please wake up.” And just like that, Aerith is up and out of bed and kneeling next to her, touching Yuffie’s face and brushing her hair back and asking, “What? What’s wrong?”
“I think Tifa is leaving.” They run back to the kitchen, Aerith snaps on the lights as they go and eventually Cid and Squall come stumbling out. “Whazza?”
Aerith and Yuffie are already at the table and Yuffie can see the glass holding the note down, condensation still beading down its side and she realizes that it hasn’t been that long that there’s still a chance, they could catch her.
Aerith scoops Yuffie up, runs out the door and they can hear it, the groan of the gummi-ship and they’re just in time to watch take off. Nobody can believe it, that Tifa just did that, that she could do that. Cid is outraged, swearing a blue streak and takes to throwing things at the sky in an effort to relieve the tension in his heart. Squall is silent and unimpressed but Yuffie watches him, carefully, and has done so for enough days now to see the tight line of his shoulder and how he’s carrying the hurt close to himself.
Yuffie watches the sky, wonders which twinkling light is actually Tifa, on her way out into the great wide somewhere. “She’s all alone.”
Aerith sighs, forces herself to smile and scoops Yuffie up, kisses the smaller girl on the cheek. “She’s Tifa, she’ll be alright.” They sway their way back into the little house, leave the light on for Cid so he doesn’t stub his toe on anything, he’s already in a bad mood, no need to make that worse.
Aerith says, “Hey, since we’re already up, how about a thing of peanut butter toast and a glass of milk?”
Yuffie eyes her carefully, wonders when she’s going to say something about the lost voice suddenly being found but she doesn’t, just goes on about how hungry she is all of a sudden and Yuffie smiles and says, “Me too!” and Aerith even lets her help butter the bread. Aerith hums under her breath and starts singing, a simple little ditty. They keep it quiet because Squall is in the living room, sharpening his gunblade and Cid is just outside the house, puffing away furiously at a cigarette. They can see him, mark his location by the glowing arc the cigarette makes as he puts it against his lips, puffs, and brings it down. Up and down up and down, it’s simple and repetitive and Yuffie has to focus on the butter knife in her hand, she’s already accidentally buttered her thumb and Aerith finds a chair for her to stand on, so she leans against the counter and watches the bread toast in the pan and Aerith teaches her the words. Yuffie’s voice is a little too high but she catches the melody easily enough and they sing softly to themselves as their snack is readied.
Aerith makes a little bit of extra toast and pours an extra glass of milk and just as they sit down at the table, Cid comes ambling in and doesn’t even ask, just sets himself down at the table and glares at them. “Damn kids.” Grabs a piece of toast and slathers peanut butter on it and takes a huge chunk out. “Always thinking they know best,” he says around a mouth full of toast.
Yuffie fusses at him. “That’s rude, you’re not supposed to talk with your mouth full.”
He growls at her and she sticks her tongue back at him and Aerith hushes them both. “Eat your toast.”
They do and it’s warm and a little sweet and tastes delicious with the milk.
-
Aerith brings Yuffie to the shelter the next day. Yuffie runs up to Eugene, all smiles. “Hey bossman, can I help out today? I’m all on my own and Aerith says I gotsta be a growed up and I promise I’ll be good and you don’t has to give me a token or nothing, just let me help, okay?”
He stares at her a little bemused. “Uh-oh, the creature has learned to speak!” He pretends to thinks about it for a second and says, “Yeah, actually. I could use your help today.” He tells Aerith not to worry about it, he’ll keep an eye on her.
As soon as Aerith is around the corner Eugene squats down next to Yuffie. “So, how do you feel about heights?”
-
Cid has been hired to help clean out a stockroom at the accessory shop. The previous owner had certain…eccentric tastes and the current owner isn’t sure about anything and just needs it organized and seems too frail himself to do anything more than offer a simpering smile from behind the register. Nobody is really sure why he asked for Cid, except maybe because Cid is mean enough that if it turns out anything is living in the pile of muck back there, chances are he’d shout it into submission.
Yuffie ends up tagging along because nobody really knows what to do with her anymore. She would be with Tifa and Cloud except… well… there is no Tifa and Cloud and so she’s spent the last few days hanging out at the shelter with Eugene and he doesn’t mind, per se, but she always feels a little underfoot and she can’t go to the clinic with Aerith, because the smell of sick people turns her stomach, and Squall wakes up before anyone else so nobody knows where he goes during the day, so Cid is the lucky winner today and has a small, humming shadow tail behind him.
“Sit.” He points at the stool and Yuffie sits. “Stay,” he says and slams the door of the stockroom behind him. She counts to one hundred, as slow as she can, in her head and then backwards to one before she gets up.
Cid locked the door behind him and Yuffie gives the knob a compulsory jiggle. It’s just sturdy enough to present the challenge of her having to find something to pick it with. She goes poking about the store front, picking things up and putting them back down. There are drawers, all foolishly unlocked, full of sparkly rings and necklaces and everything is just a huge tangle and when Yuffie goes to touch a particularly shiny bracelet, she feels a zap of something foreign run through her body and steps back with a shiver. She eyes the drawer warily before closing it with her foot. Moves on, finds another drawer and when she pulls it open a handful of, of all things; knitting needles fall to the front. Yuffie smiles and manages not to cackle too loudly. Not that it would matter; she can hear Cid crashing about in the storeroom. She could probably set off a couple firecrackers in here and he wouldn’t notice.
The lock pops easily enough when the right needle is applied. Yuffie slides it into her sock-you can never tell when something like that will come in handy, and slips through the door quietly.
The storeroom is huge and requires a trip down an alarmingly rickety set of stairs to access and smells vaguely of age and disuse. Yuffie hugs the wall, moves lightly into the room. She can see things being thrown some distance, obviously Cid’s idea of “sorting” and Yuffie sneaks around the nearest mini-mountain of junk, narrating her daring adventures in her head. She brushes her hand across rusted metal contraptions, something that looks like a birdcage and something that looks like a boot and then... Oh, she smiles and it’s a short leap into the rafters and she pops down in front of Cid.
“Hey, Pops!” and he pauses, makes a face and mouths the word like it’s something dirty. She grins at him, presents her finding and barely keeps the excitement from vibrating her whole body. “Can I keep this? Please, oh please, say I can. I promise I’ll be a good girl and I won’t stab nobody with it that doesn’t deserve it and I won’t play with it at the dinner table and I won’t leave it on the floor for anyone to trip over and die. Please please please?”
Cid is turning the shuriken over in his hand carefully and Yuffie knows what he sees. It’s old and rusted and duller than a marble, what harm could it be and she can almost see it before it happens, the moment when he shrugs and tosses it back to her and she remembers Norio and what he said to her, so she fumbles for it and lets it clatter to the ground. “Knock yerself out, kid.”
Yuffie gives a whoop of excitement and spends the rest of the day tossing the shuriken into the air. By the time Cid is ready to stop for the day, the storeroom in a slightly more organized mess, Yuffie has re-taught herself how to hold the weapon.
The next day she begs to stay at the shelter with Eugene. Aerith is a little suspicious but gives in. Halfway through the day she gives Eugene the slip and finds herself in the exact place that she wanted to be: the back alley with the abandoned crates. She’s “borrowed” a can of paint and makes a sloppy target on one of the crates. Counts off fifty paces from her target and spends the next few hours tossing her beat up little shuriken at the target.
It’s awful in the beginning, and not really a whole lot better by the end of the day but any improvement is improvement and on her way back to the shelter she practices twirling the knitting needle that she still keeps in her sock.
Eugene frowns heavily at her and asks where she’s been and, a little guiltily, she says, “Nowhere.”
“Look, kid,” he says, squatting down so he can look her in the eye. “I get that sometimes, there’s things you have to do. I’m all for that, really, I am. But I have to know what it is you’re doing, so that if trouble comes up, I can find you and make sure you’re okay, got it? Aerith trusted me with you today; let’s not make her reconsider that in the future, please?”
So she sighs and holds out the shuriken and he studies it carefully. “And you know how to use this?”
“Of course I do! Papa was teaching me! I’m the princess of Wutai and we’re a proud ninja clan!”
Eugene holds his hands up. “Okay, okay, sorry. Didn’t mean to step on your toes here.” He thinks about it for a second and finally says, “What do you say we move your target practice here? We’ll hide it in the basement and then you’ll be here with me, like we both told Aerith you would be, but you can still practice and you’ll be safe and I won’t have to worry about you too much. Okay?”
“No, not the basement.” And she shivers, thinking of buildings and being beneath one and how it wouldn’t take much, just a crack in the foundation and all of a sudden you’re surrounded by it and Eugene quickly backtracks.
“Okay, I’ll store your target down there, but we can put you in the little breezeway, between here and the clinic, deal?”
Yuffie grins and realizes this is why she likes Eugene so much.
-
A man shows up tugging on something that is invisible to all of them. Yuffie loops behind and follows him for a while. He’s wearing a dress and a matching hat and his beard is so long she can’t help but wonder if he hides things in it and he keeps mumbling weird things to himself. It gets boring quick, though, and Yuffie gives a tug at the hem of his dress.
The man makes a weird noise and jumps spins around and looks something between cross and curious.
“What cha looking for?” asks Yuffie.
The man tugs on his invisible thing again and stares at her intently. “You are a citizen of Hollow Bastion?”
“Uuum, I guess I was, sort of?”
He hums and consults his invisible things. “And how long have you been here?”
Yuffie shrugs, “I dunno, a while. I guess? Is this one of those things I need an adult for?” She considers the knitting needle still snug in her sock, wonders how much damage she can do with it. She’s never stabbed an actual person before, wonders what sort of sound a knitting utensil would make as it broke the skin and the man laughs.
“No no, no need for that. My apologies, I seem to have frightened you. I am merely just arriving from the Bastion, and was curious as to how long ago the relocation took place.”
“Whoa, how are you just getting here?”
“I am often away from home. I am a wizard, you see.” He materializes a flower and she makes a face at it.
“I’m not really a flower kind of kid.”
“Ah, understandable. Well then, my name is Merlin, and whom do I have the pleasure of conversing with?”
Yuffie wipes her hand on the hem of her shirt and holds it out for him, just like Cid taught her. “I’m Yuffie Kisaragi.”
“Aaah, of the Wutai clan, then?” and Yuffie doesn’t care how shady he looks, she could kiss him right there. “Well then, young Miss Kisaragi, would you kindly lead me to those aforementioned adults?”
Merlin listens to their story, lots of nodding and humming. “Well, nothing to do about it now, I suppose, except make the best of the new location.” He wanders off, pulls a piece of chalk out of one of his pockets and scribbles something on the space of wall in front of him. There is a light and then a door and Merlin nods a brief goodbye to everyone before disappearing.
Aerith is staying home today, making something in the kitchen. Yuffie leans over, watches her quietly.
“It’s been a year, you know.”
Which seems crazy and Yuffie doesn’t even try to do the math. Just says, “I’m seven now.”
Aerith laughs and says, “I’m sixteen now.” She beckons Yuffie over. “This is a wreath my mother taught me to make. We’d make them for funerals. It’s for loss. They’re small and light and meant to be released high up, so they’ll float on the breeze. The flowers aren’t quite right; the kind we used don’t seem to grow here. Would you like to learn how to make it, Yuffie?”
They stay at the table, hunched over the sprigs of flowers as they weave them together until they have hundreds and hundreds of tiny wreaths and the whole kitchen smells of love and heartache and hurt.
“Aerith, is there something we can make for Cloud and Tifa to come home soon?”
“There is, yes. Would you like to work on that next?” Yuffie nods and they go find more flowers.
When Cid and Squall come home that night, they take all the flowers out to the far side of town where the cliff’s edge looks out onto the wilderness and nothing and unknown and they let them go into the night and hold the names of the lost close to their hearts.
-
Yuffie spends most of her time at the shelter, shadowing Eugene and listening to stories. One day, he slips her a badly wrapped gift. “Someone told me everyone’s favorite ninja girl is a year older now. Sorry this is a little late. It took the moogles a bit longer to make than expected.” And when she opens it, there are five brand new, sharp-enough-to-split-the-box shurikens. “And keep those on the down low for now, please? Keep practicing with your old one. But hey, you never know when you’re going to need a good pointy bit, am I right, kid?”
-
Someone has shown up at the center and she gives Yuffie the willies. She’s old and cranky and…. Not evil, but there’s definitely something very Not Nice about her and Yuffie takes to the shadows, watching the woman, this Gothel, carefully.
Rapunzel is ecstatic to see her, embraces her and calls her Mother and Yuffie flat out refuses to believe there is anyway under any sun or moon that these two are related. Gothel has a certain, condescending air about her and even Aerith steers clear of her.
Which is probably why things went down the way they did.
At the end of the day, Aerith comes to fetch Yuffie at the center and she’s frowning. “Eugene, did Rapunzel come here earlier?” and when he says no, Aerith comments about how strange that is; she left hours ago and nobody seems to know where she went.
Rapunzel is missing. And shortly after her, Eugene goes missing, too. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why, though: he’s gone looking for Rapunzel. There’s nobody left to man the shelter but Yuffie and Cid and Aerith and, to a certain extent, Squall. Yuffie knows where everything is the best; she’s been through every area with Eugene enough and the others are old enough that people don’t give them funny looks for running things. After the first forty-eight hours have passed, though, with no sign of either of them, Squall goes missing, too. His sword has gone with him, the impossibly big one that Eugene asked him to keep quiet because it would make other people nervous.
He finds them and comes back and there is something different. Eugene holds Rapunzel and doesn’t want to let her go and Rapunzel-oh, Rapunzel, all her long, beautiful, magical hair is gone. Shorn off around her ears and it’s brown now and it’s not that she looks bad. She’s Rapunzel and Yuffie doesn’t think she could possibly look bad but there’s a deep sadness to her now and a certain, wild look as she keeps peering over her shoulder like she expects something or someone to come after her.
Everyone at the shelter wants to know what happened, if they’re okay and Rapunzel can’t really talk, just smiles and tries not to cry and Yuffie throws herself at her, hugs her around the knees. “You’re back.”
Rapunzel collapses around her. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Good,” says Yuffie.
On the walk home she sidles up to Squall, tries to walk tall next to him despite the fact that she only comes barely to his hip. “So,” she says nonchalant. “You did a good thing today. Kind of a stupid thing but a good thing, huh?”
He doesn’t look at her, she thinks maybe he didn’t hear her and is considering saying something awful just to get his attention when he finally speaks again. “They’re good people, I was able to help. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have.”
And Yuffie is thinking about someone else, someone from long ago who was a good person, at least as far as she was concerned; and maybe Squall knows this, or maybe it’s just the moment. He lays a hand on her head and it’s kind of heavy and says, “Sometimes, bad things happen to good people and you can’t do anything. That’s not anyone’s fault. But you have to try to make up for it when you can.” And that was a lot of words to say I’m sorry your father died
-
Aerith has started a garden behind the shelter; the patients of the clinic have been helping tend it, the ones who find it frustrating trying to paint. They seem to like it, taking care of something living and growing and everyone has their favorite flowers.
Yuffie doesn’t get it. Sure, she helps out with the yearly wreaths now, but flowers are smelly and dirty and while she doesn’t have anything against dirt, she doesn’t care for the things that live in it. Not that she’ll admit that to anyone, god forbid, so while everyone is fussing over the blooms she takes this time to go exploring, something she doesn’t get to do enough.
She takes to the roofs; Eugene taught her how to scale walls and run along the peaks, how to set your feet and when to jump. “This place is fairly compact, so there’s plenty of space to run up here without having to get down.” And she tails after Squall for lack of anything better to do. He disappears into the Second District and it’s a short hop up the wall and she’s following him again, up to the point where he disappears into the waterway.
She won’t go down there, shivers at the thought of spending any amount of time locked beneath a building like that and so she settles onto the roof of the hotel, palming a shuriken and counting the stars to pass the time.
He comes back out, hours later when her legs have finally fallen asleep and she has vowed to never ever try to hold still that long ever again. Squall stops, stares directly up at her hiding place and says, “Stop following me.”
So she drops down the street, performing a few rolls on her way down and only stumbles a little and says, “It’s a free country, I can go where I want. Just like you.”
He grunts at her and walks off. She follows behind, just out of swinging range because she’s curious but not stupid. “Must be something pretty interesting in there. You were in there a long, long time.”
He doesn’t react so she keeps going. “Yup, I gotta say, I don’t know how you do whatever it is you do down there. It must be pretty boring, way down there. All by yourself.” Still nothing so she pulls out the big guns. “Pops says you probably got a stash of skin mags down there and is doing ‘what normal boys his age outta be doing.’ I’m not really sure what that means, though, why would you want a magazine made out of skin? And what does a normal boy do with it, huh Squall?” and now he has stopped, is rubbing at the bridge of his nose and says, in a voice that discourages any and all questions and comments. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
She grins “Not really! So what kind of skin are these magazines made out of? Human skin? Pig skin? I’ll bet it’s cat skin. Pops kept saying something about cats, but how do you read anything on cat skin? Do they remove the fur first?” and she chatters at him all the way home where he finally slams the bathroom door in her face.
-
Another year, another series of wreaths. Rapunzel knocks on the door and asks if she can help too and Aerith pulls up another chair for her. They do the hundreds of hundreds for the unknown and the dead and they set time aside to make the other ones, the ones for the missing. For Cloud and Tifa.
Squall has taken to patrolling the city by himself. He’s out for ridiculous amounts of time, doesn’t even come home for meals anymore and as far as they can tell, his bed has gone empty for almost a week. When he finally makes an appearance, he looks miserable and ragged, the bags under his eyes seem to have bags and he collapses on the couch with strict instructions to Aerith to wake him up in an hour.
It’s completely ridiculous and Yuffie hates having to owe him anymore than she already does so she waits until he leaves again, slips through the door after him before it can click shut and immediately takes to the roofs. Up high is her favorite place to be. She skulks along the peaked roofs, ducking out of sight when he stops and glares in her general direction. He’s smart, which is annoying, and knows he’s being followed but she’s not owning up to this yet.
Squall slides into a ready stance before the heartless even appear. It’s obvious he’s exhausted, though; his movement is sloppy and several times he’s forced to go on the defensive. Yuffie jumps in without thinking, pulling out one of those shiny, mostly untested shurikens that Eugene had gifted her with. It’s a little disappointing when Squall doesn’t look surprised, just shouts, “Keep behind me!” and keeps going with his hack and slash technique. It may be Yuffie’s imagination, no, it probably most definitely is, but he seems to have regained a little bit of his energy.
When everything is dead and gone he finally looks at her, really looks at her and it makes her uncomfortable but she refuses to squirm under his gaze. He never says, “Good job,” or “Thanks for the hand.” Just says, “You’re bleeding.” And she wipes hastily at her cheek, smearing the blood there and across the back of her hand. “Better get to Aerith, you know how she feels about scars.” And walks away. Just like that
Squall walks her home, Yuffie wonders if she’s in trouble and how that would work. Technically she doesn’t have to answer to any of them; they’re not her family. They’re just stuck with each other.
Aerith fusses a little but heals her up and pats her cheek. “Be careful next time, okay?” and when she dawdles in the kitchen, not sure of what’s going on, Squall sighs and looks at the sky and snaps, “Are you coming or not?”
-
Squall is staying in bed today. He’s feverish and mumbling to himself and nothing Aerith tries can help him. She even runs to the clinic and asks some of her doctor friends to come by and try; maybe something one of them knows from another world would be enough. But no. He is just miserable and hot and asks them to turn the lights off, it’s too bright.
Yuffie doesn’t even chatter at him, just sits by his bed because she’s the only one home, and changes out the damp cloth on his forehead every now and then. She worries he’s going crazy, like Cloud did, and wonders who will chase after him when he runs away. If they’ll manage to calm him down and bring him home, or if that’ll be two more people disappeared from their lives.
She falls asleep, curled uncomfortably in the bedside chair. This nursing people back to health stuff is hard and she doesn’t envy Aerith her job at all. When she startles awake the bed is empty, cool to the touch, which means he’s been gone for a while and Yuffie’s heart drops somewhere in the vicinity of her knees as she scrambles to the door.
“Squall?” she calls, banging into the doorframe as she cuts a corner too sharply.
He never screamed. Cloud had screamed for hours, and if he didn’t scream does that mean he’s not crazy? Does that mean he’s still the same, insufferable Squall they all know and tolerate? There’s a light on in the bathroom, she can hear the tap running but the door is locked and so she beats on it. “Squall, if you’re in there, open up right now!”
She can pick the lock, some lingering piece of sanity informs her, she can pick the lock because she’s a ninja and she’s good at lock picking, it’s the easy part. But she’s shaking too hard and is too afraid of what waits on the other side of the door to pull any of her tools from their convenient places hidden on her person.
“Squall, I mean it! If you went all nuts-o a la Cloud, I am going to be so pissed at you and I’m going to chase you to the world’s end until you come back to your senses and you’ll be all ‘oh Yuffie, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Thanks for putting up with all my batshit crazy.’ And I’ll be like ‘nah, don’t mention it. Seriously, there’s nobody here. We’re at the end of the world. Save the whole hero worshipping for when we get home and I can have an audience.”
The door swings open then and Squall looms in front of her, backlit and imposing and she feels a shiver run down her spine.
“Stop. Talking,” he growls, legit growls and the shiver is gone and she stands up as straight as she can which, okay, not her fault she’s super short and she spits back, “You, stop being a psychopath. Should you even be up? You were, like, dying two hours ago. Come on, Squall. Back to bed with you.” And she reaches to grab his hand but he beats her to it, holds her wrist and squeezes a little too tightly.
“Don’t call me that.”
That earns a raised eyebrow and an, “Okay, then what shall we call you? Princess Sparkly Diamond Nutmeg?”
He all but throws her hand when he lets it go, stalks past her and says, “It’s Leon.”
-
“He’s gone crazy, Eugene. Calling himself Leon, which is just dumb and he’s moodier than ever and what the heck are we supposed to do with him?” Yuffie is on the roof with Eugene, helping him re-shingle things and Eugene has a mouth full of roofing nails, manages to talk out the corner of them.
“Hey, people go through things sometimes. I can’t really say anything. For years I went by the name Flynn.”
Yuffie makes a horrified face at him. “That’s awful, Eugene. Why’d you do that?”
“Ah Yuffie, you have the optimism of youth on your side. Sometimes, people go through things and they don’t like the person they are. They think if they become someone new it’ll make things better.”
“And did it?”
“Nah, not at all. But I thought it would and I refused to believe otherwise. It wasn’t until I met Rapunzel that I realized being Eugene wasn’t such a bad thing. Just give him time. If being Leon is who he needs to be right now, let him go. He’ll come around eventually and realize that Leon Leonhart is the worst name to have ever.”
-
They started marking her growth on the shelter door some time ago. It’s weird to look at the scratches, the penciled-in number next to them that starts at eight. But it’s more important than ever to see how she’s changed, her perspective of the world slowly inching up year by year. Eugene does the marking for her, makes a big deal out of it and acts like he’s trying to diffuse a bomb or something. Whistles when she stands back.
“Jeez kid, you better slow down or you’ll be towering over all of us.” Which was just stupid, she’s hardly grown an inch since last year, but he puts a little mark next to her head. 9.
Part Four