HomeWhen you can’t get away.
There was a frozen puddle of vomit near the corner to the alley. It was shaped like a very dead octopus, with its arms stretched out in all directions as if it had been thrown out from a second floor window and met its doom by splashing into the ground.
Yuffie poked one of these arms with a stick, and noted with morbid fascination how fragments of it peeled off like cracked paint. Though anyone choosing to paint anything whatsoever in this particular color ought to go get their eyes checked. Or their brains, preferably.
Inside the bar and barely visible through the dark window, Cid – who had just arrived with the latest shipment of assorted alcoholic beverages for Tifa – and Barret had a lively arm-wavingly exciting conversation about… something. Whatever. Like she cared; she’d stopped paying attention when she realized she’d been hanging around for fifteen long, dull minutes and neither of the older men had mentioned anything remotely interesting. Cloud had been there too, a few chairs away: he was sipping on a dazzling green ‘Mako Dynamite’ while taking down notes on something that seemed important, and from time to time he’d inject some opinion or other into the conversation before returning to his drink and notebook.
And then Cid had lit up another one of his nasty cigarettes. God, they stunk; she even preferred hanging out in dingy Chocobo stables left unmucked for a week to these noxious fumes. One would think that Cid could afford to buy some high class brand of tobacco after all that happened, but no, he had to be contrary and roll his own from goddamn poisonous monster parts. Yeah, well, if he wouldn’t even extend the common courtesy of not smoking in a lady’s company – shut up Barrett, none of those faces – she sure didn’t see a reason to stay and grace them with her presence.
She evacuated the building pinching her nose pointedly, but alas, Cid didn’t even notice the death glare she sent him. Must be another unfortunate side effect of those damn cigarettes; they were slowly killing his brain cells and his perception – yeah, whatever perception an old man like him could have left anyway – along with his lungs.
Come to think of it, that puke over there could very well have been left by one of Cid’s crewmates. Or they were probably used to it by now, would have to be, ’cause Cid sure never listened to anyone’s complaints. Wow, the mere thought of being confined aboard an airship together with Cid and his smokes again was enough to make her stomach protest, and she felt all unsettled and wobbly.
No fear! The great Yuffie Kisaragi does not succumb to mere queasiness that easily! Instead she returned to her previous activities, and stabbed a particularly misshapen yellow clot vehemently – for great justice! In the process she discovered that someone seem to have eaten a bad curry sausage recently. Well, nice, that sure made her feel less nauseated.
Maybe she’d eaten a bad curry sausage herself, ’cause now she really needed to sit down. Preferably in front of the great porcelain god, worshiping it with all her might, maybe even offering up a few undigested sacrifices.
A thought came over her right then, and she got the weirdest feeling that something was off, horribly off; maybe it wasn’t just her stomach being sensitive all of a sudden after all this ‘sensory overload’ but something else entirely. So she sat down on the sidewalk with her head between her knees and tried to will the nausea to pass so she could focus on finding out the source of the tiny tendrils of wrongness twisting around in her intestines instead.
…and that’s when the door to the bar opened and Cloud marched out. His face was twisted into something ugly and angry, and he would’ve passed Yuffie by without acknowledging or even noticing her presence if she hadn’t looked up and greeted him with a weak “heya!”
For a moment or two she regretted making herself heard – Cloud spun around to face her and she saw his violent scowl for a fraction of a second until it turned into something else she couldn’t quite place – but she shrugged away her discomfort. She never were one to back away from a challenge, and this was Cloud.
“What’s the big deal?” she croaked and winced at the sound of her own voice. “Someone died or something?”
Cloud’s face fell and Yuffie mentally smacked herself. That’s really, really sensible, Yuffie babe, she thought, especially to him, especially after Aeris. Maybe she should just go back to playing with vomit again, that seemed to suit her current level of maturity.
Which lead nicely into having her stomach starting heaving again. Seriously, if this continued it was gonna make her throw a temper tantrum in the not too distant future. If it was something she hated it was losing control. Especially over her body, damnit.
She looked up at Cloud again. He still looked upset, but… it wasn’t directed at her, she realized.
“I,” he started, and then paused to take a deep breath. He smiled a little, then. It was a very lopsided, sad smile, and Yuffie’s heart started pounding like crazy in her chest as he opened his mouth to try again.
Oh no, Yuffie’s mind told her. Oh no, no, no! She knew, and it was bad, so bad, she didn’t want this no matter what had happened. Her stomach started dancing again and she swallowed, fuck this. “It’s my father,” she said almost inaudibly, cutting him off so she didn’t have to hear it, and she knew by the way Cloud drew his breath that she was correct. Not that she needed the confirmation; she knew.
She looked down at her feet then and noted absentmindedly that she’d have to buy new shoe laces pretty soon: these ones were worn out and frayed and only went three quarters of the way up her leg by now and would probably disintegrate any moment leaving her with shoes falling off right when she’d be charging toward an enemy and she’d trip and fall face down and skewer herself on the conformer, and that’d be an embarrassing end for her, especially if someone, like, say, Vincent would find her half-eaten remains. And not to mention, then he’d see with his own eyes that she had indeed been lying when she said she had no idea where the Odin Materia was. Not that it would matter by then, but it was the principle of the thing. You know, don’t get caught, ever.
“…and when Cid finally told me, just now, I wanted to strangle him,” Cloud was saying with his face contorted into an angry red knot, and he’d probably been talking for a while but Yuffie had no idea what he’d said.
“They’ve been calling,” she said, quickly, quietly, before he could ramble on even more and she would have to hit him to just shut him up, “but I never answered.”
Poke. Stab that bastard of a sausage, stab it dead.
Cloud was silent now, and stared helplessly at her.
“They keep bugging me about coming home,” she tried to explain, to herself and to Cloud and to Godo. “Always the same. ‘You need to fulfill your duties here,’ blah, blah, whatever. But I got better things to do with my time and they’d never shut up so I just stopped listening. But I never wanted it to… Didn’t want him to…” She stopped herself there, and shook her head. Don’t say it out loud; it’ll make it come true.
Yeah, and if I stay quiet it’ll all go away. I do believe in fairy tales, I do.
“Is there… still time?” Please please please, say there’s something I can do, please.
Cloud shrugged mutely. “Cid just said it was bad. I’ll… call them if you don’t want to talk to them right now? But you need to go home, Yuffie. Even if he’s… especially if…”
“Yeah, I know.” Yuffie stood up again, and stared dismally at the stick in her hand. Ew. “Yeah. Please call them. I need to…” Her voice trailed off and she looked at Cloud. Need to what?
He seemed to understand, though, even though she didn’t. He nodded. “I’ll take care of it.” And indeed, he was already keying in a number on his PHS and Yuffie slunk away, first toward the bar but no, not Cid or Barret, not now it’d be too much. She ran and ran, picking up her speed and weaving through the folk masses and maybe she pushed a few people out of her way (get away and leave me alone) and after an undetermined amount of time she looked up and found herself at the airport staring at the Highwind. There was a lump of something hot and dry and heavy in her chest and she didn’t know what to do, what do you do when your annoying, overbearing, useless father is dying?, and then Tifa was there, calm and sad and warm, and she just held out her arms, and Yuffie finally cried.