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Yuffie will not follow Leon into the sewers. Hell--in fact, even Cid will not follow him because it's "too far down, dammit!" Aerith keeps her stately distance from it, though she will tap on a grate to signal him to come back to the surface.

And upstairs, it is blinding. The noise, the light, the everything. Aerith in her pink dress and Yuffie in her kaleidoscopic whatever the hell she's picked out for the day because she doesn't care, not one bit. It's enough to make him want to go back down there, until Leon remembers that it is the sewers and he is not going to spend more time than minimally possible to regain his sanity and look like he's regained his sanity. It is the only place where he can be alone.

You've sunk so low, Leon, a voice giggles. B-but... no one has ever said that to him. And it is not a voice he remembers...

-

"So Squall, how was your life as a sewer rat?" Yuffie, over his protests of "Leon! Dammit!"

She jabs at him playfully with shuriken he would not have picked for himself. Leon likes normal-sized things, not things big enough to poke out a lung or the eye of a giant Heartless. And Yuffie is so small he wonders how she wields those things so... adeptly. When Leon out started with his gunblade he was--

"And well, everyone has to start somewhere." She hefts the throwing stars and leaves Leon in shock. Half the time he doesn't know what the hell she's saying, but now she's hit right on the mark.

"If you don't have anything to say, then why bother?" he barks.

"Who said that wasn't anything?" Yuffie questions, and disappears into the night.

-

"Squall!"

Leon shivers.

It's freaking cold, and luckily his sense of smell has gone where the external heat has taken it--training has given him a minimal boost in core temperature but his hands are still shaking. It's not winter, fortunately, but sometimes he wishes it was.

A little.

"Squall! Hey--Squall Leonhart!" Yuffie bangs on the grate. It's a trick she's learned from Aerith--if she taps politely enough he will come without a fuss and be too surprised to back down where he came from to ignore her. But now she's not being sneaky at all. What kind of ninja is she? She sleuths around in screaming colors and a voice to match--

"Hey! Squall!"

Leon shifts uncomfortably in the dim, subdued green-gray. He wants to answer 'Leon!' but that would be weak. Instead he makes his way to a different grate across the street. Everything is gray in the sewers, but when he climbs up out of it, gunblade in hand: there, there, there is Yuffie.

And about a dozen.

Hundred.

Heartless.

"Okay!" Her voice keys on the right pitch for Leon to turn his head. "Leon!Leon! Would youanswer me?!" A few frantic kicks at the grate and she even draws back her shuriken. This is when Leon approaches.

"I'm here, Yuffie--here!"

-
The period after the fight is when Yuffie starts shivering in her sweat and Leon wishes he hadn't picked a short-sleeved jacket. It's never winter in Traverse Town, just like it's never properly summer... but--

"I-I..." Leon looks at the ninja as she gives a mighty shake of her head. As if to get it out of her eyes, but that would be... "I thought you wouldn't come," she confesses, with a voice that's incredibly fragile. Something that would break if you snuck around with it, not muffle your steps.

Did she really think he wouldn't...?

As always, Leon's mouth doesn't match up with his thoughts. It's like being drunk, only not. "You could have taken them all on your own if you just hadn't panicked, Yuffie."

"But I did. I thought you wouldn't come." Yuffie bites into her gauntlet to muffle the shake her voice, then swipes at the front of her dark, dark eyes with the back of her hand. "I thought it was because I called you Squall." Another shiver cuts her off, but it's mostly in the shoulders.

Leon doesn't buy it.

"I didn't go up because you called me Leon. I went up because you were scared. If you'd come out straight with it I wouldn't have--"

"But you hide things all the time!" Yuffie accuses him violently, pointing even. She does get violent after a fight--too much adrenaline, he thinks. "I don't know what you're feeling right now. I don't even know if you're tired!"

"I don't hide things." Leon brushes ahead of her as they come closer to the house. "You just don't know where to look." The tapping of Yuffie's canvas boots stop. Leon stops too and turns around, with his head first and then his shoulders, his torso, his legs... "What?"

Yuffie sets her face and looks at him like a hawk. Up and down, side to side, all the way through him. Then her face crumples and she wipes at her eyes again stubbornly, shaking her head. "I don't get it."

"Watch me and you will."

"I will?"

"You could have taken them on yourself, remember?"

"...Riiiiiight." Yuffie barges into the house before he does. "Whatever you say, Squally-kins!"

She skips into the light and heat and pink-of-health homeyness, and Leon realizes they smell like blood and sweat and metal. Both of them. He looks at Yuffie, centered in the doorframe with her outline lit by lamps on the inside of the house. The ends of her scarf twirling in the wind of her passing, and it's...

It's... blinding.