Hey. MR here.

Recently, I read somewhere that you'll never be complete until you've written a story for a pairing you'll never, ever think of yourself writing. So I got thinking, what's a pairing I haven't done? Yuffentine sprang out of my head immediately.

Shoot me. I can't imagine myself ever writing it. But, for the sake of completion, I had to. Realizing, after many attempts to write this story, that I couldn't pull off any happy-go-lucky relationship for the sheer reason Vincent is involved in this, I turned to the blossoming genre of angst.

Enjoy.

Yuffie's always happy.

Always.

As long as she doesn't think too long about a certain vampire-gunslinger-angst-maniac, she's very happy. If you thought about him, you couldn't be happy, because Vincent Valentine was the ultimate Angst King. Think about him and your whole mind would suddenly be infused with black thoughts and embalmed ex-girlfriends and "I HAVE SINNED!"

Anyway, where was she?

Oh yes, she's veryveryveryVERY happy.

It's times like this that her happiness frightens her. The fact that she can be happy when Vincent doesn't come to see her anymore (it hurts sososoSO much to think about that). It's times like this when she takes out one of those flaking, battered books she hasn't touched for a while, when she lets herself go in a pool of stereotypes and happy endings.

And she always cries. She cries about how Life never gave her Prince Charming and her castle and a heap of materia. She cries about how it gave her Vincent Valentine. She cries about how no one ever told her that Love wasn't always both ways, wasn't always "a kiss and love at first sight".

Then she will dry her tears and wash her face and make sure her eyes don't look so swollen. After that, she goes downstairs and sits in Seventh Heaven, right in front of the counter, and tries her best to make conversation with Tifa for hours and hours, waiting for Vincent to come in, and hopehopehopeHOPE that he'll see her. When he finally comes, he will come in with his red cloak swirling and smile slightly. Sometimes, if she closes her eyes halfway and squints through the slit, she can pretend he's smiling at her.

"Hello - (YuffieYuffieYUFFIE) -Tifa."

She takes a big breath and fills her senses with the smell of smoke and gunpowder that always hangs around Vincent. He will call her next. Today will be the day that he'll notice her again.

But he will just continue with some other trivialities about the weather and soon, her eyes will burn with the effort to keep squinting and she'll see that he's smiling slightly past her and that Tifa grins back, and she'll finallyfinallyfinallyFINALLY realize that he'll never acknowledge her. That's when she closes her eyes fully and her ears and runs from the room so she doesn't hear him ask for a drink from Tifa and the clink of his metal gauntlet on the glass and their voices echoing in the silent bar.

She runs and runs and runs until she gets to Cloud's room and bangs on the door as hard as she can. The door opens without a squeak or creak and she can finally open her eyes and see Cloud smile at her and she can take his hand and let herself be taken by him. Cloud leans in close every time, repeating her name over and over, so they both can't hear Tifa and Vincent talk about things she can't understand. The sheets crumple and rumple and crush together as they move, but neither of them really cares.

There's the sound of laughter, liltingly high and low and deep. It's too far away to be them, and Yuffie thinks that she's closer to crying anyway (Why?). They try to fool each other that they haven't heard it.

Spasms wrack them and they clutch each other as they fall all the way back down to earth. But when they land, they land apart. When Cloud looks at her a final time, she knows, he's thinking about black gloves, black hair and comforting words. And she's not ashamed to let him see that she thinks of red cloaks, black hair and silence. Then they turn away from each other and try to get some sleep.

She knows they both lie awake, backs to each other. She wonders if he wishes for dreams of fairytales too. If he's feeling better than normal, he mutters a "Goodnight" and pulls the blanket over to his side and leaves her toes to freeze.

All she does is grip whatever part of the blanket she can, squeeze her eyes shut and pretend it is tattered, red and smell like smoke and gunpowder.

A/N: Good heavens, it's actually done! I spent my entire holiday thinking about this and finally wrote it on the last days of it. I hope you liked it.

MR