Disclaimer; Absolutely none of this is mine! Most of it belongs to Square, but I'm also ashamed to say that I've probably pinched a load of ideas from people on this site as well (please don't sue me ;-P), especially from the amazing 'Pieced Together', by La Editor. Go read it! And yeah, the whole italicsinbrackets has been used by about a million other people before me, so that's not mine either. In short, none of it is, so call me a shameless thief or J.K.Rowling if you like, only please don't flame or sue me, because I wouldn't have enough money to pay you anyway. So, now I'm done covering my back, thanks for reading this obnoxiously-long disclaimer.

ANYway... yeah. Another Vincent/Yuffie fic. Also kinda Squall/Yuffie, and Squall/Rinoa (if you squint). KHverse. Enjoy! Also, constructive criticism would be highly appreciated on this one, as I'm still not entirely sure on some parts. Yuffie's a bugger to write in correct tenses.

She doesn't know when it was that she first arrived in Hollow Bastion.

In a small sort of way, she has always been there. She can remember waking up in a forest (aching with bruises that aren't there) with bright green eyes hovering worriedly over her. And her first thought was 'Oh leviathan, I've died and gone to heaven' because she never, never thought she'd see those eyes again. And her second thought was that it couldn't in fact be heaven, because the eyes were most definitely green, not red, and no heaven would be complete without He-With-The-Crimson-Cloak (and materia; lots and lots of materia). And her third thought was 'Oh look, it's Aeris' as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. As if Aeris weren't dead.

Afterwards, Aeris took her to meet Leon for the first time (Squall, who she'd known since childhood), and ever so slowly, she began to remember things. Twice. She remembered Radiant Garden (Wutai), the Heartless (Jenova), Ansem (Sephiroth), and a million other tiny things that she hadn't known before. (Godo. Leviathan. Aeris. Materia. The Planet. Vincent.)

And because her new-found knowledge hurt like that time Squall had pushed her out of a tree and she hadn't been able to walk for a week (like when she awoke expecting to see a great big sword in her stomach because that memory still haunted her, and sometimes he wasn't there to wake her up) she went and locked herself in her room for three days and twice as many nights, because she hated this world so damn much for stealing her away, and because if she was sixteen again, wide-eyed and curveless, she might as well make the best of it and sulk for a bit.

Because the worst part of it all was that she could remember. Everything. She could remember playing in Radiant Garden, and stealing materia all over Gaia at the same time, like watercolours running over each-other in the rain. She knew about the heartless; how they had been ravaging Hollow Bastion for years, how they had destroyed her entire planet without even giving them time to say goodbye. And she knew what was true and what was false. She knew it, and she hated it. She hated that some of her memories were alien, polluting and intruding into her mind, and yet she still couldn't forget them.

So instead she kept her true memories close and secret, living the life of Bastion-Yuffie and dreaming the dreams of Wutai-Yuffie without ever wanting to wake up, and never wanting to go back to sleep. Because it hurt so much. It hurt that he wasn't there when she awoke, the silent presence that would hold her silently in the night and just simply be there. It was like a physical pain, eating away at her stomach and somewhere just a little higher and to the left so much that she just wanted to scream out loud and never stop screaming. Why? Why was she here, whole and unhappy and so desperately alone when he had disappeared along with the rest of her life? It was him that was supposed to be immortal, the git.

And the years pass. Slowly, like the ticking hour hand of a clock. Or maybe, maybe it just feels slow to her. Gradually, she regains the years (and the figure) that she used to have, and the Wutai-Yuffie sinks deeper down under the weight of laughing and rebuilding and talking, leaving a gaping, masamune-sized hole right in the middle of her chest (just like Aeris).

Memories become more intertwined, bleeding into each-other like dead souls into the lifestream (which doesn't even exist anymore, ha ha), until some nights she dreams about Him (VinvinValentino, who she loved once-upon-a-time, and still does really), and sometimes she dreams about Them (Aeris and Squaleon, The-Guy-With-The-Dumb-Name, who she has known for years, and remembered for more), and sometimes she dreams about nothing at all.

It all collapses, of course. It collapses when she sees Cloud again for the first time in ages, as he's been off fighting that long-haired guy whose conditioner she really must get the name of (Sephiroth, who murdered Aeris and so many others) in a big hole in the sky. It collapses because he's changed back into his old retarded outfit that's only retarded because it makes her want to sob hysterically when she sees it, and Yuffie has a limited vocabulary when she's upset. Indeed, when she first saw him wearing it (years ago), the only words she could speak for several days were 'Cloud' 'kill' and 'now', especially after she'd run after him, calling a name that didn't exist anymore (VincentvincentIloveyouvincentvincentvincent), ripping open that gaping tear in her chest just that little bit more when he'd finally turned around.

And now, like she always used to do whenever she saw that costume, just to put a little bit of antiseptic on that pain, she thinks 'That claw would look so much better on Squall.'

Except that's wrong. Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong. Vincent. It would look better on Vincent, not Squall, not ever. She stops dead in the middle of the street, a blank look on her face for once in her two lives, and she fights the urge to scream at everyone there You're Not Real!! Because Vincent was real and Aeris was real before she died and the planet was real, and they're all merging into one in her fragmented, split-in-two mind and she's scared, she's so so scared. She's already lost the real Vincent, and she refuses to lose his memory as well. No, no, nopity-no-no. Not gonna happen. Don't you dare go back to your coffin, Vampire-boy. Stay in my mind. Don't you dare… Don't you dare leave me again.

But when she emerges from her room a few days later, the damage (or so she thinks) has already been done, and she's seeing Vincent everywhere. Or more accurately, everywhere in Squall.

Really, they're so similar. And she hates (loves) it. They have the same way of non-speaking, the same tangible dotdotdots (except Squall's are just a little bit softer than Vincent's, and she can't read them as well). They have the same way of leaning against walls, arms folded, making her want to reach across and just untangle them, untangle all their arms and thoughts and feelings and looks and… and oh gods, they even have the same hair. It's all long and jaggedy and pointing back on itself like some sort of crazy flattened porcupine, only a lot better looking, and looking at it makes her want to dye Squall's hair black while he's sleeping and give him a red bandanna and then kiss him while she's at it, because if he was gonna kill her in the morning, she might as well make the most of it. Except she doesn't, of course.

Instead, she just stares at him when she thinks that no-one else is looking, and she tries to imagine him wearing red. This thought makes her blush (for the first time in this semi-new life), so she switches her attention to his eyes, and for a second, just for a second, she thinks they might be glowing slightly red (crimson like blood and Chaos and fire and kimonos and Da Chao in summer and so many things that she could never forget)… but that could just have been the light of Cid's workshop.

Vincent would never get down-and-dirty with gummi-engine, even if he actually knew what they were. He'd just click his fingers and everything would be done, just like that (although, actually she's never seen Vincent in a situation where he'd need to fix an engine, so maybe that's going a bit over the top… but the fact was that Vincent was perfect, and Squall – or so she tries to tell herself – is most definitely not). However, this thought gives her distraction enough to tear her eyes away from Squall and bounce out of the workshop before he can notice her obsessive staring and mistake it for… obsessive staring.

For some reason, her and Squall (Vincent) are always paired together at the coliseum (Golden Saucer), just like they always were against the heartless (Sephiroth). She supposes it's because they 'work well together' ("put the brat with Valentine; he's probably the only one who can fcking stand that fcking noise without having a fcking seizure") which is stupid as a ninja has the capacity to work well with anyone. She might annoy them to ittybitty pieces and feed them to her cats, but she could still work, and he was the only one who seemed to understand that. Besides, she's pretty sure that Squall wouldn't care either.

At first, she can remember, she hated this arrangement, not least because of the sharp little stab of pain that shot through her every time she heard Squall's stupid gun-thingy shoot something, or the way that she had to fight off tears whenever she heard him walking behind her (because Vinnie had bloody-great-metal-shoes on half the time, and he was still quieter than Squall).

Now, she hates it for other reasons. She hates that instead of pain, she has started to feel something maybe possibly a-little-bit-like-warmth whenever she hears that gunshot. She hates that whenever a hand appears to pull her out of trouble (trouble being an acronym for almost certain death), it takes a few seconds for the image of Vincent to fade out of Squalls face. She hates the way that he covers her short-range attacks just like he used to do, with his stupid puny-ass gun that'd probably be canon-fodder for the Death Penalty, except she knows deep in her heart that it wouldn't. She hates the way that he makes her forget where she is when she's fighting with him, the way he transports her to years ago and a universe away, and the way that the illusion is always broken when she turns to grin at him and his red cloak is nowhere in sight.

For his part, Leon (Squall) is equally as confused when Yuffie sticks her tongue out at him, which she has always done since she was a kid (since a few years ago), only this time her hair is suddenly longer and streaked with highlights, and then the image fades and he has no idea what he just saw. He hates it that when they are fighting together, she will throw her shuriken and it will return to her less pointy and more circular, and he will hear the faint sound of barking in the distance before he returns to reality. He cannot understand why sometimes he imagines her as an angel, all white wings and golden fields, when really she has always been Yuffie, little Yuffie that he looked after as a child and that he still looks after now. He doesn't know why whenever he sees her, he feels like flinging aside an invisible cloak and resting his chin on top of her head and wrapping his golden-claw-that-is-really-just-a-hand gently around her waist. He is completely and utterly puzzled as to when she became so beautiful.

Of course, this confusion goes unnoticed by Yuffie, and she merely tries to concentrate on how much Squall is unlike Vincent, trying so hard not to think about his hair, and his eyes and his silences. Instead she thinks of coffins and darkness and big, scary monsters and the black coldness of death… and then she giggles to think of Squall's face if he knew what she dwelt on whilst her mouth was chattering nineteen-to-the-dozen, and then that little squiggly feeling pops up again that she gets in her stomach whenever she thinks of him. And it hurts, it hurts like a stone-cold-bitch, that funny hula-hoopy sensation, because it is exactly the same one that assaulted her whenever she thought (still thinks) of Vincent.

Nononononono. Not feeling this, fingers in ears, none of this is real. Vinnie, come back, please… I'm losing you. I'm breaking my promise, Vinnie…

Because she had sworn that she'd never get that feeling for anyone other than him, ever ever again, and now it was breaking her, damnit, and he wasn't there to hold her. And gradually, suddenly, her little squiggles were mixing and melding into one gigantic lava flow inside her of Squall and Vinnie Vinnie and Squall Vinnie Squall VinnieSquall VinnieSquallVinnie

SquallVinnieSquallliVinSquaVinalVallVallVallVallVall. And they mix together until she can't tell the difference anymore, and she goes up to her room and cries for a bit, even though she doesn't have an excuse any more because she's nineteen again, but it feels good to weep for a while, because it means that she knows how Vinnie must have felt everyday that he locked himself in that goddamn coffin. Because Bastion-Yuffie and Wutai-Yuffie were melding together, dreams and nightmares and the real world melting and mixing and dissolving until she can hardly tell which is which through her tears.

But because she is not Vincent, she is everything that Vincent isn't, and a little bit that he was, but not that bit, she doesn't lock herself in her room forever. Instead she comes out and tries to ignore the raging torrent of Squallness inside her and tries to get on with life like Vinnie was never allowed to. So she bounces and laughs and tickles Squall to death (even though he's not ticklish, and all he does is stand there and stare down at her with his not-crimson beautiful eyes, but it's still fun to try, and she'd had a bet on with Aeris) and generally destroys evil monsters and saves the day, once a day, every day, even if that does just consist of killing that measly spider that was terrorising Aeris' kitchen.

And then one not-particularly-exciting day, she is out with Squall (which is kind of exciting, she supposes, only she refuses to let it be), locked in a not-very-fatal battle with these rogue-little-monster-things-that-look-suspiciously-like-tomatoes in a forest, when Squall lets out this almighty roar a bit like a lion, and she whirls around, half-expecting to see Galian Beast, not very surprised and only a little bit disappointed when there is no great purple monster, only Squall. Except that Squall is on the ground. And he is very, very still. Even stiller than usual, which was saying something because Squall was usually like the proverbial statue.

And it is only a few seconds of stunned disbelief (Vincent never gets hurt) before her breath starts coming in little gasps and the lava in her chest steams and burns a hole right through to her heart, and it hurts, damn it hurts, and not you too, please don't leave me, please don't leave me again pleasepleasepleaseplease you promised me you wouldn't… And she is cursing her tiny frame, great for ninja-ing and awful for carrying strong, heavy, injured men (vampires), and she has grabbed him by the armpits and she is dragging him with all her strength out of the forest (Nibelheim) and tears are dripping down her nose, because he might be dead (still in love with another woman) and it could all be her fault.

So she drags him with blurred vision and aching arms until she isn't quite sure what she's doing anymore. And all the hours bleeds together so that it feels like days before they reach the town again because, damnit, she doesn't have her mobile with her (and he, the stupid idiot, never even bought a phone in the first place, the social retard), by which time the tears have dried to be replaced with a cold emptiness because she isn't supposed to be crying like this over him.

It is not until hours later when she sits in the kitchen at home with Aeris and Sora, who has turned up again out of nowhere just to say hi, her hands clasped tightly around a hot chocolate, that she realises she is still shaking. It is tiny, imperceptible, but it is there. She grips the mug more tightly. Squall is upstairs, resting in bed. She still doesn't know why she's so upset – she refuses to accept it with all of her cellotaped heart – and she is still trying to ignore the surge of white-hot magma within her that whispers of Vincent and Squall and Vincent and Squall and…

She lifts her mug to her lips to try and stop herself thinking – her mind was always such a stupid motor train. Like, a big metaphorical Shinra motor train that used to overheat and run so fast that you screamed and screamed until it broke down and crashed into a reactor and blew lotsa stuff up. Only one person could fix that train. One. Not two. One. And no, it wasn't Cloud. Or Rufus.

Sora was speaking. Yuffie listens.

"… so, Riku said we should probably come and ask you. Y'know, seeing as though you know about stuff like that."

"Right. So, what did you think?"

"Well, King Mickey was saying all about when all those worlds were collapsed, right?" Sora sounded excited. "We were thinking about how it all got kinda mushed together into Hollow Bas– I mean, Radiant Garden, all the places and stuff. Well, what about the people? Couldn't some of them have been all mixed up, too? If they didn't actually die… Maybe they're all still here, some…"

Yuffie's mug drops onto the table with unnecessary force.

"Yuffie?" Aeris peers at her worriedly. "Are you…?"

Mushed together… the people… all mixed up… not dead… still here, somewhere. Somewhere… here.

"Gotta go check on Squall," Yuffie squeaks, her heart constricting painfully inside her chest, bashing against her ribcage like it was fighting to escape the narrow confines of her body. She leaps up from the table, almost knocking it over in the process, rushing up the stairs. She faintly hears Aeris sighing behind her over spilt hot chocolate, but it doesn't matter. Nothing matters any more, except this.

She screeches to a halt outside Squall's door. Still breathing heavily, her heart feeling like a herd of Rhinos ("Vinnie, what's the plural for rhino? Rhinoceri, Rhinoci, Rhinoses, Rhinoceres, Rhini... Hey, I like that one!"),she opens the door and tip-toes in. Squall is lying asleep on the bed, half-illuminated by the sunlight streaming in from the window. The rest of the room is dark, dark and peaceful (like a coffin, only less mouldy). Hardly daring to move, she closes the door and creeps over to sit cross-legged at the foot of the bed. Squall looks strange asleep in this half-light. His features are sharper, his hair darker (pitch black, against the deep crimson red).

No. No no no! This isn't fair. It can't be him, it just…

She fights the not-so-childish urge to lean forwards and stroke that hair, that oh-so-familiar hair. A dry sob threatens to erupt from her chest, but she stifles it, choosing instead to peer even more intently into his face. His face. The curtain shifts a fraction in the breeze; the angle of the sunlight alters and for a second, just for a second, it is him lying there in the bed, and she can hear his voice in her head. Not a memory, not a dream, but a voice.

I'll never leave you again, Yuffie. I'm sorry.

And after all these years, she still shivers to hear her name on his invisible-lips. The thought makes her want to laugh and cry at the same time, but instead all she can force out is a dry, fond little whisper.

"Don't be sorry, you berk."

After a few precious seconds of silence broken only by deep, sleep-breathing, the sunlight floods in again through the window and passes over Squall's beautiful, familiar face, breaking the magical, dust-mote-illusioned air. He grunts, just a little, and cracks open an eye. There is a blurry shape at the foot of his bed (Yuffie, grinning manically at him for reasons unknown – which makes part of him very worried, and part of him inexplicably, unknowingly glad) before he is overwhelmed with arms and legs and various other body parts as she launches herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly around him and resting her head on his chest. He looks vaguely surprised at the ninja in his arms, and Yuffie's smile stretches out across her face like a balloon.

"You're awake! You were like, dead again!" she exclaims into his shirt. "Squall, Squall, Squallity-Squall-Squall!"

("Vinnie Vinnie VinnieMcVinVin!")

And when he decides to overlook the word 'again', and merely looks down impassively at the top of her head and says,

"It's Leon."

("My name is Vincent.")

… it makes her so unbelievably happy that the squiggle inside her chest erupts (finally) into her heart in a big volcano-of-light and she beams up at him, sparkling like she hasn't done in years, and buries her head back down against his oh-so-human (but maybe something else in there as well, hidden underneath all the Squallness) heartbeat and she cries big Yuffie-tears of joy into his stupid furry collar (where, in her mind, she can still feel metal buckles against her skin). And, after a moment, he hugs her back, because he can see angel wings in her eyes, and they cling to each-other like that for minutes, or maybe hours, because maybe, just maybe, it doesn't matter that Bastion-Yuffie and Wutai-Yuffie are becoming one and the same, because one person might be two people, but no-one should ever be split in two. And they might both still be trying to understand how fate can tear you apart for so long and still make things better in the end, and they might both be less than and more than what they were ever meant to be… But they are there, and now, and together, and every living creature on every living world (and a couple of dead ones, too) always deserves a second chance.

And somewhere, deep down inside, crimson eyes are weeping, and angels are flying.

Hehehe. See that little button? The one that says review? Well, if you press it enough times, SquareEnix have promised that they'll get Yuffie and Vinnie together OFFICIALLY in the next VII game!!

Actually... just kidding. But it'd still make me happy ;-P

Also, there's a little reference to XII hidden in there as part of of the 'mushing together'... anyone care to guess at what it was??