The new respirator pumps air. Shalua breathes in through her closed mouth, chest rising and falling without her eyes ever fluttering open even a little.

Yuffie sits in a chair next to the new regen chamber.

Yuffie swiped her card to open the blast doors on Lab 19 — the newest lab R&D had up and running, and the one that Director Shalua would probably be working in — and sighed when the door beeped. It was an unfriendly, 'you are not allowed in here' sort of beep.

So she took a very small knife and a screwdriver to the keypad, spliced some wires, and —

Shrieked. It was like being hit with a Bolt 3. Yuffie flailed and jerked as lines of light arced around her, turning the world to a haze of sparks and pain. She could only partly register that the lights that weren't currently snapping along her skin had all dimmed.

The door opened. Reeve and Shalua stepped out. Shalua looked surprised (a good look for her, but maybe that was electric shocks messing with Yuffie's head); Reeve just looked exasperated.

"You warned us about that trick," Reeve said.

"Watergod," she wheezed. "The hell do you have that thing hooked up to?"

Shalua only smiled. Her eyes seemed to glitter like a cat's in the glow of the emergency lighting.

It was the middle of February — a solid month into the only new year anybody east of Nibelheim cared about — and Yuffie wanted to smack whoever had come up with the eastern calendar. What was the point of starting a new year in winter? Last year ends with snow, so let's start our next year with more snow? Easterners sure could be stupid.

What was worse, Reeve had that look in his eye that spelled out budget meetings and Cait Sith had taken to following her around muttering about something that might have been 'money' in some backasswards sounding brogue. So Yuffie irritably slouched her way down to the labs. Cait Sith wasn't allowed down there; he'd once tried to free all the robot body doubles for the Commissioner. (Which would have been chill if they'd been tested properly and weren't highly, highly classified.)

"Happy New Year," Shalua said, handing Yuffie a green and silver... something or other. It had buttons, and a trigger, and sharp little needle points.

"What's this?"

"New stun gun." Shalua's mouth curved wickedly. "Did you think it was something else?"

Yuffie peered at the stun gun, fiddling with dials. "I thought it might some kind of new watergun. Blame the sweet paint job."

"It's a custom. The official model will be standard gunmetal."

"Is that her? Your little sister?"

"My reason to live," Shalua said, pointing at a photograph of herself, much younger — maybe fourteen or fifteen? — and a kid who was probably under ten. The little sister was on the scrawny side with a crooked smile; Shalua had an intense stare.

"We were all Mom had. And then we were all each other had."

Yuffie took the photo with careful fingers. She peered at it, tilting it this way and that, trying to find some clue as to location. But the neatly painted house, the white fence, the gravel drive — it could have been anywhere but Midgar. Probably not Nibelheim, either, but that was more because Nibelheim was a fake. Well, she doubted it was Gongaga, too.

She was kind of betting on Kalm, but she didn't think there was much point asking. With her luck, it'd turn out Rocket Town. Shalua seemed the type to be "I fuckin' knew your parents, twerp, don't you fuckin' tell me what to do with that engine" science friends with Cid.

"What about your dad?"

Shalua paused before saying, matter-of-factly, "Dead in the Wutai War. Or just never bothered to come all the way home. I've heard that happened."

"Oh," Yuffie said. She'd never been a reflexive apologizer, but she was pretty sure she was supposed to say something to that. "That's... gotta suck. I'm sorry. Where's your sister?"

"Missing," Shalua replied.

Yuffie got the feeling Shalua was so firm about that one because missing was better than gone.

The world had gone hazy, all fog and flashing lights, but the noises seemed to come from a distance.

"Get her to R&D," someone shouted, and she thought about trying to open her eyes.

She woke inside some sort of incredibly creepy glass coffin. The world on the other side of the glass looked warped — looked magnified and misshapen — and intercut with metal rings. Air hissed in and out of the coffin in little puffs that smelled antiseptic and metallic but tasted like a Cure spell, minty and tomato-y and pale blue.

She'd have been more terrified if a very familiar redhead hadn't bustled right by, her prosthetic arm hanging limp. Dead.

Shalua must have seen something on the monitors Yuffie couldn't read, because she turned and walked quickly toward Yuffie's glass coffin, footsteps quick click-click-clicks.

Wasn't there an eastern fairy story that went like this? Yes, she remembered. It had a prince and more importantly a princess with skin like snow and hair like a dark night. An apple with a Sleepel spell somehow cast on it by a fallen Cetra witch, so strong it left the princess near-dead. And so she'd been locked away in a coffin of glass, so a whole kingdom could see how beautiful she was and cry about it. Which had always seemed, from Yuffie's point of view, a little useless, but fairy stories were pretty weird.

"Are you my Prince Charming?" Oh. Right. Prince Charming had liked his chicks cold and corpsified, so she added, "Except not gross?"

"I'm going to assume that's the pure oxygen you're receiving," Shalua said, mouth quirked into one long line.

"What if it isn't?"

The R&D mess was completely deserted at this hour, nothing but gray concrete floors, dingy white walls, and half the fluorescent lights turned off — then again, the R&D mess was empty at most hours, because Shalua and her crack team of they're-workaholics-not-obsessives-if-they're-on-o ur-side often forgot to eat. Yuffie could have shouted across the distance and the silence at the redhead sitting alone at a gray plastic table, but it would have filled the room with sound. She settled for walking away from the coffee bar as quickly as she could.

Frankly, Yuffie was ready to count it as some sort of dry season miracle that she'd managed to actually make a tuxedo mocha that might be drinkable. That espresso machine was even more terrifying without somebody standing around telling her what buttons to push and that it wasn't going to crash all of WRO's computers if she pissed it off.

"It was the oxygen," Shalua said, when Yuffie handed her the possibly-drinkable mocha in a chipped white coffee mug.

"What if it wasn't?" Yuffie turned a chair around before she straddled it. She set her chin on the backrest. "What if I am being absolutely serious, and you're basically perfect?"

Shalua raised an eyebrow.

"Look, it's not like I have a list of things I look for. Lists are bullshit. I just… you're you, and I like that, and I want to take you out to dinner sometime."

"That is," Shalua said, crossing her legs and slowly, slowly, slowly lifting the coffee cup to her lips, and Yuffie watched every moment of it, "the worst attempt at flirting I've ever heard."

"That wasn't flirting. That was flat out telling you I like you. Am I going to have to write you a note? I hear that's a grade school thing, not that I ever went to your kind of grade school."

Shalua's mouth curved, Summon materia red against the white of the mug, but she didn't say anything. She didn't need to.

Blue dress — the kind of perfect blue that put Yuffie in mind of mastered Support materia, made out of a fabric Yuffie wanted to run her fingers all over — and shiny silver heels. Pearl earrings.

Somebody was really dressing up for this commencement/dedication/whatever ceremony. Reeve would cut a big ribbon with giant scissors, stumble and correct himself and clear his throat through a speech, and then they would all drink bad champagne. Yuffie didn't really see the point.

She sure as shit wasn't going to complain about the result.

"You know, most girly types spend half an hour debating their shoes."

Shalua made excellent use of the mirror to give Yuffie one of Those Looks. The dog-crap-on-the-bottom-of-my-shoe looks. And then she went back to selecting amongst her prosthetics.

Yuffie popped a butterscotch into her mouth and said, helpfully, "I'd take the one with the laser cannon. If things go wrong, laser cannons are always helpful. Just ask Barrett!"

"None of them have a laser cannon, Yuffie." Shalua sighed. "And no, I'm not going to make one."

"Good, we don't have time for that. Want me to help with the earrings?"

"I meant ever. Sometimes I'm not sure why I even bother."

"Because I'm the only person who can get through your ridiculous security measures."

At that, Shalua quirked a very small smile. Just watching it curl along her mouth felt like a victory. "In more ways than one, I suppose."

Yuffie palmed the earrings and leaned in close.

— Where's the Commissioner?

— I don't know, I need to check on something else.

Yuffie looks back, and knows: she shouldn't have let Shalua go. She should have grabbed her by the arm and pulled her close and kissed her.

— They say it'd take a miracle. For her to wake up, I mean —

— She was a fool.

Yuffie looks back, and knows: Forget slapping. She should have punched Shelke.

An auto-pilot funeral. Full honors. Yuffie watches a color guard or whatever the hell they call themselves in an organization that is only actually para-military fold a flag — Rocket Town's flag; Watergod, she'd guessed right — and lay it to rest atop Shalua's coffin.

Shalua's empty coffin. Because Shalua herself is in a regeneration chamber in a WRO lab, breathing in and out, sleeping forever without dreaming. But nobody wants to admit that. It's easier for them all to pretend that Shalua is dead, rather than 'gone.'

Missing is better than dead, and dead is better than gone somewhere in her own head, and they don't know where.

Yuffie looks up, and up, and watches a sky that sullenly refuses to rain. The humidity is like Wutai in the middle of summer, swampy and thick, like clouds are clinging to the skin. It leaves her sweaty, and her heart hurts, and her palms hurt.

— Yuffie, please give her a chance—!

The words echo around and around in her head for days. She knows, in her soul and in her bones and in the water that becomes her blood, that shutting Shelke out is precisely the last thing that Shalua would have wanted.

Shalua would never care if Shelke appreciated her sacrifice. Shalua would only care that her little sister — her reason for living — was safe and happy. Just one of the many ways in which Shalua Rui was a far better person than Yuffie Kisaragi is.

One morning, after several false starts, Yuffie persuades herself to roll out of bed. The sunlight is bright and she spends several minutes in an ungainly heap on her floor. She hunts down clean clothes, tosses them onto her bed, and hits the shower.

After far too much time spent on Edge's roads — more sun, humid as the day they pretended to bury Shalua, and people in Edge cannot drive, she could swear to Leviathan — she finds herself at the rebuilt WRO headquarters.

A few swipes of a few keycards, a few rote, meaningless greetings, and she finds her way to the R&D mess. She picks up a plastic chair and drags it down, after another series of keycard swipes, greetings, and cheerful refusals to explain herself, to the rebuilt Lab 19.

In a regeneration chamber — a glass coffin, skin white as snow and hair like Ifrit's fire, red, red lips curved into a perfect bow, and there are no kisses deep enough to wake this princess — Shalua sleeps on.

Yuffie sets down her chair, pulls a book from her duffel bag, and begins to read.

"Prologue. Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note…"

"Sorry, Teef, nothing doing. There's a situation in Gongaga. Eco-terrorists." Yuffie pauses, then adds, in a tone of almost manic cheer, "Heeeeeeeeeeeey. You wouldn't happen to know any eco-terrorists, would you?"

Tifa's response is dry: "Only if they're actually trying to save the planet from Shinra."

"Uh huh. Well these idiots are just trying to save the local frog population. They say digging around for oil releases all these fumes and it's killing off the rare Gongagan jungle frogs. Which even if it's true, I don't see much of a problem; frogs that can turn other people into frogs can't have that much of a population problem, right?"

"Hi, you've reached the voicemail of Yuffie Kisaragi. I'm not in right now, but you can always try smoke signals or something. Or call Vincent! He'll fix it for you. Unless this is about the WRO, in which case, try the smoke signals, if you know what I mean."

"Yuffie, this is Tifa. I know things have been different since you started working for the WRO, but Cid said you're looking pretty pale lately, and Reeve only ever tells me where you are when I ask how you're doing. Please let me know what's going on. I know you can take care of yourself, but it sounds like you're working too hard."

"Hi, you've reached the voicemail of Yuffie Kisaragi —"

"Hey, it's Tifa. I just thought I'd let you know that Marlene's school play is next Friday. Please come if you're in town. And call me. I can't believe all my news about you is coming from Cid and Shera — though at least Shera is telling me you seem a little better? I'm sorry, I just can't help but worry."

"Hi, you've reached the voicemail of Yuffie Kisaragi —"

"Yuffie, it's Tifa. I'm not sure you're getting these, but I wanted to call and tell you that I've been thinking about you. Please call back when you can. Oh! Shera's baby shower is on —"

"Hi, you've reached the voicemail of Yuffie Kisaragi —"

"Yuffie. I'm not going to get in the middle of this again. Call Tifa back."

There's a brief roar of a motorcycle's engine before the call cuts out.

"Nope," she says, "I can't. I've got a hot date."

That clearly catches Tifa by surprise. Yuffie can hear the raised eyebrows over the phone. "With who? How did the two of you meet?"

She sounds genuinely happy. Excited. Like this is the best news she's heard about Yuffie since before Yuffie stopped coming to dinner.

"A hot date," Yuffie says, sharp and pointed because Tifa's mental script for this conversation is a lie, "with a book and a regeneration chamber."

There's a moment of silence before Tifa asks, very carefully, "Yuffie, how are you?"

Her tone is tentative, like Yuffie is some fragile thing. Like even if Yuffie thinks she's okay, she'll crumble to dust if Tifa questions her too harshly.

She hangs up the phone.

"There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first place, Millarca complained of extreme languor—the weakness that remained after her late illness," Yuffie reads, "and she never emerged from her room till the afternoon was pretty far advanced."

The door swings open. Yuffie looks up from the book to see Vincent standing awkwardly just inside the room. He's changed from the ragged cloak to a red duster, but his shoes are still stupid. He doesn't have a redhead in tow, at least.

"Hey, V-man," she says, tone easy and bright in the same way that fools Tifa when they have to talk, "you're missing your shadow."

But she can see on his face that Vincent isn't fooled. He says nothing about it, though. He just produces a chair from behind his back and his huge duster, then sits down next to her.

"Don't you have somewhere to be? Like, a job, or something?"

"No," he says.

"Freeloader." But she doesn't bother putting any sting into the insult. "Why are you here?"

"Because you are," he says.

She locates the eco-terrorists, and Reeve sends in a squad of LEOs. After that, her life settles into a kind of routine. It's not really routine — Yuffie can never be sure which continent she'll be on in a week, nevermind which city she'll be in the next day — but for some reason Reeve's transport arrangements always have her waiting in Edge on Sundays.

It's a small kindness, but it means too much to talk about. She doesn't thank him; she doesn't even admit that she's noticed.

On Sundays, while she waits for an airship or a Shadowfox or for permission to sign on, low profile, with a caravan, she reads to Shalua.

Vincent joins her from time to time. He never brings Shelke. Maybe Shelke doesn't want to come — that would hardly surprise Yuffie — or maybe Vincent has figured out what Tifa hasn't.

One Sunday, when she's finished Carmilla, she asks, "Why are you really here, Vincent?"

Honestly, she doesn't expect much of an answer. She uses the time he takes to respond to decide between the fragmented poetry of some Cetra who lived out on a rock in the middle of the ocean and the slightly more complete poetry of a Cetra who lived out on a different rock in the ocean.

But he thinks a while, and then replies.

"Don't you dare," he says, too quietly, without enough triumph, to be throwing her own words back at her, "crawl back into that coffin, Vince."

Inside, Yuffie stiffens and freezes. She almost lashes out, but she's afraid to shout around Shalua. As if raised voices might drive her deeper into sleep.

So instead she says, "Get out."

He goes, and his eyes glow red as Summon materia or the coals she learned just a little too late not to touch.

She doesn't read, that day. She sits next to the chamber, and watches Shalua breathe.

The worst of it is: he isn't wrong.

He's not right, either, of course. Yuffie is not Vincent; she's not about to crawl into some coffin and relive every good and bad moment of the past couple of years. She won't hide herself away from the world the way he did. She's not consumed the way Vincent was; she's able to separate her life out into chunks: this chunk for the WRO, this chunk for Reeve, this chunk for Cid, and the rest divided between Shalua and Wutai.

But he's not wrong. And she knows it. This weekly pilgrimage — this weekly penance — is as much about her own inability to let go as it is about hoping Shalua will come back. And in that sense, Yuffie might as well crawl into some sort of regeneration chamber herself. Might as well slumber, and let the world slip by.

That's why she isn't surprised when one Sunday, with no warning at all, Tifa comes in.

Yuffie looks up from her book. She neither offers a greeting nor tells her to get out. If Tifa has something to say, she'll say it. If she doesn't have anything to say, she'll figure out that she's not welcome. Eventually.

They've fought too much already. Might as well try a more grown up way of handling it.

"You've been avoiding me," Tifa says.

Yuffie puts a bookmark in and closes the collection of poetry. She adds nothing to the conversation. (Okay, not more grown up. But at least without actually fighting.)

"You've been avoiding everything. Reeve says this is the only place, only time, that he can actually be sure you'll be."

Yuffie says, "Been busy."

"I'm worried about you."

Yuffie just sits, taps the book impatiently against her knee.

"Yuffie… did you love her? Is that why?"

"Still do," she says with a shrug. "But that's not the only reason. And if you had actually worried, you'd have asked earlier. Are we done?"

"If you loved her, why won't you talk to her little sister?"

"Don't," Yuffie says, calm and quiet, "you dare. You didn't know what was between Shalua and me. You didn't care enough to ask. You do not drag how I am not the girlfriend I should be into this."

"Yuffie —"

Yuffie stands. She rests the book on her chair, indicates the door, and then begins to move toward it. Tifa follows.

"Say we were just friends — like you and Aerith were just friends. And say some snot-nosed kid who wasn't even there, who didn't even know her," Yuffie says, as she goes. She swings the door shut once Tifa has left the room. "They didn't even know her, okay, now what if they went and said she was a dumbass for not getting out of Sephiroth's way. How would you feel?"

It's Tifa's turn to hold her tongue.

"Only you never thought about that. Vincent brought you home another stray to take care of, and you took care of her." Yuffie almost asks: does it make you feel better when Cloud stays gone?

But even now, with the anger and memories thrumming hot under her skin, filling her chest and stomach to burst, burning her throat at how much it all still hurts, she can't say it. Tifa chose a side, and it wasn't Yuffie's, but Yuffie remembers too many rainy nights and muggy afternoons and crying into Tifa's arms after Aerith's death. There are some wounds you do not point out, and Cloud is Tifa's.

So she says instead: "And damn what I felt. Shelke's pain at losing a sister she obviously did not know or care about totally outweighed mine. I lost a friend, a girlfriend, maybe the love of my life, and I am still waiting for her to come back."

"Yuffie, I understand how you —"

"— No, you don't. Or we wouldn't be talking right now. Look, I can live with the fact that when Shalua wakes up, her first thoughts will be for Shelke. But I can't live with you deciding Shelke's feelings outweigh mine."

Tifa has crossed her arms but doesn't look away. She holds Yuffie's gaze second for second. There's something she wants to say, but she's too good at listening to try and get the reply out now.

Yuffie sweeps an arm out in a reckless, restless motion, trying to explain and almost unable to find the words. The right ones might not exist in any language.

"I need you to figure out how to balance your — gawd, your emotional checkbook, or whatever, or I need you to get that I can't deal with you or Shelke right now. If we're friends at all still, give me that much."

"Yuffie… I care about both of you." Tifa sighs. "It's not about caring about one of you more than the other. I was worried. I didn't know. I'm sorry for that."

Yuffie doesn't know what to say to that, which feels like kind of a first. She's not one of those people who just apologizes for things that aren't their fault, and she's not going to hand out 'I forgive you' or 'It's okay' when she's not sure what she feels beyond that red, red throb where her heart should be and a confused muddle everywhere else.

Tifa reaches out and gently squeezes Yuffie's shoulder. "I'm not going to force the issue. You're important to me, too. If you ever want to talk, I'll listen — and it can be just us, if that's what you need. Just like old times."

And then Tifa is gone in a whirl of black leather and the near-silent tread of tennis shoes on concrete floors.

Something strained and heavy lifts from her shoulderblades. And yet the red throb in her ribcage grows, sinking deeper into her.

Yuffie sits in a chair next to the new regen chamber.

Shalua breathes in through her closed mouth, chest rising and falling without her eyes ever fluttering open even a little.

Notes: Book quotes are in fact from Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.