a/n: a-haha. so, considering Firestorm was never gonna be finished… i just sorta…
deleted and posted this instead. -cringe-
so yeah. i wrote this ages ago. haven't edited or anything since i did. hah. yeah.
-cough- you can leave what happens before this scene to your own imagination, i guess.

Fake Officer Kisaragi found him hours later, on his knees, with Xemnas's empty head in his lap. The long hair of the man was spread out like a silver pillow. His haunting golden eyes stared at the sky, considering death's bad sense of humor and Axel's worse one, probably.

And did death have a bad sense of humor or what? The bodies littered the ground, crumpled up and horrified, legs sticking out from under nothing at odd angles—heads sitting alone without bodies under them. There were dead mothers holding screaming babies. There were dead babies held by screaming mothers. There were the three men who always seemed to flock to these kinds of places, gathered around the fire forty feet away, moping around just because none of them had any children left.

It was nothing she hadn't seen before. And that, of course, should have made it better… But it didn't.

She watched Axel finger at his almost-father-almost-murderer's coat and she watched the glowing red strands of hair stick to his face. Xemnas was just looking positively demonic. It seemed as if she had some competition. Yuffie almost grimaced, but then— Never mind, at this point, the competition was dead. Yuffie nearly laughed before catching the sound under her tongue.

She cleared her throat to make her presence known. Not that he had sensed her behind him from a mile away. Not that he was dreading the fact that she could see what he'd done. Not that he was desperate for her to see what he'd done. Not that he was ready to throw himself headfirst into those bullet-hole eyes of hers.

Because that would be stupid.

Axel sniffed childishly and wiped his emerald eyes and blotchy face on his sleeve. He looked around like a housewife who'd just discovered her children had better social lives than she did. She was dev-a-stated. Thus, diets conquered, and she hadn't eaten a banana since…

Referring to the soldier as a 'she,' almost made Yuffie laugh again. …Almost.

But Axel had managed to spot her blearily, and he was crying, and her chest was threatening to explode with the urge to suck him up inside her bones and cradle him in the light until the tears stopped flowing and everything went numb but the burning in her muscles.

Her teeth were aching to know every part of him.

So, you see: this was hardly the time for laughing.

Always remember that she hated him more than she'd ever hated anything.

—and also that she loved him miles more than the time they had left.

—and also that she was holding his dying heart, and he was holding a dead man.

—and also that all she could see was the wound in his eyes.

—and also that she was about to kiss him soft and slow

—— like she was still denying it

—— like he liked her a little bit.

—— like he was Axel and she was Yuffie.

Got it memorized?

Yuffie knelt down in one fell swoop, her hair frizzing around her head like a halo of heavy metal. He looked up at her, pouting lips and tear trails down his dusty cheeks and all. She spluttered, romantic genius that she was, "Axel, you've got bald spots in your arm hair." Breaking off into dry, watery laughter, she kind of leaned her shoulder into his for half a second in a familiar, friendly, buddy-buddy sort of nudge. "And I think your waist is getting smaller…and…I…" she trailed off into some kind of rib-cracking sob that she poorly tried to disguise as another laugh.

This soldier who was somehow destined to be her best friend and worst enemy gently pulled his eyes away from hers and lifted his boss's head slightly so he could slide it off his lap, lying the man down on the ground. He pushed his hand across the angular face, closing those sky-matching eyes.

And he turned to her with the most tortured, intense, blissful, horrible, beautiful look in his tiger-eyes as they had a moment of silence for the man Axel killed—and for the part of him that followed. They listened to the unspoken words of silence gliding through them, and the sun watched the ignored seconds tick by… It all slipped around them, over their heavy-laden shoulders and across their half-starved stomachs—like rocks in the river.

"It's okay," she offered up weakly.

And only because it wasn't, Yuffie tugged him towards her so they could collapse into one another..

with all the hurt,

and all the fire,

and all the rain,

and the death,

and the steam,

and the tears

—pouring down over each other. They rocked back and forth among a million dead bodies in a blubbering, pathetic mass of soldier green and skin and blood. Clinging for dear death and nothing, nothing was happening and they hated it. With the words and the moments swimming past, they tried to steel themselves against the hopelessness that hollowed out their chests, and the happiness because they made it through, and the everything…

But they weren't made of stone yet.

She pushed herself back a little bit, pushed her mouth forward a little bit and right then, they both changed. A bit.

And Axel noticed one more thing.

He told me to tell you that the only other thing worth mentioning that he ever noticed was, as usual, about Yuffie Kisaragi. It was just that it stung when she kissed him—bomb-burnt, cuss-stained lips pressed together, (that his mouth tasted like sparks and ash, that his eyes were wide open, and that she was trying to pull him back from the edge). Yeah, it stung.

But it hurt so damn bad when she pulled away.

So, I figure I should tell you that he loved her when it rained. And that she loved him on Wednesdays.

Yuffie and Axel knelt together in the firestorm dust, (hips on hips, stomach to stomach, tears in hair, mouth burning mouth, heart on heart). She caught his chapped lower lip between hers and searched his too-sharp, too-green, too-blue, too-late eyes with little less than no expectations. She found her own reflection and brought down her lashes.

When he smiled her mouth lost its grip.

You're beautiful; was what echoed in his head.

You're not so bad yourself; was what she mouthed into his cheek.

Love you; was what they didn't say.

This was the part when their tears were supposed to freeze on their cheeks, and their sorrows were supposed to melt away, and their burdens were supposed to be lifted.

And of course nothing happened but the slowing of seconds with their heartbeats—and that was enough.

Because it had to be.

Besides, death's sense of humor wasn't getting any better—

"Hey, Yuffie…"

"Whaddaya need, Ax-man?"

"This means you'll marry me, right?"

"You're one poor, stupid bastard, my fiery friend."

"Is that a yes? …Hey! Wait! Don't walk away! Wa-wa-wait!"

"Release the hand, you ass! I'm trying to storm off in radiant anger!"

"…Are you, now…? Heh… So, s'that why you're smiling?"

"Shut up! …Mmm… Alright, I'm serious now!"

(And the sun kept ticking by..)

"You're still smiling."

"Go away."

He slung his arm across her shoulders and they shared a half-grin through the thin air between them. She stayed there for a second, then shrugged him off (which very badly wounded his pride) and sprinted ahead, giggling like a maniac—and like an angel, (which made him very afraid to think he was accompanying a crazy, laughing bird-girl.) She was the only smile on the battlefield, (which reminded him that he'd known it all along.)

Yuffie was running and when Axel didn't follow, she stopped, turned, and quirked an eyebrow.

An unspoken challenge.

He laughed.

He ran.

So, the two of them took part in an obligatory race to the end of the story.

And, only because it was Wednesday—that was enough.