Get Well Soon

According to the girl, there was a warehouse in what was left of Sector 3 that was full of liquor – "vintage Meteorfall-era!" – and unknown to anyone else. Tifa raised an eyebrow, finding it more than a little hard to believe that anyone would abandon an entire building's worth of alcohol. She wasn't comfortable letting Cloud get involved in some crazy scheme, and he was out on a delivery, anyway. So no, the ninja couldn't catch a ride or even "liberate" his motorcycle for a run back out there.

So she made her way back to the place on foot, not content to let perfectly marketable and unguarded goods go to waste. If Tifa wouldn't help her, she'd do it herself, and if Seventh Heaven wouldn't buy the booze at her low, low prices, she'd sell it somewhere else, with (even) more of a markup. She picked her way through the rubble along the tracks, almost tripping a few times on the rough and unfamiliar terrain.

She didn't see the train coming. Loaded down with an armful of liquor bottles, headphones covering all of one ear and half of the other, she glanced one way down the track and started to hop along the crossties. The train whistled came just in time for her to whirl her head around and start to jump out of the way. As she pushed off on her right foot, the locomotive slammed into her left leg, sending her spinning around so hard that her ankle knocked against it a second time before she went down in a heap of limbs and a spray of broken glass.

She awoke to a little pain and more numbness in her leg, then opened her eyes to see him standing there along with Cloud and Tifa, the black and red shape a sharp contrast with the white of the hospital room. Something about being there to work with Cloud on a project for Reeve and the WRO. A wave of nausea rolled over her and she had to close her eyes. Tifa's hand was cool against her head as the fighter murmured some words of sympathy.

Later there was a doctor talking above her and she cringed. In the movies this was the part where they told the heroine she'd never walk again. But she only needed to let the bone set before they could use materia to cure her fully. A month, maybe a bit longer. Cloud and Tifa were there again, but there was no one else besides them and the doctor.

She was eating breakfast one day, half-twisted away from the table to give her leg space to stick straight out. Pancakes were threatening to spill out of Tifa's mouth as she laughed one of the girl's dirty jokes, when the front door opened and he and Cloud walked in. The Mako glow in Cloud's eyes partially obscured the way his lids were drooping, but he came over and sat down with a tired smile nonetheless. Reeve's other temporary employee merely nodded in their direction before heading upstairs to sleep.

He came back down later that afternoon and sat beside her on the sofa as she watched TV, greeting her curtly. "Yuffie."

She glanced over at him, or rather at his hair, a dark curtain between them. Looking back at the screen, she tilted her head back slightly, imperially, and returned the greeting. "Vincent." She couldn't entirely suppress a mocking imitation of his deep, flat voice. After a moment, he looked at her, catching her eyes jumping away before creeping back over to observe him. He turned his gaze to the TV and let her continue to feign indifference.

Eventually her eyes got tired of being forced so far over in their sockets and she turned her head. "I wouldn't have guessed you were into TV, Vinnie." He shrugged almost imperceptibly. "You're bored, aren't you. Looking for something to do." He remained still and she stretched. "C'mon, you just slept half the day. You gotta be tired of not moving. I know I am." She hoisted herself off the couch with her arms and he finally looked over, watching her hop twice to her wheelchair and plop down, plaster-covered leg sticking out again. His expression showed that he could see where this was going.

"I would have guessed you'd prefer to watch TV."

"I knew you were hiding some of your spooky monster powers! We could've used telepathy way back when. Let's get outta here. I'm resting though, so you get to push me wherever you want."

"You didn't break your arms."

"Don't make me get Tifa to make you do it." She opened her mouth as if to call out and ended up holding the expression, trying not to laugh while he appeared to think it over. He sighed and stood up, and she could finally close her mouth.

Soon they were outside, and she was talking about the strangers they passed and how Edge wasn't bad but really Wutai was much nicer. A few times she craned her neck around to try and get a response from him. Once he saw the move coming and dodged in the opposite direction – apparently he wasn't completely immune to her antics. She quickly whirled around and caught him, forcing some eye contact. "Gotcha! Hey, don't stop."

They continued on through a small park. Now she wanted to stop but the sky was starting to darken enough for him to insist they go back to Tifa's before they got wet. As he turned them around, she briefly crossed her arms and then leaned straight back to look at him from below. It was like an old photo, his pale face and black hair backlit by the gray sky above. She smiled and then looked forward again, keeping up the one-sided conversation.

The following few days he was gone with Cloud again. She passed the time chatting with Tifa, hanging around at the bar. When they were closing up, they would talk about running around the Planet back in the old days, or guessing what Reeve had his people doing, or debating just how many guys would have hit on her if not for the cast.

The next time he and Cloud got back it was late in the afternoon and the bar was mostly empty. She was in the chair by the time he got to the bar, and she poked him with her foot as he walked past. Cloud and Tifa needed some alone time, according to her. He sighed and wheeled her out.

They went down by the river this time until she insisted they head over to a lone park bench. She spun herself over to face him as he sat down at her insistence, and she asked him how it was going, for maybe the third time that day. What were he and Cloud up to all the time?

"Delivering concrete."

"Seriously? Nah, that's boring as shit. That's just a cover for something really cool, right?" He didn't answer her. "Come on, tell me stuff. You've waaay behind in the game here, two words to my million. Also, sheesh, relax. That bench has a back, you know."

She watched him oblige and it seemed to actually take an effort for him to let his body rest on the wooden slats. His eyes moved down as he made a slight face and then he looked back at her. There was a moment before he spoke.

"It really was just delivering concrete."

"Hey, you're makin' a comeback now."

"If we're actually having a competition over who can say the most, you won a long time ago with all of your texts."

She watched his face in fascination as the beginnings of a smirk started to show. She had forgotten about those, and as she said so she turned away, annoyed with herself for blushing. Between her accident and him being in town, there hadn't been any reason to badger him via phone for a while. He got up, ready to take her back. She thought she felt his hand touch her shoulder slightly, probably by accident, as he gripped the handles.

"Don't get any ideas."

"Wouldn't dream of it," she replied. "At least not if I can get a few more sentences outta you."

He left again that night, alone. It was strange, not knowing that he was brooding somewhere nearby. She ate dinner at the bar and didn't realize she was being quiet until Cloud commented on it, between snippets of conversation with Tifa and bites of his food. She answered with some standard-issue snark and made her way back to the guest room.

Giving up after attempting to concentrate on a book for a few minutes, she lay back on the bed. Reading just made her feel sleepy. She stretched out and decided to crash early that night.

After a few moments she was squirming around on the bed, trying to get comfortable. She felt the lump of her phone in her pocket and pulled it out and looking at it for a second, considering. Sighing heavily, she tossed it over onto the dresser before starting to fidget again.

The next thing she knew, she was pulled out the sleep she'd somehow managed to drift into by the loud clunk of the bar's front door hitting the wall by her window. Light spilled through and glinted off the shell of her phone, bouncing into her eyes. She sat up and reached forward to knock the hunk of shiny metal and plastic away and wound up holding it instead.

A weak little wave of sadness washed over her. She wanted to just sprint out the door and head somewhere else. In Wutai, she'd be the White Rose, the queen-in-waiting. Or she could be the obnoxious brat screwing around in Rocket Town or Cosmo Canyon. Here in Edge with Cloud and Tifa, she was just a distraction from their attempts to figure each other out, and from the actual children they'd taken in.

But she wasn't a princess or some punk kid who couldn't be taken seriously, or at least she didn't want to be. And she remembered why she had started trying to open him up in the first place. Maybe beneath his cold exterior he thought of her in the exact same way as Cid or Barret, a hyperactive walking punchline. Maybe not. Probably not the punchline part.

She flipped open the phone and hesitated. This whole deep thought and introspection thing was dangerous, because now she was realizing or just accepting that she liked him, in some crushy teenage way that was totally embarrassing even though (hopefully) only she knew it, and she didn't know what she wanted from him but it was something and it hurt not to have it.

Her thumbs moved over the keys and she went through several drafts of the first text she'd send him in weeks.

"Hey good thing you're gone, the bar is super packed and you'd have had to have fun." Too haughty.

"Hey, miss you, when're you coming back?" Weirdly needy.

"Hey come get me, my chair broke and I don't wanna break my nails crawling back." Stupid, although she kinda wanted to find out if he'd believe it.

"So it turns out I miss you and I don't know why, I want to talk." That one ran through her head but she didn't type it, gawd,she'd die if it accidentally got sent.

She held out her phone as far as she could and took a photo, then examined the results. The light from the window lit up one side of her body. The leg with the cast was shrouded in shadow and the other one glowed with the light bouncing off it. They stuck out from under the blanket, her shirt shapeless above. She'd managed to smile with both her face and eyes. Her hair was still slightly ruffled from her brief sleep.

"Pretty sure I could be a model. Ask Reeve's guys for their opinion." Sent. She flopped back on the bed and tried to fall asleep again.

The next morning she woke up early. She didn't feel like she'd slept enough. The sun was just rising and she stared at the ceiling, listening to the birds chirping outside.

Something moved against her leg and she freaked out for a second before realizing that was where her phone had wound up. She dug around under the blanket for it, opening it to find that instead of the usual animated chocobo that accompanied her alarm there was a new text icon.

"I was amused, as I believe was your intention."

He probably didn't mean for her to laugh out loud at his text, but she did anyway. She heard someone in the bar's kitchen and scrambled to find her shorts so she could eat while the food was still warm.

They were just closing up the bar when he came in. Without a word, he walked over to where she was sitting in her chair and started to wheel her out. "Hey! Hey, I'm being kidnapped!" she yelled. Cloud chuckled as they headed out the door.

She craned her head up to look at him. "So, uh, what's up?"

"I guessed that you would want to go out."

"It's kinda late, you know." He started to slow down. "No, no, it's okay."

They went back down to the same spot by the river they'd visited the day before. The park was empty and their shadows stretched and retracted as they passed under the lamps. She was talking about the usual subjects like the gossip from the bar and the idiots on a talk show she'd watched earlier, when he stopped by a fountain and sat down on its edge. She grabbed her wheels and rotated to face him, starting to order him to relax again but trailing off as she saw him.

"Why do you keep harassing me? I've asked you not to."

She didn't know what to say and there was an awkward moment before she answered. "Well, you don't seem to mind talking, we're doing it right now."

"This is different. Right now, you aren't distracting me from other things."

"Well, you seem like you could always use some cheering up."

"No, I couldn't."

Her eyes were on the ground now. "Then you need some pep in your life, someone to-"

"No." She looked at him and he must have seen something in her eyes because the ice in his thawed a little. The new, softer look made her feel worse and she stared down at the path again.

"Yuffie." She could feel her heart beating and suddenly the space between each beat seemed to last an incredibly long time. "What do you…" She didn't think she'd ever heard him trail off before.

"I don't know," she answered. Time kept stretching and then suddenly it was back to normal as she heard him stand up. He gripped one handle of the chair with his metal hand and she felt him hesitate with his other one. Air moved slightly against her hair and she winced, expecting it to be ruffled like a child's, but he squeezed her shoulder instead. His hand was so warm and it lingered for a moment, two moments, before he started to push her back to the bar.

She woke up to the sound of her alarm and batted at her phone. The sound stopped, but her hand stayed where it was as her sleepy mind tried to understand why there was paper tucked there. She forced her eyes open along with the note and read it.

"I know what I am, and you should as well. I'm leaving this morning, for reasons unrelated to you. Get well soon."

She briefly entertained the thought of trying to catch him before he left, to tell him… what? Anyway, he'd be gone. Her head sank back into her pillow and she closed her eyes, trying to get back to sleep. She ended up just thinking until Tifa called her to breakfast.

A week later she was sitting on an examination table in the hospital with a borrowed Cure materia in her hand. The bone had finally set enough for the magic to do its work, and she felt the energy coursing through her leg as she cast the spell.

She thanked Cloud and Tifa for their hospitality, trying and mostly succeeding to be honestly thankful and avoid making every sentence a joke or a boast about how much ass she was going to literally kick now that she could do so again. With her small pack on her shoulder, she walked out of the bar, waving one last time at the two before picking up her pace as she heard the door close behind her.

She had things to do, places to go, materia to steal. And someone to find.