I don't have any idea what about this story appeals so much to my muse but once I find out, I'll apply it straight away to UB so I can get that next chapter up. Until then, however, I will just work on this story.

Disclaimer: From now on, I shall just disclaim the songs since I doubt there is anybody out there who does not yet grasp that I do not own the KH Glee Club and characters therein. Nor do I own Simple Plans' "Welcome to My Life."

0…0…0…0…0

(()) Do you ever feel like breaking down?

Do you ever feel out of place?

Like somehow you just don't belong

And no one understands you. (())

Yuffie was walking on clouds. She had been ever since she had confronted Squall, and had told him exactly what was on her mind. That gave her enough of a high as it was, but then he came outside and, in his own Squallish way, told her that he approved of it, and that he was glad she had done it. She didn't have the other half of the comparison, but she was pretty sure this feeling was better than sex.

But she really wanted to tell someone what she had done! This was a major accomplishment for her, and she wanted to tell someone about it, but unfortunately there were precious few people in Traverse that tolerated her, and only two that actually liked her. And of those two people, neither would really understand why she was so happy about it. So it dampened her spirits quite a bit.

She didn't really like being here. The only reason she stayed—why anyone them stayed—was because the people had no means to defend themselves against the Heartless attacking. The other worlds, save for Hollow Bastion, had a number of people who were capable of repelling the Heartless for the most part. So they stayed to defend them, but for all she cared, they could all die from the Heartless.

Unfortunately she was the only one who felt that way.

So she had to stay here and fight for people that she didn't even like, alongside a man who she was hopelessly in love with and did not like her back.

(()) Do you ever want to run away?

Do you lock yourself in your room?

With the radio on, turned up so loud

That no one hears you screaming. (())

She went back to the room she shared with Squall, dragging her feet the whole way. He would probably be in their room, sitting at the edge of the bed like he always was, looking unbelievably hot no matter what he was doing, even if he was cleaning his toenails with a shrimp fork.

He was already wearing his pajamas and gingerly hurling his clothes into the hamper in the closet.

"It's about time you came back." He didn't look at her as he spoke.

"What the hell do you care?" She snapped back, too annoyed to be polite. He turned around and gave her a funny look, and she sighed. "Look, I was just… thinking. And it wasn't the good kind of thinking, all right? I'm in a bad mood now, so don't bother me." She shed her clothing on the way to the bed where she had shed her pajamas that morning and plopped on the bed.

"Complain, complain," he snorted. "That's all you ever do. Why is that?"

"What do you mean, all I ever do is complain?" She growled. "I do not! I've never been the whiny type!"

"You're always begging Aerith and Cid to leave. That counts as complaining," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

She turned all the way around so she could look at him. "No it doesn't! I hate it here! I hate it that nobody understands me—especially you!"

"Don't give me that teenage melancholy 'nobody understands me' crap. Trust me, you aren't the only person to have gone through what you've gone through, so stop complaining, all right?"

"Do you have any idea what it's like to be me?" She hissed. "Do you know anything at all about what I've been through?"

"You've been through exactly what I've been through," he said nonchalantly. "There's nothing that you've seen that I haven't seen, too. I just don't let it get to me, that's all."

"We came from different worlds and we saw different things!" She insisted. "And on top of all that, I was just a little kid! I saw my parents die! I saw my friends and everybody I loved die from the Heartless! You might not care because you're so rock-hard and disciplined but I was a scared little seven year old girl. One minute my biggest concern was a mud fight, and the next thing I knew, there was a mass grave all around me!"

"Aerith and Cid survived," he said in the same slightly condescending tone of voice. "Nobody I know of survived the attack on my world."

(()) No, you don't know what it's like,

When nothing feels all right.

No, you don't know what it's like

To be like me.

"Stop trying to trump me, Squall," she snapped. "For my age I've seen and done more than I care to. And yes, I am pitying myself but that's just because if I didn't then nobody else would because nobody likes me, especially you!"

"I'm not trying to trump you. I'm just saying that I've seen and done everything that you have. Your problems aren't as unique as you think they are."

Yuffie sighed heavily. "Do you remember when you were little? I mean when you were like eight years old? Can you remember that far back?"

"Yea, I can. I haven't blocked out every memory you know," he said.

"Do you remember the things you did when you were that young?"

"I was in school. I teased girls. I played with bugs. Anything that normal boys did."

"Well when I was eight years old, I was using my fighting skills to the best of my ability to defend Hollow Bastion against the Heartless meanwhile trying to help Aerith with healing the people who were attacked and helping Cid dig the mass graves that we buried the victims in."

That comment did make Squall pause to think. He thought back to himself at that age. And at nine and ten years old. He was just a carefree, clumsy little kid learning his weaponry skills, teasing girls, keeping enormous bugs for pets, leaning math skills that turned out to be totally useless. When the Heartless attacked Balamb when he was sixteen years old, he thought it was unfair for him. Most boys of sixteen were worried about facial hair, acne, impressing girls, and their penis size.

But Yuffie was right—at sixteen she was now the same age that he had been when the first Heartless had attacked his world. At that time he had been clueless as to what to do about them. At the same age, Yuffie was an efficient fighter against them and had been working on it for years and years.

"You see?" She said softly. She did not have the heart to be cocky about winning this argument. It was not that sort of a win.

"People were with you," he said slowly.

"Huh?"

"People you know… people you love. They came with you. Aerith and Cid were there with you."

Yuffie glared at him. He kept coming back to that. But when everything she knew had been destroyed, Aerith and Cid had survived and were left to take care of her. But Aerith was thirteen years old and just as scared as she was; Cid, at that time, had been a disgusting old drunk with a cigarette perpetually jammed in his teeth.

"They couldn't take care of me any better than I could have taken care of myself!" She protested. "You did a better job than anyone else taking care of me!" A few stray tears started slipping out. She quickly swiveled to hide them in her hands.

Squall merely sat where he was, watching her. Again she had a point, but he couldn't help but think that she had been a little more fortunate than he was nine years ago, considering the circumstances. Still… that image came to mind of a little eight-year-old Yuffie, scared and skinny and filthy, hiding as silently as she could in a secret cupboard behind a bookshelf, where he had hidden her, during a Heartless attack.

(()) To be hurt,

To be lost,

To be left out in the dark.

To be kicked

When you're down,

To feel like you've been pushed around.

To be on the edge of breaking down,

And no one's there to save you.

No, you don't know what it's like.

Welcome to my life. (())

"You were a lot nicer to me at first than Cid was because he was trying to get over the drinking and the smoking and he was a real hell animal to be around," she sniffled, her voice slightly croaking. "And Aerith was trying to be a good pseudo-mom for me, but she was still young, too." She wiped her eyes on her face.

"They're good with you now," he said.

"That's only because I'm older and I don't need as much as I did when I was little. When…" she breathed shakily, "when I was left alone with Aerith or Cid, I would used to just run off and try to find you, because you didn't seem to hate me as much. Remember all those times I wandered into you when you were off by yourself? I wanted to be with you because you didn't hate me."

Again Squall stayed quiet and just listened. He really didn't like that Yuffie had always invaded the little privacy that he got at that age, but still, being around her that much had helped him to toughen her up.

"And then all of a sudden you were cold-hearted. You didn't like me at all. You called me names and you were mean to me and whenever I asked if I could come with you, you just said, 'Whatever' and walked away like you didn't even know that I was there! I was just a little girl! I was ten years old, what the hell did I know why you were acting this way? Until then you'd been my favorite person in the world! In that stupid little tiny world we lived in. Then suddenly I was a pest, I was obnoxious. You didn't want me around."

Yuffie sat down and cried. Just cried right there in front of him. Her face was buried in her hands and she made as little noise as possible, just a few squeaky sounds every now and then. But she stayed exactly where she was and refused to move. This discussion was not over yet, she decided. She would cry herself tearless and then continue.

Meanwhile, Squall watched her. Instead of seeing Yuffie as she had become, the Greatest Female Ninja Ever, stealthy and quick, witty, and much smarter than she let on, he saw Yuffie as she once was, scared little ten year old girl, terrified of this new world and the way things had turned out, and suddenly one day had lost the one person who had shown her kindness.

Suddenly he felt a pang of regret at being so hard on her for all these years. All he had wanted to do was to help her, but he wanted to toughen her up so that she would be able to stand up to any Heartless threat, which he had done. He was certain that if the opportunity arose, she would confront Ansem and win. But he had, for so long, been the one person she believed liked her. He could see how, in a child's mind, he had abandoned her.

"You were down fucking right cruel to me!" She screamed, invading his personal space and getting right up into his face. "How could you do that? I loved you, dammit! I trusted you above everyone else! You were the one person who I could screw up around and you wouldn't scream at me, you would just help me get it right! Aerith tried to turn me into her ideal of a girl and Cid just wanted someone to carry his golf clubs but you taught me how to fight and you made sure that I could defend myself against the Heartless!" She was panting and sweating hard by now. "I'm… I'm grateful for it, I really am," she said quietly. "But you still didn't have to be so cruel to me!" She screamed.

"Are you finished venting, Yuffie?" Squall started to get up as he finished his question but the long on Yuffies' face made him sit back down again.

"All I wanted ever since then was for you to like me again," she said. "And it's the worst-kept secret of all the worlds that I'm in love with you. If I can't make you love me, then at least I want you to like me. I want to be friends again—or were we ever friends in the first place?"

There was a long pause as Squall looked quite pensive. The silence grew bigger and bigger until it completely overwhelmed the room, and Yuffie looked down at her feet sadly.

"I guess we weren't," she said softly. "I guess I jumped to conclusions too easily. You aren't friends with anyone, are you? You just hide away in your little shell of silence and the occasional 'whatever' and those insults you save special for me. I guess you've forgotten what it's like to have friends, haven't you?"

"Stop it, Yuffie!" He yelled. "Just stop talking!" He breathed heavily for a second, as if he needed to catch his wind. It sounded to Yuffie almost as if he was trying to keep himself from crying. "Stop making assumptions that you know nothing about! You have no idea what happened to me!"

"That's because you never talk to me," she hissed back. "Maybe if you told me stuff every once in a while I could be less of a pest—have you ever thought about that?"

(()) Do you wanna be somebody else?

Are you sick of feeling so left out?

Are you desperate to find something more,

Before your life is over? (())

"I lost everything," he said quietly, in a smooth and venomous sort of voice. "Everybody I had ever loved and everybody I had ever known. I would settle now for finding somebody that I hated, just to know that I was not alone and that somebody had been saved."

Instead of trying to reply this time, Yuffie just sat there and listened to him talk. Maybe he needed it.

"They're all dead because of me, you know. It's my fault that I wasn't strong enough to save them."

"You live under the illusion that you have to save and protect everybody," she told him. "Did you ever think that maybe you survived because you were strong enough to fend off the monsters long enough to get to a ship and leave? Maybe nobody else was strong enough."

"And what about her?" He asked. "Are you saying that she deserved to die?"

"No, Squall, I—"

"And stop using that name, I hate that name!"

Yuffie winced.

"You have no idea what it's like watching all those people die! You just have no idea! You can't say were so much the same because we both lost our homes—you were too young to remember the gory details and the horrors and the pain! You were just a little kid! I remember everything that happened!"

"And how does that make you so much worse off than me, huh? At least you can remember the people you lost! You can remember your world before it was gone. You have those memories! I don't! I only know what Aerith and Cid have told me, and I don't remember my parents and I don't remember my friends and I don't even remember the house where I lived!"

(()) Are you stuck inside a world you hate?

Are you sick of everyone around?

With big fake smiles and stupid lies,

While deep inside, you're bleeding. (())

"So you're saying I should be glad that I remember what I lost?" He asked, looking at her with a look that pretty much said he thought that she was the stupidest human being alive.

"Yea, actually, I am saying that," she said. "You remember your friends. I was too young really to have that many."

"It hurts to remember. It was all my fault."

"Stop saying that, you idiot!" She yelled. "It wasn't your fault. It wasn't anybody's fault except for the Heartless! You didn't do anything except for try to help—wouldn't you have felt infinitely worse if you hadn't fought at all and just sort of… ran away with your tail between your legs?"

To that he had no answer.

"Nobody ended up here because they wanted to, Squall. We are not alone. Everybody here lost somebody, or everybody, to the Heartless. Aerith doesn't wanna be here, you and I don't, certainly the people we keep defending don't wanna be here."

"Everybody here at least has someone else. I am completely and totally alone."

(()) No, you don't know what it's like

When nothing feels all right.

You don't know what it's like

To be like me.

(()) To be hurt,

To be lost,

To be left out in the dark.

To be kicked

When you're down,

To feel like you've been pushed around.

To be on the edge of breaking down,

And no one's there to save you.

No, you don't know what it's like.

Welcome to my life. (())

"All right, you yelled at me already once for melancholy, now I'm gonna yell at you. Stop with the dramatics already!" She snapped. "You're not alone. Whether or not you want to accept it, there are people here who love you and care about you and seeing you like this makes all of us really upset! But you're still sitting there in your own little universe thinking that nobody loves you, no body cares about you, you're all alone, boo-hoo. Well whether you like it or not, I love you, and it hurts to see you feeling like this!"

"What would you possibly know about love, Yuffie? You shouldn't talk about it if you don't know much about it."

"Stop telling me that! It makes me feel so childish!"

"That's because you're being childish."

"So are you! You keep talking all about you, you, you, and you don't seem to grasp that you are not alone in the slightest but you continue to think that you are!"

"I lost everybody! I lost the one person that I ever loved! You can't say you understand any of this because you don't and you never will!" He panted.

"You lost the one person you loved, huh?" Yuffie said. She licked her lips and nodded slowly. "Uh-huh. So, she loved you back, right?"

"Of course she did."

"Well the one person I love doesn't love me back. He never will. He's living in the past and he's so self-centered that he doesn't notice when other people care about him." She sniffled a little bit. "It hurts, you know. To know that you don't love me, that you won't ever love me."

"How do you know that I don't love you?"

"How can you? You're always so mean to me. You act like I'm the last person on earth that you'd want to spend time with." She felt that familiar lump rising up in her throat again but she swallowed it. Now was not a good time to cry. She didn't want him to see her get teary. "You… you act like you absolutely hate me. You must wake up every morning and celebrate that you aren't me."

He did not answer, he only stared at her. He looked a little funny because he wasn't frowning or glaring or insulting her or anything. Finally, he said, "Yuffie, I wish I was more like you."

"Oh, really?" She asked sarcastically. "And why is that? So you could laugh and insult and you wouldn't have to worry about me actually walking away and crying?"

"No, it's because you've come such a long way in such a short amount of time," he told her. The comment shocked her. "You've grown stronger, in a way that I don't think that I ever could."

(()) No one ever lied straight to your face,

No one ever stabbed you in the back.

You may think I'm happy,

But I'm not gonna be okay.

Everybody always gave you what you wanted.

You never had to work, it was always there.

So you don't know what it's like…

What it's like… (())

"Squall… I… I don't know what to say," she said, still in shock. Imagine—Squall being envious of her. What a concept. But she was skeptical. "You're not lying just to do something cruel to me, are you? I know you adore these sadist games sometimes."

"Yuffie, I may insult you and call you names that I know you don't like. I may make you do things that you hate doing, just to try to make you say no to me. I may be a colossal asshole more often than not, but I am not sadist. I would never fool with your head that way. What I said was true."

"So then you do like me?"

"Yes, Yuffie, I do like you. Very much."

"Then how come you never show it, huh?" She demanded, feeling mostly confused and a bit angry by this whole thing. "How come you're always so mean to me and telling me things that I damned well know aren't true?"

"I wanted you to stand up to me," he said quietly. "I wanted you to… be able to tell me that I was wrong. I know that you know that nothing I ever called you was true but I wanted for you to actually tell me that to my face." He sighed. "I could never want a woman who can stand up for herself, but won't."

"Then why didn't you just say something?" She threw her arms up as she started to pace back and forth. "Instead of just being mean to me all these years, why didn't you just tell me that I had to stand up for myself? That way I wouldn't live under the impression that you found me a repelling excuse for a human being?"

"I wanted you to stand up, specifically, to me," he explained. He didn't really want to go any further into this, but he had a feeling that Yuffie would stay on his back about it until he gave up and told her everything. He would try to get away with telling her as little as possible.

She stopped pacing and turned to face him. "Why you? Do you regard yourself that highly?"

"No, I wanted you to stand up to me… because I knew you liked me more than anybody else. I wanted you to be able to stand up to anyone, regardless of what you thought of them."

"You wanted me to be able to stand up to the man I loved?"

"Essentially, yes, I did."

(()) To be hurt,

To be lost,

To be left out in the dark.

To be kicked

When you're down.

To feel like you've been pushed around.

To be on the edge of breaking down,

And no one's there to save you.

No, you don't know what it's like…

What it's like… (())

"So your immediate solution was to insult me and make me actually start to believe that I was a worthless piece of shit, and all of it was part of your scheme to make me stand up for myself, which, incidentally I could do just fine without you making my self esteem stay somewhere around ground zero for the last six years."

"I'm sorry," he said. His voice was very quiet and he did not look at her. "I'm sorry for everything."

"What?" She wasn't sure if she had heard him properly. What was he apologizing for?

"I'm sorry. I… I never knew what I'd done. I just… wanted you to stand up for yourself. I wanted you to stand up to me. You looked at me as if I was some sort of a god, and I knew perfectly well that I wasn't one. I didn't want you role-modeling me so I had to make you want to stand up to me somehow—that was the only way I could think to do it." He put his face in his hands and sighed heavily.

Yuffie, too, sighed, but she was quieter. Neither of them moved for quite some time. Finally, she stirred and gently sat herself down next to him.

"You should have told me," she whispered.

"If you knew… then you wouldn't have had to stand up."

(()) To be hurt,

To be lost,

To be left out in the dark.

To be kicked

When you're down.

To feel like you've been pushed around.

To be on the edge of breaking down,

And no one's there to save you.

No, you don't know what it's like.

Welcome to my life. (())

"We have to stay together, you know that right?" She said after a moment. "We're all each other has. But… it's better than nothing, right?"

He looked up slowly and nodded. "It is… infinitely better."

(()) Welcome to my life.

(()) Welcome to my life… (())

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Wow, this is longer than my standard-issue chapter! And it's a songfic chapter! Imagine that. I do hope you like it and if you have any suggestions, comments, or just praise, please review! I do plan on continuing this. My muse is on a songfic kick so you think that it would work on UB for me but the chapter I'm working on happens to NOT be a songfic chapter. Oh well… can't have everything! Please leave me a review!