they slipped

and they have fallen down, and they are everything that makes up Humpty Dumpty who can't get up because he fell down, too, and they hate each other for it and they love each other for it and right now they don't think because they are hurting and they want to hurt.

"Get up," she says, because she is the more provoking half and she scrambles and kicks his leg as hard as she can, with mud bloody and blood muddy on her arms on her legs and neck and face.

"Get up," she repeats, and this time he snarls because he is the more turbulent of the two and he knocks her chin stupidly and she pulls his hair dumbly and they can't get up, not for the life of them, until Vincent can't help himself and punches her in the jaw and Yuffie pounds his head with her fist and they both see stars, angry and forever spinning, and the mud caking his brass boots makes them so, so heavy.

"Get up," says him with a terrible kind of roar in his throat, angry at her, angry at him, angry at the world, and his eyes are yellow and his gauntlet's claws dig into the dirt and the mud, and there is so, so much mud. He towers over her but can't stand up because she can't, either, so she pushes him backwards with enough force that they topple over seeing stars angry and forever spinning so heavily, and she pounds his chest and he backhands her and her knee meets his stomach. They are avalanches and landslides and fire, and they are absolutely nothing because they can't think and all they can think is eggshells, eggshells, eggshells.

"Get up get up get up shit," says her swollen mouth and she tries and her legs are shaking so bad that he claws at her knee that buckles and bleeds worse than his face when she scratched him, and she snarls and jabs a point on the back of his neck that sends a shooting, terrifying bolt of lightning straight up his spine to his brain that fries and short-circuits everything. His eyes open for the first time again and he grabs her to crash his forehead into hers, and they both see stars, angry and forever spinning, while the mud coating them like a second skin is so, so heavy that they both splutter and choke and cough and drown in the mud inside their lungs.

This is the part where they collapse on the ground as it rains, sprawled across each other in the strangest amalgamation of Yuffie-Vincent, heaving and panting and bone-tired.

They have been so very, very frustrated, and nothing has changed between them because this isn't anything new, and they are both ready to stop raging and lick each other's wounds now. They stay still until they feel like they may very well bleed out, until Yuffie finally revives herself, crawling through the mud (mud, mud, everywhere, where did all this mud come from?) to curl up on his side, because she is the more provoking half. And he slowly tucks her into his side, because he is the more turbulent of the two. And they hide from the noise underneath his cloak, huddled like children and stooped scared soldiers, wondering when the Restore materia will do its job and after healing the outside heal the inside, too.

.

.

I pounded this out as a prototype for a scene I'll be writing in the future for a multi-chapter story. Working out the mechanics of how they get to this point is what I've been working on lately, but writing them at this terrible, sort of half-gone point is just wicked fun.