3. The Avenger, the Healer, the Princess and the Mechanic

"Squall?" Yuffie crept through the open door on cat-feet. "Aerith?"

Aerith looked up, but Leon kept his eyes on the carpet. His posture was coiled so tight he looked like he might drill through the floor with his feet at any moment. Aerith had done her best to heal him, but she was tired and he was still all bruised. Tifa had indeed broken his jaw and loosened some of his teeth, as well as cut his lip and eyebrow. She hit really hard – like an Excelsior Transporter XII F-Type Craft, Cid said, which meant nothing to Yuffie, but sounded really cool.

Yuffie often wished she could hit like Tifa, but her fists were so tiny they never seemed to do any damage. She could just about leave an impression in dough. In a fight she had to get creative with throwing stuff instead. Even Tifa was surprised at some of the things Yuffie had used as missiles before.

Except that Tifa had gone away, and wouldn't be surprised at anything Yuffie picked. Not even her nose.

"Yuffie, it's late," Aerith said. "Why are you still out of bed?"

"Like I'm really gonna be able to sleep tonight?"

Aerith's mouth thinned, but she didn't say anything.

Yuffie took this as an invitation and bounced across the floor to land on the couch beside her.

Aerith automatically raised her arm and placed it around Yuffie's shoulders, drawing her in for a half-hug instead of scolding and insisting it was bedtime. She smelled of liniment and washing powder, and also vaguely of the bread she'd baked earlier, before she knew their extra dinner guest wouldn't be around to eat it. Yuffie loved the way Aerith smelled. It was a comforting, homey kind of smell – nothing at all like gunblade oil and dirt.

Leon was in one of the two threadbare armchairs, the other unarguably reserved for Cid even when he wasn't there. One of its arms was burned where he'd fallen asleep and dropped his cigarette. Leon's had an indent in the seat cushion from a hundred previous butt-cheeks.

All their stuff was second-hand. That used to bother Yuffie, back when her idea of a good outfit had ruffles, a tiara and oodles of pink, but now she kind of liked having other people's cast offs. New stuff was shiny and cool, but old stuff was comfortable and welcoming, and had stories in all the folds and creases. Besides, weren't they all cast-offs? With that in mind it made sense for their stuff to be cast-offs too. It was a deep thought for her eight-year-old brain and she was very proud of it.

"Tifa's really gone, isn't she?"

Aerith hesitated before answering, "She's gone to find Cloud." As if this made it all okay.

"Can't we go too?"

"No, I don't think so."

"But Cloud was cool!"

"I don't think that's a good idea, Yuffie."

"Why not?"

"Tifa and Cloud may have gone somewhere very dangerous."

"Like that matters? I'm a super duper ninja, remember? Anything gets in my way, I'll just smoke it. Like, pow!" She smacked her hands together for emphasis.

Aerith's face twisted up for a second before smoothing into her usual expression. "I'm sure you could, but –"

"No, she couldn't." Leon's voice was harsh, like someone had sandpapered his throat. His words were slightly garbled by his fat lip, but not so he couldn't be understood.

"Leon -" Aerith started.

"If she ran across General Sephiroth, and he's anything like Cloud now, she'd be dead in a heartbeat. Probably less."

Yuffie sat up. "Would not!"

"Yuffie." Aerith forced her back down. This time her arm felt less like a hug and more like a restraint. "Leon, I know you're upset, but you can't –"

"Can't what? Can't tell it like it is? Can't be realistic?" He finally raised his face. Yuffie expected it to be all pained and yuck, but instead it was even smoother than Aerith's. Leon looked like a glass waiting to be filled with Expression Liquid. "Can't blame myself? Is that what you were going to say?"

"You do it a lot," Aerith said bluntly. "Especially when it's impossible to justify blaming yourself. This was Tifa's decision. And Cloud's," she added in a slightly softer tone. "We may not agree with them, but that still doesn't give us the right to take away their ability to choose for themselves what they want to do with their lives. We just have to be here for them when they need us. If they need us," she amended. "They may not. They may be back tomorrow."

"Or they may never come back. They may be dead by tomorrow."

Yuffie stiffened. Tifa not come home? Somehow, even though it was a perfectly plausible thing, she'd not even considered it until now. Tifa was one tough chica. She was everything Yuffie wanted to be – she could kick like a donkey, punch hard enough to lay a grown man flat, and knew six different ways to knock you out using just her pinkie. Plus, she was just plain nice. Yuffie knew people had gotten easily frustrated with her in the beginning, when she was still a weepy, waily, sparkly and totally pathetic pink princess who couldn't even tie her own shoelaces. Still, Tifa had always been kind, even when she was going off the deep end herself. Tifa used to sit up nights with Yuffie, when Aerith was too exhausted, and tell her stories. Fairytales from Radiant Garden were very different than Wutaian fairytales. Telling about how handsome princes always rescued their princesses and saved the day seemed to give Tifa as much comfort as Yuffie.

The idea that Tifa might not come home from her adventure with Cloud-the-handsome-Not-Prince …

"You're wrong," Yuffie said, tears in her eyes at the very thought.

She genuinely couldn't remember much about the bad stuff that happened in Radiant Garden, but she knew from her hazy, shadow-filled nightmares that it had been awful. Beyond awful. Her dad had been taken from her back then. Even though she knew that, she still woke up calling for him sometimes. Gradually over the last three years, the name on her lips had morphed into those of her friends, but there were odd times – when she'd exhausted herself so much during the day that she sank into the deepest, darkest of sleeps – when she went back to being a little girl who wanted her daddy to come and make it all better, but knew he couldn't because he wasn't there anymore. That was when Yuffie needed her new family most.

Tifa had to come back. She had to.

Leon stared at Yuffie. Then he looked away as if ashamed – pretty much his default frame of mind these days. Whatever. It was a relief to see any emotion on his face at that moment.

Yuffie still trembled with her own fizzing emotions. "Take it back. Tifa's gonna come home. Maybe not soon, but that's okay, because she will come back. She's tough. She can take care of herself, and if you think any different and jinx her then you … you're just …" She searched her brain for a suitable word. "You're a bastard, Squall."

"Yuffie!" Aerith exclaimed.

It was ridiculous, really, being shocked by a curse word, given their situation and the kind of future they faced. Yuffie knew Aerith didn't like the way she insisted on learning how to fight. She thought Yuffie was too young, but Yuffie knew, deep down in her bone marrow, and in the seeds of a childhood in Wutai, that it was never too early to learn how to protect yourself by taking out the threat before it became one. If the Heartless ever came back, she'd be ready to kick their butts into next week.

Leon stared at the carpet some more. Then, instead of apologising, he muttered, "Tifa took matters into her own hands. She took an active approach. We need to do the same."

Aerith swivelled from frowning at Yuffie to frowning at him. "What are you saying?" She sounded unsure, as if this turn of events wasn't entirely unexpected, but wasn't entirely welcome, either.

"We've spent the last three years just sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves. We let the adults choose where we went, because we thought they knew best. We let King Mickey pick Traverse Town We let him set Alison Goodman Merlin to guard us. We let them all take over our recovery without asking us what we wanted. Well, now it's time to take matters into our own hands. I'm sick of regrets. Cloud and Tifa had the right idea: don't just sit around waiting to feel better, get off your ass and do something about it."

"We have been doing something about it," Aerith said quietly.

"Just surviving isn't doing something about it. It's avoiding the issue. You've heard Merlin's reports to Disney Castle lately. The Heartless didn't stay in our world, and they didn't die off when they ran out of people there. Cloud said he met some on his travels. It was one of the few things he did admit about what he's been up to. I don't know about you, but I can't just sit on my hands if there might be people out there at risk from those things. I do not want any more tragedy on my conscience. I couldn't save Radiant Garden." It was obvious these words cut into Leon's tongue like little tin tacks, but he kept on talking. "No way in hell am I letting what happened to us happen to anyone else. Not if I can help it."

"What if you can't help it?" Aerith asked, playing devil's advocate.

"I'll find a way to help it. Tifa did. She did what I should've," he muttered bitterly.

"Leon –"

"No, Aerith. I've had enough of licking my wounds. Can you honestly say you'd want others to go through this kind of … of hell, if we could prevent it?"

Slowly, Aerith shook her head. "You know I couldn't. But Leon, we're not exactly an army, and we don't have many resources." She waved a hand at their surroundings, as if the shabby house and its shabbier contents said more than words could about what they had to work with. "King Mickey is already fighting the Heartless, and even with all his magic he's not winning, he's just holding them off."

"Which is why any help is better than none," Leon shot back. "You're not going to talk me out of it, Aerith. If I have to learn to fly a gummi ship, I'll become the best pilot there is. If I have to learn map-reading to get from star to star, I'll do it. If there's a magical artefact out there that might help, I'll find it. If there's a warrior who could make a difference, I'll drag them to the king and make them see what the rest of us already know: that it can't go on this way, and that if we're to have any future worth living, we all need to fight the Heartless until there aren't any left."

"You've obviously given this a lot of thought," Aerith said after he'd finished.

"I don't want any more Radiant Gardens," Leon said almost inaudibly. "Or any more Clouds."

Aerith fell silent.

Yuffie looked between the two of them. She could sense something in the room, like an extra person, and it, like her, was waiting to see what happened next.

Outside, thunder rolled. It was like hearing as giant iron cube tumble down the stairway of the gods; a cracking, thudding crash that would have made Princess Yuffie hide under the bedclothes. But this Yuffie, the girl she had become living alongside these people, wasn't afraid of the storm. Princess Yuffie had gone away three years ago, and the Great Ninja Yuffie had taken her place.

And the Great Ninja Yuffie wasn't fluffy, or pink, or pathetic.

Aerith didn't try to stop her when she got off the couch and went to perch on the arm of Leon's chair. Even though she knew he'd hate it, Yuffie wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tight. She half-expected him to push her off, but he didn't. He just sat, rigid as a stone, and allowed her to hug him, accepting but not returning it. He wasn't exactly a huggy sort of person.

"I think it's a great idea," she said stoutly. "And I'm behind you all the way, Squall. We'll kick the Heartless' butts together, and be a super-special, super-incredible, super-amazing team."

"This is too dangerous for you, Yuffie –"

"I told you before; you don't get to boss me about just because you're older. I want to help fight the Heartless. And don't tell me I'm just a kid! I want a chance at the things that took my dad's heart."

Leon went even quieter than before, if that was possible. "All right," he said eventually "But on one condition. When it comes to fighting the Heartless, you do exactly as I say and follow my orders to the letter. Are we clear? If I tell you to keep out of it, you keep out of it; if I tell you to get involved, you get involved, and no arguments either way. I'm the one who trained to be a Royal Guard, and I do have seniority, which means what I say goes."

Yuffie wasn't clear on what 'having seniority' was, but as long as it didn't mean he bossed her about just because he was older, she was fine with that. Being told what to do because the bossy-boots actually knew what he was doing was a different kettle of fish. She trusted Leon. He might be weird sometimes, and blame himself for stuff he couldn't help, but Yuffie had faith that he would always do what he set out to do. If he said he was going to beat up the Heartless, then the Heartless would soon be crying for their mommies and daddies too.

The front door banged open. "Holy crap, who died?" Cid asked, only half-joking when he saw their faces and nearly choked on the tension in the room. "Oh fuck. Who died?"

But nobody had died. Quite the reverse, in fact.

"Hey, Cid!" Yuffie said brightly. "Guess what?"

"What?" Cid asked carefully. He'd been caught before by the unpleasant consequences of her asking that question.

She beamed at him. "We're gonna save the universe. Isn't that cool?"

Fin.

A/N: This story thread will be continued in an upcoming fic that takes place after the events of Kingdom Hearts II. It will centre around what happens when an old enemy reappears in the lives of Leon and his friends – someone they never thought they'd never meet again. While they try to rebuild Radiant Garden, repair damaged and broken bonds of friendship and more, and create a new life out of the ashes of their old one, they also find themselves fighting to survive and save each other once more when that old enemy begins to literally take over the mind of one of their group. What do you do when saving your friend may mean killing them? Find out in Wolf at the Door.

When I first began The Most Dangerous Game, I never knew I was starting an ambitious project as this has become. I hope people are still enjoying it and will drop me a line to say if they are (or even if they're not). Feedback is the food of the gods that makes Ambrosia look like cold takeout.

I hope this sufficed, Thien.