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Sink to the Bottom With You
Chapter Two
I Think I'm Paranoid
"I have to hold onto your nasty claw?" Yuffie Kisaragi
It took several seconds for Yuffie's eyes to
adjust to the darkness, and even then, she probably couldn't see half as good
as Vincent. She found herself groping
blindly in the darkness with her hands and allowing her fingers to graze the
rough, wooden surfaces of crates on all sides of her while she kept her eyes
locked on the dark form of Vincent's flapping cape just a few feet in front of
her. From what her hands touched, she
speculated that they were in a maze of crates and would probably have gotten
hopelessly lost without Vincent's unnaturally acute eyes to guide them. All Yuffie could see was dark, hulking
shapes all around her that anything could have been hiding behind.
Anything at all...
The instant she starting thinking all
paranoid like that, she couldn't stop the sudden influx of thoughts that
inundated her mind. She had always been
that way: make one crack in the dam that held back her fear and the whole thing
came flooding out over her. But this
time it was different. An unexpected
irrational feeling of terror and foreboding bloomed in her heart, obliterating
all other thoughts or emotions in its intensity. All of the shadows seemed to grow eyes and a wide, cavernous
mouth that was just waiting to devour her should she venture too close. The concrete beneath her feet suddenly
developed holes that led into pits of seawater, pits so deep that even Vincent
wouldn't be able to pull her out. She
would be trapped down there with only the amoebas and sea serpents to keep her
company...
Yuffie suddenly noticed that in her terror, she
had allowed Vincent to pull quite a distance in front of her.
"Vinnie!" she hissed, her heartbeat thudding
in her ears as she hurried to catch up.
"Don't leave me back here!"
The moving shadow that was Vincent suddenly
stopped moving and faded into nothing in the darkness. She could no longer see which shadow was
Vincent. Panic suddenly rose in her,
unbidden and uncharacteristic. She
hadn't even been this scared when they had been in the North Crater waiting to
fight Sephiroth! What was wrong with her
now?
"Vincent!" she whisper-screamed in a
panic. "Where are you?! I can't see you anymore!"
There was a loud crash behind her, and if
Yuffie had been thinking rationally, she probably would have realized that the
sound was probably just a few crates collapsing, but in her panic, she was
being everything but rational and immediately realized that some big sea
monster had emerged from the depths of its watery grave to devour her.
She let out a scream of terror and ran
forward, dropping the Conformer on the concrete floor. All she knew was that she had to get away;
she just had to. There was no
other thought running through her panicked mind but escape, and since the
monster was behind her, she concluded that running forward would be the most
logical way of staying alive.
Unfortunately, she had only taken two
running strides before she ran into a different monster, one with red eyes, a
crimson cape, and a claw of tarnished gold.
It was this claw that immediately flew around her slender shoulders and
clasped her to its warm body. Yuffie
let out another terrified yelp and raised her fists to pound the creature
before she realized that her "monster" was none other than the lovable,
huggable...
"Vincent!" she gasped in a mixture of terror
and relief, flinging her trembling arms around his slender waist, holding him
tightly to her as if she could disappear into his tall figure and be rid of all
her fear. Burying her face in his
chest, she was ashamed and angry to find herself on the verge of tears. Instead of giving in to them, however, she
gritted her teeth and clung to Vincent, her fingers digging into the flesh of
his shoulder blades. Her heart
thundered in her ears, and for a moment she was afraid she was going to faint.
Vincent's claw tightened its grip around her
shoulders with surprising gentleness.
Glancing around and seeing no immediate danger, he put the Death Penalty
back in its holster and rested his gloved right hand on the bare flesh of
Yuffie's lower back. The young ninja
was shaking so hard he almost expected to hear her bones rattling.
"Yuffie, it's okay," he said in his soft,
deep voice, attempting to offer some kind of solace even though it was out of
character for him to do so. He couldn't
recall the last time he had held a female like this. All such emotions that were needed to instigate such an embrace
Lucrecia had taken with her to her watery grave.
"What happened, Yuffie?" he tried again when
the girl didn't respond to his initial statement.
"I-I don't know," Yuffie said shakily,
unconsciously tightening her death grip on Vincent's waist. For the first time, she noticed that she
could hear Vincent's heart racing in his chest, and she realized that he had
received quite a scare, too. That
comforted her somewhat to know that the unflappable Vincent Valentine felt fear
just like the rest of the little people.
She cautiously raised her head from the
folds of Vincent's cloak and craned her neck backwards so she could look into
his face. All she could see in the
darkness were his red eyes staring down at her impassively. "There's something here, Vincent," she
suddenly whispered, sweat rolling down her forehead in beads.
Vincent didn't even blink. "Of course there's something here," he
responded. "The Running Man. He went down below."
Yuffie shook her head, dark brown hair
sticking to the trickles of sweat that covered her face. "No, not just the Running Man. There's something else here. Something we can't see."
"There's no one else here," Vincent replied
calmly. "A bunch of crates fell
over. That's all that happened. Now go get your Conformer. We need to go after that man."
He tried gently to disentangle himself from
Yuffie, but the girl suddenly clung to him with renewed vigor, hiding her face
in his cloak and squeezing his waist with strength he hadn't known she
possessed. She suddenly trembled so
hard that she sent a tremor through Vincent's body as well.
"Don't leave me, Vinnie!" she gasped in a
panic, her voice muffled in the fabric of his cloak. "I'm scared!"
"I'm not going to leave you," he said
without a flicker of emotion, but he had to admit that her fear was starting to
catch. "Just go get your
Conformer. I'll be right here."
"@#$& the Conformer!" Yuffie suddenly
exclaimed vehemently, voice harsh in her terror. "I'll just use my ninja skills!"
"You're being irrational."
"I'm scared shitless! I have a right to be irrational if I want
to!"
"You'll need your weapon," Vincent insisted.
"I don't want it!"
"Keep your voice down. What do you want then?"
"I want to go home."
"Besides that."
Yuffie paused. "I want you to hold me."
That remark caused a pang in Vincent's heart
for some reason, but he quickly shoved it away, telling himself that Yuffie was
scared and not thinking clearly. "Very
well," he said. "You can hold onto my
hand and we'll go get your weapon."
Yuffie raised her head and stared at Vincent
with her stormy gray eyes. "Together?"
she asked softly.
That pang in his heart again. "Yes," he replied. "Together."
Yuffie nodded and slowly released her death
grip on Vincent's waist, only to grab his right hand in an equally tight
clasp.
"Yuffie, I need that arm. That's my gun arm."
She squinted up at him in the darkness. "I have to hold onto your nasty claw?" she
blurted before she could stop herself.
"Given the circumstances, I'm afraid so."
She didn't say anything, wondering if she
had hurt his feelings with her remark about his claw, but then she realized
that it was Vincent she was talking to.
Vincent wasn't supposed to have feelings, or at least he claimed he
didn't, which she thought was the biggest crock of crap she had ever
heard. She'd seen him show emotion
several times, not much emotion, but he had shown it. Anyhow, she didn't even think his claw was nasty. She thought it was actually kind of cool
looking, but she had always gotten the impression that if she grabbed and
yanked hard enough, it would pop right off like the arm on one of the action
figures she used to mutilate when she was a kid. That was the last thing she wanted to happen when she was scared
to even let him out of her sight.
Moving quickly and making sure that one part
of her body was in contact with his at all times, she moved around him and
grabbed onto his claw, but instead of gripping the hand portion of it, she
fastened her right hand up on his bicep, needing to feel his skin and not cold
metal underneath her fingertips. With
her other hand, she gripped his wrist tightly, the tarnished metal hard and
unyielding. She pressed the entire arm
against her body and looked up at Vincent's shadowy figure in the darkness.
"Okay," she managed to say through the lump
in her throat. "Let's go."
Vincent nodded and began to lead her through
the darkness back to where the Conformer lay meekly on the concrete floor. He instinctively unholstered the Death
Penalty and looked around for any intruders who may have heard Yuffie's cries
and come running. The docking bay was
silent except for the gentle lapping of the water that the ghost ship rested
in. Beside him, Yuffie was breathing
heavily, her big gray eyes darting left and right as she apparently searched
for whatever she thought was lurking in the darkness. He noticed with some discomfort that she had pressed his arm in
the crevasse between her small breasts, and that the warmth from her skin was
spreading to his own body. His first
instinct was to jerk his arm away before the unbidden emotions started becoming
too intense, but he knew that Yuffie wouldn't understand if he tried to explain
his actions and would stubbornly refuse to budge if he didn't explain them, so
he tried to ignore the flaming warmth of her body and his for the time being.
When they reached the shuriken, Vincent
quickly dipped down and picked it up to prevent another argument with Yuffie on
how she would have to let go of him to handle her weapon. He held the Conformer out to her, which she
took in her trembling left hand while maintaining her grip on his bicep with
her right. Vincent realized belatedly
that Yuffie was right-handed and now would be forced to throw her weapon with
her left, but with her clinging to him like this and not showing any signs of
letting go, it couldn't really be helped.
Without a word, he led her to the stairwell
that the Running Man had disappeared down.
The steps were metal and almost every inch of them was spotted with rust,
as if they had some terrible disease.
They creaked under the weight of both of the travelers, and Yuffie let
out a whimper and huddled closer to Vincent as the darkness all around them
deepened. Though Vincent tried to keep
his footfalls from making any noise, something that he usually had no trouble
at all with, the creaking stairs apparently had other ideas and let out a loud
cry every time his metal boots contacted their rusty surface. He just gave up after a while. Besides, Yuffie was making enough noise for
both of them.
It wasn't long before they came upon a door
constructed out of the same gray metal as the stairs. Like the stairs, it was rusty and practically falling off of its
hinges. It would have been easy to
simply knock the entire thing down, but Vincent wasn't willing to make that
kind of noise yet. The Running Man knew
for sure that they were following him due to Yuffie's ill-timed dip in the
pool, but he still had no idea where they were or how long it would take them
to find him. That gave them a little
bit of an edge, not much, but a little.
Examining the door in the darkness with
Yuffie practically glued to his side, he saw that it had no noticeable
lock. He didn't know whether that was a
good or bad thing. Without the presence
of a lock, he and Yuffie would be able to get in easily, but the lack of that
extra security might mean that whoever occupied this port had nothing to fear
from strangers. And Vincent knew from
experience that an enemy that lacked fear was a formidable enemy indeed.
He turned to Yuffie and said as calmly as he
could, "We've come up to a door. It has
no lock. I don't like this, but we're
going in to investigate. Are you
ready?"
Yuffie stared at him as if he was an idiot,
but the fear in her eyes was heartbreakingly obvious. "Of course I'm not ready, but let's go ahead anyways."
"Hold onto my belt," he said firmly.
Yuffie balked and gripped his arm
tighter. "No," she whined. "Why do I have to?"
"Do you want to open the door and go in
first then?" he retorted.
The girl paused, seriously thinking about
just flat out refusing to do as he asked, but she swallowed her fear and
gripped his metal belt tightly, chastising herself for being a pansy. She didn't even know why she was so afraid;
so far no one had attacked them or made any threatening gestures. Hell, they hadn't seen another living soul
besides the Running Man. Vincent was
right; she was being irrational.
It's all in your head, she told herself. It's all in your head.
But in the core of her heart, she knew it
wasn't.
Author's Note: This was a fairly short chapter, right? I'm trying to keep them as short and sweet as possible, but it's
not always easy. Writing from Yuffie's
point of view is surprisingly fun, and she's not even my favorite
character. Anyways, if you're waiting
around to see something from Cloud and the others, you won't have to wait too long. I mean, come on. It's just not a fic without the rest of AVALANCHE and the
Turks! They should be making an
appearance in the next chapter or two, but for now, on with Vincent and
Yuffie's deep sea adventure! Thanks to
anyone who is reading this! It means a
lot to me. Comments welcome. E-mail me (catalina2717@go.com)
