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A.N. I’ve been feeling an urge to write low-grade Clouffie fluff lately. Also, I’d nearly given up on the Kingdom Hearts genre, because I’m too closed-minded to read LeonxYuffies. Which are everywhere.

I can’t really do Cloud’s Kingdom Hearts persona, but I gave it a try. I’m more of an FF7 Cloud fangirl. But I gave it a shot.

Look, don’t go running off in the opposite direction just because Cloud isn’t doing the Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo with his Flower Lady, OK? Try it. You might like it. And that’s rich coming from the depths of my incredibly closed mind, huh?

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Damn it to Hades.

Dammit.

Damndamndamndamndamn…

If he had been the kind of person to share his feelings with whatever part of the world cared to listen, he would have been saying it out loud. It was sad, though. He had learned a little while back that if he betrayed his feelings, he just ended up tangled in a worse mess.

So he had decided. No more emotions. It’s not as if anybody cared, anyway. Yeah. If you hadn’t gone weeping pathetically that one time – just that one freakin’ time – you wouldn’t have been hired by that candleheaded git, and then your life would have been a lot better, wouldn’t it?

So, since that incident, he’d just kept to a simple code of living.

Keep your mouth shut, your mind open, and never show any expression. No tears, no smiles, nothing.

It wasn’t as bad as it sounded. At first, the mask had slipped often and he’d had to nearly gnaw out the bottom of his lip trying to hold in a smile. But he got used to it in the end. Besides, it had the added benefit of scaring people who looked at him. A handy asset, if you were a hired blade.

Definitely he looked frightening. But, once you finally managed to stop focusing on the expression – narrowed eyes, lips naturally in a harsh line – and the eyes – an unreal, glowing blue, like the streak on a tetra fish – and you began to take in the whole of his face…

He was handsome, you’d begin to think, glancing at the sharp, pointed nose, the high cheekbones, the slightly pointed chin. And then you’d notice tiny touches, like the little earring glinting in his ear, and the soft sheen of the lips, and the golden tinge at the tips of his eyelashes, and the way thin, glossy strands of blond hair fell across his face at an angle that just –

And you’d correct yourself.

No.

Not handsome.

Overwhelmingly handsome.

Beautiful.

Even the hair was lovely, utterly unruly and untameable, and a shade of blond that ranged from the colour at the tips – a perfect, sun-bleached white-blond – to the roots, which were the deep, rich gold of honey. But right now, it was dulled to a somewhat dingy shade of yellow by the heavy rain.

It was proper rain, the kind which got you soaked to the bone within five glorious seconds, warm, and the kind that fell with an unearthly, beautiful noise as it rushed through the trees below.

It had come at just the right time. It was the only thing that Cloud even supposed could soothe his mood.

The huge, heavy red cape that used to obscure the lower half of his face before he could affectively control his facial expression had been ditched. He hated the damn thing anyway. And he wasn’t sure how many more vampire jokes he could have taken from Yuffie, the insensitive little brat.

Maybe not a vampire, but another kind of monster…

The only thing that hinted at his dark nature was the wing, thick, black membranes over clawed bones, a sharp contrast to his fair skin. It was held at an angle that appeared regal and imposing, although this was not by deliberation.

If someone else had been around it would have been folded up tight against his back, but he was alone.

He needed to think.

Oh gods above, he needed to think.

With a sigh, he let his beautiful head lower down slightly, watching the clear, rain-enriched green of the trees below the balcony. Once the Heartless had disappeared, the castle had returned to its former glory. The waterfalls now fell, like they were meant to, not rising like an endless, abstract painting. The sky was a rich blue in summer, cloud-strewn and grey in winter. The forest that once stood proud at the base of the castle returned, as green and full of life as it was seven years ago.

The silent noise of the rain was blissful.

Absolutely blissful…

“OK! Keep like that! Don’t move a muscle!!”

Oh gods. Yuffie.

Without moving (he didn’t want to annoy that puerile brat) he acknowledged her with a quiet greeting.

“Hey, Yuffie.”

“Hey. Look, just keep still for a bit longer, alrighty?”

“Why?” he asked her, in a cynical tone.

An ear-splitting giggle was his response. He rolled his eyes.

“You just look so cool, what with the rain weighing your hair down and in that pose and all the balcony and everything. And,” Yuffie added, most likely grinning like a loony judging by her tone of voice, “the wing. That is one neato wing.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t stare, no matter how cool you seem to think I look,” Cloud said, his tone cutting.

“No!” Yuffie wailed. “I’m not just staring. I’m drawing. Look, I just need to sketch out your body shape and stuff, and then you can move. Just stay there. No moving.”

Cloud gave a sigh. The atmosphere wasn’t the same now she was watching him, but it gave him a chance to look at the surrounding landscape. There was a moon, low in the sky, and yellow as a daffodil petal. It was things like that that made him feel happy to be alive. No matter what happened to Aerith…

She and Leon had grown a lot closer together. When he first returned to the newly restored world, he had noticed the powerful bond between them. And, no matter how long he waited and watched, he could see them getting closer…

Until it had finally happened. The two ended up so close there was no longer any room for Cloud.

Now, he and Aerith merely exchanged nods instead of words, the odd, ‘Hi, Cloud’ and ‘Hey, Aerith’ being the only phrase either would ever use…

And he had just noticed how little she now cared, and he was…melancholy and furious both at once.

“You worrying about Rissy and Windy?”

Windy. That was Yuffie’s nickname for Squall.

He decided to be silent.

“I…I know what’s been goin’ on. I can see, too, you know.”

Her voice sounded a little bitter.

“Being young doesn’t make you blind, Cloud,” she said, her usually loud sing-song softening so that Cloud had to strain his ears to hear it. “Wish you could remember that.”

Cloud swallowed. He wondered why her words had meant anything to him. After all, she was the castle brat…

“If anything, Leon’s become even worse…” Yuffie began, her tone unusually calm. “Just the other day, I wanted to talk to him about y – something.” Even over her voice, Cloud could hear the tip of her pencil scratching away on the paper. “He asked me why, because there was nothing he could do to help. So, I told him that…y’know…sometimes, it’s just nice for other people to listen to you…”

“Uh-huh,” Cloud said, not particularly concentrating on the conversation. He was more fascinated about Yuffie’s new depth. He’d always assumed she was just a brat, a stupid little kid whose sole duty or purpose in life was to annoy the Hades out of him. But she seemed different.

“And he said to me,” she muttered, in a shamed tone, “he said, ‘why don’t you just go talk to a wall or something?’”

“That sounds like him,” Cloud said, trying to sound sympathetic. Too late he realised that empathy was not a quality it was good to display.

“Yeah. Well, I flew into a rage at that, because I was annoyed that he didn’t understand. So, I ask, ‘Do you ever want people to listen to your problems?’ And he just walked away…”

“So what did you do?”

“Nothin’. I just stood there, feeling a little odd. And then I saw Rissy pouring out heart and soul to him, and he was standing there listening –”

There was more than a note of tearfulness in her voice. She’d lost one of the people she believed to be her one of her closest friends, thought Cloud.

“Shh,” Cloud found himself saying, before he even realised what was going on. “Squall’s like that to everyone. You know.”

It wasn’t much of a consolation, but she quietened down a little.

“Even you?” the young ninja challenged.

“Mm,” Cloud agreed.

“Whoa…”

Cloud heard her busily sketching away. It was soothing, like the noise of the rain. As if he was listening to beautiful music, Cloud let his eyes close.

He stood there like that for a long, long while, just listening. His mood had finally settled. He felt almost…happy.

“Ok, done!” Yuffie said. Her voice sounded more like he was used to, now. “You can move now.”

He hadn’t noticed how stiff his neck had been until then. He turned, stretched his wing, back and arms, and stared at her.

Yuffie had retreated into a little alcove in the corner of the balcony, so as not to get her sketchbook wet. Dressed in a thick jumper, she had squatted down onto her knees amongst her drawing pad and assorted coloured pencils. The pencil in her hand was a flesh tone one; she appeared to be adding a finishing touch to her drawing. She drew back her head, and critically examined what she’d done. A grin showed him that she liked it.

“I think this is the best one I’ve ever done,” she commented, now smiling in a way to put the Cheshire Cat out of a job. “Funny. There was nothing really to do except draw in Traverse Town ever since Leon pawned off our games console, computer, TV, and book collection. So I’ve had a lot of practice. Don’t panic. You don’t look deformed or cartoonsy or anything. Take a peek.”

With that, she thrust her sketchbook at him.

Cloud watched as she smiled at him with those huge brown eyes as he lifted the front cover.

The drawing that greeted his eyes was an anime-style sketch. A little Yuffie girl, eyes shaped like upturned u’s, grinned triangularly at a Squall caricature, who was wearing the most obscenely uncaringly furious expression Cloud had ever seen in a drawing.

“Oh,” Yuffie giggled. “That was my first after getting the sketchbook. I still like it.”

Cloud flipped over the page. There was a drawing of her shuriken; on the next page, the Gunblade. A scale drawing of a fountain with a cutesy design of a pair of dogs slurping up opposite ends of a piece of spaghetti. Cid chewing on a toothpick and looking irate. Then, there was Squall.

Squally Sleeping, read the caption. It was in wonderful, pencilled detail, Cloud noticed. He could see every feature of Squall’s face shadowed in perfectly. She must have studied him very closely. He guessed she must have counted the number of eyelashes on his left eye. The other eye wasn’t visible; it was sunk into the pillow. The picture was so realistic, Cloud swore he could hear him breathing.

The next page showed a portrait of Aerith, smiling broadly at him through the paper. He began to feel his emotionless mask slipping, and turned the page quickly.

“You like them?”

“Yeah,” Cloud said distractedly. “Very realistic.”

“I was going to give you the Aerith one when you came back,” Yuffie said, kindly.

She believed in me after all this time…

“Something wrong?” she chirped.

“No,” Cloud said, turning the page.

He was faced with another anime-style picture, this one of Sora. The kid who’d ruined his perfect battle record. He was grinning ridiculously, waving the Keyblade in the air, brave and mock-heroic. The caption was, ‘But I refuse to believe there’s not a light of hope left!!’

“That’s one of my better ones,” Yuffie quipped. “Yours is over the page.”

Trying not to look anticipating, he turned the page over.

His was the only drawing that had been coloured other than the anime ones, and the picture of Aerith. If Cloud had been paying attention, he would have appreciated the way she’d blended the yellows and browns in his hair, making it look soft and healthy – and sopping wet - or the way she’d made his turtleneck look like fabric, or the way she’d defined the muscles in his arms. He would have liked the way the rainsoaked ledge of the balcony was stained with lichen, or the way that the puddles around his feet reflected parts of his body, cut with ripples as the raindrops struck them.

But he wasn’t looking at that.

What fascinated him was the wing. Instead of drawing it bat-like, demonic and grotesque, she had instead drawn an elegant, sweeping angel wing. It hung at the same proud angle as the real wing, but it was long and feathered, raindrops dripping along them in gently-shaded rivulets. The feathers weren’t snow-white; she had shaded the tips in with a pale gold to make them match his hair and look more natural. But the amount of detail in that wing bewitched him. And why had she chosen to draw it in? The rest of her drawings showed she was a real stickler for exact details…

“Do you like it?” Yuffie asked suddenly, jerking him out of his reverie.

“Yeah…” Cloud said. His finger idly traced over the wing. “Why did you give me feathers?”

At this, Yuffie laughed, and gave him a smile. A smile he’d only ever seen once –

– on Her.

Calm and perfect, it didn’t fit on the girl who he was thinking was less of a brat and more of a young woman every second.

“…Ever wondered why I didn’t colour in any of my pictures of Squall?” she began to explain.

Cloud thought. Now that he realised, she hadn’t.

“Well…Art is supposed to be your viewpoint, isn’t it?”

“Yes…”

“So, why shouldn’t I draw you like I’ve always seen you?”

Cloud’s hands were shaking. Trying to breathe, and not to look shocked (just keep that mask on, you don’t need to show emotion …) he handed her the sketchbook back.

The girl suddenly realised what she’d just said. “Good God. Did I just say that out loud or something..?”

Cloud gave the barest of nods.

“You don’t…” Yuffie searched around for the right words, “mind, do you?” Her voice was scared. Anxious.

She’s barely seventeen, Cloud thought. She’s a kid – but she believes in me. And she’s grown up. I never realised before…

I still think she’s mislead, but…

…No. Why should I care? She’s…beautiful.

“No,” Cloud said. Nearly choking on his own words, he spoke to her again. “And…maybe I see you like that too.”

Yuffie didn’t say anything. She just looked up at him.

“You’re soaked. Let’s go in and dry off.”

I can’t let the mask crack. I can’t. I can’t-

“Yeah,” he said, the faintest hint of a smile appearing at the corners of his lips. Gradually it broadened into a perfect, beautiful smile that made Yuffie grin even harder-

“Yeah. Let’s go in,” he said.

Fin