kh_drabble | (no subject)

Challenge: Odd Pairings
Title: Barrier
Wordcount: 395
Notes: HI, CRACKPAIRING. No really, I think this is halfway plausible as a pairing.

Also note that I cut like 150 words from this. o_o

It was the last time she had seen him.

A smile behind a veil of glass, a hand waving from inside his ship's cockpit, and he had left in a blast of light and wind. Before long he had just been another shooting star fading into the dark sky of Hollow Bastion.

"Yuffie," Leon had said, and turned to go inside. Back to the library, the only place within those walls that was still relatively sacred.

She had stayed at the castle's edge, standing over the rising falls and watching the sky. Waiting for a sign that the barrier was back, a sign that Sora had finished his work.

The Heartless were a sort of twisted blessing. She'd thought so many times, but the last glance of his smiling face had reminded her. Though they stole hearts and ravaged worlds until they fell into the night, they destroyed the barriers between worlds, made traveling and meeting new people possible. She'd seen the Coliseum and the whimsical Lotus Forest, the sands of Agrabah and the sky over London.

She'd met him, thanks to the Heartless.

And now, he was on his way to close things off--to make them safe, Leon had said, to put the Heartless at bay.

But where the Heartless vanished, the barriers reappeared. Where peace was restored, so was isolation.

"Yuffie," Aerith was next. She also turned, following Leon into the castle.

And still, Yuffie stayed.

"Well, Sora?" she said to herself, almost inaudibly. "Can you do it?" For a moment, she looked down, fiddling with her fingers.

And then there was light, all around her. She quickly looked up at the sky again to see a burst of stars, blazing through the dark sky. Pinpricks of light filled the air, star after star reappearing where they had fallen before.

"Besides, I couldn't forget about you even if I wanted to."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You idiot." She looked up, half-smiling. "Now I'll never get to see you again." She shook her head, scarf flying with the motion. "Not that I'm going to miss you or anything!"

A smile behind tinted glass, two bright blue eyes under spiky brown hair.

"You... idiot."

Yuffie turned and went to her old room in the castle, and spent the night watching the stars.

At one point, she pressed her hand against the window, smooth glass against her calloused palm, and pretended his hand was pressed against the other side.