I hate these damn share-icon locations...

Really do...

On Arranged Marriages

—ox-oxo-xo—

Disclaimer: FFVII and its characters are the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

Warning: mild language, mild adult themes.

Rated: K+

Summary: Vincent, Shelke, Yuffie: concerning their views on the practice. Also involves the final fate of Lucrecia's data fragments. Post-DOC Yuffentine. (Also some CloudxTifa and a hint of future ShelkexReeve.)

A/N: The product of a writing exercise: to write two oneshots at once, without utilising humour as the primary motive for either fic. (The other one, an FFXIII fic, is still in progress but looks promising.) Attempted as a way to break my usual m.o. of fixating on one fic at a time, which can be counter-productive when dealing with writers' block. Not entirely satisfied with the way it turned out, but when am I ever?

He hadn't spoken to Yuffie in three weeks.

And this time, Vincent Valentine noted wryly, proved to be no exception. Yet again, she'd poked her head over the counter. Yet again, she'd spotted his companion. And yet again, she turned tail and snuck back through towards the stairs. She must have done that a hundred times since his return, he reflected.

He made a point of not mentioning their fleeting, fleeing audience. It was best for the moment not to broach the topic of Yuffie Kisaragi in the company he was presently keeping.

The direct cause of the young ninja's atypical recitence sat across the table from him, sipping meditatively at her tea. Shelke Rui's mako-paned eyes stared up at him from over the mug. The diminutive ex-Tsviet, as near as Vincent could tell, appeared to be mustering the courage to say something.

It had been a month since Omega's demise, and his own. A little under a month since his return from the Lifestream, at Lucrecia's behest. A little over three weeks since Shelke, Reeve and Cid had finally tracked him down. Three weeks since he'd walked through the doors of Tifa's bar, with Shelke at his side. And over the past three weeks, Vincent and Shelke had spent a great deal of time in each other's company, sitting across from each other at a corner table by the window at the 7th Heaven.

Yuffie had no doubt made her own conclusions regarding their behaviour. And it was true that a great many of their conversations revolved around the person of Dr. Lucrecia Crescent.

That didn't render her conclusions correct.

"Vincent Valentine."

Shelke's use of his full name, he had discerned almost immediately following their return to Edge, was something of a code. She used it to signify that she was speaking as Shelke Rui, the physically and emotionally stunted ex-Tsviet – as opposed to Lucrecia, the memetic legacy of whom had been snagged like a burr for months within her psyche, and whose personality had been coming to the fore of her thoughts and actions on an increasingly frequent basis.

Their recent conversations had soon come to take two distinct forms. The first, and the most prevalent, took the form of something a great deal like reminiscence; the ex-Turk would wax relatively lyrical regarding the time in which he served the Shinra Manufacturing Company – his own life, the peculiarities of the various peoples who he'd come into contact with, the personalities which his life had revolved around… and of course his time with Lucrecia. And she would sit there, absorbing all that he spoke of with an expression of furious concentration and a foreign glimmer of nostalgia dancing behind her cerulean gaze. Occasionally she would quietly contribute something, which would usually cause him to go off on a tangential topic.

The second form was what Shelke herself took more active involvement in, for it concerned that which she would need in order to function effectively in the society that she had been forcibly separated from ten years past. She had Marlene and Denzel for advice on how to fit in as a child; she had Tifa for advice concerning the woman that she was in truth; others – Cloud and Nanaki pre-eminent among them – served as sources of information regarding society as they knew it, and how best to reintegrate with it. But after receiving that information, it was Vincent who usually had the best chance of phrasing that knowledge in such a fashion that she could actually comprehend it.

Each mode of conversation carried its own rules of engagement, rules which the others around them had considerable difficulty in understanding. The use of his full name heralded an exchange of the second type, which required a specific mode of response.

"What is it, Shelke?" He gazed down at her, features carefully devoid of emotion. It was an expression his facial muscles were well acquainted with; one of its benefits was that it required that close attention be paid to the words he actually spoke, which worked well with Shelke's ill-practiced skills at reading body language in casual conversation.

Oddly, the almost imperceptible relaxation which would normally come about as a result of his response…was absent this time. It must be serious… Could it be…? He quelled the impulse to lean forward, remaining determinedly neutral in demeanour.

"Tomorrow… Lucrecia's data files…I…" She seemed unable to actually say the words.

He had been right; Vincent knew what she meant. And he could not fault her nervousness. There remained three topics which to this point had only been raised once – and only to agree that they not be spoken of, at least until a more…opportune time presented itself.

Yuffie was one, Shalua was another; this intimately concerned the last.

He cut off her fumbling attempts with a solemn nod, and a judiciously moderate softening of his garnet gaze. "Congratulations."

Now she relaxed. "Will you attend, Vincent Valentine?"

He answered with another nod, collecting both mugs for refilling.

Pouring steaming water into their cups and leaning over the upper counter to prise open Tifa's tea-canister, he noted that their audience was back for another peek. Vincent decided, once again, to pretend he had not noticed the side of her face protruding from the side of the doorway.

Yuffie's continued, unexplained presence in Edge in general and Tifa's bar in particular should no doubt have posed some sort of mystery. Vincent Valentine was, he would concede, often slow on the uptake when it came to matters of the heart – that had been the case even before Chaos, and his single-minded determination to constrain the demonic WEAPON had merely exacerbated the issue.

But he wasn't stupid. For that matter, neither was Tifa Lockheart, who had quietly passed on the one bit of information that allowed him to set about solving the puzzle. And the time for him to deal with it was approaching at last. A small, secret, and ever-so-slightly relieved smile stretched his lips, hidden under his high collar as he looked down to stir the tea.

—ox-oxo-xo—

Shelke retracted her consciousness from the synaptic net linkage, settling back behind her own eyelids with a tired sigh.

The procedure had required deft handling and ferocious concentration, not to mention considerable force of will; the subject had protested vociferously – more vociferously, indeed, than many might have predicted, were they in a position to judge. But the end result, in her estimation, was most certainly worth the trouble taken to achieve it.

For the first time in months, Shelke Rui was alone in her own head.

Wrestling the heavy dive-dish back to its at-rest position, she slowly became aware of Reeve Tuesti's warm tones as they washed into her readjusting ears. "Almost there…" Blinking, Shelke shook away the customary disorientation and sat up to regard the commissioner.

Reeve straightened at the terminal. "And…done! The Omega Report has been cleaned, collated, and…" he punched a key, "…filed. One moment…" She tuned him out for a moment, breathing deep and luxuriating in the inner silence.

There were very few people living today who might truly appreciate just how strange, how new she found that silence. Vincent, of course, had been sharing his mind and soul – if not always his physical body – with three demons and a WEAPON since before she had even been born. However, she thought Cloud Strife might understand more completely than even the ex-Turk the constant, nagging pull of the mako which had coursed through her every fibre for ten years.

Reeve Tuesti had worked tirelessly, with all the resources at his disposal, to unravel the mysteries of her condition. And surprisingly, one early discovery was that the mako itself had only a peripheral influence on her physical retardation; her stunted growth, he had postulated only a few days ago, seemed to be a byproduct of an unknown additive used in Deepground's mako-tubes. Preliminary tests immediately indicated that the substance did not require the medium of mako to perform its function, whatever that was. And so Reeve had gone ahead with the process of weaning her from the mako itself, while the unknown additive was rationed in inhaler-doses until they could figure out what it did and whether it was safe to remove it from her regimen.

It would be several months until she was entirely free of her mako-dependency. But with merely an hour before her next scheduled infusion, and in the deafening absence of Dr. Crescent's essence, the half-heard, half-sensed voices of the Lifestream had dwindled from something Shelke had constantly been forced to ignore…to something that she would have make an effort to even be aware of.

"…Saved."

Reeve triumphantly brandished a handful of floppy disks, turning to regard his audience of two. "And here, Vincent and Shelke, is the recombined memetic legacy of Dr. Lucrecia Crescent." He beamed with unabashed happiness – and what she recognised was a tinge of mischief.

"Congratulations: it's a scientist." The grinning W.R.O. Commissioner handed her the disks. "I'll leave you three alone, shall I?"

Vincent directed a burning stare at the chuckling Reeve's retreating back. Presumably, Shelke surmised, they had been the butt of some joke.

"What was the meaning of his comment, Vincent Valentine?"

Glaring at the door Reeve had left through for a moment, the gunslinger turned to look down at her. "…It was a pun, Shelke. That comment is used, with contextual variations, by doctors and midwives upon the birth of a child."

"…I shall terminate him with extreme prejudice… Vincent."

His blood-red orbs widened in subtle shock. And given her use of his first name, she couldn't fault it.

It wasn't the first time that she'd used it, as herself. But it was the first time that she'd used it without that betraying quaver of someone else's emotions behind it.

That is a relief… The former Tsviet had privately worried, prior to the procedure, that some shadow of Lucrecia might yet remain after so long nestled within her psyche. It seemed those worries had been unjustified.

Vincent recovered almost instantly; he nodded gravely to her, features blank, as if she'd just spoken his full name.

"Your feelings are your own once more…"

There was a question hidden in his bland statement. It was one that the two of them had been very careful not to address, indeed could not have addressed before Lucrecia's removal. The time had arrived for the moment of truth… but Vincent, ever considerate of her lacking social skills, graciously allowed her to gather and collate her thoughts into a form suitable for verbal dissemination.

Vincent Valentine was extremely skilled at the verbal aspects of communication; sometimes it seemed every word he spoke was laden with added meaning. Every conversation she held with him was a test, in one form or another.

An apt metaphor came to mind. Vincent was not the only one who could perform such testing.

"In a recent conversation with Reeve Tuesti regarding certain contemporary culture references, I was told about the concept of 'arranged marriage'."

His lips, barely in view from her low vantage point, twitched upward for a moment. "Indeed. Yuffie has been avoiding such undesirable entanglements for some time now."

…A test indeed. She strove to conceal her flinch at the Wutain princess's mention, and almost succeeded. Vincent caught it, of course; his eyes narrowed infinitesimally, waiting for her considered reaction to his measured conversational barb.

Yuffie Kisaragi… Staring at the tiled floor, she examined her reaction for a moment.

His comment had triggered a small spike of what she had gathered was jealousy… but in reality, it was only a small spike; surprise at its abrupt delivery must have exacerbated her initial reaction. It was only natural, she supposed, that a minor core of infatuation for the person of Vincent Valentine should remain even after Lucrecia's removal; after all, he was more than somewhat physically attractive, and had been far more considerate of Shelke herself than she'd had any real right to expect. Yet without the scientist's distorting influence, she recognised a certain sense of… hollowness to her romantic feelings for the gunslinger. An aspect of…yes, superficiality was the word that best described it.

Looking back up at Vincent, she nodded formally in acknowledgement of a point scored. His eyelids relaxed back to their customarily inscrutable cast. While she remained not quite certain of his impending reaction, she suddenly found herself feeling a lot more confident.

"Anyway, Dr. Crescent's data fragments… What they made me feel, reminded me a lot of what an arranged marriage must feel like. It's as if…my feelings weren't taken into account, as if…"

Vincent grunted. "As if you had no choice in the matter."

"Yes, Vincent." She revelled for a moment, in simply being able to say his name with such blessed absence of longing. "But that has changed."

Shelke kept her mien carefully blank, trying not to hold her breath…

…And he huffed a quiet sigh, relaxing a little against the wall he was leaning on.

"That's a relief. I am grateful to Lucrecia for what she has done for me… But Lucrecia is gone." If Vincent were in the habit of smiling at her, a subtle twinkle in the eye told her that he would be doing so now. "And I think that it's time for me to move on."

Shelke breathed her own little sigh of relief…and found herself smiling up at him genuinely for the first time since their reunion outside the Crystal Cave. For the first time…as herself.

Vincent, she was sure, had been revived for a reason. And however much a tiny part of herself might still wish otherwise, she felt reasonably certain that it had not been to pair him off with a socially inept woman trapped in the body of a nine-year-old. If it was up to her, she'd much rather keep him as a friend anyway; it merely required a look at his track-record over the years to establish that.

And if the small, satisfied smile which stretched his lips in return was any indication: if it was Lucrecia's intention to join him to a clone of herself, then it seemed neither of them were of a mind to co-operate with the departed scientist's wishes.

"Which reminds me… Shelke." His gaze dropped down to her hands, and what they held. "If you don't mind, I have something in mind concerning those disks."

"…What are you planning, Vincent?"

"Among other things, Shelke: a funeral." He smirked down at her, most atypically for the taciturn gunslinger. "I know that it's not Lucrecia. But let's just say…there are those who would appreciate some closure."

Could he mean…? She decided to test her suddenly blooming suspicions. "Will my presence be required, Vincent?"

He shook his head, his mien laden with a meaning that she could not miss.

I thought so…

She shrugged and handed over the disks.

"In the meantime…" They began to stride over toward the lab's exit, Vincent absently shortening his strides so that she might keep up. "Reeve has been under a great deal of pressure lately, with rebuilding the W.R.O. and cleaning up after Deepground. I can think of no-one else who could cope with the position as well as he has…"

Vincent appeared to be building to his point in an oddly roundabout fashion, she mused.

"Given also that he's the one who's most likely to be able to restore you to your proper proportions—"

"I am aware of that, Vincent. What is your meaning?"

"It may be advisable for you to restrict your vengeance to a spanking."

For all of Lucrecia's naïve obsession with her research, she had not been ignorant as to the techniques of double-entendres. And whatever else had changed, Vincent did love his tests. Shelke found herself, most unusually, trying not to laugh.

"Hmm… I'll think about it."

—ox-oxo-xo—

Yuffie Kisaragi had a habit of fondling her materia; it was one of the first things that the others of AVALANCHE had noticed about her. Barret had once, half-jokingly, quipped that it was simply something to keep her hands busy when they weren't stealing something, but Yuffie didn't really agree – she just loved the glossy, tingling feel of materia under her questing fingertips. They had a calming influence whenever she needed a clear head.

Her calloused digits rhythmically circled the emerald Contain materia set into her Wizard Bracelet, reaching hopefully for any calm to be had.

Pity she wasn't finding any.

Then again, it wasn't really surprising. After all, the guy she'd been waiting to get alone for weeks now had summarily dragged her out from her hiding place and hustled her out the side entrance less than a minute ago.

But on the plus side, at least he was alone. Just like she wanted in the first place. And just in time, too – Godo had been getting pretty impatient. Not even 'get back here before I disown you' impatient – by now it was rapidly approaching 'if you don't get back here I'll have you kidnapped and dragged back kicking and screaming' impatient. And even for Godo that was pretty damn impatient.

She knew why, too. Which was why she'd hung around here all this time, mostly procrastinating against the inevitable, but still nurturing the tiniest hope that it could be averted, even if only in a sense.

God, she was nervous…

Trying to drum down the butterflies in her stomach, Yuffie peered curiously into the warped, shimmering remains of the steel garbage can. Very little remained of the little red disks which had been thrown in beforehand. Just bits of charred and bubbled plastic, laminated to the bottom. "So what were they, anyway?"

Vincent shrugged, the action barely discernable in the shadowed alley outside the 7th Heaven's side-entrance. "Lucrecia's data files."

"Wait, what?"

"Over the past few weeks, I have been assisting Shelke in her goal of identifying and collecting as many fragments of Lucrecia's memetic legacy as possible." The gunslinger's long sable locks swayed as his ruby orbs swung round to regard her stormy grey ones. "She succeeded in gathering and extracting them earlier this afternoon. Those disks…contained the result."

Was she hearing him right…?

"So…you just threw the closest thing left to Lucrecia…in a garbage can? and had me drop a Flare on it?"

He shrugged again, somehow contriving to act as if he hadn't just single-handedly broken every rule in the 'Vincent Vic-Broods-A-Lot-About-Dead-Scientists Valentine Brooding Manual for Advanced Brooders' in one go. "As Lucrecia herself said to me recently: the real 'her' died and crumbled away, long ago. She has already given me everything I needed." A perfect eyebrow quirked at her. "And I thought the gesture was one you might appreciate."

…What kind of bizarro-world had she woken up in?

Fortunately, her mouth was capable of responding by itself. "Hell yeah! Wish I'da known that!" The next Flare crumpled the garbage can into a glowing pile of blackened metal. Man, I shoulda brought out my Ultima materia!

And wonder of wonders, Vincent just chuckled.

They watched the glowing lump on the pavement for a while. Yuffie tried to get her brain to work. She'd been ready to rip him a new one, she'd had a lovely speech and everything, and it'd all just gone right out the window…

"Then… all that time you were spending with Shelke…"

"Was something like what Tifa performed when she followed Cloud into the Lifestream. Shelke needed to recombine all of Lucrecia's data fragments, to be certain she didn't miss any when she expelled them. By telling her about my past, I was able to help her find them more easily."

The sheer unexpected relief his answer triggered, the flaring renewal of that hope that maybe, just maybe, she actually had a chance, sent Yuffie slumping bonelessly on the side-door stoop.

Vincent gracefully lowered himself to the stoop, adopting his habitual sitting pose to rest his right arm on his knee. Somewhat unusually, he twisted his torso to the left in order to regard the kunoichi.

More than somewhat uncharacteristically, he was the one to break the silence. "If you don't mind, I wish to tell you something of my past."

What? "Who are you, and what have you done with Vincent Valentine?" He snorted in response.

"Before my father moved our family to the town where Midgar would soon be erected, we lived in a small village not far from Icicle. The clothes I wear, the style you have mentioned with great regularity—" He paused to glare at her. She poked her tongue at him, still running more-or-less on automatic while her brain carried on trying to kickstart itself. "It was a style adopted by the villagers. If nothing else, it's warm.

"My father's side of the family had dwelt in the area for many generations, or so he claimed. My mother's side, however, came from elsewhere. She never did say from where; she only really told me one story of her mother's former home."

Yuffie stared at him, enraptured. It wasn't so much that his family history was actually interesting – in fact, it sounded like most other people's backgrounds. The same could be said of most of the other members of AVALANCHE. Cloud and Tifa's antecedents had lived in Nibelheim for as long as Cloud's mom and Tifa's dad had been able to remember, Barret's great-grandparents had been among the founding members of Corel, Cid and Reeve's families had dwelt in the area for far longer than Midgar had been around to foul the place up. Only Nakaki's family had even a patch on the action-packed tales of her own illustrious bloodline. But unlike Vincent, the others had been relatively forthcoming about their families' pasts – at least, provided enough alcohol (or catnip) was supplied beforehand.

So it begged the question: why was he telling her this all of a sudden?

"As I gathered it, my grandmother had very little positive to say about her previous home. The story my mother told me was that she fled an arranged marriage to a man who she detested."

Vincent fell silent, his crimson gaze drilling into hers. And boy, she was grateful for it. Because at the two words which encapsulated her present dilemma, her mind kicked into full operation at last.

Since her return to Wutai following AVALANCHE's defeat of Sephiroth just over three years ago, Godo had – for a variety of reasons, ranging from the commonly-held blame placed on her shoulders for the spread of Geostigma, to a certain sense of compassion for the daughter who had been subjected to so much upheaval in her short life – agreed to withhold the final requirement for her formal announcement as Crown Princess of Wutai. He'd not even raised much of a fuss (in relative terms at least) when Reeve had drafted her as the WRO's intelligence chief.

But Deepground, and the role that her father had played in its rout from Wutai, had forced matters to a head. Godo's recovery from the Wusheng's defence of the city was too slow for the comfort of the populace, and even Yuffie's foreign influences had been forgiven in light of that. Wutai needed a formal heir, and needed one now.

And to take the role, she needed a Prince-Consort, and needed one now.

In and of itself, the idea wasn't all that bad. Yuffie Kisaragi loved Wutai, and wanted to rule it one day – and if she had to take some guy as a Consort to do that, she'd always figured, then that was… well, not fine, but just the price of being royalty. And at least, she had thought, she'd get to pick the guy – he didn't even really need to be from Wutai, at least not according to the actual law. The Consort wasn't going to rule, after all; they just needed to sire/bear some kids within an appropriate timeframe, and basically stay out of the way otherwise unless the ruler wanted them for something.

But her people were certainly right about one thing: their princess had learned a lot about the world in her travels, and when she came to power, she'd be changing a lot of things.

If she went back to Wutai now, without a choice already made, her father (probably) and the Council (without a shadow of a doubt) would use the pressure of the situation against her. They'd just present her with 'The List' of suitably noble Wutain candidates and simply demand that she pick one.

It was a short list. Only one of them was under the age of thirty. Only two had even stepped outside Wutai's borders, and then only as diplomats or businesmen before the Wutai-Shinra War. And all of them were traditionalists to the core, nursing heavy grudges against not only Shinra but the entire world beyond its borders. Worse: all of them were either heavyweights on the Wutain political landscape, or served as catspaws for other such powers – and all of them were used to ruling their own houses. It was even suspected that some of them had been waiting for decades for precisely such an opportunity.

Technically, she would be the ruler. And if this had happened merely a few years from now, she might have been able to choose from a few boys who were currently just breaking into pubescence, as she had initially planned. But as it stood, whoever she was forced to 'choose' to marry would present her with the unpalatable prospect of an uphill political battle over the course of decades.

She'd still do it if she had to. She would. But Yuffie Kisaragi was not the kind of woman who went down without a fight, not if there was the slightest chance of victory. And so she had prevailed on Tifa to—

Wait…

"…I'm gonna kill her."

Vincent frowned. "Shelke?"

She snorted. "No, Tifa! She told you, didn't she?"

A perfectly sculpted eyebrow quirked at her, wordlessly questioning her vehemence. Her cheeks flamed in response, furious gaze trying to bore a hole in the pavement.

When he spoke next, his tone of rusty voice was unsurprisingly knowing – but surprisingly gentle.

"Tifa only mentioned that your father seemed to be more serious about bringing you home than usual. Given that you seemed to be equally reluctant to return, I asked Reeve. His agents have been keeping tabs on the situation in Wutai."

She found her chin being lifted by a tentative leather-gloved fingertip, unwillingly called back to stare into those twin furnaces.

"I…am right. Yes?"

He was being so very careful, wasn't he? But that really wasn't much of an answer, not by itself. She confined herself to a tight, controlled nod before wrenching her chin away.

He seemed to understand, though. Clearing his throat, he went on, "Perhaps it is because I asked Reeve about it, that he brought up the general topic of 'arranged marriage' while he was talking to Shelke." He emitted a dry snort. "And you might be surprised to learn that she thinks of such unions in even more virulent terms than you do."

She thought about that, for a moment. It made sense, in a way, but something about it still felt a little off. "What are you getting at, Vince?"

"Lucrecia may not have realised it when she was alive…but she loved me. And that love for me was transplanted whole onto Shelke. She had no choice but to love me…"

"Ohh, I getcha now." She smirked at him. "You know, I don't actually hate arranged marriages. I just don't wanna have to marry an enemy."

Was that… did Vincent just flinch?

His visage reverted almost instantly – not to that benevolent slackness of expression, but to hls habitual frown. He was trying to hide what surely could only have been embarrassment, and he was failing.

It must've been embarrassment. Right?

Oh, no way. Only in her wildest dreams had she even hoped…

"If I may ask: why did you select me as someone to approach?" Blank, blank… She saw right through it.

"Well…" She self-consciously cleared her throat, keeping her stare riveted on the melted bin. By now it had stopped glowing, but it was still smoking merrily away. "I couldn't just ask anybody… Just about everyone I know is either taken already, or just plain unacceptable. It had to be someone important, 'cause it couldn't be a noble. And most everyone like that is connected to the WRO, or Shinra, or…" She looked up at him. "You know? That's one reason."

Vincent nodded, the frown's dimensions shifting infinitesimally as he thought his way through the twists and turns. As well he should; he always had been more well-versed in politics than most people had given him credit for. It wasn't that he was ignorant, it was simply that for the most part, he didn't care.

When she'd made her initial decision, after that horrible call from Godo relayed to her console in the Shadowfox as Vincent Valentine lay unconsious on the bench across from her, she'd taken care to justify every political aspect of it to herself. After all, she had to be ready to face her father and the council and defend it.

She couldn't just pick out some random nobody – not even Godo would back such a pointlessly childish move. And that really didn't leave many in the running. She couldn't really pick a wealthy businessman or something either – finding one without connections to Shinra, past or present, would just be too difficult to pull off in such a short span of time; not to mention, businessmen tended to be just as used to command as the wrinkly old nobles she was so bent on avoiding. Rufus and his Turks were out for the same reason. So by and large, that meant AVALANCHE.

Cloud, she might not have minded, objectively at least – but he was taken, as was Cid. Reeve – ahem, Commissioner Tuesti – was off-limits. And both Barret and Cid were out of the running anyway – Cid because of his position in the WRO, and Barret because his energy company was minority-owned by a shadowy 'coalition of investors' which Yuffie/Reeve's agents had quietly identified as none other than Rufus Shinra. (She didn't tell him that, mind; Reeve merely told him not to give away his majority stake in the company, to which he'd apparently responded with something along the lines of well, duh.)

And that left Vincent – assuming, of course, that he survived that big materia being ripped out of his chest… If he did, then he would be the perfect candidate! He was powerful and important and all, at least enough to satisfy her father. And even better for her purposes, she knew that the only thing – at least, the only thing apart from Lucrecia and maybe Hojo – that could rouse him to care about something enough to intervene, was the welfare of his friends. If the council were to accept anyone outside of Wutai, it would be a man whose utter indifference to that which did not concern him was fast verging on the legendary. And as far as kids… well, if he was sterile or just didn't swing that way or whatever, then it would just be a matter of waiting a few years for those noble boys to grow up a little more before annulling the whole thing. Hell, her father would probably prefer that. So, no problems there.

Honestly, the fact that she thought he was kinda hot was just an added bonus.

So, she'd decided to sound him out after the whole Deepground thing was over and done with. Of course she hadn't really held out much hope he'd actually agree, hung-up as he still was about that Lucrecia chick, but it was worth a shot, right?

"But then…" Dammit, her voice was starting to break up…

But then, when he woke up, he'd actually thanked her, and she had been left blushing and stammering like some starstruck schoolgirl. Then there was the thing with Shalua, where she'd snapped at him – and found herself bleeding for him when she saw the impulsively delivered barb plunge home as if she'd stabbed him with one of her shurikens. Then there was the stagnant Lifestream that Nero summoned forth to drown her in…

"Yuffie…" He was staring at her with sudden concern as mist began to cloud her vision.

…and he came swooping out of the darkness to gather her into his arms and bring her back to the light like some Leviathan-damned storybook knight, and then…

"Yuffie?" A cold, gauntlet-clad hand came to rest on her shoulder.

…and then he saved the world – and died…

"Yuffie!" He shook her a little, trying to snap her out of her impending hysterics.

Instead she practically flew at him, tucking herself under his shoulder as her own arms snaked out to wrap round his torso with rib-creaking force. Her face pressed into his leather shirt, her whole form trembling as she frantically tried to regain her control, and hoping beyond hope he'd let her stay huddled there for long enough to do it.

It was only when she found herself suffering unexpected pangs of jealousy directed at the (hopefully, for Shelke's sake!) unintentially obstructionist ex-Tsviet, that she finally realised the true magnitude of her error. Because from the moment that she decided to make Vincent Valentine her intended choice of consort – from the moment that she decided he was the man she wanted to marry, Yuffie had found herself increasingly inundated with feelings that were (almost) entirely unwanted. Feelings that she'd successfully avoided for years, feelings that in the long run could only hurt the young woman who would eventually come to rule Wutai.

After all: finding herself falling in honest-to-Gaia love with the man didn't make it any more likely he'd say yes.

And then his metal-sheathed arm retracted, to drape itself across her shoulders. Whipping her face upward at the unexpected contact, she found him staring down at her from a distance of centimetres; she blushed and tried to turn her face away, only for his other hand to recapture her chin. Vincent's breath brushed the hypersensitive nerve-endings of her lips as he responded.

"To my mind, love in itself has little to do with the question. Quite honestly, I doubt I'd recognise it if I was in love…"

She nodded. From Vincent, that made perfect sense, and she took what comfort she could in what hadn't changed.

"…And in any case, love could well come later. No; as far as I can tell, the question is whether I care enough about your well-being to spare you from being forced to marry an enemy. And when I think of it in that way, there is only one way I can answer."

"Y-You mean…?" O blessed Holy, she hoped she wasn't dreaming…

"Before Deepground, the necessity of restraining Chaos would have forced me to reject your offer. But now Chaos has returned to the Planet. So…" He took a breath. "If you wish to have me as a Prince-Consort, then I will accept."

It should have been unromantic. There was no discernable passion in the way he said it, and most of the setting – sitting on a concrete stoop in an alley, outside a bar, in a grey, polluted city of metal – should have accentuated the banality of it all. And Yuffie wouldn't have minded, not in the least, because there'd never really been much room in her life for romance beyond the occasional childish daydream; besides, Vincent had just agreed, and that was really all she was after.

But she was in his arms, and the destroyed bin which was the best sign she could ever have wished for that Vincent had finally moved on from the woman who he'd angsted over forever was still smoking on the pavement before them, and now he was actually kissing her, as chaste and tentative as it was…

All too soon, Vincent ended it.

Only to chuckle…

"Besides… With Chaos gone, certain portions of my body have begun to remind me that I haven't indulged in over thirty-three years." His rumbling laughter had her toes suddenly curling with anticipation in her boots. "And if nothing else, I do find you rather attractive."

…and move in once more.

—ox-oxo-xo—

Mixing a bowl of ingredients for that night's dinner special, Tifa frowned for a moment at the side-door, which had just emitted a soft thud. Presumably Vincent and Yuffie were still out there.

It was a little weird, actually; Vincent had come ghosting in with an empty garbage bin in one hand and a bunch of floppy disks in the other, calling for Yuffie and getting her to dig out her Contain materia. Then he'd practically dragged her out the side-door, completely ignoring Tifa's puzzled query. And then there was the rolling boom of a Flare spell confined in closed quarters, followed a little while later by another one. And then a great deal of quiet conversation. And then silence.

She smiled a little. It was about time that Vincent sorted Yuffie out; the Wutain princess could scarcely have avoided him for much longer before she intervened.

Another muffled thump rattled the door in its frame. Did I lock them out…?

Hurriedly wiping her hands clean of the cloying mincemeat-mix, she stepped over to the door. It's not locked… what's going on?

She opened the door and looked round, noting nothing out of order other than the gutted remnants of what might have once been a garbage bin. Then she looked down.

Vincent was sitting on the stoop. On first glance, and from the angle at which she surveyed him, he might have looked as if he were alone…if not, that is, for the young ninja sitting on his lap, kissing him with great – and reciprocated! (she grinned at the sight) – enthusiasm. Tifa noted with interest that Yuffie actually appeared to be twitching with bliss; the kunoichi's left leg snapped out under its own power as she watched, before snapping back into its deathgrip on the preoccupied gunslinger's abdomen. Presumably it was this twitch which had been responsible for the banging on her door.

Curiosity satisfied, Tifa stepped back and closed the door.

"About time… maybe she'll go back home now…" she murmured, getting on with the task of making dinner and making a mental note to call Cloud and tell him to avoid the side door when he returned. And also to get Cloud alone and naked as soon after the newest couple left as humanly possible.

So, um… reviews might be nice? Exploding purple giraffes would be preferable, but I'll take reviews…