The Conscience of the King Chapter 13: Throwing Stones "Then you see turning out a light switch is their only power When we stand like spotlights in a mighty tower All for one and one for all Then we sing the common call Let it be me (this is not a fighting song) Let it be me (not a wrong for a wrong) Let it be me If the world is night, shine my life like a light." -- Indigo Girls It was a common superstition in certain parts of the depths of Lower Midgar that Tifa Lockheart simply never slept. Certainly, the Seventh Heaven never seemed to be closed in the evenings, and stayed open until well past the wee hours of the night. Certainly, slum merchants reported seeing Tifa, bright-eyed and perky, in the local markets at times so early that even the sun was still rubbing its eyes and reaching for its cup of coffee. Tifa cultivated the rumors, in her own quiet way. What no one knew was that she also cultivated a habit that most people grew out of well before they ever entered school. Tifa /napped/. She was doing so now in one of the bedrooms over the bar, clad in a faded t-shirt that had seen many better days (a hand-me-down from before Kyle had handed her the keys to the bar and retired again to Costa del Sol, and therefore cherished) and a pair of sweatpants picked up secondhand from the thrift shop over in Lower Six. The room was dark and cool, and she had /just/ drifted over the edge of that pleasant precipice when the knock sounded on the door. ~Oh, for the love of all that's holy.~ She rolled over and dragged a pillow over her head, resolving to ignore it; but whomever it was who Just Didn't Know that You Do Not Bother Tifa if the door was closed obviously also Just Didn't Know that no answer at the door meant that going away was probably a better idea. The knock sounded again, sharper and more urgent, and Tifa groaned. "All right, all right," she grumbled, dragging herself out of bed. "I'm coming. I'm coming. Keep your shirt on." She ran one hand through her hair, glanced at herself in the mirror to make sure that enough of her modesty was preserved, and made her way down the stairs, grumbling to herself the entire time. The knock had morphed into a pounding by the time she yanked the door open, ready to do serious violence to whomever was on the other end of it. "What the hell do you think you're -- oh, Biggs, Johnny, it's you." She leaned against the doorframe and closed her eyes in exhaustion born not from the lack of sleep but the thought of the conversation that was about to happen. "It's the middle of the morning and I was almost asleep. What the hell do you want?" Johnny's eyes darted back and forth. "We've got trouble," he said, shortly. "Lemme in." "/You've/ got trouble," Tifa corrected, lifting one hand to stifle a yawn. "Whatever it is, can't it wait until tonight? I was up late last night. The Turks were down here partying again, and it kept me up past bedtime." Johnny pushed his way past her, shutting the door behind him and making his way over to the bar. Biggs followed. "Make a cup of coffee and listen to me." Johnny's eyes darted over his shoulder again as he went, as if he expected the door to open on its own and come after him. "This is big shit." He never would get over his habit of talking to her like she was a dog he could order around, she reflected. How had she ever found that glamorous as a child? "What's wrong?" She yawned again, rubbing the back of one hand over one eye and following him over to the bar. It was about then that she noticed the cuts and scrapes all over his face and arms. "Are you all right? You're bleeding." Johnny looked down at himself. "Nothing serious. We've got five dead, Tif', these cuts ain't anything big." /That/ woke her up the rest of the way. "What? Wait, who? Who's dead?" She leaned over, grabbing his chin in her hand and yanking it up so that he met her eyes. "You promised me you were getting out of the rebellion, Johnny. Don't tell me that you went back." Johnny jerked himself free of Tifa's grasp as Biggs went around the bar to turn on the coffeepot. "Fuck yeah I went back. I can't stay out of it. Too many people need me. There's no harm in planning what to do to get us out of their damn clutches." He scowled. "Except Shinra decided that it was time to stop us talking and start doing. The Turks went through the rally, and next thing I know we've got five down and bleeding and those fuckers are on their way back Upstairs, as cool as could be." He began pacing, back and forth, like a caged panther. "And we lost five good people." Tifa held up her hands. "Hold on a minute. You're telling me that the Turks fired on a crowd of unarmed people? That's insane." Something in the way he refused to meet her eyes tipped her off, and her own eyes narrowed. "Wait. You weren't unarmed, were you." She dropped her head back in exasperation and disbelief, staring at the ceiling. "/Johnny/." "They've got guns; we need guns." Biggs sounded all too reasonable as he put the mug of coffee under Tifa's hand. "It's not to hurt anyone, Tif'. It's to protect us." Tifa rubbed at her temples with tired fingers. "Yeah, well, it looks like a few people got hurt anyway, doesn't it?" She looked over at Johnny. "Who fired first?" "That doesn't matter, Tif'." Johnny's eyes continued to dart over his shoulder, looking towards the door, expecting someone to come after him at any moment. "What matters is that they fired on a bunch of /civilians/. Five dead, Tif'. Five good men." "/Who fired first/, Johnny?" Her voice was too sharp, and she tried to force it down. "If you come into my bar looking to get me all enraged about something, you damn well give me all the facts, not just the ones that fit your agenda. Now, are you going to stand there and tell me that the Turks started it, or are you going to tell me the truth and admit that it was one of your group of idiots who saw some kind of golden chance and took a potshot at one of them?" "And if we did?" Johnny's chin came up, and he glared. "What, you think that they're some kind of saints, some kind of miracle workers? You think that they've never come down here into the slums and killed people themselves? They took out Old Jerry last week, you know. Your prettyboy Tseng just waltzed down into Lower Three and shot him through the forehead. Are you trying to tell me that people like that don't deserve to take a bullet themselves?" Tifa could feel her eyes narrowing. "No, I'm not saying that was right, but just /maybe/ Jerry shouldn't have been running an explosives factory out of his living room, hm? If you're stupid about things, Mr. Melodrama, you can't expect to be surprised when you get /caught/." Johnny growled and sent his coffee mug off the bar counter with a sweeping gesture of one hand. "I should've known that you'd be on their side. After all, who is it who serves them drinks down here every Friday night? Fuck. You're nothing more than a whore for Shinra, these days, and it doesn't matter /who/ Shinra kills or what Shinra destroys, you'll still bend over and spread your legs." He stood, turning on his heel to stomp out. He couldn't resist a parting shot over his shoulder, though. "I'm sure your dad's looking back at you from the Lifestream and thinking, yeah, that's my baby girl." The door slammed behind him as he stalked out. Biggs was left more shocked than Tifa; he put a hand on Tifa's arm as she just stared after Johnny, somehow unsurprised and yet lacking the energy to even bother trying to get in the last word. "Hey, Tif', that was low of him." Her voice was dull. "I know." She lifted a hand to rub at her face again. "He knows which buttons of mine to push. Always has. When he wants to, he can push with the best of them." "You've known him a long time, haven't you?" "Yeah." She looked down at the puddle of coffee on the floor, the shards of mug white and broken in the pool, and sighed. "We grew up together." Biggs followed her eyes, saw the mess, and reached quickly for a rag and a dustbin before she could get up. "Nibelheim, right?" They all avoided speaking about Nibelheim as much as they could. Tifa had been shocked to realize that Johnny had stayed in Midgar after failing to make SOLDIER, shocked even further to realize that he'd moved to the slums and joined up with the anti-Shinra rebellion. Johnny had stiffly explained that Shinra's policies had kept him in the city even though he'd wanted to come home. He hadn't had the money for the gate exit permit, and he hadn't had the paperwork to prove that he was allowed to leave. Tifa had been glad enough to find someone who'd survived the disaster that she hadn't protested when Johnny had decided that Tifa's bar would be a wonderful place to spend his free time. After all, Johnny's 'friends' in Midgar were at least a slight cut above the ones he'd hung out with back home. She'd begun to realize lately, however, that there was a limit to how far you could carry childhood friendships, particularly when the adults resulting from those children were as different as she and Johnny were. If the situation had been normal, she thought, perhaps she would have stopped trying so hard, would have left Johnny to hang on his own. But he was all she had left of her childhood. "Yeah," she said now, lifting her mug of coffee to her lips and then setting it down untasted. "Nibelheim." She'd never really spent much time talking to Biggs, though she'd always liked him in a detached sort of way; perhaps that was why she was surprised at his tone, which was gentle as he asked, "You get out before it went up?" Startled, she lifted her eyes. "...No. I was there when it happened." That seemed to impress him; he stopped dead. "You were?" He paused. "You were the one who told Johnny what happened, weren't you?" "Yeah." She traced circles on the surface of the bar with one finger. "Shinra covered it up pretty well." Biggs nodded. "He just said that he knew what had happened. Made it out all big, like he was finding out stuff that Shinra didn't want the rest of us to know." He paused in his cleanup, looking ridiculous crouched over the pool of coffee with a wet rag in one hand. "It got him some big status in the group, you know. Knowing what went on. He didn't tell us how he found out." She could feel the headache starting, just behind her left eye. "Really? He never used to be like that." ~You think,~ whispered the voice of treacherous recollection in the back of her mind, the voice that told her that she'd lost so much, too much, in the fire and the pain. She ignored it. Biggs stood, finally, dripping rag in hand, and cast around for a place to leave it; he finally settled for dropping it in the sink. "He's a good guy. Just a little bitter. I mean, he /really/ doesn't like Shinra." "None of you guys do." It came out sharper than she'd intended, again, and she sighed. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to snap." Biggs seemed unconcerned. "Nah, it's not a problem. I mean, I don't like what they're doing to the people and the planet, but I ain't as fanatical about it as Johnny is. He just wants to get up there and start killin' anyone who lives on the plate." "And he's upset with me that I'm not standing next to him with guns blazing, doing some killing of my own." Tifa's voice was flat. "We've had that argument, too." Biggs shrugged. "Hey, if you're not with us, you've probably got a reason for it. It's no skin off my nose." Tifa sighed again, stifling a yawn. "Look, I don't like the Shinra any more than the rest of you guys do, all right? I just don't think that wholesale destruction is the way to solve anything. It'll only get /you/ killed, and then no one will be around to do anything." Biggs tilted his head to one side, looking back at her. "How would you do it, then?" He sounded distantly interested, like he was asking her the value of two plus two. "To be honest?" She ran a hand through her hair again. "I wouldn't. Not with the way you guys are set up right now. You're too loud, too vocal. Too much of an easy target. If Shinra decided tomorrow that they wanted to get rid of the problem -- and if you guys took potshots at the Turks, I wouldn't be surprised if they /did/ -- it'd be a simple enough matter to figure out who was doing what, and go ahead and just /remove/ the thorns in their sides. If I wanted to get rid of them, I wouldn't waste time with big loud displays against the fascist imperialist pigs, I'd just hit them where it hurts." "And where's that?" He didn't sound condescending, the way Johnny did every time this subject came up. He sounded interested. Tifa shrugged. "The pocketbook." She offered up a smile, just a little one. "Make it hurt for them to do what they're doing. Make it hurt the only place a company can hurt. Make it unprofitable for them to keep up their policies, so that the only way they /can/ keep operating is to change those policies." She shrugged a little. "It's not something that would change anything instantly. It's not a big showy solution, and it certainly doesn't appeal to Johnny's over-abused sense of the dramatic, which is why nobody ever wants to hear it. Which is why I stopped going to those meetings." "Huh." Biggs looked thoughtful as he worked it out in his head. "So you're saying that if we want them to change anything they're doing, we gotta give them a good solid reason to stop doing it, right? That makes sense." She yawned again and eyed the coffee distastefully. "Yeah. And from what I've learned from the people who hang around here, the /only/ reason they'd listen to would be if it cost too much to keep doing things that way. They don't care about humanitarian reasons, they don't care about ecological reasons -- Shinra cares about the bottom line, and that's /it/. It's pretty common knowledge that Old Man Shinra is losing his mind, and the only thing he cares about is money -- spending it and making it." Biggs leaned against the bar, looking interested. "You hear a lot around here, huh." Tifa shrugged. "We get all sorts of people in here. More Shinra before Kyle left, but even though the bar's mine now, a bunch of them still come in. All you have to do is keep your ears open." Biggs flushed, just a little. "Johnny talks about that a lot, you know. Says you're selling out because you sell them drinks." Tifa sighed again. "I'm not surprised that he does." Her tone was tired. "If someone isn't dramatically and violently on his side, he doesn't want to hear about it. I'm just trying to make a living. I wound up here, I stayed. I'm doing pretty well for myself." "How come you were working for an ex-Shinra guy in the first place?" Something in her expression must have warned him, because he held up his hands as though to ward off an attack. "Just asking, just asking, you can kick me out if you want to." She shook her head. "No, no, it's all right. I'm sorry. I'm tired." She looked around at the bar, quiet and deserted in the middle of the day. "This place takes a lot out of me." A pause, and then she decided that the question had been innocent enough. "I wound up here because Kyle was the one who took me in. The doctor who treated me after -- after Nibelheim, he was a friend of Kyle's and told Ky that I needed a place to stay. Kyle took me. Kyle was the one who showed me that not all of Shinra were a bunch of heartless bastards." "Doctor?" Biggs picked up on that, looking startled. "Shit, Tif', you said you were there when Nibelheim went up, you didn't say that you got hurt. Johnny never told me you got hurt." "Johnny never knew that I got hurt." Tifa's lips twisted in a bit of a self-mocking smile. "I didn't tell him. I didn't tell him much. It was just easier that way, and I still don't remember much." She reached down, took the worn fabric of her t-shirt in one hand. "Here. Look." The scar that she lifted her shirt to show was still, even over two years later, red and puckered. It started, thin and nearly surgically precise, directly at the top of the valley between her breasts; it ran downwards and at a slight angle, stopping several inches above her waist. Biggs averted his eyes out of politeness when she lifted the shirt, but his curiosity overrode his manners and he looked. And stared. "Holy shit, Tif', that looks like it --" "Cut through two of my ribs, punctured a lung, and nearly took out my stomach. Yes. It did." She dropped the t-shirt down over her breasts again, rubbing at the expanse of chest with the heel of one hand in a gesture that had become more and more familiar with time. "I'm just lucky that he kept his sword so sharp, or there would have been more damage. As it was, the only reason I survived was that the blade was so sharp that it cut through the bones, instead of breaking them or getting stuck there. It was a clean cut, which made it heal faster." Her voice was flat; she'd had a lot of time to get used to thinking about it. "That's how I knew he was insane, you know. It's the first thing they teach you, when they're teaching you swordwork. Don't follow through; pull back as soon as you hit, or else your sword is going to get stuck. The Great General Sephiroth certainly knew that. I got the distinct impression that he just didn't /care/." She knew that Biggs probably didn't care about the finer points of swordplay, but the lecture kept her from remembering the rest of the things she wanted to forget. "The person who found me had enough Cure materia to keep me alive until he got me here and in the hands of a real doctor, but because it was treated with materia first, I'm always going to have that scar." Biggs was staring at her with more respect than she'd ever seen in his eyes for anyone before. "He -- Sword -- /fuck/, Tif', you went up against Sephiroth? You're a /hero/ --" She overrode him. "I was an /idiot/. I was fifteen, alone, and unarmed, and he was the Great General Sephiroth. Armed with Masamune. Armed with more materia than I'd like to think about. I wasn't thinking, I wasn't planning, I just /went/, all right? And I nearly got killed because of it." Her voice rose a little more. "And that's why the rest of you are such idiots, you know. Because all right, Sephiroth was Sephiroth, and there was only one Sephiroth in Shinra. But sixty thousand people don't need to /be/ Sephiroth to be dangerous when they're up there and we're down here and /they're the ones who are in charge/." She dropped back down against the barstool, startled to find that she'd half-risen while working up to a yell, and eyed her coffee again. "I wasn't a hero. I don't want to be a hero. Heroes get very dead, very fast." Biggs's eyes were wide, trained on her face; his mouth was slightly open. "Fuck, Tif'," he muttered again. "I didn't know you paid attention to that sort of thing." Her answering laugh was bitter. "Come on, with Johnny around, I hear the party line six ways to Sunday. Give me five minutes to work myself up so that I won't make myself sick, and I can even spout off your rhetoric well enough to get into one of your secret meetings." She waved a hand. "It's not about the rhetoric. It's about having a /plan/." Biggs leaned forward, putting his hands on the bar and fixing her with an excited stare. "No, I mean it, Tif'. Come on, we both know that Johnny don't know shit when it comes to planning things. I only stick around with him because /everyone/ lets you in if you're with Johnny. We can take you to a few meetings until everyone hears what you have to say -- you can tell them what you just told me, tell them what happened in Nibelheim, they'll /listen/ to you, and once they're listening to you, you can tell them what you just told me and they'll let you /do/ it, we can hit Shinra where it counts, like you said -- they'll see that you know your shit --" "Whoa." Tifa held up both of her hands. "Stop right there. I'm not getting involved in this whole thing. I survived Nibelheim by some grace of God, and I'm not going to be dumb enough to go charging back into the line of fire again just on someone else's say-so." She stood up, picking up her nearly-untouched coffee and making her way behind the bar to dump out the liquid and rinse the mug. "Thank you, but /no/. I've got a good business down here, Shinra doesn't bother me any more than they bother anyone else, and I'm not risking myself against a lost cause without a damn good reason." "Well, what /would/ make you join up with us?" Biggs caught the cue -- he wasn't the swiftest of men in the world, but he, like everyone else, could at least recognize the "it's time to leave" hints -- and stood himself. "Will you at least think about it?" Tifa rubbed a hand over her face. "I'll think about it, all right?" she allowed. "I've been thinking about it. If I change my mind, I'll let you know." Biggs bounced in place, rocking back and forth on the balls of his toes. "All right. Look, if you change your mind, you know where to find me, right? Or you should." "I do, I do." She made a little flipping motion with her hands. "Go. I'm tired. You woke me up." He nodded. "Okay. Look -- uh, I don't think it would be a good idea to tell Johnny about this. About any of this. He, uh, wouldn't really understand." Her tone was weary as she exhaled on a sigh. "I know, I know. I've been dealing with him for a lot longer than you have. G'wan, get out of here." Biggs nodded and strode out of the bar. Tifa sighed again as she crossed the room to lock the door behind him. -- * -- She was singing an old song to herself to keep her mind from drifting too far afield as she made her way through the alleys of Sector Three, with her backpack full of produce for the evening's dinner. Most women avoided Lower Three, particularly after dark, but Tifa went where she wanted to in the slums. Enough people knew her that she wouldn't be bothered, and enough people knew that if she were bothered, it would get ugly /quickly/. "Adam lay ibounden, bounden in a bond, four thousand winter thoght he not so long..." Her mind was a thousand miles away, lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that she hadn't had any problems in the slums since "convincing" a few of her more ardent admirers that it would be a better idea to admire from afar. Perhaps that was why she didn't notice the man with the knife until after she'd practically walked into him. He was tall and broad, and his skin was the dark coal-color of a Corel native; he held the knife awkwardly in his left hand, and as Tifa tried to make her tired eyes focus, she realized that was because his right arm was a badly-carved prosthetic. "Look," he said, and his voice was rough. "I know you got money. Just gimme some of it and nobody's gonna get hurt." Tifa sighed. "You're new here, aren't you?" The man's eyebrows drew together. "That ain't got nothing to do with this. Just gimme the money, dammit." "No, actually, it's got a lot to do with it," Tifa said. She /hated/ scenes like this. "Because if you weren't new here, you'd know that trying to mug /me/ is probably one of the worst ideas you could have had." She shook her head. "Look, I'll just let you go ahead and leave without a fight. I'm tired, and I've still got a long day ahead of me. But unless you want --" She broke off; she'd just realized what the seeming disfiguration on his back was. Not a hunchback, as she had automatically assumed. Securely strapped into a cloth sack, peering brightly over his shoulder, was a baby who could not have been more than eight or nine months old. She stopped short and planted her fists on her hips. "You're going to stop and mug me while you're carrying a /baby/? What the /hell/ is wrong with you?" An expression of brief confusion passed over her assailant's face, before he shook it off and brandished the knife again. "I got the knife, lady, just gimme the damn money and stop yapping at me." Tifa shook her head. "You're trying to get money to feed her, aren't you." She could feel her sympathy level rising steadily, and tried to swat the feeling away; Lower Midgar was full of hundreds of con artists, and just the presence of a baby didn't mean that the man was deserving of her help. His expression darkened. "Ain't none of your business if I am," he said gruffly, and his eyes darted from side to side. She could tell that he was thinking of trying to escape, and she took one step to the side to block his route. "Actually, you're the one holding the knife on /me/," she said archly, "and I think that gives me plenty of right to pry. When was the last time you ate?" That seemed to deflate him. "...What day is it?" he asked. That would have decided her even if the baby hadn't chosen that very moment to let out a thin cry. "Oh, for Shiva's sake," Tifa exclaimed, exasperated, and feinted to one side. She had the knife out of his hand before he could register that she had moved. "Come on. I'll feed you." Strangely, that didn't seem to relax him; he straightened up, and insisted, gruffly, "I don't need no charity. I'll work for it." Tifa inspected the knife he had been holding on her -- as she had suspected, a cheap mass-manufactured butterfly knife, the kind that looked pretty and imposing but fell apart the minute you needed to depend on it, unless you knew what you were doing -- and then glanced back up. "I don't need someone to mug unsuspecting passersby for me, thank you very much, so you'll damn well wash dishes if you want to work for it." Her words were harsh; her tone was mild. Silently, he held out both his hands. The right one was tan and plastic, poorly made; the left one dwarfed it. "Can't work much with only one hand," he said, bitterly. "'Least nobody in this town seems to think so." Corel and Nibelheim were not so far apart in terms of attitude; she understood that fierce pride, understood what it must have cost him to resort to stealing. It drained nearly the last dregs of her anger. "We'll find something," she replied. "Come on." Without further protest, he followed her back home. -- * -- By the definitions of the Seventh Heaven, it had been a quiet night. Only one table had been broken, and that had been an accident; the person who'd done the breaking had dragged it off to the Broken Shit corner of the back room and promised to wash dishes for a few days to work it off. Things like broken furniture were common in the bar; the regulars knew that Tifa didn't mind as long as it was truly an accident, and believed that there was more to worry about in life than a few splinters on the floor. Tifa's stray -- Barret, he'd given his name as, and the child was Marlene -- had heard the commotion from the back room, where he was clumsily and one-handedly working through the stack of dishes. He'd rushed out from the back room like a bat out of hell, glowering and looking threatening, clearly ready to take on whatever had caused the noise and protect Tifa, the bar, and the other customers from whatever threat had presented itself. That reaction, as reflexive as breath, had not gone unnoticed by Tifa. It had gone a long way towards endearing himself to her, and his obvious determination to earn the meal she'd given him had cemented it. She closed the bar relatively early, but it was a Thursday night, after all. Thursday nights were for gearing up for the sea of chaos that was Fridays. Barret appeared from the kitchen as she locked the front door, his shoulders stiff as though he was steeling himself for a conversation, and she waved him to take a seat at a table before he could make his excuses and leave. "Sit down," she told him, and crossed the room to the bar. "You want a drink? You've earned it." Barret looked up at that, startled. "Uh ... yeah, I'll take a beer if you've got it." She nodded and ducked under the bar, pulling out two bottles of the brew that she imported from Costa del Sol. "Sure." Without commenting on it, she removed the caps from both of them so that he would not have to struggle with it one-handed, and brought both bottles over to the table. Barret squared his shoulders. "I, uh, look. Thanks for the food. I 'preciate it. I'm sorry about the whole --" Tifa cut him off before he could apologize; she kept her tone brisk and businesslike. "Don't worry about it. It wasn't the first time that something like that has happened to me, and it certainly won't be the last." She picked up her beer and sipped from it. "You did good work tonight." He scowled and picked up his own drink, draining half of it in a single swallow. "For a one-handed, one-armed /freak/, you mean?" The bitterness rode his voice like a parasite. "For an /employee/." She met his eyes, held them. "You do good work." That took him aback; he certainly hadn't been expecting that. "...You offering me a job?" he ventured, gingerly, after a moment of waiting for her to say more. Tifa let a smile cross her face. "I am. I can't pay you a whole hell of a lot, but I can give you room and board for you and the baby. You'll wash dishes, and sweep floors, and haul groceries, and stand there and glower and look menacing when we encounter people who think that a girl can't run a bar. We're open seven nights a week, closing time is when I kick everyone out, opening time is whenever the doors open and the neon lights turn on. Everybody knows that I'm open whenever I feel like it. We're open for lunch during the week, closed in the afternoon for a nap and some time to clean before the evening shift comes in. You've seen what the place is like at night -- and tonight was a quiet night, before you start thinking that it's all like this. There's an attempted robbery at least once a month, we get Shinra managers and slum rebels drinking side-by-side in here, my broken-chairs bill sometimes runs into the five figures per month, and half the people who come in on a regular basis wouldn't know what 'couth' meant if they tripped over it." The smile grew. "I love it more than I could say, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's not for everyone, and I'll understand if you don't want to work here -- I'll help you find a job somewhere else, don't worry. But I've been trying to hire someone for a while. And besides, how many people can say that they got their job by holding their boss at knifepoint?" That almost made Barret smile, but his eyebrows were still drawn together, as he thought things over. "I ain't takin' charity," he said, firmly. Tifa shook her head. "It's not charity. I'm not going to go easy on you, you know. I work like a dog, and I can't keep employees for more than about three months or so; they burn out, or get tired of it, or decide that they don't want to work in a bar after all. My last guy quit a month ago, and it's been impossible to replace him; I've been running on the goodwill of the customers, and that never lasts long." Her eyes still on his, she reached over the table and tapped her fingers, lightly, on the plastic of his right hand. "If you're talking about this, well, it doesn't seem to have stopped you from doing much. It certainly didn't prevent you from doing anything I asked you to do tonight." Barret recoiled slightly as she touched his prosthesis, but she didn't get the sense that it was because she'd encroached upon his personal space; something in his eyes made her think that the injury was recent, that he was still trying to come to terms with what it entailed, that he was used to people treating him as though he were less than capable because of it. "...You really mean that," he said after a minute, uncertainly, searching her face for clues. It wasn't quite a question, but it was uncertain enough that it could have been taken for one. Tifa nodded. "Yeah. I do." She picked up her nearly-untouched bottle of beer and sipped from it again. "Look, Barret, I won't pretend that I wouldn't have brought you back here if you hadn't been hurt and didn't have Marlene with you. I'd've probably broken both your arms, tied them together, and left you there to think about why it's not a good idea to mug seemingly innocent girls." She could see the disbelief on his face, and didn't bother to correct it; he'd find out soon enough. "So yeah, if you want to think of /that/ as charity, I suppose you wouldn't be too far off. But it's not really charity. It's being /human/ to someone else. There isn't a whole lot of that in Midgar, and there should be more, because people need to take care of each other. Nobody else is going to do it for us." She watched his face as he worked through that, and then he finally nodded. "Yeah," he said, roughly. "I can see that. I'm takin' care of Marlene, 'cause of that." Tifa pounced on the opening; it had been nagging at her since she'd first encountered the strange duo. "She's not your daughter?" Barret scowled. "She /look/ like my daughter? Her father was a friend of mine. He died, couple months ago. I'm takin' care of his kid, 'cause there's no one else to do it. Came to Midgar for a bunch of reasons. I didn't think that it'd be so hard to work here." There was a distinct impression of "I don't want to talk about this" hovering around the edges of the conversation, but Tifa had long ago stopped paying attention to those undertones. "Where are the two of you from?" she asked, casually. He had the skin and the accent of a Corel native, and she had heard the news reports about the rebellion in Corel. She had also heard the rumors from Johnny and from Biggs, the rumors that said that the news reports were full of shit. She wasn't sure which side she believed; neither one was entirely credible. As she had suspected, his eyes darkened and he looked away. "Corel," he muttered, and then shut his mouth, firmly. She tilted her head to one side and looked at him, then looked away herself, drawing little circles in the puddles of condensation on the table with one fingertip. "Is Shinra looking for you?" she asked, as gently as she could. "It's not a problem if you're in trouble, but if you are, we'll have to keep you out of sight as much as we can." That hit a nerve; he sat up straight and pounded his good hand on the table. "Shinra's a buncha lyin' sacks of shit," he snapped. "Ain't /none/ of us who woulda done anythin' like what they sayin' we did." In his anger, his accent thickened. "They come walkin' into Corel like they own the place an' talk alla us into bendin' over and lettin' them own us like they be some kinda gods. We didn't do /nothin'/ they said we did. They come in there and they kill us all an' then they say we /made/ them do it an' that's /bullshit/. Ain't /none/ of us woulda been that stupid." He hit the table again. "Makes me wanna kill 'em all an' make sure that they can't do that to /anyone else ever again/." Tifa held up both her hands. "Hey," she said, trying to be reassuring. "Look, that's not what I was asking. There are a lot of people down here who hate Shinra. There are a lot of people down here who are working to cause as much trouble for Shinra as they can. And you know what? I can sympathize with them, because Shinra does a lot of horrible things. But just because the company does a lot of evil things doesn't mean that all the people who work for the company are evil. There are a lot of people who work there who are regular people, just like you and me." She sighed. "If you're in trouble with Shinra, Barret, you let me know, and I'll try to help, all right?" Barret was starting to calm down; his expression was sullen. "You got some kind of thing for them or something? I ain't never heard anyone have anything good to say about anyone who works for those bastards." Tifa could feel her eyes sparking, and she took a deep breath to try and fight down the anger; she was very, very tired of people who had no idea of her history accusing her of having some affection for Shinra, just because she refused to go along with the slum party line of "kill them all and let the Lifestream sort them out." She forced her tone to remain even. Johnny's crack a few weeks ago still lingered. "You don't know who I am and where I come from, so I won't punch you in the nose for that, all right? Just trust me when I say that you're not the only person who's lost things because of what Shinra's done." Barret snorted and gestured vaguely around him at the bar. "You seem to be doin' pretty okay for yourself." That did it; she leaned over the table and had him by the shirt collar before he could react, and it startled him so badly that he didn't struggle as she hauled him up half-out of his chair, glaring at him, so close that their noses almost touched. "I watched my home go up in flames set by Shinra, all right?" she hissed. "I slipped in the puddle of blood that was left by my father bleeding out his life on a reactor floor and then I charged off after the person who'd done it with his blood still on my skin. Have you ever smelled the stench that's given off by hundreds of people burning alive, Barret? Do you know what the screaming sounds like? You might have been there when Corel was destroyed, but they used guns in Corel, Barret, and people die quickly when they're shot. Do you know how long it takes someone to burn to death? And you know, I am /sick and tired/ of people who think that just because I don't want to blow all of Shinra sky-high that means that I don't have reason to hate them, okay? It is /none of anyone's fucking business/ why I'm not fighting against them, and I am /sick and fucking tired/ of this /fucking argument/." The last bits of Barret's anger had been replaced by a sudden and sharp fear; Tifa could almost smell it, as he picked up his good hand and closed it around her wrist, and she was suddenly ashamed of herself. She let him go. "I'm sorry," she muttered, dropping back into her chair and not meeting his eyes. "I shouldn't -- I shouldn't have lost my temper. I shouldn't have yelled at you." She picked up her other hand, the one that Barret wasn't holding onto, and scrubbed it over her face, then picked up her bottle of beer and finished it off. "I wasn't yelling at you. I was yelling at someone else who said nearly the exact same thing that you just said, and I couldn't say that to him, so I -- You just hit one of my sore spots, that's all. I shouldn't have yelled." The hand around her wrist squeezed slightly, almost as though it were a clumsy attempt to offer comfort, and Barret's gruff voice was surprisingly soft. "I didn't know," he said, and it was an apology for all that it didn't contain the words of one. "An' I ain't gonna ask what happened, 'cause it's none of my business. Fuck, Tifa, I didn't mean to put my foot in it. I just -- it ain't been long, I didn't stop to think that other people might have reasons too --" She shook her head, still not looking back at him. "It's okay. I don't talk about it. I don't ever talk about it. I don't like playing games of who has more reason to hate whom, okay?" She did look back at him then, to see him watching her warily, though with a rough sympathy deep in his eyes. "I know a lot of people who are part of the rebellion, and they give me a lot of shit for not joining them. But they're /idiots/ about things, and ... I guess I'm just really tired of being lectured about what I /should/ be doing, as though they have some kind of right to tell me that I need to go out and hurt everyone I can, just because I've been hurt. That's not how it works. That's not how it /should/ work." "Hell," Barret said, "I don't blame you." He drew his hand back, but not before giving her wrist one last reassuring squeeze. "I been to one of their meetings, when I first got here. That ain't how you run a revolution. You gotta have a goal, no matter what. They just wanna kill people." His cheeks flushed; she could just see the barest hints against his dark skin. "I get mad enough to wanna kill people too, myself. I'm still hurtin' pretty badly. But I'm just talkin' about it. I'm not shootin' people." Tifa frowned a little. "That's what I've been saying for a long time," she said, with a sigh. "No one around here /listens/ to me. Or if they do, all they want to do is -- make me into some kind of a figurehead, really. They want me to tell my story and what Shinra did to me, they want me to shout it from the rooftops and get people /mad/, get them all whipped up and ready to climb the plate struts and cut Shinra down with their teeth, if necessary. I don't want that. I don't want to drag innocent people into this; that'd make us no better than Shinra is. If someone's going to work against Shinra, it shouldn't be a big, splashy protest. It shouldn't have the chance of hurting people who have nothing to do with things. It shouldn't have a chance of hurting /anyone/, really. I don't want to destroy Shinra. I just -- want them to go away and stop /doing/ shit like that." Barret looked thoughtful. "I could get behind that," he said, slowly. "I can't stand the thought of just doin' nothin'. But I don't like the thought of anyone gettin' hurt that shouldn't be gettin' hurt, either." Tifa spread her hands. "I don't /like/ doing nothing," she said, unhappily. "I don't like the thought of people out there getting hurt because of Shinra, and I didn't do anything to try and stop it. But you know, one person /can't/ change the world all by herself, and there never was anyone who agreed with me -- /really/ agreed with me, not just pretended to agree with me because they wanted me for something." "Until now." Tifa turned her head to meet Barret's eyes; his gaze was steady. "One person might not be able t'change the world. But ya think that two could maybe change Midgar?" She blinked a few times. "What do you mean?" Barret leaned forward; the look on his face was intense. "I mean -- you 'n me. You're smart. I can tell that. You gotta know what you'd do if you decided to do somethin' about things. And I --" He ducked his head, dropping his eyes. "Like I said, I'm hurtin' pretty badly. An' I got a temper, an' I know I do. If I tried to do anythin' on my own, I'd get in trouble pretty damn quick. But you think that maybe workin' together we could find somethin' to do about it, an' maybe stop feelin' so guilty that we weren't doin' nothin --" He broke off speaking as the sound of someone pounding on the door knifed through the room; Tifa's head snapped up. "God /damn/ it," she snapped, closing her eyes briefly. "What the /hell/ do they want?" "Who is it?" Barret asked, his eyes darting towards the door. "You in trouble?" Tifa shook her head and got up from the table, crossing the room quickly. "No, but that might be trouble knocking on the door. Just -- I don't know, sit there and let me handle this. I'm pretty sure I know who it is." She opened the door without waiting for a response. "Johnny, we're closed --" It wasn't Johnny on the other side of the door; it was Biggs, looking wild-eyed around the edges, pacing nervously on the front porch, and another man, overweight and looking just as nervous, that Tifa knew more by reputation than personally. Biggs looked up as Tifa opened the door, and the words rushed out before Tifa could say anything. "Tif', you gotta help, Johnny's gone nuts, you gotta talk to him --" Biggs broke off; Tifa could feel Barret looming over her shoulder, and cast a glance behind her to see him frowning. "You need help, Tifa?" Barret rumbled, sounding as menacing as he could. She almost smiled; she knew what he was trying to do, and it was just another bit of confirmation that she'd made the right choice. Biggs cast his eyes around nervously and licked his lips. "I, uh, didn't know you had company, Tif'. I'll come back later." That /did/ make her smile, and she shook her head. "It's okay, Biggs. He works for me." She ignored the fact that Barret had never formally accepted her job offer; it was close enough. "You boys can stop strutting at each other. Come on in, guys." She stepped back (nearly trodding on one of Barret's feet, but he got out of the way) and held the door open. "What's going on?" Biggs stepped into the bar, and then cast another hesitant glance at Barret. "Uh, it can probably wait until you've got time, Tif'," he started hesitantly as the other man -- Wedge, Tifa thought -- followed him in. Tifa threw up her hands in exasperation and pointed at Barret. "Barret. He's from Corel." Biggs's eyes got wide. Tifa pointed at Biggs. "Biggs. He's from the rebellion." Barret nodded. She transfered her gaze to Wedge. "Wedge, right?" Wedge nodded, and Tifa pointed to herself. "Cranky and tired. Make it quick, Biggs." Biggs looked back and forth between Tifa and Barret, and then shrugged, as though deciding that if Tifa trusted this guy, it was good enough for him. He crossed the room and dropped into a chair at one of the tables. "It's Johnny, Tif'," he said, unhappily. "He's gone nuts. He's got some idea in his head about how we gotta get back at the Turks for what happened a few weeks ago, and he's been raving about how he's gonna get up there and blow them up. And he's got the stuff to /do/ it, too. I don't know where the hell he got it, but he's got the stuff. You gotta do something to help. He won't listen to any of us, he might listen to you." Tifa stopped in her tracks. "He's going to /what/? He's going to -- that's /insane/. Does he /want/ to die?" "He's got a thing against the Turks," Wedge said in his quiet voice. "I think he thinks that it's the Turks that are keeping you from joining up with us. He's been grumbling about how if we got rid of them, you'll stop letting Shinra in here to drink, and come and fight on our side." Tifa whirled around to face Wedge. "He /what/?" she blurted helplessly. "He's -- I -- they --" She could hear herself spluttering, and yanked a hand through her hair. "What the /fuck/ -- I mean, what the fucking /fuck/?" Dimly, she was aware that she'd spent more time swearing that night than she had in the past few months; she didn't often resort to profanity, but sometimes, Zangan had taught her, you just didn't have anything else you could say. Wedge drew back slightly. "Didn't say I agreed with him," he pointed out hesitantly. Tifa shook her head and dropped her face into her hands. "I'm not yelling at you," she said, muffled through her fingers. "I'm just yelling." A strong hand closed over one of her shoulders, and she twitched slightly, overriding the reflex to strike back; it was only Barret, who had stepped up behind her and was glowering at the rebel pair. She had to admit that even though she'd known him for less than eight hours, there was a little part of her that was revelling in having someone to stand beside her for the first time in so long, to have someone there to be strong with her so that she didn't always have to be the strong one herself. She was so /tired/; tired of the stress, tired of the endless arguments, tired of the anger and the yelling and the hassle of people trying to force responsibility she didn't want to accept onto her shoulders. "I don't know this Johnny guy," Barret rumbled, "but that ain't the way to get anythin' done." He took another step forward, and his arm encircled Tifa protectively; she leaned against him, grateful more than words could say for the support. "An' I don't know what you think that Tifa can do about it. She ain't responsible for anythin' that other people do." Biggs cleared his throat hesitantly. "I'm not saying that what Johnny does /is/ Tifa's responsibility," he said, not quite sure how to react to Barret. "But she can talk to him. They're old friends -- he listens to you, Tif', he really does, even it doesn't /seem/ like he does, and you're the only one I can think of who'll have a chance of talking him out of it." Tifa picked her head up to see Biggs chewing at his bottom lip, looking worried. "Because this is going too damn far. It's one thing to try and change things, but -- Johnny wants blood. And I don't think he's gonna rest until he gets it. And Tif' -- I've been thinking about what you said the other day, about it being about fighting the /company/ and not about fighting the /people/. And you're /right/, and Johnny's /wrong/, and this whole thing is going too far, and the two of us want out of it before Johnny does something /stupid/." Biggs crossed the space between them quickly and caught Tifa's hands up in his, holding on to her urgently. "I joined up with Johnny because he sounded like he knew what he was doing, Tif'," he said, his tone the most serious that she'd ever heard from him. "I didn't want to just sit around and do nothing, because that would be wrong. And when I started with the rebellion, I wanted to get out there and /do/ something instead of just sitting around and letting Shinra push everyone around, but -- I don't want to be associated with Johnny anymore, Tif'. I don't want to run with that crowd anymore. Look, I know you think that we're all a bunch of dangerous idiots --" Wedge interrupted Biggs. "We /are/ a bunch of dangerous idiots, Miss Tifa. Or /they/ are, at least. And both of us tried to ignore that, because we wanted to at least be doing /something/ instead of just sitting around and whining about how bad we have it. But this isn't the way to do it." He bit his lip and looked back at Biggs. "And Biggs told me what you said the other day, and it makes sense. And -- look, we didn't just come here to ask you to try to stop Johnny." "When we came in here a few weeks ago, I asked you to join our rebellion," Biggs picked up the thread again. "And that was dumb, and I'm sorry for trying to push you around." He took a deep breath. "This time we came to ask to join /your/ rebellion. I know you said that you didn't want to get involved. But -- fuck, Tif', I'm no good with words, you know that. I -- just -- /please/." He looked at her with a plea in his eyes. "You know what's gotta be done. We came here to -- ask you to do it. And we want to help." Tifa closed her eyes. Barret's arm was strong around her shoulders; Biggs's hands were stiflingly warm wrapped around hers. The old trapped feeling started to wash over her again, and she could taste the scorched-hair scent of the remembered flames rising in her throat. She yanked her hands loose and stalked over to stand behind the bar, carefully not looking at anyone else in the room as she said, flatly, "I don't have a rebellion, so there's nothing for you to join." She took a deep breath and placed her palms on the bar, leaning over to briefly let her forehead rest between them before taking another deep breath for courage and straightening up. "But -- Barret made me realize. I can't just do nothing anymore." "You sayin' you gonna do it?" Barret stepped forward, half-pleading. Tifa shook her head. "No." She took another deep breath, and kept going before they could throw their arguments in her face again. "I'm saying that /we're/ going to do it." She squared her shoulders. "And we're going to do it right." -- * -- They stayed up talking well into the morning; the first, palest rays of dawn would have been streaking the sky when the council had finally broken up, if the plate hadn't been in the way. Neither Biggs nor Wedge felt inclined to leave at that point, and Barret had nowhere else to go. Tifa had impartially passed out blankets en masse and pointed the way to the appropriate spare bedrooms, and gone to fall into bed -- they thought -- with an exhaustion born of too many hours of too much hard work. Neither Biggs nor Wedge were all that surprised when they woke well into the next morning to find that Tifa wasn't there; her early-morning walks were legendary in the area. Wedge found Barret, after a few moments of searching, down in the bar area clumsily fumbling with the coffemaker; he took over the task, while Biggs (not a morning person) collapsed onto one of the bar stools and looked decidedly unawake. "Where's Tifa?" Barret asked, after a moment of trying to decide if he should be offended by Wedge's help or grateful for it; he settled for halfway in-between, and leaned against the bar near where Marlene had been settled into a baby-seat. She opened one eye and began to coo quietly; he picked her up in his good arm and settled her against his side, where she reached out one chubby hand to firmly grasp the dog-tags he was wearing around his neck. "Dunno," Wedge replied with a shrug. "She goes out in the mornings a lot." Barret frowned, liberated his dog-tags, and settled Marlene more firmly. "Alone?" he asked. "The door ain't locked." Wedge shrugged again. "She would have locked it if we weren't here. Doesn't matter. Nobody bothers her. Everybody /knows/ better." "That ain't all that smart," Barret said, glowering at the door as Wedge, with a motion that bespoke long familiarity, slid a mug of coffee under Biggs's nose. "What if someone messes with her?" His scowl deepened. "Hell, I tried to, yesterday, an' she took me home an' gave me a job. The girl's gonna get hurt someday if she's that trusting." Biggs blinked a few times as the coffee scent reached his nose. "...You really /aren't/ from around here, are you?" he asked, trying to form the words intelligibly enough to be understood. "/Nobody/ messes with Tifa. /Nobody/'s that suicidal. They'd get kicked out of the bar, for one thing, and nobody wants to get kicked out of this place. But that's not the real reason that nobody messes with Tifa. They know they'd get their /ass/ kicked." "Little girl like that?" Barret bounced Marlene against his hip as she began to fret; when she didn't quiet, he sighed and put his dog tags back in her hand. She hushed instantly, beamed, and put them in her mouth. Wedge and Biggs exchanged looks. "Little girl like that could kick your ass," Biggs muttered into his coffee. "The /Turks/ are scared of her. Or at least leave her alone. Ask her to spar with you sometime." Before Barret could reply, the door to the bar opened, and Tifa slipped in. Her face was drawn and pale, her lips pressed tightly together; two bright spots of color were blooming high against her cheekbones. She didn't seem surprised to see the other three up and about, just stalked across the room and behind the bar to pick out a coffeemug and slam it against the bar's counter before stopping, taking a deep breath, and pouring herself a cup of coffee far more sedately. "You okay, Tif'?" Biggs asked, picking up his head from where it had been resting with his nose practically in the coffee. "I'm fine." Her tone was full of forced good cheer, if a bit brittle. "Had a little conversation with Johnny. Convinced him of the error of his ways. After a nice rousing discussion in which he decided to call my honor and integrity into question /yet/ again for not naming him my undisputed lord and master, in which a number of unpleasant things were said, I informed him that if he tries anything I /will/ find him and when I do to /hell/ with childhood friendships. And then I came home." She picked up her mug of coffee and took a deep gulp from it. "How long have you gentlemen been awake?" Barret reached over the bar and took her wrist in his hand; he turned her hand over in his to reveal what he had half-caught as she moved, a series of dark marks on the underside of her arm, bruise fading into purples and greys already. He looked up at her face, saying nothing. She turned away, putting her coffeemug down and twisting her hand out of his grasp. "He do that?" he asked with a raised eyebrow. She yanked down the sleeve of the sweatshirt she was wearing and refused to meet his eyes. "Anyway," she continued, brightly, "it's going to be a rough night tonight. Friday nights always are. I'm going to go up and take a nap now. I haven't slept yet. Barret, if you get a chance, can you wash the last of the dishes from last night? Otherwise, we'll run out of cups." She finished the last of her coffee and put the mug next to the sink. "You boys are welcome to stay as long as you'd like. I'll see you when I wake up, all right?" She was out the door and up the stairs before any of them could make a response. Wedge just sighed; Biggs shook his head and muttered something under his breath that sounded like 'asshole'. Barret looked after her and his scowl got deeper. "That happen often?" he demanded, turning back to face the other two men. Biggs shook his head; he was beginning to climb up the evolutionary ladder, helped along by the caffeine. "Johnny's a shit sometimes," he said, not meeting Barret's eyes either. "And Tif' lets him get away with a lot. He's the only person she has left." "They some kind of item?" Barret bounced Marlene one last time before putting her back into the babyseat on the bar; she fretted, but settled down as Barret picked up one of the aprons that was behind the bar and tied it around his waist. Wedge choked on his sip of coffee; Biggs just shook his head. "Fuck no. Tif' ain't seeing anyone, you know? It's just ... hell, I probably ain't supposed to tell you this, but if you're going to be working for her, you should probably know so you don't put your foot in things. /Especially/ after what we were talking about last night. Tif's from Nibelheim, you know? Johnny's the only person left she knows from home. He's the only other person who survived." Barret paused in the middle of filling the sink and blinked. "/Nibelheim/? Fuck. She said somethin' about what Shinra did to her, but she didn't tell me details. An' I didn't think." He shook his head. "We heard about what happened from this guy who came through maybe five, six months after. Damn. She got out alive?" "Obviously," Wedge said dryly, as he too picked up an apron and tied it on. "She lets Johnny get away with a lot because -- she don't want to lose the last bit of home she's got. He says they were friends when they were younger. I think he thinks she's got a thing for him, but -- I don't think it's like that at all. I don't know her all that well, but I know Johnny. And he isn't worth it." Biggs sighed and drained the last of his coffee. "It's a mess. But -- hey, we can try and take care of Tifa, right?" He glanced over towards the stairs himself, and sighed. "We'll stick around and give you a hand. Tif' doesn't open for lunch on Fridays, but she can probably use another two pairs of hands around here for the Friday night hassles anyway." Barret frowned. "How bad is it?" Biggs glanced over at Wedge. "It's, uh ... well, you'd probably better just wait and see for yourself." -- * -- By the time Tifa woke up again, she was perfectly chipper and cheerful, as though the morning's events had never happened. She didn't seem all that surprised to see that Biggs and Wedge had apparently declared themselves to be temporary employees that night; she just nodded and handed them both trays. For all Barret knew, that might be standard operating procedure around here. The first customer showed up at around six; from there on, there was barely time to stop and think, much less talk. They hadn't been exaggerating much, Barret reflected, as he stopped to sit at the end of the bar and rest his feet for a few minutes around nine or so. There wasn't a free seat in the house except the one that he was sitting in, and that hadn't been touched all night by anyone except the people who were working. He'd thought that off-duty coal miners could throw a party; he was beginning to realize that it had nothing on a party thrown by Midgar residents. He'd just tossed back a cueball that had jumped the pool table (and nearly made its escape via way of his head in the cramped environment) when he heard the door open again. He didn't turn around -- after all, the door had opened and closed hundreds of times in the past few hours -- until the crowd quieted for half a heartbeat and then resumed chatter. The renewed sound had a note of falsity to it, and he cast an idle look over his shoulder to see what had happened, in case he was needed to break something up. Standing just before the doorway, glancing over the crowd as though looking for someplace to sit, were three men clad in simple blue suits. Each of them had a self-contained stillness, the kind of calm awareness that saw everything and was only waiting for the world to start making trouble and provide the excuse for violence. They smelled like trouble, and Barret knew immediately who they were. He'd been told of the Turks, when he first arrived in Midgar. He'd been told, in no uncertain terms: if you see them, get the /hell/ out of their way. He was just beginning to rise from his seat to cross the room and make some attempt at keeping Tifa and the bar safe when the redhead grinned and lifted a hand to wave. "Hey, Tif'!" he called across the room, and Tifa looked up from where she was talking to one of the customers and waved. "Hey, boys," she called back. "You staying, or just dropping in?" The redhead, impossibly, grinned wider. "An' pass up the chance to bask in your glory? Fat chance. The usual?" Tifa nodded and blew a kiss, then turned around to head back to the bar to mix the drinks. Barret let his voice drop as she passed by him. "They gonna be trouble?" This close, he could see the shadows under Tifa's eyes, even as she smiled at him. "Nah. They're in here most weekends. They tip pretty well, and it sure as heck keeps big trouble from starting." She placed glasses on the tray, and then reached over to put a hand on Barret's shoulder. "Look, I know how you feel. You just let me handle things, okay? Their gil is just as good as anyone else's." Barret settled back down on the barstool and scowled. "I don't like it, but you're the boss, boss," he muttered. Tifa gave him a little smile. "I can take care of myself," she said, and picked up the tray. -- * -- The Turks had, of course, no trouble finding a table; the other regulars might become mostly resigned to the thought of having Shinra's hired guns drinking with them, but the common sense of the slums meant that whichever table the Turks wanted, the Turks /got/. Tifa didn't necessarily like the intimidation of her customers, conscious or no, but she had a healthy dose of the slum common sense herself, and so she just brought the drinks. "Who's the big lug on the employee barstool?" Rude rumbled as she passed over the last of the alcohol and dropped down into the spare chair at the table to rest her feet for a moment. She didn't have to like what the Turks did, but she had to confess, she rather did like them as people -- or at least, she liked Reno and Rude, and respected Tseng. "New guy," she said, rubbing at her shoulder a little to stretch out the waiter's cramps. "I can't keep up this pace all by myself for much longer, so I hired him. I think he'll stick around longer than the last guy did." Tseng was watching Barret, coolly. "What do you know about him?" he asked. Tifa shrugged. "He needed a job. That's about all I need to know." She smiled a little. "Missed you guys last weekend. Too busy killing babies and raping old women to stop in and say hi?" It was an old joke; she'd started off being scared of the Turks, but as the months went by, she'd realized that a goodly percentage of their reputation was for the sake of convenience and not based on reality. She'd asked Reno, a few months back, how the rumors had gotten started, and Reno had just grinned, confirming her suspicions. She imagined that he enjoyed spreading the more outrageous of the rumors. Reno grinned at her now, too, and reached out a hand to ruffle her hair. "Nah, last weekend was rapin' the babies and killin' the old women. We miss anythin' good?" Tifa shook her head. "Not really. Jaime was asking about you, Rude, but she said she'd catch you next time you're down here. The usual stuff, really." She took a deep breath and tried to sound as casual as possible as she continued; it had been a long, sleepless night before she had decided on a course of action, but once it had been decided on, she'd known that it would be the only course of action she could take and still look herself in the mirror. Glancing over at Tseng, she continued, "And I need to talk to you, when you get a chance." Surprise registered faintly in the back of Tseng's eyes. ~Score one for me,~ Tifa thought. She'd never seen him taken aback by anything before. "Certainly," he agreed. "Do you have a moment now?" Tifa nodded. "Sure. C'mon outside?" She caught Biggs's eye across the room and pantomimed 'I'm going outside, keep an eye on things'. Once outside on the porch that wrapped around the building, Tifa pulled herself up to sit on the handrail and kick her feet in mid-air. She waved to a few people out in the street and the yard, and then looked back at Tseng, who was leaning against the wall and looking interested. Taking another deep breath, she switched languages to Wutaian -- in case anyone was listening in, it would not do to be overheard and understood -- and launched into the speech that had been rattling around in her head for most of the afternoon and evening. "\If I ask for your word of honor that nothing I say will go further than between the two of us, will I get it?\" Tseng's elegant eyebrows lifted. "Your Wutaian has gotten considerably better," he observed, not shifting languages himself. "Have you been practicing?" "There's a Wutaian restaurant over in Wall Market run by a family of expatriates. We've been sharing recipes, and language lessons were part of the deal." She studied him carefully, trying to read his expression, and as always, failing. It was probably safest, she mused, not to mention the other half of the deal; Tseng might be an exile, but he had been shocked enough to find that a foreigner had been taught the Wutaian fighting arts. There was no need to tell him that the family's child was being taught the fighting arts by said foreigner. He chuckled, lightly. "Ah, so that's where you've been learning to cook /real/ Wutaian food, instead of the kind you usually find calling itself takeout." His inflection, when he did finally drop into Wutaian, was far better than hers, she noted ruefully. He spoke like a prince. "\There are those who would say that I have no honor left to swear upon.\" She bit her lip. "\There are those who do not know you. And I'm one of them. But I believe that you are a man with a strong sense of personal honor, and I'm asking for your word.\" Tseng studied her for a long minute, and she caught herself, suddenly nervous under that oblique gaze, twisting the strings of her apron in her lap. She forced her fingers to still and met his eyes. A moment passed, and then he nodded. "\You have my word that nothing you say shall come back to cause you harm, save for where it conflicts to my previous loyalties. Talk.\" It was good enough; it had to be. "\We've talked before about Shinra and what they do. I know you're part of what Shinra does. I know you know that I don't like what Shinra does, and I know you know that I've got friends in the rebellion. And I know that we've more or less agreed without saying a word that we wouldn't talk about it.\" She watched him as closely as she could. Tseng snorted. "\They are hardly a rebellion. They are a bunch of spoiled children with no direction and no power, and they could hardly cause Shinra problems. We keep an eye on them.\" He fished out a cigarette case from his pocket, choosing a clove cigarette and lighting it. "\Why do you bring this up?\" Tifa bit her lip again. No turning back. "\Because there's trouble starting, and I can't stand back and watch people get hurt, even if they are Shinra people.\" She slid off the banister and paced back and forth on the porch. "\They're planning something, and they're trying to target you -- you and Rude and Reno, specifically. I don't know details, and I don't want to know details, except that they have guns and explosives --\" Wutaian had no words for those concepts; she had to use the common. "\And they're talking about getting up to the plate. This isn't just noise. Be careful. I think I managed to put the fear of God into the appropriate parties, but I can't be sure.\" Through the trails of smoke, Tseng's eyes were cool on her face; she turned away from him and kept pacing. "\Why are you telling me this? I could arrest you and take you back for questioning, just for having contact with them.\" "\I know you could.\" She tried to force her voice to be as calm as she could make it. "\But you won't. Because you gave me your word. I'm telling you this because killing people doesn't make up for killing people. Blood doesn't pay for blood.\" Tseng stepped into her path of pacing, and she could feel her heart pounding painfully in her chest as he reached out dispassionate fingertips to cup her chin and force her eyes up to look at him. "\You believe this.\" Tifa licked suddenly-dry lips. "\Sometimes, I think that's all I believe.\" She couldn't read his face. She never could read his face. He watched her for a moment longer, and then let his hand drop. "\You are an incredibly naive and transparent girl.\" Just as she was beginning to believe that she had miscalculated, and miscalculated badly, he nodded. "\But you are also a woman of considerable personal honor.\" He used the word in Wutaian that her tutors had ever been able to fully translate for her; it depended, they had told her, upon such a rich cultural heritage and tradition that an outsider could never hope to understand it. "\I will ask you for no further details; I will trust that you have given me all of the details that you can give me, without placing yourself in a situation where you must do something that contradicts that honor. I will listen to your warning.\" The relief flooded over her quickly enough that she could feel her knees start to go weak and shaky. "\I almost didn't tell you at all,\" she said, her voice hollow and echoing in her own ears. Tseng nodded. "\But you have, despite how you feel about Shinra. I will not forget that.\" He took a step backwards, and -- her heart nearly stopped -- bowed to her, deeply, one hand rising to touch fingers to forehead and then flick out in salute. "\I am in your debt, little sister. We are always careful, but we will remain alert.\" He turned around and strode back into the bar, flicking his cigarette off into the bushes as he went. Tifa pressed the heel of one hand against her chest, rubbing the ache between her breasts, and tried to catch her breath.