Hello! This is my first real venture into the world of FFVII fic. I've seen Advent Children but have only played through half of the game thus far. I feel I'm pretty educated on most of the spoilers for this series, but just in case, those of you who are rabid fans should notify me if you see any glaring errors. This fic is set 13 years after Advent Children (except for the prologue, which is 5 years after AC), and is very definitely AU Dirge of Cerberus and all DoC spinoffs. I have also departed from my usual formula of gen fic and attempted to let some pairings take their course.

Happy reading!

Gunpowder and Firecrackers
Prologue

She was alone in the bar, behind the counter wiping dishes, when the telephone rang. The thing was one of those newfangled speakerphones, something that Cloud had declared would make their lives simpler because they'd be able to answer the phone and walk around the house at the same time. It was in part, Marlene thought, another gadget they'd installed in an effort to keep him tied down. A vain effort, because Cloud was gone again, like he usually was. She'd come home from school two weeks ago to find Tifa in the kitchen looking thoughtfully sad over a cup of tea.

"I've already resigned myself to the fact that I can't stop him from leaving," Tifa told her calmly when she'd asked. "I just wish he'd tell me where he's going."

Tifa was always calm. Marlene had wanted to tell her that it would be all right, that Cloud would keep coming back as long as Tifa was there.

"Strife Delivery Service," she said politely into the speakerphone, grabbing a pen and paper from the counter. "We deliver anywhere. How may I help you?"

"Lockhart?" said the voice on the other end. Marlene blinked.

"This is Marlene Wallace," she said. "Tifa's currently not able to come to the phone. May I take a message?" A thought struck her. "If this is about the shipment from last week-"

The voice laughed. "Oh, Marlene, is it? This is Reno. From Green Earth Enterprises, in Corel?" he prompted, when the introduction didn't elicit a response.

She finally placed the voice - one of Tifa's and Cloud's friends, from the war seven years ago. "Oh, hello," she said noncommittally. "I can take a message for Tifa if you'd like?"

"I was hoping to reach her other half," the easygoing drawl said. "Don't suppose Strife is there either, is he?"

"I'm sorry," Marlene said, feeling somewhat at a loss. The man's voice was laconic, laid-back, but she could sense the quick mind behind the words, already two steps ahead of her. Tifa had said that they and Reno had once been enemies during the war. From what she knew of him, it was probably good for them that they hadn't remained so. "I can take-"

"Don't want to bother, kid," Reno said, his voice coming from the speakerphone almost as clearly as if he was standing in the kitchen with her. "I'll call back this evening - Ms. Tifa should be back then, hopefully."

"I think so," she said. "She went grocery shopping, actually."

Reno laughed and hung up. She replaced the paper and pen in the magnetic holder on the refrigerator, leaning against the counter and turning slightly as the back door opened.

"Someone in the house with you, Mari?"

She relaxed as Denzel's tall form came ducking into the bar, carrying a paper sack of what she guessed was alcohol. "We had a call for Tifa," she said. "I'll let her know when she comes back."

"Ah." Denzel placed the sack carefully on the counter and began pulling out bottles of rum and gin. "Thanks for doing the dishes. I was going to this morning, and time just ran away from me."

She grinned and punched him in the arm. He had hit a growth spurt this year, at first all lanky arms and legs, and now the missing muscle mass seemed to be filling in. Long hours of loading and unloading boxes with Cloud had probably not hurt, either. "I just got home from school. It's not a big deal. Shall I help you stock before we open?"

"If you would," he said. "Tifa should be back soon. She said she was going to stop and visit a friend on the way home."

---

Her church was the same as it had been all these years. Cloud had collected a donation from some of the old group and they'd repaired the damage done by Loz after the attacks. The pool that had formed after Kadaj's defeat had, to their surprise, remained, so they'd planted some flowers around it, integrating it back into the garden. There was a family of ducks living there now, fatter and happier than any ducks Tifa had ever seen before, most likely the influence of Aeris' healing water.

Barret had halfheartedly proposed erecting a marker of some sorts so that people could pay their respects, but they'd ultimately decided against it. The church was memorial enough for a life that could never be forgotten, her flowers a living legacy.

"I thought you might be here."

She whirled, more in surprise that someone else would be in the church at this hour than at her old combat instincts kicking in. Five years and already she had gotten used to not jumping at shadows. Her eyes took in the tall, bald man standing several paces behind her outside the plot of flowers, dressed casually in slacks and a leather jacket, trademark sunglasses in place as always even though it was cloudy outside.

"You scared me," she said in relief, standing and carefully stepping out of the garden. "How are you, Rude? We haven't seen you in months."

"Reno called your pub to say I was stopping by," he said, flicking a hand by way of greeting. "Your... daughter said you were gone. I couldn't reach you on your phone."

She was amused at the hesitant way he said daughter, but she supposed it was the best term they had for Marlene at the moment. "I turned it off," Tifa said quietly, gesturing around her at the church. "It seems a bit inappropriate to have it on here."

Rude smiled slightly, and she wondered as always what his eyes looked like behind the glasses, if they were smiling too. He had not changed much since they had become uneasy allies at the end of the war. She was comfortable now around Reno's drawl, around Elena and her chattering. Rude was so quiet that she never knew what he was thinking.

"It's about Cloud," he said.

Tifa stiffened. "Cloud?"

Rude sighed, removing the sunglasses. His eyes, she saw, were red-rimmed and he looked like he had not slept in days. She moved towards him with a slight gasp and he waved one hand to stall her. "He was due into Corel three days ago," he said. "We received a call from him when he left Edge. He said he would stop at Fort Condor and be in town by Wednesday." He hesitated. "When he hadn't shown up by Monday, Tseng phoned Barret. He hadn't heard a thing."

Tifa nodded. "Cloud always calls Barret when he's going by Corel."

"Thus why I'm here," Rude finished, replacing his sunglasses with finality, as if that confession had taken all the words out of him for the moment.

"He didn't tell me where he was going," Tifa said quietly, looking away from the former Turk into the pool between the flowers, as if it could give her answers. "He usually doesn't, when he goes away for a long time."

Rude said nothing, just watching her behind his glasses. She stared into the water for a long time until she was sure that she had blinked away the vestiges of tears, then looked back at him and smiled. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm being inhospitable. Would you like to come back with me to the bar? We can talk about this after dinner. Marlene is making the house special tonight, and her cooking's quite good."

Rude smiled slightly at that. "Very well," he said. "I accept."

--

Marlene was a short, sprite-like teenage girl with an infectious smile, older than Rude had pictured but still young enough that he could place her as the girl who had been captured by Kadaj and his minions. She welcomed Rude with a smile of recognition, called to the tall boy who was standing in the back of the kitchen, drying dishes, to set an extra place for the table.

He wasn't surprised when Tifa beckoned him upstairs to the tiny sitting room on the second floor. She waved at him to sit, but she did not, so he did not either. He didn't believe in sitting while a lady talked. It was disrespectful.

"How are things?" she said finally, staring out the small window into the greyness that was Edge and then farther, the under construction metropolis of New Midgar on a cloudy day. "I would say that I have been meaning to call you, but that would be somewhat of a lie."

She was more beautiful than he remembered. "People grow apart," he said. "It's natural."

"I don't think it's that," Tifa said thoughtfully. "We just have our own lives. I'm content with mine and I think the rest of you are content with yours."

"It's going well," he told her. "We had a large donation from a nonprofit group in Kalm about two months ago, so we're looking at some more housing and maybe a community center. Most people in the town have jobs now. Some have cars. We had two weddings last month."

Tifa shook her head. "I marvel at Rufus' ability to turn things around."

"Rufus has always been like that," he said. "When he wanted to start Green Earth, decided to headquarter it in Corel, people called him insane. Cloud flat-out turned him down."

"He thought Rufus still wanted to rebuild the old Shinra. Apparently that's what Rufus had been telling him before. It wasn't quite the same thing."

"Kadaj changed his mind," Rude said. "Or, rather, made it up for him. He seems more content doing this than he was with Shinra."

Tifa smiled crookedly. "Rufus, a philanthropist. Who would have thought?"

"I wouldn't quite call him that. The money's still coming in. He still gets to tell people what to do. I'd simply say the balance of power is...well. More balanced. We create jobs, build houses, get people back on their feet, something Shinra never did. At least not while I was with them."

Tifa was quiet for a long time. "What was Cloud going to Corel for?" she said at last.

It pained him somewhat to see her standing there with the weight on her heart and trying not to show it. It was part of why he had admired her from afar, because she was strong. "I don't know," he said. "It was Rufus and Tseng who wanted him there. Reno and I were dispatched when he never made it."

"Are you going to look for him?"

"We're in the process. I doubt he has come to any serious harm." Though trouble seems to follow that young man, he added silently, but did not say it out loud.

She placed one hand up to the glass, closing her eyes. "Thank you."

"It's the least we can do," he said, "for the family of the man who saved the Planet."