Usual disclaimers apply.
Phoning Home
The first thing Vincent Valentine noticed about Midgar was the lack of pay phones.
Not that he'd seen too many in his day, either. Even in those days, phone booths are only for drunk and the desperate. There were no casual phone booth users left. If anyone was using a phone booth, something was wrong. Wrong in a way that was both simplistic and far-stretched. Now, the thing about that, was that back then, people still used them, at least. Even if it was a last resort. He could still remember the last one he'd ever seen.
Which seemed like a fairly moot point.
But it was, after all, the most prominent thing on his mind when he found himself at a street corner, the others catching their breath in between all the mayhem. It used to be and old, beaten up thing. There had been red graffiti all along the inside of the glass, the last he remembered, thinking back on it, and it had been dripping. Huge red dripping streaks, as if some kind of graffiti creature had slit its wrists and rubbed it on the windows, or maybe just exploded. And he remembered, especially, having made a call in it because he'd found some odd note in his pocket as some reminder. The call itself was a blur, far away, outside of one distinct detail. Yet Vincent could still remember that despite being repeatedly, obsessively checked, there was no free gil in the change slot during the whole wait just for the answering machine. That was one of the best feelings in the world, finding a free coin in the change slot...
Besides. Pay phones had a sturdiness not found in personal phones. Pay phones had that quality, like public drinking fountains and stuff seen in army surpluses. Just ready for just about any sort of use; tall, metal, heavy glass and study, world-baring architecture.
Vincent got the first, distinct inkling of what it meant to feel that distant.
'Old' was a good word for it. One that had never crossed his mind before.
The phone booth wasn't there anymore.
Or any of the things he remembered, before all of this.
He didn't know how to feel about it. Upset? Left behind? What? The automatic default was, ironically, perturbed. What had been so bad about pay phones? Sure, they were a bit out-dated, when he'd frequent them from time to time. They had their uses.
A voice, distinctly like someone he was sure he knew, gruff and soft at the same time, just asked what he expected, times had changed, you old dog. Vincent's only answer was, "I don't know."
"Don't know what?"
Vincent blinked, realizing he'd been staring intently for quite some time and spoke his thoughts to himself out loud. Cloud didn't seem phased. He just seemed tired. They were all tired. And he glanced at Cloud, long and hard, before giving a quick survey of Cid and Tifa, who were either leaning against a wall smoking or trying to stretch out some burning muscle cramps from push for too long, too far. Respectively, of course.
His paused a moment longer. The fact that Cloud was expecting a real answer vaguely intrigued him as much as it did irk. "Nothing," he finally grunted, resisting the urge to rub at his surprisingly tired eyes. It didn't matter anyways. Midgar was practically falling apart around them.
No one asked him anything about it.
Both a godsend, as well as an oddity.
Still. It was very odd, not seeing that booth there anymore. It stuck out in Vincent's mind, even after everything was said and done, about that phone booth, about the lesson he'd finally pulled from it. that little, tiny, yet starkly distinct tidbit that had taken thirty years to truly sink in.
Your last phone call home should never be from a pay phone.