A/N: Asgard is now the name of the country incorporating Midgar, Kalm, and everything else east of the mountains on that continent. Because I said so.
The next evening, he showed up at the bar alone. I'd been chatting with Finn, and I left off in midsentence when I spotted Rude. He lingered near the door, and I sighed, realizing he'd probably come just to say goodbye.
"Cab's outside," he greeted me as I neared, confirming my suspicions.
"Damn, you guys are efficient," I joked ruefully, setting my tray down on an empty table, and he half-smiled. "But I guess you're using one of the Shinra helicopters..."
"Can't. Some kind of ethical thing about Reeve. He's not president of Shinra anymore, stepped down a while back. We're just taking a commercial flight."
"You what?" I said, frowning. All the commercial airplanes are old ones, pulled back out of retirement; jets were the first vehicles to go mako. "But..."
"There hasn't been a crash yet," he offered, I guess meaning to reassure me.
"Great," I muttered, rolling my eyes heavenward. "That's such a comfort."
"Listen, too late to argue about it. The flight's in half an hour... guess you can't get off work."
"Not right now, we're kind of busy..." I had this uncomfortable feeling that most of the eyes in the bar were on us.
"Then, uh, I better go. Elena's already tense, she likes to be early for everything."
"Yeah..." I agreed, and then I pulled him close for a kiss. I heard "whooo" noises from around the bar, and a smattering of applause when it was over. He was blushing again. I probably was too.
"I'll, uh, I'll call you?" he suggested.
"Yeah. Except for today I haven't been closing much, so you can call late whenever you want. I don't mind being woken up," I told him, and he kissed me again, quickly, and hurried out.
When I got home that night, the message light on my answering machine was blinking. I pushed play and headed into the kitchen to fix a sandwich, then stopped and got up out of the refrigerator when I heard his voice. "Lockhart, just letting you know I'm not dead. Kind of feel like it, but I'm pretty sure I'm breathing. Reeve's campaign is putting us up in the Adelphi. I'll call you with the room number once I can remember it." I smiled to myself, and since I figured my cat couldn't tell on me, I listened to it a few more times just for the hell of it.
The next morning I listened to it once more, telling myself I was only doing it so I could erase the message, but this time I noticed the weariness in his voice. I think it's a five or six hour time difference between here and Kalm – I assumed he was in Kalm, rather than in Midgar – which is bad enough, but come to think of it, I wasn't entirely sure he would have gotten much sleep. They'd probably had to pack most or all of their possessions, in the twenty-four hours between the times that I'd seen him. Less than that, really. And I couldn't call to henpeck him into taking care of himself, either.
It was definitely one of the more boring and depressing days I'd had at work for a long time. After all, I'd only seen him for a little while the previous two days, so I couldn't help feeling that it was time for a visit. I kept forgetting he was gone and having hopeful moments whenever I saw a bald scalp. Worse, Kiri's shift started before mine ended and she kept trying to distract me from my troubles. Eventually she got me to agree to see a movie with her "sometime," though I managed to avoid committing to a time.
That night, I was sitting around watching TV, trying to get interested in the coverage of the Asgard elections, when the phone rang. "Hello?" I answered it, automatic, though I could be almost sure it was him.
"Hey," he said, almost tenderly, and I smiled as I sank into the chair.
"Hey!" I replied, recognizing his voice. "How's everything going?"
"Not bad. Reeve's doing fine. Hotel's nice."
"You know, the problem with being on the phone is that you can't see that I'm nodding as you talk."
"Huh?" he replied, and I laughed.
"Well, there's not much I can say to any of that, you know, so if you were here I'd just nod..."
"How are things there?"
"Well, the weather's still miserable, the bar's about like it's always been, Kiri's trying to be friendlier for some obscure reason and my cat has started eating paper."
"Oh. Busy day."
"Something like that." I pulled my knees up to my chest. "Rude, you're being unusually quiet, even for you."
"Sorry. Never been good with the phone. Kind of strange. You'd think it'd be easier to talk when I'm not looking at you."
"Run that by me again?" I demanded.
"Well, you're... uh... distracting-looking."
I mulled that over. "Beautiful" would have suited me fine, but I wasn't sure I could say as much without sounding like a shrew. "In a good way, I hope?"
"A very good way. Yeah."
I grinned to myself. "In your own weird little way, you're awfully sweet sometimes."
"Weird?" he protested, indignant. "Little?"
"Well, you've got to admit it's kind of a strange way of complimenting someone."
He made some huffy noise on the other end of the line, and I grinned some more. "Well, it got some expression into your voice, so it all works out."
"You're an evil woman, Lockhart," he complained. "That 'little' thing's gonna bother me all night."
"Oh, come on, it's just a word. Besides, you're like eight feet tall, you're not exactly petite."
He huffed at me again, which just caused me to giggle. "Stop being so cute," he grumbled good-naturedly, so I faked another giggle. There was silence for a moment, then he asked, cautiously, "What the hell was that?"
"It was supposed to be cuteness, but evidently not," I replied, and he laughed. "Okay, one more time... How're things going there?"
"I thought it might be interesting, seeing politics up close like this. I was very wrong."
I laughed. "Do you have to go through a lot of it?"
"Not that much, but it's plenty for me. Can't complain, though. Reeve's a good guy, pay's decent, and my mom's proud of me."
"Awwww..." I said, half-mocking. Honestly, I thought it was nice that he spoke to his parents. It was nice that he even had parents.
"Shut up," he protested cheerfully. "Hey, did I tell you I have a cell phone?"
"Oh, good, so I won't have to go through the whole deal of calling your room."
"Or learning a new number when I get an apartment. Yeah."
"So you're planning to move there permanently?" I asked, in somewhat plaintive tones.
"That was the plan all along, Lockhart," he reminded me gently. "I thought you knew that."
"Well... I was sort of in denial about it, I guess. Damn."
After he gave me the cell phone number, the conversation petered out and we said goodbye. I moped around my apartment for a bit, listlessly threw a plastic ball for my cat to chase, watched my cat ignore it, and then went to bed early. Clearly the long-distance thing was working just beautifully.
Fortunately I got better as the days went on. He called regularly, and by the end of the week he'd reached the point of sounding like a normal human right from the start of the conversation. Kiri held me to my promise of going to a movie with her. Once I forced down my resentment at not being allowed to brood, I actually enjoyed myself.
There was an added bonus to this; I was able to get her to help me shop for a gift for him. Mostly, this meant books, on Elena's recommendation, and I just had her hold them and talk to me while we were going from store to store and waiting in line. But she did offer some suggestions. "Send him a picture," she suggested. "Naked."
"No!"
"Okay, dressed. But send a picture. Just to remind him why he shouldn't go dating other girls. Because you're hot and you could kick his ass." I'd foolishly let her know about my martial arts training, which she had decided was the coolest thing she'd ever heard. She kept pestering me to teach her things, and would not seem to accept that I wasn't qualified.
And she wouldn't let me get away with claiming not to have any pictures, so I dug up my camera. I'd managed to use up most of a roll of film when Cloud and I went to Costa del Sol for a vacation, our last one together, but then I never bothered to finish it or get it developed. Kiri took over the camera and started trying to make me laugh so she could take my picture. She succeeded twice (the rest of the time, I managed to get my camera face on) and I went to get the photos developed.
She insisted on looking at the developed photos, too. Arranging this exposed one of the massive barriers to a friendship between the two of us; she did not believe in waking before noon. After a few days, we managed to get the same day off, and she turned up at my place. "Send him this one where you're in a bikini," she suggested.
"This is all from when I was with my ex, Kiri. And I'm pretty sure he doesn't much like my ex. He got interested in me back when I was with the other guy..."
"Tifa, you drive me insane. You go on all tight-lipped for months and then all of a sudden you're dating a Turk and dropping these cryptic little hints about things. I can't help feeling like you have this really cool, dramatic life you're just not telling me about."
"Trust me, it's not that cool," I assured her, and changed the subject, holding up a picture from the end of the roll, one she'd taken. "I like this one."
"You've got that fake smile, though," she objected.
"I worked hard on that smile! Years of practicing for school pictures."
"How about this one?" she suggested.
I glanced at it and shook my head. "You made me laugh in that one. I look demented."
"You look happy! And pretty," she insisted.
"Nnnng," I protested.
"Oh, hey, it's five, turn on the news."
"Since when are you interested in politics?" I asked, but I turned it on.
"They're doing a lot of... just watch."
"Oh, the election coverage," I said, and then I spotted Rude in the background behind Reeve and tried not to smile. I think I failed, because she glanced at me and grinned.
"See?" she said triumphantly. Reeve was talking about redefining Asgard as a nation. I decided not to fuel her paranoia by mentioning that I knew him, too. "And check out his friend," she added.
"Huh?" I asked, and searched for a glimpse of Reno. "Whoa, his shirt's buttoned." He'd whipped his hair into shape, too, and possibly cut it, though I couldn't quite tell. "Wonder what that's all about."
"Had to clean up for guard duty," Rude explained that night. "And I think he's trying to get Elena's attention. She and Reeve have been making eyes at each other."
"Whoa, really?"
"They worked together on the Cait project. Might have stayed in touch."
"Ohh..." I said. "Well, that'd be nice for both of them, right?"
"Seems that way. Lockhart, I have a request."
"Yeah?"
"Don't ever remind me I'm on TV."
"Why?"
"I always ignored it before, but now we've got Elena on guard duty, and she wanted to see herself. So I watched with her, once," he said ominously, as if recounting a crime he'd witnessed. "Been trying to forget ever since."
"This is bad? I thought you looked nice. Same as you always look, but that's not bad, so..."
"My ears. They're huge."
"Oh, they are not! I think your ears are cute."
"'Cute'?" he repeated, incredulous.
"What?"
"'Cute.' That's for... kittens. Babies. Little fluffy things."
"Babies are fluffy in your family?"
"I don't know why I talk to you," he grumbled, but I could hear that he was smiling.
The holidays finally came, in typical depressing fashion. "What kind of plans do you have?" Tir asked, as I helped him open on Christmas Eve.
"I think I'll probably go home and drink bourbon straight out of the bottle while listening to carols on tape, same as last year," I said. I was lying, though. Last year I had worked in a record store over the holidays, and as such I would rather have sacrificed my firstborn than listened to Christmas music outside of work. It sounded like a good plan for this year, though. "How 'bout you?" I asked brightly.
"Ouch. No family or anything?"
I decided just to let him not answer. "My parents died years ago... I may hear from Rude, but he's got family, he'll probably spend time with them. Or he might have to work. He didn't say last time I talked to him."
I did have a gift from him, waiting next to my tiny tree when I went home that evening. It had arrived several days earlier, but I'd saved it, since I knew the holiday would eventually hit me. It's hard not to think back, on certain days, and Christmas was always one of them. Eleven good years, memories a blur of lights and wrapping paper and myself, so excited I couldn't even sit still. One bad one, when Mom was just starting to get really sick. A worse one, the first after her death, and one more bad one after that. And then the two worst, in Midgar, after Papa had died too. I'd been alone, in a tiny cold-water flat in the slums, with no friends, and I'd been too terrified of the city to even try to make any.
The third year, the Christmas I was seventeen, was the year I met Barret. I was working in a diner at the time, and he'd taken Marlene there for Christmas dinner. Once I got off work that night he invited me home with us; at that point I was deeply suspicious of all men, but I accepted anyway, trusting my instincts. After Marlene fell asleep he and I sat up talking for hours. He didn't introduce me to the rest of Avalanche for months, though. There had been the holidays with him and Marlene and the others, and then with Cloud and our friends in Kalm. And then last year, when I was working at a record store. I'd been so tired and bitter I hadn't cared about being lonely on the holiday.
I turned on the lights on the tree, something I hadn't bothered to do for most of the month. It did make things look a bit more cheerful. The box contained another box, which I pulled out, and my cat jumped into the opened one. Inside the second box was a lot of tissue paper, and another box. I thought about calling him to ask if he just thought I needed storage, and then when I opened the third there was another – a small, plush-covered box clearly identifiable as the kind they sell jewelry in.
I think my heart actually stopped. It couldn't be a ring, surely. Not an engagement ring, though that was certainly the first thing that sprung to mind when I looked at it. It had taken him weeks to getting around to kissing me, he wouldn't just send me an engagement ring in the mail. I opened the box, and the phone rang.
"Hello?" I answered, breathless. The box contained earrings, set with some sort of dark red stone – garnets or rubies, I assumed.
"Tifa?" Kiri said, uncertainly, and I smiled.
"Hey, merry Christmas! What's up?"
"I think you should turn on the TV," she said, very serious. I sat down to do so, putting in my earrings.
As I fumbled for the remote, I asked her, "What's the big deal?"
"I just... you should see it, because I'm not sure what's going on exactly, but..."
The TV flickered to life, saying, "—no comment yet on his status."
"Ted, why don't we go to the video," a woman's voice said, and then it started and I went cold. It was evening, and from the look of things it was just someone's handheld video camera. The camera was showing Reeve from the side and an angle; he was shaking hands with someone, and then there was a bang, barely even recognizable as a gunshot. Then chaos, people running. The camera was unsteady and grainy. I saw Rude, shooting at someone, and the camera whipped over and up to a building overlooking wherever they were, and an open window. Then back down, and it lingered on Rude for a moment. There was a dark stain at his side, and he sagged, and I saw Elena, running past the camera, and then it focused on a knot of people getting Reeve into a car. Then there was a view of cement, blurry, and then the video cut out. I'd been wrong; this was what it felt like when your heart stopped.
"For those just joining us, it appears that there has been an assassination attempt on presidential frontrunner Joshua Reeve," the woman intoned, and then started telling us nothing, with lots of words. No report on injuries. Nothing confirmed. They had an eyewitness, saying it looked like the bodyguards killed the attacker, that one of them seemed to be have been shot, that Reeve might have been as well.
"Tifa?" Kiri was saying. "Tifa?"
I just sat very still.