Zenri waited in Costa del Sol a whole week before Barret finally showed up on the back of a produce truck, with everything he owned in a rucksack and the most precious thing in the world cradled in his arms. Arm. Zenri couldn't stop looking at the stump of his brother-in-law's right arm even as he gave Barret the most sincere of hugs they'd ever shared. He might be the SOLDIER, but back in their childhoods, Barret had always been the rock. The mountain. The proof that everything would turn out alright, because he said he would.

And now here he was, silent and ashen and so much skinnier than Zenri could handle, and he had a baby. Zenri hadn't believed it when Barret had called him two weeks ago, tired and quiet and sounding so defeated that it had brought tears to his eyes, but honestly he was having a hard time believing Barret was alive at all. That anyone from Corel was alive at all. That Barret only needed money was a relief, because at least that was something Zenri had. Unfortunately there was no good way to send it over what with the distance and Corel's destruction, so an in-person exchange it had to be.

"Does she need anything?" Zenri asked as they walked down a side street to the hostel where Zenri was staying. He was avoiding the official ShinRa dorms right now, which were available for free for any Company employee and were a cut above what most people could easily afford. Never let it be said that the Company didn't take care of its own! But Barret wasn't the Company's own. Barret and the little baby he was holding were the exact opposite of the Company's own, and all because they had the bad fortune to live through a "terrorist attack".

Oh yes. Barret had told Zenri what had really happened at North Corel. And Zenri had been part of the Company long enough to believe it.

"Nah," said Barret, though he glanced at the sleeping baby as he said it. "Not right now, anyway. Been fed and changed and what."

"Okay, but like… Barret, what's she eating?"

"Bottles."

"Of what?"

A flicker of irritation crossed Barret's eyes, normally so expressive and friendly. It was better than how they were right now, which were exhausted and dull with fresh horrors. "Formula, jackass. I scrounged up some formula before I got the hell out of town. Some…" He swallowed and it was like the weight of the world settled onto his shoulders, into his bones. "Some people didn't need it anymore."

Zenri's stomach churned. "Goddamnit."

Barret cuddled the baby closer. As pale as fresh milk against his skin and dirty clothes, it was obvious the baby wasn't his. Wasn't Myrna's. And so wasn't Zenri's by blood or marriage, but he felt the same powerful surge of protectiveness that Barret was obviously experiencing.

"Dyne and Eleanor make a cute baby," Zenri said, unable to handle anything heavier. Barret softened.

"Yeah they do," he said with mixed sadness and pride. "Dunno where she got her sweetness from, because she's the quietest, easiest baby I've even seen. Sleeps most of the time, even at night. Noisy eater, though! I laughed for five minutes straight when I first fed her because she swallows so loud."

"I'll hear it too," said Zenri, peering at little baby Marlene. Barret had said she was about six months old, but Zenri didn't know enough about babies to know exactly what that meant. She was small enough to lie belly-down on Barret's uninjured arm and a thin line of drool was coming out of her rosebud baby lips. Despite Barret's general griminess and wear, Marlene was almost shining in a neat white onesie that had been decorated by someone with little hand-drawn flowers. When she stirred, Barret jiggled her gently with an ease and tenderness born of long practice. It was clear that Barret cared for Marlene above all else, like she was the only thing still good about his life, but Zenri eyed the starkness of his brother-in-law's cheekbones, the fresh scars on his cheek, and how his flesh seemed to be deflating over his bones.

"When was the last time you ate, brother?"

"Just a little bit ago," said Barret with a shrug. "Ain't nobody gonna miss a yaskell or ten of the back of a truck."

"Yaskells ain't a meal," said Zenri firmly. "Lucky for you, I got a whole bunch of food back at the hostel. You need to eat, man."

Barret just grunted, but he did seem to walk a little faster after that.

The hostel was one of many supplying the needs of the adventurous and broke, and it got bonus points for being run by a half-blind old man who thought Zenri's mako eyes were the glare off some newfangled sunglasses. And instead of one building, it was a bunch of sheds set up around a central courtyard where people could eat or laze in the shade of well-established tropical trees. Against his will, Zenri had been enjoying his time here; that was just how charming it was. He hoped Barret might get some of that same rest as he showed Barret to their shed/room and pointed at the bed on the side.

"You have that," said Zenri. "I brought a bedroll."

"Yeah that ain't gonna fit me," said Barret with a practiced glance at the bed. Admittedly, it was crammed between two walls and was probably about five feet long at most. "I'll put Marlene up there and I'll stay on the floor."

"But your arm—"

Barret shot Zenri the ugliest glare Zenri had ever seen. And despite his SOLDIER modifications and knowing that Barret was in no position to take him in a fight, Zenri shut right the hell up.

"Get a shower, though?" He managed to say, keeping his voice light. For godssakes, he had lived through a war! He could handle a brother-in-law. "You stink. And this room ain't that big."

"Yeah, alright," said Barret with a grimace. But he hesitated a second.

"Don't worry, I'll watch the baby."

"Do you know how to watch a baby?"

Zenri shrugged. "How hard can it be?"

Barret laughed darkly, pulled a roll of cleaner clothes out of his rucksack, and left.

Thirty minutes later a freshly washed Barret came back to Zenri, wild-eyed and frazzled, speed-walking Marlene around the courtyard of the hostel as she persistently whined and waved her little fists. There was spit-up all over her onesie, hastily cleaned, and while the snaps on her onesie were undone, the garment was pulled up to just under her armpits with no further attempt at actually removing it. Her diaper was also suspiciously full. Barret just laughed as Zenri mutely held the baby out to him.

"I ain't cut out for fatherhood," said Zenri, kneeling next to Barret by the hostel bed as Marlene, immediately calm at the sight of her guardian again, lay on her back and cooed like a little angel. Barret tickled her cheeks and before Zenri's astonished eyes, managed to remove her soiled onesie, change her diaper, and put her in new clothes all while one-handed, wrong-handed, and with fingers the size of personal grapeshot cartridges. Zenri made himself as useful as possible by throwing things away and what, but he knew where his place was.

"I babysat sometimes," said Barret, surprising Zenri for exactly ten seconds before he remembered how sick Eleanor and Myrna had both been. They'd become best friends in the doctor's house, practically. He went on as Marlene reached for his fingers and pulled them to her gummy little mouth. "So she knows me. Don't you, babygirl? Yes you do. Yes you do! What's that? Oh, you hungry? We can fix that right away."

"She threw up everything I tried feeding her," fretted Zenri as Barret went to his rucksack to pull out a pack of sterile remade bottles. He was struggling to screw a nipple on, so Zenri took it from him and did it while saying, "Is she sick?"

"Naw, but did you burp her?"

"What's that?"

Barret chuckled knowingly. Zenri let him have it.

That night, after Marlene was asleep and Barret had put away the entire stock of food that Zenri had purchased and stored in the room, they sat outside and talked over beers and a twist of loco weed, both for the pain in Barret's stump and also so he'd relax enough for Zenri to actually look at it. Zenri hissed in disapproval as he unwound each layer of crudely applied bandages, many of them packed with herbs in lieu of real medicine.

"Goddess, this is bad. It's a fucking hack job. What happened, man?"

"I got shot."

"With what? A cannon?" Zenri shook his head over the pulverized mass of flesh and bone that made up the end of Barret's arm. Somebody had obviously tried tending to it since there were no bone splinters or ragged strips of flesh, but anyone other than Barret probably would have died from pain and blood loss already since nothing had actually been tied off or sealed. Only a massive plug of herbs and really tight winding had saved Barret from completely bleeding out, apparently.

"Whatever the fuck that red woman was shooting with."

Zenri grimaced. "Sounds like Scarlet. Heads of Weapons Development. Of course she keeps all her best toys for herself."

"And we're just her playthings too, huh." Barret's voice dropped low and ugly and bitter. Zenri didn't bother to tell him off, because he wasn't wrong. A man saw things, the longer he stayed with the Company.

"You need to go to a hospital," said Zenri, making Barret growl. "Man, you need serious medical care. You can't smell it, but I can: this shit is rotting. You can't just heal it better."

"Been doing just fine."

"The fuck, man, you been doing this yourself?"

"Bloodeater's what we always used in the mine."

"Holy shit, Barret! This ain't a pickaxe puncture! You need an actual amputation so you can get a prosthetic on."

"And how am I supposed to afford that shit?" Barret burst out, disguted. The new scars on his cheek puckered as he snarled, "I got everything I own in the world on my back and I called you for a goddamned loan, and now you want me to go into debt?"

"I'll buy it for you, you dumbass!" Zenri shouted back, though it surprised him the instant the words burst from his mouth; however, he already had a stack of cash to give Barret and not much of a plan beyond that. But now he'd made a promise, so he was going to stick to it. "And don't you even think about saying no, because pridefulness gets you the grave and someone else the shovel!"

Barret's brows raised. "So they ain't beat the Corel outta you yet, huh?"

"I wear a uniform, the uniform don't wear me. Shit." This was directed at Barret's stump, the worst horrors of which were bleached and shadowed by moonlight. "Shit! If I'd seen this in the war I'd do the work myself, but—"

"Do it."

"What?"

"The work."

Zenri looked at him flatly. "Barret. I only have my field kit. I am not a surgeon. I do not have sedatives or anesthetics. What I would be doing is taking a fucking cleaver, chopping off about up to here—" Zenri tapped a few inches short of Barret's right elbow, high above the bloody mess of Barret's former right hand and wrist. "To make sure we miss all the rot. Then there'd be patching and spells, which is going to fucking HURT because it's going to try rebuilding your entire arm. And I can't do a prosthetic plug! You need to go to a hospital. It's going to be a lot less hard on you when you're resting, getting fluids—"

"I ain't going to no fucking ShinRa hospital!" Barret bellowed, jumping up from his seat. "And I ain't going to no hospital that reports to them neither!"

"Nobody is looking for you," said Zenri, who had checked all available ShinRa databases just before leaving Midgar and who'd gotten promises from his brothers in the Seventh to let him know if there'd been any changes. "Barret, don't let paranoia stop you from getting healthy. You're not the only one who suffers if you get gangrene and die."

"It's not paranoia," said Barret coldly, his eyes glittering in a way that made chills go down Zenri's war-hardened spine. "I ain't going to a ShinRa hospital, Zenri. But thanks for letting me know what needs done."

Zenri sighed, feeling a headache coming on. "Don't fucking… Alright. I'll do it. But you need to drink a lot more because I ain't cutting off your goddamn arm when you can still feel something. You're my sister's husband, I owe you that much."

Fortunately the hostel was right at the edge of town, so the two men were able to stay within listening distance of the room in case Marlene woke up while still being far away enough that nobody would accidentally stumble across what would look like a murder in progress. Barret looked suspiciously at the ratchet straps that Zenri took out of his field kit and looped around a sturdy tree, but kept drinking steadily from the bottle of bourbon that was helpfully labeled 'medicinal, hooch hounds stay OUT - Z'.

"Alright, it's been a few years since I did an amputation, so let me think," said Zenri, frowning lightly. "First, sit down. I'm going to strap you to the tree so you don't go flopping all over the place."

"Why don't I just lie down?"

"Did you not hear what I said about flopping all over the place? Do you see a table for me to strap you to? I'm about to chop part of your fucking arm off. Stay still or else. Now sit. Alright… Okay. I know they're tight, but you really need to stay still as much as you can or it's going to mess up your arm even more. Alright, now this…"

"Goddamn," said Barret, apprehensively eyeing the scarred block that Zenri was strapping his arm onto. "How many amputations did you do?"

"A lot," said Zenri darkly, sitting so he could drip the block between his knees. "Especially once the ethers run out. Now lucky for you, this thing's dried out so there won't be much of a mess."

"What is it?"

"It's basically a really hard sponge," said Zenri, his mouth quirking reluctantly. "Made of compressed bloodeater and some other things."

"Hah!"

"Yeah, yeah, shut up. And breathe out. You can't scream when you got no breath."

"Should I bite down on something?"

"I don't know. You wanna crack your teeth?"

Barret hmphed. Zenri chuckled. Then he pulled the bottle of medicinal bourbon from Barret's grasp and took a hearty swig.

"You make sure you chop the right arm now," said Barret with some alarm.

"Shut up, man," said Zenri affectionately. Then he straightened, his purple eyes flashing as alertness shocked his face. "Hey, did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Over there," said Zenri, jerking his chin. "Was that Marlene?"

Barret turned, looking in the direction of the hostel, over his left shoulder. Quicker than any normal human ever could, Zenri reached inside his back and drew a thick-bladed long knife that looked almost exactly like a very big Wutaiese chopper. "I didn't hear—"

THUD

Barret's breath escaped in a compressed wheeze that still had all the horror of agony of a full scream behind it. He clenched his fist and slammed it against the ground over and over, his heels drumming on the dirt, veins and tendons popping out in moonlit lines on his skin as Zenri dispassionately whisked the last six inches of Barret's pulverized arm off the bloodeater chopping block. It gleamed darkly as fresh blood spilled and rippled from the new wound, but soaked up the mess without a trace of it spilling over the sides or soaking into the ground.

"You're doing good, man, real good," said Zenri encouragingly as he set aside his amputation blade and went for his scalpel. SOLDIER strength and experience served him well: with just his knees he held the blood block and Barret's strapped-down arm in place even as the older man thrashed and his breath started coming back in hyper half-gasps that were building to a scream. As he opened a potion in a special dispensing bottle and held it just so in his left hand, pinched between his pinky and ring finger, Zenri said soothingly, "I'm sorry for this, but if you want to get a prosthetic on sooner instead of later, I gotta do it. I gotta take some skin off and stick it over the stump so it'll heal flat, man, and it's going to hurt. The skin'll heal up fine as long as we do it fast so just trust me, man, just trust me. Here we go!"

Dirt flew as Barret bellowed and struggled, his heels gouging deep grooves in the earth as Zenri swiftly trimmed off a hand-sized patch of skin from Barret's exposed upper arm and laid them parallel over the newly sheared stump like he was making a fancy pie. Drips of the pouch tacked the skin in place and instantly scabbed the surgical wounds on Barret's upper arm. Once the new stump was completely covered in transplanted skin, Zenri dumped the rest of the potion over Barret's upper arm and nodded in satisfaction as the scabs immediately thickened and dried, the skin puckering at the margins. Barret's screaming was so much softer than the din of the battlefield, making it easier for Zenri to spare more care than he usually did for his amputation patients.

"Great job, man! Now it's materia time. Here we go, Barret!"

Again Barret roared into the darkness even as Zenri cast a blinding Cure3 that lit up the dark forest clearing like a second moon. It was over in less than a second, but even before the blaze faded Zenri was nodding over his work. The wounds on Barret's upper arm from where he'd harvested the skin had healed so cleanly that the scabs fell off with just a flex of the muscle underneath, revealing smooth skin that was exactly the same as the unharvested bits around it. And the skin patch had worked to trick Barret's internal healing sense as well, making it form into a solid cover over the end of the stump instead of trying to rebuild muscle and bone that would spill and spear through the patch. In short, it looked like it had been healed for years instead of seconds, unnerving in its smoothness and the practically unnoticeable line of smoothly fused skin. Zenri flicked the end of the stump, making Barret swear again.

"Okay, looking good. It's going to hurt like a bitch for at least a week, but now you can medicate it away. No curing magic for another week at least, we want your body to settle into knowing this is your new normal. And it's nice and flat so it'll be easy to fit a plug around later." As Zenri watched Barret gasp for breath, he quipped, "Starting to wish you'd gone to the fucking hospital, huh?"

"Hell no," Barret gritted out, his eyes ablaze with pain and strange triumph. "Hell no. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Now let me the fuck outta these things!"

The ratchet straps were soaked with sweat, but the Cure3 had healed the bruises Barret had likely given himself straining against them. As Zenri wrapped up the blood block and cleaned his other tools, Barret examined his new stump in the moonlight and kept muttering in low disbelief. Zenri tuned it out, but a little whine that had unfortunately become rather familiar made him look up immediately.

"Baby's awake," he said, and Barret broke off his muttering to curse in the weary way of new parents everywhere. "Go on ahead, I'll clean up here."

"Thanks again," Barret said. His eyes darkened a moment before he lifted his head and said, "I'm glad you could help me."

"What's family for?" Zenri said, not sure why Barret was sounding so formal all of a sudden. "Go on."

"Yeah. Yeah…"

It took only a few minutes for Zenri to finish cleaning up and setting things away. As he trudged back to the hostel room/shed, a strangely familiar voice came floating through the trees. He had never heard this particular voice be so soft and tender, except once when Zenri had overheard Barret promising Myrna that she would never die alone, away from everybody she loved.

"How many times can a man look up

Before he sees the sky?

How many ears must one person have

Before he can hear people cry?

And how many deaths will it take 'til he knows

That too many people have died?"

Even in Barret's gruff, slightly flat voice, the old Corel lullaby seemed to sock Zenri right between the eyes and he nearly stumbled, a wash of horrible homesick grief coming over him. He hadn't been able to see his parents before they'd died. He hadn't been there when Corel had burned. His sister had died in gunfire and flame all alone, literally her worst fear, and he hadn't been there for her. Even with skills that had saved the Company and everyone depending on it, he hadn't been there for the people who'd needed him the most.

Barret broke off singing as Marlene started wailing, that tiny thin little cry that was the essence of helpless need. Zenri clamped his hand over his own burgeoning sobs as the baby's cry spiraled into a true wail undercut by Barret's patient, yet softly anguished shushing. There was so much goddamned unfairness in the world and so little that only one person could do, but...

"I can't fail them again. I know Barret ain't hot on ShinRa and I don't blame him, but he's going to take my fucking money for as long as it takes for him to get on his fucking feet. And I need to help him, like I couldn't help everyone else. But I can't put him on the Plate if Heidegger and Scarlet really do want to wrap things up tight; fuck, I hate to do it, but he'll have to go into the slums to stay alive and raise Marlene safely. Which one's the best so far… Sector 5? 6? Maybe 7… It's the closest to the Garrison in case some bullshit happens, or if I need to take Marlene for a day.

"Alright. Tomorrow, I'm buying us tickets to Midgar. And I'm getting Barret and Marlene a home in Sector 7."

/\/\/\

a/n:

I went looking for Appalachian songs to use as lullabies and after reading the last verses of "Blowing in the Wind", it just made too much sense not to use in the story. And yes, I have the Remake :D So far I have encountered nothing that truly enrages me, but a whole bunch of inspiration so YAYYY

Sorry it's not a main story update, but I'm still ironing the wrinkles out of the next chapter. I promise it will be up before the end of the year, but nothing beyond that.