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52. Tifa: Barmaid

Tifa walked into the bar and was nearly knocked over by someone else barrelling out of it. She caught a flash of blonde hair, but that was all before the person was gone.

Antonia was cleaning glasses – an exercise in futility with her permanently grubby cloth. Tifa came over and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "Patron?" It was early, but not too early. In Midgar it was never too early.

"Nah." Antonia spat into the glass and scrubbed. Tifa was reminded why she hardly ever actually drank anything here, despite being bought drinks every busy night by barflies and guys whose eyes never rose above her collarbone.

Tifa was surprised. "She works here?" The blonde girl hadn't looked old enough to even get a passable fake ID, much less work in a bar.

This place wasn't exactly hot on checking paperwork – one of the reasons Tifa herself had found employment there, but at least she'd looked older than her years when she first landed in the city. Her Nibelheim accent hadn't been chewed away at that point, which had labelled her a hick and encouraged most people to try taking advantage of her naïveté until she gave them a taste of her knuckles. Bartending had been the easiest and, ironically, safest work she could find, and after a bit of practise she was good at it. These days she could mix a cocktail as proficiently as she could throw a punch without breaking her thumb, and had made herself indispensable by throwing out drunkards twice her height and weight. The owner liked her and made sure she never got stiffed on her share of the tips when Antonia felt peeved that a kid half her age was being fast-tracked ahead of her to a managerial position.

The blonde girl had disappeared around the corner. Tifa straightened from where she'd craned back to get a better look through the bevelled glass of the door. Not only did the girl not look old enough to work in the bar, she looked too slender and fine-boned as well – the kind of person for whom words like 'petite' actually meant something. Tifa wondered whether she was a newbie, and was surprised when Antonia shook her head.

"Graduated from the Military Academy last Summer. Worked here the whole way through."

"Really?" Tifa was even more shocked. "I've never worked a shift with her before."

"Never will now, neither." Antonia placed the glass on the shelf behind her and took up another. "She just quit."

A buzz went through Tifa. It wasn't a pleasant sensation. Those who graduated from the Academy went to one of only a few places, and they all came with the Shinra logo attached. Her gaze slid sideways, but the tables were all empty. Barrett had said he might drop in tonight, which meant he'd be there no matter what. There was never any 'might' with Barrett. He wasn't the kind of guy who prevaricated. When you carried the weight of past bad decisions where your arm used to be, you always remembered the value of thinking fast and acting with certainty.

"I didn't think Shinra took on women in their armed forces," Tifa said, prolonging the small-talk to distract herself from what Barrett's visit could mean. Something business or something personal? The former, almost certainly. What interest could Barrett possibly have in her person life?

It wasn't as though he was Tifa's bosom buddy, although they'd moved on from just being allies. Since she joined AVALANCHE they had moved into that grey area beyond allies but not quite friends yet. Biggs and Wedge were the same, although Jessie was a smidge closer by virtue of being the only other female in the bunch. Frederick and Nicholas, veterans leftover from the old incarnation of AVALANCHE, barely even acknowledged Tifa. She wasn't militant enough for them. Few were among the 'new recruits' as they still insisted on calling everyone, no matter how long their tenure. Even Barrett had been forced to rein them in before, and they'd grumbled rebelliously at him.

Antonia was talking again. Tifa snapped back to the present. "They don't," said the grizzled bargirl (which she insisted was her job title, although 'girl' was stretching things more than a little). "She ain't enlisting. Resigned on account of bereavement, she said. Don't see how that kind of thing would make you wanna give up your job, but meh." She shrugged. "Some shit to do with her brother or sister, anyhow. Leaves me shorthanded whichever way you slice it. You'll prolly hafta pull some extra shifts." Her baleful look was a direct challenge for Tifa to say she couldn't.

"Cool," Tifa said instead, not giving Antonia the satisfaction of threatening her with a pink slip while she was still senior enough to do so. "I could use the extra money."

"You planning something special?"

"No, but it's always good to have some kept aside for a rainy day, right?"

"Pfft." Antonia rolled her eyes. "Only time it rains in this city is when someone tosses a bucket of piss outta their window."

Tifa winced. It had been years since she left Nibelheim – 'left' being the loosest possible term for what had happened, and not at all accurate – but sometimes the bleakness of life in Midgar could still shock her. If it hadn't been for her vow to punish Shinra for betraying the deaths of her entire village, she would have either left or shrivelled up from the sheer concentration of misery there. And the fear! She used to question how anyone could choose to remain under the Plate if they didn't have a vendetta rooting them like she did, until she got to grips with the reality that people born in Midgar feared the outside world far more than they feared the dangers all around them. Open skies and a distant horizon with no walls around them were what dark alleys and constant artificial lighting were to a country girl.

Antonia raised her eyes. Accusation worked its way outward from her small black pupils. She blinked too much and sniffed her reddened nose a lot – indications of why she hadn't advanced while Tifa's previously undiscovered business acumen got her skipped ahead. Word was Tifa would be running this bar soon, while Antonia was more likely to be dead if she didn't quit doing Lucid soon. "You gonna stand there all night, or you gonna punch the clock?"

"Sure thing." Tifa kept her voice upbeat. She knew it annoyed Antonia, and it was easier to believe your journey to work hadn't depressed the hell out of you if you play-acted cheerfulness.

The evening passed uneventfully. Tifa pulled drinks and made conversation with those who wanted it. She kept the bar far cleaner than Antonia could be bothered to do, and surreptitiously rewashed all the glasses before using them. There was a piece of broken yellow tooth in one. She washed that glass twice and then stuck it at the back.

When the crowd was beginning to thin and the pall of smoke had got thick enough to be mistaken for a small house-fire, the doorway darkened. Shoulders and scalp scraping the edges, Barrett lumbered inside. He nodded at Tifa, ordered his usual and parked himself at a table in back. Tifa finished serving the guys at the bar and took her break. She brought over Barrett's drink and one for herself.

"You'll ruin your tough guy look if you keep drinking these," she said, placing the orange juice down on his table.

He harrumphed and took a swig, screwing up his face at the sudden bitterness. Tifa sipped hers slower and managed not to make her mouth look like the back end of a cat.

Barrett wiped at his mouth with the back of his good hand. As ever, he didn't beat about the bush. Tifa wondered how much Dutch courage you could get from citrus fruits. "We got a problem."

"We do?"

"You ain't seen no newscast yet?"

"I've been working."

"Big shit-storm went down today. Shinra press conference got itself turned into a platform for 'terrorist speechifying'." He grimaced, and this time it was nothing to do with the juice. "It wasn't pretty. At all. Word on the street is they're gonna be scraping one of the two activists up with a spatula until Yule. The other guy got taken into custody, which means we're fucked."

Tifa wasn't stupid. She used to be, especially when it came to personal relationships, but that was before she held her father's hand as he died and was nearly run through by the world's greatest hero because she didn't use her brains before she acted. She put two and two together and came up with a handful of memories from previous AVALANCHE meetings and a groan. "Nicholas and Frederick finally made good on their threats?"

"Dumb-asses took things into their own hands. Decided to do things their way instead of waiting like we agreed. I knew they was gonna pull something, but I didn't think they'd aim as high as the president's son. Not on their own." He shook his head. His eyes were clouded with various emotions, only a few of which Tifa could name. Anger was in there, but so was grief, as well as a lot of regret. She got the feeling not all of it was because of this. Everyone in AVALANCHE had reasons for being there and memories of things they'd rather forget. Barrett was no exception.

People always underestimated Barrett. They saw his muscles and heard him talk, and they wrote him off as just some macho guy with a pound of fat between his ears. If that were the case, however, he never would have become leader of their tiny cell, or adopted a little girl, or set up a marker in a quiet corner of Sector Seven where he still went to talk to a guy called Dyne.

AVALANCHE wasn't the major operation it used to be. Barrett didn't want it to be, either. The previous incarnation's goals weren't his goals, and the only real similarities were an underlying hatred of Shinra and a desire to protect the Planet from it. Barrett's plans were small-scale out of necessity – they just didn't have the manpower for any major operations, and as Nicholas and Frederick had just proved, trying them inevitably led to disaster. This new version of AVALANCHE had to rely on brains, not brawn, if it was going to affect Shinra in any way – and especially if it was going to make a difference without sacrificing innocents like in Corel. That meant strategy and long-term plans, not headlines and making a stand to an audience only listening to the boom of your explosives, not the explosive words from your mouth.

Tifa watched Barrett for a second, and then leaned across the table to lay her hand over his flesh one. He jumped, made as if to snatch the hand away, but then left it there. He looked between it and her, something else in his eyes that she definitely recognised, but hadn't seen in a long time – not since an angry blond boy left to prove himself and join the very company she was now working to bring down. Cloud used to look at her that way: like he wanted someone to tell him he hadn't screwed up again, but was too proud, or perhaps too scared, to ask for her approval.

"It wasn't your fault, Barrett," Tifa said softly.

"Shoulda been able to do sumthin'," Barrett groused.

"Should've, would've, could've," Tifa said with a shake of her head.

"They weren't bad guys. Nick and Fred … they just got the wrong ideas." The pair had always hated having their names shortened. Maybe that was why Barrett did it, and had kept doing it. It kept them humble – or so he'd thought. There didn't seem much point now.

"You can't rule people's heads and hearts by force." Tifa wondered whether lightning could still strike her down under the Plate. It was difficult to reconcile the mutterings of 'terrorist' and all its connotations with the reasons behind what they were doing. She'd resolved never to sacrifice innocents in their fight against Shinra, and so had Barrett, Biggs, Wedge and Jessie. Barrett in particular was already intimate with the kind of tragedy that came from innocents getting caught in the crossfire, as the little girl he had at home could attest every time she called him Daddy. Nicholas and Frederick, on the other hand, had been firm believers in 'the end justifies the means'. "Nicholas and Frederick were never going to listen to reason, and trying to compel them against their will would've made you as bad as … as President Shinra himself."

Barrett said nothing, just stared into his half-finished juice like it held the answer to the secret of the universe. "We oughta be making plans to rescue whichever of 'em is still alive." His voice held little hopefulness. If Shinra had hold of the survivor after what they'd done, he wouldn't be a survivor much longer. Barrett knew it. So did Tifa, and it made her lungs feel heavy. More death. More tragedy. More of Shinra getting away with whatever the hell they wanted.

She sighed and swirled her own glass, forcing her mind along a different path. She still missed Cloud, in that should've-would've-could've way. The clarity of hindsight made her cringe at how she'd acted towards him when they were growing up in Nibelheim – and how she'd allowed others to act towards him. She'd behaved so poorly, it was a wonder he'd still counted her as his friend at all. She supposed desperation, more than actual liking, had dictated his attachment to her. It was the only way she could justify what had happened after he left. He had cared enough to rescue her from a collapsing bridge as a kid, but written only two letters after arriving in Midgar, and she hadn't heard from him since he wrote he was due to take the entrance exam for SOLDIER in a week's time.

She'd actually gone to find him when she first arrived, thinking to inform him about the tragedy of Nibelheim – as if he wouldn't already know, given the media coverage and the fact his own mother had died in the blaze. Shinra wouldn't be so cruel as to keep that information from him, would they? Actually, the jury would be out on that one for a while. One thing Tifa had learned since seeing the slums, and the predators that prowled them – including several on the company's payroll – was that the cruelty of Shinra knew no bounds.

However, when she first got off the train she'd still been befuddled with grief over losing so much so quickly, and hadn't thought it through. She hadn't thought much of anything through, otherwise why would she have left Master Zangan's protection to strike out on her own? She hadn't been allowed in to see Cloud, but she'd left a heartfelt message and the address of her lodgings. She'd been so certain he would come to see her, it had almost broken her heart a second time when he didn't; until she shook off the disappointment and told herself to get a grip.

Cloud hadn't got in contact. As time passed Tifa had been forced to conclude he'd been so badly treated by Nibelheim that its destruction didn't mean as much to him, with his fancy new life in SOLDIER, as it did to her. Cloud had moved on to better and brighter things. She'd moved on too, though she was still looking for 'bright' under the Plate before she tried for 'brighter' or 'better'.

Antonia slammed a snifter of brandy down on the counter and glared at Barrett's table. The owner of the bar rarely came down to his premises, but he had no love for Shinra either, and it wasn't like Tifa or Barrett ever made it public why they knew each other, or why Barrett kept coming back to this bar even though he didn't drink. Antonia, however, was a loose cannon with a hateful streak that might prove dangerous if she was ever allowed to start firing.

Tifa sighed, glugged the last of her orange juice, and rose to her feet. Her breaks were getting shorter and shorter. If she ever did take control of this place, she'd designate a reasonable amount of time to rest her aching hoofs. And she'd rename the place, too. Seriously, Krap's Bar? Krap's?Arnold Krap was three owners ago and nobody remembered him anymore, they just saw the name and thought it was a descriptive typo. The whole place was due a serious overhaul if it wanted to start turning an actual profit.

"Talk to you later, big guy."

"Humph," Barrett replied, but stayed in his corner for a long time after she left, staring at his drink until all the pulp had separated and settled at the bottom of the glass.