Things had gotten more cluttered the longer he lived here.

Tifa was moving in today and he still hadn't finished clearing out her room. A long time ago he remembered being compulsively neat, but when there were clutters from collections and merchandise alike, those habits couldn't be kept. So he just kept things in a sort of order, hoping that he remembered where they were in time.

He glanced out the window and noted that she was just walking up to the building.

It made sense to live above his shop, which was really just a converted house anyway. Far enough away from the boardwalk to keep the younger punks away, but close enough to everything else to get a decent amount of business. Not that he had much to worry about in terms of money; Reeve had been kind enough to wire him his pension plan and the, funnily enough, life insurance he'd gotten upon death.

Technically, according to records, he was still dead. It amused him.

He cleared a path in the things he was moving and made his way downstairs. It was getting humid and the air conditioning unit had gone out two days prior, so he'd had to dig out the silly tourist t-shirt that he'd bought just in case rolled up sleeves weren't enough.

"Well, you do pack light."

She grinned a little at him and raised an eyebrow. "Babes and brew?"

"What?"

"Your shirt."

He looked down. Right. He'd forgotten to turn it inside out. The tips of his ears felt warm. "There weren't many choices. Would you like me to carry a bag?"

Veld took one before she answered, maybe there would be no teasing. It honestly was the best he could find in that damned tourist shop. And he didn't know why her light teasing bothered him so much anyway. It was foolish.

"I've cleared a room for you, but you'll have to excuse the clutter..."

"Clutter's a word you use for a desk or a table... your entire house is like this."

Considering the heft of the bag he was currently carrying, Tifa didn't pack light. She packed compact. About the weight of a dead teenager, he wagered. That was a morbid thought.

"I'm an antique dealer, clutter is an occupational hazard."

The effort of carrying the bag up the stairs and possibly his embarrassment earlier was certainly going to insure that he'd have an excuse to change his shirt. Why was Costa so humid? He could handle the heat, but the humidity was insufferable.

Tifa, now that he set the bag down and could get a good look at her, had adapted to the setting well enough. Back to a visible midriff and a short skirt; tan and white. Not that he cared about such things, but he had to wonder if she ever wore any color.

"I get a window, that was nice of you."

He shrugged and rolled his shoulder. He was going to be sore later. "Wouldn't want my assistant to feel more like a slave or anything. Inhumane."

"Speaking of, weren't there some legal conditions you wanted me to read?"

"Ah, yes. Just give me a minute, I'll have to get it out of my filing cabinet."

Some people would call him paranoid, but really, he had merely learned that paperwork was everything. It was one of the first things that he and... well, Valentine... had done once the kids weren't looking. He planned on leaving all of the files to Reeve, when inevitability caught up with him, but he felt much more comfortable having Shinra's personnel and tracked people files under lock and key within his own reach.

While a simple contract hardly ranked up there, it could mean something sometime in the future.

"Would it be alright if I decorated the room a bit? It's a little plain." She yelled a little from the next room.

"I don't really care, do what you will," he replied as he took care of the first order of business; a new shirt. He hated the gaudy Costan print but at least there were no barely clothed women present, just tequila bottles. Still distasteful, but slightly less so, considering Tifa had mentioned running a bar at some point, and it was in her file anyway.

He'd left the contract out, as he'd just finished typing it up. Veld had taken a while to make sure that it was straight forward and that there were no catches; which was considerably more difficult than the underhanded type of contracts he'd been trained to right.

There was something kind of tragic there, that honesty was ever so much more difficult than lies. At least he still had a few of those. They were comforting in a way.

ooo

Veld had told her that she didn't have to sign anything right away, and to take her time reading the typewritten--not computer printed, she noted--three page contract. Tifa couldn't help but think that it was strangely cold, compared to everything else about his manner, which was friendly even if it was distant.

It hadn't taken her that long to unpack, it was just that some of her things were heavy. Like she kept a few free weights, and she didn't want to embarrass the man further by telling him that was what he'd lugged up the stairs. Men were kind of stubborn about things like that anyway. If he got a sore shoulder from it, then it was his own pride's fault.

Still. She hadn't had someone offer to carry anything for her in a few years now.

He didn't really have a kitchen, just a kitchenette, as most of the house was taken up by things. It would have been something worrisome for someone that wasn't an antique dealer.

Veld had offered her lemonade, which was a little too sour.

"I'm glad that you hired me. Your lemonade is a little tart."

"Oh, I'm out of sugar. I can take care of myself fairly well, but I haven't had the time to go to the grocery store lately."

She noticed it then, when he took a sip. Tifa wasn't focused on his face because of the black lines that twined his forearm. A tattoo. She never would have expected someone like him to have a tattoo.

Tifa squinted a little, trying to figure out what it was.

"It's a phoenix."

Nothing really got past him, did it? "I didn't mean to stare... it's pretty. And I might say, a little uncharacteristic."

That was a wry grin. "You might not call it so uncharacteristic after a while. And everyone was young once."

It was then that it occurred to her that she might find a younger him very appealing. No scar--she was so used to people with scars these days she barely paid attention to it--and no frown lines. There were no laugh lines.

"I thought you said I was young." Maybe teasing him would cover up her sitting and analyzing him.

"You were younger once, then. I might have to add a clause in your contract that forbids you from being cleverer than me."

"Is there any more business you'd like to talk about, before I read this carefully laid out contract of yours?"

He looked more serious, and she almost felt bad for bringing it up. They hadn't been comfortable, really, just then, but they had a moment. Like when she realized that Shera was probably one of the better friends she'd had since Aeris. Even if she was a little crazy. They'd been drinking hot chocolate, because Shera really did hate tea, and Tifa had simply known and it all clicked into place.

Well, there were other opportunities, she supposed.

"I open up at around 9, because no one is up around here much earlier. You're welcome to help me organize a bit, but I keep the records constantly updated. The ledger is just under the counter downstairs."

He finished the last of his lemonade, and only briefly made a face concerning its sourness.

"I will periodically go on outings to look for merchandise, after a while I might let you go and track down certain pieces, with the exception of guns, of course."

"Why can't I look for guns?"

He smirked. "Because I like them."

ooo

In three months his house was starting to look a bit more presentable. About a month ago he realized that she could possibly take the fact he'd kept her memory chest the wrong way, so he had to move it into his room, near his files. Veld wasn't sure she was ready to fess up to not really wanting to give it up, and that was fine with him.

Though, it was starting to make him a little curious.

He knew enough about Tifa to know that she'd rubbed elbows with a couple people that had known him in his past life. Luckily, they all seemed to be busy, dead, or not particularly close to her. One of the charms to having Tifa work for him was that she saw him as an old gentleman, not as anything else.

As much as he didn't want to admit it, it was nice to have that again. The last time he'd had someone around that had known him as something other than a Turk or a soldier or whatever else he was that he wasn't always proud of was his wife.

Of course, that had turned out badly. But his assistant wasn't the same kind of fool Lara was.

It took the phone ringing for him to realize that he'd been off somewhere else again. He'd long since thrown out his PHS and used a landline now, which helped him feel settled. If anyone wanted to disturb him, he was in his own kind of fortress. Veld liked that idea, as he'd always imagined that in some other time, one that wasn't quite so corrupt, he would have guarded a castle.

"Hello?"

"Tifa there?"

He knew that voice, and it put him off guard for a minute. "She's out running, can I take a message?"

"Can you tell her that Shera called? It's not urgent, just girl talk."

...Shera MacDowell? He wasn't always good with names, but he'd run across her before. Kind of quiet, brilliant, a little like Hojo was, minus the self importance. He remembered her name because it was unusual, like his was. She was helping with some silly proposal of some kind, and she looked nervous. Veld had joked with her about how their parents went to the same school of odd naming or some such thing like that.

Strange, how clearly he remembered some things.

"I'll be sure to let her know." He hung up abruptly.

This could cause a slight problem, if Shera remembered him at all. He should have known she'd keep some connection with that Highwind fellow. Had to be how Tifa knew her.

He was getting so paranoid in his old age. Tifa had dealt with Turks before, on friendly terms. Veld remembered seeing her, the last time he was with them. Tseng had almost wanted to give the command back to him, but he'd firmly called him Chief; nothing else needed to be said there.

So what if she found out he'd been a Turk.

"You look spooked, something wrong?"

Naturally, she'd come in then, her bangs plastered to her forehead and the rest of her hair held back with a kerchief. Veld never was afforded much time any more to sit and ponder things, which had its good and bad points.

He'd looked at Tifa's file recently, just to confirm her method of fighting, just in case. Judging by the fact that she ran every day and did free weights--he'd heard her drop one once, and discovered she was quite creative with her curses--and hoped that she didn't get angry with him. Martial artists were always the hardest to predict, oddly.

"No, nothing. A woman named Shera called? She asked for you."

"Oh! I called her a couple days ago, I guess she's finally free. I turned my PHS off, I gave her this number as a backup..."

Tifa seemed to like explaining her actions in detail. It was a trait that would be tiresome if she weren't so honest about it.

"Feel free to use this phone."

He moved to go busy himself with... something. Alright, so maybe he wanted to snoop a little. There was a delicate balance here, and he liked knowing everything that was going on. Maybe he was, as some people were prone to say once upon a time, a bit of a control freak.

There was no further preamble and Tifa hopped a little over to the phone on the wall. It too was a bit of an antique, as he figured that if he was going to surround himself with things that were familiar he might as well go all out with it.

"Hi Shera! What's going on?"

He hid his observations behind a tweed jacket that Tifa had found a month ago at a local flea market. She'd joked that it looked like the kind of thing that an academic like him would wear.

"Oh? Well, that's odd."

Veld had noticed that she owned more white tank tops than should be necessary. This was after a slight argument involving the laundry--he never understood why women never trusted him to do his own, as he had lived by himself for long enough to do almost a better job than them--and her monstrous whites load.

"I'm sure I could take a little time off, if you wanted some company..."

Hmm. There was a hole in the jacket. He'd have to go check on if there was any more cedar he could buy to keep the moths away. Veld thought it was rather ridiculous that moths should inhabit somewhere so close to the coast. Parasites.

"No, no. It's no trouble. My boss is understanding."

So she'd be gone for a little while. He might have to go dig out a book he'd thought about showing her while she was out. Despite having dropped out of high school, yet another thing from her file, she seemed to keep up with reading. This made for few mistakes in his record books.

And didn't employees tend to get little rewards after three months? But then, that was Shinra, whose mortality rate was considerably higher than antique dealing.

"Veld?"

"Hmm?"

"I need to visit a friend for a few days. Think you can handle that?"

He chuckled. "You constantly assume I'm helpless without you."

"Oh, whatever. You'd be knee deep in unorganized piles of stuff if I hadn't offered to work with you."

"My mistake. Of course, I couldn't have done this without your most humble self sorting through my storeroom, Miss Lockheart."

She smiled. "Sociology."

Well that came out of nowhere. "What?"

"That's what you studied in school."

She made her way upstairs then, presumably to pack and take a shower. He stood there for a few moments, wondering just what kind of thing that meant. Then again, he supposed it did make a little sense.

After all, soldiers and assassins and antique dealers did share one thing in common.