Chapter 2: Snack Time

'Tini's' brother wasn't Phoenix Clash of course. Or, rather Zell Dincht, the actor that played Phoenix. But he was dressed like Phoenix and for the briefest moment – Tifa thought he looked more liked Phoenix than the actor that had played him. Which of course made absolutely no sense when she thought about it.

Growing up in a bar though had Tifa's recovery time pretty quick and so she managed a 'Rita' head duck before bringing her eyes back up to look at him.

"Long time, no see, Phoenix," she stated in a shy voice to match her persona but her eyes were laughing.

His face was so calm and emotionless that she wondered if he'd play along for a second after she spoke. He was dressed in costume, and a really well done version of it as well, complete with impressively large sword strapped to his back, but he might have just been doing that to humor his little sister. But then the second was past as the very edges of his mouth were shifting upward as something like conspiratorial laughter shifted through his impossible blue eyes and he slid gracefully into the seat between her and his sister at the little table, setting down a tray of food in the process. The giant sword somehow didn't seem to get in his way in the least.

"I've been busy saving the world apparently." His voice was dry and not a little self-depreciating. Tifa couldn't help her smile, happy that he was playing the game with her and 'Tini'. Maybe it was because – it was that moment of seriousness when they'd first locked eyes…

Sometimes, her siblings forgot to play too. Tifa had never been good about just letting that kind of thing go.

"I see you still had time to do your hair," she gestured as she teased it and for the first time the straight face broke and for a moment he was tucking his chin and raising a gloved hand self-consciously to his blond hair. Or rather the gravity defying spikes in his blond hair. His sister made a squeaking noise and the hand redirected to rub at the back of his neck before he could damage the spikes. They weren't as tall as Phoenix's or as organized and distinctive – but Tifa was hardly going to fault someone on their hair attempts. They looked – cute.

"Well, that was kind of Yuf- Tini's doing" he admitted with a surprisingly sheepish grin. "She wouldn't let me come if I didn't let her do my hair."

"Didn't I do good?" Tini bounced in her chair across from Tifa with a bright smile. Obviously as proud of her brother himself as she was of her work on his blond hair. "I think he looks even better than in the movie. I mean, really – who fights with hair that tall?"

Tifa stifled her laugh behind her hand and automatically reached out to begin taking the food off the tray and setting it out. OCD habit but its what happened when you spent your life as a server.

"You did good" she assured Tini as she slid the now empty tray onto the last unoccupied chair at the table. "It must have cost a fortune in hair gel though." She gave the blond man a sympathetic and teasing look of laughter. "You're a good older brother."

He had been watching her set out the food with quietly intent observation, but his blue eyes shifted to find her face at her words and, again, the barely there smile quietly touched the edges of his mouth.

"I try" was all he'd admit to. He didn't ask why she'd felt compelled to serve them their own food. His sister didn't even seem to notice.

"I'm starving!" she dug into her food and Tifa couldn't help but smile. The petite girl was probably one of those 'eat everything and never gain weight' types that shojo mangas loved to portray. She also managed to talk around the eating, which made Tifa assume it was a common occurrence.

"Cloud – I mean, Clash here-" Again, the blue eyes dipped downward with a muted throat noise as the tiny girl teased him about the name. Tifa found it impossibly adorable that a large, grown man was being so politely and quietly embarrassed by his little sister in front of a total stranger he was never even going to see again. Tini was grinning about it. "Clash said he'd come in costume so I wouldn't feel embarrassed. It's my first year dressing up. Since I was the one that wanted to dress up I got to pick who we were coming as." She gave Tifa a proudly triumphant look and reached up to tap the very tip of one of her brother's shaggy blond spikes. "I decided it only made sense for him to be Clash if I was going to be Tini."

Tifa decided two things right there. One – Tini had probably been chosen as the dress up character because it was heavily weighed toward making her brother dress as Clash, which meant The Hair. And two – the guy must really love his little sister a lot to trust her to dress him for cosplay. It was sweet, Tifa decided and gave him a warm smile. Being the oldest sibling in her own family, she could relate to doting on younger ones.

"Well, I'm impressed" Tifa had already inhaled most of her donut and was now contentedly cupping her cocoa with both hands. You learned to eat fast when you lived in the kind of household she did. She noticed that most of Cloud's food was already gone as well. "The friend I'm here with comes to this convention every year and I've seen some of the costumes she's come up with and how long they take to put together – " she moved a hand in front of her. "I was just glad that Last Tale's characters didn't have horns or tails or crazy.. head.. gear…" she trailed off as a blood elf walked past, ears and eyebrows swaying gently as they walked. Both Cloud and 'Tini' turned their heads to watch too.

"That is sooo cool" Tini chirped and hopped up from her chair, digital camera already in hand. "I'll be right back!"

Tifa and the brother watched her go. Absently Cloud hooked the chair she'd vacated with a dark booted foot and pulled it back to the table.

"She's fun," Tifa offered with a real smile and his own face softened.

"She's a spoiled little brat" his voice was low and warm. His blue eyes flickered over to Tifa for a moment so she could see the affection for his sister in them before he went back to concentrating on eating the last of his food. "And it's all my fault."

"It's not a bad thing. I spoil my brother and sister rotten. When I'm not being a tyrant and sucking all the joy from their lives by making them do their chores or something." She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands as she confessed it without guilt and was rewarded with something that sounded like a coughed chuckle from her companion. In response he propped up his own elbows on the table next to hers and rested his chin on his knuckles to look at her in return. His eyes were alive and warm and expressive in sharp contrast to the rest of him. She noticed he had a thin, almost hidden scar at about eyebrow level on the left side of his forehead under the blond hair.

"Did you bring them too or are they at home slaving away in the mines?" he asked.

Tifa couldn't help the smile.

"They're at home. I left them with Barrett even though Marlene's convinced she's old enough to handle everything on her own since she's all of almost thirteen." Being a natural storyteller, Tifa put the right drama into her tone of voice and was rewarded with another of those quietly coughed chuckles. It was surprising how proud of herself it made her feel to earn those reluctant sounds.

He didn't strike her as someone that laughed often. And it was her nature to want people to be able to laugh.

"Yuffie's all of a whooping sixteen and thinks she knows everything" he confided in his rough/soft voice.

"I do not!" At some point apparently Tini/Yuffie had come back and her protest startled both of them off of their elbows. Tifa felt her skin flush hot for a confusing minute but before she could dwell on it, Yuffie was distracting them with her piping protest.

"Ohhh, don't move! You guys looked so cute that way! Do it again, with your elbows and sitting close like that with the staring into each other's eyes and all. Like Clash and Rita! Come on, I'll post the pictures on the web" she added as if that was actually an incentive, shaking her camera. Tifa didn't consider herself easily embarrassed, not after years of the bar and being 'that poor motherless girl' all through school even before that but for a moment, she actually felt her cheeks heat and found she had to look down to wipe imaginary grains of sugar from her eaten donut off the table. Out of the corner of her vision she caught a shake of blond hair.

"We were talking, Yuf. Not posing for you." The calm voice was amused but firm and the younger girl flopped back down into her chair without arguing. Probably a testament to her relationship with her brother that she did it without protesting and Tifa was relieved to find her own embarrassment had melted as well. Yuffie recovered almost immediately however and brightened.

"You will pose with me though, won't you? I mean, we've got almost half the LT's group here! We've got to take pictures for my MySpace page! And my YouTube site – I'm gonna make a cosplay vid and I've got a song picked out and everything! Come on! Please?!"

Since her brother had apparently sold his soul to his sister for the convention, evidenced by the hair, Tifa found herself the full recipient of the younger girl's admittedly impressive puppy dog eyes. She couldn't help breaking into a smile and laughing.

"Of course" she agreed, wrapping her own hands around Yuffie's as the girl clenched them in prayer position in front of her. "We'll take pictures. That's one of the reasons we're here, right?"

"Right!" Yuffie nodded enthusiastically as her brother muttered something soft that sounded suspiciously like:

"Obviously its not for the events."

His sister ignored him and hopped to her feet instead, smiling bright.

"Come on! Let's find a good place to take the shots!"

It was impossible not to enjoy Yuffie's enthusiasm and Tifa shot her brother a sympathetic smile, which he just answered with a shake of his head, lips pressed together to stifle his own smile. Tifa glanced at the clock on the wall as she pushed back her chair and stood up.

"I have a little bit of time," she agreed and than glanced in sudden surprise at Cloud. His hand had shot out and closed around her wrist and before she could decide if she should be angry or weirded out, he shook his head.

"I'll clear the table" he stated softly and she was surprised to realize she'd been about to do it automatically. Well, less surprised she'd been about to do it automatically and more surprised that he'd noticed, much less stopped her. His lips softened into a small smile when she gave him a puzzled look. Yuffie huffed.

"Fine. Clear the table. Can we just go?" she asked impatiently and her brother let go of Tifa's wrist to simply scoop up everything and drop it all in the nearby trash, setting the tray on top. Tifa joined the younger girl with a laugh, trying to shake off the weird feeling that the fact that someone had noticed her cleaning up after them had given her.

"I saw a place downstairs that looked vaguely 'Shin interior'. Bet we can get some good shots down there."

Tifa actually enjoyed getting her picture taken. Sure, she had more than her fair share of crazy, embarrassing or sheer hideous pictures to prove it but – taking a picture was a way of both proving and remembering something. Something you could point to and say 'see, there I was, that was me then'. A moment of your life frozen in time. Proof that you really had existed.

Her father had done something to all of her mother's pictures after she'd died. Tifa didn't want her brother and sister to have nothing left if anything ever happened to her.