have so been watching MjOoPi's 'Never Too Late' vid over on YouTube to get into the right mood for this. That's right – I'm advertising for her – cause I enjoy her Cloud/Tifa vids just that much.
Chapter 32: Puzzles
When Tifa woke up the next morning, the section of the slums she lived in was still without power. Making breakfast became a challenge in creativity – which meant cereal for everyone in the end. There weren't any complaints however and the kids were thrilled to be allowed to eat their sugar cereal on a day that wasn't the weekend. Tifa noticed with an inward snicker that both Leon and Cloud also gravitated toward the sugar cereal and left the 'adult' cereal to everyone else.
With no power there was no school, which thrilled the kids. Cloud had left just after breakfast to take his sister to a working train station. Apparently, Yuffie was going back to Wutai. Tifa found she was going to miss the girl and her energy but she understood that things weren't exactly going to get safer in the slums now and Yuffie would be better off somewhere else. She would have offered to go to the station too but – she suspected Cloud wanted the time with his sister to himself. Yuffie probably did too. So Tifa just packed a bag with lunch for the trip for the other girl, got several enthusiastic hugs, and made her promise to keep in touch. She suspected that Marlene and Denzel already would.
After she'd seen the two siblings out the door, Tifa cleaned up the bar from the night before and had a lot of willing hands to make it go easier. When the bottom of the house was spotless and her father was sleeping soundly again, Tifa went to the upstairs closet and got down the giant photographic nature books for Marlene and Aerith to go over and discuss. She also pulled down board games and puzzles for everyone else. It took a bit of coaxing but soon Shera was trouncing Cid at Shoots and Ladders and Barrett had fallen into the trap of playing Sorry with Denzel. Tifa paused long enough to watch Denzel starting go more cutthroat and merciless on Barrett than a pirate on a fat tax collector. Tifa just shook her head in sympathy and then she went upstairs to clean the rooms while everyone was out of them. Leon followed her and leaned in the doorway as she started to strip down the sheets on the bed in the kid's room. Which had become the 'guys room'. Tifa didn't know who slept on the only mattress but the sheets didn't smell like Cloud.
"Do you always do this?" Leon asked, stepping forward to take the sheets from her arms so she could tuck new ones onto the bed and she looked curiously at him. He gestured with a hand, careful not to lose his grip on the material. "Distract everyone else with happy stuff and then go and do all the work?"
It made her laugh and she shook her head at him.
"Giving you 'happy stuff' is the only way to get you out from under my feet long enough to do any work."
Leon smiled and let her pile the collection of sheets and blankets from the makeshift beds around the room into his arms while she laid out new ones. Cloud apparently slept nearest the door. She could smell that faint clean, windy, lightening smell on the pillow when she picked up it to change its cover.
"I don't get how you're still single," Leon stated as she piled the last set of sheets in his arms and she gave him a dry look from the corners of her eyes.
"Have you seen the way I live?" she asked and he smiled but his eyes were serious.
"I mean it, Tifa. You and Aerith both. You shine like raw materia down here. I'm not complaining – just pointing out you've apparently got an entire Sector of blind men."
Tifa smoothed a hand over Cloud's pillow as she set it back down and looked at Leon. Pressed her lips together as she thought about how to answer.
"Aerith – had someone. Once. A long time ago." He'd left her. Disappeared without a word and to this day Tifa didn't know if Aerith was waiting for someone she could love as much as she'd loved him – or if she was still waiting for him. That had been before Tifa had known her but once a year the usually responsible Aerith got herself smashed drunk. Tifa always made sure it was with her and it was the only time Aerith would talk about why. Tifa wasn't going to share that with anyone else though. That was Aerith's.
"What about you?" Leon asked and Tifa gave him a sideways look, gently teasing.
"I grow an extra head every full moon and chew up other people's slippers."
"Not going to tell me?"
Tifa shrugged and went into the hall to get the broom and dustbin.
"Nothing to tell. No heartbreaks, no lost loves, nothing of interest at all. Being single has just always worked for me."
Leon dropped the sheets in the hallway where she pointed and then came into the room to lift things out of the way so Tifa could sweep the floor easier.
"What if you found something that worked better than being single?" he asked and Tifa decided it was time to change the subject. She shook her head and he nodded in response. After a moment, she couldn't help but ask though:
"What about you? Why are you still single?"
He was quiet for a very long time after that and Tifa didn't rush to fill the silence, the sound of the broom and the muffled sound of Barrett yelling at Cid 'to watch his fucking language there are kids here' floating up the stairs. Finally Leon set down the end of the bed and rested a hand on it, turning his face to look out the window.
"I – lost someone. To Shinra. At first all I wanted was revenge. Later – it just got to be a habit, being alone." He shrugged. "It 'worked for me' too."
Gentle, Tifa reached out and rested a hand on his arm and he raised his other hand to lay it over hers, giving her a tired smile.
"It's all right," he told her softly. "I realized you can live your life and it's not a betrayal of the people you've lost. Took a while – but I figured it out."
She gave his arm a light squeeze and then let go so that she could sweep the dirt into the dust pan.
She understood. In a way. Her father wasn't dead. But he was dying – and a part of him, the part that Tifa had known as a child – that part of him was long dead. Nothing now but a memory with worn edges. Sometimes – she felt guilty for wishing that memory was real and her reality wasn't. Other times she realized if she felt any other way something would be wrong with her.
"So that's why you fight Shinra?" she asked and Leon followed her into the 'girls' room', holding out his arms so she could fill them with the sheets she stripped off mattresses there.
"At first. I joined because of her. I knew it was the right thing to do but I could have left. After – well, it was about revenge. It still is, in a way. But I've seen so many horrible things that Shinra's done since then – I couldn't quit now even if I wanted to. It's too important. Someone has to stand against them come what may."
"Win or lose?" Tifa asked softly, turning her head to look at him. Because alone they could admit it. Shinra was huge. It controlled the world and the people it had working its whims were so many more than the small group that Tifa's house sheltered. Leon's grey eyes met hers over the sheets in his arms and his smile was sad. But he didn't lie to her.
"Win or lose," he agreed softly.
Tifa gave him a soft nod – it wasn't anything she hadn't realized already – and then she gave him an equally soft smile.
"Winning is important. Knowing you did something is even more important. Shinra's lost two reactors so far. I'm not planning my retirement yet."
It made him laugh, which is what she'd wanted and he shifted a shoulder.
"They're certainly wearing a pretty obvious black eye, aren't they?"
"Yep" Tifa agreed as she gestured for him to dump the sheets with the other pile and started sweeping. "Though you could have done this in the summer. A working heater would have been nice."
"If it wouldn't make it obvious, I'd get Cid to see what he could rig for you."
"Ask him anyway," Tifa suggested. Met Leon's eyes. "Pretty soon we're going to have to do without Shinra power anyway, right?"
His face softened and so did the look he gave her.
"Yeah," he agreed, voice a soft rumble, setting down the chair he'd picked up for her so he could move closer and look down at her. His hand closed over the broom she was holding. "Tifa – "
"Tifa!"
Marlene bounded into the room and Tifa's eyebrows went up slightly. Marlene, as full of energy as she was, rarely 'bounded'. But she was bounding now and that meant, Tifa thought as Marlene enthusiastically threw her arms around Tifa's waist and literally knocked her backward a bit with the energy, that Marlene had either gotten into the sugar – again – or she was up to something. The a little too 'young and innocent' look in her little sister's eyes had Tifa leaning mentally toward 'up to something' and she raised an eyebrow at her. Marlene just grinned back at her.
"Aerith wants to go to her church. You should go with her."
It sobered – and distracted Tifa from her suspicions – immediately. If her own block was any indication, the slums would be rolling brown outs. And you had to pass through Sector Six to get to Aerith's church in Sector Five. Not to mention the monsters that lurked in between the Sectors in the trash and ruins that marked the borders.
"I wanted to go too but she said me and Denzel should stay here." Something about Marlene's story was starting to ring a little 'off' to Tifa – though not her friend not taking the children out into the wild neighborhood with her.
"Uh huh," she stated, remark carefully noncommittal. A sure sign to Marlene that she wasn't buying it. Marlene just looked at her and something in her little sister's brown eyes was smug. About to lay down a card she knew would win her the game.
"Cloud's back. He said he would go with her. But they don't know the kinds of flowers I like and so I hoped you'd go too so you could bring some back for me. I want to make downstairs pretty."
Tifa narrowed her eyes at her little sister.
Only lilies grew in Aerith's church. Two colors. It wasn't as if it would exactly be hard for Marlene to tell them which color she preferred. Marlene, arms still around her waist, raised her face and gave Tifa the most practiced – and devastating – puppy eyes she'd ever managed to this point. It immediately made Tifa's heart turn to mush as Marlene threw in a childish:
"Pleeeeeeeeese" for good measure.
Marlene wanted flowers. What was a trip through three dangerous sectors during black out time and across two borders full of hungry monsters compared to the fact her little sister wanted flowers?
Even as Tifa's heart thought it, her brain clicked in and pointed out Marlene didn't want flowers.
She wanted Tifa to go out with Cloud and Aerith. Either to get rid of her so evil could be hatched without her presence or because she thought Tifa should be with Cloud and Aerith no matter where they went. Tifa looked down into her baby sister's eyes.
"Flowers," she repeated and Marlene nodded with a brilliant grin.
"I'll come too," Leon offered and Marlene turned on him in a swirl.
"No! No, you've got to stay." Marlene's face grew more relaxed and serious at the same time as she nodded. "That's right. You have to stay because I need your help for a secret and Tifa can't be around for it. A good secret," she added hastily so Tifa wouldn't insist on staying to thwart it. Tifa met Leon's eyes over Marlene's head and shrugged. The children wouldn't do anything terrible to him… too terrible to him.
"Barrett can't help?" she asked Marlene and Marlene turned and gave her a 'you're messing everything up!' look that spoke volumes of plots being developed and older sisters being kept in the dark.
"No" Marlene explained slowly. "Cause of his arm. The cold hurts where the skin and the metal are together. So I can't ask him to use his arm and I need somebody who can use their arms."
Which was true – and no less suspicious. But Tifa nodded. Sometimes she had to abandon herself to the children. And Marlene was determined.
"All right," Tifa swept the rest of the dust into the pan and dumped it in the trash. "But you and Denzel need to bring all that laundry down to the basement and put it in piles in front of the wash. I'm not going to have guests walking past it and embarrassing me."
"Okay," Marlene agreed readily and Tifa figured, whatever she had planned, she must want it very badly. Setting the broom and pan back in the hall closet, Tifa gave Leon a grin as Marlene caught his arm to drag him over to a corner and went downstairs. Where she discovered Denzel was in on whatever the plot was, because he was already holding her coat for her. She gave him a dry look and he blinked back innocently – though not as convincingly as Marlene. She leaned down to kiss him on the cheek and he confirmed his compliance in the plot by not self-consciously moving away because there were other people in the room.
"I know you and Marlene are up to something," she murmured low in his ear as she kissed his cheek. "And if it's evil – there will be retribution. Of the dire kind."
Denzel tipped his hand. His eyes darted to Cloud who was standing in the doorway, still in his own jacket. Tifa's eyes went huge. Cloud? Cloud was in on the evil? Her eyes narrowed down at the innocent looking blond and she straightened, ruffling Denzel's hair with her hand.
"Okay," she looked at her friend who was standing next to Cloud in the doorway. Aerith could pull 'innocent' on epic levels but right now she was just looking happy and a little bit confused. Tifa's eyes moved to Cloud and saw he was watching her. Not looking at her – watching her. Calmly, patiently – and, perhaps she was getting paranoid – with just the whisper of a glint in his eyes. She slipped into her jacket and Denzel solemnly handed her gloves to her.
Oh. He was in so much trouble when she figured this out. Her eyes never left Cloud's however. And yes – yes, there was now defiantly laughter in the depths of that impossible blue.
"All right" Tifa felt like she was a knight going into battle as she pulled on her gloves. Flashing Cloud a bright smile. Confident there was nothing he could throw at her she couldn't handle. "Let's go."
