FFVII - Tifa and Barret, pre-game
Aug. 30th, 2010 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lirillithTitle: Home
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters: Tifa, Barret
Length: 841
Posted July 2010. A fifteen-minute ficlet that went over the time limit. At the time I posted it, I considered fleshing it out; later I did so. Only after that did I realize that my timeline was all jacked up; Barret by rights shouldn't be in Midgar for another two years.
****
After she was released from the hospital, Tifa was driven by a woman in a blue suit to a gray house near the edge of the plate, smaller than the ones near the center, with a postage stamp of the yard. Mr. and Mrs. Parker were her foster parents, but they didn't act like parents and Mrs. Parker never corrected her when she tried to call her Mrs. Parker or ma'am. Mr. Parker did - "call me Gary," he'd say, and he'd put his arm around her, which Tifa thought might have something to do with the way Mrs. Parker expected her to do the dishes without help and snapped at Gary if he offered to dry them.
They got a stipend for taking care of her, but it didn't come in till the end of the first month, so they took her to a store to buy her secondhand clothes. It wasn't that the clothes were bad, but at school it was really obvious they were secondhand, and she didn't look like anybody else. None of the girls would talk to her; the boys would but she soon learned she didn't want to talk to them at all. She cut class one day, after about a month of never speaking at school and barely speaking at the place she had to call home for want of a better word. She was scared to death and sure something awful would happen, but she was lost in her classes anyway and she didn't have a book report ready, so she rode the train to the department stores on the inner plate, tall, tall buildings with rotating doors. It looked like the movies, all of it, even the trains, and she was so happy she forgot to worry about anyone finding out she'd skipped school.
But she didn't get in trouble. She kept skipping, and one time she forgot to get off the train and rode down below the plate. She wandered around for a bit to kill time until the next train, clutching her purse and not making eye contact with anyone, and noticing that here, unlike in the stores on the plate, she could actually afford some things, and nobody laughed at her shoes.
Thinking of affording things, she went down below the plate again, looking for "now hiring" signs in windows. At one door a huge black man grabbed her arm before she could hurry past him, and she startled both of them by twisting out of his grip and settling into a defensive stance despite the gun on his other hand. He explained he was the bouncer, that he'd heard her looking for a job and just wanted to get her attention since they were hiring. Then he asked her age and decided to talk her out of it. She kept herself from looking at the gun on his wrist as they introduced themselves and fell into conversation about living down below, about the cost of life on the plate, about setting out on her own.
"Just find a vacant lot and it's yours," Barret said. "Set up a tent. It ain't like it ever rains down here." That was easy for him to say, she thought. He had built-in weaponry and wasn't a fifteen-year-old girl who had to slouch to try to make her chest look smaller. She could defend herself just fine, but she had to sleep sometime.
The vacant-lot thing didn't sound like a great idea, not exactly, but a job did, and he helped her find one. She started going to school again, most days, and rode the train down after classes to wait tables. They paid her in cash and she hid the money under her mattress. Then one day Gary helped her dry the dishes. He didn't do anything to her or even say anything, but it made her so uncomfortable she went to her room and counted up her savings and then the next day went looking for apartments below the plate. She never told the Parkers what she was doing - maybe they'd notice eventually. Maybe they'd keep getting the stipend for a while and that'd make up for the clothes she was putting in her bookbag, basically stealing.
She found a place, and got the first month's rent free in exchange for hauling away the mounds of trash the last tenant left. Barret helped, and then they commandeered the dancers' locker room at the club where he worked so they could both have hot showers. Barret helped her find a mattress in a dump and carry it home and then spray the place for bugs. They inspected an abandoned building and talked about starting a restaurant or a bar there, though it'd take them two years before they actually got around to opening one. His daughter Marlene jumped on her mattress until clouds of dust puffed out of it, and Tifa scooped her up and tickled her and thought this was a lot more like a family and a home.
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters: Tifa, Barret
Length: 841
Posted July 2010. A fifteen-minute ficlet that went over the time limit. At the time I posted it, I considered fleshing it out; later I did so. Only after that did I realize that my timeline was all jacked up; Barret by rights shouldn't be in Midgar for another two years.
****
After she was released from the hospital, Tifa was driven by a woman in a blue suit to a gray house near the edge of the plate, smaller than the ones near the center, with a postage stamp of the yard. Mr. and Mrs. Parker were her foster parents, but they didn't act like parents and Mrs. Parker never corrected her when she tried to call her Mrs. Parker or ma'am. Mr. Parker did - "call me Gary," he'd say, and he'd put his arm around her, which Tifa thought might have something to do with the way Mrs. Parker expected her to do the dishes without help and snapped at Gary if he offered to dry them.
They got a stipend for taking care of her, but it didn't come in till the end of the first month, so they took her to a store to buy her secondhand clothes. It wasn't that the clothes were bad, but at school it was really obvious they were secondhand, and she didn't look like anybody else. None of the girls would talk to her; the boys would but she soon learned she didn't want to talk to them at all. She cut class one day, after about a month of never speaking at school and barely speaking at the place she had to call home for want of a better word. She was scared to death and sure something awful would happen, but she was lost in her classes anyway and she didn't have a book report ready, so she rode the train to the department stores on the inner plate, tall, tall buildings with rotating doors. It looked like the movies, all of it, even the trains, and she was so happy she forgot to worry about anyone finding out she'd skipped school.
But she didn't get in trouble. She kept skipping, and one time she forgot to get off the train and rode down below the plate. She wandered around for a bit to kill time until the next train, clutching her purse and not making eye contact with anyone, and noticing that here, unlike in the stores on the plate, she could actually afford some things, and nobody laughed at her shoes.
Thinking of affording things, she went down below the plate again, looking for "now hiring" signs in windows. At one door a huge black man grabbed her arm before she could hurry past him, and she startled both of them by twisting out of his grip and settling into a defensive stance despite the gun on his other hand. He explained he was the bouncer, that he'd heard her looking for a job and just wanted to get her attention since they were hiring. Then he asked her age and decided to talk her out of it. She kept herself from looking at the gun on his wrist as they introduced themselves and fell into conversation about living down below, about the cost of life on the plate, about setting out on her own.
"Just find a vacant lot and it's yours," Barret said. "Set up a tent. It ain't like it ever rains down here." That was easy for him to say, she thought. He had built-in weaponry and wasn't a fifteen-year-old girl who had to slouch to try to make her chest look smaller. She could defend herself just fine, but she had to sleep sometime.
The vacant-lot thing didn't sound like a great idea, not exactly, but a job did, and he helped her find one. She started going to school again, most days, and rode the train down after classes to wait tables. They paid her in cash and she hid the money under her mattress. Then one day Gary helped her dry the dishes. He didn't do anything to her or even say anything, but it made her so uncomfortable she went to her room and counted up her savings and then the next day went looking for apartments below the plate. She never told the Parkers what she was doing - maybe they'd notice eventually. Maybe they'd keep getting the stipend for a while and that'd make up for the clothes she was putting in her bookbag, basically stealing.
She found a place, and got the first month's rent free in exchange for hauling away the mounds of trash the last tenant left. Barret helped, and then they commandeered the dancers' locker room at the club where he worked so they could both have hot showers. Barret helped her find a mattress in a dump and carry it home and then spray the place for bugs. They inspected an abandoned building and talked about starting a restaurant or a bar there, though it'd take them two years before they actually got around to opening one. His daughter Marlene jumped on her mattress until clouds of dust puffed out of it, and Tifa scooped her up and tickled her and thought this was a lot more like a family and a home.
