FFVII - Rude/Tifa, multi-part
Sep. 6th, 2010 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lirillithTitle: Sleep While I drive
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters: Rude/Tifa
Length: 7220 words
Summary: Rude and Tifa connect post-Advent Children. Incomplete.
Warnings: Drinking, cussing, a continuity that acknowledges Advent Children happened.
Notes: Although set post-AC, this doesn't incorporate other Compilation materials or supplementary info. This was posted in multiple parts over an extended period (February 2006 to September 2007) to 30_kisses, so there are inconsistencies in tense and POV between chapters.
Title: You Won't But You Might
Characters: Rude, Reno, Tifa
Length: 893 words
Notes: Theme #6, the space between dream and reality
****
"She's Marl– I mean Barret's kid anyway," she's saying. "Marlene. Is Barret's kid. Yeah."
"Yeah, I wondered about that," Reno says.
"Nobody asked you," Tifa retorts. "I wanna try another bar... that place with the pyramid on the sign?"
"You mean the Pyramid?" Reno asks, sounding amused.
"Leave her alone, Reno," Rude interrupts, while she's trying to sort out her hand to flip his partner off.
"I need to take off anyway," he says. "Remember, I'm taking your shift?"
They hadn't made any arrangement like that. They hadn't had a chance; they were just going to have a couple of drinks before heading back, and then they'd spotted Tifa and Reno had lured her over to their table, and she'd, apparently, been in the mood to talk, or at least to let off steam. "Yeah."
"Just remember to take some materia or somethin' when you walk her home," Reno adds. "I don't think Barret's going to like you getting her liquored up."
"I'm gettin' myself liquored up," Tifa says. "You're just paying for it. I'll take care of Barret."
"Yeah, you two crazy kids have fun," Reno says. Rude mouths a thank-you, and Reno waves it off and pushes his chair back. Rude watches him go, wondering what they're going to do for conversation now, but fortunately Tifa's still talkative.
"I could just go. Just like that," Tifa says hazily. "Take that damn bike of his without asking, and turn off my phone and head off without even thinkin' about anyone waiting for me for months on end."
"Yeah." His means Cloud's, of course.
"Tell Barret to take care of his own kid, and tell Cloud he can stay with us or find a new place but he needs to make up his mind, and none of it's my problem anymore. And tell... tell Yuffie to let that materia thing go, and Cloud..." He listens to her planning out arguments, planning ways to show Cloud how it feels.
He'd sort of thought Cloud would be back with her, now, that it was Geostigma and nothing more keeping them apart. He'd thought they'd be married; thought she was wearing an engagement ring, when he carried her back from the church. But the twin beds where he and Reno laid them may not have been the guest room, he thinks now, or maybe he just hopes. It's not just hope, though. Surely a woman who just got her lover back wouldn't be out drinking alone, or ready to spill her guts to a couple of one-time enemies. Maybe there's too much distance for them to cross quickly, or ever.
Not that there's much closeness between the two of them, either, even now with Tifa's head drifting toward his shoulder. "Why didn't I meet you first?" she asks him.
"You wouldn't have liked me," he points out, because he never shows a reaction if he can help it. "Shinra."
"Before you got that job," she says. "Waybackwhen. Whenever that was. You're a good guy. I mean, one of the bad guys, but a good... guy."
"We didn't think it was that bad. Shinra, I mean."
"Maybe it had its moments. Cars smelled better on evil. I mean mako." She starts giggling. "That was an accident!"
He can't help smiling at the sight of her. "You don't get to laugh enough."
"I..." She seems thrown. "Yeah. Maybe." A moment later, she adds, "I do some. You just don't see it."
"You're right. Sorry."
"Yeah..." she sighs, and her head really is resting on his shoulder now. "Evil did smell better than gas, though."
"Remember cheap air conditioning?" he asks, and brushes her hair back from her forehead.
"Yeah, that's good too," she agrees. "You should ask me out. Catch me on the rebound."
"You want to be caught?"
"Sure. You can come with me. I wanna see the mountains again."
"Sounds like a plan," he says softly, and kisses her forehead. She'll never do it; if she meant any of it, she wouldn't have had to get this drunk to start talking about it. She loves the kids - he could tell from the way she protected them, the way she talked about them earlier in the evening - and she must still love Cloud, or she wouldn't be so fixed on him now.
He'll walk her home tonight, and there'll probably be some kind of confrontation with her friends - Barret, Cloud, maybe both, maybe whoever else is still staying with them - and he'll leave, and he won't see her again unless he starts coming to her bar. He won't; for fear she'll remember, for fear she'll be embarrassed, for the certainty that he will be. Because he knows he'll remember.
"Maybe a car," she's saying, and he says "You'd look good on a motorcycle."
"You think?" she says happily, so happily he knows she's not used to being told she's beautiful.
"You'd look good... no matter what."
"I'm taking that motorcycle," she says, and finishes the drink she'd nearly abandoned. "It's justice. Won't tell anyone where I'm going. Maybe Denzel. He can keep a secret." She's quiet for a little while, then "You sure you want to come?"
"Definitely," he says. Later, he'll take her home, but right now she's leaning on his shoulder and smiling, and he can pretend for a while longer.
****
Title: Gossip
Characters: Rude, Elena, Reno
Length: 578 words
Notes: Theme #7, superstar
****
He'd tried to seem indifferent to the stupid gossip rag, but everyone keeps pointedly leaving it unattended in rooms he'd be walking though, and finally he surrenders to the inevitable.
The cover is Cloud's face, at an angle, half-hidden behind sunglasses, and grainy enough that it's probably a long-distance shot. Tifa's photo is smaller, in an inset over his hair, and more clear, except for a hand, blurred in motion; she's turned slightly away from the camera, her hand up as if to ward it off and blurred in motion, and her expression is indeterminate, guarded. "THE WOMAN IN HIS LIFE?" the headline asks, in huge yellow letters.
"Maybe she likes guys in shades," Elena says, glancing over his shoulder on her way to something else and causing him to nearly drop the magazine.
Saving the world didn't make them into celebrities - it took an airborne fight with a dead man for that. The article's pure fiction, and not exactly well-written either, but he's impressed with their effort. They have fairly accurate rumors about the Avalanche involvement, Cloud's Shinra past - though they report he was First Class in his day - and they even have some whispers of the Jenova Project, though the rumors there are outlandish. They repeat verbatim the old story that Jenova was Sephiroth's mother without finding out what that meant, and they seem to think Avalanche and Sephiroth worked together in assassinating old Nick Shinra. It mentions the theory that dropping the plate was a Shinra move, not Avalanche, but then it says no one will ever know. It calls them "controversial," which is an interesting way of saying "two years ago we called them baby-murdering terrorists."
But the photos are what he remembers: Cloud, looking ridiculously young in a blurry headshot, probably from his ID as a SOLDIER third-class; Tifa struggling to escape during her televised would-be execution; a surveillance shot of the two of them in a station in Midgar, way back when; more recent shots of Tifa entering the church with Marlene, of Cloud working on his bike; and one old one, taken, he remembers, when the Highwind landed outside Kalm. Cloud's got one arm around Tifa, kissing her on the cheek or whispering something in her ear. Her face is turned slightly towards him, one hand lightly touching the arm around her; she's smiling, and she looks young, her face rounder than it is now, her hair longer.
"You don't ever think this is kind of sad?" Reno asks, suddenly, from behind him.
"Aw," Elena objects, "I think it's kind of sweet, in a creepy, stalker-y way."
"Thanks, 'Lena. That means a lot," he says, closing the magazine.
"You didn't get her number or nothing that time she was drunk, did you?"
"Let it go, Reno."
"Sorry," he says. "Can't. We have a job for you."
"This means you can't let it go?"
With a flourish, Reno produces the package, wrapped in brown paper, a letter-sized envelope taped to the outside at two corners. "For that whatever-you-call-it delivery service of theirs. The letter should have instructions and more detail on the contents, but wait till you're with them before you open it," he says, handing it over and then tossing a set of keys. Rude catches them, and turns around, elbow on the back of the couch, to study his partner.
"This seems awfully convenient."
"Funny how stuff like that works, huh? Get moving, you know they're slow."
****
Title: Pretext
Characters: Rude, Tifa
Length: 1114
Notes: Theme #2, news; letter
****
They both stare dubiously at the box on the table. "So what's in it?" she asks.
"Dunno. It's Reno's."
"He never said?"
"No." Rude's starting to get a bad feeling about this. "He gave me a note..." Tear it open. Unfold. The note, written for some reason in purple marker, and in Reno's careless block letters, says "ONE (1) PRETEXT."
"I'm going to kill him," Rude says, and she takes the note before he thinks to crumple it or tuck it away. But she knows anyway. It's purely a matter of dignity and not privacy, at this point. If he ignores the burning of his ears, it will go away in time.
"So there's nothing in it?" she asks, looking dubiously at the box.
"Could be. It's awfully light."
"He doesn't have directions or delivery instructions... I could call him, I guess," she said. "Or you could."
"Hell," he says, pulls out his keychain, and flips open the knife. She blinks at it, and he holds it up for her inspection.
"Most people carry penknives," she says.
"It's not that big," he says, defensive, and then glad Reno's not there to start snickering.
"It just looks sort of evil, you know?" It's really not that big - the knife, he still feels he ought to be saying - but it's curved, and he does keep it sharp, when he's not using it to open boxes. He's done some damage with it once or twice.
"I just liked it," he says, and slits the box open neatly. Inside there's a folded map and another note, purple marker bleeding through the ruled paper. He picks up the letter, thinking she'll take the map, but she just comes around behind him to read over his shoulder. She's not even touching him, but he's very aware of exactly where she's standing, and every time she brushes up against his arm, or shifts her weight. Or maybe he's imagining all of that, but either way, it makes it very hard to focus on a very short note.
Former lab asst. from old Shinra #10 project ran off with samples during Meteor. One of the samples should be a female, same species as Red XIII. Thought you'd be interested.
When not in all-caps, Reno's handwriting looks like a kid's. The purple doesn't help there. "A Cosmo female?" she says. "Is there any confirmation of this at all?"
"News to me," he says. She leans around him to pick up the box, and when she unfolds the map - more purple marker, outlining a route from Midgar into the mountains southwest of it - something flutters to the floor. They both bend down to pick it up and nearly bump heads; this time he leans over her - not touching, he doesn't want to creep her out - as she unfolds a sheet of paper. It's a grainy, black-and-white photo of some kind of big creature with four legs and a head and a tail. Beyond that, it's all conjecture and wishful thinking. It could be cat-like, it could be wolf-like, it could be that weird mix that the Cosmo species seems to be, but it's hard to say.
"Is this, um..."
"Our printers suck," he says. "I wish he'd emailed it to you."
"He wouldn't have known where to send it," she says. "If this is real, it's a really big deal, but..."
He already has his cell phone out. Three key punches to call Reno, about ten seconds before he hears his partner's voice, the "Yeah?" sounding indecently amused.
In the end, Tifa comes with him back to the apartment they're all, save Rufus, sharing, and the three of them huddle around a laptop, peering at an image only a little less grainy than the printout, though at least it's in color. The orange creature doesn't look like much of anything else, and Tifa, at least, thinks it looks like something definite.
"Can't this scientist come here?" she asks, tapping her lip with a thumbnail. "I mean, that's a long way, even if the roads are good, and in the mountains..."
"Already asked," Reno says, and opens up a cascade of emails for her to see. Rude stands back and just stares at her for a bit as she leans over the desk and finally takes over Reno's chair. He doesn't especially care about finding another of Red XIII's species - in a vague way he's probably in favor of it, because in a vague way he agrees that it's bad for a species to go extinct, but it's not something he thinks about much, and Red XIII nearly took his arm off in Gongaga. But he can see that she'd like to believe it, and he'd like to see her smile again, especially if it were because of something even loosely connected to him.
"But the plan was for you to go check," Reno says.
"Nice of you to ask me," she says. "You guys were a lot of help with this last thing, but why should I trust you on this?"
"Because I'm sending the large one with you," Reno says, jerking a thumb at Rude.
"Huh? Why?" Rude asks, jerked out of his reverie.
"Yeah, why?" she asks.
"How's that going to make her feel better?" Rude asks. "I could be planning to kill her."
"Rude, she ain't stupid," Reno says.
"Besides, I could take you," she adds. "That's not really the point. I can't just take off, and there's no telling how long this would take..."
"Why can't you just take off?" Rude asks. He doesn't say You wanted to, but he's thinking it, and looking at her, he thinks she is too. He doesn't want to talk her into a hoax or a wild goose chase, but he's in for it too, and if she thinks it's worth a try, then so does he. It's just a question of whether or not she does, and she crosses her arms over her chest, walks to the window, and just stands there for a moment, obviously considering. He doesn't dare look at Reno right now, even if he wanted to; if she turns around and catches a smirk, and he's almost positive Reno will be smirking, it'll look like they planned this together.
When she finally turns around, she's smiling a bit. "Hell with it," she says. "Why not? Barret's here to look after things, and Cloud's been around a lot more. I could use a break."
He realizes he's grinning, and her smile broadens to match. "When do you want to set out?" she asks, and he honestly thinks he could kiss Reno right now.
****
Title: Departure
Characters: Rude, Tifa, Barret
Length: 583 words
Notes: Theme #25, fence.
****
He was in front of her house at eight on a Monday morning, sitting in the car, debating whether to honk or get out and knock. Honking had in its favor the hope that she'd come out and her friends would stay behind; knocking was polite, but he doubted any amount of courtesy could make Barret stop hating him. He finally turned the key and swung the door open, but as he shut it and looked up he saw her coming out the door. Barret followed her, then the two young kids, then Cloud; she seemed to be talking to them all, but he couldn't hear what they were saying.
There was a chain-link fence around the somewhat overgrown front yard. He paused at the gate, not sure if he ought to even come in, now. Barret was holding one of her bags, and she had another. The little girl hung onto Barret's other hand, the one that used to be a gun. He and Reno used to joke about that, when they were chasing Avalanche - "maybe he'll leave the safety off sometime and forget about it and we'll have one less headache" - but he'd probably always had substitute prosthetics for times when he wasn't fighting. Probably. Rude had just never seen him without the gun until recently, that was all.
She turned toward him and waved, and he reached for the gate latch, tugged at it until it gave and swung up with a protesting squeal, and opened the gate. She came out and set one of the bags down by the car. "Just give a minute to say goodbye to everybody, okay?"
"As long as you need," he said. "Wasn't trying to rush."
"Thanks," she said, sounding distracted, and she turned back to the others. As he opened the trunk of the car and settled her bag in it, next to his, he kept glancing at them. She hugged Barret, then, awkwardly, Cloud. The young boy, Denzel, was hanging back, looking like he was practicing to be as sullen as Cloud, and she bent down to say something quiet to him, then ruffled his hair. Marlene grabbed her and clung, and he wondered if he could shut the trunk unobtrusively. Then he noticed Barret approaching.
"She can hand your ass to you six ways from Sunday," the big man said. "You try and hurt her and she make you regret it. And she got a cell phone, so she can tell us and we'll make you regret it too."
"I know," he said.
"Just makin' sure," he said, and whapped his shoulder, hard, with the metal hand. Rude refused to wince or rub his shoulder. Tifa had come out to join them, and he put her other bag away. The others had all gathered inside the fence. Tifa went back, reached over it to squeeze Marlene's shoulder and then leaned down to kiss the top of her head. He finally closed the trunk, and waited as she walked the few remaining steps to the car.
"Ready to go?" she asked, and he nodded. She gestured at the car door and he finally remembered it was locked, so he unlocked it and held it open for her.
"Nice," she said, smiling at him, and he couldn't help smiling back before he closed the door. When he was settled in the driver's side, she said, hopefully, "Coffee?"
"Oh thank God," he replied, and she was laughing as he turned the ignition.
****
Title: Background
Characters: Rude, Tifa
Length: 657
Notes: Theme #17, kHz
****
"It's weird," she says. "The last time I went on a long road trip with someone I barely knew, it was Aerith."
"Much more chatty," he says, maneuvering his overlarge coffee back into the drink holder. "Sorry."
"No, it's okay... just strange." The silence sits between them for a moment, and then she asks, "Mind if I turn on the radio?"
He doesn't mind. It's easier than being the one who does the talking. She chooses, making derisive comments on each station but settling on the one with the strongest signal. They listen to prefab pop for a couple of hours out of Midgar, then they're left to scan the dial, finally settling on an AM station that comes and goes as they get further into the mountains. She turns the volume lower, but leaves it as a low hum of static and fragments of speech in the background. "I should have brought some CDs," she sighs. "I don't guess you want to tell me about yourself?"
"Not much to tell."
"And you already know everything there is to know about me." There's an edge to her voice, but all he wonders is why it took so long.
"Not true."
"What's missing?"
Reno could deflect this. He wishes Reno was here. He draws a breath, but the words don't come, so he draws another and this time it works. "I don't actually know you."
"Yeah, well-"
He turns toward her, only one eye on the road. "I know about Nibelheim," he says, and she flinches. He does, too, and faces front again, not looking at her as he continues. "I know your parents' names. I've seen your medical records from Midgar General after Zangan checked you in there. I know you play the piano and you rarely drink. I know you were Zangan's favorite student. I know you were using an ID in the name of Lindsay Ashlock when you went with Barret and Cloud to attack the reactor, and you'd used it before on Avalanche runs." He risks a glance; her arms are folded tightly over her chest, and she's staring out the window, away from him. He thinks of the magazine, the small scattering of news stories about them all at the time of Meteor and the blitz recently, and the photo of Cloud kissing her. He thinks of that evening when she was drunk enough to trust him a bit, the feel of her head on his shoulder. "I know about you, but I don't know you."
"So- why--" He's not about to volunteer anything. If she wants to know how he feels, anything about that at all, she has to work out how to ask the question. From the sound of her voice, she's looking at him now, but he doesn't take his eyes off the road. "If you were ever interested in me, and I don't know or care if you are anymore, but if you ever were - why?"
He's asked himself that so many times it's almost easy to answer. "I knew enough about you to... want to know more."
"Why?"
Because Zangan didn't impress easily, so this girl had to be really something. Because if he'd been put in foster care after seeing his father killed in front of him, he wouldn't have run off and started his own business within a couple of months. Because he'd seen her in a surveillance tape and caught his breath at the sight, before he connected her face to the one on the flagged ID at his elbow. "You... impressed me," he said, a painfully difficult three words, and wondered if he'd be able to refuse to say any more.
Her voice is softer when she speaks next, at least, but she still doesn't sound happy. "And I still know jack shit about you."
"You can ask. Ask anything."
"Will you answer?"
"...I'll try."
She laughs, a little. "It's a start."
****
Title: Woman Driving, Man Sleeping
Characters: Rude, Tifa
Length: 1845 words
Notes: Theme #8, our own world
****
When her stomach starts rumbling, she puts her hand to it, embarrassed. "Stop at the next town?" he suggests, one corner of his mouth quirking in what she's come to recognize as a smile, and so much for her hope he hadn't heard.
"It's just seven," she says. "I don't want to stop for the night."
"Fair enough," he replies. "You have the map?"
She's still unfolding it as the sign swings into view - Gas Food Lodging, next two exits. "Could use a chance to stretch my legs," he adds.
At the gas station, she gets out and stretches, then abruptly shrinks in on herself when she realizes she's sticking her chest out. She thinks she catches him looking away when she glances at him. Embarrassed, she heads into the convenience store.
He likes her. She feels like she's back in middle school, putting it that way. He's interested in her. He has been for a long time, and she effectively made the poor man admit that he still is, and for what? She looks out the window, over the display of candy bars, and tries to watch him speculatively. He's tall, broad-shouldered, not a bad-looking guy, but then the bashfulness takes over and she studies the chocolates and packs of gum, worried that her face is red. This isn't a good time to try to make herself think of him that way, anyway, not when they're stuck in the car with each other for hours. And what does she know about him, anyway? She knows he was born in Junon, she knows what he studied in college (and that embarrassed her, too, because he knows she never even finished high school) and how he met Reno. "Story's better when he tells it," he said. "I kicked him out of a bar and wouldn't let him back in, but he kept coming back for a week to talk to me." He'd paused, or stopped, because apparently that was the end of the story. "It's a lot better when he tells it," he added. He'd been working as a bouncer at the time.
He worked for Shinra. He doesn't regret it. She knows that, too.
"Why not?" she'd asked, when he said that.
"You think Shinra was bad? You think any of the governments they replaced were squeaky-clean?"
"That's not the point! People got to vote for them."
"Some of them. But fair enough."
"And whatever any government may have done, none of them did the damage to the Planet that Shinra did."
"You ever smelled an oil refinery?"
"What?"
"Mako was clean power. Cheap and plentiful. All Palmer's rate hikes couldn't jack the price up to what it used to be when power was oil and coal."
"It wasn't clean, it was--"
"We know that now," he said. She'd kept glaring at him, but he didn't look at her. "No one knew before."
"That doesn't change what Shinra did," she said. He hadn't said anything. He'd nodded. Maybe that was a concession.
It was odd; it seemed to be the one thing he'd talk about without prompting or questions. Everything else she'd had to ask of him - where were you born, what were you like in school ("Quiet," he'd said, with that half-smile, and she'd started giggling) what did you do after that, how did you end up in the Turks. But defending Shinra, of all things, pulled him out of his shell.
"Ready to go?" he asks, and she jumps.
"I... we could buy some snack food here and get back on the road," she says, and reaches for a candy bar distractedly. He stops in the middle of putting his wallet in his pocket, and opens it up again.
"If you want," he says. "Just as soon get pizza though."
"Oh, well, pizza's good," she says. "Whatever you want."
"Doesn't have to be pizza."
"No, I-- let's go back to the car."
He nods, opens the door for her and steps back to let her through. She used to tell Barret she could open her own damn doors, but she lets it go this time. "Let's go get pizza," she says, as she opens the car door - she managed to get to it before he could.
"You sure?"
"Yes."
The pizza takes time - the both order beers, then make faces at what they get, but keep drinking for lack of much to say. "Looks like there's another town about an hour or so from here," she says. "We could stop there for the night."
"Sounds fine," he says.
"You'll be okay to drive?" she asks.
"After one beer?" He sounds amused. "You ran a bar."
"People can surprise you! And you didn't say you were going to stop at one."
"It'll be fine." She just nods, sips her own beer, and glances around the restaurant; a group of five teenagers, another of four adults, a family. Plenty of empty booths. She watches the teenagers; one girl seems to be the center of attention, friendly with the other girl, smiling and laughing with the boys, half-flirting. She wonders if that's how she used to look among her friends, at thirteen or fourteen. It wasn't like she set out to flirt with them, but she'd sort of known they liked her, too, a bit, and she hadn't minded. Was that what Cloud used to see in her? She'd thought of them as friends, because she'd thought she was friends with pretty much everyone at school, but she never really spent much time with him. Maybe he'd liked her better as that distant, vivacious, popular girl; that wasn't what she was now, and it wasn't what she'd been when she'd found him again. And then she thought of Aerith, because if there was anyone who really was everyone's friend it was her. She'd never really had female friends until she'd met Aerith. She watched the quieter girl snag a breadstick from her friend's plate and grin, and she let herself miss Aerith again.
Rude was watching her, she realized, but she just took another drink. He could ask what was on her mind if he wanted to know. "You have a time you need to get back?" he asks.
"Not especially. You?" He shakes his head. "Are you wanting to break for the night, then?" A shrug. "I can drive after this."
"You'll be okay to drive?" he says, and she wrinkles her nose at him.
She's okay to drive, they decide, and he tosses her the keys over the car as they return to it after the meal. As they settle into their seats, he lowers the back on his, and hands her the map. "You're planning to sleep?" she asks.
"If it doesn't look like it's working, you can lay the map on me," he says.
"Huh?"
"The noise will wake me."
"Oh."
It seems to work, though. When she looks at him, about five minutes out of town, his head's relaxed to one side; not much later, she notices that his breathing is deep and even. She wishes she could sleep on command like that, though she's not tired now. She thinks she may go on to the next town after this one, see how far they can get in a day. It's not likely she'll miss an exit - this freeway is the largest road through most of these towns. Built by Shinra, of course. She squints even through sunglasses at the setting sun and wishes she could play the radio.
She glances at him again. Five earings, and a shading of stubble on his jaw and scalp, all about the same amount of growth. It's a bit odd to see - she's used to seeing Barret's stubble contrasted to his hair, and Cloud's stubble is virtually invisible, when he even lets it grow. She promised she'd call them when she stopped for the night. "I'll answer my phone," Cloud said quietly, and she'd smiled. "Call mine," Barret insisted. "Some of us don't have to promise to answer because everyone knows we keep in touch." She'd promised, and she'd planned to call them both, but she doesn't want to make it too late. Denzel and Cloud are both still recuperating, and she doubts Barret gets much sleep when he's working; this is his chance to rest, just as the trip, in a different way, is hers.
She never told Barret about what she'd said to Rude that night they got drunk together - the night she'd gotten drunk, anyway. She hadn't mentioned the hazily-remembered kiss on her forehead, hadn't mentioned him putting his jacket on her on the walk home. Hadn't mentioned thinking of kissing him good night as she watched him shrug back into it, not far from her and Cloud's place, and leaning towards him as if hoping it'd happen without any effort from her. Maybe she should have done something before he left, said something, but maybe it would have made it worse, because she couldn't have said she was in love with him; she just kind of wished she was, wished she weren't still hung up on Cloud after all this time. Wished she could drop what seemed now to be a bad habit.
That feels unfair. It's not Cloud's fault. But maybe for her it's a bad habit; waiting for him, holding out hope. He needs people, and she thought he needed her. Maybe for a while he thought so too. But if he thinks that now, he keeps it well-hidden, and she knows he won't say much when she calls. Barret will be suspicious of Rude, and she'll have to reassure him they're in separate rooms, and he'll want the phone back after she talks to Marlene. She'll probably call Cloud first and get rid of the silence by asking to speak to Marlene and Denzel, and Marlene at least will probably demand to speak to her while she's talking to Barret as well. Barret will insist she call him the next night as well, but she suspects Cloud won't. If she thinks about it enough in advance, she won't be disappointed, she hopes.
But it's getting dark, the glare of the sunset finally sinking out of view, and she discards the cheap convenience-store sunglasses and looks at him again. Rude's still wearing his. She thinks of trying to remove them, but she'd wake him. He must be tired - he drove all day. They probably should have stopped after dinner, but she didn't want to face killing a few empty hours in a hotel room before she slept, or trying to kill those empty hours with him; the car makes that easier somehow. This way they're covering more ground, and right now, she likes the quiet, the dark, and being almost alone but not quite. She wishes she could stay like this forever - just her, a sleeping man and the noise of the tires. And her thoughts, but she can try to quiet those for now.
****
Title: On the Road
Characters: Rude, Tifa
Length: 824 words
Notes: Theme #12, in a good mood
****
Hey, Cloud had said, and It's good to hear from you, and after a moment's silence, What's he like? Quiet, she'd said. Like you. She'd gotten a heh out of him, and then he'd handed the phone over to Barret and hadn't been back on. She knows he's never talkative on the phone, but she'd lain on her back for a long time after she went to bed, staring at the cieling, listening to the wheezing of the air conditioner, and wondering how much to beat herself up for being happy when she got a single beat of laughter or a smile out of him. It's like he's returned to the Zack act - an act, now, and not delusion - and she wonders if that's her fault, because she'd always needed him to be the stoic leader. Left to himself, he wasn't like that. Hell, Yuffie described him as a dork, and she's seen him goofing off; just not recently. And usually not with her. Maybe he needs time. She's just not sure how much more.
But things look better in the morning. Waking up, she wonders why she was so upset. She came to terms with being his friend a long time ago, and she's not sure why the old sadness is cropping up. Maybe she's been trying to cling to him harder than usual because of the way he'd distanced himself when he was sick, or maybe that smile knocked her for a loop because it'd been so long since she'd seen it. The dry mountain air is making her hair dry out, so she pulls it back in a ponytail, finishes re-packing, and makes her way to the car. Rude's already there, loading up. "Wow," she says.
"Huh?"
"I'm not used to people being punctual for group travel. Shinra discipline, I guess."
"Turk discipline."
"Close enough." She heaves her bag into the trunk despite his effort to snag it, and their hands touch. He pulls away quickly. "Do you want to go get breakfast?" she asks.
"Figured we'd snag something on the road."
"We covered a lot of ground yesterday, though."
Over pancakes (his) and an omelette (hers) she traces out their route on the map - where she thought they'd stop yesterday, where they actually are, where she plans to stop tonight. "Sounds good," he says, and she wonders why she expected him to say anything more. Finishing her coffee, she studies him across the table. His shades have slipped down his nose a bit, and she can make out that his eyes are brown. When he looks up, she smiles at him, and he quirks a quick smile at her and looks back down. She sips her coffee, grinning inwardly and not quite sure why.
"You want to drive or should I?" she asks on their way out of the restaurant, holding up the keys. He shrugs. "I can," she continues. "You did more than your share yesterday." He just nods, and she sighs.
"Sorry," he says.
"Nah, it's fine," she replies, unlocking the car door.
They're approaching the mountains - she can see them in the distance - but the plains they're driving through are at their prettiest in the morning, with mist hanging low over the fields. The last time they crossed these mountains, they'd gone much farther south, then under and through, winding through caves that made her nervous and gave Barret reason to talk about generations of coal miners in his family. This time they're going to go over, and she remembers explaining to Aerith that mountain passes weren't really visible gaps in the mountains at all. "Something on your mind?" Rude asks, and she realizes she's not sure how long she's been quiet.
"Just thinking. I used to live in the mountain, you know?"
He nods. "I always wanted to. Never managed it."
"You could now," she says.
"When I retire."
"That sucks," she says. "Putting everything off."
"You don't have to," he says.
"Well, yeah, but you shouldn't either."
He turns to look out the side window. "I'm glad. You said you wanted to see the mountains again."
"I did? Ohhh." She feels her face heating up. "Yeah, I guess I did." That night he'd walked her home. And kissed her. Kissed her forehead. She'd forgotten that part.
"Sorry if I, uh..." She glances over, but if he was looking at her, he isn't now, and he doesn't seem to have an end for that sentence. "If I... came on too strong."
"Um, if anyone did, it was probably me."
He chuckles. "No complaints here."
She swallows hard. "None here either."
"What?" He's looking at her now, she sees when she glances at him. "Really?"
"Yeah," she says, before she can lose her nerve. When she glances back at him again, he's taking his glasses off, and she smiles, nervously and only a little, before turning her attention back to the road.
****
Title: Shopping
Characters: Rude/Tifa
Length: 726 words
Notes: Theme #1, look over here
****
She doesn't dare to look at him for quite a while. He doesn't say anything more, and neither does she. She ought to, but she's never been good at talking about her feelings. Her face feels hot. They reach the edge of some small town, right at the edge of the mountains; gas stations and motels, then restaurants.
"Hey," he finally says, some miles along. "I see stores."
"What?" She almost starts laughing. "You need some new shoes?"
"Music," he says. "Possibly."
"Hey, that's an idea. We should at least check."
"Chance to stretch our legs," he says. "Trade off on driving." He put his shades back on at some point. She's a little disappointed she didn't have the nerve to really look at him without them.
"I need to pull my weight," she says. "I told you this morning, you did more than your share yesterday."
"Fight you for the keys," he suggests, and she grins. Things feel normal - more normal than she would have expected.
"You think I'll be recognized?" she asks. "I'm so used to my little part of Midgar, where people just know me and either don't know or don't care about the Avalanche stuff."
He shrugs. "You look a little different with your hair pulled back. And no one'd expect to see you here."
"Hope so," she says, but she's not especially nervous. They'd been swarmed when they landed in Kalm right after Meteor. That was more because people wanted to know what was going on, and the airship - once a Shinra craft, after all - might have had some kind of view of the action, than because anyone associated them with a role in the events. They were heroes in Cosmo and Corel, and almost nowhere else. Not that it stopped tabloids from putting them on the covers on a slow week, but a strip mall should be safe enough.
It is. She's not really disappointed, but a little recognition might have been nice. They wander a bookstore's music section, though Rude doesn't actually pick anything out at first. "I'm not going to judge you based on your music taste, you know," she says.
"Don't think I have music taste."
"Don't let that stop you!"
He does, though. She tries to get them a wide selection without denting her cash too much, but he's noncommittal and no help at all. When they emerge, he points out the big building with the distinctive Shinra-Mart storefront and a sign saying "Elwood's." All the Marts closed down sometime back, but when they go inside, the stock looks about the same - it still seems to sell everything under the sun. She used to shop at one on the plate - it was about the only store on the plate she could afford - back in her early days in Midgar, before Barret's long, impassioned arguments about the dozens of ways the whole chain was evil did their work. She'd known all along the money she spent there went to Shinra, but she'd needed shoes and cereal sometimes.
"What are you looking for?" she asks.
"Dunno."
She sighs. He heads down an aisle and she follows, watching as he sorts through razors. "Forgot yours, huh?"
"Yeah."
She spots something. "Look over here!" she says, making a beeline for the sunglasses. She can hear his footsteps behind her as she selects a pair of cats-eye glasses - rhinestones on the frames, she notes with delight - and puts them on. He actually snickers when she turns around. "No?"
"If you like 'em..."
"You need any?"
"I got plenty." He comes to stand next to her, though, as she sorts through the racks. Their shoulders are almost touching. She feels nervous in a way she hasn't since she spent that night with Cloud, before they fought Sephiroth - the only night she ever spent with him that way - and even then, the nerves had been mixed with grief and fear, all kinds of fear. Now she just feels kind of happy, and she wonders if she shouldn't, even as she notices in the little strip of mirror that he's taken off his sunglasses again. She folds up the ones she'd just pulled from the shelf, turns to him with her heart thumping, and pushes aside doubt as she leans in to kiss him.
****
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters: Rude/Tifa
Length: 7220 words
Summary: Rude and Tifa connect post-Advent Children. Incomplete.
Warnings: Drinking, cussing, a continuity that acknowledges Advent Children happened.
Notes: Although set post-AC, this doesn't incorporate other Compilation materials or supplementary info. This was posted in multiple parts over an extended period (February 2006 to September 2007) to 30_kisses, so there are inconsistencies in tense and POV between chapters.
Title: You Won't But You Might
Characters: Rude, Reno, Tifa
Length: 893 words
Notes: Theme #6, the space between dream and reality
****
"She's Marl– I mean Barret's kid anyway," she's saying. "Marlene. Is Barret's kid. Yeah."
"Yeah, I wondered about that," Reno says.
"Nobody asked you," Tifa retorts. "I wanna try another bar... that place with the pyramid on the sign?"
"You mean the Pyramid?" Reno asks, sounding amused.
"Leave her alone, Reno," Rude interrupts, while she's trying to sort out her hand to flip his partner off.
"I need to take off anyway," he says. "Remember, I'm taking your shift?"
They hadn't made any arrangement like that. They hadn't had a chance; they were just going to have a couple of drinks before heading back, and then they'd spotted Tifa and Reno had lured her over to their table, and she'd, apparently, been in the mood to talk, or at least to let off steam. "Yeah."
"Just remember to take some materia or somethin' when you walk her home," Reno adds. "I don't think Barret's going to like you getting her liquored up."
"I'm gettin' myself liquored up," Tifa says. "You're just paying for it. I'll take care of Barret."
"Yeah, you two crazy kids have fun," Reno says. Rude mouths a thank-you, and Reno waves it off and pushes his chair back. Rude watches him go, wondering what they're going to do for conversation now, but fortunately Tifa's still talkative.
"I could just go. Just like that," Tifa says hazily. "Take that damn bike of his without asking, and turn off my phone and head off without even thinkin' about anyone waiting for me for months on end."
"Yeah." His means Cloud's, of course.
"Tell Barret to take care of his own kid, and tell Cloud he can stay with us or find a new place but he needs to make up his mind, and none of it's my problem anymore. And tell... tell Yuffie to let that materia thing go, and Cloud..." He listens to her planning out arguments, planning ways to show Cloud how it feels.
He'd sort of thought Cloud would be back with her, now, that it was Geostigma and nothing more keeping them apart. He'd thought they'd be married; thought she was wearing an engagement ring, when he carried her back from the church. But the twin beds where he and Reno laid them may not have been the guest room, he thinks now, or maybe he just hopes. It's not just hope, though. Surely a woman who just got her lover back wouldn't be out drinking alone, or ready to spill her guts to a couple of one-time enemies. Maybe there's too much distance for them to cross quickly, or ever.
Not that there's much closeness between the two of them, either, even now with Tifa's head drifting toward his shoulder. "Why didn't I meet you first?" she asks him.
"You wouldn't have liked me," he points out, because he never shows a reaction if he can help it. "Shinra."
"Before you got that job," she says. "Waybackwhen. Whenever that was. You're a good guy. I mean, one of the bad guys, but a good... guy."
"We didn't think it was that bad. Shinra, I mean."
"Maybe it had its moments. Cars smelled better on evil. I mean mako." She starts giggling. "That was an accident!"
He can't help smiling at the sight of her. "You don't get to laugh enough."
"I..." She seems thrown. "Yeah. Maybe." A moment later, she adds, "I do some. You just don't see it."
"You're right. Sorry."
"Yeah..." she sighs, and her head really is resting on his shoulder now. "Evil did smell better than gas, though."
"Remember cheap air conditioning?" he asks, and brushes her hair back from her forehead.
"Yeah, that's good too," she agrees. "You should ask me out. Catch me on the rebound."
"You want to be caught?"
"Sure. You can come with me. I wanna see the mountains again."
"Sounds like a plan," he says softly, and kisses her forehead. She'll never do it; if she meant any of it, she wouldn't have had to get this drunk to start talking about it. She loves the kids - he could tell from the way she protected them, the way she talked about them earlier in the evening - and she must still love Cloud, or she wouldn't be so fixed on him now.
He'll walk her home tonight, and there'll probably be some kind of confrontation with her friends - Barret, Cloud, maybe both, maybe whoever else is still staying with them - and he'll leave, and he won't see her again unless he starts coming to her bar. He won't; for fear she'll remember, for fear she'll be embarrassed, for the certainty that he will be. Because he knows he'll remember.
"Maybe a car," she's saying, and he says "You'd look good on a motorcycle."
"You think?" she says happily, so happily he knows she's not used to being told she's beautiful.
"You'd look good... no matter what."
"I'm taking that motorcycle," she says, and finishes the drink she'd nearly abandoned. "It's justice. Won't tell anyone where I'm going. Maybe Denzel. He can keep a secret." She's quiet for a little while, then "You sure you want to come?"
"Definitely," he says. Later, he'll take her home, but right now she's leaning on his shoulder and smiling, and he can pretend for a while longer.
****
Title: Gossip
Characters: Rude, Elena, Reno
Length: 578 words
Notes: Theme #7, superstar
****
He'd tried to seem indifferent to the stupid gossip rag, but everyone keeps pointedly leaving it unattended in rooms he'd be walking though, and finally he surrenders to the inevitable.
The cover is Cloud's face, at an angle, half-hidden behind sunglasses, and grainy enough that it's probably a long-distance shot. Tifa's photo is smaller, in an inset over his hair, and more clear, except for a hand, blurred in motion; she's turned slightly away from the camera, her hand up as if to ward it off and blurred in motion, and her expression is indeterminate, guarded. "THE WOMAN IN HIS LIFE?" the headline asks, in huge yellow letters.
"Maybe she likes guys in shades," Elena says, glancing over his shoulder on her way to something else and causing him to nearly drop the magazine.
Saving the world didn't make them into celebrities - it took an airborne fight with a dead man for that. The article's pure fiction, and not exactly well-written either, but he's impressed with their effort. They have fairly accurate rumors about the Avalanche involvement, Cloud's Shinra past - though they report he was First Class in his day - and they even have some whispers of the Jenova Project, though the rumors there are outlandish. They repeat verbatim the old story that Jenova was Sephiroth's mother without finding out what that meant, and they seem to think Avalanche and Sephiroth worked together in assassinating old Nick Shinra. It mentions the theory that dropping the plate was a Shinra move, not Avalanche, but then it says no one will ever know. It calls them "controversial," which is an interesting way of saying "two years ago we called them baby-murdering terrorists."
But the photos are what he remembers: Cloud, looking ridiculously young in a blurry headshot, probably from his ID as a SOLDIER third-class; Tifa struggling to escape during her televised would-be execution; a surveillance shot of the two of them in a station in Midgar, way back when; more recent shots of Tifa entering the church with Marlene, of Cloud working on his bike; and one old one, taken, he remembers, when the Highwind landed outside Kalm. Cloud's got one arm around Tifa, kissing her on the cheek or whispering something in her ear. Her face is turned slightly towards him, one hand lightly touching the arm around her; she's smiling, and she looks young, her face rounder than it is now, her hair longer.
"You don't ever think this is kind of sad?" Reno asks, suddenly, from behind him.
"Aw," Elena objects, "I think it's kind of sweet, in a creepy, stalker-y way."
"Thanks, 'Lena. That means a lot," he says, closing the magazine.
"You didn't get her number or nothing that time she was drunk, did you?"
"Let it go, Reno."
"Sorry," he says. "Can't. We have a job for you."
"This means you can't let it go?"
With a flourish, Reno produces the package, wrapped in brown paper, a letter-sized envelope taped to the outside at two corners. "For that whatever-you-call-it delivery service of theirs. The letter should have instructions and more detail on the contents, but wait till you're with them before you open it," he says, handing it over and then tossing a set of keys. Rude catches them, and turns around, elbow on the back of the couch, to study his partner.
"This seems awfully convenient."
"Funny how stuff like that works, huh? Get moving, you know they're slow."
****
Title: Pretext
Characters: Rude, Tifa
Length: 1114
Notes: Theme #2, news; letter
****
They both stare dubiously at the box on the table. "So what's in it?" she asks.
"Dunno. It's Reno's."
"He never said?"
"No." Rude's starting to get a bad feeling about this. "He gave me a note..." Tear it open. Unfold. The note, written for some reason in purple marker, and in Reno's careless block letters, says "ONE (1) PRETEXT."
"I'm going to kill him," Rude says, and she takes the note before he thinks to crumple it or tuck it away. But she knows anyway. It's purely a matter of dignity and not privacy, at this point. If he ignores the burning of his ears, it will go away in time.
"So there's nothing in it?" she asks, looking dubiously at the box.
"Could be. It's awfully light."
"He doesn't have directions or delivery instructions... I could call him, I guess," she said. "Or you could."
"Hell," he says, pulls out his keychain, and flips open the knife. She blinks at it, and he holds it up for her inspection.
"Most people carry penknives," she says.
"It's not that big," he says, defensive, and then glad Reno's not there to start snickering.
"It just looks sort of evil, you know?" It's really not that big - the knife, he still feels he ought to be saying - but it's curved, and he does keep it sharp, when he's not using it to open boxes. He's done some damage with it once or twice.
"I just liked it," he says, and slits the box open neatly. Inside there's a folded map and another note, purple marker bleeding through the ruled paper. He picks up the letter, thinking she'll take the map, but she just comes around behind him to read over his shoulder. She's not even touching him, but he's very aware of exactly where she's standing, and every time she brushes up against his arm, or shifts her weight. Or maybe he's imagining all of that, but either way, it makes it very hard to focus on a very short note.
Former lab asst. from old Shinra #10 project ran off with samples during Meteor. One of the samples should be a female, same species as Red XIII. Thought you'd be interested.
When not in all-caps, Reno's handwriting looks like a kid's. The purple doesn't help there. "A Cosmo female?" she says. "Is there any confirmation of this at all?"
"News to me," he says. She leans around him to pick up the box, and when she unfolds the map - more purple marker, outlining a route from Midgar into the mountains southwest of it - something flutters to the floor. They both bend down to pick it up and nearly bump heads; this time he leans over her - not touching, he doesn't want to creep her out - as she unfolds a sheet of paper. It's a grainy, black-and-white photo of some kind of big creature with four legs and a head and a tail. Beyond that, it's all conjecture and wishful thinking. It could be cat-like, it could be wolf-like, it could be that weird mix that the Cosmo species seems to be, but it's hard to say.
"Is this, um..."
"Our printers suck," he says. "I wish he'd emailed it to you."
"He wouldn't have known where to send it," she says. "If this is real, it's a really big deal, but..."
He already has his cell phone out. Three key punches to call Reno, about ten seconds before he hears his partner's voice, the "Yeah?" sounding indecently amused.
***
In the end, Tifa comes with him back to the apartment they're all, save Rufus, sharing, and the three of them huddle around a laptop, peering at an image only a little less grainy than the printout, though at least it's in color. The orange creature doesn't look like much of anything else, and Tifa, at least, thinks it looks like something definite.
"Can't this scientist come here?" she asks, tapping her lip with a thumbnail. "I mean, that's a long way, even if the roads are good, and in the mountains..."
"Already asked," Reno says, and opens up a cascade of emails for her to see. Rude stands back and just stares at her for a bit as she leans over the desk and finally takes over Reno's chair. He doesn't especially care about finding another of Red XIII's species - in a vague way he's probably in favor of it, because in a vague way he agrees that it's bad for a species to go extinct, but it's not something he thinks about much, and Red XIII nearly took his arm off in Gongaga. But he can see that she'd like to believe it, and he'd like to see her smile again, especially if it were because of something even loosely connected to him.
"But the plan was for you to go check," Reno says.
"Nice of you to ask me," she says. "You guys were a lot of help with this last thing, but why should I trust you on this?"
"Because I'm sending the large one with you," Reno says, jerking a thumb at Rude.
"Huh? Why?" Rude asks, jerked out of his reverie.
"Yeah, why?" she asks.
"How's that going to make her feel better?" Rude asks. "I could be planning to kill her."
"Rude, she ain't stupid," Reno says.
"Besides, I could take you," she adds. "That's not really the point. I can't just take off, and there's no telling how long this would take..."
"Why can't you just take off?" Rude asks. He doesn't say You wanted to, but he's thinking it, and looking at her, he thinks she is too. He doesn't want to talk her into a hoax or a wild goose chase, but he's in for it too, and if she thinks it's worth a try, then so does he. It's just a question of whether or not she does, and she crosses her arms over her chest, walks to the window, and just stands there for a moment, obviously considering. He doesn't dare look at Reno right now, even if he wanted to; if she turns around and catches a smirk, and he's almost positive Reno will be smirking, it'll look like they planned this together.
When she finally turns around, she's smiling a bit. "Hell with it," she says. "Why not? Barret's here to look after things, and Cloud's been around a lot more. I could use a break."
He realizes he's grinning, and her smile broadens to match. "When do you want to set out?" she asks, and he honestly thinks he could kiss Reno right now.
****
Title: Departure
Characters: Rude, Tifa, Barret
Length: 583 words
Notes: Theme #25, fence.
****
He was in front of her house at eight on a Monday morning, sitting in the car, debating whether to honk or get out and knock. Honking had in its favor the hope that she'd come out and her friends would stay behind; knocking was polite, but he doubted any amount of courtesy could make Barret stop hating him. He finally turned the key and swung the door open, but as he shut it and looked up he saw her coming out the door. Barret followed her, then the two young kids, then Cloud; she seemed to be talking to them all, but he couldn't hear what they were saying.
There was a chain-link fence around the somewhat overgrown front yard. He paused at the gate, not sure if he ought to even come in, now. Barret was holding one of her bags, and she had another. The little girl hung onto Barret's other hand, the one that used to be a gun. He and Reno used to joke about that, when they were chasing Avalanche - "maybe he'll leave the safety off sometime and forget about it and we'll have one less headache" - but he'd probably always had substitute prosthetics for times when he wasn't fighting. Probably. Rude had just never seen him without the gun until recently, that was all.
She turned toward him and waved, and he reached for the gate latch, tugged at it until it gave and swung up with a protesting squeal, and opened the gate. She came out and set one of the bags down by the car. "Just give a minute to say goodbye to everybody, okay?"
"As long as you need," he said. "Wasn't trying to rush."
"Thanks," she said, sounding distracted, and she turned back to the others. As he opened the trunk of the car and settled her bag in it, next to his, he kept glancing at them. She hugged Barret, then, awkwardly, Cloud. The young boy, Denzel, was hanging back, looking like he was practicing to be as sullen as Cloud, and she bent down to say something quiet to him, then ruffled his hair. Marlene grabbed her and clung, and he wondered if he could shut the trunk unobtrusively. Then he noticed Barret approaching.
"She can hand your ass to you six ways from Sunday," the big man said. "You try and hurt her and she make you regret it. And she got a cell phone, so she can tell us and we'll make you regret it too."
"I know," he said.
"Just makin' sure," he said, and whapped his shoulder, hard, with the metal hand. Rude refused to wince or rub his shoulder. Tifa had come out to join them, and he put her other bag away. The others had all gathered inside the fence. Tifa went back, reached over it to squeeze Marlene's shoulder and then leaned down to kiss the top of her head. He finally closed the trunk, and waited as she walked the few remaining steps to the car.
"Ready to go?" she asked, and he nodded. She gestured at the car door and he finally remembered it was locked, so he unlocked it and held it open for her.
"Nice," she said, smiling at him, and he couldn't help smiling back before he closed the door. When he was settled in the driver's side, she said, hopefully, "Coffee?"
"Oh thank God," he replied, and she was laughing as he turned the ignition.
****
Title: Background
Characters: Rude, Tifa
Length: 657
Notes: Theme #17, kHz
****
"It's weird," she says. "The last time I went on a long road trip with someone I barely knew, it was Aerith."
"Much more chatty," he says, maneuvering his overlarge coffee back into the drink holder. "Sorry."
"No, it's okay... just strange." The silence sits between them for a moment, and then she asks, "Mind if I turn on the radio?"
He doesn't mind. It's easier than being the one who does the talking. She chooses, making derisive comments on each station but settling on the one with the strongest signal. They listen to prefab pop for a couple of hours out of Midgar, then they're left to scan the dial, finally settling on an AM station that comes and goes as they get further into the mountains. She turns the volume lower, but leaves it as a low hum of static and fragments of speech in the background. "I should have brought some CDs," she sighs. "I don't guess you want to tell me about yourself?"
"Not much to tell."
"And you already know everything there is to know about me." There's an edge to her voice, but all he wonders is why it took so long.
"Not true."
"What's missing?"
Reno could deflect this. He wishes Reno was here. He draws a breath, but the words don't come, so he draws another and this time it works. "I don't actually know you."
"Yeah, well-"
He turns toward her, only one eye on the road. "I know about Nibelheim," he says, and she flinches. He does, too, and faces front again, not looking at her as he continues. "I know your parents' names. I've seen your medical records from Midgar General after Zangan checked you in there. I know you play the piano and you rarely drink. I know you were Zangan's favorite student. I know you were using an ID in the name of Lindsay Ashlock when you went with Barret and Cloud to attack the reactor, and you'd used it before on Avalanche runs." He risks a glance; her arms are folded tightly over her chest, and she's staring out the window, away from him. He thinks of the magazine, the small scattering of news stories about them all at the time of Meteor and the blitz recently, and the photo of Cloud kissing her. He thinks of that evening when she was drunk enough to trust him a bit, the feel of her head on his shoulder. "I know about you, but I don't know you."
"So- why--" He's not about to volunteer anything. If she wants to know how he feels, anything about that at all, she has to work out how to ask the question. From the sound of her voice, she's looking at him now, but he doesn't take his eyes off the road. "If you were ever interested in me, and I don't know or care if you are anymore, but if you ever were - why?"
He's asked himself that so many times it's almost easy to answer. "I knew enough about you to... want to know more."
"Why?"
Because Zangan didn't impress easily, so this girl had to be really something. Because if he'd been put in foster care after seeing his father killed in front of him, he wouldn't have run off and started his own business within a couple of months. Because he'd seen her in a surveillance tape and caught his breath at the sight, before he connected her face to the one on the flagged ID at his elbow. "You... impressed me," he said, a painfully difficult three words, and wondered if he'd be able to refuse to say any more.
Her voice is softer when she speaks next, at least, but she still doesn't sound happy. "And I still know jack shit about you."
"You can ask. Ask anything."
"Will you answer?"
"...I'll try."
She laughs, a little. "It's a start."
****
Title: Woman Driving, Man Sleeping
Characters: Rude, Tifa
Length: 1845 words
Notes: Theme #8, our own world
****
When her stomach starts rumbling, she puts her hand to it, embarrassed. "Stop at the next town?" he suggests, one corner of his mouth quirking in what she's come to recognize as a smile, and so much for her hope he hadn't heard.
"It's just seven," she says. "I don't want to stop for the night."
"Fair enough," he replies. "You have the map?"
She's still unfolding it as the sign swings into view - Gas Food Lodging, next two exits. "Could use a chance to stretch my legs," he adds.
***
At the gas station, she gets out and stretches, then abruptly shrinks in on herself when she realizes she's sticking her chest out. She thinks she catches him looking away when she glances at him. Embarrassed, she heads into the convenience store.
He likes her. She feels like she's back in middle school, putting it that way. He's interested in her. He has been for a long time, and she effectively made the poor man admit that he still is, and for what? She looks out the window, over the display of candy bars, and tries to watch him speculatively. He's tall, broad-shouldered, not a bad-looking guy, but then the bashfulness takes over and she studies the chocolates and packs of gum, worried that her face is red. This isn't a good time to try to make herself think of him that way, anyway, not when they're stuck in the car with each other for hours. And what does she know about him, anyway? She knows he was born in Junon, she knows what he studied in college (and that embarrassed her, too, because he knows she never even finished high school) and how he met Reno. "Story's better when he tells it," he said. "I kicked him out of a bar and wouldn't let him back in, but he kept coming back for a week to talk to me." He'd paused, or stopped, because apparently that was the end of the story. "It's a lot better when he tells it," he added. He'd been working as a bouncer at the time.
He worked for Shinra. He doesn't regret it. She knows that, too.
"Why not?" she'd asked, when he said that.
"You think Shinra was bad? You think any of the governments they replaced were squeaky-clean?"
"That's not the point! People got to vote for them."
"Some of them. But fair enough."
"And whatever any government may have done, none of them did the damage to the Planet that Shinra did."
"You ever smelled an oil refinery?"
"What?"
"Mako was clean power. Cheap and plentiful. All Palmer's rate hikes couldn't jack the price up to what it used to be when power was oil and coal."
"It wasn't clean, it was--"
"We know that now," he said. She'd kept glaring at him, but he didn't look at her. "No one knew before."
"That doesn't change what Shinra did," she said. He hadn't said anything. He'd nodded. Maybe that was a concession.
It was odd; it seemed to be the one thing he'd talk about without prompting or questions. Everything else she'd had to ask of him - where were you born, what were you like in school ("Quiet," he'd said, with that half-smile, and she'd started giggling) what did you do after that, how did you end up in the Turks. But defending Shinra, of all things, pulled him out of his shell.
"Ready to go?" he asks, and she jumps.
"I... we could buy some snack food here and get back on the road," she says, and reaches for a candy bar distractedly. He stops in the middle of putting his wallet in his pocket, and opens it up again.
"If you want," he says. "Just as soon get pizza though."
"Oh, well, pizza's good," she says. "Whatever you want."
"Doesn't have to be pizza."
"No, I-- let's go back to the car."
He nods, opens the door for her and steps back to let her through. She used to tell Barret she could open her own damn doors, but she lets it go this time. "Let's go get pizza," she says, as she opens the car door - she managed to get to it before he could.
"You sure?"
"Yes."
***
The pizza takes time - the both order beers, then make faces at what they get, but keep drinking for lack of much to say. "Looks like there's another town about an hour or so from here," she says. "We could stop there for the night."
"Sounds fine," he says.
"You'll be okay to drive?" she asks.
"After one beer?" He sounds amused. "You ran a bar."
"People can surprise you! And you didn't say you were going to stop at one."
"It'll be fine." She just nods, sips her own beer, and glances around the restaurant; a group of five teenagers, another of four adults, a family. Plenty of empty booths. She watches the teenagers; one girl seems to be the center of attention, friendly with the other girl, smiling and laughing with the boys, half-flirting. She wonders if that's how she used to look among her friends, at thirteen or fourteen. It wasn't like she set out to flirt with them, but she'd sort of known they liked her, too, a bit, and she hadn't minded. Was that what Cloud used to see in her? She'd thought of them as friends, because she'd thought she was friends with pretty much everyone at school, but she never really spent much time with him. Maybe he'd liked her better as that distant, vivacious, popular girl; that wasn't what she was now, and it wasn't what she'd been when she'd found him again. And then she thought of Aerith, because if there was anyone who really was everyone's friend it was her. She'd never really had female friends until she'd met Aerith. She watched the quieter girl snag a breadstick from her friend's plate and grin, and she let herself miss Aerith again.
Rude was watching her, she realized, but she just took another drink. He could ask what was on her mind if he wanted to know. "You have a time you need to get back?" he asks.
"Not especially. You?" He shakes his head. "Are you wanting to break for the night, then?" A shrug. "I can drive after this."
"You'll be okay to drive?" he says, and she wrinkles her nose at him.
***
She's okay to drive, they decide, and he tosses her the keys over the car as they return to it after the meal. As they settle into their seats, he lowers the back on his, and hands her the map. "You're planning to sleep?" she asks.
"If it doesn't look like it's working, you can lay the map on me," he says.
"Huh?"
"The noise will wake me."
"Oh."
It seems to work, though. When she looks at him, about five minutes out of town, his head's relaxed to one side; not much later, she notices that his breathing is deep and even. She wishes she could sleep on command like that, though she's not tired now. She thinks she may go on to the next town after this one, see how far they can get in a day. It's not likely she'll miss an exit - this freeway is the largest road through most of these towns. Built by Shinra, of course. She squints even through sunglasses at the setting sun and wishes she could play the radio.
She glances at him again. Five earings, and a shading of stubble on his jaw and scalp, all about the same amount of growth. It's a bit odd to see - she's used to seeing Barret's stubble contrasted to his hair, and Cloud's stubble is virtually invisible, when he even lets it grow. She promised she'd call them when she stopped for the night. "I'll answer my phone," Cloud said quietly, and she'd smiled. "Call mine," Barret insisted. "Some of us don't have to promise to answer because everyone knows we keep in touch." She'd promised, and she'd planned to call them both, but she doesn't want to make it too late. Denzel and Cloud are both still recuperating, and she doubts Barret gets much sleep when he's working; this is his chance to rest, just as the trip, in a different way, is hers.
She never told Barret about what she'd said to Rude that night they got drunk together - the night she'd gotten drunk, anyway. She hadn't mentioned the hazily-remembered kiss on her forehead, hadn't mentioned him putting his jacket on her on the walk home. Hadn't mentioned thinking of kissing him good night as she watched him shrug back into it, not far from her and Cloud's place, and leaning towards him as if hoping it'd happen without any effort from her. Maybe she should have done something before he left, said something, but maybe it would have made it worse, because she couldn't have said she was in love with him; she just kind of wished she was, wished she weren't still hung up on Cloud after all this time. Wished she could drop what seemed now to be a bad habit.
That feels unfair. It's not Cloud's fault. But maybe for her it's a bad habit; waiting for him, holding out hope. He needs people, and she thought he needed her. Maybe for a while he thought so too. But if he thinks that now, he keeps it well-hidden, and she knows he won't say much when she calls. Barret will be suspicious of Rude, and she'll have to reassure him they're in separate rooms, and he'll want the phone back after she talks to Marlene. She'll probably call Cloud first and get rid of the silence by asking to speak to Marlene and Denzel, and Marlene at least will probably demand to speak to her while she's talking to Barret as well. Barret will insist she call him the next night as well, but she suspects Cloud won't. If she thinks about it enough in advance, she won't be disappointed, she hopes.
But it's getting dark, the glare of the sunset finally sinking out of view, and she discards the cheap convenience-store sunglasses and looks at him again. Rude's still wearing his. She thinks of trying to remove them, but she'd wake him. He must be tired - he drove all day. They probably should have stopped after dinner, but she didn't want to face killing a few empty hours in a hotel room before she slept, or trying to kill those empty hours with him; the car makes that easier somehow. This way they're covering more ground, and right now, she likes the quiet, the dark, and being almost alone but not quite. She wishes she could stay like this forever - just her, a sleeping man and the noise of the tires. And her thoughts, but she can try to quiet those for now.
****
Title: On the Road
Characters: Rude, Tifa
Length: 824 words
Notes: Theme #12, in a good mood
****
Hey, Cloud had said, and It's good to hear from you, and after a moment's silence, What's he like? Quiet, she'd said. Like you. She'd gotten a heh out of him, and then he'd handed the phone over to Barret and hadn't been back on. She knows he's never talkative on the phone, but she'd lain on her back for a long time after she went to bed, staring at the cieling, listening to the wheezing of the air conditioner, and wondering how much to beat herself up for being happy when she got a single beat of laughter or a smile out of him. It's like he's returned to the Zack act - an act, now, and not delusion - and she wonders if that's her fault, because she'd always needed him to be the stoic leader. Left to himself, he wasn't like that. Hell, Yuffie described him as a dork, and she's seen him goofing off; just not recently. And usually not with her. Maybe he needs time. She's just not sure how much more.
But things look better in the morning. Waking up, she wonders why she was so upset. She came to terms with being his friend a long time ago, and she's not sure why the old sadness is cropping up. Maybe she's been trying to cling to him harder than usual because of the way he'd distanced himself when he was sick, or maybe that smile knocked her for a loop because it'd been so long since she'd seen it. The dry mountain air is making her hair dry out, so she pulls it back in a ponytail, finishes re-packing, and makes her way to the car. Rude's already there, loading up. "Wow," she says.
"Huh?"
"I'm not used to people being punctual for group travel. Shinra discipline, I guess."
"Turk discipline."
"Close enough." She heaves her bag into the trunk despite his effort to snag it, and their hands touch. He pulls away quickly. "Do you want to go get breakfast?" she asks.
"Figured we'd snag something on the road."
"We covered a lot of ground yesterday, though."
***
Over pancakes (his) and an omelette (hers) she traces out their route on the map - where she thought they'd stop yesterday, where they actually are, where she plans to stop tonight. "Sounds good," he says, and she wonders why she expected him to say anything more. Finishing her coffee, she studies him across the table. His shades have slipped down his nose a bit, and she can make out that his eyes are brown. When he looks up, she smiles at him, and he quirks a quick smile at her and looks back down. She sips her coffee, grinning inwardly and not quite sure why.
"You want to drive or should I?" she asks on their way out of the restaurant, holding up the keys. He shrugs. "I can," she continues. "You did more than your share yesterday." He just nods, and she sighs.
"Sorry," he says.
"Nah, it's fine," she replies, unlocking the car door.
***
They're approaching the mountains - she can see them in the distance - but the plains they're driving through are at their prettiest in the morning, with mist hanging low over the fields. The last time they crossed these mountains, they'd gone much farther south, then under and through, winding through caves that made her nervous and gave Barret reason to talk about generations of coal miners in his family. This time they're going to go over, and she remembers explaining to Aerith that mountain passes weren't really visible gaps in the mountains at all. "Something on your mind?" Rude asks, and she realizes she's not sure how long she's been quiet.
"Just thinking. I used to live in the mountain, you know?"
He nods. "I always wanted to. Never managed it."
"You could now," she says.
"When I retire."
"That sucks," she says. "Putting everything off."
"You don't have to," he says.
"Well, yeah, but you shouldn't either."
He turns to look out the side window. "I'm glad. You said you wanted to see the mountains again."
"I did? Ohhh." She feels her face heating up. "Yeah, I guess I did." That night he'd walked her home. And kissed her. Kissed her forehead. She'd forgotten that part.
"Sorry if I, uh..." She glances over, but if he was looking at her, he isn't now, and he doesn't seem to have an end for that sentence. "If I... came on too strong."
"Um, if anyone did, it was probably me."
He chuckles. "No complaints here."
She swallows hard. "None here either."
"What?" He's looking at her now, she sees when she glances at him. "Really?"
"Yeah," she says, before she can lose her nerve. When she glances back at him again, he's taking his glasses off, and she smiles, nervously and only a little, before turning her attention back to the road.
****
Title: Shopping
Characters: Rude/Tifa
Length: 726 words
Notes: Theme #1, look over here
****
She doesn't dare to look at him for quite a while. He doesn't say anything more, and neither does she. She ought to, but she's never been good at talking about her feelings. Her face feels hot. They reach the edge of some small town, right at the edge of the mountains; gas stations and motels, then restaurants.
"Hey," he finally says, some miles along. "I see stores."
"What?" She almost starts laughing. "You need some new shoes?"
"Music," he says. "Possibly."
"Hey, that's an idea. We should at least check."
"Chance to stretch our legs," he says. "Trade off on driving." He put his shades back on at some point. She's a little disappointed she didn't have the nerve to really look at him without them.
"I need to pull my weight," she says. "I told you this morning, you did more than your share yesterday."
"Fight you for the keys," he suggests, and she grins. Things feel normal - more normal than she would have expected.
"You think I'll be recognized?" she asks. "I'm so used to my little part of Midgar, where people just know me and either don't know or don't care about the Avalanche stuff."
He shrugs. "You look a little different with your hair pulled back. And no one'd expect to see you here."
"Hope so," she says, but she's not especially nervous. They'd been swarmed when they landed in Kalm right after Meteor. That was more because people wanted to know what was going on, and the airship - once a Shinra craft, after all - might have had some kind of view of the action, than because anyone associated them with a role in the events. They were heroes in Cosmo and Corel, and almost nowhere else. Not that it stopped tabloids from putting them on the covers on a slow week, but a strip mall should be safe enough.
It is. She's not really disappointed, but a little recognition might have been nice. They wander a bookstore's music section, though Rude doesn't actually pick anything out at first. "I'm not going to judge you based on your music taste, you know," she says.
"Don't think I have music taste."
"Don't let that stop you!"
He does, though. She tries to get them a wide selection without denting her cash too much, but he's noncommittal and no help at all. When they emerge, he points out the big building with the distinctive Shinra-Mart storefront and a sign saying "Elwood's." All the Marts closed down sometime back, but when they go inside, the stock looks about the same - it still seems to sell everything under the sun. She used to shop at one on the plate - it was about the only store on the plate she could afford - back in her early days in Midgar, before Barret's long, impassioned arguments about the dozens of ways the whole chain was evil did their work. She'd known all along the money she spent there went to Shinra, but she'd needed shoes and cereal sometimes.
"What are you looking for?" she asks.
"Dunno."
She sighs. He heads down an aisle and she follows, watching as he sorts through razors. "Forgot yours, huh?"
"Yeah."
She spots something. "Look over here!" she says, making a beeline for the sunglasses. She can hear his footsteps behind her as she selects a pair of cats-eye glasses - rhinestones on the frames, she notes with delight - and puts them on. He actually snickers when she turns around. "No?"
"If you like 'em..."
"You need any?"
"I got plenty." He comes to stand next to her, though, as she sorts through the racks. Their shoulders are almost touching. She feels nervous in a way she hasn't since she spent that night with Cloud, before they fought Sephiroth - the only night she ever spent with him that way - and even then, the nerves had been mixed with grief and fear, all kinds of fear. Now she just feels kind of happy, and she wonders if she shouldn't, even as she notices in the little strip of mirror that he's taken off his sunglasses again. She folds up the ones she'd just pulled from the shelf, turns to him with her heart thumping, and pushes aside doubt as she leans in to kiss him.
****
