Favorite Colors
December 2025
Wedge probably should have been nervous. Biggs had left to cover someone's shift on the neighborhood watch, not wanting to draw suspicion by turning them down. Jessie had had some epiphany mid-conversation and rushed down to her computer. Tifa had ducked out after thinking she heard Marlene wake up, and Wedge had promised to clean up for her.
That left him alone in the dimly-lit bar with Barret and the last of their beers. Should he have been nervous? He was always waiting to be singled out as the weak link, but Barret treated failures as a group issue. Besides, he was in a good mood tonight; their heist hadn't been a failure at all, and they'd come home with military-grade explosives. Wedge had only been the look-out, but Biggs assured him that was important, too.
"You got a brother?" Barret was saying. Wedge had mentioned him offhandedly, derailing the conversation, but they hadn't been talking about anything important anyway. "Lemme guess: older."
Wedge shook his head. "Younger. Only by a year, though. People were always mistaking us for twins."
"Huh. Never would've figured."
"You're just saying that 'cause Biggs is older than me." He knew Biggs and Jessie both saw themselves as mentors, and he didn't mind it. He wanted to help, and he had a lot to learn.
"Maybe," Barret conceded. "But y'know, you an' Tifa got that in common. You come off all friendly an' then I get to thinkin' an' realize there's all kinds o' shit I don't know about you."
Wedge gave him a wry look. "Like you're an open book?"
Barret spread his arms wide. "Ask me anything."
There were a lot of things Wedge could have asked. He didn't know where Barret was from, or how he'd found himself in Midgar, or about Marlene's mom, but he was pretty sure all of those were heavy topics. Tifa knew Barret better than the rest of them, but with some things she'd just smile and shrug, a gentle signal not to pry.
"...favorite color," Wedge said instead.
"Red," Barret answered confidently.
"I guess that explains the AVALANCHE logo." And his tattoo. Maybe the bandannas, too, though that had started before Wedge had joined so he couldn't say whose idea it was.
"Your turn," Barret prompted.
"...it's yellow."
"Why d'you say it like you're embarrassed?"
"Well, nobody picks yellow. It's--"
"A damn underrated color, is what it is," Barret interrupted. "Sunlight's yellow. Chocobo feathers. You got a whole mess o' gorgeous flowers." He sat back, eyes scanning the bar in search of more yellow. "Butter," he added.
"Butter...?" Wedge repeated doubtfully. Here it came.
"Yeah! When you bake somethin' just right, that's how you get that golden crust. Smells like everything good in the world."
That was when Wedge realized Barret hadn't meant it as a dig at his weight. He was just genuinely talking about how much he liked butter.
"...buttercups," Barret went on, oblivious to Wedge's private revelation.
"That's another flower."
"Yeah, an' if I had one now, I'd hold it under your chin."
Wedge started back as Barret leaned forward, fingers brushing close to his face. "W-what?"
"You ain't ever done that as a kid? Honestly I forget exactly why we did it. Think if it makes your skin glow, means you're sweet or somethin'."
Wedge was also starting to realize that being alone with Barret was dangerous for him for an entirely different reason.
"...does it work on beards?" he asked.
Barret chuckled. "Probably not," he said, but the warm lighting in the bar already reflected golden off of his dark skin.
Wedge was pretty sure Barret didn't know exactly how handsome he was. He'd go around intimidating vendors--and he was a big guy, it worked--but sometimes Wedge wondered if he'd be even more successful charming them. He wasn't sure he'd like that.
This side of Barret, all eager grins and easy laughter, was something that only came out around AVALANCHE. It was just for them.
Wedge knew it wasn't just for him, but now he knew it wasn't only for the others either.
Yeah, he was in trouble.
The next time danger walked in on him, he was in the stock room. He knew he was lingering; he'd already sorted and put away all the canned goods, but there were a couple sacks of potatoes. They didn't get much fresh produce in the slums, and it was comforting to take in the smell of something that had grown in healthy earth. That same earth still dusted their skins, brushing off on his fingers.
"There you are."
Wedge jumped, looking up at Barret. "Just checking the potatoes," he said, pulling the drawstring shut on the sack. "Did you need something?"
Barret shook his head. "Got you something," he said, and it was only as he revealed it that Wedge realized he'd come in with his hand tucked behind his back.
He extended it, holding out a single yellow flower.
"Where did you...?" Wedge began, but as he reached for it, he realized it was made of paper.
"There's a guy over in Sector 8 who makes these," Barret explained. "Found 'im a while back, but I wanted to wait 'til Marlene could be gentle with 'em. Almost four now, so she's gettin' a pink tulip."
"Birthday present?"
Barret huffed. "No way am I holdin' out that long."
Wedge smiled and turned his attention to the flower. It had broad, rounded petals forming a shallow bowl around a delicately-rendered cluster of stamens. The stem was short and thick, designed to sit upright on a flat surface rather than be placed in a vase.
"I don't think I know this one," he admitted.
"That's 'cause it's a prickly pear cactus," said Barret. "Only blooms in the desert."
"Did you get this custom made?" It was pretty, but he couldn't imagine prickly pear cactus flowers were in high demand. Most people probably wanted roses or lilies or, well, tulips.
"Guy had a whole book on flowers. Said he could make anything."
That answer was yes, then, and it said something. Wedge had always imagined deserts to be like the Midgar wasteland, barren and empty, but Barret had experienced enough of one to see it in an entirely different light. Maybe where he'd come from was too sore a subject to talk about in words, but he'd found a way to share something about it just the same. Wedge opened his mouth, but he wasn't sure what words to use to acknowledge that.
Barret preempted him. "Thought it could jump-start this operation for ya," he said.
"Operation?"
"To be loud an' proud about likin' yellow!"
He'd been charmed enough by Barret thinking of him, but he was touched by the gentle encouragement that came behind the thought.
Loud and proud.
Barret had already seen himself back out of the stock room before Wedge could wonder if there was any other meaning behind that particular phrase.
Red, red. He had to find something red.
The problem was that Barret wasn't the least bit materialistic. Everything he bought was either for Marlene or for the cause, which was ultimately for Marlene anyway. Wedge could think of a million things to get for her, but he wanted to get something for Barret.
He already had a tool case for taking care of his arm. He didn't really wear red, and the only red watches he was finding were kid-sized anyway. Gloves? What, did he want to remind Barret he only had one hand?
Wedge ran into Biggs once while the other man was on a supply run, and he gave Wedge a knowing look.
"Not a word," Wedge said preemptively, already flushing.
"Try the alley up behind Dobb's," was all Biggs said.
There were a few different vendors who set up in that alley, but Wedge knew the one Biggs was pointing him to. She was always claiming to procure things from relatives in far-off places, and if anyone had tried mapping out that family tree, it would have been quite the tangle. Wedge doubted she knew anyone farther away than Kalm, but she definitely had her sources.
As he came to her table, his eyes fell on it immediately: among a handful of protection charms was one in bright red.
"You like that one?" the vendor asked. "It's a good luck charm. My cousin brought it back all the way from this tropical island down south. They got some special hot spring where they bless a little pebble an' seal it up inside. You won't find anything else like it in Midgar."
Jessie would have been the first to tell him the story was bullshit. The charm had most likely been made by someone here in the slums and never so much as seen clean water, much less been blessed by anything. But it wasn't a cheap knock-off either: Wedge could tell the embroidery had been stitched with care. Its crafter was likely intimately familiar with the real thing, and maybe they'd made it in memory of a home they'd left years ago.
People always thought Wedge would get taken in by this stuff, but he just didn't haggle like Biggs and Jessie did. He played it like he really wanted to pay full price for things, but he just didn't have the gil. And oh no, he couldn't ask anyone to mark it down just for him.
It didn't work on everyone, but slums residents weren't as hard-hearted as everyone said they were, and by now most of them were convinced that poor Wedge was being ripped off by all their fellows. He got decent prices because they genuinely didn't believe there was any more gil to bilk him for.
The amulet was still a little pricey, but he decided it was worth it.
The next hurdle was getting Barret alone. Wedge had his own obligations to Tifa and to the watch. When Seventh Heaven was open, it was always busy, and when it wasn't, most of AVALANCHE would be hanging around, chatting or planning. He normally liked that; it made the place feel like a home.
He wound up carrying the amulet around in his own pocket for days before he got a chance. (But it could have been weeks, so, maybe that was lucky?) They'd just spent an hour pouring over a map of the city, marking off standard military deployments they'd gotten from a contact, looking for weaknesses. The bar was still a mess, so the others were helping Tifa square everything away for the night, and Barret had stepped outside. Wedge quietly slipped out after him.
Barret sat on the steps up to the bar, looking out over Sector 7. The slums were always dark, which was Wedge's least favorite thing about Midgar. Some days he missed sunlight something terrible. It was worse at night, without the scraps of daylight that found their way through gaps in the plate, and when shops hit their closing hours and shut off their blazing neon signs. Standing on Seventh Heaven's porch, Wedge was still safely in the circle of light cast by its own sign, but Barret stared off into the dark.
"Hey," Wedge said to announce himself, cautiously taking a seat on the step beside him and trying to gauge what Barret was looking at. At night, you couldn't really see the distant silhouettes of the reactors between the plates, but he knew where they ought to be.
They only had pieces of a plan, but it was a start. Little by little, the nebulous idea of striking at Shinra was taking on form. They could all feel it now, a mounting tension as they put themselves on this track.
"What's up?" Barret asked him.
"Nothing much. I've just been trying to catch you for a couple days."
Barret glanced at him. "We're square, right? Know we're a little light after payin' off that contact, but Tifa said--"
"Oh, no, it's not about money," Wedge interrupted quickly. "Wow."
"Then, uh...?"
Well, this was all wrong already, but putting it off to try again later just wasn't an option. Wedge dug the amulet out of his pocket. "I just wanted to give you this."
Barret accepted it, blinking. "This some kinda charm?"
"For good luck. That's... probably even more important now than it used to be."
"You worried about me or somethin'?" Barret asked, his expression turning amused.
"I just figured..." Wedge faltered. "Well, you're always thinking about the Planet's future, or Marlene's future... Someone should be looking out for yours."
Barret sobered again. He looked back at the amulet, running his thumb over the embroidery. The thread was a pale yellow against the red fabric. "So, this's you watchin' my back, huh?"
"That's kinda my job, right?"
It was a cop-out. Not exactly loud and proud. And in retrospect, maybe this wasn't what Barret had been encouraging him to at all. He seemed surprised by the reciprocation.
But Barret gave him a knowing look and curled his fingers around the charm. He tapped his hand to his chest. "I'll keep it close," he promised.
Wedge relaxed into a smile, even as his chest fluttered. It was a cautious approach to danger, but for a second, he felt like he could take on the world.