Midnight Tea

July 2025

Elmyra had no business being up so late. It was past 1am, and Aeris wasn't home yet, which meant she wasn't coming home tonight because even on the last train she should have been back by now. Still, Elmyra puttered about in her kitchen, wiping down an already-clean counter, rearranging the spice rack, and imagining things that might have delayed the train as she peered out of the kitchen windows for signs of movement.

She wondered if the transition would have been any easier had Aeris been a normal child. She was, Elmyra reminded herself, a grown woman now. She couldn't impose a curfew or a bedtime, and it wasn't as though Aeris hadn't told her where she was going: to see a concert up on the plate. She'd shrugged off Elmyra's concerns about missing the last train, saying she'd 'figure it out.' Whether that meant splurging on an overpriced hotel room or going home with a stranger, Elmyra couldn't help worrying.

But beyond that, there was always the worry that this might be the day that Shinra tightened its reins. They said they needed Aeris's willing cooperation, so there was no point in bringing her in by force. But it was force that had kept Aeris's birth mother, and force that had killed her. Elmyra didn't trust Shinra to stay their hand forever.

One day, the Turks would show up with something other than polite requests.

Movement in the garden. Elmyra leaned hopefully closer to the window, but then her heart dropped into her stomach.

A street lamp outlined a silhouette much too big to be her daughter. A strange man had stepped onto the path, and now he stood motionless, a hulking shadow. Not one of the Turks, unless they had a new recruit. Rude might be that tall, but he was a slim man.

Maybe this was a threat of the slums, not Shinra. Their garden didn't hold the kind of treasures any bandit would find valuable, but hers was one of a handful of houses in the sector remaining from before the plate was built. Someone who didn't know any better might assume an old house meant old money. Heirlooms to be pawned and sacks of gil under the mattress.

They'd be disappointed to discover nothing but her mother's old photo albums and the letters Edmund had sent her from the front.

The man in her garden was moving again. Elmyra wrung her hands in her dish towel. She drew a breath, let it out, hung the towel neatly. She locked the door, making certain he wouldn't see her through the window.

But his hurried stride carried him on past without even trying the handle. She watched him make for the upper garden, disappearing out of sight, and realized that he was running from something. Either he didn't realize the garden was a dead-end, or he was looking for a place to hide.

What would send a big man like that running? The local thugs were such that Aeris could fend them off with a few well-placed smacks of her staff. They'd never think to prey on someone twice their size.

But there was one ever-present force that everyone knew to fear.

Elmyra tore her eyes from the windows and went to the table, switching on her radio with the volume turned low. Maybe it was just her heightened anxieties over Aeris not coming home--the people Shinra arrested day-to-day rarely did anything to get them on the news--but she felt like she was following a hunch.

"...advised to stay clear of the area," the broadcast was saying. "With crews hard at work on the scene, the fire is expected to stay contained within the factory grounds, but until it's out, no investigation can be done into whether this was accident or arson. We've been informed that Shinra is conducting a sweep for potential perpetrators. If you have any information..."

She listened long enough to work out which factory they were talking about. A topside manufacturing plant in Sector 2, but the reporters never said what it manufactured, which meant it was either weapons or something related to Mako technology. The kind of place that made a strategic target, if there were anyone standing up to Shinra at all.

Elmyra switched the radio back off and peered out the window again. No sign of the man, but she couldn't see most of the upper garden from her kitchen. She drew another breath and went to the door. Unlocking it, she stepped outside.

She followed the path up, and there was something almost comical about finding the man in the deep shadows between two lamp posts, crouching among the lilies.

"...I think you're a little big to be hiding in the flower beds," she said.

"Ma'am," he said, hurriedly straightening to his feet, and she noticed for the first time that his right arm ended in a machine gun. As her eyes widened, he held up his other hand, palm forward. "I ain't here to do you any harm, I promise. Must've taken a wrong turn somewhere, an' I was hopin' there was a back way out."

Elmyra breathed again to steady herself and said, "Someone's looking for you."

"'fraid so," he confirmed. "But I don't wanna cause you any trouble."

His shadow loomed over her, but his voice was an earnest rumble, with an accent that said he wasn't from the city. She wondered what had driven him here, leaving that small town behind.

"...well, if they come this way," she said, "they're going to find you out here. You may as well come inside."

She couldn't read his expression in the dark, but she saw the hesitation in his body language. "You sure?"

"My daughter will throw a fit if she finds out I let soldiers trample all over her garden and arrest a man."

She spun on her heel, moving quickly to disguise the shudder that went up her spine at turning her back on him. She wanted to seem surer of herself than she was.

She glanced back as she drew close to the house, only to find him lagging behind. A last careful step out of the flower bed, and then he picked up the pace down the path to join her. This time, she didn't tense at him drawing near.

Elmyra went inside, and he caught the door from her and followed. She turned to watch him as he came into the light. Still a big man, to be sure, tattooed and dressed in slums fashion, but his skin glowed a warm brown under the lights and his beard was neatly trimmed. A set of tags hung around his neck that another might have mistaken for military, but Elmyra had her husband's tucked safely in her jewelry box, and she knew better. A miner, once upon a time.

Miners knew something about explosives, she expected.

He closed the door gently behind him and turned to her, bowing his head. He spoke quietly, as though afraid of someone overhearing. "Thank you kindly. Promise I'll get outta your hair as soon as things die down a little."

"Of course," she said. "Do I get a name?"

He blinked, and then looked sheepish. "It's Barret," he said.

"Elmyra," she said, offering him her left hand. The small courtesy brightened his expression, the warmth spreading into his eyes.

Then he nodded towards the stairs and asked, "Your daughter asleep?" and she realized that that was the reason for his attempt at whispering.

"I have no idea," she admitted with a wry smile. "I was up waiting for her, but... I think she's spending the night someplace else."

"Must be worried sick," Barret observed. "She even old enough for that?"

"She's twenty," Elmyra said, "so I'm sure she'd say so."

Barret did a double-take, looking her over. "Never would've guessed it," he managed.

In spite of herself, she felt flattered. She dropped her gaze, smiling to herself, and then turned towards the kitchen. "Would you like any tea?"

"You, uh... ain't gonna ask who I'm hidin' from?"

"It's Shinra, isn't it?"

A long pause from behind her as she filled the kettle.

"...how'd you know?" he asked.

Elmyra glanced back, giving him a once-over of her own. "I don't really think you'd need to hide from anyone else."

Barret let out a huff of amusement. "I'm lucky they ain't so observant as you."

She set the kettle on the stove and switched it on. "Did you... have anything to do with that business at the factory?" she asked at last. "Or do they just think you did?"

"...is the answer gonna change anything?"

"I won't turn you out," she promised. "But I... It's a bold move. What are you hoping to accomplish?"

"It's just a first step," he said. "Don't think Shinra oughtta be allowed to do what they do."

"No," Elmyra agreed quietly. "I don't think they should."

She thought of the Turks and their habit of showing up whenever she or Aeris strayed from the bounds of their established routines. The time her oldest friend had gotten sick and she'd gone to stay with her a while, bringing Aeris with her, and Rude had come to inquire about the change in residence. The first time Aeris had taken the train topside, a teenager with a fake ID, and within a few days they'd flagged it in the system and Reno told her to find a better forger. The time Aeris had gotten herself arrested for punching a soldier, and Elmyra had arrived to find Tseng already erasing any record of it.

They didn't need to alert her to any of it, but they wanted her to feel small in the face of their network of surveillance cameras, security scans, and paid informants. Every time was a reminder that they were permitted to live their lives, not free to do so. Aeris chafed under it, and Elmyra couldn't do anything but keep her back straight as she exchanged polite words with Turks through gritted teeth.

Maybe it was because she liked the idea of lighting those damn suits on fire that she'd invited this stranger into her home. She wondered what Aeris would say about it. Elmyra chided her time and again for her recklessness, but maybe not all of it was strictly hereditary.

The kettle sang, and in the same moment Barret cursed under his breath. She glanced back, saw his attention out the window as he drew back from the light.

"Upstairs," she said. "Quickly."

He didn't argue. Elmyra shut off the stove and swiftly stowed the second cup she'd taken out back in its cupboard.

A knock sounded.

She waited a beat until she heard the creak of the floorboard overhead, and then she went to answer it. A pair of soldiers stood outside, faces obscured by their helmets almost into anonymity.

"Yes? It's awfully late."

"You're still up," said the taller one.

"I was about to turn in," she said. "What is this about?"

"A suspicious person was spotted in this area," said the other man, his tone strictly professional, "and we believe he may be on your property."

"I haven't seen anyone."

"You sure about that?" asked the first. "You didn't maybe open the door for him?"

Elmyra let her affront show. "I beg your pardon."

"We know how things are in the slums," he went on, clearly a topsider who didn't know the first thing about the slums. "You're all criminals down here."

His shorter colleague threw him a look and then said to her, "That is, maybe he spun you some kinda story. You come clean now and we'll let it slide."

"There's nothing to let slide," Elmyra said firmly. "I'm a widow, and my daughter is out for the night, you think I'm going to let some strange man into my house?"

"Then you won't mind if we have a look around."

She folded her arms across her chest, not budging from the doorway. "I certainly do mind. What did I just say?"

"This man blew up a factory, ma'am," said the one with manners. "We have to be thorough."

"I've already told you, no one's here but me. Is this how you'd treat your colleagues' wives? It's disgraceful. My husband gave his life for Shinra."

"Your husband was in the army, ma'am?"

"Yes, and if he'd been here to answer the door, you would have believed him." She let her voice crack a little, as though it were a fresher wound than it was. One of them would buy it, and the other wouldn't want the hassle of a woman in hysterics.

The shorter man turned to his colleague. "Look, let's just have a look around the yard and then we'll move on. This way is a dead-end anyhow."

The taller one threw up his hands, already turning away. "Fine, fine. I still say all these people are suspicious as hell."

"Maybe if you didn't go around insulting them," the other soldier suggested as he started to follow. He paused and turned back to Elmyra for a moment. "Sorry for the intrusion, ma'am. You have a nice night."

He didn't wait for a response, so she didn't give him one. Once they were off her porch, she shut and locked the door and returned to the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of tea and settled at her table where she could watch for their departure out the window without looking like she was doing anything but calming herself before bed.

Their inspection of the garden was cursory. She saw the beam of a flashlight flick here and there past her windows, and a few minutes later they were walking back down the path the way they'd come. She waited a little longer, and then went to the stairwell.

"They're gone now," she called up.

The floor creaked, and Barret appeared at the top of the stairs. "Damn!" he exclaimed as he started down. "You handled those soldiers like you do it every day."

They were nothing compared to the Turks--was what she thought, but didn't say. She didn't want to invite the speculation.

"Well, my husband really was in the military," she said instead.

His face did something complicated; he was no fan of the military, but he couldn't ignore the past tense. "Ah, sorry for your loss."

Elmyra shook her head. "He was a good man. They never had him out terrorizing civilians like this."

"You don't gotta defend 'im. I get it, folks make the best choices they can, an' Shinra don't go around bein' up front about what they are."

"No," she agreed. "A lot of people still believe in them, even down here."

"Not you, though," Barret observed. There was a question in the way he said it, and the way he looked at her, but he didn't ask it aloud.

"There's been a lot to change my mind." Elmyra let her gaze drift to the vase of flowers on the shelf nearby. Aeris, more than anything. That Shinra would keep a child in captivity and have the audacity to ask her to return after killing her mother. But Edmund's death, too, had just seemed so senseless.

"There are some good people," she went on, "but it's a callous company on the whole. They don't care about anyone beyond what they can get out of us."

Barret nodded. "Yeah. I like to think..."

Elmyra looked back at him. "What?"

"Well, there's folks that believe in 'em, like you said, but I like to think plenty understand how it is. An' maybe they wanna do somethin' about it."

"Not everyone can go around blowing up factories," Elmyra said. "I have my daughter to think of."

His expression twisted, her words wounding him more than she'd intended. "...I got a daughter now, too," he said.

She held her tongue, biting back the even sharper reply that sprang first to her mind. He had to have his reasons. People made the best choices they could.

"Can't blame you if you judge me for it," he said, "but I wanna fight for a better world for her to grow up in. Found out the hard way, tryin' to get along with Shinra don't protect anybody."

"...your wife?" she hazarded, and he nodded, thumbing the tags at his neck. She hesitated, and then asked, "Who's looking after your daughter now?"

"She's with a friend," Barret assured her. "She's safe."

Elmyra nodded, and turned her back on him on the pretense of returning to the table to collect her half-empty cup of tea. She felt, briefly, like a coward. But Aeris was different from his daughter, a secret she'd never told another living soul. Who could she have trusted, in those early years, with a little girl who didn't know the first thing about living outside of a laboratory? Who didn't know what was normal, when to hold her tongue? When so many of Elmyra's acquaintance had themselves had husbands away at Shinra's war?

Now that Aeris was grown, Elmyra understood her role had shifted. She had no more value to Shinra as a precious asset's caretaker, only as potential leverage against her own daughter.

"I would have liked to fight, too," she said quietly. "But it never seems like there's much of anything I can do."

"Well, not everybody can go around blowin' up factories," Barret said from behind her, his voice like a gentle hand on her shoulder. "But you helped me out tonight. Can't tell you how much I appreciate that."

Elmyra glanced back at him, managing a smile. "I'm glad now. I wouldn't want to make your daughter worry."

"Hopin' she sleeps through all this, an' I see her in the mornin' like nothin' happened."

"I'm sure you're anxious to get back, but those soldiers are probably still searching the sector. Will you stay for tea?"

Barret hesitated, but he nodded. "Yeah, all right. Wouldn't want all you done goin' to waste."

She took her cup into the kitchen, retrieved a second from the cupboard, and set the kettle back to heating. In a few minutes, she returned and set both steaming cups down on the table. Barret thanked her, and didn't sit until she did. She curled her hands around her tea, waiting for it to cool a bit, and watched as Barret looped his fingers through the handle of his cup, tugging it closer. It looked so small in his hand.

"You aren't doing this all on your own, are you?" she asked.

"Nah, I got a team," he said. "We split up on the way back, I was tryin' to draw the heat."

"I guess you succeeded."

"Guess so," he agreed with a wry grin.

Different questions floated in her mind: how many they were, how they'd found each other, what they intended next. But she didn't ask them, because it wasn't as though she could join them, and from an outsider they sounded like an interrogation.

"So I gotta ask," Barret spoke up instead into the silence. "How do you get all those flowers to grow? I barely seen so much as a weed anywhere else."

Elmyra smiled. "Oh, I'm afraid that's a trade secret. My daughter has her ways."

"No kiddin'. Well, she's sure got a talent."

"I'd send you home with some, but I don't think you want any evidence you were here tonight."

Barret shook his head. "Nah. Wouldn't want that comin' down on you."

He was so considerate. She'd won his trust, and it made her feel like she could give him hers. Years of never knowing exactly which of her neighbors informed to the Turks, and the secret was to find someone they were trying to arrest, apparently.

"...if you're ever in Sector 5 again, though," she said slowly, "you can look for her in the market. She sells them there sometimes."

"Yeah?" said Barret, looking at her curiously. "I'll remember that. It'd definitely brighten everybody's day, havin' some of 'em around."

Elmyra smiled again and sipped her tea, wondering if she was being reckless. If her small act of rebellion in hiding this man had emboldened her, if the late hour was affecting her thinking.

But what did she do on another night, when Aeris didn't come home and there was nothing to tell her that that was by choice? Who did she turn to when Shinra stopped playing nice? Why should she let them keep her isolated and unprepared?

She knew how to be careful. And after all these years, they wouldn't expect her to do otherwise.

Barret rose once he had finished his tea, bobbing his head politely. "Thanks again," he said. "If there's ever anything I can do for you, you just say the word. I owe you."

"...you can let me help," she said, though she kept her gaze steady on the dregs of her tea.

"Huh?"

"I know some things, about Shinra. More than the average person." The average person didn't know the identities of the Turks, or about Shinra's desire to find the Promised Land. "You'll need to be a little more strategic than just setting things ablaze, and maybe I have something you can use."

Barret scratched his head. "I ain't gonna turn it down, but that wasn't exactly what I had in mind."

Elmyra looked up at him. "Please."

He looked at her for a moment, and then he nodded. "Right. But then..." He gestured. "You gotta let me treat ya to dinner, or somethin.'"

"Dinner?" she repeated. Surely it was more courtesy. A handsome man like this would have options.

"Midnight tea might be harder to pull off," he said with a lopsided smile. She still wasn't quite sure of his intent, but the point was to see him again regardless, so that was all right. She could flatter herself with the possibility until he made it clear.

"We shouldn't meet here again," she said, "but there's a cafe a little way down from the square. I always feel silly eating there alone. Why don't we meet there for lunch next Thursday?"

"I'll look forward to it," he said. "An' I guess I better find somethin' besides flowers to bring."

That definitely sounded flirtatious. Elmyra dropped her gaze bashfully into her tea, and then she rose to show him out. He was just being sweet, she told herself, but his hand brushed hers as she unlocked the door for him, and he flashed her one more smile beneath her porch lights before disappearing into the dark.

An ally, a partner, something. What mattered was that the night didn't seem so long anymore.