Standing Together

April 2025

Barret hummed as he headed home. It was a fine day, and he could have kept working, but--it was a fine day, and he didn't want to. The others kept on, but that was their choice. There was no overseer to insist on a timetable or fire anyone over a six-hour work day. Not everyone was even a regular member of the crew. Some folks preferred a more jack-of-all-trades existence, while others liked to drop in now and again for a change of pace.

He couldn't have been prouder of how his town had rejected the disease that had afflicted Midgar. There were no bosses, no haves and have-nots, no gil value assigned to their every breath. The seeds had always been there--their grandparents had fought for collective ownership of the mines--but they'd lain dormant until Meteor had shaken the town out of its stupor.

The first thing they'd done after Meteorfall was seize the ropeway, preventing vacationers from reaching the Gold Saucer. What they'd demanded was their land: the original Corel swallowed by the desert and erased by corporate greed. What they'd gotten was a cut of the profits, at least until Dio had completed a second ropeway to the south and they'd lost their leverage. It was still more money than any of them had seen in ages, and every gil had gone into building up North Corel.

Barret had arrived shortly afterwards, and in his first town meeting, he'd seen what had grown up out of who they'd been, and what they'd lost. Respect for the dead had prevented them from electing a new headman to replace the man Shinra had murdered, and Barret was one of only two surviving members of the old town council. There just wasn't a council anymore. If you wanted to be involved, you showed up, and that was all. After years of stagnation, North Corel was a place where everyone was in charge, or no one was.

The Gold Saucer had been closed for a while now, ever since Reeve had sunset the Mako reactor. The hydroelectric plant built to replace it just didn't generate enough electricity to support an amusement park on top of Costa del Sol and North Corel. Barret had tried asking Reeve if that was by design, but the man just smiled. Rumor had it Dio had been hurriedly investing in solar.

The last thing he'd done before the place shut down entirely had been to dump the population of Corel Prison on them. They wanted their land, they must've wanted their people, too, he'd said, thinking to punish them. As if it were their fault he hadn't listened to Reeve's repeated warnings. And it was a rough transition, but far from a punishment. The people of Corel were no strangers to hard work, and they were uniquely suited to rehabilitation.

Tifa had found her calling by happenstance. When they'd first come, they'd stayed with an old man who complained of joint pains. Tifa had walked him through some stretches she knew, and he'd felt such relief he'd bragged to all his friends about her, and the idea was born.

Reeve had been managing the Midgar relocation efforts back then, and through him, Tifa had reached out to various medical professionals who might know anything about physical therapy. At last a nurse had taken her up on her proposal, and that was how the clinic had gotten started. It was one of the first buildings Barret had worked on, and ever since he liked to say: he stood up homes, and Tifa stood up people. Marlene had taken to calling it a dad joke, but he thought it was a nice turn of phrase.

There'd be no accusations of dad jokes today. Marlene was staying with Elmyra for another few weeks, and they only talked on the phone every other night now.

He swung through the market square on his way. They still called it the market, though most things were free. You only had to be mindful of the per-household limit on the scarcer stuff. Peaches were in season now, which meant Barret could take as many as he could carry--tempting, but you couldn't make dinner with just peaches.

"Hey, Barret," said Glen from behind the table. "How's it goin'?"

"Great! You? Nobody's been givin' you trouble over the coffee rations, have they?"

"Just the usual grumblin', nothin' that needs sortin'," Glen assured him. "But you're really doin' great?"

Barret blinked. "Yeah, why?"

"Feels like at least a week since I seen Marlene around. Was startin' to think she might be sick."

"Oh! Nah, she's visiting a family friend since school's out for summer."

"Ahh, I see," said Glen. "You been enjoyin' some private time with the wife, then."

"Wife?" It was out of his mouth before it clicked in his brain.

Glen looked at him in amusement. "Tifa?"

"Oh, uh, right." Barret scratched his head. "We ain't married, is all."

He couldn't help pondering that as he carried his groceries the rest of the way home. It had crossed his mind, but he'd never felt any urgency about it. He and Tifa had found a natural kind of rhythm, and there didn't seem to be any need to change that.

Tifa liked routine more than he did, and it suited the work she'd fallen into. He put the groceries away and checked her schedule up on the fridge; she'd be in her last session of the day, home within the hour. They'd be able to cook dinner together.

He wondered if she'd been waiting on him. She'd gotten a lot better about voicing her feelings, but she could still be patient to a fault. What if everybody was exasperated with him, wondering when he was going to pop the question? But if Tifa had said anything about wanting it, surely someone would have blabbed it to him by now.

She came in through the door like it was any other day, kicking off her shoes. "Glen said you'd already been by the market, so I didn't get anything," she said. "Summer squash and snap peas?"

"Yeah. You wanna help or just relax?"

"Go ahead and get started. I'm gonna change real quick."

Barret set out the cutting board and washed the produce, and Tifa was back in a few minutes to join him chopping vegetables. A familiar routine.

"...you ever feel like something's missin'?" he ventured.

"Missing like what?"

"Just like... if there's anythin' else you'd want to be part o' your life."

Tifa threw him a wry look. "Barret, if there's something you're trying to ask me, then why don't you just ask it?"

He scratched his head. "Apparently some folks think we're married."

"Oh, that."

Barret stared at her. "You knew?"

"Well, it's not like it didn't happen back in Midgar, too," she said with a shrug, and that was true. Marlene looked a lot more like Tifa than Barret, and people had made assumptions.

"If you'd asked me a few years ago if I wanted to get married," Tifa went on, "I probably would've said yes."

"Uh?" A few years ago? They'd only been together for three.

Tifa smiled at his expression. "I meant in general. After Meteorfall, I was looking forward to a normal life... but I hadn't really thought about what 'normal' meant to me since I was fifteen. I think maybe it's the same for you."

At first, he didn't know what she meant. After all, it wasn't like marriage had been remotely on his radar after Meteorfall. All his ideas about his future had revolved around Marlene, as if it was too late for him to do anything but make sure she had one. And maybe that was what Tifa meant: he'd had the same notions of a normal life as she had, so he'd assumed it was all behind him.

"...guess you're right," he said. "When we came here, I wasn't expectin' to be anything to anyone except Marlene. I figured it was a temporary stop for you. You'd find your own thing sooner or later."

Cloud had. He'd come here with them at first, because like Tifa, he hadn't had a home to go back to. But before long, he'd missed their other friends so much he was hopping around all over. Other folks had taken notice, and he'd been running a courier service before he even realized that was what he was doing.

Barret had forbidden Marlene from riding on that damn bike of his. He hoped she wasn't sneaking a spin when he inevitably swung by Kalm.

Tifa had set down her knife. "Well, I'm still here," she said, slipping an arm around his waist, "so I guess you were pretty wrong about that, huh."

"Guess so."

She looked up at him. "Did you want to get married?"

"...dunno," he confessed. "Always figured the point of a wedding was to celebrate two families comin' together, but we're already all the family we got."

"That's the wedding part, not the marriage. Right?"

"Kinda feels like we're already doin' the marriage part."

Tifa glanced around their house, the one they'd planned together and built with help from friends. "Yeah. It kind of does, doesn't it?" She thought for a moment and went on, "I guess that's the other thing. Marriage is... a promise. But I'm not sure what other people have to do with that. We're past the point of needing permission from anyone."

"'specially if they already think we're married," Barret added.

Tifa laughed. "Maybe the real question is whether we need to correct them?"

"Do we?"

"Hmm... 'Husband and wife' kind of calls to mind something particular, doesn't it?"

"And what's that?" Barret wondered. He'd been proud to call Myrna his wife, proud to hear himself referred to as her husband. It said they belonged to each other. It didn't sound like what Tifa meant at all.

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe Nibelheim was a little more traditional than Corel."

"Ah. Well, you sure ain't a housewife. Even if you are the better cook."

"You're more than decent at it," she said, nudging his arm.

"Just bowin' to professional experience," he said. He turned it over again in his mind. Husband and wife. "We never went through the boyfriend-girlfriend phase either, did we?" he realized. "Think it's always been 'partners.' Just felt right."

"Well... It's what we've always been, right? Even before it was this. We supported each other."

"Partners, then?"

Tifa nodded decisively. "Yeah. Partners."

"...gotta say, I'm a little surprised," he admitted.

"About what?"

"Well, that you ain't interested in a wedding. It's about the most romantic thing you can do."

"Is it?" Tifa wondered. "That seems kind of tragic."

"Tragic?"

She turned to him, putting a hand on her hip. "Think about it. You're doing the most romantic thing imaginable at the start of your lives together? It's already behind you?"

"...hadn't thought of it that way."

"You're not wrong, though," Tifa added. "I did used to think about weddings. The dress I'd wear, all the romantic vows my fiancé would make to me. But, um..." She tucked her hair behind her ear. "It's awfully public, you know?"

Barret chuckled. "Not so much into gettin' up in front of a crowd?"

"I'd do it for you, but I think I'd be looking forward to escaping."

His smile softened, knowing she meant that. If he did want to get married, she'd be along for all of it. But she was right, too. They didn't need anyone to witness any promises when they already had that certainty.

"You definitely got a point," he said. "The most romantic moments are just the two of us."

"Like right now?" she asked. Her hands found his waist again.

"Think dinner can wait a bit," Barret agreed, and he leaned down to taste her lips instead.