Chapter 1
The adrenaline of the mission should have worn off hours ago, but Barret was still amped. After he put Marlene to bed, he told Tifa to go ahead and take the bed with her. She didn't protest, but he saw the reproval in her eyes. He'd kept his daughter up worrying well past midnight, and maybe he should've stayed with her now, but she was already fast asleep. He'd just wind up waking her with his restless energy.
Below the little apartment, the bar was dark and quiet, a void for the sounds outside to creep into. A dog was barking somewhere, and Barret heard the distant rattle of the weapons shop finally closing up for the night. Somewhere in the street, a radio was going, and the echo of voices in the cavernous dark suggested a group gathered round to listen. Barret wasn't the only one on edge.
He thought of the people up on the plate, and wondered if they were tossing and turning, their illusion of a perfect world shattered. If at Shinra headquarters, a bunch of big wigs were gathered in their pristine suits, trying to figure out how to respond.
AVALANCHE had been on the news tonight. They'd struck a blow too obvious for Shinra to shrug off, and like hell could they call it an accident, so they'd had to give credit where credit was due. The people would learn about them, and they'd learn about them from Shinra, but they'd still see with their own eyes that Shinra wasn't invincible. They could fight back.
A light was still on down in the hideout. The elevator was stopped below, allowing the dim glow to come up through the rectangular hole. Barret swung himself onto the guide rails and climbed down.
Jessie sat in front of her computer, staring intently at a bunch of equations, probably the same ones she'd tried to explain to him before the mission, calculating blast force and so on. He'd waved away her math; he trusted her, and she'd gotten the job done. The TV news ran muted above her.
Biggs and Wedge were asleep atop their bedrolls in the corner, so Barret kept his voice low.
"You still checkin' all that? Mission's done. You did good work."
Jessie glanced up at him as though just noticing him. "Oh, Barret. I just wanted to look over my math. I didn't expect the blast to be that big."
He nodded, making note of the muted scenes of destruction playing across the TV screen. "You wanna make sure we're good for the next one, that's fine. But you let the consequences sit with me."
Jessie, too, glanced at the TV, but then she looked down, frowning.
"What?"
She rotated her stool to face him. "That's not the only thing I'm worried about," she said. "We cut it closer than I'd like. We could've used a little extra muscle." She threw a meaningful glance upwards, towards the bar.
"...you mean Tifa? But..."
"She's tough. She can handle it."
Barret shook his head. "It ain't that. I... never left Marlene with anybody else that long."
"And if you can't escape the roboguards next time, she'll be staying with Tifa a lot longer."
Barret fell silent. She had a point, but he didn't like it. Every one of his team was capable, but none of them had military training. They couldn't tackle Shinra head-on, so their plans hinged on getting in and out quick, before reinforcements arrived. The others had guarded the escape route while Barret had planted the bomb, but none of their intel had told them to expect the damn roboguard.
He'd been lucky to make it past that thing. His ribs still ached from when its laser had cut loose the ladder he was on and his frantic leap had sent him crashing into a nearby pipe. That thing should've been blown to smithereens with the reactor, but Shinra would no doubt be placing more of them.
"We could look into hiring someone on," Jessie suggested.
"Like we could trust somebody in it for the money not to sell us out to Shinra! No way."
"That's what I thought."
Barret sighed, tapping his fingers against the side of his gun-arm. "Tell you what," he said. "We'll push back our timetable a couple days. Make sure everybody's at their best so we don't fuck anything up."
"I still think you should talk to Tifa."
"...maybe," he relented. They couldn't trust anybody new at this point, but Tifa could have his back, if he let her.
Jessie nodded, satisfied. "Okay."
"An' you get some sleep," he told her. He reached across to switch off the TV, and gave her computer screen a meaningful glance.
"Okay, okay, you're right. I'm not gonna solve it tonight." She saved her work and pushed herself away from the keyboard, holding up her hands. Barret grinned.
By the light of the monitor, Barret detached his gun-arm and settled it on its shelf out of Marlene's reach. Jessie stripped off the last of her combat armor and laid out her own bedroll. Barret plunked himself down in front of the computer to shut it down, plunging the room into darkness. He should've been getting to sleep himself, but he still just wanted to pace.
He'd expected to sleep well tonight. After all his dreaming and planning, he'd finally struck a blow to Shinra that meant something. Hit them where it hurt, in the profits they drained out of the Planet.
Was it anxiety eating at him? Guilt? Corel had burned for an accident, because Shinra had needed a scapegoat. None of them had been Shinra's enemy then, but Barret had made himself into one now. If they wanted a rebel faction, he'd give them one.
But it couldn't be something futile. It couldn't be something they could crush. He listened to his team breathing in the dark, and he wondered if it was enough. They'd struck a major blow, but could they keep it up on their own? They had to, somehow. For Marlene. For everybody.
It had to be more than tonight.
Morning in the slums didn't look much different from night, but it felt different. The slums were still beholden to the rhythm of the plate, which dictated when the working day began and when the trains started running again. Even people who never went anywhere still catered to folks who had jobs topside. Morning stayed morning whether you could see it or not.
Barret couldn't remember when at last he'd gotten to sleep, but the others had woken before him. Light and the smell of pancakes drifted down from above. He took the pinball elevator up.
"Papa, you're up!" Marlene exclaimed, hopping down from her seat to run towards him.
"Morning, sleepy head," said Jessie, seated at the table nearby.
Barret knelt to meet Marlene's hug. "You all ain't been up that long," he said. Tifa was at the stove, and Biggs waited at the bar for his plate. Both he and Jessie were nursing nearly full cups of coffee.
"Long enough," Jessie declared. A win was a win as far as she was concerned.
Barret lifted Marlene into his arm and headed back to the table. "C'mon, kiddo, we don't want your breakfast gettin' cold."
"Tifa made me a kitty!"
"So she did," Barret noted as he sat down at the table and settled her in his lap. Atop her plate was a round pancake with pointed ears, a few bites missing from the bottom. "Let's get this kitty in your tummy."
Marlene giggled as his fingers gave her stomach a quick tickle, and then she picked up her fork.
Biggs joined them with a fresh plate of pancakes. "So are we really delaying the next mission?"
"Just a couple days," said Barret. "Don't go gettin' lazy."
"Wouldn't dream of it," said Biggs, but his posture relaxed just slightly at the confirmation that they wouldn't be risking their necks again tonight.
"Where'd Wedge get off to?" Barret asked.
"Said he wanted to get the mood of the town this morning," Biggs explained, smirking around a mouthful. They all knew the mood of the town would include the mood of its stray cats. Barret rolled his eyes fondly.
"Well, guess that ain't a bad idea."
"I'm sure he'll report back with important intel," Jessie put in.
They joked, but Barret did want to know what he came back with. Folks talked easier around him than around Barret, and he'd learn how they felt about the bombing now that they'd gotten past the initial shock. Were they pissed at AVALANCHE, in full support of Shinra? Or were any of them singing a different tune? You got different types down here, both folks who clung so hard to Shinra's promises of a shiny future that they refused to see what was right in front of them, and folks who knew exactly how they were stuck but couldn't see the way out. Barret wanted to give them one.
Tifa was the last to join them at the table, carrying one plate for herself and setting a second down near Barret. He snagged only a few bites until Marlene had finished, not wanting to jostle her.
After they'd all eaten, Biggs went out to track down Wedge, and Jessie took Marlene to get cleaned up, throwing a meaningful glance at Barret. He helped Tifa collect the empty plates and carry them into the kitchen, where Tifa settled herself in front of the sink.
"So Jessie thinks I should join you on the next mission," Tifa said before he could bring it up.
"Hell. She went ahead an' talked to you about it?"
"Not exactly. Subtle hints just aren't really her strong suit."
"Guess not," Barret huffed. He took a clean plate from Tifa and settled it in the drying rack. "Don't know how I feel about it, to be honest. We could use another hand, but..." He trailed off.
Tifa rinsed clean another dish, handed it to him, and said, "I didn't join AVALANCHE to stay at home babysitting. I want to do my part."
"You're doin' plenty, Teef. We wouldn't be able to operate at all without this place."
Tifa shook her head slightly. "You don't know what it was like, waiting half the night with no word. The power went out and it could have meant anything." She left a silence where the unsaid words would have been, about what she might have imagined in those hours. At last she lifted her head to fix him with a look. "I want to fight."
He didn't ask if she was sure. The question died in his throat. Of course she was sure. He didn't know how it had gotten there, but she carried the same anger that he did, and that was why she'd been the first person in Midgar he'd trusted. She needed to strike a blow that mattered, for the people she'd lost when she hadn't been able to do anything about it.
"...okay," he said.
Tifa nodded and returned her attention to the sponge in her hand. "I'm sure Johnny's parents wouldn't mind looking after Marlene for a night. She drives them a lot less crazy than he does."
Barret chuckled, and tried to feel at ease with the idea. "Ain't no contest there."
As he lined up their breakfast plates in the drying rack, Barret hoped he was making the right choice, that they stood a better chance of making it back to Marlene if they stuck together. He wanted to think that in three days' time, they'd be back here calmly washing dishes together, but at the same time he knew he'd set something irreversible into motion.
You couldn't hit Shinra without them trying to hit back; he just didn't know what shape that was going to take. He hoped they were ready for it.