Chapter 9
It was still dark when they made it into lower Junon, exhausted from the mission, from paddling, from the adrenaline leaving their systems. Jessie struggled to climb onto the dock, so Barret just carried her.
"It's not far," Yuffie promised as she led them up from the water into the town. She pounded on the door to one house until an old man answered. Seeing her, he gave a grunt and disappeared back inside, leaving the door open.
They took it for the invitation it was, though Barret meant to thank the man properly later. He'd already vanished back into a bedroom by the time they were all inside. From the hanging nets to the framed photos, everything about the house said fisherman, and Barret guessed maybe Yuffie's boat really was borrowed.
Wedge moved a stack of old newspapers aside, and Barret set Jessie down on the sofa. The rest of them collapsed where they could around the living room, with Red settling down near the door as if to guard it.
"Let's all grab a few winks," Barret proposed. "We can catch up after."
"As much as I'm dying to know what you all've been up to," said Jessie, eyes already closed, "I'm not gonna argue."
Barret sat on the floor with his head leaning back against the sofa and dozed. He kept his gun-arm attached, not sure if Shinra would manage to track them here. They'd left their pursuers behind in the base, keeping ahead of any broader alert spreading through the city. Sloppy, but as much as Junon was a military base, it was also where the bulk of new recruits were trained, and maybe the people they'd lost recently had been senior officers. If they were home free, he wasn't complaining.
But he didn't trust it either.
With the shadow of the air base overhead, dawn didn't find them any more than it would have in Midgar. Barret woke instead to the smell of coffee. The old man passed around an assortment of mismatched cups and shrugged off their gratitude.
"I'm too old to stick it to them bastards," he said by way of explanation. "Don't mean I don't want to." With that, he took his coffee and went to sit outside. He couldn't do anything to stop soldiers, but Barret figured he'd give warning if he saw any.
With a few hours' sleep and the caffeine to perk them up, they sat around the living room and told Jessie everything that had happened since they'd parted ways during the reactor mission, which felt like a lifetime ago. The Airbuster fight, Wedge's survival in the basement, their capture of Elena. Their journey from Midgar and their fortuitous encounter with Yuffie.
Jessie had already asked after Marlene, and she brightened a little at each other name of someone who'd survived. Those were the people she'd fought for.
"How did you make it out?" Tifa asked her finally.
Jessie shook her head. "If you could call it that... Shinra took me in at the pillar. We were exchanging fire and then all of a sudden it was like somebody's orders changed. One of the Turks came, and they hauled me out by helicopter with the rest of the troops."
"All of a sudden they decided they wanted a prisoner?" Tifa wondered.
"I thought it was weird at the time, but now I figure it was because of you guys."
"Us?"
Jessie nodded. "That Airbuster. I'm betting it was meant to record your demise so Shinra could play it for an audience later, but that didn't really work out for them."
"Didn't think they knew we survived that..." Barret muttered.
"Maybe they didn't," Jessie conceded. "But you definitely broke its camera."
"But..." Wedge spoke up quietly. He hesitated. "...the Turks didn't take in Biggs?"
Jessie looked down into her coffee. "Biggs sent me on ahead of him," she said quietly. "He figured if we needed to mess with the plate release system, I'd be the one to do it. So I was just... closer. The easier one to grab."
No one said anything for a minute.
Barret set down his coffee to rest his hand on her shoulder. "Ain't on you, Jess. We're all just damn glad you're alive."
Jessie offered him a small smile. "Thanks for coming to get me."
Yuffie leaned forward. "So did they interrogate you and stuff?"
Jessie shook her head, and she made a gesture with her bandaged hand. "Oh, this's from the pillar-- you should've seen the other guy. They seemed to think they already knew everything about AVALANCHE. But the thing about being on death row is people aren't too careful about what you might overhear. I think I can answer some of your guys' questions."
Barred raised his eyebrows. "You know who actually killed President Shinra?"
"Well, I know what they say," Jessie amended. "They say it was Sephiroth."
"Sephiroth? The Shinra general?"
"Didn't he die?" said Wedge. "I thought it was weird that... But maybe I'm remembering wrong."
"No, it was a big deal on the news a few years back," said Jessie. "But we all know that doesn't mean it actually happened."
Barret rubbed his beard thoughtfully. Sephiroth had still pulled a vanishing act, so either he'd left Shinra, or they'd had reason to believe he really was dead--like maybe they'd tried to make it happen. "Sounds like maybe he an' Shinra didn't part on the best o' terms," he said. "So he's fightin' against 'em now, huh?"
"I saw some of the reports at the base," Wedge added. "He might be in Junon right now."
"Sephiroth's not--" Tifa choked out, and then broke off.
Everyone turned to her. Barret hadn't noticed her go quiet, but he saw now she sat rigid, her hands so tight around her coffee mug that her knuckles had gone white.
"Tifa?"
"He's not an ally," she said.
"You know 'im?" asked Yuffie.
Tifa shook her head. "Not really. Once." She took a shaky breath and lifted her gaze to look him in the eye. "I know what you're thinking, Barret, but he's not. He's a murderer."
Barret watched her for a moment longer. He trusted the tension in her voice more than rumors of a man he'd never met, and he remembered, too, the guard they'd found dead on their way out of the base. That man's death might have delayed the alarm and aided their escape, but if Sephiroth had done it, Barret wasn't sure that was the kind of help they wanted.
The man hadn't revealed himself either. Did he mean to be a silent benefactor? Or did he just like killing?
He wasn't going to ask Tifa the details now, in front of everyone. She needed time. For now, all that mattered was that she said Sephiroth couldn't be trusted.
"All right," he said. "So if we run into him, we keep our guard up. Can't go assumin' his reasons for goin' after Shinra are the same as ours."
Tifa let out a breath, relaxing a fraction. She didn't say anything more.
"...I don't know what Sephiroth's up to exactly," Jessie went on cautiously, "but there's definitely something weird about the whole thing."
"What do you mean?" asked Wedge.
"So, Shinra wants to go after him, but not to take him out. They seem to think he can lead them to--get this--the Promised Land."
Yuffie squinted at her. "Huh?"
"They say he's an Ancient."
"The hell would Shinra want with the Promised Land?" Barret wondered. "It's a legend."
"...what does the legend say?" Tifa asked quietly.
He shook his head. "A lotta different things, I don't know. It's the afterlife for the Ancients, or some kinda reward? From what I remember, a lotta scholars don't even believe it was an actual place."
"...if I may," said a voice.
Barret slowly turned his head towards the voice. There sat Red, gaze direct and intelligent, his paws settled neatly in front of him, tail swaying slowly behind.
"Sorry," said Jessie, "did he just talk?"
"Indeed I did," said Red, and Barret continued to stare as the animal's mouth moved and words came out. "I apologize for the subterfuge, but I wasn't certain I could trust you all."
"I knew it!" Yuffie crowed suddenly, pointing a finger at him. "I knew you were holding out on me!"
"I..." Wedge faltered. "Wow."
Red's ear twitched. "If you would kindly stop gawking."
"You ain't gonna explain?" Barret demanded.
"What is there to explain? I am what I am."
Barret didn't know what to say to that. But if Shinra soldiers were Ancients and the Promised Land was real, then maybe there were such things as talking dogs. It made him feel like he was dreaming, and he reached to retrieve his coffee.
"Uh," Jessie managed, "so you were saying?"
The beast cleared his throat. "Barret is correct that stories of the Promised Land are conflicting, and apocryphal. But if Shinra believes that they can travel there in this life, then they must be trusting to the stories which speak of it as a kind of holy land. The Cetra were said to be a nomadic people, and those whose stewardship of the Planet proved true would eventually find their way to a land of rest and plenty."
"A land of plenty..." Barret repeated thoughtfully. "Place like that'd have to have Mako."
"Yes," Red agreed.
"And... Sephiroth is looking for it?" Tifa wondered.
"That's what Shinra thinks," said Jessie. "If there's more behind their conviction, I don't know it."
"I should add that..." Red began, and then faltered.
"What's up, Red?" Yuffie prompted.
He shifted uncomfortably, tail curling and uncurling around his paws. "...I was there when Sephiroth came," he said. "Killing President Shinra was not his only aim. He passed through the labs as well, killing the staff and... freeing one of the specimens."
"A specimen?" Barret repeated. He looked at the animal in front of him, the kind of thing he might have thought came from a lab if it weren't, as Yuffie had said, for the jewelry and the tattoos. "You mean besides you," he said.
Red shook his head. "I merely took advantage of the chaos. I don't know what it was, but I do know that it was Hojo's prized specimen. Jenova, he called it."
"Jenova..." Tifa murmured.
"Does that mean something to you?" Jessie asked.
"I don't know," she said. "It... sounds kind of familiar, but I can't place it."
This was making Barret's head hurt. Tifa knew Sephiroth, and the name Jenova sounded familiar to her. "So's there a chance this Jenova thing's got somethin' to do with the Promised Land, too?" he wondered. "Could it be another Ancient?"
Red tossed his mane. "Who knows."
"Well, whatever's goin' on, we can't let Shinra have it for sure," Barret decided. "If it's a real place, we gotta get ahead of 'em somehow."
"I've got a suggestion for that," said Jessie.
"Let's hear it."
"If Jenova was an Ancient, it wasn't the only one Shinra had prisoner. The reason I know any of this is 'cause they put me next to a woman named Aeris in the cell block. I think she's the one the Turks brought in from Sector 5. They came by to talk to her a few times, but she wouldn't tell them anything. That's why they're actually glad Sephiroth's resurfaced."
"But you think she might talk to us?" Wedge asked.
Jessie shrugged. "I think she doesn't like Shinra any more than we do, and she might appreciate a rescue."
"Do we know where she's being held?" Tifa asked.
"I'm not sure," Jessie admitted. "This was back in Shinra HQ, but she got moved outta that cell block before I did."
"We got these files, though." Barret set his coffee back down to retrieve the disk from his pocket. "Might be somethin' in here."
Wedge had had the foresight to bring some of their gear back with them to the house, and they set up Jessie's computer at the kitchen table.
"I don't have programs to read some of these file types," she said, "but that Turk access got you around any encryption, so I think most of this I can figure out."
"Great," Barret said. "While you're at that, I'm gonna have a look around town, see if there's anything we gotta be worried about."
"You mind if I tag along?" Wedge asked.
Barret's first thought was to turn him down, because what he'd really wanted was a chance to wrap his head around everything Jessie had just told them, but Tifa spoke first.
"We need to get Jessie cleaned up, too," she said, "so you boys makes yourselves scarce for a bit."
Barret exchanged glances with Wedge, gave him a shrug, and headed for the door.
"Are you a girl, Red?" he heard Yuffie ask.
He glanced back to see Red's ears twitch. "I...... will keep watch outside," he said. Wedge held the door for him, and once outside, Red settled himself on the other side of the door from the old man, who gave them all a casual nod.
"You good here?" Barret asked the beast, but he just tossed his mane, glancing away. "All right, then."
The Junon undercity had a familiar feel, but the airbase overhead didn't loom quite as large as Midgar's plate, and as long as Barret didn't look up, he could pretend it was just an overcast day. A dreary, grey light suffused the town, but at least it was daylight.
"Where do you think he came from?" Wedge asked once they'd moved out of earshot.
"Dunno. But I think Yuffie's right: there's no way Shinra bred him. More likely he's somethin' they almost wiped out."
"...you think maybe the Ancients are the same way?"
Barret shook his head. "From what I read, everybody thought they died out a long time ago. Can't blame Shinra for that one."
"I know," said Wedge. "But I mean... Obviously some of them survived. One of them used to work for Shinra, and one of them got picked up by the Turks. So whatever community they did have... I don't know."
"Yeah. I wouldn't put it past 'em to fuck that up."
He wouldn't have thought Shinra was interested in the Ancients, but maybe if they just saw them as Mako detectors... He didn't know how they'd made the original discovery. Sephiroth was too young, he thought, but could his parents have done it? Unwittingly, not knowing what Shinra would wind up doing with it?
Why did they think Sephiroth could lead them to an even bigger prize? Maybe they had access to research he'd never even dreamed of that confirmed the Promised Land was a real place, but if Sephiroth had turned against them, why would he let himself be followed? What was he doing in Junon?
He lifted his gaze to the airbase overhead, and the massive wall that bounded Junon's city. Maybe he meant to take a shot at Rufus, like he'd killed his old man.
"...it wasn't a long list of detainees," said Wedge. "I didn't see the name 'Aeris.'"
"Huh?"
"If you were thinking about having to do another rescue mission into the base. I don't think she's there."
"Oh," Barret said, realizing Wedge hadn't quite guessed the trajectory of his thoughts. "Yeah... Guess it'd clear some things up, if we got a chance to talk to her."
"I'm not sure how we keep Shinra from finding the Promised Land," Wedge admitted, "but maybe an Ancient would know."
"Seems like talkin' to this Sephiroth guy'd help, too, but... doesn't sound like that'd go well."
Wedge looked up at him, cautiously. "Do you know...?"
He knew what Wedge was asking this time, and he remembered Tifa's question on the riverbank. Did they burn your home, too? He didn't know for sure Sephiroth was involved with that, but it had been the same tension in her voice both times.
He shook his head. "I got a guess," he said. "But it's just that."
Wedge nodded, and fell quiet. He went on not saying anything as they walked the town. Ahead, guarding the entrance into the base, were a pair of Shinra soldiers, and Barret turned them down a different street before they got too close. There didn't seem to be any other Shinra presence, for now.
"All right, Wedge," he said at last. "Spit it out."
Wedge chewed on his lip and then began, "I was thinking... Before we do anything else, I think we should have a memorial for Biggs."
"A memorial...?"
"Or something," he amended, but he pressed on. "I know we needed to keep it together for Jessie, but it... We haven't talked about him. We're all missing him, but we're all doing it alone. If we... If we don't find a way to grieve together, I'm worried it'll just stay pent up and close us off from each other."
Barret didn't say anything for a minute. They hadn't talked about it. Not about Biggs, not Sector 7, not since the night it happened. They'd focused on logistics, and they'd seized on the chance that Jessie was still out there to keep themselves moving. It was too much to shoulder otherwise, or so he'd thought.
"...last time I lost somebody," he said, and part of him wanted to shove the words back down his throat the second they were out, "there wasn't any chance for that. A memorial... Guess I didn't think of it."
"Do you think it's a bad idea?"
Barret shook his head. "Nah. Think you got a good point. I just..."
"...what?"
He took a deep breath. He'd never been as honest with them as he should have been. That had to change. "Y'all don't blame me?" he asked.
"Blame you?" Wedge repeated blankly. "...for Sector 7? But you were the one who said..."
"I know what I said. But I'm the one who led us all into it. Pushed for the reactor bombings. An' I knew... I knew Shinra wasn't gonna take it lyin' down. I knew they'd hit us back. I just didn't think... I should've known."
Wedge shook his head. "How could you have known they'd take out a whole town?"
How could he have known? Barret made himself look up again, at the shadow of the air base that wasn't just a cloudy day. "'cause they done it before," he said.
"What?"
"You ever hear o' Corel?"
"Corel... That's on the Western Continent, isn't it? A mountain range."
"Used to be the name of a town, too. Down in the valley. Coal minin' town, so to Shinra that meant competition, even if we were barely scrapin' by. When they came an' proposed a reactor... I thought it was our ticket to a bright future. Believed 'em hook, line, an' sinker."
"...what happened to the town?" Wedge asked. Barret avoided looking at him, not wanting to see the expression on his face. Sympathy he didn't deserve.
"There was an accident at the reactor, when it was almost finished. Shinra blamed it on some 'rebel faction,' used that as an excuse to march soldiers in and burn down the town. My wife... my family... I wasn't even there when it happened. All I found left was Marlene."
"...does she look much like her mom?"
Barret shrugged helplessly. "Plenty," he said, "but she ain't mine, not really. Her dad was... my best friend."
"I'm sorry."
Barret shook his head. "It was my own damn fault. Everybody knew that. Weren't too many left from the town council, after, an' I was so damn in favor... In the end, it was just Dyne against it. My friend."
"Is that why you wanted to take out the reactors?" Wedge asked. "To make it up to him?"
"No," he said. He didn't believe there was any atonement. He couldn't make it right. "No, that ain't it. It was for me... I didn't see what they were back then, so I can't close my eyes now. I can't let 'em pull that shit again, except they did..."
He stopped, his hand curling into a fist, and his other arm a dead weight. A weapon to get back at the Shinra, but in return they'd just caused more ruin, carved more out of him. He couldn't be just a weapon, but whenever he thought about what they'd done, his vision narrowed until raging against them was all there was.
He felt Wedge's hand on his back, tentative at first, but then the other man leaned his weight into him. Wedge's head was on his shoulder, a steady, gentle pressure, as if to remind him that gentleness existed in the world, even in his own life.
"W... What the hell're you doin'?"
"I'm not from Corel, so... I can't forgive you for that," Wedge said softly. "But I don't blame you for Sector 7. And you... You have a right to grieve with us."
Barret swallowed. Wedge saw the best in people, and that meant sometimes Barret dismissed him as naive. But that didn't mean that he was wrong about what he saw, and the words Barret heard now weren't wrong. It wasn't the whole of it, but after Corel, there hadn't been anyone to grieve with. They hadn't pushed him out of the refugee camp, but they'd pushed him out of their community. Everyone else had held each other and mourned, and Barret had been alone, accepting the brunt of their anger as his due.
He hadn't deserved to grieve with them. But his friends now were refusing to push him away.
"Okay," Barret said gruffly. He pulled away, and Wedge let him. "Dunno exactly how we'll do it, but... We'll talk with Tifa an' Jessie. Figure somethin' out together."
"Thanks," said Wedge.
The edge of the town was clear ahead of them, no Shinra in sight, but Wedge didn't say anything as Barret continued down the street anyway. They reached an old wooden sign that marked the entrance into lower Junon, its paint so faded as to be barely legible, and turned around. Barret kept a slow pace, letting the walk ease the knot in his chest.
He stopped as they approached the house. Leaning against its wall, out of sight of Red or the old man, was Elena.
She was out of uniform, though her idea of plainclothes was still a button-down shirt and slacks, shoes too polished for a fishing village. Barret felt a scowl settling into place, but he threw Wedge a look and approached her.
"The hell're you doin' here?"
"I thought..." She faltered and then drew herself up, shoulders back, jaw squared. "Well, you could use my help, couldn't you?"
Barret snorted. "Now you're offerin'? What's so different from yesterday?"
"You were right, okay?" she said, holding his gaze defiantly. "Shinra treats me like crap, and I'm sick of my skills not being recognized."
He didn't believe her for a second--at least, not that she'd turned traitor. Her actual words seemed honest enough: being dismissed was getting to her. So he didn't think she was here on anyone's orders either. She just wanted a win, to prove herself.
"So you figured you'd shop around where you might get a better deal, is that it?"
"I want to hit them where it hurts, and have them really feel it. Isn't that what you're all about?"
Barret pretended to size her up, like he was almost buying it. "You gotta know we ain't gonna trust you just like that."
"I know. But I've got intel. I'll prove it to you."
Intel, or a trap, he thought, but she might at least try to bait it with something real. They could hear her out and decide for themselves.
"You make good on that, an' maybe," he said. "For now, you wait here." He looked to Wedge. "You wanna go inside an' get Yuffie? I figure she an' Red can keep an eye on blondie for a bit."
"Wh-" Elena stared at him indignantly. "Don't you want to hear what I've got to tell you?"
"We got more important shit to take care of first."
"More important? What could be more important than getting back at Shinra?"
There were other times, he knew, when he would have said the same. The mission took priority over what anyone was feeling. But he heard it out of her mouth, and that cemented it for him: his team was more important than getting back at Shinra. His friends were more important.
If that was a shock to her worldview, then good. Let her chew on that for a minute. He wouldn't have bet money on her change of heart turning genuine, but he didn't think it was impossible either.
When Yuffie appeared around the side of the house with Red at her heel, Barret gave them a quick thanks and headed inside. Wedge, Tifa, and Jessie waited for him, and he felt the absence of their missing number in everyone's eyes on him. Having Jessie back made them more whole, but they were never going to be what they'd been. Before anything else, it was time to acknowledge that.