They took the buggy to the edge of Kalm proper, where the shantytown that had sprung up after Meteor and was gradually being built into a legitimate urban area gave way to the city center that had once been a sleepy country town. Since cars had been banned from downtown Kalm, they couldn’t have driven any farther if they wanted to; all the marked parking areas were taken, so Cloud just parked the car in the most out-of-the-way open space available.

“Jus’ like last time,” said Barret. “I’m tellin’ you, man, it’s like the Midgar slums all over again.”

“Here,” Cloud said, tossing Barret the keys to the buggy. With no more delay, he headed towards a motorcycle that was chained to a sign at the edge of a parking zone.

“Huh?” Barret asked, looking at the keys and then at Cloud in confusion. “—Oh, come on, man! Where’re you going? We’re right here!”

“I just have to do something,” Cloud said, unlocking the motorcycle and getting on. “I’ll be in later.”

He gunned the motorcycle’s engine, which protested a couple times before turning over, and drove off down the road that led back out of the town. Barret watched him go, shook his head, and headed for the business district.

For most purposes, the broad, unpaved square framed by sturdy but unsightly buildings had become the real center of town. Built up entirely since Meteor, the district had at least the pretense of organization — which, Barret had to admit, put it ahead of anywhere in the old Midgar slums. The buildings, reaching two or three stories and made with brick instead of the shantytown’s predominant sheet-metal siding, bore neon signs and professional trappings, although they had clearly been constructed in haste and were already falling into disrepair. The center of the square was occupied by a rough, slightly abstract wrought-iron monument depicting Meteor’s descent onto Midgar; it had been dedicated to all those who had died in the destruction, but the plaque that explained this had since been stolen.

Barret weaved his way through the mass of shoppers, beggars and parked vehicles to the building marked 7th Heaven. He’d missed the noontime crowd, so the inside was almost completely deserted, save a pair of men eating hamburgers and another man passed out in the corner. Barret was pretty sure the latter man had been in the same spot the last time he had visited. A TV on the wall behind the bar was showing a news report about some new railroad line.

Two women were behind the bar; one of them was using her thumb to mark her place in a well-worn book while watching the news with a bored expression. When she saw Barret, though, she abandoned both book and TV immediately.

“Hey!” she said, jumping to her feet. “I didn’t think you’d be here already.”

“You kiddin’?” asked Barret. “I ain’t missed one o’ Marlene’s birthdays yet, have I?”

“That’s not for another two weeks,” she said. “You could say you missed me, you know.”

“Yeah,” Barret said, shrugging noncommittally. “I mean, that too.”

Tifa sighed at him in amused faux-frustration. Though older, she didn’t look much different than she had while tending bar at the original 7th Heaven, providing cover for AVALANCHE. She seemed to be growing her hair out again since Barret had last seen her; it now reached almost to the small of her back. She was wearing a sleeveless tan leather top with black jeans; the green ribbon tied around her right upper arm was losing its color and becoming a bit frayed at the edges.

“Lexi, I’m gonna step out early,” she said to the other woman. “Will you be okay here?”

“Yeah,” said Lexi indifferently. “Can you get Rod out, though? It’s your turn.”

“Sure.” Tifa retrieved a jacket that matched her jeans from the wall rack. “Help me with this?” she asked Barret, nodding to the passed-out man. Crossing the room, she shook him awake with one hand and pulled out the chair from under him with the other, as Barret grabbed his jacket and hustled him to the door. “Time to go, Rod,” she said cheerfully as he tried to get his bearings, nodding for Barret to release him and then gently shoving him out the door. “See you tomorrow.”

Then she turned back to Barret, as Rod melted off into the crowd. “So. He’s not with you.”

Barret shook his head. “Took off on his bike. Said he’d be back later, though.”

“Yeah,” she said, sighing. It took her a few seconds to ride out the train of thought this had set her on. “...Well, Marlene will be in school for another hour or two. You eaten anything? Everything here’s just gonna be reheated from the lunch hour, but I’ve got some stuff at the house.”

“Now that you mention it, I am kinda hungry,” Barret said. Tifa, who was securing her hair at about shoulder-level with an elastic band she’d retrieved from her jacket, led the way back towards the center city.

“So how’ve you been, Barret?” she asked.

Barret shrugged. “Aw, y’know, th’ same. You?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “We got a new truck a few months back. Not new new, but...you know. It’s already broken down once or twice, but it’s working okay now.”

They walked in silence for a while. “...So how’re the kids doin’?” Barret asked.

“Good,” said Tifa. “Marlene was runner-up in her grade’s art competition. Her painting’s on display at the school.”

“Yeah?” Barret said. “Marlene, an artist? Whaddya know.”

“She’s been doing little sketches for years,” Tifa said. “Finally talked her into submitting something.”

“Huh.” They were coming up on the auto barricades that led into the old city; a pair of kids whom Barret didn’t recognize were playing some game that seemed to involve hopping onto and off the barricades as quickly as they could. “...Damn,” he said, stopping and shaking his head. Tifa stopped too, looking at him quizzically. “Every time I come back here, it’s...I’m thinkin’ I know th’ place, but then everything’s somehtin’ new, y’know? So it’s Marlene’s home ‘n all, but I don’t know nuthin’ about it. It’s gettin’ like I don’t know Marlene either.”

“Well, of course,” said Tifa. “Barret, I know you’re not happy seeing her just two or three times a year. I don’t understand why you won’t just take her to Corel.”

“Well—” Barret shrugged. “Y’know. I mean, that wouldn’t be no good for her; I’m workin’ in the mines all day, an’—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tifa interrupted. He’d given her that excuse before.

“No, for real,” he said, as they started walking again. “Anyway, she knows you way better’n me by now, an’ here’s where she grew up. Corel ain’t no place to raise a family.”

“And this is?” asked Tifa.

The old city didn’t seem too different from the way it had been before Meteor. The many more vagrants begging for gil were the primary difference, and the serene atmosphere that the city’s name still wistfully implied was ruined by the mass of cheaply built buildings that had risen to replace the countryside, crowding around the town’s former edge. Against all this, the cluster of simple two-story country houses seemed more than a little incongruous; the soot that had tarnished their formerly white stucco exteriors testified to the futility of maintaining the enclave’s atmosphere.

The town’s small Mako reactor still stood in the center square, but had ceased to function; in the distance, black smoke rose from the city’s new coal plant, making the sky as black as it had ever been before Meteor.

“—Hey, so.” He started talking before he knew what he was going to say, mostly looking for something to take his mind off the town. Tifa looked back at him as she unlocked the door to her house, and he went with the first thing to come to mind. “Look, uh...about Cloud.” Tifa’s eyes flicked away, and he immediately backtracked. “Nah, nevermind. It’s none of my business.”

Tifa unlocked the door, and they went in. The house was spartan, unremarkable but homey: the living room was dominated by two couches by the window that looked like they fit together even though they didn’t match; they were set at right angles, around a simple, sturdy wooden coffee table. Partitions that had once included sliding doors separated these from a dining table with six chairs, and from the kitchen on the other side of that. A TV was propped against the wall, below the broken mounts that had been fitted to hold it. The TV was also broken, and sat with screen facing the wall; a radio was balanced on top of it.

“How was he?” Tifa asked, proceeding to the kitchen. She removed three fist-sized meat rolls from the refrigerator and put them in the microwave. “On the trip.”

“What, Cloud?” Barret asked. “Same as usual, I guess.”

“And I guess you didn’t find anything.” The microwave beeped. Tifa removed the rolls, and picked up a pair of beer bottles from the refrigerator with her free hand before bringing them back to the living room.

“Oh, we found somethin’.” Barret finally sat as she set the rolls down on the coffee table. “Whole load of junk. Jus’ don’t add up to make no kind of sense, is all.”

Tifa had removed the caps from the bottles, and handed Barret one. “So that’s it for now? No other leads?”

“It don’t look good.” A thought occurred to Barret halfway through a swig of his beer. “So Cloud didn’t call or nothin’? Say we were comin’ back?”

Tifa shook her head. “He never does.”

“—Damn!” Barret slammed the bottle down on the table; it made a sharp thud. “What is his problem, anyhow? Like it’d kill him to be a person or somethin’?”

“Force of habit,” said Tifa, looking sideways at the broken TV.

Barret blinked. “Eh?”

“You could find a job here, you know.”

“...Wha?” Barret asked, shaking his head at the change in topic. “...Ain’t no good mines around here.”

“You can do other things,” Tifa said. “Plenty of demand for bodyguards and the like. Cloud sure keeps busy enough.” She shrugged. “And you could actually be Marlene’s dad for a while.”

Barret shook his head. “I ain’t Marlene’s dad. I promised I’d take care of her, an’ that’s what I’m doin’. You keep sayin’ how hard it is puttin’ all the kids through school, and the mine’s good steady money. You don’t think I’d be here if there was another way?”

Tifa nodded at the TV. “You know how long that’s been broken?”

He didn’t, though he remembered seeing it like that before.

“Four years now,” said Tifa. “It’s been at least two since I tried getting it fixed. But it just sits there, with all the furniture around it like we’re gonna catch the news tonight.” She sighed. “It’s all habit. Don’t try too hard, don’t stray too far from what you know. Don’t get attached. Don’t start anything you might not be around to finish.” She raised her bottle to take another drink, but stopped and set it down instead. “It’s not just the TV. It’s not just Cloud, or you. It hits us all in different ways, but everyone’s just...waiting. For nothing.”

Silence descended on them. Barret took one of the meat rolls, which disappeared into his mouth in one bite. It was getting cold again already.

“It’s the kids I feel the worst about,” Tifa said. “Maybe we’ll manage to die on our own, before the Planet does. Who really thinks that they will?” She shook her head. “Is it worse to live a wasted life, or never to have the chance? And what does it say when that’s all there is left?”

Barret hunched over the table, shaking his head as well. Then he tensed, banged his gun-arm on one of the couch’s arms. “Dammit!” he said, standing; but even the anger didn’t last long. I been all over the Planet lookin’ for...shi’t, I don’t even know what I’m lookin’ for.” He dropped back into the couch, having already paced himself out. “Savin’ the world was a helluva lot easier back when there was somethin’ to kill.”

“No kidding.” Tifa managed a wan smile.