Departure (Final Fantasy VII, Rude/Tifa, #25)
Title: Departure
Author: Lirillith (liri42)
Pairing: Rude/Tifa
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Theme: #25, fence
Disclaimer: FF7 and Advent Children are not mine. This is set post-Advent Children, without any connection to Dirge of Cerberus or any other AC-related material. Earlier fics in the sequence are available here, here, and here (in order.)



He was in front of her house at eight on a Monday morning, sitting in the car, debating whether to honk or get out and knock. Honking had in its favor the hope that she'd come out and her friends would stay behind; knocking was polite, but he doubted any amount of courtesy could make Barret stop hating him. He finally turned the key and swung the door open, but as he shut it and looked up he saw her coming out the door. Barret followed her, then the two young kids, then Cloud; she seemed to be talking to them all, but he couldn't hear what they were saying.

There was a chain-link fence around the somewhat overgrown front yard. He paused at the gate, not sure if he ought to even come in, now. Barret was holding one of her bags, and she had another. The little girl hung onto Barret's other hand, the one that used to be a gun. He and Reno used to joke about that, when they were chasing Avalanche - "maybe he'll leave the safety off sometime and forget about it and we'll have one less headache" - but he'd probably always had substitute prosthetics for times when he wasn't fighting. Probably. Rude had just never seen him without the gun until recently, that was all.

She turned toward him and waved, and he reached for the gate latch, tugged at it until it gave and swung up with a protesting squeal, and opened the gate. She came out and set one of the bags down by the car. "Just give a minute to say goodbye to everybody, okay?"

"As long as you need," he said. "Wasn't trying to rush."

"Thanks," she said, sounding distracted, and she turned back to the others. As he opened the trunk of the car and settled her bag in it, next to his, he kept glancing at them. She hugged Barret, then, awkwardly, Cloud. The young boy, Denzel, was hanging back, looking like he was practicing to be as sullen as Cloud, and she bent down to say something quiet to him, then ruffled his hair. Marlene grabbed her and clung, and he wondered if he could shut the trunk unobtrusively. Then he noticed Barret approaching.

"She can hand your ass to you six ways from Sunday," the big man said. "You try and hurt her and she make you regret it. And she got a cell phone, so she can tell us and we'll make you regret it too."

"I know," he said.

"Just makin' sure," he said, and whapped his shoulder, hard, with the metal hand. Rude refused to wince or rub his shoulder. Tifa had come out to join them, and he put her other bag away. The others had all gathered inside the fence. Tifa went back, reached over it to squeeze Marlene's shoulder and then leaned down to kiss the top of her head. He finally closed the trunk, and waited as she walked the few remaining steps to the car.

"Ready to go?" she asked, and he nodded. She gestured at the car door and he finally remembered it was locked, so he unlocked it and held it open for her.

"Nice," she said, smiling at him, and he couldn't help smiling back before he closed the door. When he was settled in the driver's side, she said, hopefully, "Coffee?"

"Oh thank God," he replied, and she was laughing as he turned the ignition.