Title: Return Home
Fandom: Final Fantasy: Advent Children
Characters: Tifa
Prompt: 078 - Where?
Word Count: 383
Date finished: 02/15/2008
Rating: G
Summary: A lost sheep is found.
Author's Notes: Follows Orphans. Thanks so much to laurencrowned, who nudged me into posting these and getting started on them again. Seriously. This is ridiculous.
Disclaimer: Characters are owned by Square Enix and Sony Pictures as far as I know.

Return Home

Tifa did not expect the knock at the front door; people who came regularly to Seventh Heaven knew to go to the back. She filled the last bowls with oatmeal, sent the children to tables, then washed her hands and went to answer the door.

The couple she let into the small wind-break between the outside and the main bar looked cold. "We're sorry to bother you," the man said. "Rufus Shinra said you were the person to ask."

"Ask?" Tifa asked warily, wishing she dared move them into the main bar - even if the man did look like a stiff wind would blow him over - or that Cloud were here to back her up. She needed space to move, if this came to a fight.

"We lost our son," the woman said, her voice soft and thin, the kind of voice she'd heard often from Denzel, after some of his more serious attacks from the stigma. "We hope he's here." She sounded desperate.

"How did you lose your son?" Tifa asked.

"We got very ill," the man said as his wife leaned against him, "and sent him to Midgar to live with my mother. We didn't know until recently that she died, and we've been trying to find out where Jaren might have gone."

"How old is he?" She did have a Jaren, but still wasn't sure how he'd feel about this.

"Ten, barely," the woman said. "Please. Is he here?"

Tifa looked at them both. "There is a boy with that name here. But," she added sternly as the woman's eyes lit up, "If he wants to stay, he will stay."

They nodded, the hope still so bright in their eyes it nearly blinded her. Turning, she led the way into the bar.

Before she could even call him over, Jaren shoved away from the table where he ate. "Mom! Dad!" he called as he ran over to them, throwing his arms around his mother. "Where were you? Are you okay?"

Tifa drew back from the happy reunion, smiling wistfully as they spoke back and forth. She knew, even as she sat behind the bar, that Jaren would go with his parents.

She'd miss him, and Cloud would miss him. Knowing where he was going, though, they could live with that.

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