IC contact

[more_than_words]

This is Tifa. Thanks for calling. I can't answer the phone right now but leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Have a good day!

Comments

[TEXT]

[more_than_words]

[Tifa's been leaving her PCD on to receive. It's her usual habit anyway, just to keep half an ear on things but since Cloud's left, she's needed the sound of other voices to fill the empty air. Text messages however usually get missed. She doesn't actually pick up her PCD often to check for things like that. When it beeps at her from its spot on the little stool she's left it on she looks up from the old wooden floor she's slowly scrubbing back to life and frowns at it. That's about the only action it gets for a full minute - until she finally sets down the half worn brush and reaches over to flip it toward her.

It promptly gets dropped. Scrambled after. Stared at for several long seconds. The return text gets typed and erased three times before she finally sends it.]

Zack? Is Cloud with you?

[TEXT]

[zackthepuppy]

[Inside the room where he had picked that isn't near Angeal's or in any place that he is familiar with, his dog Justice barked once when his PCD vibrates on the weathered nightstand. His head slowly turns on the pillow, his face showing signs of aging at least five years. Everything has been so hard lately.

His hand reaches for the device, even after he had sent the message, there is no turning back on the path he had started. He flips it open, half expecting the message to be a scolding one, his heart drops instead but it's a relief at the same time.]

No. I'm sorry. He's not with me. I want him to be. I have so many questions I need to ask.

[TEXT]

[more_than_words]

[She's glad it's text because she can feel her face fall at his answer. She doesn't want him to feel guilty for something that's not his fault and she knows Zack well enough, now, to know he'd feel bad all the same. She'd known better about Cloud but the hope had still jumped up inside her. He had a way of finding his way back to her. It seems perfectly natural to send her answering text and it's only after she does that she realizes... he'd said he'd been told he knew her. So - he didn't already?

It doesn't change her offer.]

Would you like to come over?

[TEXT]

[zackthepuppy]

Yes. I'd like to meet you, if you don't mind.

[He doesn't know about the Nibelheim incident yet. All he knows is that he's dead and he kills his mentor which sent him into a world of nightmares and terrible thoughts. It hurt...a lot.

Text is just easier to him. It keeps things simple without the complications of his own emotions getting in the way through his voice. Still, it didn't make things any easier.]

[TEXT]

[more_than_words]

[She doesn't know what he's already been through here, berating herself mentally for missing his arrival somehow but if he's already been told how he dies...if that's what 'knowing his future' means... she thinks that's a hard thing to swallow down. It's obvious, this text, that he doesn't know her and she wonders briefly who pays enough attention to her to even know she knew him, much less to mention her to him. It's a good thing though and she's already getting up and dusting off her skirt.]

I'm at the stadium. Come in and up the stairs on the south. There are a couple of chocobos in the field in the middle but Mr. Angry won't bother you if you give him a wide circle. I have a house in one of the boxes. It'll be the one with the lights on. {x,y}

[She adds the coordinates for good measure and then sets to work, tackling the job of putting everything she'd torn up in her fit of cleaning back together with something very close to her usual energy.]

[TEXT]

[zackthepuppy]

Got it. Tifa, thanks for seeing me on short notice. I can really use a friend right now.

[That's one thing he paid close attention to when it came to his training. Reading maps and understanding coordinates is something that he actually picked up pretty fast.

Tifa is right that he's in a bad place mentally. It's as if his entire world has been shattered and caving in. He snaps his PCD closed and continues his trek forward. His mental notes on the map provided is the only thing guiding him this time. He makes it a point to stay focused or else he would get lost along the way, even though emotionally, he was already sinking into despair.]