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Voices

Barret

It ain't right. It just ain't right, I'm telling you. It ain't right and it ain't fair.

Nobody deserves what she been through and her least of all. You think people like her come along everyday? Not in Midgar, I'll tell you that much. In Midgar, people'll cut you soon as look at you. Ain't nobody goes round with a smile for just anyone. Nobody but her got a smile and a 'hello' for a total stranger.

Now don't gimme dat look. You know which look. It ain't like that. She's too young. I'm too old. It weren't ever that way so get your mind out of the gutter. You make me sick, thinking like that at a time like this. She's a real sweet girl is all. Kind of what I hope Marlene will turn out like.

You have any idea what that girl gave up? Not for me so much as Marlene, still, but damn, I owe her. She put herself on the line and carried through for a child she didn't even know. People like that don't come along everyday and that's whether you're in Midgar or out of it. Damn.

I owed her then and I owe her now. I'm the one that dragged her into this mess. If it weren't for her giving up her freedom for Marlene and getting tangled up in all this shit, she'd probably be somewhere in Midgar healing all the people who got hurt by the Meteor, maybe bringing flowers to the bedside just to cheer 'em up.

Instead she's lying in a hospital needing healing herself. She hasn't been doing much more than that these past couple of weeks. She's getting the best care money can buy, courtesy what's left of Shinra Inc. Reeve's seeing to that. Even if he weren't I woulda dragged out my stash and held everybody else up at gunpoint if they didn't want to chip in. Not that they would refuse, mind you. We come too far in this to get petty now.

It took us damned long enough to find a hospital that would take her. We had to make the rounds all the way up past the flames and into Wutai eventually. Yuffie surprised me. The doctors were sending us away but that skinny little brat stormed in and pulled some royal rank or something. Yuffie... well, she's alright, even if she's kinda delinquent on account of having no mother.

I hope Marlene don't go that road. It hasn't been easy taking care of her these past couple of weeks. Sweet thing, she was so happy to see me after so long. She couldn't understand why I looked so sad, or why Auntie Elmyra was crying.

Elmyra's just at the point of being civil to me again. I guess she got more to think about now than beating the bearer of bad news. I don't hold it 'gainst her. She had to be told and I had to do the telling. Who else was going to do it? Cloud was a mess. Tifa was acting nurse. Elmyra didn't even know the rest of them. And after how she took Marlene in, I owed it to her to tell her to her face.

Didn't make it any easier though. How do you go up to somebody who's taken in your little girl and treated her like their own kin, then tell them something about their own child? It's not easy. It can't be. To go up to somebody and tell them their daughter's been hurt like that? You think anybody takes that news well? I didn't mind when the fists started flailing or when she started to scream at me. It was easier to take that than think about how sick I felt about the whole thing.

I brought Marlene on board the ship the same time I brought Elmyra, but I didn't let my baby girl go down to where all the commotion was. There's some things a child's just not meant to see. She kept asking me where the flower lady was, though. That's the thing with kids. You try to hide it, but they always when know something's up.

I told her the flower lady was real sick and that we had to find a hospital that was good enough to take care of her. That was why Auntie Elmyra was mad at Daddy. Marlene's young yet. That was enough of the details for a while.

We're all staying in Wutai for the time being. Funny how we all agreed to it without ever talking about it. We're in this together, till the girl's out of the woods. We'll see where to go from there.

I go to visit everyday at the hospital. I don't bring Marlene with me just yet. It's too soon and things are still too awkward. Elmyra's always in there. If she's not crying, she looks like she just finished crying, or else she's going to start crying. I see Cloud in the hall sometimes. He just sits outside and stares at the floor. Tifa stays by the bedside with Elmyra most times I've been there. The others come and go like me. There's not much we can do other than check in to see how things are going.

They're not going too well either. Oh, she's doing alright, physically. Bones healing, bruises fading, that kind of thing. She's awake for hours at a time now. But it's like she's not really there. Tifa told me something to that effect early on, but it took me a while to see what it was. She doesn't talk to anybody, not even her own mother. She looks at us like she ain't ever seen us before. I tried to say something to her the first couple of times I went. She just looked right through me the whole time, like she was staring at the wall behind my head. Then she turned away to look at the other wall.

The first look at her was pretty bad but it was right then, in that hospital, that it hit me how bad it was. She's not in her own head anymore and she might not come back. You have any idea how much that hurts? Looking at her like that makes me just want to sink straight through the floor. She's gone from being what she was to this thing that just lies in bed, not understanding a damn thing around her. Is that fair? Tell me, for somebody who would do what she did for everybody around her, is that fair?

My visits are getting shorter and shorter these days. Mostly I feel like I'm just dropping in to see if she's said anything yet. I keep going, because I got to be there for her. We all got to be there for her, even if she don't recognize us anymore. Each day I go, hoping and praying for a change, that maybe this time there'll be that spark in the eye and she might say 'hello' or something. Each day I'm disappointed and I can't stand to stay much longer.

It hasn't been long though. There's plenty of time for her to come around yet. Who know with these things? They're guided by something mightier than us. We just gotta do the best we can. I hope for Elmyra's sake at least, it doesn't take forever.

Marlene keeps asking to come with me. I don't let her. I keep telling her I'll take her later, or the doctor said only one person at a time or something. that doesn't stop her from doing something though. Everyday she picks a bunch of raggedy old wildflowers for me to take to the hospital. She looks so happy when she's out there in the grass, enjoying the sun. I don't know that it would be good for the child to see her friend the way she is.

Marlene's no fool though. Can you believe she actually asked me what was wrong? Now what the hell am I supposed to say to that? Children understand things like measles and shit, but this is something else entirely. How am I supposed to look this sweet, happy little girl in the eye and tell her that the world is an ugly, ugly place full of ugly people who don't care for anything but hurting others as bad as they can? And that it don't matter how good you are because bad things can still happen to you, just like they did to a sweet slum girl who grew flowers and had a heart as big as the ocean?

There's something wrong with a world like this and I'd fix it if I knew how. Because it just ain't right. It just ain't fair.