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No matter how far away Barret roamed, there was no place like home.
Corel was starting to feel back to normal. Most days there was power. There were still outages, but not as often. Homes had been rebuilt, shops, clinics. Soon there would be hospitals and schools. Roads that connected Corel to the rest of the continent.
But normal as it felt, it still did not feel like home to Barret.
Once, it had. Myrna was good at making a house feel like home. They did not have much, but they cherished what they did have. A cozy home with enough space to have friends over. Dyne and Eleanor crowding around their kitchen table, the smells of good food and the sounds of good conversation surrounding them late into the night.
Barret’s house in Corel was small, but most days it did not feel like the cozy home he once had. There was a bed, and there was a table in the kitchen. Sometimes, there were even friends at the table, and sometimes there was even laughter into the night. Even still, the laughter he had made him ache for laughter he missed.
One thing made his house in Corel feel like home.
Myrna had favored local artisans to decorate their home. The blankets were locally made, sometimes by friends or family. One of their neighbors was a sculptor, who Myrna had been determined to support. He did not mind so much the vases Myrna brought home, which were at least practical for holding flowers, or the mugs for drinking coffee. But there were one or two sculptures that Barret side-eyed every time he passed. There were paintings too. Lovingly framed and featuring dessert scenes.
Now, Barret also found himself to also be a patron to a local artist. One who resided primarily in Edge, and only occasionally in Corel. Her primary medium was paper. Her tools mostly were crayons. As for subjects, Marlene favored the people she loved.
Barret’s walls had drawings on them featuring portraits of himself and Marlene. Big smiles on their faces. He liked those. But still, Barret jumped every time he closed the refrigerator door to find a spiky-haired face scowling at him. Marlene drew an uncannily realistic Cloud. He smiled, though, at the Tifa next to him. Though her smile was just a sideways slash of crayon, Barret thought Marlene did a good job capturing the warmth.
Even so, when you pined for the sunshine of friendly face, paper and crayon just did not cut it. You could not beat home sweet home.
For Barret that was no longer Corel. Not Edge either, not exactly. But the people in Edge were Barret’s home. It made him happy in a million ways, every time he came back to them.
Of course, there was Marlene.
“Daddy! Daddy’s home!”
Every time Barret came to Edge, the same greeting and the same excitement. Did not matter whether he had been gone a week or month. Marlene was happy to see him. And always, she had a million things to tell him.
Marlene was going to school. Unlike Corel, where kids were still getting by with what their parents could offer them, Edge had a school system now, and Marlene was thriving in it. She liked reading, writing, math, and science. And she was smart. Made Barret tear up every time he read the reports, which made Marlene grumble.
“Daddy, you’re supposed to be happy,” she told him.
He was. The years of chaos, the years in the slums. None of it seemed to have done her any harm. And each time he came back to Edge, it confirmed to him that she was in the right place. Living in Edge where it was stable, where there were schools, while Barret helped fix Corel and helped find a way to bring power to the world.
Tifa would cook for Barret.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said every time.
“Uh huh,” said Tifa. “Eat, please.”
Homemade pie. You could not beat it, especially if it was Tifa’s pie. Sometimes, the edges of the crust were crimped with teeny, tiny uneven fingerprints. They told Barret Marlene had been right there helping Tifa, mixing love into every bite.
Tifa and Barret always ate together after his long trips back to Edge, at table in Seventh Heaven, just the two of them. They caught up on what was going on with Marlene, the good and the bad. All the ways she had gotten in trouble, which they laughed about as long as she was out of earshot. Tifa pressed him for every detail of his life, and he less successfully managed to get a piece or two of hers.
Often, they talked about the past. Hard not to, when it was just the two of them sitting together, in bar called Seventh Heaven, when once it had been a different Seventh Heaven and many others at the table too. But most times, it did not make them sad. Even this felt like home to Barret, the shared memories and even the sadness.
And then, there was Cloud. Not much sunshine on that friendly face, but somehow it had become home to Barret as well. Usually, he got a call from Cloud on his way from Corel to Edge. That was enough to make Barret feel warm and fuzzy, because Cloud hardly ever called anybody or picked up his damn phone.
“Almost here?” he would ask.
“Yeah,” Barret would say. “Traffic is terrific.”
It was a joke he made every time. Sometimes Cloud graced him with a laugh. A snort, anyways. There was never any traffic because the roads were barely functional and hardly anyone dared venture out on them. Cloud navigated them on a motorcycle that could go around the wreckage. Barret barreled through on his rickety but hardy truck.
“I’ll let them know,” Cloud would say. Them, their girls. “See you at home.”
Home. There was no place like it.