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It’s a generous offer. A fully-furnished house, two months of instruction on mountain life, a set of basic materia, and when you question further, promises of food and warm clothing for the next three months.
That last would be enough to make you sign almost anything; it’s gotten to the point you’ve started eyeing make-up and slinky frocks as investment for a meeting with Don Corneo. You wouldn't if it was just you, but there’s the kid to think of, and toddlers need to eat or they cry and cry and only go to sleep after they’ve tired themselves out, suckling on fabric you’ve wet with a little hard-bought milk.
You’re getting desperate, and that gives off a smell all the sharks in Midgar can recognize, the promise of gil and blood. Soon recruiters of all stripes will swarm around, until they’ve caused enough trouble that you have no choice but take any one of them on their offer. You know how this works, you’ve seen it happen.
This particular shark wears a suit. That’s a new one: you’ve kept away from ShinRa trouble, and in-between screwing with gang issues Jin was too busy coaxing you into forgetting to lock the door of the bar you worked at to attract attention from the Upper Plate.
You know what they say: if something sounds too good to be true…
“So what’s the catch?” you ask. You’re desperate and cornered to making desperate choices; doesn’t mean you’re stupid. You’re a Midgar girl born and raised and on the streets since you were fifteen, Sector 6. Stupid gets dead fast. You’re going to make one of these desperate choices to stay out of worse trouble, and ShinRa’s the most attractive package deal by far, but that's because you know what bad sides the other offers are hiding, and you can’t guess about this one.
“I’m afraid you’d have to sign the non-disclosure agreement first.” Suit’s expression doesn’t change, unreadable as a trooper’s helmet, but he doesn’t pretend to play dumb. That’s good, you decide. Less chance on you getting the wool pulled over your eyes.
“If I sign and don’t like what I hear, what happens? I can walk off?”
“No.”
Well, that was worth a try.
“So how do I know you’re not planning on turning my baby and me into mako, huh?” you shoot back. Only then does it cross your mind that maybe you should’ve thought twice before mouthing off to the ShinRa suit with the golden proposition and letting him know you’ve been listening to anti-ShinRa conspiracy nuts. Not listening listening, but they speechify loud enough that you heard a bunch of their rhetoric when you still worked at the bar, and the rumor that ShinRa was disappearing poor people to turn them into literal mako had been the most memorable.
Suit raises his hands in an appeasing gesture.
“Miss, I can guarantee the parameters of this contract do not include any harm coming to you or your child.”
Legalese, okay, you can work with that. Also Suit looks surprisingly patient and hasn’t called an abrupt end to your meeting yet, so clearly you still have room to push.
You cross your arms.
“I’d like more guarantees before I make a choice.”
Suit gestures at you to go on.
You hoped he’d be one making a laundry list of things that wouldn’t happen, that you’d be able to pick apart for clues, but guess that was too revealing. From you, anything you demand will be a shot in the dark: you don’t know what kind of catch to look for.
You’re not even sure you want to guess at the catch. Maybe then he’d take it back – the offer, the house, the training, the food. But the general shape of it, yeah, that’s what you’d like to know about.
“…no harm, on purpose and by negligence,” you say. “Oh, and whatever it is – it won’t be used to start off another war, right? Or to, well, to destroy Wutai? I ask,” you hasten to say, afraid Suit served in the war and you’re just marking another non-welcome point, “because my baby—“
“Your child’s father was Wutainese, yes, we’re aware.” A beat. “No, nothing like that.”
A human being might have let the hint of a smile shine through. Here, nothing, just more of the same blank-faced formality.
A beat.
“Are these your conditions?”
Now he’s making you feel underprepared.
Mentally, you tick down the list of ShinRa’s demands. If you sign you agree to spend the next ten years of your life in a hamlet in the coldest boondocks, and agree not to reveal anything about whatever it is that ShinRa’s keeping under wraps for the moment.
Duration aside, it’s not that different from a more standard job contract. It’s kind of a job, if your job was house-sitting and you couldn’t resign. In the little reactor town of Nibelheim. Way out in the deep nowhere. (You never heard of the town before today, though the word “Nibel” brings back images of the Nibel dragons that were popular fifteen years ago or so in kids’ entertainment programs.)
And you don’t have a family, aside from the small bundle of flesh and hunger you made yourself, with Jin’s help, a little over two years ago.
ShinRa never mentioned it, but you know that must be why you’re being offered this at all. People with no families are convenient; no-one to look for them after they’re gone, no-one to spill the beans to.
Ten years.
You lick your lips. “Are there--I suppose you can’t tell if there are other people up there, or how I’ll explain I’m there, but what I want to know is, it’s not ten years in isolation, right? I mean, the town’s isolated, but I’ll be—I won’t be alone, will I?” Or surrounded with SOLDIERs or ShinRa spawns. No way you can ask that at all, though – I’m sorry, is the non-disclosure agreement I haven’t signed yet at all about a super-secret ShinRa project you’re secretly working on?
“The guarantee no harm will be done to you included the psychological, Miss.”
Beat.
He hasn’t called you anything other than ‘miss’ since the beginning of the conversation; you wonder if reminding you of your young-single-mom status is supposed to make you subtly uncomfortable, or something.
...Nah, it’s gotta be more old-fashioned formality, if he wanted to push the social stigma button, he’d refer more to the war. You’ve lost of count of times you’ve been spit, or worse, at for living with a Wutainese guy. It’s been a bit better since the war ended, but you’ve gotten used to people talking about The War and looking at you, like you’re going to break down and cry or get angry and give them an excuse to beat you up.
If you go you wouldn’t be leaving any kind of support system behind, having successfully alienated yourself from everything and everyone. Not all of it was because of your choice of man. You’ve never been much impressed with the gangs, either, and that’s made you dangerous to be around, sometimes. Jin paid the price, when his so-called friends stopped being understanding.
“The access to information – it’s not restricted, is it? Or, or the PHS, things like that? Or modern accommodations,” you add. If you have to haul up water from the well like they did in olden times, you damn well want to be warned first.
“The level of comfort is rustic, but well within the Midgar norm. You’ll find it a significant step up compared to your current accommodations.”
Your current accommodations are a hellhole. So that’s not saying much.
On the other hand, you haven't said jack about it, so Suit is letting you know they’re well-informed.
Okay.
It’s either a bone he’s throwing you or a warning you’ve been asking a lot of questions for someone only her kid would miss.
“And that’s ten years, right?”
Suit nods. “After that, you are welcome to leave, provided you keep to your end of the non-disclosure agreement. You could come back to your old life, or make a new one somewhere else. Or stay, for as long as you want, under the same conditions.”
It’s a long time, ten years – ten years of your life you’d sign away.
Ten years of life.
Roof over your head, promise no harm will come to you, bar what you’d bring to yourself or the reactor exploding. Ten years of a happier childhood for your child that in Midgar, that’s for sure.
And you could try and fish for more, but what's the point? ShinRa's the shark; pull on the line too much and they'll go deep and drown you.
You take a breathe, try to make your hands stop shaking.
“Yeah,” you tell the suit, “yeah, I’ll sign.”
*
Nibelheim’s cold, but you expected that, and the neighbors speak with a mishmash of accents so your own Midgar nasals barely stand out, and you all smile at one other and pretend not to notice.
Your house is very nice, furnished like it’s lived in but everything’s brand new, and just the right size.
Looking around, you find small, horizontal scratches on the kitchen wall, at irregular intervals from your hip up, with a date in half-erased pen (washed away with time or artificial means) next to each, measuring. Another family lived here before you did, another child growing up. You don’t know what happened to them, but you trail your fingers on the scratches, and you feel the strangest urge to—to say thanks, for this, for all of this but especially for this one small thing.
So you do, turning toward the wall and resting your forehead on it.
“I promise to look after this place,” you whisper.
From the dates, it’s been years since the child grew up (not that much, kid can’t have been older than thirteen, fourteen when the notches stop). You’ll pick up the tradition for them.