milliways_bar | bartending!

"Green?" She looks so hopeful, but glances at the board that shows how much money people owe. For her, it is listed in won, and this distresses her. She has no money and despite Sam Linnfer's reassurance that the "tabs" are not called in very frequently, she still worries even though it seems that Hercules' word was good, and her room is paid out of his generosity.

At home, she rarely worried about money.

She has a strong accent, but Tifa isn't surprised that she can't place it. "Green tea is no problem."

It's possible this bar has as many types of tea as it does types of beer, and that's no small feat. As she claims a cup for the lady, she follows her gaze up to the tab board and then looks across the bar again, smiling gently.

"My name's Tifa. Have you been here long?"

"Tifa. That is a pretty name." Ducking her head into a small bow, she smiles. "I am Sun. I have only arrived recently, and am... I think the word is bound." She chances a glance to the wall she's beginning to dislike very much. "No door."

Every day, she misses Jin. Every day, she misses the husband she was going to leave. If this is a test of some kind, it is one she's failing miserably.

"Thank you."

She grins, pleased. She can barely remember the last time someone commented that she has a pretty name. In her opinion, Sun is a beautiful name.

It makes her mind want to wander to Cloud, as if her brain can't think of one thing found in the sky without thinking of another, and she has to promptly turn her thoughts back to the task at hand.

Careful not to spill, she presents Sun a full cup of green tea, and her eyes are full of understanding. "I'm bound, too. I can see a door over there, but I can't get it to open for me."

Her eyes widen in surprise. "No, you can see a door but it does not open? That is terrible." Even worse, she thinks, than not seeing a door at all.

"That is false advertising."

It should not be allowed: she takes the teacup into her hands and lets it warm them. "Can I ask you how long you have been here?" She's been hearing differing things about the length of time that one must stay bound.

In spite of herself, she lets out a tiny surprised laugh.

False advertising is exactly what it feels like.

"I thought it worked that way for everyone who can't leave, but it looks like I was wrong." Sun's the first person who's specifically mentioned not seeing the door. That's strange. "I've been here... a little over eight months. I got to go home for a while, though. Six months passed, and then I came back -- without meaning to -- and found out it had only been three weeks here." She rests her folded arms on the bar. "What about you?"

It can't have been long.

She holds up two fingers on her left hand, that diamond ring flashing in the light. "Two days. But... eight months? That is impossible. Too long."

This whole business distresses her even more than the plane crash: at least with that, she had her husband. It made no sense, but it made more sense than this.

A tentative sip of tea later -- it is as good as the dumplings were the other day -- she is still shaking her head. "You got to go home for six months, but really only for three weeks?"

The longer she stays here, the less sense it makes. "I do not want to be here for eight months. What will happen to my husband? When you went home, was it the same?"

Tifa's eyes widen in empathy.

The ring, the mention of a husband. She hopes Sun has no children just because that'd make the separation even harder.

"It was exactly the same." She nods. "It was like I'd never left. Like everything froze the second I left and didn't move again until I went back."

She doesn't understand it any more than Sun appears to.

"One of my friends is here, too, but..." She ventures a half-smile. "It's hard not to miss home."

That things stop is small comfort: she still misses them. She even misses the sand in everything, and the fact that there is nothing to eat on the island, and whatever makes noises at night. She misses the crass way Jin has started telling her what she can and cannot do because it is familiar, and she misses the other women: Claire with her tiny build and giant belly, and Kate who has no fear, and Shannon with her attention to grooming, and Rose who does not believe her husband died.

But something Tifa says attracts her attention more than anything and for the moment, her tea is forgotten. "You have a friend here? That is possible?" No one else she spoke to mentioned that. "How?"

She nods again, her smile widening just a little.

If Vincent wasn't here, she doesn't know what she'd do. It's his presence here that's kept her linked to home and helped her not to fall apart. With him around, she can manage.

"He originally got here a few days before I did, and we ran into each other outside by the lake. We left at the same time, and he was with me when I came back a few weeks ago." She shakes her head. "There doesn't seem to be any connection between seeing him and coming here. And I don't know why he's come here and my other friends haven't, but I'm glad he's here."

Ah, she is so lucky.

"He is your boyfriend?" The assumption seems logical from the smile on Tifa's face.

Her mouth opens in surprise.

And then she shakes her head, feeling heat creep into her cheeks. She's never even thought of Vincent like that before. "Oh, no. Vincent's a good friend, but we--"

She hesitates, looking for a careful way to put it.

"We both have other people we'd like to get back home to."

She and Cloud are... what they are. A family, but not officially. And even if Lucrecia is encased in mako crystals, never to breathe and speak and stand in sunlight again, she's sure that still applies to Vincent, too.

No?

"My apologies. I am so sorry." Still, she barely conceals a grin with her teacup: she has seen blushes like that before.

Between good friends.

However, this is not her business. "Do you think... that you will go back to your home again? And that it will be the same, that things will be frozen?" She has such an interest in the answer that she finds herself leaning forward, the teacup only steady in her hands because she holds it with both of them. "I would very much like to know how that works."

"I hope so," she admits readily, somewhat grateful for the change in subject.

Their stoic, lovelorn Vincent and her. It seems so unlikely. Later she's going to have to have a good laugh over that.

"I've been home twice now, but both times it happened the same way. Nobody even knew I'd been gone. I don't know why it wouldn't happen that way again the next time I get to go home." She tilts her head slightly. "I know other people who've said it works that way for them, too."

"Then that is a relief." It doesn't make her miss things any less, but it does give her the smallest bit of comfort. "Although it is a shame I cannot go back in time. Nine days. That would change everything."

So far she has cried on Hercules and been given a blue handkerchief plucked right out of thin air. She has eaten dumplings with a Grandmother and cried herself to sleep every night. She's not sure how much longer she can keep this up.

"You... are very good at this. Tell me, please, Tifa, if there are ways for people here to earn money. I have none." Again, her eyes move to the tab board where she sees the price of the green tea added to the meager amount of food she's eaten the past several days. "And I do not wish to live on the kindness of others for so very long."

"It's a relief, but it doesn't lessen the homesickness."

She stops short of adding a does it?, but Sun's made how she feels about being here pretty clear. Sun hasn't screamed or cried or tried roughing up the door -- although she could've done all of that before -- but she has been more vocally opposed to being here than anybody else she's met. Even Vincent.

And that... in a strange way, makes her feel a little better.

"Did someone tell you about the fund for bound people?" That may be what she's talking about already, though. "I lived on it until I got this job. Since I've run a bar at home, I thought it was a perfect opportunity. I get room and board for doing it and keep any tips I'm given during my shifts, so... if you have any bar experience, this is one thing you could do." She leans forward a little. "But I know they also hire people to help with the gardening, and I think they've hired help for the stables, too."

"A... fund for bound people? There is such a thing?" It sounds so archaic but it also sounds like such a relief. Setting down her tea, she speaks in a whisper. "I met... Hercules. He insisted that he pay for my room. I have never been in a situation before where I had to depend on a stranger for help."

The very notion offends her sensibility, but here, she is glad for it.

"I could not work at a bar, but I do know gardens and gardening. That could be something except..." A moment of sadness washes over her. "I do not wish to do something that sounds so... permanent. It makes it seem as if I have given up on going home. I would not do that trapped on our island after the plane crash, and I do not want to do it now."

"Is that what you meant by nine days ago?" Trapped on an island after a plane crash? "People must be looking for you."

But even nine days seems like a long time to be stranded.

"The fund is for anybody who can't leave. It's unfair to expect everybody who can't get out of here to find ways to earn enough money to pay for food and rent the whole time. But when I took this job, I never thought of it as permanent." The idea is a sad one, and she can see why Sun has a problem with it. "I just... think I'm better off keeping busy."

Ah, yes, she has not told Tifa what happened. Looking down into her tea, she nods. "Nine days ago, my husband and I were in Australia. In Sydney, waiting for an airplane to take us to Los Angeles. My husband was to deliver a watch for my father, to a business associate. Eight days ago we got on that airplane, and somewhere over the ocean, the airplane broke in half and crashed on an island. Many people died. Those of us who did not have been... surviving as well as possible. Some others have died since."

Like the man with the shrapnel.

"One of the plane crash survivors is a doctor. He has been very helpful."

She, however, is no doctor, and she has not been very helpful either. Her husband will not let her.

"If I could go back nine days, I could stop my husband from taking me on that airplane."

Sydney she's not familiar with, but she's heard of a city on Earth called Los Angeles.

And somehow just now doesn't seem the ideal time to mention that she's from a completely different planet.

It's horrible story -- it sounds like Sun and her husband are very lucky to have both survived -- and nine days without rescue still seems so long, but...

Her eyes soften. "There's no way you could've known then."

"But I know now."

It does her no good at all. She cannot even share the good fortune that is this place -- if it is good fortune -- with her husband. Looking down into her tea, she sighs.

"I am sorry. I have taken up too much of your time, but... can you tell me about this fund. For people who cannot leave: what is the way to apply for it?" It would be business, she thinks, and there would be accountability for it. And knowing soon would be good because she is very, very hungry.

And how many times has she wished she could go back and change things?

Maybe it's the solidarity in wanting to go back home and maybe it's the empathy over being separated from the people they love, but she can't help feeling an odd surge of protectiveness toward Sun.

"The good news is that there's not much you have to do to apply, but when someone's actively tending bar, the bar itself is taking a break. So when my shift's done, why don't you just let the bar know you need to be covered by the fund? It's named after a man named Joe Manco, and I think doing that should be good enough."

It wasn't much trouble for her to get on it.

"Joe Manco." She says the name aloud. It is a foreign name, but one she will remember. It might be her lifeline.

She is not so sure she understands when Tifa tells her the bar itself is taking a break, but there are a great many things here she does not understand. Instead, she manages a weak smile and takes her teacup into her hands again. This, too, is a lifeline of sorts.

"Thank you for all your help. There is so much to learn about this place." There is much to learn about the island, too, but that cannot be done from here.

"You're welcome."

It's been no trouble at all, really, and she's almost surprised she hasn't had more opportunities to give information to new people coming in. If she'd seen someone behind the bar on her first night in, she'd have approached that person right away.

She just wishes she could do more. For Sun and for herself.

"If you need anything, I'm not usually too hard to find. My room upstairs is number 34."

She hasn't been in the habit of giving her room number out, but it hasn't been a guarded secret, either. Mostly she tells Sun what it is because she remembers exactly how she felt on her first few nights in and how glad she was to have a friend.

It's just that the friend, in her case, was someone she already knew. In that way, she was lucky and she realizes it.

"Oh, thank you." Sun really is very grateful. People here have been so friendly, and that is not something she's used to. "My room is 815." It's a number that filled her with wonder when she first saw it on the key and she does not know if it is supposed to be some kind of joke, but it is easy to remember. "And that is the same number as the flight we were on. I am not sure if that makes me feel worse or better."

Laughing -- but not really -- she takes another sip of her tea while it's still warm. It can all be chalked up to simple coincidence. Because how could a bar know the number of a flight from a place that could be so far away from here that nobody has ever heard of it?

Her laugh really just hides her tears and frustration, though she tries very hard not to let that show. She is weary from lack of sleep and from hunger and from missing Jin, and the tea is the first sustenance she's had all day. It is barely enough.

bartending!

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