If he were a normal person he'd probably lean forward and say something soothing about her not being able to leave, coo a bit over her getting a job tending bar -- it's actually perfect for her -- and ask how on earth a closet could possibly open onto the end of the universe. But he's not a normal person and he doesn't engage in small talk. What he does instead is absorb her words and the unstated implications behind them: she was home for a while after he left in his unceremonious fashion, and then got stolen away by who knows what back to this place, and he... went on with his business, unaware that any of this had happened.
He really ought to start carrying a phone.
The chair is comfortable, he leans back and carefully crosses one armor-clad leg over the other: some days balance is everything. "That's good." About the job, he means, although it speaks a little to a permanence he isn't so sure he wants to embrace. "So long as you're unable to leave, a job will be handy."
She'll excel at it. She'll have an easier time than when he helped out... as if she needed his help. Tifa is one of those people who's perfectly capable of doing whatever she wants, and if she needs help she asks. And she hasn't really asked for specifics but because they're friends, he tells her. "When I got back here, the door closed behind me and... doesn't open. Again. But... it's all right. I know how to wait."
That's a little bit of an understatement. There's so much more he could tell her, too: that he looked for her that first night and the day after and the day after that, until he retreated deeper and deeper into the forest and stayed there so he might effectively lose track of time. Reverting to that old behavior is... a sort of skill he learned during his thirty years in the Shinra Manor basement. Time becomes irrelevant when there's nothing by which to measure it, and when it's irrelevant the speed of its passage doesn't matter so much.
Still, he missed Lucrecia enough to talk to her the whole time he was out there among the trees... at least in his mind. Seeing her again before his return was a blessing and a curse and one day, maybe, he'll tell Tifa the whole story. But it will have to be under very particular circumstances.
Now he leans forward, studying her this way and that. "So glad you're all right, Tifa." Under these circumstances, telling her he looked for her seems redundant. If he hadn't done so, he wouldn't be sitting here with her now.
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He really ought to start carrying a phone.
The chair is comfortable, he leans back and carefully crosses one armor-clad leg over the other: some days balance is everything. "That's good." About the job, he means, although it speaks a little to a permanence he isn't so sure he wants to embrace. "So long as you're unable to leave, a job will be handy."
She'll excel at it. She'll have an easier time than when he helped out... as if she needed his help. Tifa is one of those people who's perfectly capable of doing whatever she wants, and if she needs help she asks. And she hasn't really asked for specifics but because they're friends, he tells her. "When I got back here, the door closed behind me and... doesn't open. Again. But... it's all right. I know how to wait."
That's a little bit of an understatement. There's so much more he could tell her, too: that he looked for her that first night and the day after and the day after that, until he retreated deeper and deeper into the forest and stayed there so he might effectively lose track of time. Reverting to that old behavior is... a sort of skill he learned during his thirty years in the Shinra Manor basement. Time becomes irrelevant when there's nothing by which to measure it, and when it's irrelevant the speed of its passage doesn't matter so much.
Still, he missed Lucrecia enough to talk to her the whole time he was out there among the trees... at least in his mind. Seeing her again before his return was a blessing and a curse and one day, maybe, he'll tell Tifa the whole story. But it will have to be under very particular circumstances.
Now he leans forward, studying her this way and that. "So glad you're all right, Tifa." Under these circumstances, telling her he looked for her seems redundant. If he hadn't done so, he wouldn't be sitting here with her now.