Sometimes Violence is the Way

by Anonymous

Summary:

Cloud has definitely woken up to better situations, and he is very, very, very certain he knows whose fault this is. There’s only one person he knows who shares the same silver hair and green slit-pupil eyes as the child who looked disturbingly like himself in everything but colouration sitting in front of him right now.

Sephiroth.

Cloud decides he is going to bring Sephiroth back, just so he could have the pleasure of killing him again.

Notes:

Eeerrrr I have a lot of plot bunnies? Yes yes I know I should be working on my other two fics BUT I also like this trope lmao

Chapter 1: Babies are Fragile (But Maybe Not This One)

Summary:

A baby falls into Cloud’s lap, literally.

One moment, Cloud is driving through the Ancient Forest, trying to find forgiveness and talking to Aerith, and then the next moment, he hears her say “oh my” and as he turns around to try and find her, he almost crashes into a tree. And then. A baby falls onto his lap.

Quite literally, out of nowhere, a baby has fallen onto his lap.

Cloud looks up.

Above him are white, ghostly trees that form a canopy that blankets the sky. Eerie, but very much normal for this forest. There is nothing at all there to suggest that babies would be falling out of the sky today.

He looks at the baby.

How in Odin’s name did this baby survive that drop?

Then he sees the baby’s features and thinks, ah. That’s how.

He immediately turns around—finding forgiveness can wait—and gets the hell out of there after securing the baby to his chest just in case it wasn’t an illusion. Finding the nearest inn and ignoring the strange stare the innkeeper keeps giving him, Cloud Strife goes to sleep.

Then he wakes up. The baby is still there.

It’s also asleep, on his chest, drooling.

Cloud stares at it as if he could make it just disappear. Then he punches himself, hard. It hurts.

Cloud has definitely woken up to better situations, and he is very, very, very certain he knows whose fault this is. There’s only one person he knows who shares the same silver hair and green slit-pupil eyes as the child who looked disturbingly like himself in everything but colouration sitting in front of him right now.

Sephiroth.

“Hmm.” Cloud considers his next step for a second. “I am going to bring back Sephiroth, and murder him,” He decides very quickly.

Except that isn’t what he manages to do next, as the baby wakes up, and it is loud.

---

Cloud has no idea what he should do with a goddamn baby who looks like his and Sephiroth’s lovechild and at first, Cloud considers incinerating it. After all, what if it’s another remnant? The world couldn’t take another Sephiroth appearance—as if he hadn’t just been thinking of bringing Sephiroth back just to kill him again. But the baby cries and shits itself and Cloud is left with a very smelly, very upset child who just managed crush all his murderous urges with the sheer force of oh Gaia, he has no idea what to do with a baby.

The baby is also kinda cute, which helps.

Tifa doesn’t answer any of his calls—maybe she’s really mad at him for driving all the way to the Ancient Forest without so much as a goodbye or see you later. Instead, he finds help in the old innkeeper who is now Cloud’s role model and hero as the man helps him clean and feed the baby, and it’s only when he’s gently, very gently—babies are fragile—patting the baby in an attempt to burp her that Cloud suddenly realises he doesn’t recognise the man.

Oh well, Cloud dismisses it, rocking the baby to sleep.

Now it was time to get back and rely on Tifa like she always told him to.

---

Cloud begins the journey back to Edge, a lot slower with the baby in tow. Some of the towns he passes by look weird, but the baby—a baby girl, he checked—is honestly too exhausting for Cloud to think on it further.

She cries, she pisses herself, she shits herself, she wakes up every other hour… Cloud soon decides he will bring back and kill Sephiroth twice. Especially since babies are fragile and for a person who needs very little sleep to function, Cloud is actually sleep deprived from the caution he needs around her. First Tsurugi has to be very carefully hidden when she’s not strapped to his chest, he can’t ride Fenrir too fast, he has to keep his materia away from her… and a whole bunch of other stuff.

So, when she not only is able to walk but somehow manages to grab First Tsurugi and lift it, Cloud nearly has a heart attack.

Oh, he thinks, one step away from fainting, that kind of makes sense.

---

Cloud isn’t too sure how old this baby is, but he can finally indulge in all his terrible parental instincts that were shut down by Tifa and Barret.

Awkward bed time stories get replaced with battle tactics. Walking practice and playtime are now time for her to get familiar with the smaller First Tsurugi blades. The slow drawl of Fenrir is pushed to an exhilarating high for some nice father-daughter bonding time as the baby shrieks in delight from where she’s strapped to Cloud’s chest. Formula milk is thrown out for cooked monster parts that she seems to much prefer. Cloud actually starts to get good with cooking them too, learning all sorts of new recipes just to see the delight on his new daughter’s face with each new delicious dish.

It feels… good. Cloud likes this weird baby and he’s pretty sure she likes him too, as she hugs him liberally, and clings to him when there’s strangers, and laughs in such an adorable way.

Cloud eventually decides to name her, having totally forgotten she doesn’t yet have a name, and settles on Aeris—pronounced the same as Aerith—after discarding several he came up with that sounded more like chocobo names than human names.

He swears he hears Aerith choke on a laugh in the back of his mind.

“Maybe I’ll only kill Sephiroth once,” he tells Aeris one day, fondly.

“Mama!” Aeris responds, and for a second, Cloud is torn between mortification at what she just called him and melting at the fact that Aeris just spoke her first word.

Eventually, her wide, innocent puppy-eyes wear him down and he smiles through tears as he says, “Good girl, Aeris, mama is here,” even though it hurts him physically.

---

Cloud loses track of time, travelling with his daughter and trying, futilely, to get her to call him papa, and it takes almost an entire month before he suddenly realises two very strange things.

One, no one has called his PHS, and two, the towns he has been going past recently are really weird.

Cloud decides to head back to Edge.

People seem to, oddly enough, not recognise him. And when they see his eyes, they startle and stare. Really weird.

A bad feeling settles in his gut, one that Aeris doesn’t seem to notice at all, as he makes his way back to Edge.

Except… it’s not Edge.

It’s Midgar.

“I’m going to kill Sephiroth at least thrice,” Cloud promises Aeris.

Aeris laughs in delight.

Chapter 2: Maybe a Little Discretion Might Help

Summary:

Cloud decides he might need a disguise. And so might Aeris. Silver hair and green eyes are rather… noticeable, after all.

Notes:

Please do not copy Cloud’s extraordinary and appalling and very very incorrect child rearing methods

Cloud’s Sephiroth-killing plans are once again delayed by Aeris crying.

Oh, she’s not crying because she’s upset about him wanting to kill Sephiroth, no. Actually, maybe Cloud should be rather concerned at how the words “kill” and “murder” seem to inspire so much delight in this very young child who can somehow swing a sword?

… Nah, it’s fine, babies are harmless, after all, and if she can swing a sword, it means she can protect herself better. Baby mama Cloud Strife almost puffs up with pride thinking about how well Aeris is doing with swordsmanship so far.

No, Aeris is crying because she needs a nappy change but Cloud has ran out of nappies and has no idea where he should go to buy them.

Maybe it’s time he should start potty training her.

He ends up in Sector Seven (and how  strange it is to see this sector, hell, any sector, standing so whole and untouched) and heads straight for the weapons store. As it turns out, the weapons store does not, in fact, sell nappies. Instead, Cloud tries to placate Aeris by asking her if she wants her own sword, buying her her very own sword with the Gil he got from selling monster parts, and then, under the extremely horrified gaze of the weapon store owner, handing Aeris the sword.

Jeez, it’s like they’ve never seen a baby wielding a sword before, Cloud thinks in smug contempt.

… Ah shit. This whole proud baby mama thing was bringing back his smug-asshole merc persona.

Cloud ends up sheepishly asking the store owner if he knows where Cloud can buy nappies and the man shakes his head, expression still frozen in horrified awe.

Cloud heads to the materia store next. The materia store owner stares at Cloud, then at the baby, then at the baby’s little sword in her little baby sword harness. When Cloud asks him about nappies, he does not respond. Cloud takes that as a no. Instead, he picks out a healing materia and leaves the Gil that’s noted down on the price tag on the counter.

He slots the materia into Aeris’ sword and when she babbles at him he soothes her, saying, “I know attack materia are cool, but safety first, okay? We start with healing, and that’s the final word on it.” What can Cloud say, he’s invested in the survival of his newfound daughter. Safety was important (as if he hasn’t just bought her a fucking sword and strapped it to her side where it was easily accessible to her).

Aeris sniffles in response.

Finally, eventually, he finds the general store, and asks the owner about nappies and, as an added afterthought, asks if he knows where he can get a helmet. He doesn’t need one, but he wants to get Aeris one, especially after that one time dust got blown in her eye, causing her to cry and Cloud to panic spectacularly. So yeah, a helmet with a visor would be good. The general store owner looks panicked as he brings out the largest bag of nappies Cloud has ever seen, a sight that warms Cloud to the core with delight. The store owner seems insistent on giving it to Cloud for free, but Cloud pays for it anyways, probably even overpays, and happily takes the helmet the man threw in as well.

Cloud locates the nearest establishment with a restroom, commandeers their bathroom with the owners stunned agreement and changes Aeris’ nappy so that the baby is happy and no longer smelly.

The rest of the nappies go into Fenrir’s storage compartments.

Now Cloud is happy, Aeris is very happy, and they’re ready to head topside to continue their plans of brutally murdering Sephiroth.

---

Cloud is, once again, delayed in his plans of killing Sephiroth. This time, not by Aeris’ crying, but still indirectly because of Aeris.

He has, finally, realised just how damn conspicuous Aeris is with her silver hair and green eyes in a time that all but worships the ground Sephiroth walks on. Now, Cloud finds himself in desperate need of a plan and a disguise, after biking all over Sector Seven with Aeris in plain view and nearly running into the Tseng of this time, overhearing how everyone was discussing and looking for General Sephiroth’s long-lost child.

General Sephiroth’s child his arse. Aeris is his child, his daughter. No way is Cloud sharing with Sephiroth.

Sephiroth has to go.

But before he could do that, he needs to get topside without being discovered. Thus, the need for a disguise.

“Nope,” Cloud turns away from the store full of dresses and skirts and blouses of different colours, sizes, and styles. He did it once, but never again.

Aeris sniffles, and Cloud makes the mistake of looking into her eyes. Her wide, innocent, pleading eyes that remind Cloud of an eon ago (or in the future?) where Aerith had looked at him like that, telling him it was the plan.

“… Alright, fine.” Cloud caves all too easily, and Aeris cries out “mama!” in delight as Cloud returns to the store to crossdress once again. Sometimes, he wonders if Aeris is actually just Aerith fucking with him. It would certainly make sense.

“It’s papa, not mama,” Cloud grumbles, more of a habit now than an actual attempt at changing her way of addressing him.

---

While Cloud is certainly pretty enough to wear a glamorous dress and pull it off with ease, dresses like that are far from practical. So Cloud goes for something light and flexible and just on the side of androgynous enough to make Aeris happy. Thank Gaia he’s running out of Gil (why the hell do women’s clothes cost so much and the lack of pockets-…! Dear Gaia) and can’t afford a better dress because heaven knows what he would do if he kept caving in to Aeris’ puppy-eyes.

So his usual clothes are carefully washed and tucked into Fenrir’s storage compartment while Cloud dons the black wolf motif pleated short skirt, tank top, leather jacket, and leather boots ensemble. The jacket is big and baggy enough to hide the fact that he doesn’t have a bust, and a black choker is all that’s needed to hide his Adam’s apple.

Aeris, on the other hand, despite being the more noticeable of the two, gets away with a cute yellow chocobo onesie that hides her silver hair. As for the eyes… eh, he’ll cross that bridge when he gets there.

Aeris’ original clothes had come with her from wherever the hell she dropped out of in the sky, and they were discarded for not being cute enough after Cloud discovered baby onesies. And Cloud buys a lot of onesies, ending up completely broke by the end of it.

With enough time wasted, Cloud decides they are suitably disguised and heads topside on the highly noticeable Fenrir with the also highly noticeable First Tsurugi, and no valid ID.

It should not be strange that security catches up with him on the motorway.

“Four times,” Cloud mutters, speeding up and leaving all the other bikes in the dust, “I’m going to kill Sephiroth four times. At least.”

Aeris giggles in exhilarated delight at the speed at which they are going.

At least, Cloud hopes it’s the speed and not the mention of killing that makes her so delighted.

Chapter 3: Trouble in Midgar

Summary:

Sephiroth is not having a good day. Neither is Cloud. Genesis, on the other hand…

The first thing Sephiroth hears when the communications tower is completed and he picks up his ringing PHS is Genesis’ voice, which means that the day has already started awfully.

“Soooooo…”

The way the red-haired commander draws out the word gives Sephiroth a bad feeling. He can vividly picture the man and his infuriating smirk. The fact that Angeal managed to grow up without murdering the man was a testament to his patience.

“What do you want, Genesis.” The question sounds more like a statement, mostly because Sephiroth would not like an answer. He would like to hang up right now and go take a shower after a night of trekking through the forests of Wutai. It’s uncomfortably hot and humid, there’s bugs everywhere, and his current platoon of soldiers are irritatingly awestruck whenever they see him. The only reason he doesn’t hang up right here and now is because of the tenuous friendship he has with Genesis that the man constantly threatens to strain and snap. And the possibility that Genesis might have some sort of entertaining news. Unlikely.

“Who's the blonde, huh?”

Sephiroth frowns. “What blonde?”

“Oh, Sephiroth you dog, why didn’t you ever tell us?” Genesis’ voice sounds somewhere between highly amused and purposefully perverted, a combination that makes Sephiroth more confused than anything.

“Tell you what?” 

“That you shacked up with a hot blonde lady and got her pregnant! The baby must be, what, at least a year old? Two years old? Something like that. Little kid totally has your hair and eyes, your genes must really be something.”

Sephiroth pauses to process the information. It doesn’t compute.

“I what.”

---

Fenrir loses the pursuers easily, leaving security yelling in confusion behind them. Cloud doesn’t stop to figure out what they’re yelling—probably cries for him to stop and surrender—and manages to make it topside with minimal trouble. He hasn't been in Midgar for a while but navigating through the busy roads is pretty easy. All he has to do is keep going to the gigantic phallic symbol in the centre—shit, Cid is rubbing off on him.

He gets a lot of looks and stares, a lot of catcalling too, but he safely makes it to the front of the Shinra building. Fenrir is parked directly outside the main door, where visitors and workers alike come and go.

Cloud and Aeris stare up at the tower before them, one in contemplation and the other in awe.

Now. How the hell is Cloud meant to get up there to kill Sephiroth? He could probably barge his way in and just fight his way to the top; he's pretty sure no one would be able to stop him. However, that sounds like a recipe for a lot of collateral damage in both the structure of the city and in lives.

Or perhaps, he could lure Sephiroth out somehow. But how is he meant to do that without luring out a bunch of turks or SOLDIERs or, even worse, fans. Not only would fans make a huge deal out of it and publicize it to no end, they would also get hurt very easily if any of them tried to approach and Cloud really didn't want to cause any civilian casualties.

As Cloud contemplates this, Aeris suddenly pulls on his sleeve.

Cloud looks down as she points to something to the side, and he follows her finger to see... a giant screen playing propaganda videos of Sephiroth.

Sephiroth with his hair flowing, Masamune drawn, frozen in an epic shot with SOLDIERs charging behind him. Sephiroth pointing Masamune forwards in an order to charge, chest barely visible under the straps and leather. Sephiroth holding... wait, is that a shampoo bottle? Conditioner? Then running his hand through his silky-smooth hair with a flourish.

Cloud stares at it with dead-fish eyes. Wow. What a terrible day to have the gift of sight.

Aeris, on the other hand, is bewitched. So bewitched by Sephiroth's silver hair, that she knocks off the hoodie of the onesie and strokes her own hair, staring at it with awe.

Cloud notices too late.

"Oh my god, it's general Sephiroth's child he had out of wedlock!"

"No no no, that's the wife he abandoned and the child he left!"

"No way, the General would never do something like that! I bet they're a happily married couple he's keeping safe because of the war and his enemies!"

"I heard she was a gold digger and here to demand child support!"

"Well, I heard she was actually a he, and he's raising the General's clone!"

"Does she look like a he to you!?"

"They could be both. Or neither. You never know."

"I personally am of the belief that they're a shapeshifting vampire from the nether realm who was so entranced with the General's strength and beauty that they decided to take on a human form just so they could bear his child."

"What the hell, man, you've been reading too many gothic romance novels."

Shit. Cloud looks around at the gathering crowd with a thunderous scowl. Even after all he has been through, he hates being the centre of attention. 

Well now what?

The crowd has started taking out their PHSes, snapping photos and the like of Cloud and Aeris. Aeris, who is still bewitched by the shampoo commercial and stroking her hair.

Fuck this. He doesn't have time for this. So, he revs up his engine and drives forward, forcing the crowd to part as he crashes straight through Shinra's automatic doors that don't even get the chance to open of their own accord. He deftly dodges past visitors and workers alike, drives straight up the stairs and then parks squarely before the entrance to the elevators.

Hmm... he's pretty sure Fenrir won't fit, but he also doesn't want to leave his bike behind.

Just as he's figuring out the best way to continue his path of destruction, the elevators open and two men step out, a redhead and someone who... has the Buster Sword on their back!

Cloud stares at the Buster Sword, but his attention is then drawn to the redhead who gasps loudly and points at him. "YOU!"

Cloud startles, eyeing the man warily as he struts over to Cloud.

"You," he says, this time in a much more subdued voice, "must be Sephiroth's secret lover."

"What," Cloud deadpans, as the other man reaches for his hand and takes it in both.

Cloud is a little too stunned to react as the crazy redhead brings his hand up and looks at him with wide eyes. "Can I be godfather?"

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Cloud Strife with a Chance of AU