Author's Note: Where did this come from? Myriad sources. I cosplay as Jenova an awful lot, and one of my favorite things to do has been to play her as the downtrodden mother with deadbeat stay-at-home adult sons who won't get a job or a girlfriend or even a gig destroying the world like they promised. But at about 4:10 AM on Thursday, April 20th, I was suddenly bushwhacked by the idea in a mega-deluxe form, and the rest (as they say) is history. No Sephiroth, though; once he dies for good, I'm pretty sure he'll find out the truth of it all.

(Plus, I'm already tormenting him in "Party City: Midgar," so I figured it was Jenova's turn to suffer.)

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy. Please review.

Warning: Slightly sappy, very odd, occasionally verging on the ludicrous.

Pairings: Tifa/Cloud, Tseng/Elena, Reno/vodka, Rude/sunglasses, Jenova/headache

Disclaimer: Cloud, Tifa, Denzel, Jenova, Sephiroth, Kadaj, Loz, Yazoo, and all other associated characters and concepts are property of Squaresoft Inc. and not me. I'm not making any money off of this; it's written purely for entertainment value, and not to be sold in any form. Please don't sue me. Neither do I own Teflon (tm), which is a really nifty product.

And remember: Sephy-clones love their mummy!

SINGLE MOTHER OF THREE

by Morrigan, the Nightmare Queen

Two voices, speaking in the swirling world of the Lifestream. We do not know them, and we are not priveleged to behold the world they now inhabit, but we can still hear their words. They are concerned, for a problem has become more dire of late . . .

"Sephiroth has already gone back to his true mother. Lucrecia has moved on."

"But what about the other three? The lost ones?"

"They were born of a madman's lust for power. Let him have them."

"Eternity with him? Torture far beyond what they deserve, surely. Aeris has been kind to them, and her favor holds some high regard. What does she say?"

Another presence joins them now: a high, clear voice, the sort that might be accompanied by a friendly hug or a mischievous smile. But despite its youth, the girl who owns this voice is wise beyond her years, and should not be overlooked or underestimated.

"I say: give them what they want."

"A mother?" one of the first voices says.

"Their mother."

"But Lucrecia has-"

"Not Lucrecia. They would neither know nor love her. Give them the mother they wanted."

"You can't be serious. The Calamity from the Skies? The destroyer of our race and enemy of the Planet? Give her the kind of power that those three possess?"

"And you don't understand," the young girl says, a hint of sharpness edging into her tone. "With the loss of her last remaining cells, Jenova is truly dead. She is in our power for the first time in a thousand years. Someday, Sephiroth may learn something other than hate . . . can we give his tormentor the same chance?"

"Redemption? Jenova? It's original, to say the least. But what about the three- and how-"

"Send them back to the Planet. Give them human forms, and let their souls figure things out for themselves. If they love her as a mother . . . maybe she can learn to love them as sons."

"Oh, this should be good."

"You be quiet, Zack. What are you doing in a Cetra council, anyway?"

Far off, a door slams. A rough tenor interrupts the conversation, and he means for it to stay interrupted. "I was bored, so I thought I'd drop by to see you, gorgeous."

"Weren't you watching over Cloud today? It's the anniversary of Meteor-" the girl begins.

"I never thought I'd say this- but he was more interesting when he was depressed. I'm a military man, Aeris. A guy can only take so much of this Happy Families stuff."

"Oh, Zack . . . "

"What? I'm serious! Even in our barracks, you didn't watch while your buddy had some quality time with his girl. Even one stacked like Tifa. There are standards, ya know."

"Standards? You seem to have picked up a new hobby, Zack. I didn't know you had any."

"Oooh, you wound me! C'mere, and I'll show you exactly how many standards I don't have-"

"Not here! Zack!"

A sigh from one of the first voices. " . . . honestly. Could you two take it outside?"

The 7th Heaven, Midgar . . .

The alarm clock on the bedside table buzzed arthritically, then gave out a squawk and died. Tifa Lockheart rolled over, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and thumped the surface of the clock with one fist; the clock rattled apologetically, but refused to reactivate. With a wide yawn, the brunette martial artist kicked away the woollen plaid blanket and stretched, pulling the kinks out of her muscles. A new day. It was six AM and she had two hours until the bar opened; plenty of time to rouse everybody, make breakfast, and make sure that Denzel got off to school on time.

Lazily drooping brown eyes snapped open. The other half of the bed was empty.

For a moment, Tifa panicked- he's not gone again, is he?- but that instant of worry was quickly dispelled. A smoky haze hung in the air, along with the aroma of inexpertly fried bacon. She knew Denzel must be still asleep, because Cloud would never use that kind of language if he thought the boy was listening.

Cloud was a wonderful man. After years of anguish, his heart had finally begun to heal; the confrontation with the three Sephiroth clones and with their "big brother" himself had brought the blonde face-to-face with his demons, and he had conquered them. Only a few months ago, Tifa had summoned up the courage to kiss him- and she had been very surprised to find him kissing her back. Denzel had been adopted into the small household above the 7th Heaven, and all of AVALANCHE had chipped in to turn part of the old church into a permanent home for the orphans. Cloud had been through hell and back, and he was a hero ten times over.

That didn't mean he knew how to cook.

Tifa quickly leapt out of bed and threw a robe on over her loose sleep shirt. Slippers and socks were ignored in the fighter's haste to get downstairs before something really catastrophic happened. A bar and a delivery service together made good money, more than enough to live comfortably on, but she didn't want to have to get the stove repaired. Cloud had guilted around the place for a week last time.

Hurrying into the kitchen, Tifa was met with a peculiar sight. Cloud, already fully dressed, was swatting frantically at a frying pan currently emitting the smoke of successfully charbroiled bacon. On another burner, the stick-resistant powers of Teflon were being challenged as eggs a la Strife cooled into a rubbery mess. The coffee pot, on the other hand, was pristine and untouched: on a weeks-long quest with little or no proper rest, even ex-SOLDIERs learned that it was Percolate or Die.

"Cloud!" Tifa exclaimed, grinning despite herself. "You made breakfast!"

The blonde whirled around, nearly dropping the smoking pan on his foot. "Uh- yeah," he said, attempting to shrug nonchalantly and juggle a large amount of hot metal and grease at the same time. "I tried, but the eggs started curling up and the bacon sort of-"

Tifa cut him off with a kiss. "It's the thought that counts," she said, running a hand through Cloud's spiky hair. "I'm just glad you're up, that's all."

The blonde raised an eyebrow in an eerily Vincent-like manner as he slid one arm around Tifa's waist. "Is that so?"

"Ack- lemme go, silly!"

"Say the magic word."

"What, 'please?'"

"That's not today's magic word."

"Cloud- you know I'm ticklish- aaack- Cloud!"

"What's the magic word?"

Tifa sighed and rolled her eyes, having been unsuccessful in her attempts to get loose from Cloud's affectionate bear-hug. "Fine. Who am I today?"

"You are . . . hmmm . . . you're Yuffie."

"Oh, easy. Yuffie's magic word is materia."

Cloud grinned, loosening his embrace. "You're free to go."

"Actually," Tifa retorted, leaning back against him, "I think I'll stay here for a while. And I'm not going anywhere until you give me a magic word, and it better be good, buster- or I'm not making cinnamon rolls."

"Curses! Foiled again!"

"Again? We do this every day!"

"Well," Cloud replied, planting a kiss on her nose, "Sometimes you have to do something over and over again to get it right. Like that Materia Keeper? What a nightmare. I'd swear we tackled that thing fifty times." He nudged her. "You, however, I'll deal with for nothing."

Tifa laughed and gave him a poke in the ribs. Yelping, the ex-SOLDIER tightened his hold on her again, which made her retaliate with a mock-punch to the jaw. Cloud pretended to swoon, and the two of them somehow wound up on the kitchen floor together . . .

"Hey, get a room, guys!"

Frying in the sheer embarrassment, Tifa scrambled to her feet under Yuffie's disgusted-yet-fascinated gaze. Cloud followed her a second later, covering up his chagrin by scraping the remnants of the bacon out of the thoroughly blackened pan. The ninja, resplendent in an eighty-year-old cherry-blossom silk kimono and fuzzy moogle slippers, yawned hugely and fixed the reddening pair with the critical air of the nineteen-year-old catching her parents cuddling.

"Is this what you guys always do?" Yuffie said accusingly, stifling a second yawn. "'cuz if I'd known I'd get dinner and a show, I'd've brought my camera. What'd you do, forget we were here or something? Barret snores."

"I slipped-" Tifa began, and stopped. She had forgotten. The ninja winked hugely and tiptoed past them towards the pantry, snaring a box of cookies that had been hidden behind the pasta and shoving three into her mouth. On her way back with the box, she nudged Tifa in the ribs and winked again, doing a quick one-woman pantomime of a dramatic faint and the accompanying smooches. Cloud groaned and covered his eyes with his hands.

"Yuffie, I thought part of being a princess was being polite . . . ?"

"Yeh, thahh whuh Vhinnhi's hulwhayh abouhh," Yuffie slurred through a mouthful of Double Chocolate Fudge Chip. "Hehh ahh bahd ahh Dahhd umthimeth-"

Cloud blinked. "Was that a language?"

"It was Yuffese, I think," Tifa replied, gently shooing the errant ninja and the swordsman away from the stove. "But you two had better keep out of the way if those cinnamon rolls are going to be ready any time soon. Yuffie, don't bother Cloud too much, all right? Cloud, please don't kill Yuffie. If that's possible."

"I'll go wake up Denzel," Cloud said pointedly, stepping around the messily chewing shinobi. "Some kids around here actually go to school, you know."

Yuffie's reply was thankfully illegible due to the cookies, but suffice to say that it expressed a very definite opinion about being classed as a "kid." Cloud restrained the impulse to point out that no matter how old Yuffie would get, she would always be younger than him, and would therefore be a kid all her life. He knew what kind of an answer he'd get to that. Instead, Cloud climbed the stairs to the second floor and turned left, heading down the corridor where the guest rooms were.

Cloud didn't need his SOLDIER training to know which of the visiting family friends had picked which room. Barret was the easiest- the gun-armed man's titanic snores were audible from several rooms away, and there was usually a sailor suit hanging on the door. (A man has to have hobbies, after all.) Marlene insisted on sleeping in Denzel's room, and Red XIII would curl up any place that wasn't currently inhabited by someone who annoyed him, which explained why a fire-tipped tail was protruding from the linen closet. For the sake of decency, and to keep Cloud from being deafened by Lord Godo, Yuffie had been given one of the two remaining rooms: this had left Vincent and Cid to uneasily share the last space left and to fight over who would have to sleep on the convertible sofa.

After a prolongued argument and one night of uneasy rest, Cid had graciously surrendered all rights to the room and had moved the sofa into the storeroom behind the bar. Some people sleepwalk in their dreams. Some kick. Some transform into hideous creatures beyond the knowledge of mortal men. Cid had decided to go the gentlemanly route and keep all of his limbs intact.

Meanwhile, fourteen miles away, a small meteorite crashlanded in the backyard of an abandoned cottage. Someone said "Oh, aghraooa!", which- if you happen to be a Calamity from the Skies- is a very naughty thing to say indeed.