Fragile Tender Heart
Title: Fragile Tender Heart Rating: T Word Count: 8,061 Summary: Once upon a time, there was a prince with a teddy bear. And then, there was neither a prince nor a bear. The story of how a newborn chocobo nugget transforms into a beautiful gentlethem.
-1- "It's a boy," the midwife says.
The first time Yuffie holds her baby, she's exhausted, bathed in sweat, but she's still the most beautiful thing Cloud has ever seen. She's glowing, eyes bright and mirthful as ever despite their baby's painful, intensely arduous journey into the world. He smiles at her as the midwife counts the correct number of digits on hands and feet that are so unbelievably tiny and fragile. Cloud leans over and kisses her forehead, running his fingers through dark hair wet with perspiration, and he mutters something about how proud he is of her, how amazing she is, how much he loves her.
Yuffie just grins as the midwife takes the infant once again, to tend to him and making sure the rest of him is as healthy as his lungs and vocal cords seem to be, and she's clearly delirious with exhaustion when she laughs breathlessly and says, "Cloud, we did it. We made a chocobo nugget."
-2- "Mama's yukata is pwetty," Yuki says, squirming around in his lap.
"It is," he whispers, tapping at his son's mouth with an index finger, "but we have to be quiet until she finishes her speech. It's very important, and we don't want her to mess up."
It's not exactly fair to ask a three year old to sit completely still as his mother announces the newly-made agreement between her country and the reformed, rebuilt Shinra Company. It likely won't go over well, but she is the Empress, Her Imperial Majesty, the Daughter of Leviathan, and her people trust her not to let their home be ravaged by senseless war ever again. She says as much to them, reminding them that she has been actively in the fray since she was sixteen years old and has aimed to restore her country to its former glory since the war with Shinra ended. She loves and respects her father, she tells them, but she would rather die than allow her people's culture to be reduced and trivialized, to once again let an oppressor overtake them and turn their precious traditions into a show for tourists.
She makes a hell of an argument, and Cloud is quite proud of her for acknowledging Wutai's righteous anger at Shinra. She doesn’t dismiss their obvious concerns about this partnership, and makes a point of assuring them, not only that she feels exactly the same, but also that she knows Rufus Shinra personally and can tell when he’s lying. She tells them all the ways how she knows that he is serious about making peace between their two groups.
(In another life, she once told him, she might have married him to establish this same bond with her people, and can you even imagine that, Cloud, how gross would that be, he's like, a million years old, eww.)
Near the end of her speech, she very casually says, "If Rufus violates our agreement, I reserve the right, in addition to enacting the fines and sanctions and other political punishments that I’ve already talked about, to cut his dick off—like, the whole entire thing!—and shove it down his throat." And how can anyone can doubt her sincerity when she adds, "And then, I dunno, murder him or whatever"?
Yuki lets out a giggle, because he's never heard his mother threaten to kill anyone outside of a joke before and has no idea that, right now, she is completely serious. Cloud cannot help but hope that his son does not inherit his mother's sense of humor. "Daddy," Yuki says in the loud half-whisper so common to children his age, "I wanna be a empwess like Mama someday and wear pwetty yukatas."
Cloud hushes him again. "You'll be the Emperor when you're all grown up, Yuki, don't worry."
-1.1- "It's a boy," the midwife says.
She's smiling at them as she gingerly lays the infant in Yuffie's arms, obviously proud of both herself and of her patients, and she adds, "He will make a fine Emperor, Lady Yuffie, I can already tell."
"You say that about every baby you deliver, Midori," Yuffie mutters, and Cloud is the tiniest bit impressed that she still has the energy to be sarcastic after the ordeal she's just been through. "'He will make a fine priest, I can already tell.' 'She will make a fine wife, I can already tell.' When I was born, you probably told my mother the exact same thing; 'She will make a fine Empress, Lady Kasumi, I can already tell.'"
The midwife grins, a sharp sparkle in her eye, and replies, "I told your honored mother, I said, 'She will be a right terror, this one, I can already tell.' And I was right, wasn't I?"
"Hey, I didn't turn out so bad! Helped save the world a few times, made a bunch of good friends, got a crap ton of gil and cool materia. I even bagged myself a man without anyone's help, thank you very much."
"Well," the midwife murmurs, running her fingers over the few soft, black strands of hair that are already on the baby's head, "let's just hope this son of yours turns out to be more like his father, hmm?"
-3- It's somewhat common, he's been told, for little boys to go through a phase where they want to dress up in their mother's clothes. So he's not worried when he finds Yuki in their closet, digging past Cloud's pants and shirts to get to his mother's things.
What does worry him is the make-up smeared inexpertly on Yuki's face and hands and how the boy is transferring it to anything close to him at an alarming rate. Cloud snatches him up and pulls him away from Yuffie's more formal clothing before Yuki can christen it with the dark eyeshadow that makes his wife's eyes shine or the bright red lipstick she wears only when she's angry at or annoyed with her advisers. The boy protests, letting out a shriek as Cloud methodically cleans him up before he can do anymore damage.
Yuki squirms in his lap the whole time, small hands pulling at his father's arm and begging him to stop. "You're ruining our clothes, Yuki; I have to get this stuff off of you."
"No!" he screeches, digging his tiny, sharp nails into the back of Cloud’s hands. "No, I wanna be pwetty like mama! Stop it!"
"Boys don't wear make-up, Yuki!" he scolds, and his voice is much louder than he intends it to be.
And it's so strange because the wriggling mess of a child in his arms immediately goes still. Yuki looks up at him, and while Cloud takes the lack of movement as an opportunity to finish cleaning the boy up, Yuki murmurs, "But I'm not a boy."
Cloud's immediate response is a distracted, "Of course you are," which causes a round of silence in addition to the stillness. He manages to wipe off the last vestiges of make-up from the boy’s hands and face, working quickly before his son can start the wiggling and the protesting again. But Yuki is still quiet when the work is done, and for a long moment, Cloud is haunted by a feeling of dread, knowing it was a mistake to negate his son's feelings right away like that. He remembers people dismissing how he felt as a child. He knows exactly how many scars he still carries from being told that how he felt was unimportant or wrong.
It’s important to him that he apologizes for yelling. He never got that as a child, and he wants things to be different for his son. He’s not perfect, but he doesn’t have to be. He just has to be able to admit when he makes mistakes and do better next time.
Yuki only shrugs, jumping up from his lap and bouncing toward the door. "You're right, I am a boy."
Okay, wow, big sigh of relief for that. It doesn't seem like his son is permanently harmed or anything. He would have to be more careful about controlling his temper in the future, though. Cloud never wants Yuki to feel like he couldn't talk to him about anything at all whenever he needed to.
"But," his son trills, elongating the vowel in the exact same way his mother does right before she attempts something mischievous, "maybe I'll be a girl tomorrow!"
Cloud shakes his head. That's all it is, then. A game.
Nothing to worry about, right?
-4- The summer after Yuki turns 5, Cloud wins a teddy bear for him at a festival booth. He calls it Nanko, despite his parents telling him that isn't a real name, and it immediately becomes his favorite toy. He goes nowhere without it, and he's seen by the public with it so much that the bear soon becomes an unofficial member of the royal family. That brand and style of teddy bear gains an immense popularity, and Yuffie cracks a joke one evening about her son being a fabulous trendsetter at such a young age. "Just like his mother," she sighs, dropping a kiss onto Yuki's forehead.
The boy is sleepy, soft and pliable in her arms, and not really paying attention to anything. He's fighting sleep like it's a master tonberry walking toward him with the intent to kill shining bright in its eyes, and Cloud can't help but smile. "We should probably put him to bed."
A muffled protest issues from the vague area near Yuffie's lap that his son occupies, but they both dismiss it. When he's tucked in, Nanko held tight in his arms, the boy is so adorable that Cloud has to take a picture. He can't not do it. He's physically incapable of not memorializing this moment in time, of not getting hard proof of how his child is quite possibly the cutest thing to ever exist.
As they are leaving the room, Yuki mumbles, "You didn't say night to Nanko."
"Good night, Nanko," Yuffie murmurs.
"Daddy too...."
Cloud smiles. "Good night, Nanko."
More content, his son curls on his side and snuggles into his bed, letting out a soft sigh. "He says night too."
-1.2- "It's a boy," the midwife says.
Well, she's not technically wrong.
-5- A few days later at breakfast, Yuki says, "Nanko wants to eat chocolate chip pancakes!"
"Well, tell him we're out of pancake mix," Yuffie replies.
"Her."
"Hmm?"
"Nanko wants you to call her 'her'."
"Why? I thought Nanko was a boy?"
"Nah," Yuki replies, holding the bear out in front of him and considering it very seriously. "Nanko is a girl today."
-6- "Daddy! You keep calling Nanko a girl! Nanko is a boy, and he wants you to talk to him that way! Why are you being so stupid about this? When Nanko is a boy, you call him a boy, and when Nanko is a girl, you call her a girl! Got it?!"
-1.3- "It's a boy," the midwife says triumphantly, the pride of helping to birth her country's next emperor clear on her smiling face.
(If only it were that simple.)
-7- "Don't ever let this thing out of your sight again," he tells Yuffie, presenting the newly-washed teddy bear to his wife. Yuki lost it two weeks ago, and the level of agitation and worry that the boy has exhibited over the disappearance of his favorite toy is very unsettling. He's been restless and inattentive, unable to sleep at night, and his emotions have been incredibly volatile. At times, he's seemed withdrawn, given to very sudden bouts of anger or weeping, but nothing either of them does can console him. Cloud had nearly been at his wit's end when he happened to catch a glimpse of the distinctive brown and tan plaid ribbon that was tied around the stuffed animal's neck sticking out from beneath a piece of furniture.
"Absolutely not," she sighs, taking the bear from him. "Come on, I think we'd better get these two back together as soon as possible. Not sure I can take another night of having a wiggly chocobo nugget in my bed waking me up with another nightmare."
"I know," Cloud agrees, taking her hand. "I feel bad that he's so upset, but it's getting exhausting to deal with him."
There's a long period of silence as they walk toward Yuki's suite, and just before they enter the hall that leads to his front room, Yuffie chuckles. "You wanna take a bet on whether Nanko's a boy or girl today?"
-1.4- "It's a boy," the midwife says with a smile.
-8- When Yuki sees the bear, a grin splits his face wide open. "Nanko, I missed you so much! Mommy, where did you find her?"
-9- Years go by, and Cloud nearly forgets that his son's bear is still around. It sits high on a shelf now, dusty and untouched for nearly a decade. He tries to convince Yuki to get rid of it, but the boy refuses. It's odd, isn't it, for a teenager to want to hang onto a childhood toy?
But if a little teddy bear is really that important to him, Cloud's not going to force him to get rid of it.
-10- The smell of smoke wakes him in the early hours of the morning. Not immediately seeing the source as his eyes quickly scan the room for flames, he turns to wake his wife, only to find that she is already climbing out of bed and stumbling toward the Conformer. It's the third time in as many months that they've been confronted with this scenario before, and each and every time, the culprits have attempted to torch a new section of the palace. No one is exactly sure who is to blame or why they're doing it, as the preferred method thus far has been Molotov cocktails thrown through windows that have opened to let in the cool summer breeze at night. They've since ordered all windows shut and locked at all times.
It forces the criminals' hands a bit, and this time, they actually have to break in to set the fire. Fortunately, he and Yuffie catch them before they can make their retreat, two men and a woman dressed in all black like some kind of ridiculous play on the stereotypical ninja's garb. Yuffie hands them over to the guards, bloodied from the beating they'd given them, and though she doesn't exactly cut an intimidating image in her silky pajama shorts and pink crop top, her shuriken and fists speak for her. The fire is put out before it can seriously damage anything else, and everyone in the room save for the three people in custody breathe a collective sigh of relief.
But even still, the would-be arsonists don't seem entirely disappointed to have failed their self-appointed mission yet again or, for that matter, to have been caught. The woman stares at him as he walks by, and he can't help but notice the smug grin on her face. He pauses, considers her for a long moment, but before he can demand an explanation for her oddly good mood, he detects the faintest hint of smoke in the air once again.
A scream shatters the silence of the room. One of the guards shouts, "The prince!"
By the time Cloud turns toward the long hallway leading to his son's suite of rooms, Yuffie is already halfway down it. He catches up to her as she's reaching for the door handle, but even as her fingers are closing over the knob, he can tell the knob is burning hot. She lets out a curse and yanks her hand away. He tries to break the door down, but the wood has expanded with the heat of the flames he can hear raging behind it, and there's no use of trying to get in this way. The only other option is to try and break through the window in his bedroom.
The idea occurs to them simultaneously, and while they run outside and around the enormous building to find the correct window, Cloud prays that they're not too late. The smile on the woman's face is the only thing he can see clearly in his mind, and it does nothing to dampen the worry clouding his thoughts. They arrive to see their son standing in front of the window, pounding at it to no avail.
"Move!" Yuffie screams, holding up her shuriken so he can see it. "Yuki, get out of the way!"
The drapes beside him are suddenly ablaze, and although he hasn't moved at all--is probably too frightened to think clearly and without a safe place to get away from the fire--Yuffie launches her weapon at the panes of glass.
The next few minutes are all a blur. Cloud grabs his son out of the broken window and runs with him thrown over his shoulder. Someone hauls out an Ice materia and extinguishes the fire. Yuki is crying, and when Cloud sits him back down, the boy screams in pain and falls to the ground. It's only then that Cloud notices the burn on his foot and ankle. Someone is there almost immediately with a Restore, and in the blink of an eye, most of the burn is gone. A potion will take care of the rest of the wound, but later.
The guards have followed them outside, their prisoners in tow, and the woman starts cackling when she catches sight of the chaos before her. "It's too bad," she yells. "Even if nothing else, I had hoped we could exterminate the vermin from Leviathan's sacred household. His own daughter has betrayed him! She's contaminated herself by fucking a man who belongs to Shinra--" She pauses long enough to spit in Cloud's direction, "--and she had the audacity to taint the holy blood of her family by producing that half-breed spawn with him. Lord Godo should have forced the vile thing from her belly before it drew its first breath!"
Cloud has seen Yuffie kill before. He's seen her ruthlessly take down a horde of attacking monsters. He's seen her defeat Shinra troops and members of DeepGround in battle like it's nothing. The only context in which he's ever seen her take a life, however, is self-defense. This is most assuredly not self-defense. This is angry and rough and uncontrolled. This is Yuffie screaming and grunting with the effort as her shuriken lands home again and again, ripping open flesh and tearing through viscera in an instant. This is Yuffie not caring that her skin and clothing are covered in a sickening amount of blood and gore.
This is Yuffie taking pleasure in murder for the sake of revenge, and it's the most frightening thing he's ever seen in his life. The only thing he can do is pull Yuki into his chest so he doesn't have to see it himself, cover his ears to block out the sound of metal ripping through clothing into warm flesh and flinging hot, red blood everywhere. A few droplets land on Cloud's face and the back of Yuki's shirt.
Yuffie sinks to her knees with a grunt next to the woman's remains, and even at a distance, Cloud can see how much she’s shaking. She throws the weapon away from her and barks out an execution order for the two men. The guards only look at each other and shrug before complying, snapping the mens' necks in the practiced, efficient manner he remembers seeing so many officers in Public Security at Shinra trying to perfect.
They quickly survey the extent of the physical damage to the palace, and they find the body of a fourth accomplice in the corner of Yuki's bedroom. The corpse is pinned to the wall by Yuki's sword, skin black and blistered from the fire.
"He tried to suffocate me," the boy explains. "I got away from him, but then he threw a bottle at the other wall and it caught on fire. And I didn't know what else to do, so I just..."
"It's okay, Yuki," he says, running his hand over his hair and hugging him close. "You had to protect yourself."
"I could have incapacitated him, though. I didn't have to kill him. I'm a ninja. Ninja are trained to--"
"Sometimes, Yuki," he interrupts, "just sometimes, just once in a great while, it's kill or be killed. They took that choice away from you when they trapped you like that. Don't blame yourself."
First kills always weigh on the heart like a heavy stone, and Cloud could only hope that his son will recover well from this horrific event. He is a strong kid, and Cloud is confident that he will eventually be alright.
Until, that is, Yuki discovers the charred remains of Nanko in a pile of debris that is taken from the room.
-11- "My Lady, I'm sorry," says Yuki's exasperated tutor, "but the Prince is acting very strangely during his lessons as of late. He has become very argumentative, and the obvious effort he used to put into his work is gone now."
Yuffie sighs and glances over at Cloud. "This is all your fault, you know. He inherited your wild adolescent chocobo genes. We'll have to chain him to a wall to make sure he doesn't try to join SOLDIER."
Cloud rolls his eyes. "...she says, as if she didn't run away from home around this age and join an eco-terrorist group."
Yuffie shrugs. "Whatever. We'll talk to him."
And talk they do, several times when the issues never seem to be resolved, but they can't get down to the heart of the matter. When they ask what has changed recently to cause him not to enjoy school anymore, he only shrugs. "Dunno. Just boring, I guess."
Over the course of the next three months, the apathy worsens, and eventually, Yuki becomes combative about going to school, insisting that he has been taught everything he could possibly need to know, refusing to go sit in a room and be talked at for hours on end, as he describes it. One day, he even goes so far as to push his tutor out of the way when the man stands in front of the doorway, blocking the only exit that Yuki has. He had run outside and up the mountain, the tutor tells them frantically, and if that's the case, then there's only one place he can possibly be.
Ever since he was a tiny child, Yuki has been fascinated with the cave at the top of Da-Chao. He and Yuffie have told him the story of how a fire raged inside for hundreds of years, until they found the scales of Leviathan and extinguished the flames. He has always been enthralled by the scorch marks on the stone walls, and he would often ask to be told the story over and over again. Now, he hid in the very back of the cave and let his thoughts wander. It helped calm him down, he would say, to give him a quiet place to think about his life and everything that happened to him.
So Cloud and Yuffie climb the mountain, and they do indeed find their son inside the cave. He stands as soon as he sees them, asking, "Am I in trouble?"
"Why would you be in trouble?" Yuffie asks sarcastically, crossing her arms. "You just assaulted someone. No big deal, right?"
Cloud holds out his hand. “You'll be in less trouble if you willingly come back down and finish your lessons today.”
He does, but his obvious restlessness about his education doesn't lessen at all. His grades continue to hover barely above a passing mark, but nothing they do, no punishment, no encouragement or reward, no amount of time spent talking about why school has suddenly become so abhorrent to him or about what they could do to make it less so, makes the situation any less bleak. One of them suggests moving him to a public school, where the presence of other children his age might help him out of his funk, and although Yuffie's advisers flip their collective shits about the decision, within a week he is enrolled and attending a school that's less than a ten minute walk from the palace.
The improvement in his grades is neither dramatic nor immediate, but when their son comes home with a smile most days and doesn't fight them every morning on whether or not he needs to get out of bed, it's well worth the adjustment.
-1.5- "It's a boy," the midwife says.
-12- Cloud suffers from the occasional sleepless night, and it's never really bothered him. Most people take spells of insomnia, whether due to stress or illness or anything else, so it's not exactly abnormal. Usually, he self-medicates with a glass or two of wine and a cake pop binge, but it's not helping at all tonight. He's scared to pour a third glass, as he and Yuffie have an extremely important meeting in the morning and being hungover isn't the best idea when they're meeting with the leader of a rebel faction who could easily instigate his followers into a death-match against the Empress's army and win.
What he decides to do in the end is watch television. Wutai has some of the craziest programs he's ever seen, and at night, he can't say they get any less weird. But if he's very lucky, which he is tonight, sometimes the wild and crazy bright-flashing-lights sort of game shows are foregone in favor of an eastern movie. It's dubbed over, of course, but his wutai is more than strong enough by now that he doesn't have any trouble understanding the fast-paced sentences. He does ponder over a few of the translation choices, but it's all a part of the late-night TV experience.
He's so deeply entrenched in his second movie that he doesn't really hear the door open. Or rather, he does hear it but doesn't think anything of it. It's not quite 4 in the morning, and that's around the time when the guards change shifts, so he's not worried. If one of them forgot something in the house or simply wants to take a shortcut through the kitchen to get back home, he's not going to say anything.
The odd thing about it is...why aren't any of the other guards coming through the house? There's never just one poking around during a shift change. Usually it's all of them coming in at once, a dozen people exchanging information and gossip and news and anything and everything else. Right now, Cloud can only hear one set of footsteps making their way very slowly and deliberately up the hallway, and that cannot be good. Because from the way the sound reverberates, whoever this is is trying to sneak into...
Cloud jumps up as fast as he can and races back to his son's bedroom, the memory of the fire and of Yuki's injuries and his wife's bloodthirsty, determined face springing to mind. He can't let anyone else hurt Yuki, he just can't, he can't lose anyone else ever again, not like last time, please Aerith please, please, please, just let Yuki be okay, let his son be okay--!
Yuki is fine. He's covered in a mixture of body paint, sweat, and glitter, but he's okay. He jumps when Cloud barges into the room, which is more than understandable considering he's in the middle of undressing and has exposed the hot pink lipstick smear someone has pressed to his stomach. “Dad, stop it!” he hisses, yanking his shirt back over his chest and turning away very quickly. “Just get out!”
He does, but there will be no letting anything he saw go without comment and explanation. He waits for a bit and knocks at the door again. “Yuki, I'm not leaving.”
After almost ten minutes, the door is finally opened for him. Yuki is clean once again and has changed into his pajamas, but there's a distinct scent in the air that lingers on him. Cloud can't quite figure out what it is. He sits down beside the boy, intent on talking about why he found him sneaking back into his rooms at this time of night and where on Gaia he had been to get so filthy, but the stench knocks him over, takes his breath away. All of a sudden, he's back in Nibelheim, 16 years old and watching helplessly from inside a body he can no longer control as he's dumped into a tank filled with mako and left to die. He shakes the memory from his head, but the scent is still there and it's coming from Yuki.
“Your eyes are glowing,” Cloud notes.
Those dark eyes, exactly like his mother's, look away from him and roll. “So?”
“So,” Cloud replies, worried and disgusted at the same time with a hint of anger roiling underneath his skin, “there's only one reason for that.”
“You're so clever, aren't you?”
“This is serious, Yuki! How long have you been using mako?”
Recreational mako use was nothing new, but for obvious reasons, it was thought to be a thing of the past. Apparently not. Cloud couldn’t say he’d never done it himself as a teenager in Midgar, where tiny vials of the stuff could be purchased on nearly every street corner both above and below the Plate so long as there was no one from Public Security on patrol. It gave the regular folks of the world a small taste of what it felt like to be a SOLDIER, a high that included temporarily enhanced senses and a ton of synthetic confidence. It wore off fairly quickly, and first-time users were often left with nausea and a killer headache after they crashed.
Yuki didn’t seem to be exhibiting those symptoms, so Cloud could only assume it wasn’t the first time he’d done this.
Not much was known about the side effects of what was effectively a self-administered mako injection not dissimilar to the ones SOLDIERs received at Shinra. They were much weaker, of course, but most off-label uses before this involved mixing other illegal substances with mako to enhance the high. This stuff was diluted, sure, but it was still mako, straight from the Planet. Who the hell knew what this could do to a person’s body with prolonged exposure?
And his own son is shooting it into his veins, slowly destroying himself from the inside out. Cloud is determined to put a stop to this even if that means locking Yuki away from the world until the storm has passed. He will not let his son waste his life like this. He will not take the chance that Yuki has inherited his susceptibility toward mako poisoning and could be only one high away from slipping into a coma, or worse.
Yuki shrugs, still looking away from him. “Why do you even care?”
“Maybe because I'm your father,” he replies, “and I don't want to see anything bad happen to you.”
His son scoffs. “It was just a party, Dad. Not a big deal.”
“No, it is a big deal,” he counters, taking hold of his son's shoulders and forcing Yuki to face him. “Do you have any idea how dangerous mako is? What it could do to you one day? You're fourteen years old, Yuki; this stuff could kill you.”
Yuki still isn't meeting his eyes. “Fuck you, okay?” he grunts, shaking himself out of Cloud's arms. He stands up and takes a few steps away. “I just wanted to feel like a normal kid for once in my life.”
Cloud ignores the swearing. He can tell they are getting close to the root of the problem, and that's more important. He'd said “normal kid”; is this about rebelling from the expectations and pressure put on him as the prince? Yuffie's counselors and advisers are sometimes quite harsh with Yuki under the pretense of preparing him for inheriting the throne. In reality, Cloud knows that at least some of it is due to the fact that he is half-eastern. Yuki will be the first mixed-race emperor Wutai has ever seen, and none of the officials can really agree if the country is ready for him or not. They themselves aren't ready for him, because most of them still cling so tightly to the traditional aristocrat's idea that non-Wutai are somehow beneath them, and that mixed blood is tainted.
He remembers the speech one of the extremists gave the night Yuki was attacked, and although he hasn't heard anything of the sort with his own ears, he has heard rumors from some of the residential workers that certain of Yuffie's advisers had been disappointed that his son survived. It's no secret that they all hate Cloud, but being unable to take it out on him directly, they poke, prod, question, and attempt to forcibly mold Yuki into the kind of ruler they want him to be, to make sure that his undesirable eastern heritage doesn't interfere with his ability to competently govern his people.
Cloud can't say he doesn't empathize. “Normal kids don't do drugs, Yuki.”
The boy lets out a loud grunt, slamming his fists down on his desk. His back is still turned to Cloud as he screams, “But normal kids know if they're a boy or girl!”
The silence that follows that statement is embarrassingly long, and it takes Cloud much longer than it should to understand what his son is saying, to parse the words and formulate an intelligent response. A boy or a girl? What in the world does gender have to do with anything? His mouth is hanging open slightly, and he's peripherally aware of Yuki turning towards him and glaring at him, the sharp gaze falling heavy and intrusive on his skin as his son awaits some kind of response. When he can form words, all Cloud can manage is, “So...you’re trans?”
Yuki's eyes drop, and his entire form goes slack as he sits down on top of his desk. “Yeah? No. I don't know!” A sigh escapes him, and when the boy looks back up at him, his dark eyes are shining with tears. “I don't know, okay?”
This is serious, but Cloud has absolutely no idea what he's supposed to do. Comfort his son, of course, but beyond that? No idea. So he does the only thing he can think to do and hugs Yuki. “Hey, nugget, it's okay,” he whispers into the boy's hair. “Don't cry, alright? You don't have to have yourself figured out just yet. Nobody's gonna pressure you to be anything you're not. Just take some time and—”
“Everybody pressures me,” Yuki interrupts. “Maybe you don't notice it, but I do! Everybody calls me a guy, calls me the prince, or calls me your son, and sometimes it feels so wrong that I just want to punch them! But then it's like...other times, I don't care, you know? It feels okay to be called a boy. But it makes me so frustrated, because where do I get off being angry at people when I don't even know what I am?”
Cloud is completely out of his depth here, but he can't let it show. He can't let his discomfort show, lest Yuki take it as a sign that his struggle is unfounded. He can't let Yuki think that he's being rejected, that this moment of uncertainty is grounds for any amount of distrust or hatred from his parents. Because it's just the opposite. Right now more than ever, Yuki needs him, needs strength from his father to make it through this without breaking down, and he's not going to let his child suffer alone just because he's unsure of himself, unsure if he even can help, unsure if he'll only make things worse. The pressure to be a perfect father was immense, but Yuki didn't need him to be perfect. Yuki just needed him to be there, to hold him when he thinks the world's coming to an end, and to make sure he knows he's strong enough to come through it.
What he decides to do, when Yuki has mostly stopped crying, is to take to the worldwide network. Cloud turns on the boy's laptop and opens up a browser page to the Moogle search engine. He coaxes Yuki onto his lap and tells him to type and search, that they'd try to find an answer together. And he does, and they spend hours there reading articles and watching videos and, most importantly, talking about what Yuki thinks about everything he's reading.
Eventually they come across a page that lists a variety of different gender identities. It begins with cisgender, which Yuki is vehemently sure he is not, and transgender, which they've already marked off the list as well. Then there's non-binary, a term they'd encountered earlier that Yuki had taken a liking to. As they read on, though, they discover the word genderqueer, and a few minutes later, genderfluid.
Yuki's eyes light up. Cloud can almost feel how excited he is with every word he reads. He gets through to the end of the paragraph and says, “That's it, Dad. That's me. It's—that's exactly what I feel like.”
“Okay,” Cloud replies, feeling incredibly relieved himself. He can't even begin to imagine what his son feels like right now. He's grinning ear to ear, and it's the most beautiful thing Cloud has ever seen. “Genderfluid. Alright. Have you been thinking anymore about pronouns yet? Not that you have to decide right now, but—”
“No, yeah, I think...I think I like 'they.' Yeah. 'They' and 'them.' That feels pretty good.”
Cloud nods, but before he can say anything else, before he can assure Yuki that changing his mind later is always an option if he needs to, Yuki's stomach growls audibly. He can't help but laugh. He's getting a little hungry himself. Glancing at the clock, he notices that it's nearly 7am already. “Hey, you know what we should do? We should take my bike and go down to that 24-hour diner for breakfast. Just you and me.”
Yuki's eyes glisten with mischievous pleasure. He looks exactly like his mother. “Mom will kill you when she finds out we went without her.”
He gives his child a wink. “I won't tell if you won't.”
-1.6- "It's a boy."
-13- Although he does his best, it's hard at first to overwrite the part of his brain that thinks of his child as "he." He's honestly pretty bad at remembering to use Yuki's pronouns in the beginning, but eventually he starts catching himself before the "he" can escape his mouth and replaces it with "they." It's awkward at first, because every time he messes up, he can't help but think how hurt Yuki must be, can't help but cringe and hope that this mistake won't be the last straw for his child, the moment when they give up on ever being accepted by their own family.
A few months after the initial introduction of his child's preferred pronouns, he sits Yuki down after a particularly tense and silent dinner and apologizes. "I know it's important, and I really am trying, I promise. It's just hard sometimes."
Yuki nods, but he--no, they--won't look at him. "Yeah."
"Are we still okay?" Cloud asks, putting an arm around his child's shoulders.
"...yeah."
"You don't sound too sure."
The silence hangs between them for a long time, which tells Cloud that, no, they're not still okay. There's something else Yuki wants to get off their chest, and even though Cloud wants them both to clear the air about everything, the choice to speak up has to be Yuki's. If not tonight, then maybe another day, but now that Cloud knows something is bothering them, he can't let it fester for very long.
Just as he's about to press a kiss to their forehead and tell them they don't have to talk right now, they whisper, "I miss Nanko, that's all."
Cloud pauses, uncertain of how to proceed. The subject of Nanko is a touchy one, hard to maneuver without making Yuki intensely upset or viciously angry. He tests the waters with, "Nanko was very important to you. Makes sense you would miss them."
"I guess."
"But..." and he can only hope as he runs his fingers over his child's hair that this doesn't end badly, "...you don't need Nanko anymore, right?"
Yuki shrugs. "Guess not."
"And if you hadn't lost them--"
"You used to make fun of Nanko."
There it is. This is the source of Yuki's discomfort, and Cloud has been trying to work out what he would say about this subject for months now. "I did," he answers, meeting their eyes even though it’s the last thing he wants to do. He wants to say more, to explain everything and apologize again all at once, but he pauses to let Yuki finish expressing himself. Themself.
"You and Mom used to make fun of them right in front of me. And then you laughed when I got angry."
"Yes."
"You thought Nanko's gender stuff was a joke."
"I did."
"So...do you think I'm a joke too?"
Cloud's heart starts pounding. He can't just say, "Oh no, of course not, Yuki!" and move on, because that won't help anything. And pointing out that Cloud had been the one to help him find the terminology and the language with which he could express his gender identity, although strictly speaking the truth, is bound to only make things worse. Cloud has done severely wrong by his child, and it's not something he can ever fix. Unintentionally, he's left scars on Yuki's heart that will maybe fade over the years, but they will never go away. He can only take ownership of his mistakes, admit them instead of dismissing Yuki's very valid fears and concerns, and focus on changing his behavior in the future.
So he hugs Yuki close, lays a kiss on their forehead, and says, "I'm sorry for the things I did and the way I acted when you were little. There was no excuse for it. If I could go back and change it, I would, Yuki, in a heartbeat. But I can't. Instead, all I can do is make sure I respect your identity from now on. And I do. I know that sexuality can be fluid; it only makes sense that gender can be too, and I wish I had realized that before. You're not a joke, nugget. Don't let anyone ever treat you like you are, especially not your mom or me. All I ask is that you continue to be patient with us while we relearn how to think about you, and that you never, ever let us get away with misgendering you. Because if we're allowed to, then your friends will think they are, too, and so will your teachers, and Mom's advisers, and the entire country. You'll be in charge one day, and I don't want you to have to fight to be respected then. So start fighting right now, and begin at home."
He can't quite see Yuki's face, but five minutes goes by very slowly as neither speak, and when they raise their head from his shoulder, there is a small damp spot in his shirt. "Thanks, Dad," Yuki says.
"I love you, nugget," he responds, and although Yuki just nods on his--their--way out of the room, Cloud feels like a weight has been lifted off of him.
He hopes Yuki feels it too.
-14- "So, I've been thinking, right? About what my legal titles will be when I inherit the throne. I need you and mom to go to bat for me with the advisers, because I'm not just a son of Leviathan, you know? But it's too wordy to say 'sometimes a son, sometimes a daughter of Leviathan,' that's a crap title. So this is what I came up with instead: 'Their Imperial Majesty, Kisaragi Yuki, Child of Leviathan, Sacred Ninja of Da-Chao, and Rightful Emprex of Wutai.' Will they go for Emprex, you think? I mean, I could use 'Ruler' instead, but I kind of like the sound of Emprex. It was a pain in the ass to get them to call me Heir, and I guess I'm willing to compromise about Emprex, but at the same time, I should get the final say, right? It'll be my country, and it's my title. Why can't they just use gender-neutral language all the time, anyway? Wouldn't it make things so much simpler in the long run?"
-1.7- "It's a boy."
No.
Yuki is a healthy newborn, perfect and tiny and the most beautiful thing on the Planet, and that's all that Cloud has ever asked for. Son or daughter, neither or both--it doesn't matter. They are his child, and he will love them with everything in his entire being until the day he dies.
-15- For their 17th birthday, Cloud buys Yuki a teddy bear. Well, he can't actually go out and make the purchase himself, because his health doesn't allow it, but he commissions Yuki's bodyguard Jun to do it, gives her explicit instructions on what he wants, and tells her not to bother with anything that isn't perfect. In the end, she can't find anything to suit his specifications, and so he calls Tifa, still living in Edge, to see if she can help him. He can hear her smile when he tells her what he wants, and she lets him know that a specialty shop recently opened in town that lets people custom-build a stuffed animal. As long as she can find the right kind of ribbon, it should be relatively simple.
The finished product arrives two days before the party. Cloud opens the box to inspect its contents, and he hasn't been this happy in months. He undoes the ribbon around the bear's neck, attaching the small charm he bought weeks ago, and ties it back.
It's perfect.
Later on that night, after the main part of the party is over, after the food has been eaten, after the advisers and counselors and public officials and other Important People of Wutai have offered up (as Yuki calls it) their “politically-correct, ass-kissing gifts”, the Imperial family has their own celebration. Cloud has managed, with some help from Yuffie, to get up from his wheelchair and have a seat next to his child. The nurse assigned to him for the day protests, but he waves her concerns off. Yuki looks happy to see him up and about, but there's a certain sadness behind it. Everyone in this room knows it's only a matter of time before he dies, but none of them are willing to admit it.
His doctors tell him that he shouldn't give up fighting, but he knows he won't make it to Yuki's next birthday, so he has to make this one count.
He saves his gift for last, and the emotion that crosses Yuki's face as they unwrap it gives him chills. Tears well up in their eyes as they grip the teddy bear in their hands. Cloud puts an arm around his child, and they melt into his side, unable to control their emotions.
The bear is as identical to Nanko as possible, with one change. The ribbon around the bear's neck is now a color gradient, rather than the neutral-palette plaid of the original. The colors might not seem significant—pink fading into purple merging into blue—but Yuki immediately understands. And the charm Cloud has attached to the ribbon is unique as well: an emblem that blended the stereotypical male and female symbols with an infinity sign.
When Yuki is nearly composed again, Cloud asks, “Any thoughts about a name?”
Yuki hums thoughtfully, holding the bear out in front of them and considering it very seriously. “I think...Jiikyu.”
Cloud smiles, immediately recognizing the source of the name. Jiikyu, as in GQ. Genderqueer. “That's an awesome name,” he says, laying a kiss on their forehead.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“You're welcome, Yuki.”
