Pater Familias

I respectfully credit all Original Creators, namely Squaresoft, which became SquareEnix,for these characters. In this way, I pay homage to my Fandom's Original Creator, and illustrate my Community's belief that Fan Fiction is "fair use". I do not claim to own these characters. I do not make money or gil from using these protected characters, nor do I wish to make money or gil from them. In other words, I am borrowing these characters to entertain the adult fanfiction community, but I am doing so with the highest degree of respect to the engineers, game designers, music makers, voice actors.

“Hey, Hojo,” Strife said, sitting up on the edge of my desk.

“Strife,” I said, making my last notation. Why did Strife and Sephiroth both have a penchant for plopping their bony asses on my paperwork? “How do you feel?”

“Good, actually,” he answered. “I just thought I’d come back and tell you.”

I lifted my eyes to him, observing his improved color and demeanor. He looked much better. I grabbed his wrist, feeling for his pulse. It beat steadily and with strength. “Very good,” I told him. “Your appetite?”

“Fine,” he answered. His eyes moved over the room a moment before coming back to mine. “Know where Sephiroth’s secretary might be right now?”

Ah, so that was it.

“With my son, I imagine,” I said. At least he’d set his sexual sights on someone able to comply with his needs.

Strife seemed to sigh. “Okay,” he said.

I hesitated only a moment. If I got Strife distracted I’d have all the more time free. I picked up my cell and punched in the number.

“Sephiroth,” my son said. I knew by his tone Aerith hadn’t broken the news to him just yet. I would ask her why she’d decided to wait.

“Your secretary there?” I asked, watching Strife’s eyes light up.

Sephiroth hesitated. “Yes,” he said at long last.

I waved at Strife to leave the room, which he did only after a heavy glower from me. “Send him over to the lab for something,” I said, tapping my pencil.

Sephiroth hesitated only a bare moment. “What do you want with Zel?” he asked.

“Strife,” I answered. It amused me Sephiroth had paused to consider I might want Zel for experimentation.

“I see.” Sephiroth made a slight, indeterminable noise. “This is against my general inclination,” he confessed. “Zel is a likely candidate for Cloud but that doesn’t mean I should link them. I really don’t want Cloud dropping by my office at all hours.”

“At least he’ll be distracted and on good behavior,” I remarked.

“Yes, there is that,” Sephiroth agreed. “Plus, I’m tired of watching him mope.”

“You think you’re tired?” I replied.

Sephiroth chuckled. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll send Zel over on a pretext of picking up my quarterly health evaluation sheets. You can keep him there an hour.”

Click.

Sephiroth rarely wasted time with goodbye.

I got up and stuck my head out the lab door. Strife had stopped to talk to Sakura, who apparently had just entered the hall. “Strife,” I said, getting his attention. “Come back for a moment.” He readily obeyed, sauntering toward me with his usual look of mistrust. Sakura followed him, her eyes on me.

“You realize,” I said to him, “I no longer have any need to keep you locked away? That I have no interest in experimenting on you, tormenting you, or dictating every bit of your existence while you float in a mako tank?”

Strife blinked. “Well, yeah,” he said. “If I thought you wanted to do any of that I wouldn’t be here.”

Sakura walked past us, smiling to herself.

“Then stop looking at me like Valentine does,” I said testily. “You didn’t fuck my wife, and I’m not about to shoot you and throw your corpse in a coffin.”

Very slowly, Strife began to smile. “Sorry, Hojo,” he said. “Old habits die hard; your face brings a lot of bad memories to the surface, but I’ll try to remember you’re reformed.”

“I’m not converted to anything,” I snapped. “But, I’m no threat to you or any of your friends.” I pointed to a chair. “Sit. I’m going to take your blood pressure.”

He sat. I put the cuff on him and started, forcing his arm into the proper angle. He looked up into my face with unusual intensity. “I can see it,” he said after a quiet moment. “I used to wonder where Sephiroth got his looks, but now I can kind of see you have the same bone structure.”

Startled, I forgot to watch the pressure dial. Well, I’d only started this to keep him here until Sephiroth’s secretary arrived. I looked into those clear, almost innocent eyes and thought of my son for just a moment. He and this young man had much in common, including meeting pain at my hands.

Maybe I was reformed, just a little, because I couldn’t help wincing.

“He inherited his looks mostly from Lucretia,” I said at last, stripping off the blood pressure cuff. Quickly, I prepped a mako injection and tapped the air bubble out. “And, I would appreciate it if you didn’t ask me any questions about her.”

“I wasn’t,” Strife said quietly. “I wouldn’t.”

I believed him for the reason that his compassion burnished the blue of his eyes. I slid the needle into his vein very gently.

“Why does the mako only burn sometimes?” he asked softly.

“When your testosterone levels are very low the mako tends to work harder, causing that burn,” I answered. “Interestingly, mako and estrogen are highly compatible; a woman will hardly ever feel the burning.”

Strife lowered his eyes to the floor a moment, relieving me of their painful purity. “There are no women in SOLDIER,” he said after a moment, rubbing his arm.

“A deliberate thing,” I grunted. “The elder Shin-Ra didn’t want women in the program, and his son followed that prejudice.”

“But, why?” Strife’s gaze slid to Sakura.

I leaned close to him, speaking for his ears only. “Because they’d be too good, Strife,” I said. “Can you imagine feminine flexibility combined with super strength?”

Seeming startled, Strife gave a quick nod. “Someone like Tifa would be the female version of Sephiroth,” he murmured back.

“Yes, Miss Lockhart could give my son a run for his money with mako in her veins.”

I would have said more, but Sephiroth’s secretary came in at that moment, looking nervous. Telling Strife to sit for awhile, I grabbed Sephiroth’s file. “I need to run off a few copies of the blank forms,” I said, addressing Zel. “It will take me about ten minutes.”

There. Now, Zel and Strife were in the same room together.

“Sakura,” I said, “will you accompany me? I want to look in on Havars as well.”