Author's Note: For Tifa Stan Club's Tifa Lockhart Headcanon Month, which is centered around winter themes. I haven't written fanfic for Final Fantasy VII in a long time, so please forgive me if this is subpar!
Soup
Tifa wasn't a very big fan of winter. It wasn't that she disliked the decorations, or the holiday cheer. On the contrary - if anybody embodied the holiday spirit, it was Tifa Lockhart. What she didn't like was the cold and the inevitable coughs and sneezes that would soon echo throughout her bar and living spaces.
No matter what she did, Denzel always caught a cold. And if Marlene was around, she was next. Sometimes Tifa would hear a sniff or two come from Cloud, despite his declarations of being perfectly healthy and fit to make deliveries.
To conquer this, Tifa had begun the tradition of making enormous pots of soup. She bought medicine too, of course, but she remembered being given soup when she was a sick little thing in Nibelheim. It had always made her feel better, much better than how she would feel after being given sickly cough syrups.
One morning, as Tifa was out running her errands, she felt a familiar chill in the air.
I'm not going to let the cold win this time, she thought, defiantly lifting her chin at nobody in particular. She decided to begin plying her family with soup immediately, with the hopes that it would keep them warm enough, and that the greens and other vegetables would give a little boost to their immune systems.
She pushed the door to 7th Heaven open, determined to get started. As soon as it shut behind her, Tifa paused and sniffed the air.
Was somebody…cooking?
Tifa shook her head. She was definitely imagining things – Marlene was with Barret and Denzel was probably…
Before she could come to a conclusion about what Denzel could possibly be doing, his little head popped out from around the doorframe of the kitchen.
"Oh, you're home," he said nonchalantly, standing in the doorway.
Tifa placed her bags on the nearest table and put her hands on her hips. "Have you been messing around in the kitchen, mister?"
"That would be me." Cloud appeared behind Denzel, a tea towel sitting on his shoulder.
"Cloud?" Tifa's face was the picture of utter disbelief.
Denzel chuckled.
Tifa didn't wait for any more information – instead, she just walked into the kitchen. On the stove was her enormous soup pot, and if the vibrating lid was anything to go by, it was close to bubbling over.
"…Soup?" Tifa murmured, lifting the lid. And it was soup. Her recipe card, aptly labeled Winter Soup, was sitting on the counter nearby. She picked it up. "You made my soup?"
"Cloud wanted to help you," Denzel said. "He didn't have a lot to do today, and he noticed it was a little colder outside, so he made your soup for you."
Cloud's cheeks colored slightly as Tifa smiled brightly at him.
"You didn't have to," she said, her cheeks glowing.
"I just wanted to help," he said. His gaze shifted to the floor.
Tifa shook her head, her smile widening. She knew how awkward Cloud would get if she continued to pile on the gratitude and praise, so she turned to the pot instead. She took a spoon out of the nearby dishrack. Denzel followed suit, and Cloud eventually reached for one as well.
They gathered around the bubbling pot. Leeks, potatoes, garlic – everything Tifa's recipe called for bubbled happily in the steaming broth. They dipped their spoons in, and simultaneously downed their tiny helpings.
Cloud's blue eyes widened first, and he grimaced.
"Guess I must have messed up," he said sheepishly, watching Tifa and Denzel awkwardly clear their throats after tasting the strange concoction. "I followed your recipe exactly."
Cloud turned toward the counter where all the ingredients had been laid out. He began quietly listing them off with a bewildered expression on his face.
"Leeks, garlic, carrots, pepper…sugar?"
"Sugar?" Denzel repeated.
Tifa walked over to where Cloud was standing and picked up the clear, plastic tub filled with white crystals. "Oh, Cloud, I'm sorry. I use almost identical containers for the salt and sugar. It's my fault."
There was a small pause, which was broken by the unexpected sound of Cloud chuckling.
"Maybe next winter I'll do something more practical," he eventually said, shrugging. "Build a fireplace or something."
"You'll burn the house down," Denzel said flatly. He turned to Tifa. "Sorry we messed your soup up."
"That's okay," Tifa said, suddenly feeling very content. She noticed Cloud reach over to remove the tea towel from his shoulder. "I don't think so. You two are helping me make a new batch."
Cloud and Denzel exchanged glances.
"Are you…sure?" Cloud asked, his hand still hovering near the tea towel.
"I'm sure," Tifa said, picking up her apron. "Call it a new tradition."
At that moment, Denzel let out a little sneeze.
"And apparently one that couldn't have come sooner," she added, smiling at Cloud.
It was true that Tifa wasn't a huge fan of winter, but as she stood in her kitchen with her small family milling around her, she suddenly felt grateful that the cold had come so soon. The soup would bring the warmth she was so desperate for, but as her eyes met Cloud's over Denzel's little head, she felt the certain kind of cozy warmth that, for some reason, she knew only this – cooking with her unconventional family in a cramped kitchen on a cold day – could bring.