Warning: Contains mention of male/male relationships.

"Look at this!" Cloud shouted in excitement as he ran into the house.

"Shoes, Cloud," Eleanor Strife scolded, even as she wondered what could make her son – her too-quiet, too-solemn son – shout like that: not in distress, as had happened more than once when he was younger, before he'd started keeping to himself, but with an almost gleeful happiness.

"Sorry." He dropped to the floor to wrestle muddy shoes from his feet, hampered by the fact he never let go of the newspaper he was clutching in one hand. She wondered what could be so very special about one slightly-crumpled newspaper, but then Cloud regained his feet, and raced over to show it to her. "Look!"

Dutifully, Eleanor looked.

The headline was about ShinRa's Wutai campaign. But that wasn't what had caught Cloud's attention. The photograph below was responsible for that. It took up nearly a quarter of the page and was in full colour, a rarity for the small tabloid newspaper that was the only news Nibelheim received outside of private correspondence. It showed a tall, pale man with long, pale hair, his eyes a brilliant green that had to be the result of some kind of colour mix-up during printing. That would probably explain the hair, too, as it looked almost metallic in its silver tint. He was dressed in imposing black, and held a sword that seemed longer than he was tall.

"General Sephiroth leads from the front lines as SOLDIER forces push back Wutaian resistance," she read from the caption below.

"When I grow up, I'm gonna marry him!" Cloud announced, looking incredibly pleased with himself.

Eleanor's jaw dropped.

"You can't marry him, Cloud!"

"Why not?" Her son's seven-year-old face creased in a mulish pout.

Half-a-dozen reasons immediately crossed Eleanor's mind, including 'because he's a killer.' Newspapers were always so careful in what they said about ShinRa – presses ran on electricity, after all – but she could read between the lines about what was happening in Wutai. ShinRa were taking what they wanted by violence rather than the heavy-handed persuasion they usually preferred, and this was the man that lead the slaughter, without any hesitation. That had been in the papers, fear thinly disguised as admiration: the observation that Sephiroth killed with no visible remorse. She wanted somebody like that to stay as far away from her little boy as possible.

But it was the obvious objection that came out. "Because he's a man. Men don't marry other men."

The pout turned to a frown as he digested this fact. "But he's much prettier than the girls I know," he pointed out with the logic of a child. "You're supposed to marry someone pretty when you grow up. And he's a great swordsman, so he's not boring and silly like girls are, either."

Eleanor could feel a headache forming. It was true the man in the photograph was beautiful, if in a rather frightening way. "You don't marry someone just because they're pretty, Cloud. There are more important things to consider, like what sort of person they are."

Cloud nodded. "Sephiroth's really good with a sword, so he's strong. Probably fast, too. I bet he could even fight a dragon!" The boy's eyes widened in awe at this thought.

That wasn't what Eleanor had meant at all; she'd been talking about character, not physical attributes. She was just about to explain this when Cloud's face suddenly fell.

"But he probably wouldn't want to marry somebody like me."

It was a mother's instinctive response – her son was good enough for anyone he wanted, thank you very much - that had her bristling before she remembered that she didn't want Sephiroth to marry Cloud, and this whole conversation was ridiculous, because it would never happen anyway. But she did her best to wipe the hopeless look from her little boy's face, anyway. "You're only seven, Cloud. You're still just a child. You have a lot of growing up to do before you're ready to marry anyone."

"I'll get bigger and stronger, won't I?" he asked anxiously.

"Of course you will," she assured him.

He beamed at her. "I'll get big, and strong, and learn how to fight just like him. Maybe I'll join SOLDIER so he'll notice me. Maybe I'll fight dragons! And beat them!"

Eleanor sighed as her son continued to make grand plans for his future. At least, she consoled herself, children eventually grew out of these wild notions.