Reno walked into Seventh Heaven like he owned the joint and went directly to the bar and used the intercom to page the apartment above it. "I'm here" he said when she answered it.

"I'll be right down" Tifa replied and hurriedly straightened up her appearance before picking up her precious bundle and descending the stairs.

"There's my baby!" Reno announced, breaking into a loving smile upon seeing her in Tifa's arms. "Hey there Ronnie" he said taking her from Tifa and hugging her to him and she gurgled and gave him a toothless smile in welcome. He smiled back and smoothed his hand over her tuft of dark hair. At three month of age, Veronica's features were forever shifting from his to Tifa's, but her blue eyes and even the shape of them were definitely his own.

"You'll have her back at nine on Monday? We have an appointment to get her shots done that day" Tifa said reminded him.

"I have that programmed into my phone notifications" he promised her.

"You sure I expressed enough milk for her?" Tifa said showing him the cooler.

"You could stock a shelf at Costco with those. We'll be fine and if anything comes up, we can call you, well I can. She can't speak yet. Or you can stop by whenever you want" he added, finding himself disturbed that he wished she would. "Now who is going to be spending father-daughter time with Daddy?" he said lifting Ronnie up and kissing her all over her chubby little face until she was laughing and Tifa smiled as she observed this. She never would have believed that this man would be the father of her child, let alone a good father at that as he patiently listened to all of her instructions as he carried the various luggage needed for Veronica's visit to his place and then carefully fastened the car seat into the passenger seat in an expert way.

"Her pink bunny?" Tifa said in a panicked voice.

"Right in the backseat. She'll be fine. I know what I'm doing" he assured her.

"I know, I just don't like…." She said.

"To be separated from her. Then come with us, you can sleep in my guest room" he said with his hands up in a neutral way to show he wasn't trying to talk into sleeping with him.

"No, you need bonding time with her" she said in an assertive voice but wanted to go.

"Okay, I shall call you every couple of hours. Until then, we have a full weekend planned. She's going on a play date and probably checking out boy babies" Reno said as he quirked one eyebrow at her.

"I'll see you on Monday" Tifa said as she raised her lips to be kissed and Reno blushed at this. Instead he gave her an awkward hug and a kiss on the cheek before bolting into his vehicle and leaving Tifa to open her eyes in disappointment as they drove off. Reno blushed further as he drove away at the speed limit that he had acted like a preadolescent teenager to Tifa's silent request for a simple kiss. "I really don't know how to act around your Mom" he admitted to Veronica, who seemed to frown at him in reproach in a way very familiar. It reminded him of several nights in the past when he was really drunk and hitting on women to the point he was making a nuisance of himself and Tifa ordered him to leave and called him a cab and personally walked him to him to it while berating him. "You take after Tifa a lot I see" he mused to his mute companion.

How It Began

Tifa was excited she put on the simple wedding gown that was wrinkle proof and low cut enough to be be sexy but still demure with a full tulle skirt that made her tiny waist look minuscule as she did up the zipper in back and perched the fingertip veil on top of the small bun she had fashioned in back of her hair while the rest fell down her back in a silken midnight fall. She was so excited about tonight.

Flack Back

"Tifa, the damage is extensive, as I told you that long ago. It's unlikely you'll ever be able to carry a baby to term" her doctor told her.

"Please I want at least one child born from my body" Tifa pleaded.

"I'm sorry I can't help you" she said and then her doctor handed her a card. "But he can. He is expensive and you never got this from me" she said.

Tifa was shocked to find herself on a farm lying on the actual table in a farm house as a woman as old as a hills ran her hand over her belly. "It very damaged, but with a little materia we can fix the once" she said to her the other loudly clothed people in the room.

"Then I need to do the operation" a surprisingly normal looking man said who stuck out like a sore thumb against his loudly clothed kinfolk. "It can be done" he said laying glowing hands upon her belly. "10% at best and you only have the one chance" he told Tifa.

"How much?" Tifa said in a thick voice as she felt her tongue too overwhelmed to speak.

"For you, nothing" Sephiroth said in his guise as a non-descript middle aged man as Aerith's hands guided his as he gave back to Tifa the one thing she wanted the most as she lay on the table beneath his healing hands. It was true her uterus was in a sorry state that he carefully prepared for the coming of the seed that would fertilize her dead womb as he stood beside the disguised Aerith while she lay a small hand upon his to it to bless the healed womb. Aerith gave him the thumbs up and both faded and Tifa awoke to people rejoicing her fertile condition and danced with them to a primitive beat of the drums and fiddles as her heart leapt with joy.

Tifa and Cloud were in a resort town where one could marry easily and she arranged herself into the dress and applied a little makeup. Nothing more than discreet eyeliner and mascara, she smiled at the end results. She looked beautiful she thought.

Cloud however freaked out when she met him at the door. "What's all this?" he asked her gesturing with his hands.

"I have a surprise for you; I'm fertile and can carry your baby. You don't believe in children born outside of wedlock. We can marry at any of the chapels around here and I can be pregnant by the end of the day" she spurted out with happiness.

Cloud of course ran off and Tifa ended up at the bar by herself drinking while still wearing her wedding gown. "Hey if you want to marry, we can do so after you suck my….." one of her would-be suitors suggested until he saw her racoon eyes. "Never mind" he said before going onto easier game.

Tifa wept unashamedly of her emotional outburst as she was abroad. She could give into her grief and that is where Reno found her, he instinctively put his arms around her and allowed her to foul his clean white shirt but could make nothing out regarding the cause of her grief with her disjointed sobs. Eventually he just called Elena, who sat with her and encouraged her to drink water as she explained her story through hitched sobs.

"That bastard" Elena raged over Tifa's words of denial.

"What is it?" Reno asked.

"Because of Sephiroth's filleting her like a fish, she can't have children. She had an operation for a slim window to get pregnant that's it" Elena explained while she held Tifa.

Even the aloof Reno could see how much Tifa desired children. "So should I go chase him down…" Reno asked.

"I can't do much but I can offer you a donor who is wildly intelligent, hot and seems to have really good genes in his jeans….and one you know you can trust to deliver what you need. You know his reputation" Elena said.

"Who?" Tifa asked, bitterly said.

"Presenting bachelor number 1" Elena said as she gestured towards Reno, who instantly flushed at what was being offered of him.

"What?" both of them said at the same time.

"How could you offer this of me without permission…." Reno raged at her.

"Shut up, what Shinra has taken away from her, her family, her town, her lover. Someone has to give one back and I'm can't do it" Elena crudely said.

"So why should I be the one…." He protested.

"Because it isn't anything you don't do on a regular basis, minus the condom. I'm sure you loved someone once, imagine if this were their little, tiny chance at happiness. Would you deny them this?'' Elena hissed at him.

"I'll do it" Tifa said, rising to her feet.

"But I….." Reno said.

"Let's go" Tifa spat out.

Reno felt trapped and ill at ease as Tifa got to his room and a little embarrassed that his clothes littered the floor like a teenaged boy. "I never considered having a redheaded baby" she said without judgement in a bittersweet way.

"It's actually rarer than you think. In order for your…baby to have red hair, you would have to have redheaded genes on your side of the family as well, so it's unlikely this child will have red hair" he uncomfortably explained.

"I don't know how to begin" she admitted.

"A kiss is a good start. Come here" he said, sitting down and patting his lap and she stiffly sat on it, making sure to touch him as little as possible. "We can stop whenever you want. This isn't your first time. Is it?" he asked her mainly out of curiosity. He had always found her to be an anomaly amongst woman. She was beautiful and brave and gutsy but seemed rather shy at the same time and she dressed in a sexy way, but in her demeanour and how she held herself, she acted like she was wearing a nun's habit. Reno knew from experience that she wasn't interested him and had stopped hitting on her a long time ago and had nothing but respect for her. Yet they were about to…..he quashed that thought.

"No but it's been a long time" she admitted. "Not since I was sixteen" she admitted with glowing cheeks.

Reno was shocked by this, that so beautiful a woman had no one loving that body on a regular basis. No wonder she was so cranky all the time! His lips covered her own plump ones, her kiss was a little shy but soon she kissing him back as she melted into his embrace and her arms came up around his shoulders. She felt sheltered by him at how he cradled her on his lap and she liked his clean, masculine body scent even if it was the wrong scent. She flinched when long fingers found the zipper on back of the wedding dress and undid it, baring the smooth flesh of her back nearly to her waist and his hands caressed it.

"Do we have to do this…naked?" she nervously said through dry lips.

"It will be more comfortable that way. I want your flesh on my own. If we are going to….do this I don't want it to be a cheap fuck where we are both half dressed" Reno said and she made a small noise as his hand slide around to her front and he held one of her breasts. It was warm and heavy and his hand could barely contain that wondrous globe of her flesh. She mewed as his thumb strummed the hardening nipple of it. "Just relax let me take care of this" he said smiling at her in a way he hoped was reassuring when he was nervous as all hell. He stood up carried her to the bed.

"Are you sure?" he asked her.

"Yes" she said with more bravado then she felt.

Gently he undressed her while he talked her through her embarrassment at being naked in front of him. He wove a spell of words and touches as he caressed her body in an expert way, making it seem it was like the wedding night she had always dreamt of where her husband removed her wedding gown and stripped her down to the sweet lacy skimpy white panties she wore. She blushed when he discovered that she had shaven herself as a surprise to Cloud and the cut away heart on the front of them revealed only soft, pale silky skin beneath and then they were gone as Reno gently tugged them down her long, toned legs.

He couldn't believe how incredible her body was; Tifa had a body made for loving and he now wanted to more than anything as he took in her gravity-defying breasts on a slim frame, her smooth, flat belly and the gentle curves of her softly feminine hips. She was like the goddess herself and perhaps one of the most beautiful women he had ever touched as she responded beautifully to his caresses. Her shaven pubes gave her a touch of innocence that he found alluring and he pulled out all the stops in his arousal of her as he worked his magic with his hands first and then his mouth and lips joined in as he descended her body and she cried out as he lapped her hot core in a way fervid no one ever had until her hands joined his in removing his own clothes.

Yes she had known of his reputation and had heard women sighing over him but never believed it until she was clutching his ponytail to hold his head in place and trembling with impending release and soon cried out loudly with abandonment as she experienced the most powerful orgasm she ever had. She felt boneless as he leaned back and she realized he was naked too and she that he wasn't merely scrawny as his baggy uniform suggested, he was wiry with ripped muscles and had long, well developed limbs. He wiped his lips and looked at her. "We can stop" he offered as his knee parted her trembling thighs. His manhood jutted proudly from his own ginger pubes, it was large and looked heavy in its arousal. She swallowed in nervousness and felt like a virgin again, she didn't recall Cloud being quite so endowed.

"No" she bravely said, wanting a child so badly, even if it was her ex-enemy's. She made a sound like a gasp when he entered her and it felt uncomfortable at first despite how wet she was but soon he was moving slowly and deeply inside her until her body caught his rhythm and she cried out with each thrust. He seemed to be touching everything deep inside her and found and niggled a sweet spot until her body caught fire and all of her limbs came around him and her body began to move in time with his. She buried her face in his shoulder the first time she came just as loudly as before but the second time she shrieked it to the ceiling as she rediscovered the joy of sex. They did it three more times that night and he got dressed in a euphoric state the next day, having gotten little sleep but felt great anyway. "I won't disturb you again nor seek you out" he promised he as he showed her out.

"I guess that is for the best" Tifa said with a blush and they parted with a shy goodbye as she hurried off.

She did catch a baby that night and made no secret of who their father was and knew it was over when Cloud came and got his stuff to move out. She was so in love with the child growing inside her to really worry about what was going on around her. She would examine her growing body in the mirror and felt truly beautiful for the first time.

She looked at her best pregnant and seemed to glow, her odd carmine eyes twinkled and a nurturing smile was on her lips. She didn't know that Reno was monitoring her in the background and was aware of every aspect of her pregnancy. He had kept his distance as he promised but couldn't stop spying on her and longed to be with her as much as she longed for him to but refused to seek him out; afraid she would embarrass herself as she thought he wanted nothing to do with her. She was another notch on his belt and nothing more.

She didn't see him until the day her daughter was born as she debated with Yuffie over names; she could never seem to settle on one as the doctor brought her the birth certificate for her to fill out. "Name of father?" she asked her.

"Reno….I don't know his last name" she said with dawning horror.

The doctor looked up at this "we've known him for years but he only goes by his first name in his profession" Yuffie explained to the older woman.

"Sinclair" Reno said. "But why would you want to put that on her birth certificate?" he asked Tifa, she looked exhausted but radiant as she held the small baby and he couldn't stop staring at what he had helped to create.

"You're her father" Tifa said with a frown, finally realizing he hadn't thought he was welcome to share her pregnancy with her.

"I was only the sperm donor" he said in wonderment.

"Reno Sinclair, put him down as her father" Tifa said to dispel that notion. "Would you like to hold her?" she asked him, seeing how he couldn't tear his eyes away from the small girl.

"You don't mind?" he asked her in surprise.

"Name of baby?" the doctor reminded her.

"How about Catherine?" Yuffie offered.

"I had a teacher I hated by that name" Tifa said dismissively as she handed Reno the baby "make sure you…" she said and then froze in shock at how easily he settled her into his arms.

"You've held a baby before?"

Reno looked at her, weighing how much he could really tell her about his past. "Growing up in an orphanage that was understaffed with a budget that was cut to the bone, the older kids looked after the smaller ones, even the smallest ones when we could. I also know how to change a baby, feed one, bathe one and nurse one through being colicky and all other things baby related" he confessed.

"No one adopted you" she said with sympathy in her voice.

"Nah it just never happened. It's no big deal, it was a long time ago and I turned out just fine" he said not wanted to become one of the lame ducks she seemed to surround herself with.

"How about Shawna?" Yuffie suggested.

"Sounds like the name for a nerd" Tifa commented as she watched Reno fall in love with their nameless child at how he gazed at her almost hungrily. He seemed to come out of his trance and handed the baby back to Tifa. "Thanks for letting me hold her. Bye Ronnie" he said giving her a small kiss on her tiny forehead that made Tifa's heart ache.

"Ronnie?" she questioned him.

"Sorry, that is my nickname for her since I heard you were giving birth to a girl. My mother's name was Veronica" he explained.

"What happened to her?" Tifa asked. The pain killers she was on making her less discreet than usual and was curious about him as he never talked about his past.

"She was killed during a mugging when she had sixteen cents on her. I was six at the time" he admitted. "In case you're wondering, my people are sturdy and have no known diseases you need to worry about. My father, I never met but was told I have his hair and he was as dumb as a bag of hammers. My mother was intelligent; she was going back to school to get her chemistry degree through a series of government grants. I take after her. Thank you for letting me meets her. I'll have my lawyer prepare the paperwork waiving my parental right for me to sign and him to file" Reno said and prepared to leave.

"Her name is Veronica Natasha Sinclair" Tifa interrupted his departure.

"But your last name?" he asked her, turning to look at her.

"A child should have the surname of their father, they should know their father. We should have joint custody" she insisted.

"But…" he said, not sure if he felt overwhelmed or happy as emotion gripped him such as he had never known before until it threatened to crush his heart.

"Every school play or ballet performance or parent-teacher day; you're expected to be at" Tifa scolded him. "What do you say to that?"

"I do" he said as he realized he was being invited into a family he had always wanted, if not an unconventional one and his grateful smile broke her heart as she beckoned him closer so she could show him Veronica's tiny fingers and toes and sweet little baby feet. It was a tender moment for both of them and neither noticed as Yuffie left the new parents to their bonding time.

Reno was watching a movie with Veronica napping in his lap and he felt happy that someone filled up his lonely life, no matter how small.

He normally would have been at a bar in the past with another woman on his lap but he was perfectly content to watch his daughter nap as her sweet breath wafted out of her plump lips that she had gotten from her mother along with her long eyelashes. She was a miracle to him and had him wrapped around her tiny pinkie finger since day one. He picked up his PHS when it rang "Reno" he said in a hushed voice. "Hey Tifa" he said in a muted voice while his heart leapt.

"What are you doing?" she asked her.

"Watching porn" he said.

"You have better not be!" she snapped.

"I'm watching a Weekend at Bernie's while Ronnie's taking a nap in my lap. We're fine. She's drinking your milk like it's going out of style and I'm eating popcorn mixed with chocolate how you showed me. What a combo!" he assured her.

"That sounds like fun" she said and wished she was there.

"You could come over…..I mean if only if you want" he hastily suggested, blushing at the suggestion.

"It's your time with her" she said.

"You've been here at the same time as her many times" he reminded her.

She remembered how he had taken Veronica so many times in her early days to make sure Tifa was sleeping properly. Nights spent at his place when Veronica was colicky with the two of them sleeping in shifts while the other held her in the steamy air of his shower or walked the floor trying to lull her to sleep. Getting to know the real him, watching him sleep. Becoming smitten with him with each act proving what a good father he was. Even her friends who had been outraged at first had to admit he was right there for them both, that he put them first in the deadly concealment that was his life.

"No, you just enjoy your time with her" Tifa said and forced herself to remain home and they said their goodbyes and he found himself wishing she was with them, she truly loved the silly movie and should have been there. "What is your mother doing to me?" he whispered to Veronica, she just cracked open one eye and gave him a look as if to say "you're totally fucked" he frowned at this.

He was surprised when Tifa was busy in the kitchen when he went to pick her up for the doctor's visit on Monday. "What is all this?" he asked her.

"Pancakes and bacon" she replied. "Have a seat and I'll serve you" she said.

"How did you know I was hungry?" he asked her.

"You're always hungry" she said as he put the car seat down in a spare chair and didn't comment when he took a seat at the head of the table as she indicated he must and enjoyed his pancakes made extra crispy with lightly fried bacon.

They went to the hospital with Veronica strapped beside him in the car seat with Tifa in the back as she leaned over the seat and spoke with them both. She was an excellent mother and seemed to care about them both in equal measures.

Tifa couldn't watch as the nurse injected the needle into the tiny veins of their daughter and Reno held her and then reached out and took Veronica into his arms and told her she was brave when she wailed and stroked the dark fuzz on her head. Tifa was reminded of how he had stroked her own hair on the night when Veronica was conceived when Tifa had lain helpless in his arms after her earth shattering orgasms as she came down and wondered if all men had that talent to make her feel like this or if Reno was just especially skilled. She watched him and made a decision.

,"We sure make beautiful children" she said gazing at Veronica and he looked at her and straightened up. "She'll need brothers and sisters to play with. I'm sure we can beat the odds and have a redhead despite the odds you mentioned. We just have to keep on trying. I've been to my doctor and she told me that by some crazy miracle" she said holding up his length of hair in a significant way. Reno, himself seemed frozen in shock and he blushed so red that his tattoos became indistinguishable on his face and even the tips of his ears were stained that walked out to the parking lot and he bent over the front seat to fasten the car seat in and Tifa watch how his long ponytail slid across the smooth fabric of his suit jacket and hung over about the level of his hip. She touched it how she had on their one and only night together, enjoying the heavy, silken feel of it.

"We sure make beautiful children" she said gazing at Veronica and he looked at her and straightened up. "She'll need brothers and sisters to play with. I'm sure we can beat the odds and have a redhead despite the odds you mentioned. We just have to keep on trying. I've been to my doctor and she told me that by some crazy miracle, my uterus is now fully healed and blooming with fertility. " she said holding up his length of hair in a significant way.

Reno, himself seemed frozen in shock and he blushed so red that his tattoos became indistinguishable on his face that even the tips of his ears were stained that colour.