A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed: mom calling, LadyTeefStrife, Creative Spark, .., Kisdota, Arrowned, P.P.V.V., kitsune13, Amos Whirly, StrifeVsTribal, Synchrony, vLuna, imaginedreams22, Puggles Master, chrisVIII, 1080, UglyTruth, Tiny Cherie, and Meeve.

Hole

Tifa was asleep at the bar counter when Cloud came home. She was sitting on one of the stools, the counter in front of her scattered with papers. It looked like she'd been working on finances, but she'd fallen asleep on top of them. Cloud wasn't sure how she had managed to stay in the stool, with the way her body was angled.

"Tifa." He touched her shoulder as her eyes blinked open and her head rose off of her arms.

"Cloud." Her voice was fuzzy with sleep. She yawned and rubbed her eyes. "What time is it?" She wrapped an arm around him and pressed her face into his side.

"Almost one in the morning." Cloud hugged her around the shoulders and kissed the top of her head. "You should head for bed. The finances can wait."

"Not--" Tifa yawned again "--finances." She stretched her arms out and shook her head, looking more alert. "I don't think it can wait, either. I wanted to talk to you about it, unless you're too tired."

Worry suddenly prickled over him. "I'm awake." He sat down in the barstool beside Tifa's, eyes roving over the papers, wondering what they were and why they had kept Tifa from going to bed. A frown touched his mouth when he saw the papers--four of them--all had Marlene's name written on the top. He picked up one paper and realized it was a homework assignment. His eyes widened slightly. "She failed?" He looked at the other papers, and sure enough, every single one of them was marked with a failing grade. His frown deepened. Marlene was smart as a whip, and the thought of her failing at even one paper, let alone four, was baffling to him. The date at the top showed she had done all of them that week. Well, half-done them. Two of the assignments were just blank homework sheets.

"Her teacher called me earlier and said she wanted to have a conference. When I asked if there was a problem, she was surprised I hadn't seen Marlene's recent homework assignments," Tifa said. "Marlene was not happy when I asked for them, Cloud. She got really snappy and came at me with an attitude bigger than Cid's ego."

Cloud's eyebrows rose.

"I asked her if she was having trouble understanding the homework. She yelled at me that she didn't want to talk about it and stormed up to her room. When I went in to talk to her, she had fallen asleep." Tifa's brow furrowed. "She's been really moody the past few days, though. Have you noticed?"

"Yes." The mornings he had been there for breakfast that week, he had noticed that she had only picked at her food. She hadn't been her usual smiling, chatty self, either. "She keeps saying she's okay."

"I know." Tifa pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm glad tomorrow's a Saturday. No school. Maybe if we sit down and talk to her together, we can figure out what's going on. I'm really worried about her."

"Barret's coming to visit on Sunday. Do you think that has something to do with it?"

"I thought about that, but I don't know why it would. She's always excited to see him. I asked Denzel and Aria if they knew why she was so upset, but they didn't know, either."

Cloud put a hand on Tifa's back. "We'll talk to Marlene in the morning."

"Mm." Tifa gathered up Marlene's homework assignments and headed for the stairs.

Cloud followed her, setting his things in his office. He climbed the rest of the steps and peeked into Marlene's room. She had kicked her blankets halfway off the bed. When Cloud went over to pull them off of the floor and back onto Marlene, he noticed that she was sleeping with her tattered stuffed rabbit, Mouse, and her old butterfly, and that deepened his frown. She had stopped sleeping with her stuffed animals beside her more than a year earlier.

He left her room and glanced into Denzel's room. Denzel, who was a much lighter sleeper than Marlene, opened his eyes and waved at Cloud before rolling over onto his stomach and burying his face in his pillow.

Cloud turned to go into his and Tifa's room. Several years earlier, he wouldn't have been able to imagine himself as a family man. Families had always been what happened to other people--to normal people. Not to people like him. Then again, his family had been built from broken pieces and broken people, from a lot of circumstances that were anything but normal.

Family changed everything. Having kids around changed everything. Cloud sometimes felt like he learned more from the kids than he taught them. Every age brought something different, every year that passed brought new understanding--and occasionally frustrations.

Tifa had whispered to him, late at night, that she also had times when she felt she had no idea what she was doing. "My mother died when I was so young," she had said, "and I just had to figure things out by myself."

Cloud climbed into bed and held up his arm so Tifa could settle against him. He wasn't sure when he finally drifted off to sleep, but he woke briefly when kids' quiet footsteps sounded on the stairs, then again when a screeching alarm went off.

Cloud was on his feet, his sword in hand, before he realized it was the smoke alarm downstairs that was wailing. He ran down the stairs with Tifa on his heels to see Denzel darting into the kitchen.

Cloud and Tifa followed him to the doorway. Smoke pouring from a pan in the kitchen. Denzel grabbed it off of the stove and poured water over it and then stood on a chair, waving a towel in front of the alarm to blow the smoke away from it. The horrible noise finally stopped, and then the only noise was Marlene's crying as she stood in the middle of the kitchen, hands pressed over her face and her shoulders shaking.

Tifa put her arms around Marlene and looked at Cloud. He ran a hand through his hair and nodded.

"I was just trying to make pancakes," Marlene sobbed. "I can make them. I didn't mean for them to burn."

"Denzel, can we have a moment with Marlene?" Tifa asked Denzel quietly.

Denzel shot a worried look at Marlene, but nodded and left Marlene alone in the kitchen with Cloud and Tifa.

"Marlene, it's all right. We can still make pancakes," Tifa said gently.

Marlene yanked away from Tifa, and her face was angry despite the tears. "No!"

"Marlene, sweetheart, we need to talk. Why don't you--"

"I don't want to talk to you!" Marlene interrupted. She crossed her arms and glared between Cloud and Tifa. "Maybe if you wanted to talk to me you should have done it earlier!"

"Marlene." It was all Cloud got out before Marlene turned her back on Cloud and Tifa, arms still crossed. "We just want to help you. We can't do that unless we know what's wrong."

"You want to know what's wrong?" Marlene yanked something out of her pocket. She turned and shoved it at Cloud.

Tifa stepped over to Cloud, her eyes full with worry and confusion. Cloud held out a worn, folded up piece of paper. When he unfolded it, a picture dropped out onto the floor, and Tifa scooped it up. Her eyes widened. "Oh! Oh, Marlene!"

As soon as Cloud saw the picture, he began to have some inkling of the problem. It showed a very happy young couple, with the woman cradling a tiny baby in her arms. He didn't recognize the woman, but she looked an awful lot like Marlene. And the man's face was unforgettable.

Sure enough, when Tifa flipped the photograph over, it had three names written on the back: Dyne, Eleanor, and Marlene Bishop (2 months old).

The paper turned out to be a letter, and though Cloud didn't have time to read it, he saw that it was signed by Eleanor. By Marlene's birth mother.

Marlene folded her arms around herself. "Those are my parents, aren't they? I've asked Dad--I asked him about my mother once, and he told me she was beautiful and amazing and that he'd tell me the whole story when I was old enough to understand, but I'm old enough to understand and no one told me! I found those in a box of Dad's things--I thought I'd go through it before he came to visit, but I found that and…I don't understand why no one told me." Her voice was a whisper when she finished speaking. She sat down on the chair and looked up at Cloud and Tifa. "I thought he was my father. I mean…my real father. I know…he looks a lot different than me, but…it can happen that way…"

"Oh, sweetie." Tifa dropped down in front of Marlene and took her hands. "I'm…I--" She looked over her shoulder at Cloud, who stared back, not sure what he was supposed to say.

Marlene pulled her hands away from Tifa. "You didn't tell me, either!"

"I know." Tifa bit her lip and sighed. "You never asked me, and I thought that Barret--"

Marlene shook her head. "I haven't lived with Dad in so long…I hardly remember living with him at all. And I…I think about it sometimes. I think about Dad and I call him and find out what he's doing. I always love it when I get to see him. But I wonder, sometimes, about my mother, and it just…I didn't think too much about it because I have you, Tifa, and you've always been my mother. And there are so many kids who don't have mothers or fathers, and I know that I'm so, so lucky to have you, and Cloud, and Dad, and so many other people who love me. I just didn't realize…"

"Realize how important it really was?" Tifa asked.

"Yes." Marlene looked down at her lap. "Until I saw that picture, and then--then I just realized it's all a lie. Who I thought I was. All this week, I haven't been able to think about anything else. I've felt like there's this big hole inside of me. But…if they're my parents--" she waved at the picture "--does it really change anything?"

"It changes your perception." Cloud crouched down beside Tifa. "Truth is important, and it's always been very important to you."

"We were never trying to lie to you, Marlene," Tifa said. "And I know Barret--"

"How hard would it have been to tell me he adopted me? Who are Dyne and Eleanor Bishop? Are they dead?"

"Yes." Tifa exchanged glances with Cloud, and he knew that one of the hardest things to explain would be the death of her father. That would go so well. 'Oh, your birthfather? Yeah, he went a little crazy and we had to fight him, and then he jumped off a cliff.' "I think it's something you need to talk to your dad about tomorrow."

"I don't want to talk to him! I want…I don't know…" Marlene wiped at some more tears coming down her face. "I feel so selfish."

"It's not selfish, wanting to know about your past," Tifa said firmly. "It's my fault, too, for not talking to you about it. Some people…" She trailed off. After a moment, she said, "Some people have such painful pasts that they don't want to inflict them on other people. And some people don't like looking back. Cloud and I--and Barret--we've always just wanted you to be happy."

"I want to know the truth," Marlene whispered. "I want to know what you know."

Cloud put his hand on Marlene's shoulder. "We'll tell you what we know. It's not much."

"Barret told us the story of what happened a long time ago, but we don't know anything about your mother," Tifa said. "I had never even seen a picture of her until now."

"She's beautiful," Marlene said softly.

"She is. She looks like you." Tifa pressed the photo back into Marlene's hand. "We can tell you what you know, and tomorrow, you can talk to Barret. He'll be able to tell you much more. Dyne was his best friend."

Marlene had always been the most adjusted child Cloud had known, which was remarkable given some of the things she had seen and experienced. This was just a reminder of how broken even her past was. He suspected that Marlene was going to have to work things out with Barret before she could settle things in herself.

It was going to be an interesting visit.

:--:--:--:--:

Cloud wasn't present for Marlene's questions and conversation with Barret. It was something that was between them, and something that Marlene needed to discuss alone with him.

He did know that late that night, after Marlene and the other kids had gone to bed, Barret sat at the counter and gulped down a mug of Corel wine before dropping his head into his hands. Cloud looked at Tifa, who reached across the counter and squeezed Barret's shoulder with a hand covered in soapy water. After a moment, she went back to washing her dishes.

"You've done good." Barret's gruff voice carried through the bar. "Done a lot better with Marlene than me."

Tifa shook her head. "Barret…"

"'S true and you know it. You raised her up right. And she's jus' as forgivin' as you, Tifa. Know what she told me tonight? Told me she's glad she knows the truth and wishes I'd a told her sooner, but no matter what, she'll always be a Wallace."

:--:--:--:--:

The night after Barret left, Cloud paused in the doorway of the girls' room to see that Marlene was sleeping without her old comfort toys. On her night table was a pendant that Cloud recognized as the one Dyne had given to Barret.

Then, on the way downstairs, he noticed a new photograph among the many lining the stair hallway. In between a picture of Barret with Marlene and a picture of the Strife family was the photograph of Marlene and her birthparents.

Tifa had been right that some people didn't like looking back at their pasts. He knew from experience that some people could get stuck so firmly in their pasts that they had a hard time pulling out of them.

But Marlene had always been one of those very special people who knew that no matter what the past held, it was the present that mattered. She had never let the pain she had experienced hinder her, and had always tried to pull other people out of their misery and fill their holes. Even as a little girl, she had helped fill Cloud's.

As he continued on down the stairs, casting one last look at the photographs on the wall, he knew that Marlene was going to be just fine.