A/N: This chp details something briefly mentioned in chp 21 of Shouldn't Feel Like a Crime
Nibelheim.
Or hell on earth, as Cloud likes to call it.
It's the only habited town that lies at the equator, so the sun's especially scalding hot in this part of the world.
The heat here has put Cloud through years of struggling with actinic keratosis – or in its less fancy term, a skin condition that leaves him red and crusty everywhere.
But that isn't the only reason why it's hell on earth for him.
His childhood here was just an ongoing cycle of being trapped in between a boozer dad and a whoring mom who're fighting all the time whenever they're under the same roof.
There's almost never a single day in his childhood home when something isn't broken.
Now, after years of leaving it behind, he's back again at this hell.
Only this time, it's more tolerable because Zack's here with him.
Claudia, his mom, is staring at them from across the table, judging with the same blue eyes that he inherited from her.
"Another Vincent?"
He clacks his tongue at the vile question.
She ran into him kissing his ex Vincent once in Midgar and swore that he's just a closet gay pretending to be straight.
"He's not another Vincent."
"What will Tifa say about this?"
"Mom…"
"Who fucks who? Does he fuck you? Or do you-"
"MOM."
Claudia finally shuts up.
"Where's he?" Cloud asks, reminding her why he's here in the first place.
She quickly disappears into the room that used to be his and comes out carrying a little baby who's probably not older than 4 months old.
He clumsily takes the baby from her and sits back at his chair, just watching the kid sleeping soundly on his arms.
The baby has his butter blonde hair and upturned eyes.
"What's his name again?" he asks, caressing the baby's fleshy head.
Claudia smiles. "His name's Sky."
"Should've named him Moon, Sun or something," he quips, less to deride his mom's choice of name and more to admit that he's awestruck by the baby.
This little one's the cause of his stress for the last couple of months? Unbelievable.
"I don't know what to do with him," Claudia suddenly says as if she won't have the chance to again if she doesn't do it now. "I can't keep him here."
His good mood immediately sours.
This is what his mom is good at: ruining his fucking mood.
"What do you mean you can't keep him here?" he barks, glowering at her. "Who else will take care of him?"
"You!"
His jaw drops. "What do you mean ME? I can't take care of him, mom!"
Hell, he can barely take care of himself!
"Neither do I, Cloud! Your dad doesn't want him here. That motherfucker asked me to get rid of Sky but I refused, so he's doing everything he can now to let me know that I fucked up!"
Purple and brown bruises all over Claudia's face, neck, arms and legs are proof of how bad things have gone between his mom and dad.
Cloud shakes his head. "You should have moved out ages ago."
"And go where? To you?" she parries, forcing out a laugh. "You don't even have the time to answer my texts."
"Well, that's because all you do is ask for more fucking money, mom. I'm sorry that I don't make enough to fund all your needs and wants!"
Sky stirs awake, jolted by their screaming match.
The kid starts crying and Claudia hurries to retrieve him into her arms.
She paces the room, rocking the kid until he's quiet and falling asleep again.
"What happened to his dad?" Cloud asks, just remembering someone who's supposed to be part of the discussion.
"Haven't heard of him."
"And yet you're keeping his baby?"
"I loved him, alright?" Claudia snaps, defensive in her tone. "He just doesn't want to have anything to do with me anymore."
She walks back to Cloud's childhood room, probably to put Sky back into his cot.
As soon as she returns to the kitchen, she grabs a can of beer from the fridge and pries it open.
She's staring out of the windows, chugging her drink in silence.
The look in her eyes seems distant.
"I'll put Sky up for adoption. At least someone will take good care of him."
Cloud's heart almost stops. "What? No, you can-"
His words dangle unfinished in the air as he feels Zack slipping a hand onto his left thigh.
His surprise is met with the other man's soothing smile.
"Can I say something?" Zack asks, glancing at Claudia.
The woman doesn't flinch.
Zack carries on, "It's probably not my place to say this because I'm no one to you but… adoption isn't going to guarantee Sky a good life. Our foster care system's shit. I should know because I went through it. They let anyone adopt a kid as long as you have money. They don't care about making sure that you're fit to take care of kids. They don't care about keeping the kids alive and well after the adoption. You can ask every person in Midgar who has been through the foster care system and you'll find almost all of them will say their life has been shit. Besides…"
Zack pauses for some time as if the next few words he's going to say are too heavy to roll out of his tongue. "I know what it feels like when your own folks don't want you. That's what you're going to make him feel: abandoned and unwanted. You don't want that, don't you? I know you love him."
Cloud hears his mom sniff.
When Claudia turns around to look at Zack, her eyes are all wet with tears.
"Then what am I supposed to do?" she asks, voice shaking from trying to hold down her sobs.
"Move to Midgar. Raise him," Zack answers. "Don't worry about the money. I'll take care of it all."
"You can't be serious…" Cloud gasps, eyes as wide as an owl's in the darkness.
He can't tell if Zack's being serious or not.
"Will you really do it for me?" Claudia asks, wiping her tears away with her sleeves.
She sounds equally doubtful.
Zack shrugs. "Yeah. Don't want another kid ending up like me."
A/N:
I said in the prev chp's endnotes that this should've been the final chp. Well, turns out that I wrote it too long that I decided to break it into 2 chps.
PS: Sky is such a generic name lolz. I couldn't be bothered to find a better name!