Sephiroth was sitting at his kitchen table, flipping through the Kalm Journal. He giggled a little at the editorial cartoon, and read with interest an article about the discovery of a comet in Cosmo Canyon, which had been named after the last Elder, Bugenhagen. He sipped his tea, frowned, and dropped in four sugar cubes, stirring it idly as he perused the announcement of the upcoming marriage of Barret Wallace and Elmyra Gainsborough, and smiled softly, recalling his own wedding.
Cloud had been so angry that Aeris had accepted Sephiroth's proposal, even though Aeris was plainly no longer interested in the spiky-haired SOLDIER wannabe and Cloud himself had been manipulated into taking Tifa's hand.
A wicked grin lit up the face of the former General. Cloud must have been horrified that Tifa had proposed to him, instead of the other way around. In some ways, the mercenary was very traditional.
Jenova had, it turned out, given up on trying to conquer the Planet and warp all its creatures into hideous monstrosities. Apparently, as She had said in a live interview, She had little patience for Planets that refused to submit to Her will, and was fed up with fruitless attempts to gain control over every living thing. Consequently, She had settled down and started a church whose members called themselves 'Jenova's Witnesses' and dedicated themselves to making pests of themselves in order to punish the pitiful creatures who had refused to submit to the will of their mistress.
She kept an eye out for Sephiroth, though, letting it be known that anyone who messed with Her favourite pawn would face Her wrath.
As Sephiroth had no last name (he refused to consider taking the name of Professor Hojo, and changed the subject whenever anyone suggested that the man who seduced Lucretia was his father), he decided to take Aeris', to the shock of more than a few, but he quite liked the sound of 'Sephiroth Gainsborough'.
After a year of happy marriage, Aeris gave birth to a daughter, who, after careful thought, they named Lufalna, after Ifalna and Lucretia.
That was seventeen years ago, and those years had seen blessedly few tragedies, and many joys, including the birth of a son, Gethsemane, who was now fourteen and in the looks department took after his father.
Lufalna had grown into a devastatingly beautiful woman, with her father's eyes. Her hair was thick and dark brown, shot through with strands of silver. The boys were all over her and Sephiroth carefully watched her and the few boys she brought home, occasionally hiring the Turks to spy on her when she went on dates.
To his surprise, she excelled in science, evidently taking after her grandfathers. She had no real interest in plants, to Aeris' dismay, but Gethsemane was obviously her child. Although Gethsemane nearly idolized his father and tried to emulate him in every way, he adored working in the garden with his mother, and possessed an unreal skill in coercing plants to thrive in unfavourable circumstances. Perhaps, Aeris sometimes mused, that was a touch of Ifalna in the boy. After all, she had lived in the far North in difficult conditions, and the drive to spend time with nature that filled all Cetra would not be stopped by snowy fields or icy winds.
His pleasant reverie was broken as Lufalna sat down at the table opposite of him.
"Daddy."
He smiled at her in what he thought was a tender, fatherly fashion, but was in fact more than a little insane, but let's forgive him that. Fathers should be allowed some leeway in taking pride in their children, shouldn't they?
"Yes, dearest?"
His daughter took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Daddy, we need to talk."
Again, he smiled. "Ask anything, Lufalna. You know that I'll do anything I can for you, right?"
Lufalna started to nibble on her lip, and it was then that Sephiroth began to worry.
"We need to talk about sex."
Lufalna had chosen a bad moment to tell him that. He had been taking a long sip of his sweet green tea, and it spewed across the table, spattering his daughter's face and drenching the newspaper.
"Oh my Gods, you're not pregnant, are you?" Industriously wiping her glasses with a tea-towel, Lufalna said, indignantly, "No! Of course I'm not! It's just that...well, Daddy, I'm not a little girl any more."
Sephiroth winced. He'd tried ever so hard to not notice that. Oh, how he had tried! He had carefully ignored the pile of makeup on Lufalna's dresser, the brassieres in the laundry that were definitely not his wife's, that Aeris seemed to have filled the cupboard under the bathroom counter with box after box of what he could only refer to as 'feminine products', but time and a young girl's curiosity had conspired against him and forced him into the one place that even the great General Sephiroth feared to tread.
"Lufy, honey, my..." Sephiroth took a deep breath "...father, though it pains me to say it, was...Professor Hojo. You've heard all the stories about him?" She nodded. "He was worse than that. He told me about where babies come from in five minutes and didn't let me ask any questions. That was when I was about your age and I was mortified beyond belief. When I thought Grandma Jenova was my mother, I asked her once. Remember Grandma Jenova?" Lufalna nodded again, looking interested. "Remember how she sent you a baby rattle for your fifteenth birthday? That's because she's an incredibly ancient space germ and we pitiful mortals have no real interest to her. She had no idea of what I was asking about. For all she knew, we spontaneously generated or hatched from eggs."
Lufalna had mopped up the puddle of tea on the floor and looked up at her father. 'Does that mean -"
"Yes. Go ask your mother."
As his daughter went off in search of Aeris, Sephiroth struggled to come to terms with the fact that his little-girl-no-longer had asked about the horribly embarrassing subject of sexual relations. His wife would be able to take care of it. Hells, Aeris had managed to bring the most well-known and feared man on the Planet out of his shell, hadn't she? Lufalna would be able to find out everything she needed to know.
Wouldn't she?
Putting the subject aside in his mind, Sephiroth flipped through his now-sodden newspaper and tried to find the comics.
Aeris was sitting on the bed in her and Sephiroth's bedroom, folding pillowcases and humming a sweet tune. Quietly, Lufalna knocked on the doorjamb and coughed. Aeris turned about to look at her daughter, and smiled.
"Yes, dear?"
Taking a deep breath, the girl sat down next to her mother.
"Mom...I need to ask you something."
"Yes, Lufalna, what is it?" "Mom...I think we need to talk about sex."
Aeris dropped an armload of pillowcases to the floor. "Oh my Gods, you're not pregnant, are you?"
"No!"
Sitting there on the bed, Aeris said brightly, "Have you been trying? I mean, it doesn't matter to me if you're still a virgin."
With anguish, Lufalna yelled, "Mother!"
"Fine, fine...You didn't try and ask your father, did you?"
Lufalna rolled her eyes. "He just did a spit-take and told me that he was raised by Professor Hojo, and that Grandma Jenova thought that humans hatched from eggs or spontaneously generated."
Aeris sighed. "Well, I don't find that surprising. I always did think he was a bit of a prude, to tell you the truth. Why, on our wedding night, he -" Lufalna suddenly looked nauseated and was sticking her fingers in her ears while humming loudly. "- nevermind. Anyway, I've been prepared for this day for a long time." Going to the closet, Aeris took out a large box from the top shelf and opened it, revealing a plethora of booklets, pamphlets, charts and diagrams, and a variety of what Lufalna realized, with an unpleasant feeling somewhere in her stomach, were birth control devices. There were also, she saw with a shiver, mannikins. Anatomically correct mannikins.
Aeris waved a hand and the bedroom door swung shut. Lufalna saw a puppet slide its way onto her mother's hand, and then she screamed.
Fifteen minutes later, Lufalna burst into her own bedroom, slamming the door behind her, locking it, then dragged her dresser in front of it. A dull 'thud' echoed from the other side, and Aeris' voice came through.
"But Lufalna dear, we still haven't discussed breast orgasms as an alternative to sexual intercourse, the emotional after-effects of abortions, or what it means to live an alternative sexual lifestyle!"
Leaning to reach the crack in the doorframe, Lufalna yelled, "Thank you, Mother, but I think I'd like to go off and live in a convent now! Or learn about sex on the street, with my friends! Yes! And from the mass media! Anything but you, please!"
Aeris shoved a few small and square packets of silvery foil that resembled condoms under the door, as well as two pamphlets on the risks of unprotected sex and STDs, and, to Lufalna's horror, a hand puppet that most certainly did not belong in a child's toybox.
As soon as Aeris gave up and went back to folding bed linens, Lufalna crept downstairs to the kitchen.
"Daddy. Can you tell me about sex?"
Author's Notes:
Demented? Off course! Sane? No, way! I'm sorry, but I got this idea one day and I had to work with it. It was inspired by a movie I saw, 'Mad About The Boy', I think, which was about a gay man whose mother was a psychologist, played by Andrea Martin, who had a horribly open and liberal way of teaching her children about sex. And I thought, wouldn't it be funny if Aeris were like that? And evidently it is.
I wrote this for the now-defunct magazine, 'Aurora', which published AeriSeph fanfics. It was written under the pen-name 'Silverfire Darkmoon'.
Hugs and stabbings, Lucifer's Seraphim (whose parents never tried to tell him about sex, for which he is profoundly grateful, and in awe of the schoolteachers who do so every year)