So I've wanted to, for years now, rewrite A Mother's Quandary as a "look how much better my writing has gotten with so many years of practice" thing like artists do sometimes. And with the remake of the game coming out now is the perfect time (even if this is more based on Advent Children, whatever).

Warnings: messed-up-science-experiment mpreg, forced pregnancy,

There are two bikes chasing him across the landscape. Something familiar about their riders to Cloud that he can't place. He can't tell what with the dust being kicked up by the three bikes and the monsters summoned to join the hunt.

Twin screaming babies. No- not twins.

"Where's mother?" one of the riders demand. Close enough that Cloud can hear him. That Cloud can see him – silver hair and those terrible, dangerous, aquamarine eyes.

"We know you hid her, brother," the other rider calls over the roars of their engines.

Not your brother. Your-

"Where's mother?" the closer rider asks, again, like a petulant child. And Cloud tries to pay it no mind – what they want won't matter if he can get away from them. Listening to them will only distract him getting away.

Can't get away. The scientists they-

"We went to look for traces of Sephiroth," Rufus says. "We started, where do you think?"

"Yep, at the Northern Cave!" Reno says from outside the door Cloud locked him out with.

"What do you think we found?" Rufus asks and suddenly Cloud feels a bone-deep dread hit him. Like a secret he doesn't ever want unearthed coming to light. But he doesn't know what? What could he be so terrified of Shinra finding out? Especially after everything else that had come out during the events.

His stomach looked so big. So huge and unmissable even in his deeply drug-hazed brain.

"Relax – we didn't find anything," Rufus continues. "However, not all went as planned. We were interrupted. Kadaj and his gang."

"Kadaj?"

Three. Three crying babies. Triplets. Their cries echo weirdly off the walls as the scientists carry them away.

"They'll be after you as well. If they haven't already found you," Shinra says. And they had found Cloud – the riders on the edge of Midgar.

"Leave me out of this." There's something about it that feels like it's picking at a scab Cloud wasn't even aware he had. It's a feeling he's come to hate, and recognise always just leads to more bad news.

"How? Your ties to Sephiroth run as deep as ours do Cloud," Rufus says. And as much as Cloud hates to admit it now he's right – his and Sephiroth's destinies now apparently wound. "If Kadaj's purpose is to do what's necessary to prepare for the moment – we stand in the way as his greatest threat."

"Moment?"

"Sephiroth reborn."

"Do you think I would let you get away with destroying so many years worth of work of mine?"

The restraints are painfully tight, giving no room for Cloud to wiggle from them. And Hojo looms so dangerously over him.

"No – I will not see him die. Not when I have a vessel that can see him reborn."

"Are you done talking?" The conversation seems to be grating against a block in Cloud's mind. Some memories wanting to come to the surface at it. Memories Cloud is sure he'd rather keep buried deep. He has more than enough trauma from those years to work through.

"Let's get to the issue at hand," Rufus says, and again, there's that moment of terror for Cloud – that Rufus has found something out that Cloud desperately doesn't want known. "In order to combat Kadaj we need someone with your expertise. Will you join us – former SOLDIER Cloud?"

"In my head," Cloud says with a scoff before heading for the door. He doesn't need to be here. Doesn't need to keep digging at this memory block to uncover some new trauma. Still. "What's this stuff about 'Mother'?"

"Why, did Kadaj mention something?" So Rufus clearly knows something. Not that Cloud knows what and he's so afraid it's something to do with him.

But what? What could his connection be to it greater than his established tie to Sephiroth. There's something about them though – the three – that makes Cloud feel like he's even more entwined in this story.

"I don't have time for failures – three, I think, three should be enough to guarantee at least one successful result."

"Rufus – if you're hiding something-"

"I'd never keep a secret," Rufus says and Cloud actually scoffs at it because secrets is what Rufus Shinra does best – so much like his Turks. "Not from a comrade."

But Cloud isn't a comrade. He was barely a part of Shinra and certainly not involved in creating this mess the planet it is. He doesn't deserve to be dragged into the mess again and expected to clean up a problem he didn't cause.

Because he didn't cause anything to do with this – right?

"You keep rejecting the treatments, why? Nevermind that – you can still have use. If not as a vessel for him than a vessel for them."

"I said I'd live out both our lives," Cloud says to Zack's buster, having righted it from where it was knocked over, "easy to make that promise."

"What are you doing to him?" Zack demands and from the corner of his eyes Cloud can see him fighting against his restraints. "Let him go – he doesn't have anything to do with this."

"Oh but he does," Hojo says, "and I'm going to make him useful."

"Get your hands off him!"

"No, his body isn't accepting the mako like yours is, disappointing in one way, but on the other hand it makes him the perfect candidate for this. They won't kill him before they are able to survive out of him. He might even survive it himself."

Cloud grips his head as the pain of the memories sears though him. More bits of memories that he had repressed – either through wilful or chemical amnesia.

A surgery.

It doesn't make sense why they are operating on his abdomen.

A vessel they kept calling him. But a vessel for what?

Bile builds in his throat and he thinks he'd rather the memories had stayed where he suppressed them.

"Who did this?" Cloud asks as he holds Tifa's battered and bruised form. She'll be fine – she's tough, but the idea of someone being able to take her down is worrying none the less.

"He didn't say," Tifa says before starting, "Marlene!"

Cloud looks around the room, hoping that Marlene has merely hidden herself from the attacker. But she is gone, and so is the materia.

"Damn."

They're cutting through his abdomen again. But now it's so much larger than it had been previously. His stomach swollen and squirming and full.

Driving to the Forgotten City Cloud thinks he's figured it out.

His stomach so big. Squirming and full of some kind of life Hojo put in him.

At least, if the memories that keep assaulting him can be trusted he's figured it out.

Three screaming babies dragged from his abdomen. That shouldn't even be possibly there in the first place.

Figured out what his part is to play in it.

But- what even are they? If they were natural children then they should not be as old as they are. If they were clones then why do they not look identical to their original?

He pushes the thought from his mind. Thinking about it makes this all more complicated. The three of them are clearly something evil. And have taken Marlene and Denzel.

The children, all the children they have taken, line up on the road and Cloud skids Fenrir in order to avoid them – sending himself flying.

"I'm glad you could make it," Kadaj says.

The eldest. By a handful of minutes.

"I only came for the kids." The real kids. The human ones that these three had kidnapped.

"See this man?" Kadaj asks the children gathered around. "He's out big brother."

That's the thing isn't it?

Cloud isn't their big brother really.

No, he's something else.

In a bitterly ironic way he's their real mother, but not the one they keep demanding for.

There's a bit of him that wants to spit out the truth – call them and Hojo out for what happened to him. It won't change anything though – Hojo is dead and the three of them would either not believe him or rightly call him incubator, not mother.

Because he wasn't their mother. Mother's cared for their children, loved them, and Cloud knew he was going to put these three down.

So I decided not to include it because would throw off the pacing at the end but if you have forgotten do go back and rewatch Kadaj's death in the movie. Because that was actually the scene that first inspired me to write the original version of this all those years ago.

Tumblr is GoddessofRoyalty and twitter is goddessofroyal if you want to talk to me about FF7 remake, Cloud mpreg, or send me a prompt.