Author's Note: Jesus, after moving into a studio smaller than an average high school classroom, my mother had decided to cut the TV cable, and get rid of my DSL. I only get good reception when it's rainy outside and/or if someone stands really close to the TV. (But that blocks my view. I'm an American. I have the right to sit on a couch from a distance and gorge on vegan junk food.) AND I DON'T HAVE INTERNET. So don't be expecting an update anytime soon after this.

Disclaimer: FF and all related things belongs to Tetsuya Nomura. Tifa's beaded earrings that were in the box are the ones I saw while waiting on line to pay for clothes at EXPRESS. ABBA owns "Dancing Queen". The car in which Tseng and Elena had sex on is a Cadillac. A black one.

Upon looking for her old shoes that she liked to wear when she went on scenic walks, she found a dusty cardboard box that looked familiar to her. Tifa blew away all the dust and pulled it out of under the bed, and sneezed. When she opened the box, she pulled out a roll of colorful sticker pictures of her and Cloud when they were still together.

His hair was as spiky as ever. He was smiling goofily too, something that he rarely did. She remembered that they went out for ice cream afterwards. He had pistachio, and she had mint chocolate chip. What were they so happy about? Oh yes, they went to an amusement park, and they had rode the monster coaster six times without feeling the usual pang of nausea that most riders feel.

There was more in the box; an old ticket stub to a melodramatic opera, an old tube of lip balm, a pair of dangly earrings made of beads and a picture of AVALANCHE-when they were all still together.

But where was Cloud now? Tifa knew the answer but tried so hard over the years to forget.

About two years after the "Kadaj" incident, Cloud began to slowly go insane. He'd hallucinate, throw fits, and suffer from insomnia. It was Tifa herself who checked him into the asylum.

Today, she decided to visit him, just to give him the things in the box and to see how he was doing.

Concern.

Stomach round and fat, heaving up and down, up and down. He knew. They sat in silence as the yellow-haired one looked at the white stucco walls, eyes all distant. Her lips were twisted, like they had an insect in between she wanted to mash up and pulverize.

She pulled out the box from the white paper bag she had by her chair. The loud crinkling noise snapped him out of his trance-like state, and his eyes, the eyes that used to radiate with beauty and glamour were dull now, and they shot towards the noise. His bare toes curled up on the hardwood floor as he remembered faintly.

"Cloud, you remember this?" She held out the roll of sticker pictures, each decorated with colorful stars and big, fat hearts.

He eyed it like it was a Petri dish full of Dengue Fever-infected mosquitoes that she was going to unleash onto him. He brought his knees up to his chest and began to shift away from her hand on his bed. The solace of his bed relaxed him, so he slowly reached out to take the sticker pictures.

When the 9-inch plastic roll of sticker pictures was in his hand, he looked at it as if he was trying to remember. She took out all the other things in the cardboard box and placed them on the side of his bed. Tifa pulled he chair closer to the side of his bed after seeing that he was comfortable enough with her.

"Do you remember Marlene?" Tifa asked and held up the picture of the AVALANCHE members, plus Marlene and Denzel. "That's her, right there."

Cloud nodded; he understood. "Vincent." He said concisely.

Tifa gave him a small smile. "Mmm. Vincent always wore that old red cloak, didn't he?" She reminisced sadly.

With three fingers, he touched her growing stomach gently, just with his fingertips.

Sensitivity.

The cedar walls were unpainted, unvarnished. Steam rose from the center of the closet-like sauna, and the men in it were all in towels, each with dark, concentrated faces. The light was dim, and the air was thick and hazy, but it didn't distract all three of them from their mental ramblings.

"She keeps asking me if we could do it in the car… that's a company car, damnit… I should go buy myself one just for sex. Yeah… it'd have shag music CDs in the stereo… vibrating seats… six different kinds of stimulating pills… hydraulics… yeah… it'd be called the 'shag pad'… but why does she bite me? She never bit me there before…"

"How old is Yuffie? I mean, she's a princess and all, and she uses stupid dating sites to meet people… Argh… if she's underage, I'll be dead… I didn't even know it was her online! Is cybersex with minors illegal? I know that sex itself with minors is illegal, but she told me she was over 18… damn it… damn it… I didn't even use a condom…"

"Shit… why does this have to happen to me? Why am I going to be a father? Why couldn't it be someone else that got her high and pregnant? Why do these things always have to happen to me? Oh, woe is me… woe is me…"

"Rude… don't you ever take off your sunglasses?" Tseng asked, adjusting the white towel around his waist.

Rude shook his head and wiped away the steam on the sunglasses with his fingers, like little windshield wipers.

Dissolvit ut glaciem.

"What are you thinking about?" Reno asked Tseng, a big mug of beer in the redhead's right hand. All three males sat at a bar downtown, far, far, far from where the women they were avoiding would ever think to find them- a drag bar in Junon. ABBA was playing, and a muscular, tanned Adonis-like creature in dressed in purple and green was singing "Dancing Queen".

Tseng swallowed the wasabi peas that were in his mouth. "Elena." Reno and Rude made sounds of agreement. Not about Elena, but knowing that their teammate and leader had women problems too. "You?" The bindi-d man asked Reno after taking a large swill of his Gin and Tonic.

"Tifa. Rude?"

Rude shifted in his seat, and nervously finished his cocktail, coincidentally named 'Sex on the Beach'. (Yuffie and Rude had sex on the beach earlier… then in a hotel… then in the bathroom… then in a boat… then in a restaurant kitchen closet…) "Yuffie." He said quietly.

Both of Rude's coworkers gave him odd looks. "Did you have sex with the Princess?" Tseng asked the bald man about the Wutaian princess.

Rude nodded.

"Man, you scored!" Reno smiled and made a motion to the bartender to get another round of drinks for the three. The bartender winked at Reno, and in turn, received a glare and the finger from the slightly homophobic Turk. When the drinks were served, Reno asked, "So, how'd it happen?"

The follicle-less man, being as tight-lipped as he normally was, summed it up in ten words. "Online. Dating. Cyber sex. Bar. Drunk sex. Is she legal?"

Tseng replied, "She's legal."

Mollified.