22. Mother

She is tired and sweaty and her shoulder-length hair is a mess. There is blood in places she didn't know it was possible to bleed, and she has aches in muscles she didn't know she had.

She is tingling with exhaustion and joy and satisfaction.

Yuffie is a mother now, and she's not quite sure how she's going to pull that off, but she's got a lifetime to learn.

Tifa and Shera are the only others in the little shoji room now, having recently expelled Vincent to locate their other friends, who are holed up in the guest rooms at the Pagoda.

"She's beautiful, Yuffie," Shera comments fondly, brushing a a hand over the new baby's forehead and smiling benignly.

Yuffie smiles tiredly and holds out her arms. "Gimme," she demands. "My baby." Tifa snorts and Shera complies.

"Cid hogged Buddy when he was first born," she remembrance. "I doubt you'll have that problem with Vincent, though. He's good with kids but he understands the mommying behavior."

"Yeah, well," Yuffie grins down at the newborn. Her tiny eyes are closed and she's squalling in the way of new babies. "I should feed her, right?"

"Yeah," says Shera the Mom, and guides Yuffie on how to hold her new daughter and allow the child to breastfeed. Tifa sighs wistfully at the scene. The other women, older and younger, notice and give her sympathetic looks.

"It sucks that you're having such a hard time," Yuffie says. "I mean, I didn't even want kids, but we decided we'd just let it go and see what happened, to appease Godo, you know, and here she is."

"That's alright," Tifa smiles sadly. "If we're meant to have kids we will."

None of the women mention the possible drawbacks of Cloud's past mako exposure.

"So what are you going to call her?" Tifa asks after a while.

Yuffie shakes her head. "Who knows. Wait until Vinnie gets here, speaking of which," she says pointedly, "what did you do with my husband?"

"We had to clean you up, he was in the way," Shera shrugs. "We sent him to tell the others."

"Great," Yuffie snarks. "You do that. Can I have him back now please?"

In answer to her prayers, the shoji door slides open and there is Vincent, looking harried.

"Yuffie," he says, crosses the room and kneels on the tatami next to his wife's futon.

"Hey Vince," she yawns at him, and she allows him to scoop herself and the baby into his arms, where she cuddles while still letting the infant feed.

They study her tiny face for a while before Vincent asks, "Which do you think?"

"Shizuko," Yuffie says decidedly. "A remembrance and a hope for the future," she adds with a grin.

Vincent shakes his head. "She wont be a quiet one," he says, examining his daughter's facial features minutely. "Too much like her mother."

"Asana then?"

He smiles. "Asana."

They kiss over Asana's head, then Yuffie leans her head against her husband's shoulder and drifts as her daughter nurses.

Even when their other friends pile into the room, even when Godo comes to meet the new third-in-line, she just leans and smiles, and knows that she can do this after all.

She has Vincent.