Chapter Text
It started with Cloud.
Well, technically, Sephiroth was the first he took in, but he couldn’t not be the caretaker of Lucrecia’s son, not after rescuing him from Hojo’s clutches and the labs—the boy was already too physically strong to be left in the care of anyone with less than Vincent’s enhancements, and the likelihood of his violent upbringing causing the child to unintentionally harm someone was high. Leaving Sephiroth in someone else’s hands was out of the question, especially so when, sans Hojo, who didn’t have a familial bone in his body, Vincent was the closest thing Sephiroth had to real family.
And, technically, Genesis was the second kid Vincent Valentine legally adopted, but how could he leave a child kicking his legs in the courthouse lobby while his parents screamed at ShinRa lawyers just a few doors down the hall, demanding the company either take their ward back or properly compensate them for looking after a ‘freak’? He couldn’t, especially not after Sephiroth’s eyes lit up in wonder as Genesis easily broke through the other boy’s social ineptitude in the way only a chatty seven(and-three-quarters)-year-old could manage. Vincent was already at the courthouse and Veld was already pulling strings left and right to get Sephiroth into his custody; tugging on a couple more wouldn’t be a problem, so not adopting Genesis hadn’t been an option.
Angeal came next and, unlike with Sephiroth and Genesis, Angeal didn’t technically count as one of his kids because, despite being Angeal Hewley’s emergency contact and regular, full-time babysitter, Gillen Hewley was still alive, kicking and doting on her baby boy, so Vincent Valentine hadn’t needed to step in and become his primary caretaker. After learning that Genesis would be relocated to Nibleheim, Gillen packed her things and her son and moved to the other side of the planet to be near him. She was too personally invested in Genesis’s well-being to not be involved in his upbringing, and Vincent respected that. He offered to watch Angeal during the day while his mother was working, which made watching Angeal more of a part-time gig and not a full commitment.
Two years later, Vincent got a phone call from Veld, which led to a short family road trip to Midgar, a subsequent ‘scavenger hunt’ gathering intel from different informants to ensure maximum secrecy, and ending their journey in a run-down motel outside of Sector Seven that was completely off ShinRa’s radar. That’s where Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal were first introduced to Rosso, Weiss and Nero, while Veld got Vincent acquainted with a very large stack of documents and the idea of looking after three more children. There was no way in hell he could leave Nero to someone else, not when the boy’s powers stemmed from his own; Nero and Weiss were a package deal, so he couldn’t leave one without the other, and a quick glance at her birth certificate revealed Rosso was related to Genesis in a way Vincent didn’t even want to think about, meaning she, legally, was already his charge. This, if one was keeping count (which Vincent totally wasn’t), technically had the ex-Turk up to child number six, but, again, he didn’t have a choice and the matter was completely out of his control.
After that came Aerith. Technically speaking, Aerith wasn’t even his kid. She was the last Cetra on the run from the ShinRa labs; moving her to Vincent’s place was simply the easiest, most practical solution to keeping her out of the hands the science department without exhausting valuable Turk resources watching over her in Midgar. He hadn’t chosen to watch her; it was a necessity.
By the time Sephiroth finds a four-year-old Cloud, bruised and dirty, sleeping right outside the mansion’s gates, Vincent is so used to taking in small and battered children that he doesn’t stop to consider that the kid might already have a home.
Cloud’s a little different from the others in Vincent’s care, in that he’s perfectly normal. He immediately imprints on Sephiroth and follows him around like a baby chocobo, and Sephiroth, despite their six-year-age gap, seems equally fascinated in the younger boy. Which is rare. Sephiroth doesn’t take to strangers, not without ample time warming up; usually, he spend at least an hour carefully observing people before he’s comfortable interacting with them at all (Genesis is the sole exception, but it’s impossible not to engage Genesis when he’s chatting your ear off) but, with Cloud, something just clicks, and the two of them become instantly inseparable.
Vincent Valentine is a trained Turk. He is immune to most attempts at manipulation, but, dammit, Cloud is adorable. Granted, all the kids are precious in their own unorthodox ways, but Cloud is just straight-up, dictionary-definition cute. He’s small, with fluffy blonde hair and enough baby fat to make his face constantly pouty. His big blue eyes seem to take up a disproportionate amount of his face, but it works. It works a little too well and Vincent can’t find it in himself to deny the boy a place in his home.
Watching a boy for ten hours every weekday isn’t the same as adopting a child, nor is housing a girl to protect her, and Vincent hadn’t really had a choice with either Sephiroth or Genesis, and certainly not in the three-child Rosso-Weiss-NEro compounded instance, so none of them counted, leaving Cloud as the first kid he legally adopted out of the goodness in his heart.
Less than twenty-four-hours later, he’s already contacted Veld, and Veld’s in the process of contacting his lawyer to finalize the process when there’s a loud knock at the door. One loud knock turns into two, and two turn into many more.
Even with his enhanced hearing, it takes Vincent a moment to identify the door as the source of the noise; running a household with seven-going-on-eight children under the age of twelve is loud enough without putting their various quirks into consideration. He’s preparing dinner in the kitchen with Angeal, a good half-a-manor away from the front entrance, so it’s natural that the sound slips past him. Officially, the ShinRa manor in Nibleheim is unoccupied so there shouldn’t be anyone knocking at the door in the first place. It’s only when the knocking persists that he realizes that there’s somebody at the door. At first, Vincent ignores it, because that’s his default response to dealing with things he isn’t prepared to handle, and the lasagna will be ready any minute, and Angeal’s still a little too short to reach into the oven without burning himself.
When the knocking starts getting louder and more frantic, he shouts for Genesis to do something about it. Genesis and Angeal are the only two old enough, socially capable enough, and discrete enough to be trusted interacting with strangers unsupervised, and Angeal’s currently elbows-deep in the kitchen sink. The oven beeps. Without bothering with mitts, Vincent grabs the deep dish and sets it on a trivet to cool. He listens for scampering feet and mentally maps Genesis’s footsteps as he scurries around the old house.
Down the stairs….
Past the living room…
Into the foyer…
Past the living room again…
Down the hall…
Finally, the footsteps draw nearer until Genesis is standing in the doorway and there’s a near-hysterical blonde woman in Vincent’s kitchen asking if he’s seen a child that, by her description, sounds remarkably like the one currently coloring with Aerith under Sephiroth’s watchful eye.
The child that Vincent also, coincidentally enough, legally obtained guardianship over.
That could pose… problematic.