What A SOLDIER Has To Do

"No, and that's final"

"Oh come on Seph!" Zack half wined. "It's just for a few hours, I'll be back by morning"

"I said no" Sephiroth said coldly as he walked away. "Find someone else"

"But there IS no one else!" Zack explained as he half jogged to catch up to him. "Cloud's going with me on this mission and Tifa runs the bar at night, you're the only option I have"

Sephiroth sighed as he came to a stop, and looked his friend right in the eyes.

"PLEEEEEEEESSEEEEE?" Zack begged now giving him his infamous puppy dog eyes. "I won't ask you for another favor ever again!"

He doubted Zack would remember he told him that, and while normally he would've just ignored him and moved on, he knew that Zack wouldn't leave him alone if he did, puppy dog eyes or not.

"Fine" he said, giving in. "But just this once"

"Thanks Seph" Zack said with a smile as he patted his friend on the shoulder. "I promise she'll be on her best behavior, but try not to scare her or something"

"How old is she again?" he asked, wanting to know what he was getting himself into.

"Five, her name's Angel"

Angel was Zack's daughter. His girlfriend, Aerith, had conceived a little unexpectedly, and while Zack had freaked out at the fact that he was going to be a father at eighteen, they both agreed to raise the child. However, tragedy had struck them when Aerith died a few months ago, and he was left to raise her on his own.

Everyone who knew him could tell that he was still grieving over her, but he hid it for Angel's sake. And now here was the great Sephiroth, SOLDIER First Class, being forced to babysit her. He showed up at Zack's apartment around Six like he was told, and was let in after knocked.

"Oh good, you're here" Zack was actually kind of worried that he wasn't going to show up. "She's already eaten, no violent television, bed time's at eight, and she should be fine as long as you don't give her any sugar" he said as he slipped on his combat boots and strapped his Buster Sword to his back.

"Angel come say goodbye!" he called, and she came running to hug her father.

Sephiroth could easily tell that she had inherited Zack's dark spiky hair, but it wasn't anywhere near the porcupine style that he had, just a bit spiky at the ends.

"I gotta go now ok, but Seph here is gonna watch you 'til I get back" he said.

She made a pouty face when she heard he was leaving, then looked up at Sephiroth curiously. She blinked at him a few times, then tilted her head to the side to look at him from a different angle before finally speaking.

"You have hair like a girl"

Zack of course burst into a fit of chuckles trying to hold back his laughter, while Sephiroth just stood there not really sure what to say to that. He had just gotten verbally powned by a five year old...

"Be good for Seph ok Angel?" Zack said as he grabbed the rest of his equipment and opened the door.

"Ok daddy"

With a wave he was gone, and before Sephiroth could say or do anything Angel grabbed his sleeve and started pulling him towards her room.

"Come play with me!"

And Sephiroth's torture began.

Like any other little girl's room, it was very pink, and messy. Sephiroth had never seen such a combination before it almost made him cringe, but remembering that some of Zack's messy habits were much worse from what he heard from Angeal, and that calmed him down.

"Sit" she told him, obviously thinking that she was in charge in this situation.

Now Sephiroth was not the one that took orders from little girls, but he thought that if he played along with her it would make the time pass, and it would be bedtime before he knew it.

"You get to be Rapunzel and I get to be the prince that comes to your tower!"

Then again, maybe not.

"Shouldn't you be the princess and I'll be the prince?" he asked trying to find some possible way out of this.

"No" she told him. "You have long shiny hair like Rapunzel, so you have to be her" she explained. "But first I have to braid it!" she exclaimed cheerfully.

At this he sighed and buried his face into his hands. What in the world did he do to deserve this?

"This is ridiculous" Zack commented as he and Cloud hiked up a hill. "Monster problems are understandable, heck I can even deal with Mako Reactor inspections, but sending two First Class SOLDIERS just to take care of a minor chocabo problem?"

"Complaining won't make this job get done any faster" Cloud said getting rather annoyed with his friend.

"No, but it helps me feel better"

Cloud sighed, and was pretty much thinking the same thing that Sephiroth was:

Someone please kill me.

"There, now you look all pretty!" Angel exclaimed cheerfully when she was done.

Sephiroth twitched when she said that, and cringed when he looked in the mirror. "Pretty" was not supposed to be one of the adjectives that described him, he was supposed to be cold, feared, and respected, but no, tonight his dignity was crushed by a hyper five year old little girl who had French braided his hair, and put pink glittery bows in it. If word got out about this he would be doomed.

He sighed, knowing that he couldn't really say anything about it to a five year old, and glanced up at the clock. It had only been ten minutes; this was going to be a long night. So after he was forced play the role of Rapunzel trapped in her tower (which was her bed) he then had to sit through a thirty minute imaginary tea party with her play tea set and many of her dolls, and after that the worst came: She wanted to play house, and he had to be the mom.

Thankfully, after two hours of what was pure torture to him, her bed time finally came. She pouted for a moment when he kindly told her that play time was over, but changed into her nightgown and brushed her teeth without any complaints or problems.

"Will you read me a bed time story?" she asked after he tucked her in.

He didn't see any harm in it, so he nodded. However, in her terms of math 'A' story meant five. Again, he didn't see that much of a problem with it as long as she went to sleep afterwords, but since she interrupted his reading frequently with comments on the pictures, complaints that she couldn't see the pictures because he wasn't holding the book right, and the occasional sudden question that didn't have to do with the story what so ever it took much longer than expected.

After he finished the stack of books that she had grabbed from the mess on the floor her yawning became more frequent, and her eyelids began to close, he tucked her in once more, and she curled up tightly before going to sleep.

"Thank you for playing with me Seph" she said sleepily as he turned off the lights and left the room.

He smiled softly as he quietly closed her door, then collapsed on the living room couch absolutely exhausted. There wasn't a single doubt in his mind that she was Zack's daughter, but he wondered how he was able to deal with it all. As he laid there for a while, he also wondered what they were up to right now...

Zack really wished he had brought some snacks. Not because he was hungry, but because any kind of snack would go well with the moment. The two of them had thought this mission would be rather easy. All they had to do was round up a few Chocobos that had recently escaped a local Chocabo farm. They both knew that they were still wild and aggressive, but they had brought plenty of Gysahl Greens along.

Of course, things didn't go well as planned. Finding the missing chocobos wasn't very hard, but when Cloud approached them with a handful of Gysahl Greens he started a chocobo stampede for them, and was now basically running for his life. Zack didn't really know what to do in this kind of situation, so he just stood back quietly and watched it all wishing that he had a bowl of popcorn or something to do with it.

Thankfully while Cloud was running away from them all he got the idea that he could lead them back to the chocobo farm while doing so, and yelled at Zack to get his butt over there and help him. Naturally the two of them were tired after all that running, but they got the mission done, so they flew back to Midgar in a ShinRa helicopter, and walked home from the ShinRa building.

"Seph?" he whispered when he walked in, knowing that Angel was asleep.

It was roughly past midnight, so he expected Sephiroth to be asleep on the couch, but he wasn't even in the living room.

"Seph?" he said again, walking around the apartment trying to find him.

The bathroom door was open, and the light was on, so he poked his head in. He blinked a few times when he saw him trying to take the pink bows out of his braided hair, then started chuckling trying to hold back his laughter. Sephiroth just glared at him.

"Well I see you've had quite a night" he commented.

"I don't want to hear another word about this ever again, Zackary" he said coldly.

"Yeah yeah, do you want some help or not?"

His only response was an annoyed grunt, but he took that as a yes so he gently grabbed a hold of his braid to see what he could do.

"Man she sure made this difficult for you"

Angel had always been fond of double and even triple knotting things, so when Sephiroth had pulled on the ends of the ribbons he just ended up making them tighter. However Zack had experience of untying his daughter's knots, so he got them out easily. The rubber band holding his hair at the end was another story, for it was insanely tight to begin with, and Sephiroth had just created one big tangle trying to yank it out.

"I'm gonna have to get the scissors..." he said softly, making his friend nervous.

"Zack if you come anywhere near my hair with those..." he warned.

"Alright, here" Zack said as he handed them to him, knowing that he was over protective of his long sliver hair.

So Sephiroth cut the rubber band in two, then brushed out his tangles.

"Where did she learn how to braid hair anyway?" he wondered out loud.

"Aerith" Zack answered. "She practices on her dolls"

He nodded, and frowned as he noticed his hair was now very wavy from being braided for a while.

"Remember Zack, no more favors" he said as he headed for the door.

"Uh huh"

The smirk on Zack's face made him uneasy, but he left, not knowing that Zack had taken a picture of his braided hair on his phone for future blackmailing purposes when he wasn't looking.

Author's Notes

Alright, well this one was a little AU as you can tell, and in case it wasn't obvious and/or you're confused this is what I changed: Zack's still alive and with ShinRa, Sephiroth's still sane and with ShinRa, Cloud is in SOLDIER, and Aerith is dead (I couldn't come up with a decent explanation for her death, but obviously Sephiroth didn't kill her).

I was also originally going to have Cloud babysit Angel, but then I came up with the whole hair braiding thing and just had to mess with good old Sephy. I also have a five year old sister, so a lot of this was based on personal experience. If you liked my little OC Angel, she's also in Change of Fate and my future fic A SOLDIER'S Orders.