"You smell…strange."
It was Yazoo who met him when he parked his bike, standing utterly still in the darkness. Moonlight gleamed off of his silver hair and pale skin, his jade eyes softly glowing. He lifted one slim hand languidly and touched the blood on his little brother's face.
"There now," Yazoo sighed, cocking his head, hair pooling over his shoulder. With his free hand he pulled his smaller brother close against him in a warm embrace. "Didn't I warn you, then?"
"He's…he's different than before," Kadaj said, patient while Yazoo licked the blood from his lips, warm tongue washing him and ingesting Mother's cells from their brother's blood, briefly returning Kadaj's sudden, demanding kiss. The littlest one demanded their constant affection, constant proof of their love for him. When he was satisfied with Yazoo's response, he allowed his brother to lave away the last of the blood on his mouth, murmuring, "He's not like we remember…"
"Of course he's not," he was told, his taller brother pulling back to gaze down into his face. Of the three he was more physically a twin to Sephiroth—tall and lithe, his movements languid and graceful. It was Kadaj, the youngest of them, who had internalized their origin—the temper, the determination, the obsessive nature that bordered on madness, the jealous and zealous possessiveness. "We are different, too."
"He'll kill us," Kadaj said, and was saddened by the thought. Deep inside him, in the place where the other slept fitfully, he felt an answering sadness that, after all this time, Cloud was still determined to murder his own soul.
"He will try," Yazoo crooned, stroking his hair, petting him. Yazoo the comforter, the one who'd soothed them when the tests and blades and blood started, when the screaming wouldn't stop, when the madness came. How often had he and Loz woken up in Yazoo's lap while the somber man comforted the horrors away? "So we will kill him first."
Loz appeared then, drawn by the murmur of their voices and the proximity of Kadaj—each of them could sense the others, a constant and comforting presence that let them know they were never alone.
Immediately rankled to see the baby getting attention, the bull-like man pushed his way between Yazoo and Kadaj and snuffled at his little brother.
"Blood?" he rumbled. "But you haven't been fighting, Kadaj."
He licked away the smear of blood on the boy's cheek.
"Tainted," he spat, swallowing. He gripped Kadaj's chin and gave him an affectionate smile. "Does he have Mother, koishii?"
"I don't know," Kadaj answered, moving between his older brothers and past them. "I didn't ask."
Loz sobbed softly behind him and Yazoo crooned to him, hugging his broad shoulders.
"We'll kill him," Kadaj said, steeling himself. That uninvited guest inside him that had so recently flowered into being raged against the decision, an overpoweringly possessive fury burning Kadaj's soul—Cloud is mine, how dare you think to harm him!
"We must," Kadaj whispered in answer to that demand.
His brothers watched him with solemn understanding and nodded their silvery heads.
He held his hands out to them, their little Messiah, and they silently gripped his slender hands, accompanying him back to their camp.