Loz was roused from his own catatonic state by Yazoo's piercing cry of distress. The sound penetrated his pain-dulled senses and his waning consciousness. It stirred the strong, fundamental instinct in him to protect his family and despite his own injuries he was stirred into action.
Squinting against the corrosive rain that curdled his skin, he searched for Yazoo. His eyesight was blurred and each time he tried to focus on an image his vision tunnelled, swam and spun. He rolled on his side, battling against his broken body to go to his brother's aid. Staggering to his feet he held himself up by grasping a twist of steel jutting from a broken beam of reinforced-concrete rubble, his free hand clutched to his bleeding stomach.
"Yazoo?" he called into the rank, misty rain, panting against his bruised ribs. He hobbled amongst the ruins of the old ShinRa building, keeping away from the open ground which offered no handholds to steady himself or cover from the thunderous roar of the airship engines overhead. Loz searched for his missing brother though he could barely walk, hardly see and unsure of whether he had imagined Yazoo's bleak cry.
By some miracle he found Yazoo. His brother lay spread-eagled where he'd fallen, bright red blood wrongly bringing colour his long silver hair. Where Yazoo's clothes did not protect him, the rain was scalding his pale skin an angry red. Tendrils of black smoke climbed out and up from under his clothes while a dark haze boiled around his right forearm, glowing spheres of materia fleeing Yazoo's dieing form.
"Brother!"
Loz didn't have a plan. He didn't have Sephiroth's cunning ambition or intellegence, he had Sephiroth's physical strength. It was Kadaj who gave orders, turned Mother's ideas into plans, plotted, schemed and led the way. Yazoo was the smart one, he could forsee problems, predict trouble and offer foolproof methods towards the search for their Mother. Loz felt he was just there to do as he was instructed, but now no-on was left to guide him. He had been left in the rain with his brother dieing at his feet.
"Yazoo?" he gripped one of his smaller brother's slender shoulders and shook him, trying to wake him and bring some life back into his unresponsive body. "Brother! Wake up! Don't leave me on my own, I don't know what to do on my own." He had been gritting his teeth against his tears but now he surrendered to the prickling in his eyes and the broken sobs waiting in his throat. He knelt over Yazoo, gently holding his jaw as if it might help him hear the desperation in his brother's tone. "Yazoo, please wake up, I don't want you to leave me alone!"
There was nothing. Not a murmur, flutter of an eyelash or a twitch of his lips. Loz placed a thumb on Yazoo's unconscious eyelid with all the tender gentleness he could muster to open his brother's eye. Beneath there should have been an electric blue and acid green eye with a piercingly thin pupil gleaming bright from the fast and active mind behind them, but instead Yazoo's eye was dull, still and dilated. His pupil was a blank, swollen oval which had swallowed up almost every last speck of colour. Yazoo's eyes looked dead.
Loz crumbled, dropping his forehead to Yazoo's unmoving chest and bawling uncontrollably into the wet leather. There was nothing left he could do but let the rain fall and wait.
A sudden chinking sound gained Loz's attention. He rose to see his own skin belching black streamers of smoke. He watched in horror as bright globes of materia bubbled out of his forearms and fell away, chiming as they bounced on the hard, wet ground. As he looked at the accumulated scattering of shimmering, multicoloured spheres lying around him, he had an idea.
Frantically he rummaged through the pale green magic orbs, searching for Yazoo's Restore materia. If he could find Yazoo's Magic Plus amongst the purples and the MP Turbo amid the blues, they would help too.
Loz was a physical fighter and made a pitiful mage, he had low magic, little MP and even less experience, but he had to try. There was a chance that Yazoo wasn't quite dead yet.
Holding the three spheres in one hand, he readied himself for equipping them. He shook his left arm out and flexed his muscles, trying to up the blood flow like a junkie preparing for a fix. It was going to be a struggle to force a body that had ejected materia only a few moments ago to accept these three new spheres in one go, he was already quivering with exhaustion and teetering on the brink of passing into unconsciousness.
At first the materia began to sink in with regular ease, but all too soon Loz's efforts met with resistance. The harder he pushed, the harder his body repelled the materia. It was like trying to force the wrong poles of two very strong magnets together, only it wrenched painfully at his flesh. Gritting his teeth, bracing against the ground and heaving with all his remaining strength, he pushed them home but kept his hand clamped firmly over the throbbing area. He had to make this quick, they wouldn't stay in long.
He only succeeded in casting two rounds of Cure before he could no-longer hold them in deep enough. Two cascades of glittering, resonating, restorative magic was all he could muster. It was pitiful, but it would have to be enough.
The poisonous torrent of rain was still falling thick and fast, sapping Loz's precious little remaining strength. The tears and holes in his leather clothes admitted so much burning water that he may as well have been wearing a cotton shirt. He had to find shelter.
He gathered up his brother, struggling under the meagre weight of Yazoo's modest frame. His boots scattered the materia littering the ground as he trudged towards a gaping crevice in the rubble of the ruined building. Deeper and deeper he went, carefully picking his way through the darkness that concealed treacherously sharp twists of steel, broken glass and uneven ground as he sought out a dry, secluded den in which he could provide a safe refuge away from the outside world from himself and his brother.
Loz pressed on until he found a small chamber of concrete which would suffice. He carefully unzipped Yazoo's long leather coat and disrobed him first, flinging the searing, sodden clothes in a heap well away from them both. He tenderly wrung out as much water from Yazoo's trailing, blood-stained silver hair as he dare, caringly mindful of avoiding uncomfortable sharp tugs at his roots. With Yazoo relieved of the burning water, Loz tore off his own clothes to rid himself of the incessant stinging they brought.
He shivered in the dark, still damp and longing to be dry again. His adrenaline rush was subsiding now, and with its waning came the true pain of his injuries. Sniffing back tears, Loz eased himself into a vaguely comfortable position among the chunks of concrete and plaster, pulling Yazoo's limp body on top of himself to keep him up off the cold, hard floor. As Loz waited for sleep to claim him, he affectionately groomed Yazoo's tragically ruined locks, working out the knots and spreading it out to dry.
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