A/N: Again, Revamped.

Characters: Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz

Pairing: Non-Romantic, Brother-fic

Genre: Angst

Setting: Some months before Advent Children

Music Listened To During Making Of This One-Shot: For the Reunion, Advent Children Soundtrack

"I'm still here…"

"GO AWAY!"

"You can't escape me…"

"LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"You're nothing but a replica, a host until I return… she'll never love you more than me…"

"NO! GO AWAY!"

"I'll always be here…"

"Wake up! Please wake up! It's just a nightmare!"

"NO!"

Emerald eyes wildly flew open to be reflected in identical green, before quickly scanning the surroundings. The same old rickety bed, the same old rickety room, the same old rickety shack. Nothing was out of the ordinary in the empty room, and the specter of moments before had vanished again. It was an unusually cold spring night, and an ominous icy wind was blowing into the room through the broken window.

"Kadaj, 'Nii-chan! Are you okay? It's me, your brother, Yazoo!"

Kadaj looked back up to see the taller, silver-haired teen. His normally cool face was frantic, eyes flickering with worry. His long flowing hair was not loose, cascading down his back like normal, but pulled back in a loose, low-set ponytail. This calmed Kadaj a bit; Yazoo had remembered how much waking up to see HIS likeness always terrified him.

"Yes… yes, I'm fine, Yazoo. I'm okay…"

Yazoo calmed somewhat, his pale skin shining in the moonlight. Neither was wearing clothes in except for a pair of pajama pants. Kadaj's breathing, which had been irregular before, now began to slow as he finally calmed down. Likewise, his pupils, which had retracted into paper-thin slits, were beginning to widen once more.

"…It was Him again, wasn't it?"

Both heads turned towards the door, where Loz had appeared and spoken. He too wore only pajama pants. His also-green eyes were wide and focused on Kadaj. The said teen only silently nodded and looked away, out the window where the moonlight shone in.

"It's the third time this week."

Both Yazoo and Loz looked at Kadaj, listening attentively. The youngest silver-haired teen sighed, wondering how exactly to explain it to them, the premonition that plagued him more so than usual. There was no way he could hide it longer, and besides, Yazoo and Loz were intellingent like him. They had to have had at least ageneral idea of what bothered Kadaj so.

"Remember what Hojo told us in the labs? About how we were clones?"

Yazoo felt a gasp escape his lips. Kadaj hated Hojo the most amongst them; why would he speak so easily of him now? … unless there really was a problem.

"I think… I think HE'S going to come back. I think he's going to try to make Mother love him more than us."

Kadaj pulled his knees to his chest, his head bowed so that his bangs would cover his eyes and the angry tears forming there. Saying this, the teenage swordsman seemed to have a jealous edge in his voice, one that usually occurred when speaking of Mother.

"I hate him! He's always there, laughing at me! He never leaves me alone! He keeps saying Mother loves him more, that Mother will-"

Yazoo cringed a little, and covered the younger teen's lips with his fingers. He never wanted to see his little brother unhappy. They may have been only three years old, created in a sterile white laboratory, but the bonds that had been created between them couldn't have been cut by the sharpest sword, not even Masamune.

Likewise, Loz crept nearer to his brother, sitting on the bed as well. Beneath those iron muscles, a heart still beat, one that was devoted to his brothers in a bond that could never be broken. After all, all they had were each other. Each other and Mother, whom they had searched the world over and still had yet to find.

"We'll find her first, before HE does. The geostigma will spread more, and then we'll have enough people to help us find her. There's no way HE'LL find her before we do."

Yazoo tried to reassure his younger brother, hugging the teen close to him. Loz tried to smile reassuringly, but in vain. They all wanted to see Mother, and the though tof losing her to the perfect being ever created...

"Yeah, when we find Mother, there no way she'll love Seph-" Kadaj cringed at the name, and Yazoo glared a little at the eldest brother "-er, I mean, HIM more than us."

Kadaj looked back up at his brothers, Mako-emerald eyes shining with unshed tears. The youngest of the three smiled a bit at them, appreciating that they were trying to help him calm down.

"…hmm."

That was the best he could scrounge up for a thank-you, but his brothers seemed to understand. The tension seemed to dissipate away into the cold moonlit night and Kadaj yawned. Yazoo sighed.

"Do you want us to sleep in here?"

Ever since they were small, even though they were three years old, they had a habit of sleeping in the same room whenever one of them had a nightmare, a sort of way to comfort and prevent more of the terrifying dreams. In this way, they protected each other and drew closer. With the whole world against them, damning them for unwillingly resembling the Planet's worst enemy, where else could they turn but to each other?

Before Kadaj could answer, Yazoo had already slipped between the sheets and curled up beside his younger brother. Likewise, Loz did the same, and the three used each other for warmth. They had slept this way for so long, in protective brotherly embrace, that it was almost second nature to them, a letting down of masks they so easily wore publicly during the day. To any other, any other, it might have seemed strange that three supposedly grown men were sharing one bed, but it was nothing perverse, nothing more than platonic. They were, in a sense, still small children, lost orphans seeking the mother they lost before they ever even knew her. They may have been clones, but they had souls too, didn't they?

The two eldest brothers fell into the arms of sleep the quickest, but it was the youngest one who remained awake. For some reason, he couldn't sleep; why should he? He knew that if he slept, those malevolent Mako orbs would be there again, taunting him, tormenting him as they always had for three long years, his entire synthetic life.

Perhaps Yazoo would be right. Maybe they could find Mother, rid the planet of the human vermin that tortured them so, and escape away to a Promised Land where they could live in peace, where they could go home. That was all Kadaj truly wanted, a place to go home to and loving arms to hold him, to embrace him as a beloved child. That was all he wanted, to see Mother smile at him, not the horrible voice of his nightmares, but him.

This thought placated him long enough to finally let the gentle caresses of Slumber overcome him, and he fell into a sea of soothing darkness. And he dreamed again. He dreamed of going home, to a paradise where he was finally accepted, no more laboratories, no more SOLDIERS, no more hateful Sephiroths to haunt him. Just Kadaj, his brothers, and Mother, home at last. A place where he could smile freely and, for once, smile from his genuinely acquired soul.

And yet, it always seemed to return, a plague to his dreams and to his mind, that jealous, hateful voice that would haunt him as long as he would live.

"I'll always be here…"

And, once again, the voice, which haunted Kadaj the rest of his synthetic life, smiled and laughed.

A/N: I liked this one better than the previous one, mostly because I love the SHM. I kinda tried to portray them as orphaned brothers who only had each other, and letdown their guard only around each other.It's kinda obvious that they're clones of Sephiroth, and apparently the closest that Hojo could come into making them identical to Sephiroth. Also, they're very jealous of Sephiroth, because they want Mother (Jenova). My guess is that Kadaj, in a way, houses Sephiroth inside his clone body as well as himself, hence the strange, schizophrenia effect. And sharing a body with someone you hate and rival against must truly suck.

Kadaj seemed a bit strange, but I'm supposing that through a lot of Advent Children, Jenova had a lot of influence over his mind. After all, why would one spend all their time hating Sephiroth, then turn around and boast to the President how much like Him one is? Personally, I think it's obvious that Jenova's clearly using Kadaj to bring out Sephiroth, but poor dude didn't figure it out until way too late.

As to their age, being three years old, again returning to the fact that they're synthetic replicas, the would have probably been created during the vie years between the Nibelheim incident and FF VII, and FF VII was two years before, so two, plus however old they were (I guessed one year) would make them three. Thus making them "abandoned" petulant children mentally who only wanted to find Mother. Make sense?

Well, at any rate, please review and constructively criticize.

Ja ne!

The Psychotic One