“Don’t cry, Loz.”

Yazoo’s voice is silken and knowing, and it makes Loz snarl and bang his fists down on the seat of his motorbike.

“I’m not crying!”

“You are.”

Loz’s face crumples into a defeated frown and he turns tear-filled eyes to their younger brother.

“He’s being mean,” he wavers.

Kadaj rolls his eyes and flips his phone out, punching numbers into the keypad. “Shut up, the both of you,” he says distantly. “What would Mother think?”

That silences them.

They wait, Loz throwing the occasional pitiful glance towards his younger brother. Yazoo ignores him and plays with a strand of his hair, his eyes dreamy and fixed somewhere beyond the horizon. Eventually, Kadaj finishes his conversation and slips his phone back into a pocket.

“I have a lead!” he says excitedly. Loz’s tears vanish instantly, and focus returns to Yazoo’s eyes. “We’re heading east.”

They ride with the setting sun at their back and do not stop until the shadows turn to full dark.

oOo

They stay in a motel that night, Yazoo curled up like a cat on the bed with Loz on the floor at his feet. The television chitters to itself in the corner, forgotten by them both.

“Where’s Kadaj?” Loz asks again. Yazoo’s eyes slip closed for the briefest of moments before he replies.

“He’s gone out. He said he’d be back soon.”

“Why did he go?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”

“Oh.”

On the TV a beautiful diva twirls and dances in time to a rhythm flashed out in symbols and glittering spotlights. The glimmer of her sequined dress reflects in Yazoo’s eyes and beneath his feet, Loz’s shoulders shiver.

“Don’t cry, Loz.”

oOo

There are never tears if Kadaj doesn’t want there to be.

The slender boy is quick-witted and exuberant, full of a fey energy that captures and digs in its claws and won’t let go. Loz adores the easy chatter and the attention the other boy lavishes upon him when he’s in a good mood. Yazoo is charmed, lost to the quick eyes and quicker hands. He sees beauty in the fall of a leaf and when Kadaj moves he is bewitched.

There are no tears when Kadaj wills there not to be. He is the youngest, but he is Mother’s darling and they worship him.

oOo

Getting Big Brother to stay in one place is hard. He just won’t stop to play with them.

Kadaj acts like it’s all a game, but beneath his cheerful patter they can hear the wire edge cut of anger. It makes Yazoo retreat into himself to the place where no-one else can reach him and where sometimes, if he listens hard enough, he can hear the voice of Mother.

Loz looks from one brother to the other, and then, when neither will look at him, his lower lip begins to quiver and he scrubs furiously at his eyes with the back of his hand.

Yazoo, who isn’t even looking at him, knows anyway.

“Cry-baby,” he says softly.

Loz can never understand how he always seems to know.

oOo

When Sephiroth happens, and Big Brother gets angry, and Mother screams and Kadaj turns and turns again and then vanishes up to Heaven, they both want it to end.

Loz isn’t crying, not really, and Yazoo can still lift his gun, just.

The end comes in a blaze of fire and Mako and Big Brother’s furious burning eyes.

It should have ended there in fire and glory and one last desperate bid to become One. But it doesn’t and Yazoo wakes up to pain and cold and the thrum of a motorbike beneath him. He shifts and something in him cracks horribly, so he stops. The bike beneath him slows and the rush of the road going by on either side becomes less, so that now he can see, even in the dimness, the individual lines on the tarmac.

He can’t breathe through his nose, which is good he thinks because the black gloves he thought he was wearing aren’t gloves at all, that’s his skin and this terrible cold numbness is starting to feel like an excuse for something so great his mind hasn’t quite got round to processing it yet.

He can feel the trail of tears running down his cheeks, but he can’t stop them. They prickle at his skin and when he chokes in a breathe his ribs hurt so bad he cries harder which just makes it worse.

The bike decelerates suddenly and they come to a halt. The one holding him leans over awkwardly and pulls him to one side, cradled in his arm. Yazoo looks up into his brother’s face, and it is his brother, even if the skin is burnt and the hair blackened, because he’s there in his eyes, except that he’s not crying. Not a single tear. And that just makes Yazoo cry harder.

He cries for all the times he never did, when Loz’s tears were enough for the both of them. The tears come now and he can’t stop them and there’s no point anyway because Kadaj isn’t there to roll his eyes or smile his smile and Mother is so silent it’s like she never even was.

It’s over and he cries for that too.

“Don’t cry, Yazoo,” Loz says softly and holds his younger brother close.