The Lost Child

Description: Her mother died to free her, and her sister sacrificed herself to save the world. His mother only wants revenge, and his brother haunts his mind and his soul. The daughter of Ifalna and the son of Jenova walk different paths, but soon their roads will intersect and there the future of the Planet will be determined. AU, SHM/OCs, non-romance.

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children belongs to Square-Enix. I'm just borrowing it for a while.

A/N: Hello! I promised this fic ages ago, and I'm finally doing it. However, the focus of it has changed over the months, and it is no longer primarily a romance, if at all. It has also taken on a much darker tone, and I suspect that I will be upping the rating to M rather soon due to the torture that Jenova will be inflicting upon Kadaj. I do hope that doesn't scare anyone away, but I really think I need to do it this way to do justice to his character.

Please note before you read: I am fully aware that the SHM are remnants of Sephiroth, that they were born fully-formed from the Lifestream two years prior to the movie, and that they are not even complete beings, which is what allows Kadaj to taint the water at the Northern Crater. I've read all the notes and even the three short stories that were written to compliment the movie. (Quick quiz: How did Denzel's parents die? Cookies if you get it right.) I have made a conscious decision to discard that. Hence, the "AU" note up there. Please do not send me any angry messages telling me that I messed it up. I did it on purpose. And no, they are not Sephiroth clones in my story. You'll find out exactly what they are eventually.

1. Name

18 years ago

A serpent-tongue of lightning bolted across the night sky, briefly illuminating the empty town below. Rain pounded against the stone streets and rolled from the rooftops to form puddles on the ground. Alone in the dark, a young woman pulled her cloak closer to herself and shrank back against the building she stood near. Her contact was late. Not too surprising considering the terrible weather, but she still worried. So much was at stake, and so much could have gone wrong.

Another bolt of electricity dashed through the air, followed closely by a clap of thunder that seemed to shake the ground under her feet. The storm was getting worse. She shivered and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Blinking the rain from her eyes, she painstakingly scanned the border of the town for any sign of life. A figure. Movement. Anything.

The darkness remained unchanged.

A hand touched her shoulder.

With a small shout of surprise, she spun around and met a second set of eyes. They glowed a faint green in the dark. The newcomer said nothing, and his expression betrayed no emotion or thought. He simply pushed a bundle into the woman's arms, turned, and began to walk away.

Stunned, she looked down at the delivery for a moment before her mind reawakened. "Wait!" she called out, lifting one hand after him. When he stopped, she continued, "There were supposed to be two. Where is the other one?"

The stranger turned to her then, and she gasped as another burst of light from the sky allowed her to see him fully. His clothes on the left side of his body were soaked in blood.

"There was a complication," he answered her question. "I could only bring the one."

Quickly, she shook away the horror at the sight of his wounds and concentrated on her mission. "I can't just leave the other one behind!" she insisted. "Where is she? What happened?" When he refused to answer, she cried, "You can't expect me to abandon her!"

Mako eyes narrowed, and her breath caught in a suddenly tight throat. In a low voice, he replied, "The older girl is lost to you. You cannot save her. Do not endanger the life of the one you can save by dallying here."

His words crashed into her mind. The blood on his shirt and pants suddenly leapt out at her again. A complication. That meant danger. They could already be on their way, and still she stood here.

She turned on her heel and fled through the rain, clutching the bundle tightly against her chest. Her heart ached for the lost child, but she knew there was nothing she could do anymore. This child, however, she would save. This child would live free. Those monsters would not touch her. She swore it as she ran, swore it to the child's mother and sister whose fates would now forever remain a mystery.

On the other side of town, a car waited with engine running. The young woman yanked the back door open and slid inside. "Go," she said.

The man in the front seat turned to look at her in confusion. "Where's the other one? Wasn't there supposed to be a six-year-old?"

"Something happened," she replied, trying to wipe away rain and tears with a wet sleeve. "I don't know what. He couldn't bring the older girl, just this one. Now, drive!"

With a short nod, the man turned back to the road and complied. As the car lurched forward, the woman instinctively reached out to steady the basket that lay in the back seat with her. Inside slept her own child, a little girl of barely one year.

They drove in silence, the rain beating down mercilessly on the small vehicle. The pain of losing the older girl still tore at the woman's heart, but eventually, it began to ebb away and be replaced by the joy of holding a newborn in her arms. Carefully, she pulled away the fabric so she could gaze at the sleeping child's face.

"What?" the man asked when he heard his wife gasp slightly.

"She's so fair. Her hair is such a light brown." She looked briefly at her daughter's darker complexion and black curls. "No one will ever believe she's ours."

"She isn't ours," her husband replied easily. "We found her abandoned on the streets, and your kind soul refused to leave her."

"Abandoned on the streets?" she echoed. "Won't that seem suspicious? Surely, they'll be looking for any orphaned child."

"From the streets of Junon?" he asked with a meaningful look into the rearview mirror. Her fears eased immediately. The war had filled the port towns with broken families and homeless children. No one would look twice at a young couple who carried a child that was clearly not theirs.

The man smiled at her in the mirror when he noticed the worry leave her face. "What's her name?" he asked, returning his eyes to the road.

"I don't know."

"Well, it's probably better that way. She would need a new name anyway. What should we call her?"

The woman looked down at the little girl in her arms and lightly ran a finger along the baby's cheek. She couldn't have been more than four months old. So completely helpless and fragile and yet so powerful and beautiful in her potential.

"Amaylia."

"Amaylia," he repeated, trying the name out. "I like it. Won't Tatyana be surprised when she wakes up to find she has a little sister?"

"Yes," she answered absently, her mind still focused on the baby. Gently she leaned down and whispered to the sleeping child, "Don't be afraid, Amaylia. We'll protect you. They'll never find you as long as we live. I promise."

xXx

Two years ago.

Water. There was water in his mouth and in his throat. In his lungs. He couldn't breathe. He needed to breathe, but he couldn't. The water was everywhere.

"Come on, spit it out."

A sharp smack hit him on his back, and he started to cough. The water poured from his mouth and splashed onto the floor. He coughed harder, forcing up the liquid from his lungs and expelling it violently out of his body.

"There you go. Get it all out now."

More smacks on his back, softer this time, and a bit of rubbing. He continued to cough for several minutes after the last of the water had left. The air he drew in stung his lungs, but he gulped it down greedily anyway. The adrenaline from his panic was still coursing up and down his limbs, making him shake slightly.

"There. You're fine now, right?"

Slowly, he opened his eyes and stared at his hands as they pressed against the tiled floor, supporting the weight of his upper body. The liquid that he had spit out had splattered out in front of him. It was green. He suddenly felt extremely nauseous.

He sat back on his heels and turned his head to the person next to him, the one who had been talking to him and smacking him to help clear his lungs. Bright green eyes watched him carefully from a broad face, framed by long silver hair. The muscular man was wearing a simple white bodysuit that looked like it was made of rubber or some similar material. After a moment of staring, he glanced down at himself and noticed he was wearing the same suit and also had long silver hair. He wondered if his eyes were also that same strange shade of green.

"So, what's your name?" the other man asked.

He opened his mouth and found that he did indeed have a voice. "N-name?"

"Yeah. My name is Loz. What's yours?"

"I … I don't know."

"Let him be, Loz," a second voice ordered from behind him. He turned to see yet another man in a bodysuit with silver hair and green eyes. This man was thinner, wispy even, and he looked bored. Still addressing the bigger man, he continued, "It took you hours to remember your name. Let him get used to being alive first." His calm gaze changed its focus to him. "Your memories will come back eventually. Some of them at least. I'm Yazoo. Loz and I just rescued you from that tube there." He pointed lazily to a broken glass tube next to two others, also broken.

An image flooded into his head. Floating inside the tube. Gazing through green liquid at a woman in a white coat as she wrote notes on a clipboard.

He shook his head violently. The memory made him feel sick. His subconscious self did not want to remember that experience.

"You okay?" Loz asked, concerned by the anxiety in his face.

"Yeah." He lifted his head and looked around the room. A laboratory. It didn't surprise him at all. "What happened?"

Yazoo shrugged. "We don't know yet. My tube broke first. On its own. There's no one here, and some of the rooms don't have power, so I think some sort of disaster happened which caused my tube to break. After I recovered enough, I broke Loz's, and then we both broke yours."

"I see." More images were seeping into his head, and he didn't want them there. All of them involved men and women in white coats, and many of them involved pain. Words drifted to him in clumps. Scientific babbling. Panicked whispering. And …

"Kadaj."

"What?" Loz asked.

"My name. It's Kadaj."

Loz's face broke out into a wide grin. "Hey, that's great! You remember it already."

"Yeah." Kadaj managed a small smile for Loz. It didn't feel like that much of a victory to him. Slowly, he got to his feet and swayed for a moment before his balance kicked in. Once he was sure he wasn't going to topple over, he looked to Yazoo who had walked over to stand in front of him. "What now?"

Yazoo shrugged. "Who knows?"

Kadaj hung his head. That wasn't the answer he had wanted. If being alive meant being adrift, having no purpose, no knowledge, no meaning …

"Then why did you save me?" he asked bitterly.

A small smile turned up the corners of Yazoo's mouth. It fit him perfectly, just as Loz's wide grin fit him. "Because," he answered simply, "you're our brother."

"Yeah," Loz added, draping an arm across Kadaj's thin shoulders and mussing up his hair with the other hand. "We'll be all right, as long as we stay together."

Together. Kadaj let the word roll around in his head. Being adrift might be frightening, but at least he wouldn't be alone. None of them knew where they were or even who they were, but they would find out. And when they had, they would make their own purpose. Together. As brothers.

Kadaj lifted his head and smiled at them. "Okay then. Let's go."