Jenova's Daughter

CHAPTER FIVE: Kadaj

ReiMei awoke flying through the air, landing hard on the floor, but rolling instantly to her feet, hissing like an angry animal. She saw eyeshine near the bed where she and Loz had been sleeping. Loz was awake too, and his shouts resounded out into the darkness.

“What’s going on?” He demanded. “ReiMei?”

“Shut up, Loz.” Kadaj’s voice ordered. ReiMei saw him turn toward her. He came closer and she smelled the scent of predator. She hissed again, dropping into a low fighting stance.

“Leave her alone!” Loz shouted, rising from the bed and going after his older brother.

“Stay out of this, Loz.” Kadaj said, emphasizing his command with an unexpected round-house kick that sent Loz sprawling back on to the bed. The Eldest brother turned back to his little sister.

“It’s my turn now.” He said menacingly.

Instantly understanding, and with that neon blue flash bursting across her vision and snapping within her mind, ReiMei’s posture became submissive, and she bowed her head. Kadaj wound her long hair in his fist and yanked her off of her feet, dragging her toward the door.

“Don’t do that!” Loz cried out, tears already streaming down his face.

“I said shut the fuck up!” Kadaj screamed, just as Yazoo appeared in the doorway, blocking his elder brother’s way.

“Get out of the way, Yazoo.” Kadaj growled. “This is none of your business.”

Yazoo’s eyes sought ReiMei’s. She could see tears in his gaze and felt sorry for him. She wished she could take the time to make him understand, but she couldn’t. He would have to find it on his own. She dared only to give him an order.

“Do it, Yazoo.”

Her sibling’s eyes widened.

“But…” Yazoo began, hating to see his beautiful sister with her little hands wrapped around Kadaj’s wrists, trying to ease a bit of the pain the eldest was causing her.

“Go to Loz!” ReiMei cried. “Make him understand!”

Yazoo gave his oldest brother a hard stare. There was a look in Kadaj’s eyes that warned him it would go worse for ReiMei if he didn’t obey. The youngest brother shoved past Kadaj, going to Loz, who sat sobbing on the bed. ReiMei heard him telling her most recent lover that she would be okay before Kadaj jerked her off balance again, and pulled her from the room.

He didn’t give her the chance to regain her footing, hauling her bodily through the common room to his bedroom. Once there, he flung his petite sister against the wall, pausing only to slam and lock his door. As Kadaj turned to stalk ReiMei once more, she cringed, but spoke out.

“Why are you so angry?” She questioned.

“Because you are a betraying cunt!” He yelled at her, cocking his arm back and hitting her in the face as hard as he could, driving her to the floor.

“Your tech didn’t tell you everything.” Kadaj continued, using her hair as a handle again, and tossing her easily to his bed. “I found Hojo’s notes. I know about The Bonding. Yazoo told me you had begun the process.”

Her commander, her brother, sat on her, pinning her to the bed.

“How dare you?!” He screamed, hitting her again, snapping her head to one side.

“But that is The Way!” ReiMei cried out as blood ran from her mouth. She didn’t know what else to say. “It is what I am meant to do! I am to love you, and to please you, no matter what you ask of me.”

“I’m not going to ask.” Kadaj growled, lowering his voice.

He yanked one of her arms to the head of his bed, ratcheting the handcuff he had prepared around her slender wrist so tight it ground against her bones.

“And I’m not going to love you.” He locked her other wrist in the restraint on the other side.

“Why?” ReiMei asked, her voice softer and her eyes eerily innocent.

Kadaj took his weight off of her and paused.

“Because the promise of The Bonding is a lie.” He told her.

That froze ReiMei in horror. What had her maker’s notes told Kadaj? Why, when she knew so much emerging from the birth pod, did she not know the secret that enraged her brother so?

“That can’t be true.” She protested.

Kadaj stood at the end of the bed, and grabbing one of her ankles, pulled with such force, she thought her arms would come out of their sockets. He clasped one more ring of cold steel around her ankle, trapping her in this spread position. She waited for him to clamp her other ankle, but he left it loose. He shed his leather pants, throwing them aside, and then going to the bed. Showing no mercy, he sat on ReiMei again, fixing her with a hard glare, daring her to complain. She locked her teeth and let none of her pain show in her face or escape her lips. Even her feline eyes remained dry, though the emerald irises were much darker now.

Kadaj struck her again, marking the same spot over and over.

“It’s true, ReiMei,” Kadaj said, his low tone more threatening than his screams. “Did you know that all of the Assassins died?”

The shock of what he told her only registered in her eyes, the Mako light in them beginning to swirl.

“I didn’t think so.”

Reaching beneath the pillow where her head rested, Kadaj produced a sheathed Tanto blade.

“Assassins Bond with their brothers and then one way or another, they die.” Kadaj said, slipping the blade silently from the wooden sheath. “Hojo tried to keep it from happening with you, but even he doesn’t think you’ll survive.”

Kadaj held the knife against his captive sister’s sharp-angled cheekbone. He pressed, and the expertly honed blade cut a line of blood that matched the bone underneath. ReiMei didn’t flinch or cry out, and Kadaj was disturbed by the calm look on her face. Her eyes held his as if she trusted him, even in his rage. Was she trying to trick him somehow?

“Do you know what their deaths did to all those Soldiers?” Kadaj shouted, her expression goading his wrath. “You fucking bitches make us love you more than anything in the world! It was President ShinRa’s way of repaying us for what we suffered in the pods.

“Some fucking present.” Kadaj spat. “When you fucking cunts left the Soldiers, they all self-destructed!”

With that, Kadaj drove the Tanto into the pillow beside her head, cutting off a lock of her hair. He was shaking as he withdrew the blade.

“It’s a good thing Hojo didn’t make too many of you, or ShinRa’s Soldier army would have been destroyed.” Kadaj told her.

He scooted back a little, relieving the pressure on her chest.

“The only one who escaped was Cloud Strife.” Kadaj continued, naming his greatest enemy. Dragging the tip of the blade in a diagonal from her shoulder to the center of her chest, he cut a line across her left breast.

“He’s our big brother, you know.” Kadaj said. “He had the Jenova cells and the Sephiroth genes. He was complete!”

Her Eldest brother cut her again, leaving a trail of blood across her other breast. The two wounds made a vee on her chest.

“One of the Soldiers in his group failed to survive the birth.” Kadaj spun the story. “His Assassin suicided after she realized she couldn’t meet the conditions of The Bonding. He wouldn’t allow any more Mako infusions, and managed to walk away with his surviving brother. Zach died not long after. Though it seems Cloud escaped, Sephiroth fixed him. He put his sweet blade into that Cetra woman that Cloud loved like he was fucking her through the heart. Our father was a great man, and a great Soldier. I want to be just…Like…HIM!”

With the last two words, he slashed ReiMei from hip bone to pubic hair on each side, drawing another vee on her body in her blood. Why didn’t she cry out? Kadaj wondered. He was hurting her, wasn’t he? Her complacence made him angrier still, and he flung the Tanto without looking where it would land. It crashed through his mirror and stuck in the wall behind it. He did not know that the thoughts in ReiMei’s head were not of herself, but of him. How she wished he would let her draw him into her arms to comfort the wretchedness she could hear in his voice. She had already made her promises to Yazoo and to Loz, and there wasn’t a power in this world that could make her break them.

She still had a promise for Kadaj, if only he’d let her give it to him. She submitted to his tantrum now, ruled by the Ritual Hojo had programmed in her, but as soon as she got the chance, she would find a way to soothe Kadaj’s distress. She was an Assassin! She was the strongest woman alive, and she meant to survive despite of what her maker thought.

Kadaj moved up again, sitting in the blood that had pooled on her stomach. He kissed her without warning, biting her cruelly on her split and swollen lower lip before forcing his tongue into her mouth. Her blood was metallic, and it excited him, but when he tasted the true sweetness of her mouth, he almost faltered. Almost. He snaked his hand into her long locks and pulled her head back, stretching her out a little farther.

ReiMei’s dark cat’s eyes were calm and accepting. Those enchanting eyes that had hypnotized him from the moment she had stepped from the birthing chamber. Despite all of his rage for the betrayal that he knew would eventually come, he already loved her. He wanted her so badly that his heart hurt as much as the torment he inflicted upon her. Had the fucked-up Hojo wiring in her head really programmed her to please him, even when he punished her like this? Kadaj couldn’t understand an unconditional love like that. It confused him, warring with his own Hojo-spun conditioning, and what he had learned in the files containing that mad bastard’s notes.

The tendons on the side of her neck stood out, and he viciously bit down on them, biting so hard he drew more blood. He sat up, spitting ReiMei’s blood into her face, and staring into her Mako lit eyes.

“Say something.”

“I will never betray you.” ReiMei said softly. “Not even with my death. I can’t make you love me, but The Bonding has already begun between us. Neither you nor I can resist it. Before this night is done, The Bonding will be complete. I will love you, and you will love me.”

Kadaj wrapped his hands around her swan-like neck, his face one of frustration and pure fury. He began to slowly strangle her.

“You don’t understand!” He cried out. “I already do!”

A sweet smile was on her swollen lips, completely out of place on her bloodied face. That smile broke his heart, but her calm emerald eyes swiftly put the pieces back together, promising to keep it safe and whole. It was too much for Kadaj. He needed her so much! He moved back, positioning himself between her legs, lifting her ass, and throwing her one free leg over his shoulder. This put too much strain on the places where the handcuffs were already biting into her skin. Blood began to trickle down her arms.

Kadaj plunged into ReiMei, ripping her inner labia as he entered her. She had more than enough strength to keep her head up, even thought her body was in the air. Her eyes were hooded, but her gaze was rooted to the torment in Kadaj’s icy jade eyes. He was all paradox now, hate and love, rage and pleasure, nothing but lunacy, warring with each other, making his strokes sharp and brutal. It wasn’t enough. She was still wearing that maddening smile.

Her arms had gone numb, and she felt something pop in her ankle, the blade of agony lancing up her leg. Her foot seemed to be at an odd angle now. She wondered if her dear, Eldest brother would end up killing her. As long as she were within the Ritual, he could do anything to her, anything at all.

Kadaj pulled out of her abruptly, raising her a little higher and planting the head of his manhood against her other orifice. She almost fainted at the extra tension in her limbs, and she couldn’t help the tears that now misted her eyes, threatening to fall. She willed her body to obey her. She kept her eyes clear, and nothing but Kadaj was in her sight.

“Let me hear your pain.” Kadaj asked quietly. “I need to know if you hurt as much as I do. Please.”

That was when ReiMei’s gentle, stoic heart broke, but there was no one there to mend it for her. When Kadaj tore his way into her anus, she screamed, the sound raw and biting. Kadaj began to pump in and out of her, abusing her already battered body. Each time he drove in, she screamed again. By the time his orgasm erupted, her voice was gone. The smile that had been on ReiMei’s lips now danced upon Kadaj’s

She hadn’t fainted, had never closed her eyes, and Kadaj saw that the tears she silently shed were of blood, not saltwater.

“I love you, ReiMei.” Kadaj said softly as he pulled out of her, letting her body rest on the bed. “I’m okay now.”

His baby sister’s eyes registered anguish, and a sorrow so deep it could not be fathomed. She had screamed until she was mute, but her eyes spoke for her. Kadaj nodded. He rose from the bed, but did not release her. Putting on his pants, he went to the bureau, retrieving something she could not see, and left the room.

Kadaj surprised Loz and Yazoo, his middle brother still sobbing in the youngest’s arms. He abruptly pulled the door of Loz’s bedroom shut and drove two knives into the edge of the door between the hinges. He’d let them out later. He then returned to ReiMei and stood at the end of the bed, surveying the damage he had wrought upon her.

The ankle in the cuff was clearly broken, her foot cocked sideways in the restraint. She was covered in blood. It stained her hair and was still pooling on her belly. She would bear many scars. There were the two vees on her torso, and the thin line on her cheek. Both her wrists and her ankle were just raw, open wounds that could no longer bleed. The circulation had been cut off for far too long. There was a large bruise on one side of her face, and her opposite eye had begun to blacken and swell shut. Her fine lips were split in three places and there was a clear bite mark on the side of her throat.

He left her again, staying away longer this time. While Kadaj was gone, ReiMei fought the darkness threatening to take her away. She was an Assassin, and she would prove equal to the Bonding Kadaj had performed. At last, her Eldest brother returned bearing a crutch which he leaned against the door jamb. Digging into a pocket of his leathers, he found the key to her cuffs and opened the one on her leg first. ReiMei whimpered a little when he touched her. She used her good leg to shove herself closer to the head of the bead, whimpering again when blood found it’s way back into her arms. It was agony.

Kadaj unlocked one arm, then the other. Her limbs fell like lead to the bed. His sister couldn’t move them yet. Kadaj tossed the key onto her chest.

“Keep it.” He said softly. “It’ll remind you not to betray us.”

ReiMei groaned, the sound coming out as a hoarse whisper. She slowly moved one arm to clutch at the key. Kadaj sat down on the edge of the bed, his back to his little sister. She was an Assassin, but he knew she couldn’t kill him. They were Bonded, just as she had said they would be. Assassin. Seer. Sister. Lover. Betrayer. Kadaj loved her anyway.

“You can go now.” Kadaj said over his shoulder.

Somehow, ReiMei found the strength to sit up and swing her legs over the edge of the bed opposite of where Kadaj sat. She tried to stand, but as soon as she took one step, she crumpled to the floor. Kadaj ignored her. His baby sister dragged herself to the door and climbed up the crutch, fixing it under one arm. Kadaj spoke to her once more before she left the room.

“I’m sorry.” He said it so low, she almost didn’t hear it. “It was the only way.”

Kadaj saw her nod. She couldn’t speak – another wound. She touched her heart and hobbled away.