Briar is an apothecary, a lonely traveller of a land left scarred by the Cataclysm five centuries ago. Haunted by events long past, his new goal is simple: save anyone and everyone he can, and never let anyone close along the way.
But not every ailment can be eased by a healer’s hands, and not every problem can be solved alone. As the weight of monsters, magic, and Briar’s own shadowed past begin to bear down on him, a chance encounter with the charming and beautiful Rosa might be the perfect cure to his own loneliness—if only he can let her past the walls he’s spent so long building around his heart.
If only he can deal with the unfortunate curse she brings with her, too.
🌹
Sins of the Goddess is FREE tomorrow! If a fairytale-inspired Witcher-esque journey (with a heavy focus on LGBT+ themes) is your thing, then this is your chance to pick it up at no cost! Unravel the mystery of Briar the apothecary, and maybe watch the guard around his heart fall too…
Sins of the Goddess: Desert of Grass 1 : Renwick, Jace: Amazon.co.uk: Books
I have been in Tokyo these past two weeks for my birthday and by pure happenstance I happened to book my holiday exactly when the Yu Gi Oh GX pop-up shop was on…! We’ve had a great time (tomorrow is our last day) but we’ve had crazy luck the entire time we’ve been here with our finds!
Most people probably follow/know me for being an artist, but I think I'll always think of myself as a writer first and foremost.
I consider fanfic to be the backbone of fandom. It's easy to finish a show, scroll through the tag and like/reblog a hundred fanarts, and then promptly forget about it and move onto the next one. But I think to engage in reading and writing fanfic forms a much deeper and more fulfilling connection with the material, as well as with the community, and it's a shame that I don't see as much of that engagement in the GX fandom.
So for that reason, I want to share some GX fics I read in 2025 that I think you should read too. As a disclaimer… these are not ordered, this isn't a scientific list of the best GX fics, or even a list of fics I think are the best. These are just some fics that I think others should give a try :)
break of day by @xsparklingravenx
Post-canon spiritshipping but also an examination of Judai's patterns of avoidance as he finds his way back to his friends. It's a lovely read with some beautiful lines that takes its time to really put you in the headspace Judai is in, which builds up to its inevitable conclusion. I also loved the treatment of Yubel here and how they fit into the spiritshipping equation.
Boys Chase Boys by @puzzling-reeds
Definitely a writer for the spiritshippers, this fic is about Judai having a gay crisis over the thought of Johan going on a date with a woman. Yubel is there to be helpful too. It's very funny and cute. I also appreciate how this writer always handles queer themes with such care -- all the joy and struggle of finding yourself and finding someone else.
Flor de Maio by @seventhdoctor
Short and sweet soulshipping of Judai trying to find a hobby for Yubel. You can read it in a few minutes, so there's no excuse. If you're boiling pasta or scrolling tumblr, just click the link. Do it.
Home for the Holiduels by @chazzersized
Did someone say seasonally relevant GX fic? This is jewelshipping (Chazz/Jesse) as a hallmark Christmas romcom. Don't think you're above having a jolly good time, because this fic is really funny and easy to breeze through. I particularly enjoyed how they developed Chazz's family, and Judai as a disaster aroace. There is also plot important Panda Express.
Snowed In by @cerakuro
Also maybe seasonally relevant GX fic? This is a gx rivalshipping longfic that's part supernatural mystery/intrigue and part Manjoume and Judai being stupid idiots. I really love how they've built out the world of post-canon GX, what all the characters are up to, and Manjoume's life as a pro duelist.
So go read! Pull up tabs for the next time you're stuck in a line! And if you've read any fics you loved this year, please comment/add on in the notes :)
Characters: Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang, Qiao Ling, Xiao Li
Rating: T
Word Count: 12,363
Summary: Cheng Xiaoshi, photography, and the act of preserving the past in the face of a daunting future.
[Major spoilers for season 1′s finale.]
AO3
There was a camera in his hands. An old one, small and black, with a space in the hollow for film and a heaviness that could only be associated with something analogue. There was no digital screen to see its subject, a small viewfinder at the top, and chunky buttons that clicked satisfyingly when pressed. A treasure by any other name. A way to freeze the present dead in its tracks, to embalm the past, to prevent decomposition.
The early afternoon sun cast a golden hue over the empty classroom, rambunctious shouts coming from below where Cheng Xiaoshi could see other students mingling. Some were talking while others played sports, balls bouncing across hot concrete. It was a perfectly normal day, achingly so, several lessons behind him and several more to come. This window of peace would last only for thirty minutes more before it would be back to the grind, pens on paper, textbooks open.
He raised the camera, centring the unaware students beneath him in the viewfinder. A girl shyly approaching a lonesome boy, a gaggle of friends laughing and clutching at their sides, the tallest member of the basketball team taking a shot. Which moment was worth the most? What should he choose to save?
“Oh. It’s you.”
Click.
Cheng Xiaoshi hit the shutter release in surprise. Whatever picture he’d taken would have to wait until he got the film developed—that was both the beauty and the curse of a non-digital device. Whirling on the spot at the semi-familiar voice, his eyes fell on the newcomer, his own brows raising in surprise.
White hair, just on the right side of unkempt. Dark eyes, the pupil hidden from view in their depths. A mouth downturned, not quite severe, but not quite soft either. A boy, one Cheng Xiaoshi had encountered only a couple of times personally despite sharing the same class.
“Didn’t expect to see you here, Lu Guang,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, lowering the camera. Lu Guang’s eyes tracked its movement, but he said nothing. Never one for silence, Cheng Xiaoshi carried on. “Too hot for you outside? I get it, the sun is killer today, huh?”
“Not quite. I forgot something,” Lu Guang approached his desk, where a boring-looking, doorstopper of a novel sat unopened. “Just came back to get it, is all.”
Cheng Xiaoshi hummed his response, watching as Lu Guang reached for the book, his fingers curling around the spine. His hands were slender, not quite suited for basketball at a glance, but it was on the court they’d met regardless. He was a new addition to the school, a new addition to Cheng Xiaoshi’s periphery, a boy who didn’t seem to quite fit in with the status-quo.
But Cheng Xiaoshi appreciated that, because he’d always felt like he didn’t quite fit either.
It was a pleasant kind of silence as Lu Guang flipped through his book to check his ear-marked page, as Cheng Xiaoshi fiddled with one of the settings on the camera. Comfortable, even, in the same kind of way it was when he was at Qiao Ling’s house, the two of them doing their homework together while her Dad watched the news downstairs. There was a considerable distance between them, one stood at the window, one across the room at his desk, yet it felt like nothing at all.
“You gonna hit the court again sometime soon?” Cheng Xiaoshi asked.
“You like photography?” Lu Guang’s voice slid the question beneath Cheng Xiaoshi’s own.
They both looked at one another, startled by their perfect timing. A small smile broke like dawn on Lu Guang’s face, while a peal of laughter escaped Cheng Xiaoshi’s lips. He shook his head, straightening up. “Me first, or you?”
“I’ll give my answer first. It depends.”
“On?”
“On if you’ll be playing too.” Lu Guang paused. “You’re always the best player. I can’t trust anyone else to shoot if I pass to them.”
It was kind of an arrogant thing to say, but because it was praise directed Cheng Xiaoshi’s way, he couldn’t help but grow euphoric with pride. He recognised those words, that talk of trust and passing. “Oh? I’m the best? Wanna say that again?”
“You heard me the first time.” There was that smile again, small, but fun. “You know you’re good. You don’t need me to tell you that.”
“Yeah, but it’s nice hearing it anyway. Cool, so we’ll hit the court together, no big deal.” Cheng Xiaoshi glanced back down to the camera. “And, to answer your question now, yeah, I guess I do.”
It was a lame answer; so few words could hardly explain the magnitude of what photography really meant. But it felt foolish to go into it with someone who was a casual acquaintance at best, a complete stranger at worst. And what use would there be, really, in laying out every pathetic detail to someone who’d only asked a simple question?
Lu Guang’s gaze was heavy as he stared at the camera in Cheng Xiaoshi’s hands. He could feel the weight of it even from across the room. The sun beat through the window onto his back, and time felt gauzy and immaterial, like this moment would last forever if he let it.
He raised the camera, finger hovering over the shutter, but in the end he thought better of it. Instead, he asked, “You look interested. Wanna see it? It’s nothing much, kind of an old model so it might look a little difficult, but, uh…”
Cheng Xiaoshi trailed off as Lu Guang crossed the distance between them, taking the camera in his hands and peering through the viewfinder. For a moment, Cheng Xiaoshi thought he might take a photo, and he wondered desperately what he might look through that lens. Qiao Ling had taken pictures of him, with him, low-pixel selfies on the latest smartphones, washed-out polaroids on those little cameras that girls bought as fashion accessories, but he knew what to expect with those.
But Lu Guang didn’t press the shutter-release. He lowered the camera again, his dark eyes peering over the top. “What sort of pictures do you take?”
“All sorts. People, places, whatever catches my eye, you know?” Cheng Xiaoshi wasn’t sure if he did know, but that was fine. “I can take one of you, if you want. Right here, right now.”
“Uh, no, no thanks.” A faint hint of pink dusted Lu Guang’s cheeks, starkly contrasting his pale hair. “I’m good.”
“Camera-shy?” Cheng Xiaoshi laughed.
“Something like that.”
“Why does that sound like it’s not true?”
Lu Guang snorted softly. He handed the camera back, a brush of skin as Cheng Xiaoshi took it. The sun caught them both in its glow. “It’s true enough. Well, thanks for showing me it, but I should…”
“Go?” Cheng Xiaoshi finished for him. “Aw, so that’s it? Just gonna grab your book and leave? Why not stick around a little while. People-watching is great, you can see the whole campus from up here.”
He gestured to the window behind him. Lu Guang stood at his side, looking out. A heartbeat passed, another, and finally he spoke. “Everyone has something going on in their lives, don’t they?”
“Yeah,” Cheng Xiaoshi agreed. “Way too much sometimes, and then the people in their lives have all their stuff going on, and it just kind of keeps spiralling out.”
“Do one thing, and it affects everyone around you,” Lu Guang mused, leaning his arm on the window, forehead against it. “I didn’t think you’d be one for watching. You seem like the type to act.”
Cheng Xiaoshi looked back down at the camera, a little impressed. “Sounds like you’re the observant one.”
Lu Guang laughed at that, a delightful, shy little sound. Something told Cheng Xiaoshi that it was a rarity, bottled lightning, a moment worth preserving, but he could hardly keep sound in a photograph. There was a limit to photography. It could capture singular moments, save an expression, an act, a mood, but that was it. The heat of the sun, the pulse of his heart, the ring of laughter—all of it would be gone in a moment, a faded memory in motion.
But Lu Guang didn’t know that. He simply turned his head and said, “Maybe I am.”
~x~
The science-fiction and fantasy shows the three of them often got together to watch in the late hours were right about one thing; for every supernatural power, there had to be a limit.
The interrogation room was cold and silent. The food was tasteless, cardboard in Cheng Xiaoshi’s mouth. Every bite was a struggle to swallow, stuck to the back of his throat while his hands shook too much to get the chopsticks to his lips.
In the end, he put them down, took a few shaky breaths, then collapsed into his arms. It was the worst sort of crying, loud and ugly and brittle, like any breath could snap his body in two. Small. He felt small, like a child, lost and lonely and breaking apart.
He died. He died. He died. Again, again, again, those words spearing through him like lances, pinning him down to the table, suffocating like Liu Min’s hands around Emma’s throat. All these powers, the ability to throw himself into the past and make a difference, and for what? All to attract the attention of a serial killer, all to lose one of the only two pillars he’d ever manage to build himself.
In here, there was nothing. Without his phone, he had no photographs. Without a computer, he had no security footage. Without Lu Guang, he had no guide. What use was there in power when it had no use? What use was there in power, when the one person he’d shared it with was gone?
He wanted Qiao Ling. He wanted to touch her, to make sure she was okay, to pull her into his arms and feel her warmth against his. He wanted to hear her voice in the present, brushing against his eardrums. He wanted to hear her say, “Come on, Cheng Xiaoshi, it’ll be fine,” just the way she’d done all those years ago after May 12th.
But she was gone too, her bloodstained visage haunting him. She was likely being questioned elsewhere while he was left to stew in the knowledge that his best friend was dead and it was his own fault it had happened. Emma’s memory weighed him down like a stone and what he wouldn’t give to go back, to tell himself, stop.
“You seem like the type to act,” Lu Guang said, their first real conversation of thousands, but Cheng Xiaoshi had always remembered it. Punching a woman five-times his size. Screaming bloody-murder about an oncoming earthquake. Laying in bed, sending a text that should never have been written.
“You seem like the type to act,” Lu Guang had said, and though the memory was faded, Cheng Xiaoshi remembered this; he’d sounded a little in awe. Like it was something he couldn’t quite comprehend, something he couldn’t quite do for himself, which was ridiculous, because Lu Guang was Lu Guang, confident and unflappable and calm.
“Would you say it like that if you’d known?” Cheng Xiaoshi asked through tears, hands balled into firsts. His fault, his fault, his fault. All it had taken was a single woman’s love for her parents and he’d crumbled. One quick text message, one attempt at making a real, palpable difference, and now the blood of his best friend was all over his hands.
Time ticked onwards, every second slower than the last. His thoughts spiralled in disarray. Emma, falling. Qiao Ling, knife in hand. Blood, all over the couch, all over the floor, Lu Guang unmoving. Each sob that shuddered through him threatened to fracture in his heart. There was no coming back from this.
For hours, he waited there. The food went cold. His sobs tapered to nothing. Reality warbled around him, like the smallest movement would splinter it entirely. When the door opened, he snapped his head up, some stupid part of him wishing for someone who would not be there.
Captain Xiao Li stood there, his mouth a grim line cutting through his stern face. Cheng Xiaoshi closed his sore, red-rimmed eyes, and dropped his head back into his arms. His chest tightened; his lungs unable to expand properly.
Movement by his head. His shoulders trembled as he held back his grief, as he fought for words. He needed to ask about Qiao Ling. He needed to ask about the real killer. There was so much he had to do but it felt impossible, paralysing, like he was drowning.
“It wasn’t me,” he whispered, but deflecting blame felt wrong, felt like a lie in itself. “It was my fault, but it wasn’t me.”
“The knife had your fingerprints on it,” came Xiao Li’s voice, stiff yet calm. “But, then again, it had the victim’s and the girl’s on it too.”
Of course it did. It was in their house. Cheng Xiaoshi probably used the damn thing every day to cook. “There’s someone else.”
“Convenient.”
“Someone else like us.” Cheng Xiaoshi didn’t know how else to tell him, and could only hope he would catch onto the implicit meaning. “We wouldn’t—he’s our—was our friend.”
His voice cracked as he switched tense. A hand touched his shoulder. Hefty, but firm. A weight unlike Emma, unlike his own memories, just a comforting touch.
“Someone told you,” Xiao Li said, but he sounded irritated, not sympathetic. “You asked about him, then?”
“I need you to get me a photo,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, finally looking up. Desperation coated his tone like frost. “Or footage. Something. It doesn’t matter what, I’ll make it work, I just need—”
“To go backwards?” He didn’t break eye-contact as Cheng Xiaoshi gaped at him. “I know what you do. Hard not to notice when you show up on our security footage from two years ago looking the same as you did when I met you.”
Hope ignited in his heart. Death was a node that couldn’t be changed, Lu Guang had insisted as much, but how could he know? “Then, you know—you know what I need, so Captain Xiao Li, please—”
“But you don’t need it,” Xiao Li cut him off swiftly, snuffing the hope out in an instant. “Because it’s a lie. For his protection, and you and your friend. Better the killer thinks they’ve finished the job instead of coming back for more. So take some time to calm down, and then I’ll come back and we can talk about this. You need to tell me everything you know.”
For a moment, the words floated above him, drifting on the surface. Cheng Xiaoshi took a breath, and they sank, crashing into him like a mallet. His chest loosened. “You mean he’s…?”
“Keep it to yourself,” Xiao Li said. “Situation’s tenuous, he still in surgery and might not make it, but they haven’t called it yet. But, listen. I know it wasn’t you. I know it wasn’t the girl either. There’s more to this than we could ever have imagined, and I think you’re already aware that we’re going to need you to get to the bottom of it.”
Cheng Xiaoshi nodded, quick, repeatedly, like one of those little solar-powered bobbing toys that Qiao Ling had left on their windowsill as a gift. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Xiao Li grunted, but said nothing more. A heartbeat, two, and he was gone.
~x~
Warm days were always his favourite. The shop was closed for the day, but the sun was only just on the verge of setting. The red glow across the skyline was a fraction just past golden hour, but beautiful all the same.
Cheng Xiaoshi bounced the ball in one hand, sipping at his boba with the other. Lu Guang was strewn over the park bench, the butt of his own cup resting against his forehead as he tried, futilely, to cool down. Qiao Ling sat a couple of inches away from him. Earlier she’d declared that it was too hot to even think about sharing body heat, and now she scrolled her phone, drinking her own iced tea.
“Oh! I like this one,” she said, using her thumb to hold on whatever she’d found. “Quote of the day from the page I follow!”
“Is this that weird English page you keep quoting from?” Cheng Xiaoshi asked. “‘Cause none of those sayings make any sense.”
“Because you’re illiterate.”
“Because they’re stupid.”
“You’re stupid.” She puffed a single cheek in annoyance. “Anyway, listen, here it is. Take time to stop and smell the roses.”
Admittedly, Cheng Xiaoshi’s English was not outstanding. Different grammar structures were enough to make his head start spinning, but he caught enough to figure out the literal meaning of what she’d said. Though he doubted that was the real intention of the phrase, he looked around with a grin, then shrugged. “None around to sniff, Qiao Ling.”
“That’s not what it means,” said Lu Guang. Of course he would resurrect himself from the dead given the opportunity to lord his knowledge over them. Unlike either Cheng Xiaoshi or Qiao Ling, he knew enough English to not only speak it to the very few tourists who poked their heads into their shop out of curiosity, but to also competently read it. “It’s an idiom.”
“Cheng Xiaoshi’s an idiot,” Qiao Ling giggled.
“Oh, come on! That doesn’t even make sense!”
“It means,” Lu Guang said over the top of them, taking the boba from his forehead, “that you should stop every now and then to appreciate the things around you. Like boba.”
He took a pointed sip. Qiao Ling shook her head and carried on scrolling, the twin ears of her rabbit-themed case bouncing with the movement. Cheng Xiaoshi bounced the ball again, rough texture against his fingers, heat pounding down around him. A sweet smell reached him, like rich honey, the hydrangea of the park spilling their scent all around.
And then, giggling. He looked up, spotting a very young child playing football with his father not far from them, the mother watching with a serene smile on his face. Elsewhere, a couple walked past them, hand-in-hand. A businessman spoke swiftly on his phone as he cut through the park, and Cheng Xiaoshi was at once struck by the enormity of it all, of the world at large.
Déjà vu. He’d experienced this before, in a classroom years ago now, in every single dive he’d ever made. Living the lives of others, feeling their emotions, recalling their memories. He’d lived in the bodies of the dead, of the left-behind, of the lost. He’d lived in the bodies of the living, the leaving, the found. Old and young, happy and sad, determined and aimless, he’d experienced a hundred different viewpoints, a hundred different dreams, a hundred different relationships.
Yet for as well as he’d learned all those different people, he still felt as if he had no idea of himself. Superficially, he knew of his own traits—annoying, impulsive, difficult to love, easier to leave behind—but he didn’t know who he was.
Time felt blindingly fast. Crippling fear clutched at him, as if everything might be snatched from his hands. “Think fast,” he said, tossing the ball at Lu Guang, who had to drop his boba to the bench and scramble to catch it before he got hit in the face. He barely made it in time, the ball inches from his nose, angry gibberish leaving his mouth.
Qiao Ling laughed again, her eyes twinkling in the light of the setting sun. “What was that? You nearly got him square!”
Lu Guang’s expression darkened in a comical fashion. He reached up with both hands, the ball held high, rearing back to throw it back just as hard and without any kind of verbal warning.
“Wait!” Cheng Xiaoshi cried, one hand in his pocket to grab his phone. A couple of taps, and the camera was open. He flipped it to the front-facing camera and raised it, his head low in the frame, Lu Guang caught in an act of violence, Qiao Ling leaning over to flash a V sign.
“Everyone say Shiguang,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, snapping the image before giving anyone the time to say it. A half-second later, Qiao Ling came out with it while Lu Guang watched with an inquisitive gaze.
“You didn’t give me time!” she shouted.
Swiping through the phone, Cheng Xiaoshi brought the image up, smiling in satisfaction. “Eh, it’s fine.”
“Was it a good one at least?”
“Nah, terrible. You look so ugly.
“That’s because you took it before I was ready!” She jumped up, peering over his shoulder. “Ugh, we all look bad. Delete it!”
“No way!”
“Delete it, Cheng Xiaoshi!”
She reached for the phone. He held it high out of her reach, the two of them dancing around the park in a one-sided tug-of-war that she had no chance of winning. He opened up their messaging app and sent it to both her and Lu Guang. Qiao Ling looked down at her own phone as it dinged, and then battered his shoulder hard with its case. “You’re the worst. Tell him, Lu Guang!”
Lu Guang had his own phone out now, peering at the photo with the kind of intensity he usually reserved for when they were working. He wasn’t using his power—it had barely been twelve seconds, let alone twelve hours—but he took his time before languidly looking back towards Cheng Xiaoshi.
“It’s a good photo,” he said, much to Cheng Xiaoshi’s surprise. He gave Qiao Ling a triumphant look, only for Lu Guang to carry on. “But, is everything okay?”
Drops of condensation from Qiao Ling’s boba cup hit Cheng Xiaoshi in the face, ice-cold, a startling reminder that the moment was as fragile as he’d assumed. Words bubbled in his throat and died on his tongue. How could he ever convey the truth, that he was terrified of the unexpected earthquake that could tear their lives apart in a fraction of a second, that he feared himself changing in a way that would tear the three of them apart, that he knew how fragile life was because he’d lived those scenarios.
But for all Lu Guang was observant, he was no mind reader. For all his omniscience when it came to time, he couldn’t ever inhabit another person’s head the way Cheng Xiaoshi did. So Cheng Xiaoshi forgave him for that and grinned, as wide and brilliant as the dying sun behind him, and said, “I’m smelling the roses. Couldn’t you tell?”
~x~
Sometimes, time sped along like a bullet train, hurtling forward with no means of stopping. Cheng Xiaoshi had experienced that time and time again; thirty minutes before an unpreventable disaster, or a photo’s time limit approaching the elusive twelve-hour limit, or a moment of peace he never wanted to end. In those moments, the minute-hand of the clock seemed to rush like it was desperate to reunite with its partner at the turn of the hour.
Other times, it stuttered to a stop, the train losing power on the tracks. Cheng Xiaoshi had experienced that, too; waiting at the door of the photo-studio for his parents to return, stuck beneath the rubble with another boy’s mother dying atop him, or now, in the intensive care unit, Lu Guang’s arms a mottled collection of bruises from the lines fed into him, the lower half of his face obscured by the mask.
He was awake, though to what extent he was actually conscious, Cheng Xiaoshi didn’t know. He’d been warned beforehand about the sedatives, the lines, the machines, the beeping and the alarms, but nobody had told him how harrowing it would be sit at his bedside and see the strongest person in his life reduced to this.
“Can you hear me?” he asked, knowing there would be no response. Lu Guang’s eyelids fluttered, gaze sliding around but never focusing. “Sorry it took so long to get here. They arrested me, you know? Thought I’d done it ‘cause I grabbed the knife off that sick bastard. I know we fight but that’s kind of pushing it, huh?”
He wished he wasn’t alone in this room. Qiao Ling had gone to get them drinks from the vending machine. She’d said that she’d catch up, that she thought Cheng Xiaoshi should go and see him first, but he knew it for the lie that it was. It was obvious; her guilt ran deeper than sepsis despite her bearing none of the fault, but nothing he said would make it any better.
“They have so many drugs in you right now,” Cheng Xiaoshi observed with a forced laugh, taking Lu Guang’s hand in his own. It was cold, and when he gave it a customary squeeze, he didn’t squeeze back. “Guess it makes sense though. They told me you—they lost your heartbeat twice. ‘Cause of all that blood. Ruined our couch too.”
The joke fell flat with nobody to laugh at it. Lu Guang’s eyes slipped shut. Cheng Xiaoshi held on still, because he knew that if their places were swapped, he would want the same. “That red-eyed freak…we’ve got to get him back for it. Not just for this, but for Qiao Ling too. Emma. Everyone who he’s hurt.”
He’d had one-sided conversations with Lu Guang before, at night in bed talking endlessly at the bunk above him, but it was never so lonely as this. Cheng Xiaoshi dipped his head low and drew in a shuddering breath. “I’m so sorry…this is my fault. If I’d just listened, if I’d done what you’d said, then maybe—”
The door opened behind him. He knew Qiao Ling’s presence like a second skin, would have known it wasn’t her in the photo studio even if she hadn’t been covered in Lu Guang’s blood and wielding a knife. She stood utterly silent in the doorway, and when he turned to face her, he saw the frozen horror scrawled over her petite features.
She clutched the two cans of soda in her hands to denting. Tears welled in her eyes. She backed up a step, then another. Cheng Xiaoshi stood, and, before she could flee, he grabbed her around her shoulders to pull into a crushing hug.
Alive. Both of them were alive. He’d nearly lost her too, the moment the killer had turned the knife inwards and Cheng Xiaoshi had to grapple with it. His worst fears, seconds away from coming true.
“Not your fault,” Cheng Xiaoshi told her, firm, furious, not at her but at the circumstances, the killer, himself. He already knew what was going through her head because it was the same as what was going through his. “Don’t you blame yourself, you didn’t do anything.”
“Why did this happen?” she asked, her voice watery. “It was just—harmless. We help people, that’s all we were doing, so why…?”
I played with time, Cheng Xiaoshi thought, but did not say. And then I cheated the game. And now he wants me and it’s my fault, my fault, my fault—
He couldn’t spiral, not here, not when they were both damaged and he was fine. Taking Qiao Ling by the wrist, he brought her to Lu Guang and tucked his hand into hers. Then, he deposited the two cans of soda on the bedside before drawing up a second chair to take for himself.
Qiao Ling stared at Lu Guang, shadows deep beneath her eyes, her gaze haunted. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. Every detail was a curse that Cheng Xiaoshi wished to forget, so he turned his attention away. Grabbing his phone from his pocket, he scrolled through his camera roll. Not to jump to—Lu Guang would never forgive him if he tried to change the past in any serious manner—but to relieve the past in a different kind of way.
“Hey, Qiao Ling,” he knocked into her side, showing her the screen. “Remember this?”
Summer, the setting sun casting its red glow, Lu Guang with a ball held high, his face twisted in irritation. Qiao Ling with her V sign, mouth half-open and her eyes half-closed. Cheng Xiaoshi just in the frame, eyes wide and entertained, mouth spread in a smile for Shiguang!
Qiao Ling scrubbed at her eyes with her free hand, her other holding Lu Guang’s in a vice-grip. “Why do you still have that stupid photo? I told you to delete it.”
“I don’t delete any pictures that make me look dashing,” Cheng Xiaoshi said with a faint smile. “And I don’t delete anything that makes me happy.”
“You’re so childish,” Qiao Ling sniffed. “Do you have more?”
“Tons. Wanna see?”
He handed over her phone, and before long, she was bringing up old memories, Cheng Xiaoshi’s great photos, his less-than-stellar ones. Weak laughter mingled with the beeping machines, and after a while, Qiao Ling said, “When was even the last time you took a proper camera out for fun instead of work?”
Too long, was the answer. He had enough fun with them at work; the photography studio was hardly the most profitable venture in the world, but sometimes someone came in looking to book for a wedding or a birthday. Though they were few and far between, they paid well, and occasionally they got requests for headshots or other professional ventures outside of their supernatural dealings.
Outside of that, Cheng Xiaoshi rarely took his vast collection of cameras for a spin anymore. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to, it was more a time thing. He never had enough of it, and when the urge struck to take a picture nowadays, he always had his smartphone on him.
But smartphone images were one thing. A polaroid, or film, was another. The customary grain of a photo taken the old-fashioned way, the different look to the light, the depth to each shadow. Something to hold, afterwards, something to frame, or pin up, a different experience entirely.
“After this,” he said, “let’s go somewhere. Maybe down to the beach, or some kind of amusement park. I’ll take a hundred pictures.”
“Yeah.” Qiao Ling nodded, then turned her head suddenly. “Oh! Lu Guang…!”
His eyes were open again, half a groan breaking past the mask on his face. His heart rate, which had been steady the entire time Cheng Xiaoshi had been sat there, picked up. His hand twisted in Qiao Ling’s, shoulders shifting. She froze, but Cheng Xiaoshi could pick up the signs of distress he’d been warned about instantly. Sedatives, drugs, the lines—all of it could cause confusion, agitation, fear.
So he rushed to the other side of the bed, took Lu Guang’s other hand in his own. “We’re here,” he said, voice artificially bright, an awkward imitation of the Cheng Xiaoshi he presented himself as every other ordinary day. “Looking at all these terrible photos that manage to make your handsome face look as ugly as that lucky cat Qiao Ling’s dad got us for the shop—”
“That was a gift…!” Qiao Ling said, momentarily distracted from the ongoing crisis in the face of offence. “You take that back, Dad wanted to be nice!”
“And we appreciate it, but it’s still ugly.” Cheng Xiaoshi drew his hand through Lu Guang’s lank, deflated hair, a soothing motion that he recalled from ancient memories of his mother. His eyes still lacked any kind of focus, but that was fine. Normal. Expected. “Qiao Ling, show him that picture. I want him to see what I’m talking about.”
Qiao Ling seemed hesitant to lean over him, but she did it anyway, tilting the phone screen so Lu Guang might be able to see it. Cheng Xiaoshi doubted he could, doubted he really knew what was going on, doubted he even knew that he’d sustained multiple stab wounds and his insides were a ruinous mess, but he hoped that he at least realised they were there.
Lu Guang’s heartbeat slowed. His wracking, half-movements stilled. His eyes focused for a brief second on the phone, and Cheng Xiaoshi thought he saw his friend for real, hoped maybe he was using his power to experience those twelve hours again instead of being trapped here—and then his eyelids fell again and he was silent.
Qiao Ling looked up. Cheng Xiaoshi met her gaze across the bed.
“We have to find the real killer,” she said, quiet determination spilling into her tone.
“I know,” he replied. “We’ll nail the bastard ourselves, I swear it.”
~x~
As a child, Cheng Xiaoshi had never been all that friendly. Spiteful, angry at the world and others, envious of the things they had, the things that had been taken from him. Other children were a threat to his fragile peace, talking about weekends spent with parents, siblings, trips and games and fun. Every reminder that he was different was another blow to the shoddily crafted walls he’d built around his heart, an attack on the desperate coping methods he’d had no choice but to come up with on his own.
By the time he realised he couldn’t go his entire life with a social circle consisting of just Qiao Ling, he was already well past the age where making friends was easy. In high school he drifted from group to group, sitting on the sidelines with his easy humour and cheerful disposition, but it was all an act. He tossed basketballs around courts, pretended he was in with the crowd, and never let anyone close. Popular, but on a superficial level. Everyone knew him, but nobody knew him.
Then, Lu Guang transferred into his class one dreary spring morning. He was a walking anomaly, and left one hell of an impression. With his white hair (bleach?), his stoic expression, his few words, it felt like a mystery had just been dumped straight into first period’s mathematics class. Cheng Xiaoshi couldn’t deny that he was more intrigued in him than Pythagoras’s theorem.
But Lu Guang didn’t have much to say, and though Cheng Xiaoshi was a professional at keeping a conversation going, the right time to start one never seemed to arrive. Fortunately, fate seemed to have his back for once, and a couple of weeks later, just as summer was rolling in, Lu Guang wandered onto the basketball court of the local park at the exact same time Cheng Xiaoshi was shooting shots.
One encounter turned into another. A classroom bathed in the sunlight’s glow, the local milk-tea place afterschool, a hazy day when he and Qiao Ling were repainting the front of the battered photography studio. One day, Cheng Xiaoshi invited Lu Guang to sit with him while he ate lunch in the cafeteria, and from then on, they were rarely out of each other’s company. Conversation or companionable silence in their breaks, trading answers while studying, video games in the studio’s sunroom, selfies taken on phones that steadily grew on-par with his beloved cameras as the years flittered by.
Cheng Xiaoshi’s walls fell beneath Lu Guang’s gentle pressure. He shared things he’d never shared with anyone but Qiao Ling; his parents, his fears, his dreams. Lu Guang listened to it all, offered comfort when it counted, and was otherwise a pillar to lean on when Qiao Ling couldn’t be there for him. High school faded into university, which they attended together, and then in the height of the summer one ordinary year, they travelled abroad for their studies.
They came back with the newfound knowledge that they were skilled in ways regular people were not, complimentary abilities that thrived in the presence of the other, and Cheng Xiaoshi wondered if their meeting on the court was fate after all.
“There has to be rules,” Lu Guang said, sitting in the corner of the couch that he always occupied when he came over. Cheng Xiaoshi hung off it next to him, legs over the back, head nearly touching the floor, scrolling his phone looking for a good image to try next.
“Rules,” Cheng Xiaoshi repeated. “Psh. Come on, we’ve got supernatural powers and you want there to be rules? That’s so you, boring as always.”
“If we don’t make rules, something will inevitably go wrong,” Lu Guang said pointedly. “Time is…fragile. Think about it. Change one small thing in the past, and the world you come back to could be completely unrecognisable.”
“Like that would happen,” Cheng Xiaoshi rolled his eyes, stopping on a selfie of them at a party Xu Shanshan had thrown the year before. The lighting and framing left much to be desired; he’d been drunk when he’d taken it and judging by the luminescent blush on Lu Guang’s pale cheeks, he had been too. He didn’t remember much of the night, really, these pictures the only real testament that it had ever happened.
“I’m serious,” Lu Guang carried on, unfazed. “Time could unravel. We could cause paradoxes, we could write people or events out of history—”
“Paranoid much?” Cheng Xiaoshi poked him hard in the side. Lu Guang slapped the back of his hand, which was as much of a declaration of war as firing a bullet. Cheng Xiaoshi sat up, slapping him in the arm in retaliation, and their childish squabble began.
They’d done this sort of stupid playfight many times before, usually when Cheng Xiaoshi’s antics bypassed irritating into outright annoying. It was light and silly, right up until their hands met in mock-violence and Cheng Xiaoshi found himself hurtling backwards into the past.
He stumbled, music booming in his ears, chatter all around him. “You okay?” Lu Guang asked him, voice muffled beneath the din, words slurred into each other. Cheng Xiaoshi blinked hard, his thoughts fuzzy all of a sudden, his heart hammering. “You’ve had a lot.”
Indeed, there was a glass in his other hand. It had been obscured by the angle of the selfie, but he could see the significant amount of alcohol left in it. Should he drink it? Should he not? He was in his own skin but he felt like a trespasser, this whole dive-back-in-time business still not quite second nature yet.
“Cheng Xiaoshi! You idiot!” Lu Guang’s voice rang in his ears, crystal clear unlike his younger, drunk counterpart. “You dived!”
“Not my fault! You slapped my hand, you started the fight!”
“You started it first!”
Were they really going to have this argument now? When past-Lu Guang was looking at him with such concern? “Forget that, quick question, do I drink this?”
A sigh so heavy it could have pulled the moon from the sky. “Yes.”
He downed it in one, which was a mistake. The alcohol burned the back of his throat, and he couldn’t help but choke on it. Past-Lu Guang slapped his back in alarm, but Cheng Xiaoshi shook his head. “I’m fine, I’m fine!”
“Really?” Lu Guang looked left, where Xu Shanshan and Qiao Ling were doing their best approximation of some dance that had been popular on bilibili lately—or, at the time, Cheng Xiaoshi supposed. “Maybe we should go get some air. They’re going to be at that for a while, I think.”
“Agree with him—me! Agree with me, Cheng Xiaoshi, that’s what you did.”
“Was it?” Cheng Xiaoshi answered aloud, to which past-Lu Guang gave him a questioning look. “I mean! Why don’t we join them for a moment? As revenge.”
“Cheng Xiaoshi!”
“Revenge?” Past-Lu Guang’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. “On who? You’re really drunk.”
“And so are you, so let loose!” Cheng Xiaoshi grabbed him by the wrist. Qiao Ling cheered as he danced beside her, Xu Shanshan throwing her arms around Lu Guang’s shoulders. Cheng Xiaoshi smiled wide, lost in the moment, lost in this euphoric moment of the past, music so loud it vibrated through him, resonating with his heart.
This power was the best. After trying so hard to preserve the past to recall it, now he could return to it with a simple clap of hands. The heat of the summer on his back, the sound of a transfer student’s voice as he asked a gentle question, chirping insects, grass against his skin, whatever he wanted, he could have it. Nothing would ever abandon him again.
Cheng Xiaoshi had always known he was unlovable, had always known that he would find himself alone again one day, but now if anything threatened him, he had the past to fall back on.
Past-Lu Guang got into it, after a moment’s hesitation. Present-Lu Guang said nothing. They danced until they were breathless, until Cheng Xiaoshi pulled him away to the refreshments and downed another glass of alcohol.
“You need to do something if you’re going to stay here,” Lu Guang said in his head.
Cheng Xiaoshi knew that much, because though he didn’t remember this conversation in particular, he remembered Lu Guang the morning after, a rare-teasing look in his eyes as he asked, “Do you remember what you asked me last night, Cheng Xiaoshi?”
And Cheng Xiaoshi, bleary-eyed, nursing a coffee with the worst hangover he’d ever had, replied, “Hopefully I didn’t propose. I’m only twenty.”
It hadn’t been a proposal. It had been something more damning, it had been Cheng Xiaoshi finally kicking the door to his heart wide-open to Lu Guang. Drunk on the atmosphere and the alcohol itself, he looked his best friend in the eye and said, stupidly, “Wanna move in with me after we graduate?”
He’d never known what Lu Guang’s immediate answer to the question was, because his idiot brain had forgotten it. The morning after, when they’d discussed what had been said, Lu Guang simply told him that he’d given it some thought and had come to the conclusion that it would be beneficial for the both of them to share rent. Cheaper. Efficient.
But here in the present (past?), Lu Guang, drunk and bright-eyed and flushed, laughed and said, “Don’t I live in the studio already? Sure.”
Days spent studying, gaming, reading, laughing. Nights spent staring at the ceiling, both of them wrapped in blankets on the sofa, Cheng Xiaoshi airing his restless fears while Lu Guang listened. He was right; they’d been living together for years now, Cheng Xiaoshi had just been too blinkered to notice.
“Smartass,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, bringing his hands up. “I won’t remember this in the morning, you know.”
“I’ll remind you,” Lu Guang replied. “If I remember.”
“You better,” he said, clapping his hands together.
Coming back was always less disorienting. He fell out of the air, the bright light of the sunroom blinding, the sudden silence a relief. And then he crashed, hard, into the body beneath him, eliciting a sharp cry from his suffering partner who now had a shoulder buried in his bony ribcage.
“Cheng Xiaoshi—!” Lu Guang started.
Cheng Xiaoshi knelt over him, raising his hands in surrender. “We were so drunk that I could have done anything and it wouldn’t have mattered, because we had the perfect excuse to not remember!”
“Cheng Xiaoshi—”
“And besides! It was just a bit of fun. Hardly changing anything big now, am I?”
“Cheng Xiaoshi—”
“And just for the record, it was you who started that fight, so it was you who sent me back there, so you’ve got no-one to blame but yourself.”
Lu Guang deflated beneath him, all the fight going out of him. “You need to be careful,” he said. “I know that you didn’t change anything significant, but that doesn’t mean you can just act recklessly. You have to listen to me.”
“You once told me that I was the type to act. What can I say? Just living up to expectations.” Cheng Xiaoshi winked, a little giddy still. “Anyway, it was nice.”
Lu Guang blinked in surprise. His hair had gone wayward from the fall, a mess of white atop his head. The light flush of his cheeks from the past was absent, but Cheng Xiaoshi could still picture it, his best friend, unguarded in his drunkenness, as open as any book.
“What was?”
“Hearing what you really answered that day.” Cheng Xiaoshi smirked. “Don’t I live in the studio already? That’s hilarious!”
Sweet was the word he really wanted to use, but he didn’t quite have the courage. Despite that, Lu Guang turned his head, that faint dusting of pink sweeping across his cheeks again. Cheng Xiaoshi laughed openly, reaching for his phone again to look back at the picture.
Yes. This power was everything. Everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d ever needed.
~x~
The ward was different to intensive care. Quieter, fewer nurses, other patients trying to sleep. Lu Guang was awake when Cheng Xiaoshi arrived, flat on his back with the blanket drawn up around his shoulders. It was late-November now, just over three weeks since the incident, and it had brought in the cold.
“Warm under there?” Cheng Xiaoshi asked as he walked in.
“Not warm enough,” replied Lu Guang, voice rusty and hoarse, a thin imitation of itself. “I miss the bunk.”
“I miss you in the bunk. It’s too quiet in there right now. Makes it hard to sleep.” Cheng Xiaoshi dropped his backpack to the floor, rummaging around for his lunch. “Uh, do you mind if I eat in here? I know you can’t, so I don’t wanna make it worse, but I haven’t had breakfast ‘cause we’ve been busy.”
“It’s fine. I don’t have any appetite anyway. Enjoy yourself.”
He drew out his lunch box and chopsticks, dipping the points into the rice. He tried not to look too hard at Lu Guang as he ate; he’d withered in the ICU like a rotting flowerhead. Already a beanpole to begin with, his friend looked unhealthily thin now, and the shadows under his eyes were even more pronounced. The knife had done more than wreck his stomach.
Solid food would be out of the question for a long while still, which was why he still had the tube. Recovery was a long, arduous road, and they’d barely walked any of it.
“How is it progressing?” Lu Guang asked him.
It being the investigation, Cheng Xiaoshi knew. He swallowed his food and glanced away. “It’s…well. It’s going.”
“I thought as much. Your face gives everything away.” Lu Guang smiled. “Too easy to read.”
“Which reminds me! I brought you some books to keep you occupied, wanna see them?”
He dumped his lunchbox on the bedside and hauled up his backpack. Three paper backs tumbled out when he tipped it upside down, three popular fiction novels that had been released in the last two weeks. Not a single one was a murder-mystery, nor did any include stabbings. Cheng Xiaoshi had trawled the internet for hours to vet them.
As he stacked them next to his lunch, Lu Guang shifted in the bed, wincing hard as he tried to push himself up on his elbows. He gave a soft gasp as something obviously pulled, and Cheng Xiaoshi abandoned the books in an instant to take him by the shoulders. “Not on your own,” he said softly. “Let me help, and no sudden movements. Hey, look, I get to tell you what to do for once.”
“So you do,” Lu Guang said, fondness leaking into his voice. Cheng Xiaoshi got him upright, gently resting his back against the bedframe. Without the blanket covering him, he got a good look at the fading bruises on his arms, the one on his neck, the sickly pallor of his skin. He still had a needle jammed into the back of his hand, but otherwise, it was a vast improvement compared to the overwhelming number of tubes in the ICU. “Thanks, Cheng Xiaoshi.”
“Don’t mention it. Here, check these out.” He put the books in Lu Guang’s lap, letting him parse through them at his own leisure. It took him longer than normal, stiffness in his joints and weakness in his muscles forcing him into a slower pace, but Cheng Xiaoshi was content to simply watch, to bask in the fact that his best friend was alive, to be able to just sit with his noodles and let time do whatever it wanted around him.
But he still grew impatient after a while. Unable to contain himself, he asked, “Do you like them? I wanted to get you something ‘cause me and Qiao Ling are so busy, it’s been hard to get away to come see you.”
Lu Guang frowned. His fingers stilled against the covers, and then he asked, “Didn’t you come visit yesterday?”
Cheng Xiaoshi paused, rice halfway to his mouth. “Uh, no?”
“Oh.” It was a resigned, odd little sound. Lu Guang pressed his bony hand to his forehead, eyes squeezing shut. “Right. You’re right.”
“Lu Guang?” Concern, rising like a tide in Cheng Xiaoshi’s chest. Breath became a little more difficult to source.
“They said it’s normal,” Lu Guang carried on, swift, voice still rusty but calm as usual. “Forgetfulness, bad dreams. I thought you came to see me. You and Qiao Ling. You were laughing about something. It was like looking through a photo—I could see you, but I couldn’t interact. I thought maybe I was just dozing when you came.”
He and Qiao Ling had been very much occupied yesterday—Captain Xiao Li could attest for that alibi at the least. That, coupled with the fact that Lu Guang had been aware and conscious for over a week now, suggested a different scenario. Cheng Xiaoshi could recall only one instance of laughter with Qiao Ling, the very first day in the ICU when he’d wanted to cheer her up, when he’d wanted to calm Lu Guang down, when they’d shared the picture of the past.
“Sounds like a memory to me, just in the wrong place,” Cheng Xiaoshi said. “The first day I finally got to see you. You freaked out a little, so we tried to calm you down. But, huh…would that help? Seeing any pictures? I know you’re stuck here and it kind of sucks, so do you wanna escape for a bit?”
Lu Guang seemed to consider it, but only for a moment before he shook his head. “No. Reliving the past won’t change the truth of it—and I can see even you’ve figured that out, seeing as you haven’t tried to change it. Anyway, I can’t just leave you here on your own after you came to see me.”
And though the words warmed him, there was a small part of Cheng Xiaoshi which couldn’t help but feel like he didn’t deserve it. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, voice muffled when he spoke. “You should if it’ll help, if it’ll make you happy.”
“I’m happy right here.”
“In the hospital bed I put you in where you can’t remember one day from the next?”
“What?”
He hadn’t meant to say it. Hadn’t meant to let Lu Guang know. Despite the cold, Cheng Xiaoshi felt too hot, his thoughts stuttering to a stop on a single one. My fault. It’s my fault. I cheated. I changed the past. I didn’t listen.
“You blame yourself,” Lu Guang said, eyes growing bright with lucidity, then stern in the same beat of Cheng Xiaoshi’s fickle heart. “Stupid as always.”
“I screwed things up, of course I blame myself.”
“Did you pick the knife up?” Lu Guang asked, spearing him to the chair with the brutal question.
“Lu Guang—”
“I wish I understood you,” Lu Guang gripped the edge of the blanket, frustration sweeping across his features. “I wish I understood what drives your rash, idiot way of thinking. There is only one person at fault for this, and it isn’t you, or Qiao Ling, the same way it isn’t the client who gave us the job that led to Emma. All blame lies with the killer, never you.”
Cheng Xiaoshi didn’t want to cry again. He’d done enough of it the day he’d sat in the interrogation room and believed that his best friend was dead, but heat welled up in his eyes and his hands began to tremble. He took a thin breath through his teeth as he clenched his jaw, leant back in the chair, tipped his head back too.
“I thought you were gone,” he said to the air, to the ceiling, anything other than Lu Guang himself. “I thought Qiao Ling would be ruined by it, too. I thought you were both gone and I’d be alone again, and it didn’t even seem like a surprise because I knew it would happen one day. I’m just clinging on to borrowed time, waiting for it to run out.”
“Borrowed time?”
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m living out moments that my future will dive back to,” he said, voice quivering just like his hands. “I used to take pictures to try and preserve what I had. Now I take them to give my future self some security. No matter what happens, I can always return to that moment. I can feel the heat on my skin, or hear Qiao Ling calling me some stupid name, or laugh with you about some show. I love this power I have, but at the same time, sometimes I wonder if I’d have been better off without it.”
Lu Guang listened, because it was what he was best at doing. “You seem like the type to act,” he’d said once, years and years and years ago now, sounding wistful and longing.
“Sounds like you’re the observant one,” Cheng Xiaoshi had replied, and if only he’d known how right they both were, how well they knew the other despite being nothing more than friendly strangers.
“I won’t tell you not to worry, because you will,” Lu Guang said eventually. “Sorry, it’s hard to order my thoughts. Give me a moment…right. Listen. Are you listening?”
“I guess.”
“Nostalgia is a liar, Cheng Xiaoshi. When you look at the past, it always looks better than the moment you’re living in, because there’s an uncrossable gulf between you and it. But there has never been anything better in my life than the moments spent in the sunroom where we did nothing but lounge around, or nap, or lose video games to Qiao Ling. There has never been anything better in my life than the both of you, but if I were given the choice between reliving those days or making new memories with you in the present, then I know what I would choose.”
It was, perhaps, the most open that Cheng Xiaoshi had ever heard Lu Guang be. He leant forward again, looking his friend in the eye properly. He drank in the sight of him, broken and bruised and gaunt, but gloriously alive in a way Cheng Xiaoshi had not thought possible three weeks ago, and it broke something inside him.
He rocked forwards onto the bed with a shuddering sob, and despite his stitches, despite his IV and his tubes and his ruined body, Lu Guang still put his arms around him. Still drew him close, still held him the same way he had the night Cheng Xiaoshi punched him hard enough to send him tumbling.
The memory of that picture resurfaced again, Lu Guang holding the basketball, Qiao Ling with her distorted expression, Cheng Xiaoshi in the bottom half of the frame. Through his sobs, he laughed. “So, what you’re saying is…you really like to stop and smell the roses?”
“Living in the now isn’t so bad,” Lu Guang said, and though Cheng Xiaoshi couldn’t see his face, he could hear the smile in his hoarse voice. “Even if all we do is spend our time in the past.”
“Maybe after this,” Cheng Xiaoshi mused, “we could do more photoshoots for clients instead of time-jumping.”
“With what clientele?”
“The ones we’re going to get by smothering your handsome face all over the shop ads.”
“I’m not sure advertising someone who looks like death will do much for our business.”
“You’ll look better by then,” Cheng Xiaoshi said. “We’ve got to get the killer before we do that, anyway, so we can let everyone know you’re actually, you know, not dead.”
Lu Guang laughed above him, only to tense when it likely pulled at his wound. He took a moment to recover before asking, “Feeling better now?”
Better was hard to quantify. Of course, part of him was still crushed and it would be until the entire case was put to bed, but compared to minutes ago, it felt like a weight had been lifted from his chest. Breath came easier. Lu Guang was warm against him despite the cold. He was alive. He wasn’t going to leave. In the back-and-forth of their conversation, it almost felt normal.
Things went silent between them. Cheng Xiaoshi stayed there for an unknowable amount of time, right up until Lu Guang’s arms went lax around him. He stayed a few seconds longer, before opening his mouth again to speak.
“If you’d known,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, then stopped, searching for the courage to ask the question. “Do you remember the classroom?”
The answer came delayed, but Lu Guang sounded lost when he said, “Classroom?”
“Oh, sorry, that was totally out of context. Uh, when we were in high school, after we played basketball that one time. I think I was hanging out there and you came in. Do you remember that?”
He extracted himself carefully from Lu Guang’s hold. When he looked up, he found that his eyes had gone a little glassy, a little gauzy, the kind of look Cheng Xiaoshi had seen on him too many times in the ICU when he was awake, but not really awake. He feared for a moment that he’d lost him to whatever crap they had in the IV, or just general exhaustion from exerting himself, but then he nodded, a slow, imperceptible movement. “Yeah. You had a camera. I’d left a book behind.”
“Oh, so you can remember that, but not what happened yesterday?” Cheng Xiaoshi’s teasing seemed to fall on deaf ears, though, as Lu Guang only blinked languidly. “Never mind. I should let you rest.”
“No…say what you wanted to say.”
It felt stupid now he’d had a moment to ruminate on it. But Lu Guang was fading fast, whatever he said wasn’t something he’d be likely to remember, so he carried on anyway. “I think it was the first time we talked properly, and I can’t really remember most of the small stuff we said, but…if you knew then that this would happen, that you’d end up here, would you still have talked to me that day?”
Lu Guang’s eyes closed, head lolling forward. It was what Cheng Xiaoshi had expected, but it was still a little disappointing. He stood putting his hands on Lu Guang’s shoulders to begin the gentle work of getting him lying flat again—only for his eyelids to flutter at the touch.
“I think,” he said, “that I would have done it even if I’d thought I’d die here.”
Then, he was gone again, sleep claiming him swiftly. Cheng Xiaoshi wordlessly laid Lu Guang down, drawing the blanket back over him. Then, he sat back in the chair at the bedside, counted his breaths, and wrapped his arms around himself.
You’re loved, he thought to himself, again, again, again. It was something he’d never really believed, not until now. Even Lu Guang and Qiao Ling’s constant companionship hadn’t been able to convince him of it, but this—this did. And though it had been dreadful, though he’d lived through horror and fear and despair, Cheng Xiaoshi realised that Lu Guang was right.
No matter how he much he relived his past, he would never find that single reassurance there. It was only in the present he could make his peace. Only by living in the moment could he be satisfied. Only in smelling the roses could he realise the beauty of it all.
~x~
Spring brought with it singing birds, budding flowers, a closed case, and Lu Guang.
Cheng Xiaoshi and Qiao Ling took him home together on one crisp morning, the three of them riding the taxi with a boba tea for each of them. Lu Guang had filled out in the last month, not quite at a healthy weight but healthier, the clothes that Cheng Xiaoshi had grabbed out of his wardrobe fitting far better than they would have during the worst of it. Sat in the back of the taxi, it was close enough to normality that it was almost enough to think that none of it had ever happened, that it was just another ordinary day.
And maybe it was, the first in what would hopefully be a long string of them. The taxi parked in front of the photo studio, the driver gave them his well-wishes, and then he was gone.
It was just them and the photo studio.
“I never did ask about the couch,” Lu Guang said suddenly, looking a little pale as he faced the shopfront. Cheng Xiaoshi figured it made sense; Lu Guang hadn’t been back since the night he’d been stabbed, while Cheng Xiaoshi had no choice but to sleep only a short distance away from the scene of the crime. It had desensitised him in a way he hadn’t realised.
“It was evidence for a little while,” Cheng Xiaoshi admitted. “Then I got rid of it with Captain Xiao Li’s help. Couldn’t be helped. Too, uh, stained.”
“The room probably looks empty without it.”
“Yeah, it did, which is why we begged Qiao Ling’s dad to pitch in for a new one. It’s mega comfy, swear!”
Qiao Ling nodded enthusiastically. “Super flumpy. Soft too. Dad spent a fortune on it, so you’ve got no choice but to love it!
Cheng Xiaoshi went in first, unlocking the door and shivering as the cold air of the studio hit him. He went to get the heating on, and found Lu Guang and Qiao Ling in the sunroom inspecting the new couch. His memories flittered back to that hideous night all those months ago, but he shoved them aside just quickly. The past was the past. The present was now.
And just like that, Lu Guang was home. The store stayed shut as they celebrated with breakfast and Qiao Ling’s laptop, where she brought up all the funniest viral videos she’d collected in the last few days. Hours melded together as they lounged in the company of one another on the sofa, trading anecdotes of the police station, the hospital, everything that had been missed.
Eventually, Qiao Ling left for home as evening fell, and Lu Guang, who was not allowed to lift anything heavier than his books and banned from strenuous activity for the foreseeable future (his next check-up) was banished to the bottom bunk.
“I can climb up,” he protested half-heartedly.
“I’m sure you can, but the doctor said you can’t, so don’t blame me,” Cheng Xiaoshi replied, launching his pillow at him. “Give it up, Lu Guang, you’re staying down there.”
“Your restless sleeping will keep me up all night.”
“Guess you’re gonna have to get used to it.”
“I’m going back to the hospital bed.”
“Oh? After all those complaints? All those nights of, I miss the bunk, Cheng Xiaoshi! I miss you rattling the bedposts, I miss you sleep-talking, I miss—”
“I never said that.”
“You did. Well, the missing-the-bunk part, anyway.” Cheng Xiaoshi snorted. “It’s not forever, just like the hospital ward wasn’t. You’ll get the top-bunk back eventually.”
Lu Guang grumbled something, but he wasn’t petty enough to argue a case he’d already lost, so it was with that they both burrowed into bed. Being up so high felt like a privilege, a novelty, and utterly wrong all at once. The ceiling was so close that if he reached out, he’d be able to brush his fingers against it.
But in the silence of the room, he could hear Lu Guang breathing, filling space that had been left hollow for too many months. Somewhere along the way he’d grown used to that silence, had learned to live with it, but he hadn’t realised just how much he’d missed it until now.
“Hey, Lu Guang?” Cheng Xiaoshi said, his voice made louder in the dark.
“Yeah?”
He’d missed this, too. The closeness, being able to call out and know he was there, not needing to pull up his phone and dial a number to reach him. “I never said it before, but welcome home.”
A beat. A moment so quiet that Cheng Xiaoshi maybe wondered if he was already asleep. But then his answer, quiet but firm, cut through the darkness like a gentle flame. “I’m home.”
~x~
Peace was fragile. Cheng Xiaoshi had learned as much as a child, where the transition between being a normal child and a parentless one had occurred in a heartbeat. Normality was a butterfly’s wing, delicate, beautiful, in danger of being torn by any number of outside factors.
Peace was fragile. That lesson had been reinforced the day they went from two guys running a less-than-ordinary photo studio to the targets of a serial killer. Cheng Xiaoshi had forgotten many things from that night—the time on Lu Guang’s bloodied watch, if it was dark or light at the window, the twist of Qiao Ling’s voice drunk on power—but the crisp air of the sunroom stayed with him, the coppery scent of blood, the sticky consistency as he pressed his hand to a still-bleeding wound.
But it was past. Gone, just like every other terrible moment he’d lived through. That was not to say it didn’t haunt him; he’d spent enough nights staring at the ceiling after being jolted awake from a too-real dream to know the finer details might always stay with him. But a haunting was just that; a phantom of the past, something that he could maybe ignore, given time.
Days came, went. He divided his time between the present and the future, making money for the next month of rent through his usual means, and, occasionally, with a dive backwards. Qiao Ling still advertised their services, but Lu Guang had become pickier with what they did. Simple jobs; nothing that could attract danger to their doorstep—making lives better, but on a smaller scale.
Cheng Xiaoshi could live with that, he thought, as he pressed the shutter on a woman glancing to her left, her eyes bright and shining, a headshot to advertise her new novel. He hoped she would do well, and considered buying a copy for Lu Guang when it released.
Life went on. The shadows beneath Qiao Ling’s eyes gradually faded, her presence brighter every time she brought boba tea and news of their friends to their doorstep. Lu Guang was given the all clear for light exercise, and they switched bunks anew. Occasionally, there were hiccups. Qiao Ling calling up to say, not today after they’d made plans, or Lu Guang, as restless as he claimed Cheng Xiaoshi was, caught in a nightmare of the ICU again, but they made do.
Wounds healed into scars, and sometimes those scars, raised and irritable, were impossible to ignore. Cheng Xiaoshi had slapped Lu Guang’s hand away from his stomach enough times to know.
But peace, for all its fragility, was all the more beautiful because of it.
It was one Sunday afternoon, just as spring was trading places with summer. The shop was shut, and it was the time of day when families would be at parks, the sea, eating ice-cream on a pier somewhere or drinking ice-cold drinks beneath the shade of the tree. Cheng Xiaoshi towelled his hair dry as he wandered to the sunroom after taking his shower, his loose, cotton shirt and shorts enough to beat the oncoming heat.
He found Lu Guang on the floor a couple of feet from the sofa, a pillow behind his head as he laid directly in the sunlight, a book in his hands. The entire room had a golden hue that reminded Cheng Xiaoshi of another time, another place, rambunctious shouting from somewhere below, balls bouncing on a court, a perfectly normal day some six years past.
“What’cha doing on the floor?” he asked.
“Best place to catch the sun,” Lu Guang replied. It could have been a lie; the couch was not shaded, or it could have been the truth; maybe the couch just didn’t have enough. Cheng Xiaoshi had long since stopped questioning him when it came to things like this, not when they all had their own neuroticisms born from that day. If Lu Guang didn’t want the couch, then he didn’t want the couch. It was no big deal.
Cheng Xiaoshi stopped in the middle of the room, looking down at his friend. He basked in his presence, in his dark eyes as they focused hard on the words before him, in the glow of his white hair in the sunlight, in the furrow of his brow when he flipped a page. Handsome, he’d always called him, always jokingly, but the truth of the matter was that he’d always meant it.
“You’re staring,” Lu Guang said, eyes not leaving his page. “What did you want?”
A hundred excuses came to mind. Wanted to ask what you wanted for dinner, wanted to see if you wanted to watch a show, wanted to ask your opinion on a shirt, but the truth slipped out instead. “Just to see you.”
Lu Guang raised his eyebrows. “You do that every day.”
“Yeah, well. What can I say? You’re nice to look at.”
Cheng Xiaoshi laughed as Lu Guang clicked his tongue. The heat was pleasant, dust motes floating like gauzy stars in sun’s rays. He was hyper-aware of every aspect, the exact shade of brown as light bounced from the floorboards, Lu Guang’s laptop whirring on the desk where it had been abandoned in rest-mode, the curl of his wet hair against the nape of his neck. All the fine details he would lose to time.
But right now, he knew them intimately. It felt like the right moment to ask a question that had been hanging over him. “Do you remember when I came to see you in the hospital?”
A soft snort. “You came a lot of times.”
“Okay, yeah, I did, but I mean one specific time. The first time I brought you books.”
Lu Guang dropped his current novel face-down onto his chest, eyes flicking up and right as he thought. “I think…that was the time you brought food, and asked me if it was okay to eat it. Because I was still on the tube, right?”
“That’s the one.” Cheng Xiaoshi crossed the room, sitting cross-legged at his side as he tossed the towel aside. “You remember what we talked about?”
Another furrow of the brow. “Something about time?”
He wondered if this was how Lu Guang had felt, the day after the party when he’d woken up and said, “Do you remember what you asked me last night, Cheng Xiaoshi?” Had he been frustrated, beneath that calm veneer? Had he been desperately hoping that he had remembered?
“A lot of our conversations were about time,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, no longer feeling like following up on it. It was months ago now. Even if he hadn’t been on a hundred different drugs, it would have been a stretch to imagine he would recall it. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine, I was just interested in if you’d managed to get any of those memories back.”
“Hm.” It was a non-committal sound. Wondering if he would go back to his book, Cheng Xiaoshi drew his phone from his pocket and popped open a strategy game to distract himself. He’d just gotten into a campaign, sliding units about the screen when Lu Guang said, “Did you ask me about high school?”
Cheng Xiaoshi paused, the unit he was holding hovering over the target. “Uh, yeah, I did.”
“About…if I would still have spoken to you, even if I knew what would happen.”
Swallowing thickly, Cheng Xiaoshi closed the app. He let the phone hang in his hand, unable to look Lu Guang in the eye. “So you do remember.”
“I thought I dreamt it,” Lu Guang admitted, drumming his fingers against the wood floor. “I had a lot of conversations with you and Qiao Ling that I don’t think ever happened. But apparently this one did. Before you ask, yes, I meant what I said to you. It wasn’t drug-induced, or whatever stupid justification you’re thinking up.”
Cheng Xiaoshi’s heart pounded hard against his ribcage. He flopped backwards, head hitting the remaining space on the pillow, Lu Guang’s hair tickling his cheek as he pressed his face into his. “Cheng Xiaoshi—” Lu Guang began, both fond and irritated, only to cut himself off when Cheng Xiaoshi threw his arm over his chest. They laid there a moment, just the two of them, breathing, breathing, breathing.
“Alright,” Lu Guang said. “Let me try then. If you knew about the outcome, would you still have carried on the conversation that day?”
There was no question about it. For every low moment, a higher one came. For every past happiness, there was a moment of crippling despair, but the same also rang true for the present. For the sunlight, for the motes of dust, for the press of warm skin against skin, Qiao Ling’s laughter, Lu Guang’s reassurances. For all of it, and this singular moment, Cheng Xiaoshi would do it again, again, again.
“Yeah,” he said, his phone forgotten next to him, the urge to snapshot and preserve the moment long since having dissipated. “I would.”
Summary: The world is coming to an end for the fourteenth time in a fortnight. Penniless, homeless, and friendless, Kaveh decides to ride out the apocalypse by drowning himself in alcohol.
Enter Alhaitham, but whether he holds salvation or the second coming of Khaenri’ah in his hands is another matter altogether.
AO3
1 / 2
Kaveh didn’t want to open his eyes.
It felt like a Grounded Geoshroom had decided to make a home in his skull, thumping its hefty legs against his brain. His mouth was drier than the desert, and, wherever he was, it felt like his upper half was hanging off a cliff-side. Hunger tormented his stomach, gurgling with every movement, no matter how small. Hungover once again. Fourteenth time in two weeks.
He pried his eyelids apart with great effort. Beams of filtered sunlight filled the room, revealing thousands of dust motes, each dancing as if they could hear a private, merry tune. Kaveh blinked, noting an upside-down table opposite him. It was stacked high with books, the pile leaning dangerously to one side. How bizarre, he thought, that the books didn’t just crash down to the floor above them. How bizarre that there were even books at all, given they were a rarity in Sumeru.
But the stacks didn’t stop there. No, they were everywhere, all over the ceiling, and they weren’t even tidy stacks at that. Misshapen, hazardous, on the verge of tipping over. A single tremor and they would face the great book tsunami. And that was before Kaveh even got started on the furniture, the tones of wood mismatched, the textures all wrong—
He realised, suddenly, that he was the one upside down, half-hanging off the couch he was on, his hair aloft as his head nearly hit the floor. Eyes wide, he scrambled to right himself, finding himself caught up in a plain green blanket and a bundle of pillows. His head pounded at the jerky movement, and he moaned with a hand pressed to his eyes at the intensity.
It all came crashing back to him with horrifying clarity, which was somehow worse than waking up not knowing where he was. He knew whose blanket this was. He knew whose hazardous book-stacks these were. He knew whose house he’d found himself in, and every reminder had him cursing the universe itself for playing such a cruel joke.
The world hadn’t ended, but he wasn’t sure if that was the best outcome here.
Untangling himself from the mess he’d made of his makeshift bed, Kaveh slowly got to his feet, careful not to knock into anything. The place was a disaster-zone in the making, as a quick survey of the room revealed that it was not just books that were strewn everywhere. Papers, writing increments, pieces of stone inscribed with undecipherable languages that were no doubt research topics. How Alhaitham hadn’t killed himself in a avalanche of clutter, Kaveh didn’t know. More intriguing was how his former friend actually found anything he needed when there didn’t seem to be any logic to the crazed mess. It irritated Kaveh like an itch beneath the skin, but there was nothing to be done.
If this was how Alhaitham liked to work, then so be it. He’d proven time, time again that he wouldn’t change.
Quietly, Kaveh stepped around the mess. It was only when he reached the kitchen that he remembered Alhaitham never slept with his aids in, and that too likely hadn’t changed. Thusly, he commenced clattering about with renewed vigour, looking for a glass and then running the tap. The water was glorious on his tongue. He felt his energy return, like someone had cut a Tumor of Withering from his chest.
The question was, now what? Was he supposed to leave without a word? Wait for Alhaitham to wake so they could exchange a few volatile turns of phrase? Maybe he could leave a note amidst the mess for him to find in a week from now when he finally tidied up, or just pin it to the table. Kaveh thought and thought, but none of the options seemed appealing, not when there was absolutely nothing waiting for him beyond the front door.
He returned to the living room and sank back onto the sofa, head in his hands. His stomach rumbled again. He still had a little Mora left for food, but it was fast running out. Maybe he could stay for breakfast…?
But the last thing he wanted was to owe Alhaitham even more, so taking from his stores while he was still asleep was out of the question. That meant he had to wait, but how was he supposed to fill time? Find a hairbrush and fix the bird's nest he had atop his head? A fine idea, but he had no idea where Alhaitham kept one. Draw? He had his sketchbook, filled with designs and doodles and the tattered remnants of the years he and Alhaitham had been close, but he didn’t feel like designing in an environment this disordered.
Maybe if he just shuffled some of the piles around…yes, Alhaitham could hardly complain if he just put them out of his own view. He started grabbing books, casting his gaze over titles that were just as forbidden as he expected. So much about language, about old tongues long since lost. It was a miracle Alhaitham was a free man; one wrong set of eyes on what he had here, and his comfortable life as the Scribe would be over before he knew it.
But then Kaveh found other books, psychology, mirrors, human subconscious, and general fiction all randomly piled with no real rhyme or reason. Alhaitham seemed to read whatever he could get his hands on, romance, adventure, crime, even the odd light novel from Inazuma. Kaveh stared at the aptly titled I’m Fighting Slimes In Another World, But Now I’ve Found Love! and wondered if he still had alcohol in his system.
Putting all of these books back in one pile didn’t sit right with him, not when there was a bookshelf right across from him. Though it was made of completely different wood to the table and was therefore an eyesore, Kaveh put aside his reservations and began organising. Topic, size, ordered alphabetically by author…surely it had to make more sense than whatever had been in place before.
“What,” came a voice behind him, mildly bleary with sleep, “have you done to my house?”
Kaveh nearly leapt out of his skin. He twisted with a book in hand to face Alhaitham, who’d somehow snuck up on him, and slammed it against his chest. “I’ve made it actually look presentable to guests, you’re quite welcome!”
Alhaitham took the book in his hand, raising his eyebrows when the cover of Fighting Slimes! stared back at him. “And this one is out because…?”
“Oh, don’t give me that! I wasn’t reading it, you’re the one who owns it in the first place!” Kaveh crossed his arms with a huff. “I can’t draw in these conditions, so I cleaned up! Consider it my thanks for letting me stay the night.”
“I’d have preferred something useful, but fine. You look like someone dragged you through the forest backwards. Why didn't you use the bathroom?"
"I didn't want to traipse around your house without permission!"
"Seriously? Did you at least eat?”
“No. I don’t know what kind of ruffian you take me for, but I wasn’t about to steal from your kitchen.”
“Then go make something instead of standing around in my living room. I don’t know why you waited. If I wanted you to starve, I’d have left you in the tavern.”
“You first. It’s your kitchen, after all.”
“I’m not having this argument with you. Go. Now.”
Kaveh thought, privately, that whichever god had seen fit to set off the line of dominos that resulted in this moment deserved nothing but a warm pillow for the rest of eternity. He grumbled beneath his breath and went to crack eggs into a pan. Eggs! In Alhaitham’s kitchen! What greater shame could there be?
When Kaveh came mooching back to the living room with a plate and fork in hand, he found Alhaitham still at the bookshelf, examining it intently. A little of his pride returned to him, and he puffed up like a peacock. “Oh! Do you like what I’ve done?”
“You put the novels at the top and the research topics at the bottom. Do I look like I want to be flat on the floor every single time I need something?”
And there went all that pride once more, escaping him like air from a popped balloon. Kaveh dropped onto the couch he’d previously occupied. “I don’t want to hear anything about organisation from a man who bought a Brightwood bookshelf and an Adhigama table.”
“And does that bother you, Kaveh?”
“It does! You have the aesthetic sense of a Fungi! That is to say, absolutely none!”
He forked some of the fried egg into his mouth, and, oh, that was even better than the water. His tastebuds sung, his body crying out for more. He answered it by shovelling more in. Alhaitham snorted, then shook his head. “Maybe don’t starve yourself next time. Instead of wasting money on drinking yourself into a hole, why not spend that Mora on something worthwhile?”
The short answer, of course, was that nothing right now made Kaveh feel good. So what, if he actually did all that, if his next project was successful, if he could buy a new roof to put over his head? It still wouldn’t be home. Nowhere would be, nowhere could be.
“I’ll be honest, Alhaitham,” he said. “More honest than I should be, anyway. We said that I’d figure all this out in the morning, but I don’t even know where to go anymore. My name carries itself, certainly, but that’s all I have.”
Alhaitham sat on the chair opposite him, leant forwards, hands clasped. His brow was furrowed, deep in thought. “I don’t understand you,” he said finally.
“Oh, trust me, I’m well aware of that. Likewise, by the way.”
“As you’ve made quite clear. " Alhaitham fell silent again, clearly still thinking. "Your name is power. I don't know why you won't embrace that."
"And so we come back to the original issue. Let's just accept we'll never agree and go from there."
The conversation lulled, Alhaitham's brow creased as his brain carried on ticking. Time ran long, seconds stretching onwards, onwards, onwards. Kaveh finished his breakfast, clasped and unclasped his hands awkwardly, then cleared his throat. “Not to interrupt this riveting discussion, but don’t you have work?”
“Day off. Why do you think I was looking to buy alcohol last night? And here I thought you were intelligent, Kaveh.”
“You—! Ugh.” Kaveh threw his hands up. “I don’t know why I bother saying anything to you.”
Alhaitham narrowed his gaze. His eyes were piercing, and once, Kaveh had found that a little attractive, how light changed their colouring. Green? Turquoise? Maybe even a little orange. They stole his breath even now. Time stuttered and stopped. It seemed to have a habit of doing that when Alhaitham was involved.
"This is ridiculous," he began, making to get up. "I really should be off."
“If you’ve got nowhere else to go,” Alhaitham cut in, “if you really did just throw everything away in the pursuit of the unattainable, then you need a place to stay.”
"Are you really so interested in talking me around in circles, in us having the same back-and-forth over and over? I know that, you know that, but I told you, I don’t—”
“Stay here.”
Kaveh stopped short, mouth half-open. He gripped the fabric of his trousers at the knee, heart knocking painfully against his ribcage. He’d misheard. Surely he’d misheard. They weren’t friends, and even if they were, Alhaitham would never offer such a thing without expecting something hefty in return. He was not inclined towards charity or kindness without transaction, and never had been.
“What do you want?” Kaveh asked, suspicion creeping into his voice. This was a trap. It had to be. “I know you, I know what you’re like, and I know you’d never—”
“You’re right.” Straight to the point as always, no sugar to coat his words. Alhaitham as he always was, entirely unapologetic. “I’d expect rent, of course, but I’m sure a fine architect like yourself could make it up—if you somehow reign in your unsustainable altruistic streak.”
Kaveh dropped his head into his hands again, fingers massaging his temples. This was too sudden. Too out-of-character for the man he thought he knew. He waited for the punchline, for Alhaitham to break into hawkish laughter and tell him he was just joking, that he didn’t mean it, that he was just stringing him along. But, as Kaveh had come to learn over the past hours, days, weeks, years, life never adhered to the scenarios he made up in his mind. Reality and fantasy were just like him and Alhaitham, ever at odds with one another, ever clashing.
“Why would you do that for me?” Kaveh asked, not looking up, unable to meet his gaze.
“Because if I don’t, who else will? You might be the most charitable man in Sumeru, but it won’t stop people taking advantage and leaving you on the wayside.”
“And you’re not going to take advantage? You can’t think I believe this is out of the goodness of your heart.”
He lifted his head again slightly, peering at Alhaitham over the top of his fingers. His former friend was sat back, arms crossed, like he hadn’t just presented Kaveh with a decision that could make or break him. They locked eyes, and Kaveh couldn't breathe beneath his gaze.
“No matter how I approach this, you’d think the same,” Alhaitham said, casual, but careful, like he was choosing words carefully for once instead of using them to chip away at Kaveh’s confidence. “So whatever you think of me, there’s a spare room. Stay and pay rent, leave and do whatever you’re going to do, it makes no difference to me—but you said it yourself that you can’t bear an empty house. Therefore, it’s only logical that you’d take the offer.”
Alhaitham stood, offering his hand. Kaveh looked at it, then at Alhaitham himself. Still, he couldn’t figure out why. What reason did he have for giving him a place in his life again, when they both had every reason to throw each other away? Every path he went down seemed too convoluted, too outlandish, too inherently wrong for the way Alhaitham thought.
So he threw away his theories. Threw away the dressing. Threw away any attempt at trying to guess Alhaitham’s thoughts and returned to his own. If it were Kaveh in Alhaitham’s place, Alhaitham in Kaveh’s, why would he do this? Why would he offer a place to the one person who’d cut him to the core?
And all he could think was, because I’d want to make my house a home again, because I’d want to know there was someone in the other room, no matter who it was.
"This isn't a joke, is it?" Kaveh asked, feeling a little foolish, vulnerable, small.
"I'm not inclined towards humour and you know it," Alhaitham replied. "I'm not going to start stand-up for the sake of getting a cheap shot in."
That, at the very least, was true. Kaveh reached up, trying not to seem hesitant even if a small part of him still doubted the validity of Alhaitham's offer. “So much for just tonight. I’m more surprised you didn’t boot me out the moment you woke up.”
“How could I ever turn out a man who’d clean up without me asking?” Alhaitham asked as they clasped hands, a hand-shake to seal the deal.
“Har-har, and you say you're no comedian! But! If I’m to pay you rent, if this is really going to happen, if I'm to let myself to accept, you must at least allow me to sort the furniture! I won’t stand for mismatched pieces.”
“Picky for a man who was looking to the streets for a bed only hours ago,” Alhaitham snorted, as close to a laugh as he ever got. “But for once, I’ll acquiesce. So long as you’re paying for it out of your own pocket.”
Kaveh expected nothing less, but it meant that now, he had a goal to work towards. Alhaitham’s hand was firm against his, and it felt like an unspoken promise between them. He could do this. He could do it.
And when night came anew, when he and Alhaitham were busy arguing over the colour of the walls, how the shade was just off enough to clash with the carpet, there was no time to be miserable, no time to despair. Instead, it felt like a semblance of normality, of the kind of human connection that Kaveh had lost the moment he'd been left in Sumeru on his lonesome. Tonight, he would sleep on the sofa, but in time he would purchase a bed, a desk, enough trinkets to turn his half of the house into a home all of his own.
And, tonight, when he did sleep on the sofa, there would be someone else. The friend Kaveh had brutally parted ways from, the friend he still longed after all these years later. The truth was it was a wound that had never quite scarred over, a wound that Kaveh continued to pick at even now. In this home, maybe there would be a chance at reconciliation once more, a chance to put right what had once went wrong.
But most of all, when he closed his eyes and let sleep take him, it was with the knowledge that for the first time in fifteen days, the world would go on.
Summary: The world is coming to an end for the fourteenth time in a fortnight. Penniless, homeless, and friendless, Kaveh decides to ride out the apocalypse by drowning himself in alcohol.
Enter Alhaitham, but whether he holds salvation or the second coming of Khaenri’ah in his hands is another matter altogether.
AO3
1 / 2
The world was ending for the fourteenth time in a fortnight, and Kaveh was riding out the apocalypse in the only place he could cope; the tavern. Alcohol he couldn’t afford stared at him pityingly, though nobody else gave him the time of day. People moved around him, each caught up in their own joy, their own excitement, their own fun. They had no idea of the cataclysm happening in their space, no idea of how everything was crashing down.
And why would they, when he was the only one caught in the disaster zone?
He pressed his fingers into his temples, begging for the alcohol to dull his thoughts and numb his emotions. It had worked every other day these past two weeks, had let him grow merry and cheerful alongside his fellow tavern-goers, had returned his lost drive and passion to him. Tonight, it hadn’t had the same effect. Instead, all he’d succeeded in fogging was his own inhibitions, in driving his misery further into his skin, in loosening his lips when there was nobody left to talk to.
It was his own fault. There was no one else he could blame, not when he was the one who’d driven everyone away, when he was the one who’d built his life’s work over a Withering Zone, when he was the one who’d thrown everything away to resurrect it from the ashes elsewhere. It was his fault that he was penniless, friendless, homeless, and it was his fault that there he had no family to turn to either. Just another error to add to his comedy of them. Just another day of being the grand architect, Kaveh.
A shadow descended over him, someone bodily blocking the light. Kaveh didn’t say anything at first, too busy caught in his own melancholy. But the minutes drew long and the presence remained, oppressive and overbearing. Kaveh drew in a careful breath, straightening up on the stool he occupied, every joint creaking. The bag he wore, containing just his sketchbook, pencils and last couple of Mora, weighed on him. “Ever so sorry to bother, but you’re quite in the way—”
Kaveh stopped short as he locked eyes with the man who’d been standing over him. First, he doubted his vision, which had become hazy with inebriation. Then, the colours sharpened, a shade of green he associated with anger and finality, the golden glint of hearing aids that heralded words Kaveh never thought he’d hear from the mouth of a friend. Dread, cold and heavy, settled in his gut. His hands began to tremble. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.
He was too sober for this.
“You’re drunk,” Alhaitham said, his tone stiff and cool, just as Kaveh remembered it. It had been years since Kaveh had last seen him, yet that hadn’t changed in the slightest. Neither had the brutal cut of his eyes, the eternal down-turn of his mouth, the fierceness of his frown. Like he was looking down on him. Like he was always looking down on him.
“How could you tell?” came Kaveh’s curt response, It escaped him before he could think better of it. This had to be a joke, Celestia itself having a cosmic giggle at his expense. The world was ending for the fourteenth time in a fortnight, and now his once-best friend was watching from a front-row seat.
“You’ve slurred every word you’ve said.” Alhaitham said, which was unfair. Kaveh was certain he was speaking with as much eloquence as he always did. There was no obvious emotion on former friend’s face, though that meant little. Alhaitham felt just as strongly as everyone else, he just didn’t like to show it. “You don’t look well.”
Kaveh didn’t want this conversation. He didn’t want this particular ear to listen in on his woes. He didn’t want Alhaitham in any way, shape, or form, which was a lie through and through. Beneath the dread, beneath the anxiety, beneath the cold horror of being perceived by one person Kaveh hated most, there was a hint of hope, a hint of relief. Time felt frozen. He was fumbling, fumbling, fumbling.
(How often had he wished for a chance meeting like this? One where Alhaitham dropped his mask and apologised for cutting Kaveh to the bone, one where Kaveh apologised for biting back in turn? How often had he wondered, could things have been different? Was there a way out of that conversation where we didn’t stab each other in the jugular, only to flee before we bled out?)
“Kaveh?” Alhaitham said.
The simple sound of his name shattered Kaveh’s resolve to keep his mouth shut. “The world is ending.”
He expected Alhaitham to scoff, laugh, roll his eyes. He did none of that. He didn’t drop his mask and apologise either, because life didn’t play to a script. Instead, he drew up the stool next to Kaveh, resting his head on his hand, elbow against the countertop. “It always is when you’re involved.”
“Typical!” Kaveh turned away from him, grabbing hold of his drink once more. “Writing this off as me just being me, is that it? Of course you are, that’s what you always do, always did. You only ever look at things from your own blunted perspective.”
But he doubted that the moment it left his mouth, uncertain if that was truly the case anymore. Kaveh could see his own reflection in the glass. He looked no different to normal, maybe slightly flushed, but otherwise himself. He didn’t look homeless. He didn’t look distressed. He didn’t look like a man who’d lost everything, but Alhaitham had still approached. Had still sized him up. Had still said, you don’t look well.
“Why are you even here?” Kaveh asked. It came out more helpless than he would have liked.
“I came to get a particular drink,” Alhaitham replied. “And you?”
“I came to get drunk. You might have noticed I’ve succeeded.” Now Alhaitham had pointed out his slurred speech, Kaveh became self-conscious, slowing himself intentionally. He wondered just how many words Alhaitham’s ears were actually picking out. His aids, while incredible, were just that; aids. They enhanced sounds, but they were not infallible.
Alhaitham himself, on the other hand, was. His reply came as quickly as a knife in the dark. “And have you succeeded in much else, lately?”
Kaveh engaged his drink in a staring contest. He could name the tavern’s very own second floor as an acomplishment. The Palace of Alcazarzary. More. Project upon project, architectural might built upon architectural might. Alhaitham had to know that. Word travelled around and the Akasha Terminal did the rest. There wasn’t a person in all of Sumeru who didn’t know what Kaveh had achieved.
But at the end of the day, it meant nothing. The world was still ending. Kaveh was still penniless. Still friendless. Still homeless. His mother was too far away to call on. His father was even further still. No less than the heavens crashing into Teyvat would reunite them, and even Kaveh knew when he’d blurred dream with reality.
“Would it please you to hear that the answer is ‘no’?” Kaveh asked, feeling small. His hands were still trembling. His eyes felt hot. The alcohol wasn’t working. He was drunk, yes, but not in the way he wanted.
“Not particularly,” Alhaitham said, like it really did mean nothing. For some reason that irritated Kaveh more. At least, if Alhaitham had said yes, he could feel justified. He could even feel a little less terrible for taking the dagger that Alhaitham had put in him all those years ago and stabbing him in the back with it. “You always did like thinking the worst of me.”
“Lucky for me, then, that you don’t care in the slightest for what anyone else thinks.”
“Lucky indeed.”
He hadn’t changed. Neither had Kaveh, and that was both a comfort and a curse. Alhaitham was the Akademiya’s Scribe, and had been for years now. Kaveh was busy running himself into the ground with every completed project, and had been for years now. They’d both stagnated without the other present. It twisted Kaveh’s stomach into knots.
“If this is just a chance meeting, if I won’t see it you again past tonight, can I at least talk at you?” Kaveh said, hands clasped around his glass. He was going to regret this later, he already knew it, but his inhibitions were low enough to not care now. “You don’t have to listen. Turn your aids off if you’re so inclined. Just, just let me get this weight off my chest, because you’re right. I’m not well.”
Alhaitham didn’t reach up to his aids. He simply shrugged his shoulders, saying, “I’m rarely wrong.”
“You—ugh. Arrogant, self-important—forget it.” Kaveh took a breath, squeezing his eyes shut. Where did he even start? How was he supposed to fill in everything that had happened in the short amount of time Alhaitham would permit him? “Do you ever miss your parents?”
“Maybe I would, if I remembered them.”
Kaveh winced. Bad opening topic. Alhaitham had mentioned that before, a long time ago, before they’d fallen out. Unlike Kaveh, who’d lost his father at just the right age for it to destroy the foundations of his youth, Alhaitham had lost both his parents at just the right age for him to emerge unscathed from their passing. “Your grandmother, then?”
“Is this about your father?” Alhaitham said. “Because we’ve had this discussion before, and if I recall, it was our final debate.”
That was an unusually nice way of framing the death of their friendship. Kaveh rolled his eyes. “My mother remarried recently.”
“I’m happy for her,” Alhaitham said, which Kaveh knew was a nicety that he didn’t mean. He did that from time to time. Parroted phrases he knew he was supposed to say to appear friendly or placate the mood, though he’d never done it with Kaveh, not when they’d been friends. It upset him that he’d seen fit to do so now, but Alhaitham spoke again before he could snap at him. “What does that have to do with you drinking yourself to death?”
“It doesn’t.” Kaveh rested his head on the desk. “Alright. Maybe it’s a contributing factor, because she left me everything she had in Sumeru. The house, all to myself. Wonderful! Fantastic! Amazing! Except I couldn’t even open the front door without wanting to break down. It wasn’t my home. It hadn’t been since everyone left. It was just empty. I hated it.”
His chest felt crushed, like someone had taken his claymore and caved his ribcage in with it. It was the first time he’d ever admitted that fact aloud. It was the first time he’d let himself come to terms with the fact that the place he’d grown up in had become foreign and cold. He felt like he had shards of glass lodged in his skin. How had it ever come to this?
“Then leave it behind,” Alhaitham said, ever pragmatic, ever ready to cut straight to the heart of the matter without care for anyone else’s feelings. “You’ve never had any problem with doing that before.”
“That’s what my mother did.” Kaveh ignored Alhaitham’s attempt at instigating an argument and ground his teeth, unsure what exactly he was angry with. Himself, for not having the courage to do so? His mother, for doing so? Alhaitham, for showing up out of the blue and dredging up bad memories all of his own? “But the house isn’t even the problem, because it’s gone now. Everything is. All my Mora, all my passion, all my drive. I gave it all up for the Palace, and though I know it was worth it, I’m…”
Adrift. Dried up. Lost. He could fill the space with so many words, too many words, and so he left them unsaid. Alhaitham would know. He was too intelligent not to understand. It was what Kaveh had once found so brilliant about him, and on the flip-side, what he’d eventually come to loathe.
“Where are you sleeping tonight, then?” came the question that Kaveh didn’t want to answer. He kept quiet as to avoid it, but Alhaitham was nothing if not stubbornly persistent. “Kaveh.”
“I’ll figure it out somehow, don’t you worry about me.”
“I’m hardly worried.”
“Of course you’re not. You never are. I don’t understand you at all, I never have.”
“I could say the same about you. You push and push and push when you could give half the effort for double the reward. Why do you still choose to care so deeply about the little things when it only exhausts you?”
“Why don’t you care at all?” Kaveh was tired of the debate already. They would go in circles at this rate; they’d done it before, days spent going back and forth, the two of them trying to meet in the middle and instead skating right past one another. There had been a time, once, where they’d had something. Where they would talk and magic would happen, where Kaveh would grow excited to see him, where Alhaitham would acknowledge him across the halls of the Akademiya with more than just a raise of his eyebrows. Those memories were long in the past, long lost, just like Kaveh’s father or Alhaitham’s grandmother.
“If you think I don’t,” Alhaitham said, “then that’s your prerogative. Not mine.”
“If I think you don’t,” Kaveh said, lifting his head from the table, his voice rising like the tide, “then that’s your fault, not mine!”
The swift outburst drew attention. Heads turned. Muttering drifted around them. Alhaitham had no interest in other people and it showed; he didn’t look bothered in the slightest that they’d attracted the gazes of half the tavern. Kaveh, on the other hand, still had enough of his dignity to feel shame. He turned away from Alhaitham, only to feel a hand grip him by his upper arm.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said, and, oh, Kaveh had missed that so much. Hearing his name on someone else’s lips, not out of adoration or admiration but just familiarity, someone who knew him for him, the man behind the architecture. “If you’re done putting words in my mouth, I need some air. So do you. Let’s get out of here.”
That hand was an anchor. Kaveh, ever so adrift, ever so lost, could do nothing but focus on its weight. “But I haven’t paid.”
“You have now.” A jingle of coins. Alhaitham, paying both of their ways. He didn’t give Kaveh the time to protest, pulling him from the chair like he weighed nothing.
Sumeru’s crisp evening air struck like a whip against Kaveh’s flushed skin. It wasn’t fair. Kaveh had dreamed of this meeting over and over, of the two of them dressing the wounds they’d left in the other, of starting again with an even playing field where they could finally understand. But it had only ever been a dream; for it to become reality, it required a world where they had both changed. Both grown. Both allowed themselves to see a perspective other than their own.
“We were supposed to be friends,” he whispered.
“What was that?” Alhaitham frowned.
“We were supposed to be friends!” Kaveh hissed, louder this time. “But you didn’t understand that, did you? All you do is pick and pick and pick! I tried, Alhaitham. I tried to hide my weaknesses, but you have never been able to help yourself! You saw straight through me, and then you struck where you knew it would hurt most!”
“Are you listening to yourself?” Alhaitham still sounded too calm, too at ease, too unbothered. “You’re far too emotionally fragile. You take everything as a personal attack when you know as well as I do that I—”
“I don’t know anything!” Kaveh had long since given up any pretence of subtlety. So Alhaitham wanted to put pressure on the fractures in his armour just like before? So be it. He would repeat the past in kind. “So what, if it wasn’t a personal attack? How am I supposed to differentiate between friendly fire and collateral damage when they all sound the same? You still hurt me, you don’t get any right to say that you didn’t!”
His stomach rolled. Nausea slammed into him. A moment later, he was doubled over and retching. Little more than bile came up; he’d eaten very little since the apocalypse had descended. Weak in the knees, he crumpled, pathetic, snapped in half.
But Alhaitham went with him. Scooped Kaveh’s hair out of the way, blocked prying eyes with his broad back. “It only hurt you because you didn’t want to hear the truth. You were too busy burying your head in the sand, just like always.”
And, as usual, Alhaitham was right. Because for all it had hurt, Kaveh had only snapped back that day because he’d been unable to refute it. Get your head out the clouds, Alhaitham had said, and it had been the only time Kaveh had heard his tone shift from stiff to outright cold. You work yourself to the bone for others because you feel like you killed your father. Your charity is born only from that very fact. It won’t bring him back, and it won’t make your life any easier. You have so much potential, but all this misplaced guilt just chains you in place. I can’t work with that.
It was agony to remember, the wound gaping, ripped open anew. Kaveh swallowed back his nausea. He had to patch it closed, had to stop the bleeding. “And what did you want me to do that day, Alhaitham? Just say, yes, you got me! Clap you over the back and tell you you were right?”
“I might have preferred that over what you actually said.”
Kaveh laughed, a broken sound slipping past his lips. “You still remember that?”
It was impossible. Alhaitham didn’t care. He had no interest in what people thought of him, whether they revered or hated him, it was all the same water off this fish’s back. Once, Kaveh had swung an arm around his shoulder in the Hall of Daena after overhearing a small crowd of students badmouthing him. He shook his head with a sharp click of his tongue before declaring, “The nerve of it! They talk and talk and talk, but they don’t know a thing, do they? You’re as emotive as anyone else, they just don’t bother to get to know you.”
Alhaitham had merely shrugged, far more interested in his book than he was the muttering of others. “It’s meaningless background noise.”
“Yet you still decided to listen in on it.”
“Because it might have been useful. If it was, I’d remember. If not, then just forget it.”
Yet he’d remembered this, the last words Kaveh had snapped at him across a table, throat raw from shouting, hands red where he’d slammed them against the wooden surface. Your intelligence belies your arrogance! Who are you to say you know me? Who are you to tell me I’m wrong for being kind, for daring to give a damn? Well! I suppose that’s my mistake for involving myself with you when everyone else already knew what kind of person you are. My mistake, for thinking you could be anything other than what you've already proved yourself to be!
Kaveh regretted it as he regretted most things he did when he was at his lowest. He regretted his impulsivity, regretted his tendency towards alcohol, regretted selling everything for the project, and then regretted regretting that too. His head was a mess. His heart was a mess. Everything was in pieces and he didn’t know where to even begin in putting them back together.
Alhaitham didn't give him an answer to his question. He still had one hand in Kaveh’s hair, still blocked the view with his own body. In the end, he changed the topic. “What do you want to do now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Go back to work. Build something new. Make someone happy. Make my dreams a reality. Realise every ideal I’ve ever held.”
“And how has realising your ideals gone for you so far?”
It was a brutal thing to ask when Kaveh was on his knees, still on the verge of dry-heaving, drunk and bankrupt and without a single thing to call his own. It was Alhaitham through-and-through. Kaveh sank against him, head knocking into his chest, eyes slipping shut. “How do you think, Alhaitham? You’re so smart. You already know.”
“So even with nothing, you’ll still carry on?”
“Of course I will. I’m not wrong. I just…made mistakes this time around. As we all do. I’m only human.”
“We all make mistakes,” said Alhaitham, to which Kaveh snorted softly. Hearing him say such a thing was ludicrous when the man had never made one in his life. “Where are you sleeping tonight, aside from on me?”
“Again with that question? I’ll figure it out.”
“While so drunk that you’re airing every grievance you’ve ever had?” Alhaitham shook his head. “Can you walk?”
Could he? Probably, if he put his feet under him and swallowed back his nausea. Did he want to? That was another matter entirely. “Is it not enough to just pray for the ground to open, for Sumeru to swallow me whole?”
“I wonder if it hasn’t already,” Alhaitham said, wrapping one of Kaveh’s arms around his shoulders. He was warm, a shield against the cool breeze. Kaveh didn’t have the energy to fight with him anymore, nor did he particularly want to either. How long could he shout before he ran himself ragged, before he said something else he couldn’t take back, before he became someone he wasn’t?
And Alhaitham seemed to agree on that, at least, because he didn’t instigate any further. He helped Kaveh up, kept most of his weight on him as he walked him away from the tavern. Kaveh’s stomach flipped again at the movement, but there wasn’t anything left to bring up.
“Where are we going?” he asked when he found his voice again. “I told you, I sold everything. I don’t have a home. You can’t take me there.”
“Contrary to what you think of me, I’m not going to just leave you here,” Alhaitham sounded a little put-out. It had to be a trick of Kaveh’s ears, the alcohol warping the sound. “You can sleep on my sofa, then work out whatever you’re doing in the morning.”
“Morning?” Kaveh snorted softly. “Didn’t I tell you, Alhaitham? The world is ending.”
“As it does every night. I’m sure there’ll be something to salvage in the morning.” Alhaitham paused, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Isn’t that what happened with the Palace of Alcazarzaray?”
And he was right. Right like always, infuriatingly and inevitably. But, for once, it was exactly what Kaveh needed to hear. Not cutting brutalities, not cruel truths. Just a kindness, rare, yet all the more valuable for it. It was unthinkable from Alhaitham, but reality all the same.
“I suppose so,” Kaveh replied. “Thank you.”
“What was that?”
“You heard me.”
“You mumbled.”
Kaveh didn’t know if he was joking or not, but relented in the only victory he would relinquish. “I said thank you. This is more than I could have asked for.”
“You’re welcome,” Alhaitham said, and there was his home down the street, sitting by its lonesome. It looked like any other place in the city, the same rounded roof, the same rainforest-green, the same familiar foundations. It had been theirs, once, before Kaveh slid like a fault line in response to the pressure and torn himself from Alhaitham’s side. Both of them had their names on the deed. If things hadn’t played out the way they had, maybe it would have still been theirs, even now.
But Kaveh had spent his entire life entertaining what-ifs, and he knew better than anyone that they helped nothing. So he kept quiet, let Alhaitham drag him through the front door, did his best to get his own boots off while Alhaitham pulled pillows from his bedroom to throw on the couch. It didn’t feel empty. It didn’t feel cold. The couch was flat, but the pillows were soft.
“Just for tonight,” Kaveh said as Alhaitham hovered in the doorway, fingers caught on the lamp as he made to turn it off. It was—as much as he didn’t want to admit it, it was a comfort. To know there was someone else who would be just a room away, someone else filling the space, someone else simply existing with him.
Summary: Crick may have survived the attempt on his life, but his wounded trust in the Sacred Guard and world at large is not something so easily salved.
But sometimes, the best medicine is having someone else to put your faith in.
[Canon divergence from Chapter 3 - Stormhail Route.]
AO3
The night always brought with it howling winds and bitter blizzards in Stormhail, Glacis’s hatred turning the darkness into an unforgiving mistress. “Return to your quarters before dusk,” said the captains of the Sacred Guard to those not assigned patrol. “Do not let yourself be caught short in the frozen drifts. You will regret it otherwise.”
Crick had always listened. It was what he was best at: following orders, carrying out his duties, deferring to authority. He wondered now if that had been a mistake. After dark, it wasn’t Stormhail’s violent weather that he’d needed to shelter himself from. It had been the Sacred Guard itself, striking like a storm in the night, its shadowed blade sliding between the gaps in his armour with intent to kill.
Perhaps that was what the captains had been trying to say all along, their warnings hiding something far more sinister. ‘Return to your quarters’, meaning, ‘keep your nose out of places it doesn’t belong.’ ‘You will regret it otherwise,’ meaning, ‘we will kill you if you don’t.’
Crick had the wounds to prove that fact. A gash at the back of his head where it had been slammed against the wall with intent to stun, or kill, it hasn’t mattered much at that point. A barely mended collection of holes in his chest where a sword had danced in and out, missing his heart by only breaths. Holy magic still swam in his blood, knitting, healing, soothing. Aelfric’s blessing, bestowed by the Inquisitor himself.
By the gods, he was lucky to be alive and he knew it.
Tonight in Stormhail was no different to any other. Outside, the winds roared, snow whipping around in a frenzy. Even within the warm library where Crick had set himself up the candles flickered at its might, the wooden ceiling creaking above. Still, the gauzy, comforting light didn’t go out. The Sacred Flame itself could only feel like this, he imagined. Safe. Inviting. Gentle.
His fingers touched the spines of musty books that had long since been abandoned, some cracked from where they’d once been read over and over. Not so much anymore; this section of the library, tucked away beneath ground, had grown dusty with disuse. Old texts filled with archaic folklore made their homes here, not quite forbidden enough to have been squirrelled away by the Sanctum Knights, but not quite appetising enough for scholars to want to devour.
Nothing quite called out to him, either. He stepped back from the shelf in quiet frustration, wincing as the slight movement jarred his wounds. He was not supposed to be up, not yet. That apothecary wearing Eir’s uniform had warned him as much. “You’re very fortunate. Had Temenos not found you when he did, we might be looking at a much more unfortunate outcome.”
She meant well. When stacked up against death, any other option seemed more appealing, but now Crick looked forward to a life where his faith was shattered, where he had to live with the knowledge that Captain Kaldena wanted him dead. There was no future with the Sanctum Knights anymore. No future as a Godsblade. Everything he’d worked for, built up, pledged his life to, lost the moment he put his nose where they’d not wanted it.
He didn’t regret it—not when his sacrifice had been for a cause more noble than even the knights he’d always admired—but the wound still ran deep. He’d always tried to believe in a better world yet it seemed determined to prove him wrong at every step. Seemed to want to choke the very life from his lungs with its oppressive nature.
Footsteps drew his attention, light, uneven, nearly lost beneath Glacis’ howling. Crick didn’t miss them. He turned in an instant, hand reaching for a sword he’d left behind at the inn. One near death experience had taught him to be wary of unexpected company. His heart raced as he realised he was trapped, back to a wall of shelves and nothing else.
A ghostly figure ambled down the steps, a staff in one hand functioning as a support while their other clutched the railing. White robes, silvery hair, a thin smile on a pale face. Not a threat, but a concern nonetheless. Crick started forward, only to wince as pain lanced through his chest.
The figure laughed. “Ah, ah, no sudden movements, Crick. Isn’t that what the bonemender ordered?”
“Temenos,” Crick felt exposed beneath his crafty gaze. His armour still remained at the inn alongside his sword, piled up in a heap which Ochette had taken possession of. In his plainclothes, just a simple white shirt and dark set of trousers, he had no shield. “You’re a fine one to talk of listening to bonemenders. The apothecary warned you too, did she not? You are too wounded to be out and about! What are you doing here?”
“Looking for a lost little lamb. I noticed he wasn’t quite where I left him, and I would be a terrible shepherd if I were to just leave him to it.” Temenos planted his staff against the wooden floor as he reached the bottom of the stairs, his breath coming a little too quickly. Cubaryi had done a number on him too; though he’d emerged the victor, it had not been without cost. Crick hadn’t seen the wounds, Temenos wouldn’t let him look, but he knew they existed nonetheless. “I thought we had an agreement, that you wouldn’t attempt to do this on your own again.”
“I wanted to do something,” Crick argued. “You and your companions, you’ve all been doing so much, while I—”
“You found evidence so valuable that it endangered your very life,” Temenos cut him off sharply. “Don’t try to tell me that was nothing. I know better.”
Crick knew, of course, that Temenos was right. Rarely was he anything but. It didn’t help Crick much; knowing he’d been unable to defend himself when it had mattered most haunted him. How would he be able to protect anything else if he'd already failed at the first step? He’d thought his last words were to be Temenos’s own name, rasped through bloodied breath. It was only through pure happenstance that he’d lived to speak again.
“You are angry with me,” Crick observed, noting the curve of his companion’s eyebrows, how they dipped inwards in a near-frown.
“Is that what it looks like to you?” Temenos shook his head stiffly. “Not in the slightest, Crick.”
He stepped forward, movement stilted like he was favouring his right side. Crick offered him an arm, which he declined. “No, no. We are both too injured to be leaning on one another, which is why we should very much still be in our rooms at the inn.”
“But you’re here anyway.” Crick glanced around. They were alone down here, the hour too late for anyone to risk their fingers in the cold for a couple of books. “You walked here in the snow?”
“No, I rode on a Cait across the drifts.”
“You found a Cait and caught it?”
“Oh, dear me. No, Crick, of course I walked here.” Temenos paused. “A Cait would be far too small to ride, you realise?”
Embarrassment tinged Crick’s cheeks red. “You are terrible, Temenos.”
“I am, aren’t I?” Temenos looked towards the shelf that Crick had previously occupied. “You were looking for more clues? You need not—I already know my next destination. Tropu’hopu is where I will find Kaldena. I told you this.”
Just recalling her, cloaked in the darkness, the gale at her back, was enough to send chills down Crick’s spine. His would-be murderer, stalking him like prey. “I just…wanted to be of assistance to you somehow.”
“Have you not already?”
It was a difficult question to answer, more so when Temenos stood injured before him. A cleric of the church should never have been on the front lines, an Inquisitor more so. The very fact he’d taken up his staff in search of battle meant that it fell to Crick to do his duty as a Godsblade and protect him, yet he’d failed. Instead, his cleric had become a knight in his own stead, stepping in to save Crick from the ravenous dark.
There was a bench between the wide spaced shelves. Crick dropped onto it, hunched forwards, hands clasped in front of him. Such a small movement, yet it sent tearing pains through his wounds. His head thumped unpleasantly; he’d had a mild headache ever since he’d woken in the apothecary’s care all those days ago. She’d washed his hair clean of blood, but he still imagined it there, crusted in the strands. Kaldena’s fingers, gripping hard at the roots as she dragged him by it.
“This is unlike you,” Temenos said. Crick looked up, meeting his cool gaze. He looked smaller in the hushed light, not quite the bombastic man who’d asked him to break down the door of a man’s home without any kind of warrant. He recalled, faintly, a hazy memory of ice and snow and desperation, familiar hands pressed to one of the holes in his chest and inciting fire despite the incantation calling on Aelfric. Temenos’s voice, a violin string on the verge of snapping beneath the stress, caught up in the early morning winds.
“I could say the same about you,” Crick replied. “You do not seem so…Temenos-like, to me.”
“Is that so?” A gentle silence filled the gaps between thought and speech. “Perhaps we do not know each other as well as we assumed.”
Temenos moved, stumbled lightly as something clearly gave him pains, but righted himself quickly enough. Crick didn’t get a chance to offer assistance; by the time he’d made to move, Temenos had reached the bench for himself. He sat at Crick’s side, resting his shoulder against his, the candles casting their oversized shadows against the wall.
“Shall I tell you a secret?” Temenos said. He followed up before Crick could answer. “Cubaryi saw no mercy from me. I would say I am sorry, but…it would only be a lie.”
Implications that Crick wasn’t fond of danced in his mind. Not because he judged Temenos for taking lives—he knew now that the world was not so kind for that—but because it meant that Temenos had dirtied his hands for him. “You should have reported it to the captains.”
“And have them cover it up? When Kaldena herself is our suspect? You’re not truly so naïve to think that we would not have gone the way of Vados had I done anything else, are you?”
Corruption was a contagion, and it spread like pestilence. The Sacred Guard could no longer be trusted, but Crick had wanted to believe in good. He’d held on until the very last moment, only to be proven a fool. “I just hoped it would be better. Was that so wrong?”
“Not at all, but I've found that reality is not so kind.” Temenos sighed. He was warm against Crick, shoulders bony, but solid. “I think I prefer this lamb without his armour.”
The comment threw Crick’s thoughts off their well-worn tracks. “What?”
“Do you remember crashing into me?” Temenos was wearing his bladed smile once more, a grin that never boded well for Crick but warmed him through regardless. “Pounds and pounds of heavy metal, slamming into this poor shepherd with nary a care! Castti told me I was fortunate to not have broken more of my ribs!”
“You—!” Crick sat upright, pain forgotten in the moment. “I injured you? By the gods Temenos, I didn’t mean to—”
Temenos erupted into a cackle that echoed through the empty shelves, only to clutch at his side at the movement. Crick, realising that he’d been tricked, huffed quietly, turning his head away. “I thought clerics were supposed to be honest, good men.”
“I was, once,” Temenos said, his smile dulling, hand still pressed into his side. “A quiet, unassuming little lamb myself. But, sometimes, Crick, wolves come into the flock and make a dreadful mess. And sometimes, lambs have no choice but to grow teeth of their own, to stop hiding behind their fears and take matters into their own hands.”
It was as close as Temenos had ever gotten to speaking of himself. For all the time they’d spent together, Crick still knew so little about him. He teased, made fun, deducted, became terrifying at night, but those were all surface-level details. His past was much a mystery; where Crick had laid his out plainly, Temenos had told him nothing at all.
But now, he had a feeling he knew why that was. “So that makes you a wolf in sheep’s clothing now?”
“If I were a wolf, Crick, I fear you wouldn’t have survived me.” There was that mischief-making grin again, a lilt to the words that heated Crick’s cheeks anew. “Rather, I’m the opposite. I prefer it that way. I’ll protect the flock on my own, even if they know not quite what I am.”
“You do not have to do it alone,” Crick spoke before he could think it through. “I…there is nothing left for me here. There cannot be, anymore. All that I have is the truth, which we must find. I am at your side, I can even be your blade, your shield, if you will have me. When I have nothing else now to put my faith in, please, Temenos, allow me this.”
Temenos wore so many faces, but the one he showed now was not one that Crick was familiar with. His smile, vanishing like ice beneath flame. His eyes, a fraction too wide, vivid green in the candle’s glow. His jaw tense. Some despairing flavour of horror had scrawled itself across his features, and Crick suddenly feared something worse than death itself; rejection.
“No,” Temenos said, voice caught on that single word in the same tenuous tone as it had been when Crick had lain dying, when Temenos had driven all of himself into the magic that had saved his life. Heart crushed, Crick retreated from him now, distance opening between them. “No, Crick, you will not do this to me. I have no need of a blade, no need of a shield—”
“I must apologise then, I fear I misread—”
“No.” Temenos’s fingers gripped his arm, then his shirt, his staff clattering to the floor as he abandoned it in favour of keeping Crick from escaping. “Stop running from me. I am your guide, am I not? Come back to me. Listen.”
Crick hesitated, his heartbeat on a rampage but now for a different reason entirely. Fear, but also want. He wanted this so badly it hurt, to have a place to belong, to believe the world could be better, to know there was someone who would take his faith and prove it was not misplaced.
Temenos didn’t speak. Instead, he moved, arms wrapping around Crick’s middle, head dipping down to rest against his shoulder. His voice, when he spoke, was terrifyingly close. “I want you as you are, Crick. Not as some weapon to be wielded, not as some armour to hide behind. You are not made for that. Stand at my side as yourself.”
Warm. Temenos blazed as the Sacred Flame did itself against him, Crick instinctively seeking his heat. Their shadows melded together on the wall, larger than both of them. Uncertain what exactly to do, he returned the embrace, feeling his pulse in his own throat.
“What can I offer you, Temenos?” he asked. “If I am not with you as a Godsblade, then…?”
“I thought you were dead,” Temenos said, which hardly seemed like an answer. “Even after I took you to Castti, she told me that you might not survive. Do you know what it feels like, Crick? To stand as witness to losing everything. Because I have lost time and time again. When she said those words, I was certain that there would be no might. I doubted your survival because that is what I’ve been taught. There is no hope in this world.”
“Temenos—”
“I took up my staff. Osvald caught up to me before I went inside. Throné and Partitio too. No words, they let me have my moment. I forgot my place in that battle, Crick. Healing? Aelfric’s blessing? I forgot all of it. I wanted answers more than I wanted anything else. I wanted the truth, and I got it. Then, I wanted her gone from this world for what she did. These wounds? I cared little.”
“Temenos—”
“You wanted an answer. Let this be it. You are a comfort I did not realise I needed.” Temenos’s full weight was against him now, arms lax but still encircling Crick’s waist, head pressed into the crook of Crick’s neck. “The very fact that you are here now is proof. Perhaps this world is not so hollow as I thought. Perhaps there is something worth trusting. I do not know yet, but, if you want to believe in good, I can try also.”
Crick’s eyes burned. An emotion he didn’t quite recognise swept him, throat closing. It became hard to speak, his voice made thick beneath the weight of his own words. “I would want nothing more than to stay at your side then, if you will have me.”
Temenos pushed himself from Crick’s embrace, hissing softly as he caught himself again. Crick touched his arm carefully. “Temenos?”
There was that familiar gleam in those green eyes, daring and teasing, but with a hint of something more. Desperation. “I want a promise worth more than words, little lamb. Forgive me, but as you know, doubt is what I do.”
So he wanted action, then. Crick hesitated, not entirely certain of how to show something so weighty. “What would prove it to you?”
“I want to see what your answer is, one you've decided for yourself.”
It was suddenly difficult to meet his eyes. Crick’s mind flittered through a hundred different, wild options before settling on something that seemed both outlandish yet infallible. He stammered as he spoke. “Would you allow anything?”
A snicker, so light that it could have been mistaken for the wind itself. “If it were you, I suppose I would.”
Crick took a breath, the act of steadying himself sending splintering pain through him, but he no longer cared. His hands travelled up, reaching for the hood of Temenos’s cloak. The fabric was thick yet soft between his fingers as he pulled it up and over his silver hair. There was nobody to watch, nobody to lay eyes on this, but he wanted no prying eyes on them regardless.
“Ah,” Temenos caught his gaze, touching his own hand to the back of Crick’s trembling ones, slender fingers pressing in. “So it would seem you do understand what I want.”
“Temenos,” Crick said, voice thin. “Please. I will lose my nerve if you tease me.”
“Alright, alright.” He paused. “But I must know, is this what you want, Crick? Do not feel like you’re being coerced. It is not my intention to misread this, nor to ask for something you wouldn’t want to give.”
He’d seen Temenos corner people in the darkness, information gotten in ways ill-befitting a cleric. Here, soft in the candle's glow, he didn't look anything like the man who took his staff to those who would not speak. “It is nothing of the sort. I—I give myself willingly.”
“Good. I would ask nothing else.”
The winds outside picked up. The candles flickered. Their shadows danced against the wall as Crick pulled Temenos’s hood forward and pressed their lips together, a silent promise, a hefty dedication. Hyperaware as he was, Crick heard and felt everything; the thudding of his own heart, the delicate push of his mouth against Temenos’s, the blood rushing in his own ears that overpowered Glacis’s cries.
It felt like prayer, like dropping down to his knees in worship. If the Sacred Guard were no longer the altar to which he could offer his life to, then this would be a worthy trade. When they broke apart for breath, Crick ducked his head, tears brimming in the corner of his eyes.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Not quite the response I expected,” Temenos said, his gentle laugh suggesting that, despite that fact, he was entertained. “But, you’re very welcome, my dear Crick. Now, we should away from here. If Castti wakes and finds us gone, we’ll be due an earful that I’m not quite up to.”
"No, I don't think I am either."
Temenos laughed. When he stood, he took Crick by the hand. "We must keep warm, on our way back. Stay close."
Crick followed without complaint; he knew now he would do so the ends of the earth if Temenos asked him to. The heat that warmed him thoroughly told him so; this was his place. There was nowhere else he would fit any longer.
Summary: Temenos navigates grief once again, messily, but with friends at his side.
Major spoilers for Temenos’s Stormhail Chapter 3 Route.
AO3
In the gauzy light of a crackling flame, Temenos warmed his hands and tried to direct his thoughts to an avenue worth wasting his time on walking.
The others moved in his periphery; their routines a familiar comfort. Osvald, a worn book in his hands as he read by the low-light, Partitio none-too-subtly stealing glances over his shoulder. Throné and Hikari, both cleaning blades with meticulous care as Agnea danced her steps around them. Ochette, scarfing back food with Mahina while Castti chastised their manners. Nothing had changed. Everything was the same as it had been a night ago, two nights ago, three.
Only, it wasn’t. The sun had set on the memorial service and Temenos had walked away with a promise held in his heart, yet now the night was here and the space at his side felt emptier than ever before. Seven companions to his name, and loneliness still threatened to gnaw a hole inside his chest. Seven friends to share his loss with, and the hollow in his heart grew bigger with every passing beat.
They gave him a wide berth, not because they didn’t care, but because he had deliberately asked them to. He knew that they would come if he called out, but the last thing he wanted to do was talk about it. Agnea had already seen the cracks in his carefully crafted shields the morning she’d come to him and asked why his eyes were red. If those fissures were left unattended, he would break apart entirely.
So, he sat, staff laid across his lap and his mind darting between the evidence he’d obtained. The Book of Night, a scrap of paper held tightly in bloodied fingers, Kaldena. Temenos's hand tightened around the weapon at the thought of her, Crick’s mangled body in his mind’s eye. Aelfric be damned, what he wouldn’t give—
“Revenge is a dangerous game,” Osvald said, not looking up from his book. “Play the board too long, and you’ll find yourself a different man than before.”
Temenos glanced his way, a wry smile dancing at his lips. Anger broiled on his tongue. “And aren’t you a fine one to be speaking of revenge, my dear Professor?”
The camp fell silent around them, every activity grinding to a sudden halt. Osvald cleared his throat, his hand stilling on the page he’d been about to turn. “I’d say I have more authority than most on the matter.”
“Would you, now? Then pray tell, what kind of man would I be, Professor? I’d love to know.”
He was being unfair, and he knew it. His bark had always been worse than his bite; fighting truly was not his forte. Throné let out a soft whistle in the silence that followed, while Partitio hopped up from the log he’d been occupying, coat rustling with the movement. “Now, now, hold your horses there, both of you! Ain’t nothin’ to be gained from a brush now, you hear?”
Osvald, never one to say more than was necessary, needed no further warning. Temenos let go of his staff and pressed his fingers to his temple. “Well said, Partitio. I think I will retire then. Do enjoy your evenings my friends.”
He stood, gathering his things, straightening his robes. In the morning they would carry on, forget this happened, take on the next issue at hand. Ochette had a lead near here too, didn’t she? Out here in the Flame-forsaken snow there was still something to do, and yet they weren’t staying at Stormhail’s inn. Instead, they were out in the open at Temenos’s insistence.
To save our leaves, he’d told them, but they’d all agreed too readily, hadn’t even put up a fight despite the extreme weather. Partito could haggle with anything so long as it had a pulse, and they all knew it. Money was no question. It was Temenos’s conscience that was the problem, how he couldn’t return to the room he’d slept in while Crick was beaten to death only a few streets over.
What had his final words been? Had he called out for someone to help him? Had he fought back? Temenos would never know, and it was that which haunted him most.
“Wait,” Castti’s voice drifted on the wind as he turned his back. “Temenos, don’t do this.”
“Sleep?” he returned. “Why, Castti, I thought you were our biggest advocate for a good night’s rest!”
“No. Withdraw. Grow thorns.” Castti stood, hands fisted in the blue fabric of her uniform dress. “You are hurting, I know, but there is no simple fix for it. I cannot make a salve for this wound, nor can I concoct a vulnerary. I can only offer you my heart or my ear, but I fear you won’t take either. Not when you’re so set on turning your head away.”
How easy it would be to snap back, to drive a wedge between them, to argue that the apothecary knew nothing because her memories were as thin as Temenos’s own faith. But there was no argument to be had, because she was right. He was already balancing so many wounds; the Pontiff still raw and bleeding. Roi was a scar he still scratched at constantly. How was he meant to just add Crick’s death to his growing body of injuries and accept that when it was Temenos's fault that Crick had walked the road that had led to his murder?
“We liked him too,” Ochette piped up, her eyes a little shiny in the glow of the flame, ears flickering when the bitter wind touched them. “I liked giving him jerky. I was gonna give him more, next time…”
“Next time,” Hikari mused quietly. “I, too, had thought of it. His bladework was incredible. I wanted to spar with him, to learn it.”
“Next time,” Throné echoed, her eyes flicking to her blade. “Haven’t we all said that at one time or another, only to realise that it won’t ever come to be?”
Next time. Temenos’s eyes were uncomfortably hot, irritated, like he’d caught sand in them. What had been in his plans, next time? To share the evidence, to tease and laugh and joke, to call out wayward lamb, to see the end of this mystery together. Why hadn’t he doubted that? When it was all he did, why hadn’t he ever considered that there would never be a next time?
A hand touched his. Agnea had crossed the camp while he’d been caught in his thoughts, her delicate fingers cold as she intertwined them with hers. “I’m just—just a dancer,” she said, voice wavering, uncertain as her careful accent slipped. “I don’t know much about death or revenge or anythin’, but I do know that when Mama died, it was the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life. It won’t do to keep all that hurt inside. So…stay a little while. Even if you’re angry, or sad. Even if it hurts so much that all you can do is shout.”
Her eyes were earnest, bright and bold. He opened his mouth to speak, but found the words would not come. What did he want to say, when he could no longer hide behind his jests and barbs? What-ifs danced in their place. What if they’d never met that day in Flamechurch, what if Temenos had just left him be? What if he’d been kinder when Crick’s faith had been shaken, what if they’d gone down into that library together?
“He wanted to protect me,” Temenos said, a little anger leaking into his tone. “I told him—I said I had no need of it, yet still he came running like the fool lamb he is. He should have stayed behind me. He should have let me take charge. He put his faith in me above his god, and now I’m left in his debt.”
“One that you swore you’re gonna repay,” Partitio reminded him. “I ain’t gonna pretend I know what he was thinkin’, but I do know he was a good guy. I’d barter he’d be happy with that, no matter what.”
Agnea took him back to where he’d sat before, gently taking his staff from him as he took his place again at the fire. Osvald looked him in the eye this time. “I won’t promise you this will get better,” he said. “I know from experience it will not. If revenge is the path you want to take, know I will follow you and help you exact your vengeance—just as I know you will help me with mine.”
“And if you need someone to do it for you,” Throné said, wearing a small smile, “well, I’m not exactly free yet. My dagger can still be hired—for a price.”
“You know you have my sword,” Hikari added.
Ochette waved her hands. “Me and Mahina too!”
“A fine group,” Castti nodded. “And I will be there to tend to your wounds afterwards—if my axe is not the bloodiest of the lot. Now, if we’re all in agreement that we will be awake for a little longer, I’ll get to cooking dinner. I do think Ochette caught a wonderful haul earlier, even if she did eat much of it on her own…”
“Aw, c’mon Ma, nagging me again?”
Temenos watched as Castti shot Ochette a withering look before retrieving her cooking utensils. The others returned to their tasks, the uncomfortable tension that had settled over the camp dissipating. Quietly, he wished he’d had the foresight to ask Crick to join them, even if he knew that the answer would have never been yes. He was a Godsblade, newly anointed, but one all the same. His duty came before all else. Temenos would never have convinced him.
No matter how much love he had in his heart for the man he called a friend, no matter how many what-ifs he entertained, it would never change that fact. There would never have been nine of them, despite how he desired it.
Everyone left. It was the lesson he’d learned the day Roi walked out the door to never return, and time only seemed determined to reinforce it—but it couldn’t be a reason to distance himself. These people had reached out to him. It was all he could do to reach back.
So he lowered his head and said, softly, “Thank you.”
The food, when it arrived, was warm and hearty and delicately spiced. Partitio heaved another helping from his own plate onto Temenos’s, while Ochette doled out extras from her personal stash of meat. It was not a night spent with laughter, but it was a night spent with friends, the best of the worst situation. When the sun rose again, it would still be a world wherein someone important was lost—but it would rise nonetheless.
Summary: Kaveh prepares to leave for the evening, disrupting Alhaitham’s quiet peace.
An argument breaks out, as it so often does.
AO3
Kaveh flitted like a prismatic butterfly in Alhaitham’s peripheral vision, in and out of the room multiple times as he gathered his coat, his bag, his hairpins, his art supplies. He’d been getting ready for the better part of an hour, drifting through Alhaitham’s bubble as though he owned it. It was his special talent; to somehow make himself known even when doing the most inconsequential of things. To take up so much space when he was supposed to be moving through it.
Alhaitham flipped through the pages of his book, nestled in the edge of the sofa with his music beating a steady rhythm against his ears. Kaveh’s mutters were drowned by it, whatever inane complaints he had this evening lost in the sound. Alhaitham ignored him entirely, attention enraptured by the words across the page. A study of masks and personality, of how a person constructed a face for every situation. Time continued to tick onwards. Kaveh left the room and re-entered again, storming over to the sofa.
He clapped his hands in front of Alhaitham’s face, slender fingers, blunted nails from his work. Alhaitham did his best to ignore that too, though was forced to look up when Kaveh furiously repeated the action. The music continued on. Kaveh’s delicate features were screwed up in frustration, cheeks so flushed that they nearly matched his eyes. He had a heavy red coat thrown over his usual gaudy outfit.
With a click of his tongue, Alhaitham tapped the side of his earphones. The music came to an abrupt stop. Kaveh’s voice filtered back in instantly, a mallet against his skull. “—rude, arrogant, irritating—!”
“I hope you interrupted my reading for something more important than listing off adjectives," Alhaitham said.
“You—!” Kaveh stammered in a way so typical of him, straightening up with a huff. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for the last ten minutes and all you’ve done is ignore me! Does it entertain you to see me flap and wail for your attention? Does it?”
“Yes. I find it so enthralling that I’m throwing my book aside to laugh and point at you.” Alhaitham’s voice was as flat as his expression. “If you want to entertain someone so badly, join the theatre troupe.”
“I will not! You are insufferable. Every conversation with you is like a wading through a battleground, and I’m not interested in yielding tonight. Oh, no. Not at all.”
“I think you’ll find this battleground is something you’ve constructed in your own mind. What did you want?”
“You do this on purpose, don’t you? Provoking me.” Kaveh crossed his arms, a haughty shake of his head accompanying the movement. “You’re hoarding my scarf like some kind of hideous dragon. Move.”
Ah, so that was it. Alhaitham craned his neck to glance behind him, spotting where the garish garment was half-trapped behind him. Kaveh had left it draped over the sofa where Alhaitham now rested. It was pink and blue woollen thing, perfect for the cooler weather that had now set in, perfect for Kaveh's own odd tastes.
“You shouldn’t have left it on the sofa,” Alhaitham said.
“Says the man who leaves his clothes everywhere!” Kaveh spoke like exclamation points were fast going out of fashion. He was passionate in everything, his work, his hobbies, his rivalry with Alhaitham. “Take your own advice, and maybe then others will follow suit!”
“And leave you with no chores?” Alhaitham shuffled to the side, taking his book with him. This side of the sofa was cold, all his body heat left behind in the cushions. He regretted moving.
But Kaveh hardly seemed interested in the scarf anymore, instead pacing the length of the sofa with increasingly dramatic hand gestures. “Oh, hardly. If you’re not leaving your clothes, it’s your books. All of them, strewn about like garbage! Haven’t you ever heard of a pile, Alhaitham? Or a bookshelf? You have enough of them, all mismatched in their colour, or their wood, or their style. It’s like a monkey decorated this place, I swear it—!”
“Though I know you enjoy listening to your own voice, I’ve got other avenues of research to attend to. Your scarf is free. Take it, and wherever you’re going, make sure that squawking of yours doesn’t attract the wrong kind of attention.”
It was the closest that Alhaitham would ever get to expressing any kind of sentiment towards his erstwhile friend. Knowing him, he was off to survey some desolate area or another in some misguided attempt to find inspiration for a new build. There were plenty of threats in Sumeru’s rainforest, and though Kaveh could be handy in a fight, there were times that he’d come back rattled or lightly wounded, ranting or distressed. If he returned injured, it would be another irritation that Alhaitham would have no choice but to put up with.
Kaveh’s eyes lingered a moment too long, something shifting in them. Alhaitham had never been much good at reading subtle emotional changes, however; whatever face Kaveh was wearing now, it wasn’t one he recognised. It hardly mattered. As Kaveh opened his mouth to start off his next tirade, Alhaitham reached up and switched his music back on, looking back to his book.
And then Kaveh was off again, rushing around the room in Alhaitham’s peripheral before making a grab for his keys. He vanished from the room, and finally the door slammed shut, vibrating through the floor. Alhaitham sank back into his seat again, eyes half-lidded as he picked up where he’d left off.
A mask for every occasion, every person, every conversation. He understood in a way; though he’d never bothered with his own, the people around him always implied he should. If only he was a little less blunt, a little less arrogant, a little less difficult to work with. They made obstacles of their own perceptions of him, but that was how he liked it. Why be someone he wasn’t when it would only make his life more difficult?
But for others, he knew it made it easier. Logic dictated it so. To smile around someone you hated just to keep the peace, to lie to a friend to keep a horrible truth buried, to shout at someone to perpetuate anger when deep-down you just wanted to find a common ground again. He’d seen it time and time again, watched others experience it in the halls of the Akademiya. Though he didn’t understand it for himself, he could through others. Such was the beauty of perspective.
A hint of red at the edge of his vision, though Alhaitham barely noticed it in favour of the next line. His music trended onwards, bouncing against his ear drums. He turned a page, another, another, until the red shifted. Finally, Alhaitham lifted his head, locking eyes with Kaveh, who, inexplicably, was stood at in the doorway.
Alarm flitted through those deep red eyes. Then, a flurry of movement. Alhaitham knocked his headphones off in time to hear, “—forgot my scarf, so I just came to get it back, you’re such a thick-skulled fool, I don’t know why I bother—!”
“You forgot?” Alhaitham shook his head in disbelief. “Colour me surprised.”
“Har-har, laugh at me all you want, but I couldn’t care less!” Kaveh wrapped the scarf around his neck and rushed back for the door. “And don’t you dare fall asleep on the sofa because you were too engrossed in that book! If I come home and find you in a ruinous position, don’t think I’ll move you to your bed. That’ll be your own folly coming back to bite you, you hear? Goodnight!”
The door slammed shut again before Alhaitham could get a word out. He sat there a while, both perplexed and astounded, before shutting off the light he’d been reading by and taking his book to bed with him. He had a small lamp at his bedside, enough to not strain his eyes with, and Kaveh could hardly complain if he fell asleep in his own bed now, could he?
But he allowed a moment before he went back to the book to think of the scarf, to wonder how Kaveh had managed to forget it after making such a fuss. He was a careless man, but not to that degree.
No answer came—he would have to ask in the morning.
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