It had been a difficult task for Altair to get use to Tazim, the man standing across the Master's table from him. Tazim was the epitome of Malik when it came to looks, minus a few small differences inherited from a maternal side, minus the lack of a left arm: Malik's nose was there, Malik's dark hair (though Tazim's curled a bit on the ends), Malik's sharp and full brows, Malik's unimpressed and prideful gaze. The Malik that Altair knew in boyhood. The Master-Assassin-Malik that he spent days with in Masyaf. Malik. Malik. Malik. Malik.

Malik.

That was the night when Darim returned, and the air was still stifling from the day's sun-sweltering kiss. In all honestly, Altair didn't believe he would ever see his eldest son's face again, and he stood, shocked even in his old and wise age, behind the table when Darim stepped around into full view some distance off.

"Father," Darim said between the silence, pensively, "I'm home."

Not back. Home.

On the other hand, Tazim regarded Darim up and down with an inspecting eye, lips pursed, shoulders straight. He didn't seem remotely pleased about Altair's son's presence, and Darim frowned under the scrutinizing gaze. "So you're back when all is said and done," Tazim said, cocking his chin up. "Did you expect a welcoming party waiting for you?" Dismissively, Tazim turned back to the papers on the table, but caught Altair's disappointed stare. Quickly, Tazim was reduced to scolded silence, and he stubbornly but apologetically lowered his head.

"Welcome home," Altair said to Darim after some time. The Grandmaster lifted an arm, beckoned Darim over with a hand, but Darim shook his head. The simple rejection made Altair's heart constrict painfully, made him remember Darim's flee to the West, but he could not push reunion on the son whose eyes were dark, face just as tired. The look in Darim's eyes, though, Altair knew too well. Pride in an ornate vase held up in stubborn hands, only for it to be slapped out of the grasp and broken on the floor.

Darim left as quietly as he had come.

Later, in the early hours of the morning, Darim was returning to seek a private council with his father, but he found that Tazim was still adamantly there. (Did this man ever sleep? Better yet: had his status as son been replaced?) The two of them collided at the corner of the library, just before where the Grandmaster would typically spend his days in front of table and window. Tazim dropped a few scrolls, but he desperately clutched the rest of them in his arms and refused to bend down to get the fallen. Instead, he held Darim rigid with a distasteful stare. Darim stared back.

"He's asleep," Tazim snapped before Darim could ask. "He has no time to waste on a son who abandoned him and the Brotherhood during a time of great need—twice."

Darim clenched his jaw. What did this man know about him? What did this man know about all he had been through, in Mongolia for ten years, back here just before everything fell apart, in Alamut, mourning for his brother's loss, in the West? "I did what I had to do."

"And that was what?" asked Tazim irritably. "Think only of yourself? You didn't find him—Sef. He was dead. You"—and each word was punctuated by a bitter snap of Tazim's tongue—"did not come back."

"You don't know me," warned Darim.

Tazim scoffed. "You would like to think that, wouldn't you? A man is defined by his actions, and your actions have been nothing but coward-"

Angrily, Darim smacked the other scrolls out of Tazim's hand, and the latter man looked entirely taken aback. They stared at each other for a long time in utter silence, tense, Tazim's lips hard, and Darim's mouth in a twisted frown. "I could not come back," Darim said through his teeth, "because—"

"Because you were a coward," Tazim interjected.

"—I could not bear coming back empty handed, and then I left because my father was not my father any longer."

Tazim's eyes glimmered with something Darim couldn't read, but the man still did not look convinced in the slightest. "That is a pathetic excuse," Tazim said, and the ferocity even in his quiet tone clamped off any of Darim's retorts. "Does family mean nothing to you? Even when you learned that your brother was dead, you should have returned to Masyaf for your father's sake! Your mother, your brother: they should have been reason alone for you to return to offer support to your father after their loss, the father who raised you and protected you!"

As if slapped, Darim looked away.

Tazim's eyes darkened and his chest swelled with what could only be contributed to restrained rage. "It should have been you coming to help him bring retribution to Abbas so he would not have fled to Alamut. You…" Tazim stuttered in frustration, at a loss for words to describe what he wanted. "You should have convinced and helped him to rebuild Masyaf when he came to you!"

"He would not have come back here," Darim said, voice low with defeat.

Glaring, Tazim leaned in close. "You wouldn't know because you didn't try," he hissed. "This place was his home! He would have done anything to rebuild the Masyaf from his childhood! You take him for granted! You shunned him when he was hurting most, and I pity you for it. You don't know what it's like to not have your father."

"I do!" snapped out of Darim suddenly, and he looked back to meet Tazim's glare. "I did not have a father; he was taken by the Apple! By ghosts."

"At least he is not dead like the rest of your family," spat Tazim, and that too was like a slap to Darim's face. Another smacking hand was raised, but Tazim caught it by the wrist with surprising ease. He offered it a squeeze of warning. "I am my father's son, not your father's son," continued Tazim lowly. "If you do not grow a backbone and stand at his side as you should then you can go cry back to Alamut and rot."

After that, Tazim was gone, and left behind a suffocating cloud of guilt and heartache in his wake. Darim almost physically choked on it, and he looked at the floor to find that Tazim hadn't bothered to collect the scrolls. He collected them instead.

It was another hour before Altair sauntered around into the Grandmaster alcove. The man was surprised to find Darim there, almost as if waiting. "Is something wrong?"

Darim managed a weak smile. "Is he always like that?"

"Who? Malik?"

Instantly, Darim frowned. He wondered if his father's mind was still being warped by the Apple, by old age. Tazim looked like Malik, but Tazim wasn't Malik, and he wondered, painfully, if his father understood that concept. "He isn't Malik."

"No," said Altair with a lingering, regretful sigh. "He's not, but he wants to be called Malik. He has taken his father's name." Honor, Altair wanted to say. It was an honor.

Darim's lips parted to form a soft 'O' of surprise. With his own father still present, he often forgot the implications of remembrance, the idea of this 'honor' that came from taking the name of someone important (like a father). There wasn't much for him to remember in that sense, just his brother, just his mother, both so very different from the prestige of a father. He couldn't imagine himself being called Altair. Then again, he couldn't imagine his father not existing anymore either.

Suddenly, with a gnawing harshness at his stomach, he realized he had been a fool.

Darim opened his mouth, and then shut it again. Altair stared at him questioningly, but the only asking was done with those amber eyes. "Father, I—"

Altair raised a hand for silence. He already knew what Darim was going to do, going to say, and it might break him more to hear it after so long than it would if it was left unsaid. "Tazim," he said. "You should get to know him."

Unfortunately, getting to know Tazim was easier said than done.