A/N: I was listening to a 9/11 report and immediately thought of doing this. It'll be a little OOC, of course, but I'm happy to put out a serious story for once.

…

The smoke, the screaming, the fires… Malik closed his eyes and sighed as he relived it all.

He had been applying for a job as an Arabic translator that day. Kadar had gotten him the interview; he worked about twenty floors up, and Altair was waiting for him in the lobby. He was in the middle of telling his future employer how he'd spent years in Syria when it happened.

There was a crash from above them, inhumanly loud, and all the power went out. He looked out of the window to his left and saw a gigantic flare shoot out of the side of the building, falling from higher up. His thoughts, as well as his face, blanked and a single word crossed his mind – Kadar.

…

Altair was absently rubbing the scar on his lip, the other hand drumming out a quick beat on his knee. He knew this was important to Mal – he'd lost his arm and his god damned brother, for Christ's sake – but this wasn't right.

Malik wasn't kneeling by his brother's grave, wasn't speaking to the spirit of the blue-eyed CPA, wasn't letting the occasional tear leak down the side of his face. Instead he stood before the little gray stone plaque, fist clenched, head tilted back a little and eyes closed.

"Oh, shit," he hissed and fumbled to get out of the car as quickly as possible.

When Malik had a flashback it didn't end well. They weren't like the ones soldiers had, hearing gunshots and mortar fire out of the blue; this was deliberate. He'd explained it to Altair once.

In order to remember Kadar, he had to remember the Trade Center – it was a mental block he just couldn't get past. In order to access the fun, happy memories of Kadar in diapers, his first day of kindergarten, making the honor roll in seventh grade, catching him in a make-out session with some girl and teasing him to no end about the hickey above his collarbone… first he had to relive that day, the fires, the screaming, the thump of people jumping off the tower to their deaths, knowing that his little brother had died among all that confusion and hatred…

Altair stifled his own shiver of horror.

Afterwards he'd shut down for hours, just staring into space with that somber look on his face. He wouldn't talk, wouldn't eat, wouldn't respond to anything at all, then he'd finally fall into an uneasy rest riddled with nightmares. The next morning he'd wake up tired and kinda cranky, but at least he'd speak.

"Mal," he called, putting a hand on his shoulder and shaking him a little. "Mal, c'mon, man, wake up."

He turned to Altair with dulled brown eyes. "Do you remember when Kadar tried to make spaghetti and got sauce everywhere?"

That made him smile a little; he remembered perfectly. It had been funny in a cute sort of way – Kadar had been, like, six at the time and wanted to surprise Malik with dinner. The noodles were hard, the sauce was too hot, and when he got to the kitchen, the walls had gotten a fresh coat of paint. He'd been flabbergasted and amused at the same time, and called Altair over to help him clean up. There was a photo of the three of them, covered in tomato sauce and laughing like there was no tomorrow, on his coffee table.

"Yes, I remember, Mal, but you have to snap out of it," he said adamantly, refusing to let his best friend lapse into that hours-long depression.

"And then there was that time when I locked him out of the house," he chuckled, a vacant look to his eyes. "He sat on the porch for hours –"

"Mal, get a hold of yourself."

"- waiting for me to open the door," Malik continued as if he hadn't heard. Altair knows he probably didn't. "When I finally did he looked like he was going to cry."

Altair sighed. This wasn't getting anywhere.

"And back when that one history teacher – Hastings, was it? – gave him a B when he thought he deserved and A and he stalked that teacher for a month just to get him to –"

"Malik, wake up!"

And he smacked him.

Malik gaped at him, hand touching his red cheek lightly, and the dead gaze he had been giving Altair faded before his eyes darkened sadly.

"I'm doing it again, aren't I," he mumbled.

It wasn't a question, but Altair nodded anyway. "I couldn't let you do that to yourself again."

"I know," he murmured, looking down at the smooth gray rock with Kadar's name on it. "But I miss him…."

Altair put an arm around his friend's shoulders. "I do too."

He was almost happy to see the single tear roll down the side of Malik's face. It meant that he wouldn't shut down this time.

Today was the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. While the memory of Kadar was hard to go through over and over again, they both knew that it would be worse to forget him entirely.

…

A/N: My heart goes out to anybody who lost family that day.