Kadar loved to come across it.
When he was perusing the merchant's wares, wandering the bazaar. The delicate smell would surprise him, like a child leaping from his clever hiding place, and it would completely encompass him. The sweet, flowery smell would shut him down entirely, leaving him a statue until someone snapped him out of the dream. The beautiful, terrible scent of Jasmine flowers had the power to mortify him. He would feel the sharp snap in his chest, and the dull ache of something that somewhere in his mind, he was still determined to look for.
The smell let him believe for a moment that Malik was lost in the bazaar. That it was only a matter of time before he came across his brother, enthralled by a new journal or set of drawing inks. That he would turn from the merchant, spot Kadar, and he would smile just like he used to. Slow and full.
That belief was always decimated by the truth.
Malik had been dead for a year, and it had never gotten any easier. He still remembered the day at Solomon's Temple, and the way Malik had pushed them both out through the Templars. The way he had shoved the relic into Kadar's shaking hands, the way he practically threw him onto a horse and screamed in his face. An arrow had hit him in the back. It startled the horse. It galloped for days.
When Kadar got back to Masayaf, he wasn't Kadar anymore.
Those months after Malik-
He had turned into a statue. He had walked in, slowly, listening to Altair's excuses, his ridiculous words. That's all they were. Words. Malik and Kadar were dead. That much was true. In a way. He had thrown the relic to the floor during Altair's rant, startling both master and dog. "Aquila non capit muscas. Right, Altair?"
The eagle looked too stunned to reply, but he forced one out. "I thought you were dead. I thought-"
"We are dead. Can't you see?" Kadar couldn't hold back the laugh. It died in his throat, replaced by a quiet, almost biting frost. "You are superior to me, and in some ways to Malik. You left us for dead, so that must make us dead, right? You're the superior here, so why don't you tell me? Am I dead? I feel pretty cold right now, but I haven't seen that light at the end of the tunnel yet. I am only a novice; I haven't killed anyone yet, so tell me. Do the targets talk of a light at the end? Or do they just stop, and whatever's left is just meat? Tell me, Mr. Holier than Thou! Or has your voice left you for once? The mighty Altair lost for words?"
The eagle was about to reply when the messenger ran in.
Kadar would never know in that raw moment what Altair would have said.
It had been a year since he started working on the list, and he was only two-thirds of the way through. It didn't change a thing. Kadar had given up the promotion to become a rafiq. Al Mualim had offered him Assassin whites, and a first contract. Kadar refused. Said in no uncertain terms that he wanted nothing to do with the clothes; Altair was murderer enough for the both of them. They didn't need another blade.
So he became rafiq of Jerusalem.
So Al Mualim asked him to help with the List. Kadar didn't argue, much. He simply threw papers at Altair and ordered him to leave the Bureau as fast as possible. The eagle had tried to talk, tried to save, but it didn't change a thing. It hadn't changed a thing. The rage still boiled in his stomach. He wasn't strong enough to save the one thing he loved the most, and now he had nothing left he wanted to save. Altair used to be very important, back in the day.
Kadar rubbed a thumb over the side of a rather ornate inkwell, lost in thought. He almost dropped the tiny ceramic with his laughter. He remembered the day where Altair was golden boy. He remembered the crazy nights under the stars, when Malik was in bed. He remembered a lot, and it nearly always made him laugh at himself. How he could be so stupid was humbling, to say the least. Malik was always the smart one.
Malik used to tell him stories at bed time. One was about a Titan called Prometheus. Malik told him the story long ago, when they had just joined the brotherhood, when they were both in novice greys. Before everything. The story said that the Titan rebelled against the Gods and gave men fire. In retaliation, Zeus chained Prometheus to the highest precipice of a mountaintop, allowing a vulture to tear the Titan's liver out and eat it in front of him. Once a day. Every day. For an eternity.
That's how the story went, anyway.
And the Eagle tears out his guts, again and again.
Things had started slow, as they always had.
But then he would find himself in the library with the older boy, doing everything but reading the scriptures there. It almost made him smile how naïve he had been back then. How ruthless the Eagle had been.
It had been years since the fight, and then the disastrous temple-mission. He remembered it well, the day that he let himself come before his brother. It cost them everything.
Kadar looked away.
It made him physically sick to just be near the other assassin, but the older boyjust simply wouldn't leave him alone. The golden eyes that he looked into every night for the last month held nothing for him now. They were anchors in the dark, something that Kadar could associate those sweet nothings to, that would finally seem to soften as the blood got pumping. But now they were simply gold eyes. Cold, hard, unrelenting.
"Stop looking at me."
"Kadar…"
"Don't bother."
"Please..."
"No, I am not my brother. No matter how much we play pretend."
The younger boy had shrunk from the questing hands, seeking something more from
him. Always something more. Altair had already taken everything by then. There was nothing left. Kadar had run, and in his fear, or guilt, or whatever, Altair gave chase. Well, they tried. Malik was in the doorway of their safe house, staring them down. Kadar could remember the glassy look to his eyes, the way his tight jaw had been twitching, the way his fists turned snow white.
The yelling was loud, almost enough to bring the guard down upon them.
Altair admitted to a lot that night, but things were already broken.
It was already irreparable.
Kadar left that night, and only came back when the shouting had stopped. Kadar remembered the ice in the morning. The way that they looked at each other; his brother and the eagle. They stared at each other as if the other were a particularly venomous asp, ready and coiled. Kadar didn't think to make them wait another day. Wait until their minds cleared. He put the inkwell down.
Hindsight was a motherfucker.
No matter how many times he sent Altair scampering from the bureau like a rat, the man always came back. In the early days, he didn't stay the night. Came back once a week to update Kadar before he flitted away again; after trying to talk again. There was nothing to say. The words were all dried up.
Sometimes, Kadar wondered how his brother would have been if it was the other way around. He probably would have torn Altair apart. But eventually, he would have figured himself at fault and forgave Altair. Maybe they would have gotten together. Maybe they would have been happy. Kadar shook his head and pulled out his key.
It didn't matter.
The bureau was quiet, stuffy, and best of all, didn't smell like Jasmine. In the first few months Kadar had wasted so much paper because of tear-stains. No assassin wanted a tear-stained map of Acre. Brought up too many questions, opened too many doors. It gave Kadar a sense of humanity, and although the Brotherhood had been supportive of his loss, it had also pushed him away. He smiled as he slipped onto his stool behind the bureau. He had done the pushing, really.
He was one of them, now.
Orphan, no family, nothing outside the Brotherhood. Nothing keeping him alive but his oaths to a stuffy old man, hidden away in a tower. The ghosts in white weren't his brother, no matter how much he wanted them to be. Each one that wandered in, a small voice told him Malik. Each time he was disappointed, but the voice never stopped.
"Safety and peace, Rafiq."
Kadar looked up, and automatically felt the bricks hit his back again.
The figure was changed. It was slightly slumped, eyes blunt underneath its hood. Its armour wasn't shining like usual, and for once, Kadar saw a man and not an angel. Altair had been falling a long time, but he had finally hit the dirt. He had glided for a while, but it had been a year since Malik died. A Year of being treated like a monster, like a traitor, like a child. His pedestal was long gone. Already chopped up for firewood.
Kadar felt the piercing again.
"Upon you as well." Kadar wasn't above the growl.
The silence stretched, and the sounds of the city outside filled it. Altair looked as if he had been sleeping rough for the last few weeks, but things were different. Kadar couldn't feel the ice rolling off him this time. Kadar had seen it only once when they were young. Altair threw up the ice-wall thing when he was in pain. Frankly, Kadar hadn't given a flying fig what Altair got up to, until right then. The wall wasn't there anymore. Altair wasn't bearing his soul, or melting down. He just looked exhausted. He had no blood on him, and didn't smell like it either. He shouldn't have a reason to be tired.
"Where would you suggest I start?"
Kadar felt the suspicion cross his face, but it was gone in an instant. He was already on autopilot, giving the few places where Altair would find the latest item on his Redemptive Shopping List. With that, he looked away from the older man, looked to the books on the shelf beside him, looking for a new read. Fuck the work. Fuck Altair. Fuck it all.
The eagle retreated.
"Thank you."
"Hmm."
The faster the eagle left, the better. Time hadn't healed much, thanks to whichever philosopher suggested that time was better than booze. Kadar rolled his eyes. The motion felt alien to him. It was a Malik gesture. When the shuffling feet cleared the trellis, he left himself fell back into his seat, deflated. Nothing had healed him. Not drink. Not the secret scribble book. Not Altair's constant bothering. Every time he was here, he tried to fix this clusterfuck. He always went at it; hammer and tongs. He always left empty handed, tools broken.
Always.
Kadar hadn't changed his mind. He knew that it wasn't entirely Altair's fault. But every time he looked at him, Kadar felt the slow, twisting pain in his guts. But it wasn't a blade. It was a beak. Sometimes, he felt like Prometheus, having his insides eaten, once a day, every day, by that very same eagle. The eagle tried to talk, tried to sooth him, wipe the blood away with its wings, but Kadar could only look at his insides; outside and dangling in that golden beak.
Kadar pulled a new wine bottle from his desk and as per the ritual, uncorked it and started drinking.
Wine was proof that Allah loved him, and wanted to make it up to him.
After all, the man he loved had his fingers in his brother's death.
So did he.
So did that slippery Master of his.
Kadar frowned around the bottle.
Al-Mualim.
There was something there. Something Kadar couldn't quite grasp, but it was there. That niggling. It was a high rank mission. Why the fuck was he there? Altair and Malik were considered Master Assassins, and he was at least four missions from that status himself. If the Master wanted the job done properly, he would have sent two more men with them. It didn't matter. It wasn't like he could have put a contract on the Master's head, and he wouldn't side with the Templars just to see the man dead.
So, stuck he was.
Kadar drank long past the candles going out.
Aquila non capit muscas - an eagle doesn't catch flies