Detention with Malik was turning out to be more of a punishment for Altair than for Malik. One day into it and he was already regretting this choice. They'd spent an awkward hour sitting in silence while Altair graded papers and Malik watched him in stony silence. When the clock on the wall hit 3:00, Altair pointed at the door and Malik walked out without a word.

On the second day, Altair decided to try something different. Malik walked into the classroom at the end of the school day with a mouth like he'd just sucked on a lemon, just like the day before. He started to head for his usual seat but Altair shook his head and pointed to the chair he'd set up on the other side of his desk.

"What?" Malik asked. "You want to have a heart to heart or something?"

"Desmond," Altair whined, and he felt the barest hint of laughter against the edge of his mind. It was muffled and distant, which meant that he was trying really hard not to be overheard.

"Sorry, it's just- come on, he's like six."

"Sure, easy for you to say. The only kid you have to deal with is apparently adorable and easy to deal with."

"Can I go back to my seat now?" Malik asked, and Altair shook his head.

"Sorry, man," Desmond said. "You're on your own. And for the record, Arno's psychic. He comes with his own set of problems."

"Thanks." He frowned at Malik. "Sit down and tell me what's wrong with you."

Malik sat, collapsing bonelessly onto the chair. He slouched there with his arms crossed over his chest and glared at Altair as if daring him to say something. Altair, who had never been great with words, only glared back. He was disappointed but not particularly surprised when Malik remained completely unfazed by this.

"Are you really going to make me come back every day?" Malik asked. "What is this supposed to prove?"

"It's supposed to be a punishment."

"For you, or for me?"

Altair was saved from flushing obviously only because his complexion was dark. He grunted something unintelligible and glared at Malik. Malik glared right back.

Neither of them moved for five full minutes, and then the door opened.

Altair glanced up and bit back a curse. "Desmond," he said. "Your dad's here."

"What?" The feeling of Desmond in his mind, normally no more than a sort of mental white noise, was suddenly intense and fully present. Altair flinched at the way it made his head feel stuffed and over full, then tried his best to focus.

"Mr. Miles," he said. "What brings you here?"

"I heard from Achilles that Desmond has been in contact with Shay Cormac," William said. "I should have heard about it from you."

"I didn't think it was any of your business," Altair said. "You have nothing to do with Cormac."

"I have told you more than once that I expect to be kept up to date on Desmond's movements!" William shouted. "The man is dangerous, and there's no reason to expose Desmond to something like that!" Altair stood and cursed Desmond's original height. Before the potion, Altair had been four inches taller than Desmond, and he'd never really regained the height advantage as he got older. Now he had to look up to meet William's angry glare.

"You're my superior," he said calmly. "Professionally speaking. You have the authority to dictate my research projects, classroom duties, and extra assignments. You do not have the authority to dictate what I share with you about my family."

"Why are you deliberately pissing him off?!"

"He is not your family!" William leaned forward, close enough to slam his fist against the desk, close enough that his shouted words sent flecks of spit flying into Altair's face. Altair didn't flinch, either against William's outburst or Desmond's angry protest in his mind. "He is my son, and you stole him from me!"

"You never wanted him," Altair said. He expected to feel angry, but a kind of stone cold calm had settled over him instead. Very gently, but relentlessly, he pushed Desmond away. When he was as far (as he could ever be) from Altair's mind, he slid a mental wall between them to keep Desmond away. He didn't want his brother to hear this. "Do you remember that? In your delusional reinvention of the facts, did you ever stop to think about the way you treated Desmond when he was your son? He was constantly sick. He was smaller and weaker than the rest of us. He was always missing school because he was in the hospital, so he was always the outsider. Before me, he never had a single friend."

"Don't you dare criticize me for that," William said. "I can't help that he was messed up when he was born. Desmond's health is not my fault."

Messed up. "No," Altair said. "Maybe not. But it was your fault for never being there for him when he needed you. I said he never had a friend before me, but he never had a family."

"He was mine!"

"He's not a possession!" Altair snapped, suddenly shouting as well. "Desmond is my brother. He is not your son! You forfeited that right a long time ago, and somehow thank God, Desmond was still emotionally together enough to turn his back on someone that was no damn good for him. Genetically, mentally, emotionally, we're brothers. I'm not perfect." He thought, with some guilt, about the time he and Desmond had spent fighting and slowly drifting apart from each other. But even before they made up, Altair knew he still would have done anything for Desmond. "But he's my brother. I would fight for him. I would lie, cheat, steal, and kill for him. That's what family means, not that you would know a damn thing about the concept."

"You are standing on very shaky ground," William said. "When I'm in charge here, you're not going to be able to get away with this kind of bullshit anymore."

"When you're in charge?" Altair asked. "You're a decent researcher, but you could never be in charge of all this."

"We'll see," William sneered. He turned and walked away, and only when the door slammed shut behind him did Altair fall back into his chair.

He leaned back and pressed his hands against his face until little spots of light danced behind his eyes. Then, very slowly and very precisely, he said, "Fuck." Somehow, it made him feel very slightly better.

When he opened his eyes, whatever tiny comfort he had managed to regain leaked immediately away. In the face of William's tirade and accusations, he had forgotten Malik completely. The boy was still there, though, sitting still as a stone in his chair. He seemed to have shrunk into himself, and the smart ass look from earlier had fallen completely off his face. Altair straightened up, trying to scrape together some semblance of professionalism.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," he said slowly, into the dead silence of the classroom. "You can leave now, you don't have to-"

"You have a brother?" Malik's voice was high and thin, and Altair was suddenly reminded that the asshole he'd been fighting with was still just a child.

"Yea."

"Me too," Malik said, and Altair eyed him carefully. It was impossible to guess why the shouting match should make Malik suddenly want to open up to him, but he wasn't going to question it. "His name's Kadar. Technically we're twins, but he came out second so he's always been my little brother." He fidgeted on his chair and looked up at Altair. He took a deep breath and didn't look down again. "We don't have a lot of money."

"You're here on scholarship?"

Malik nodded. Roughly a third of the total students at the homestead were scholarship students, people with unique powersets (Altair had been one of those) or demonstrated ability to perform strong magic (older students and transfers, mostly), or people with the brains or stubbornness to convince the administration they deserved a free ride. From what he knew of Malik, Altair assumed the boy fell into that category.

"This school was our only chance to get away from home," Malik said.

"How bad are things at home?"

Malik shrugged. "Sometimes we don't have a place to stay. Momma…" He flushed angrily at the word as it slipped out and corrected himself. "Our mother has, um… she doesn't work very much."

"No dad?"

"No," Malik said firmly. "He only comes by sometimes, when he needs money. And he's mean. Me and Kadar both hated it there. We wanted to leave, and I heard about this place. I thought it would save us, so I sent letters, again and again and again until we got interviews. We live in New York, so I figured out how to hide in a train to get here. We hid in a shipping containers full of rolled up carpets, we made caves and tunnels in the fabric. Kadar thought it was the best thing that ever happened to us. He called it an adventure.

"Then we got here, and we got split up for the interviews. There were so many kids."

"Four hundred this year," Altair said. "I remember. I had to give some of those interviews." And how weird had that been, talking to five year olds like they knew what they were doing, trying to figure out which ones were mature enough to be admitted. In the end he'd given up and gone home early, because the whole thing felt like a ridiculous sham. Half the kids just broke down crying for their mommys anyway, it was exhausting.

"I talked to Ms. Jensen," Malik said. It figured that Hope would have liked him, they were both as difficult to like as the other. "Kadar was supposed to talk to you. Only you never showed up."

…because he had gone home early.

Malik seemed to have noticed that Altair had figured out what he had done wrong, because he nodded maliciously. "I was going to wait a year," he said. "So we could come here together. But Kadar insisted I should come here without him. He said if I gave up my scholarship now they might not give me a second chance. So he went back home where anything could happen! Dad could come home and beat him, or mom could hurt him while she's high, or there could be an accident, or-"

"Malik-"

"If something bad happens, you killed my brother," Malik said, in a voice that did not sound at all like a child's. It was precise and heavy like every word was supposed to be a weapon. "I would do anything for him, if there was anything at all I coulddo that would help. You have a brother. Maybe you understand. I can't do anything to help him except hate you." He got up to go, but Altair was quicker and grabbed his arm.

"Let go of me!" Malik pulled but Altair had twenty years and about three feet on him, and he couldn't get away. He stopped struggling and glared. "I'll scream," he said.

"Don't."

Malik opened his mouth and Altair picked him up and sat him down on the desk. The surprise of the movement had at least startled him away from thinking about screaming. He looked absolutely livid, and when he opened his mouth only a thin whine of protest came out. He looked torn between listing off every one of Altair's faults, and giving into the tears Altair could see starting at the corners of his eyes.

"What's going to happen?" Altair asked. "What are you so afraid of?"

"I told you," Malik said. "Anything could happen. He needs me to keep him safe."

"From what?"

"Anything!"

"From. What."

Malik pinched his mouth tight shut and pulled up the front of his robes. The skin underneath was a patchwork of old bruises and cuts, in various stages of healing. "Dad," he said. "Or some other man that comes following her home." He let Altair get a good look, then pulled his clothes back on. "He's my little brother," he said. "I have to keep him safe."

"I'm sorry," Altair said. "I screwed up by not being there. But I'm not the one hitting you, or hitting your brother."

"You could have stopped it, though."

"Malik, I didn't know! You can't expect other people to magically know what your problems are or how to solve them. If you want help, you have to ask for it. You've been walking around here since school started, putting all your effort into punishing me, when instead you could have just asked for help and solved this weeks ago."

"It's not that easy."

"It could be."

Malik looked at Altair, and Altair thought that the boy had never looked as young as he did right now. His eyes slid slowly away from Altair's face, down and down until he was staring at the ground. "My brother's going to be really hurt if he stays where he is," he said. "He's too nice. He always tries to make things better but some people are too mean. Seeing someone try to be nice just makes them meaner. When I'm at home, I can keep him away from people that want to hurt him. Now I can't. And if… if…" his voice dropped along with his eyes, until it was only a whisper. "Will you please help me get Kadar away from our momma, so he won't get hurt anymore?"

Altair didn't smile, because he was pretty sure Malik would hate that. He nodded instead. "I can help," he said.

"You can bring him here?"

"Maybe," Altair said. He gestured vaguely at the door where William had disappeared after shouting at him. "I'm not exactly popular right now. But-" he raised a hand to stop Malik from interrupting. "This is what I will do. I'm going to talk to my brother. He lives very close to New York, and he will go find your brother."

"What will he do with him?"

"Well," Altair said. "The man that was in here earlier used to be his father. He wasn't a hitter like your dad, but he treated his son like trash."

"Seems like he treats everyone like trash," Malik said tentatively.

"We have some history. The point is, my brother will do anything it takes to keep your brother safe, because he knows what that feels like. As soon as Kadar is somewhere safe, we can talk about what happens next."

"Okay," Malik said. He looked like he didn't quite know how to feel about this turn of events, a little bit lost or even deflated, smaller without the hatred Altair had gotten used to seeing in him. "Wha- what's your brother's name?"

"Desmond."

"Okay." Malik slid off the desk and this time Altair let him go without a word.

"Desmond," he said instead, letting down the barriers he'd put up to keep his brother out. "I need a favor."

-/-

Desmond had not been happy when Altair asked him to head into a nasty part of New York to take a six year old away from his mother. Even when Altair explained so that Desmond understood the necessity of it all, he still didn't like it. Altair had talked vaguely about showing up and just taking the kid away, but that was because Altair had lived almost his whole life in one place with a small group of people and didn't always get the way the rest of the world worked. Desmond decided on a different tactic.

He spent three hours on the phone with Malik, who impressed him as an intelligent kid, unusually mature for his age. They talked about the specifics Malik hadn't been willing to talk about with Altair. Then, armed with these more particular details, he went to the police.

They took three days to call him back with the news that they had been able to find Kadar, and just in time from the sound of things. Child services had arrived just in time to interrupt a fight ("domestic disturbance") which had at least removed any doubt that it was a fit environment for children. Desmond wasn't entirely sure the extent of the damage until the police called and asked him to come down to the station to sign a statement about what he'd learned from Malik.

That was how Desmond first met Kadar, through a one way mirror in a too white hallway in a police station. He looked a lot like Altair had described Malik, except there was dirt on his fingers and his face looked like it smiled a lot. Not right now, though. He had been left alone with a coloring book (which he was completely ignoring), and a four pack of crayons (which he was using to redecorate the table in front of him). But he did it aimlessly, like he'd just as rather be doing anything else.

"Damn." The cop that had brought Desmond by to see Kadar rolled his eyes at the sight. "Kids. I gotta go find something to wash that shit off the table. Stay here for a minute?"

"Can I go in?" Desmond asked. "Talk to him a little?"

"Absolutely not," the cop said. "We just got this kid out of an unsafe household, child services says he needs to be slowly introduced to new people."

"Sure," Desmond said. "Okay." And he waited long enough for the cop to turn the corner before he opened the door and went in to see Kadar. The boy looked up at him and then down at his coloring.

"Oops," he said. There was no apology there, just a challenge. Desmond looked down at the table and shrugged. "It's not my table," he said. "I don't care."

"What if it was your table?"

"Then I'd be handing you soap and a washcloth and telling you to clean it up."

"What if I didn't?"

"Then I guess you'd be at that table until you changed your mind."

"Would you hit me?"

"No."

"Would you shout at me?"

"No."

"Okay." Kadar went back to coloring on the table and Desmond sat down across from him. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

Desmond smiled. "I'm Desmond. My brother is in California," he said. "With your brother."

"At school," Kadar said.

"Yea. My brother is one of his teachers, and we have a telepathic connection with each other."

"How does that work?"

"Magic. So-"

"Yea, but how?"

Desmond bit back a sigh. "You ask a lot of questions, kid."

"So you don't know?"

"The point," Desmond said, because he didn't expect they'd have too much time together. "Is that he's with your brother right now, and your brother wants to tell you something."

"I wanna tell him something too!" Kadar said. "Tell him, um- tell him I miss him. And I wanna see him soon. Tell him is he okay? Tell him they took momma and daddy away. They said we don't have to see them anymore but I don't know where I'm supposed to go now. Don't-" his eyes were suddenly wide and worried. "Desmond, don't tell him I colored on the table, he's gonna get mad."

"Did you get all that?" Desmond asked, only half managing to hide a smile.

"Got it," Altair said. "You know, as much Malik pisses me off, I'm kind of glad you got the other brother. This one doesn't talk as much."

Desmond waited while Altair relayed the message and then repeated Malik's words. "He says he loves you, and don't get in trouble."

They both looked at the table again. For a second, there was silence. Then Kadar put his hand over his mouth and giggled.

"Didn't I tell you not to come in here?"

The cop glowered at Desmond as he came back in with a wet rag and started to aggressively scrub at the table. It didn't do anything but smear the crayon around a little, and after a few seconds the guy threw the rag down and scowled. "You," he said, pointing at Desmond. "Come with me."

Desmond followed him out and as soon as the door was shut he asked, "What's going to happen to him?"

"Uh-" the cop glanced back at Kadar and shrugged. "Foster care, probably? You said his brother's the same age as him, right?"

"Yea."

"Well then, he's out of the question as a caregiver. No other family we can find, apart from an aunt in prison."

"That can't be the only other option, though," Desmond protested. "He just got away from abusive parents, he can't just be abandoned there. His brother's at school in California, can't we send Kadar there too?"

"Because the state of New York took custody of him as soon as we took him away from his parents," the cop said. "Sending him to California would be a bureaucratic nightmare, and frankly no one's going to take the time to do it."

"But-" He didn't know where the words came from, but suddenly there they were, bursting out of his mouth like he'd planned them all along. "Can I suggest something?"

-/-

"Here," Desmond said an hour and a half later, throwing Kadar's single bag of things onto the floor. "It's not much, but it's better than nothing. Bedroom. Bathroom. Kitchen." He pointed vaguely around the apartment. "Table's not for coloring on."

"Course not," Kadar said, standing on his toes to look up at the half dead plant on the shelf by the door. "You wouldn't let me bring my crayons." He turned around and knocked the pot onto the floor, where it shattered and sent dirt flying all across the carpet. "Oops."

-/-

"Elise is starting today, right?"

He and Leonardo were bent over a sheet of figures that Leonardo had been trying to coax him into solving. Arno didn't like math under the best of circumstances, but today he was even more distracted.

"She's supposed to be here in an hour," Leonardo said. "Ezio's bringing her."

"Okay."

"Can we talk about numbers now?"

"Um…" He went quiet again and shook his head. Leonardo sighed and pushed the math aside. "You haven't said a word to me since Shay told you to apologize. Don't you want to learn?"

Arno shrugged and looked at the table.

"Ezio tells me you're not doing much with him, either," Leonardo said. "I thought you really wanted to learn about being psychic? Remember how Ezio told you about all the cool things he can do?" Technically, Leonardo had been the one to say Ezio was cool, not Arno. "Don't you want to be able to do that too?"

Arno still didn't say anything. He never said anything, Leonardo was right about that. He wasn't used to this, and wasn't sure he liked it. School so far sure had a lot of grown-ups asking questions. Arno was nervous about getting things wrong, he was nervous about looking dumb, he was nervous about messing up and getting his chance at friends taken away from him. So he didn't really say anything.

The front door opened and Arno practically shot out of his chair, vibrating with nervous energy. "Maybe she's early?" he asked. He half turned away from the door to look at Leonardo, and that was how he missed the boy come hurtling around the corner into the kitchen and hit him.

"Oops!"

Leonardo looked down at where the two boys were all tangled up together on the floor, and smiled at Arno. "Do I have to point out that if you were actually participating in Ezio's class, you would have seen that coming?"

Arno groaned, and picked himself up off the floor as Leonardo switched his attention to the other boy. "And what are you doing here?"

"That's my fault, sorry."

"Desmond?" Arno asked, looking up at the man as he came in. "What are you doing here?"

"This is Kadar," Desmond said. "He's staying with me for a while, and the cops said he needs to be in school if I plan on keeping him with me. Only I don't want to stick him in school, so I thought why not here?"

"Well, not that I'm complaining, but why not at school?"

"I don't know anything about the public school system," Desmond said. "And I would really rather not have to learn it. I talked to Shay, he said he was cool with me bringing Kadar here, at least until Charles comes back and says otherwise, so I figured why not?"

Arno smiled because now there were two other kids coming today instead of one, and that was exciting. "Hi," he said.

Kadar was looking at his eyes. "Desmond said you're psychic."

"Yea. So?"

"That's weird," Kadar said. His voice was matter of fact.

"You smell bad," Arno said.

"You're really short."

"You're a butt!"

"Boys," Leonardo scolded. "Behave."

Kadar beamed at Arno, and Arno smiled uncertainly back.

"Is this okay with you?" Desmond asked.

"I can handle one more," Leonardo said confidently.

"Great. See you later, Kadar."

"Bye!"

But Desmond only got as far as the front door before it opened again, and Arno heard voices from the hall. One was Desmond's, one was Ezio's, and one was a little girl's. A few minutes later, Desmond headed out and Ezio came in with Elise. She was taller than either Arno or Kadar, with dark red hair in a braid down her back.

"She's really pretty," Arno whispered to Kadar, while Elise traded polite introductions with Leonardo.

"Ew," Kadar said. "She's a girl." He wrinkled his nose and Elise looked around at the two of them.

"Ew," she echoed. "Boys."

Kadar stuck his tongue out and Elise made a face and Arno froze with sudden nerves. He didn't say anything while Leonardo wrangled the three of them into places around the kitchen table. Ezio sat on a stool next to the back door, across the room from Arno.

Leonardo looked at the three of them, and seemed to be considering something. Then he nodded. "Back to math, then."

"Oh," Arno said softly, as the worksheets came back out. Elise reached across the table, grabbing the nearest piece of paper.

"Math is easy," she said.

"Math is hard," Kadar protested. "Tell her, Arno."

"It's hard and boring," he said, nodding.

"No!" Elise got off her chair and shoved it across the table until she could sit closer to the two boys. "Look, it's easy-"

The three of them spent the rest of the morning arguing over the math and trying to figure out the right answers. Kadar kept drawing pictures of fruit under the problems he didn't know how to solve, and Elise kept yelling at him to stop it. Arno was a little bit quieter than either of them, but there was a funny, fluttering feeling in his stomach that was like nothing he had ever felt before. As the morning wore on, he started to have visions. First just one, then two, then more and more and more. The room filled up with him and Elise and Kadar, sometimes little like they were now and sometimes older, but (always) together, grouped around a table or spread out at desks or reading from books. And the older they got, the closer they got, so that Arno could see their whole friendship unfolding in front of him in stupid jokes and shared experiences, a promise of something good in his future.

And then there was Ezio's hand on his shoulder, and Arno looked up at him. The visions quieted and faded away. "You okay?" Ezio whispered, and Arno nodded.

"I'm good," he said. "I just saw a whole lot of stuff at the same time."

"I can tell," Ezio said. "You have that look in your eyes."

"What look?" Arno asked, and Ezio mimicked a startled, wide eyed look that made Arno giggle.

"Was it good stuff, at least?" Ezio asked.

"Yea."

"Hey Arno," Kadar called. "Stop whispering and come help us with this!"

"Coming," Arno said, and there was something special about knowing he the two people next to him were going to become his best friends, while still being able to look forward to the whole experience of getting to know them.

-/-

Fun fact: Kadar was originally supposed to die in this chapter, and then my whole entire brain went NOPE and decided he needed to be protected and suddenly this happened. So now I have to replan a bunch of later chapters. Silly Kadar. Don't make things so difficult for me.