02: bury me beneath the tree i climbed when i was a child
Taking the mantle of the Grand Scribe, even temporarily, meant Alhaitham had to wake up earlier. He already hated the discombobulation that mornings brought his clear mind, and that was when he woke up at around eight in the morning at the earliest. Rising at six, before the moon descended from the sky, was a crime against humanity.
Alhaitham stumbled from his bedroom, freshly washed and clothed, with less grace than a drunk dog. Immediately upon spotting Kaveh loitering in the kitchen, he straightened his spine and forced his legs to walk straight. While he was fine being irritable around Kaveh, he didn't want his roommate to be able to poke fun at his guache posture.
"Good morning, Haitham. I see you slept well," Kaveh called from where he was stirring his coffee. Alhaitham knew it was black coffee because his roommate was an absolute psychopath and preferred it that way.
Kaveh was always awake at least two hours before Alhaitham on any given day, and for some unfathomable reason seemed to function better so early in the morning. By the time Alhaitham would drag himself out of bed, Kaveh would be packing to leave.
Now that he was the Acting Grand Sage, they woke up at similar times. Alhaitham's intense grumpiness had been a source of comedy for Kaveh, all the way up until they started their meaningless bickering.
At first glance, Kaveh didn't even seem tired. But the little details quickly woke Alhaitham's mind all the way, clearing the fog that came with his terrible night of sleeping — or, really, not sleeping.
"What's this about calling the kettle black?" Alhaitham grumbled back. He pushed past Kaveh and reached for the mug cabinet hanging above the refrigerator. "I wasn't the one who decided to take a stroll halfway across Sumeru City."
"I didn't do it on purpose! Besides, you didn't have to come get me. That was your choice, not mine."
The Scribe narrowed his eyes, watching his roommate carefully as he poured grounded coffee beans into the coffee maker.
It wasn't obvious; Kaveh could be secretive when he needed to be, hiding when it didn't come to matters that had no effect on his day-to-day life. Alhaitham was likely to be the only person that could make out the subtle tells.
One. Kaveh's hair was already laddled in pins and two braids despite the rest of his body being dressed in his nightwear. That had changed, too. Whereas before he'd slept with his torso and feet bare, he now wore a nightshirt and socks.
Two.The tightness in his jaw. He was most relaxed in the morning, especially when it was so early. Even their arguing wouldn't get him tense in his face.
Three. His voice was loud and clear, if not slightly clipped. When Kaveh slept, he snored, causing his voice to be hoarse the next morning for at least an hour. If he spent the entire night hammering away on a design, his breath would wheeze and his words would end in a whistling sort of sound until he ate a vegetable or fruit.
Four. His back was straight and his limbs taut like he was ready to flee. If Kaveh was running late, this wouldn't be surprising. However, he was languidly drinking coffee with plenty of time left until he had to leave.
Five. Kaveh betrayed nothing in his ruby eyes. They were guarded, blank and unreadable in spite of Alhaitham's best attempts. The architect always wore his heart on his sleeve.
The conclusion: Kaveh was overcompensating. He hadn't slept well, and whatever dream he had was still bothering him. Instead of complaining about it to Alhaitham in his usual fashion, he was trying to bury it.
"If you ended up dead in the city, I would get investigated. That's a lot of paperwork."
Kaveh huffed. "You think I'm so careless that I would get myself killed so easily?"
"As a matter of fact, yes." Alhaitham waited for the sound of the coffee machine kicking to life before he continued. It was unpleasant for his hearing aids. "Your first instinct was to attackme once you woke up. Had a Matra or a Corps of Thirty Eremite been there instead of me, a sword would've been in your neck."
"I think not! At worst they would've arrested me. Murder is an overreaction."
"Swinging your claymore at me was an overreaction, yet here we are," Alhaitham said. Kaveh, despite groaning at the comment, didn't lose any of his tension. His exasperated tone didn't match the rest of his body.
"How many times do I have to tell you? I didn't mean to! I wasn't exactly aware of my surroundings." Kaveh set his mug in the sink and rinsed it out just as Alhaitham's was done being filled.
Alhaitham got his first tug in the conversation. Now Kaveh had to bite the bait. "Where did you think you were?"
"I'm repeating myself so much that it's embarrassing. Has your memory gone faulty?" the architect said. "I don't recall anything from my dream, Haitham."
There was no hesitation in his reply. If he had truly forgotten the dream like he said, he would've been more upset by it. The first dream that he gets, he forgets the entire thing? For someone like the light of Kshahrewar, torture would've been a fate easier to accept.
Besides, the way he flexed his hand after lying was the only indication that Alhaitham needed for him to know that he'd practiced that particular line over and over.
"If you have that dream again, you'll likely sleep-walk. It would be beneficial for the both of us if you got this off of your conscience before we have another impromptu tour of the city."
"I don't remember my dream!" Kaveh whirled to face the Scribe, his hands tightening into fists and his ruby eyes shining with true frustration. "I don't know why you're so insistent that I do, but it's incredibly annoying! Stop it."
"I'm trying to helpyou—"
"Has it occurred to you that I don't need your help?" Desperation and anger were thick in Kaveh's voice. His arms waved wildly with his words. "You're always butting into my business when it concerns you the least! Learn to leave things alone, would you?"
Kaveh stalked off, slamming his bedroom door behind him. Alhaitham cringed as the sound reverberated through his hearing aids.
The fish had bit the bait, but it swam away hook-free. For some unfathomable reason, Kaveh being cagey about this subject rubbed him the Scribe the wrong way. It wouldn't do Alhaitham any harm if he let Kaveh figure out his problems on his own.
Kaveh is in danger.
Alhaitham wasn't interested in solving the manner of his own feelings. If Kaveh wanted to lie to the Scribe and simmer in his own thoughts, then Alhaitham would let him. There was no immediate danger that Alhaitham was aware of. He would double check if the door was locked that night, and that would be the end of his roommate problem.
He added four teaspoons of sugar to his coffee. Unlike some people, he wasn't a complete psychopath that drank his coffee without sugar. Alhaitham drowned Lesser Lord Kasanali's words — and her subsequent worry — in caffeine.
—
As Alhaitham promised himself that morning, he checked behind Kaveh to make sure the door was locked. They hadn't spoken since their morning argument; Alhaitham had been at the Akademiya all day and Kaveh had found other things to do during the few hours they were both supposed to be at home.
The quiet hours had allowed the Acting Grand Sage to indulge himself in various essays about sleep-walking. Admittedly, Alhaitham had underused the Akasha when it was available to everyone. But in situations like this where he wasn't particularly interested in his research, the Akasha would've saved him the effort of finding the required material and properly digesting it.
Even so, the theses and research papers were only slightly helpful. Sleep-walking was definitely a conundrum, an under-researched topic in the Akademiya due to its sporadic nature. Sometimes it was genetic, other times it came up randomly.
Most of the essays agreed that children who suffered from consistent somnambulism — sleep-walking — often grew out of it into their adulthood. Suffering adults was less common. The other six nations, excluding Inazuma, of which still had data being collected due to their borders only recently opening, had higher rates of sleep-walking individuals. Some scholars said that this was because these nations had people who dreamed. Other scholars disagreed.
There wasn't one singular reason for somnambulism, Alhaitham learned. It could be caused by stress, drug and alcohol intake, sleep deprivation, head injuries, and the list went on. However, none of them resulted in a distinctive pattern, meaning that any and none of those could be the cause of someone's sleep-walking. Sometimes there wasn't a cause.
Dreams were the only wild card in the equations. Since the scholars at the time had never dreamt, they didn't know what exactly to make of the possible correlation to the two. For the most part, the scholars and students agreed that dreams affected how the person interacted with the real world while sleeping-walking. The extent of it varied.
Overall, those parts of the essays weren't helpful. The useful bits he learned were how to properly help a somnambulist get back to bed without waking them up. If Kaveh were to sleep-walk again like Alhaitham suspected he would, then at the very least they wouldn't end up in combat.
In the meantime, he had a hypothesis to test.
All of the little downtime he had between work, eating, and resting was spent reading about somnambulism. That meant he hadn't had time to research what he was actually interested in: deafness in his dreams.
Kaveh had told him the night before that Alhaitham was likely not going to dream in sound since he was deaf. That much had been proven. He then wondered if his hearing aids would have any affect on his ability to hear in his unconscious state of mind. Thus, he didn't take his hearing aids off as he laid down to sleep.
Alhaitham only ever wore them to sleep if he felt unsafe or if he thought Kaveh was returning back to the house after a research project. His heart stuttered at the mental image of his roommate; he had come home that night and immediately retreated to the room they had renovated into an art studio. There hadn't been any time for arguments or even an attempt at civil conversation.
He carried that thought as he drifted away into unconsciousness. He woke up in a house.
Alhaitham was splayed out on one of three couches in the living room, a fluffy people resting beneath his head and neck for support. There was a book in his hands that he supposed he should've been reading, but an entirely different subject had captured his interest.
From where he was sketching soundlessly on the couch, Kaveh was glowing. His hair was fluffed and undoubtedly incredibly soft, while the blue feather complimented the light blond tone of his hair. The natural sunlight streaming from the window hit his face perfectly, outlining his sharp jawline and accenting the curve of his pursed lips.
His eyes were the most physically attractive part of Kaveh, at least from this angle. They were ombre-shaded, starting from deep, wine red to coral pink. His pupils were narrowed into small slits due to the brightness of the room and the intense focus he needed for his architectural drawing.
Alhaitham swore that he could spend the rest of his life on that couch, rotting away slowly, if it meant that he could gaze upon Kaveh the entire time. If he was the last person Alhaitham ever saw, then he could die peacefully.
As though he knew he was being stared at, Kaveh raised his eyes to meet Alhaitham's. He smiled. The Scribe's heart tried to break out of its cage, boom boom boom-ing in his chest. It shook his entire body. He wondered if Kaveh could hear his heart, but the architect made no indication that he could.
Kaveh looked back down at his paper and returned to drawing, though that soft smile lingered on his face. His hands moved elegantly as he no-doubt drew out an even more elegant structure. A familiar thought ran through Alhaitham's mind, curious to know how well his hand would feel intertwined with the architect's.
As he was seriously considering acting on the idea, the smell of burning wood hit Alhaitham's nose.
It all went to hell in a matter of seconds. He didn't have time to react before he spotted heavy smoke drifting into the living room from the kitchen. Alhaitham slapped his book closed and jumped from the couch, Kaveh following his movements with a concerned yet beautiful stare.
"Fire in the kitchen. I need to put it out," Alhaitham signed quickly, not waiting behind to see a response from Kaveh.
He didn't take five more steps in the hallway leading to the kitchen; from what he could see, it was too far gone. It was engulfed in flames and a beam on the ceiling had fallen, blocking the entrance. Smoke billowed out quick and thick, shortening Alhaitham's breaths and hindering his eyesight.
Retracing his steps, Alhaitham found Kaveh had disappeared from the living room, his paper and utensils abandoned. Foreign panic swelled in his chest upon noticing that the front door was firmly shut, both of their keys still hanging from the doors. Kaveh was somewhere deeper in the house, and Alhaitham needed to find him so they could get out of there fast.
Smoke followed the Scribe into the renovated art studio, the bathrooms, and the study room. Every time Alhaitham stepped out into a hallway, the smoke thickened twice-fold. Flames licked the ceiling of the living room and charred his books. If his books were the only precious items he was leaving behind, he would've been long gone.
Books were replaceable. Kaveh was not. Even when he began to cough and then didn't quite stop, he plunged into smoke and fire again and again to find the architect. His friend. His only friend. Alhaitham wasn't leaving without him.
When he opened up Kaveh's bedroom door, his eyes watering and his throat raw from calling out a name that he couldn't hear, he found a young girl waiting on the other side.
"I am sorry you are having this dream," Lesser Lord Kusanali signed. Her eyebrows were furrowed and her lips were drawn down into a frown. "It is not real, my Scribe."
The unbearable heat against his skin, the sweat dripping down from hair and body, the sickening despair and anguish of not finding Kaveh.
"He is still in your home, Alhaitham. He is still in danger." Her sign for his name had changed. She no longer fingerspelled each letter, but rather signed the letter H with one hand then slightly bent the extended fingers. She brought them to the tip of her nose and pushed it out and back in.
She smiled at him, but it was tinged with unbearable sorrow. "Wake up."
Alhaitham could still smell his house burning down, but instead of seeing his glowing Archon, darkness greeted him. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust and for his brain to orient itself back to the present. Through the fog of sleep, he recalled all he needed to for urgency to settle in his veins.
With ash instead of saliva on his tongue, the Scribe pushed himself out of bed and flipped up every light switch he could find. Kaveh is still in danger. The offending person's door was open, but Alhaitham didn't bother to look inside.
In his dream, Kaveh hadn't been there. He hadn't been anywhere in the house, except for the living room. That was where he was going to check first, even if it didn't rationally make any sense.
Turning on the lights, Alhaitham sweeped the room. Perhaps subconsciously he was still looking for a fire, for the books it had eaten through and the furniture it had burnt, but the house was at a comfortable room temperature. No smoke obscured his vision, and the phantom senses of burnt wood and ash were quickly fading.
He looked to the door, just in time to see Kaveh slam a fist into the stained-glass window that made up the top half of their door. The sound of shattering glass greeted him instantaneously.
Kaveh had a long-sleeved nightshirt on this time, but he still lacked any footwear. He stepped directly onto a glass shard, then put his hands on the edge of the broken window like he was about to haul himself through it.
Actually, that was exactly what he was trying to do.
Carefully sidestepping the sharp, colorful glass, Alhaitham reached Kaveh's side. The essays and thesis papers had said that one shouldn't wake a somnambulist on account of safety issues and preventing disorientation, but Alhaitham really didn't have a choice. He could wait until they got away from the broken window, but he couldn't let Kaveh go back to bed with glass shards sticking out of his body.
Blood dripped from the architect's hands as the Scribe pried them off of the glass in the window. Kaveh's struggle was weak and vain, but that pained expression was worse than it was the other night. The physical pain of the real world might be affecting him in the dream, though it wasn't something Alhaitham could necessarily prove.
As gently as he could, he turned Kaveh around and guided him away from the window. He whispered to him reassurances in hopes that it would prevent him from putting up a real fight. Kaveh was already stepping in enough glass at it was — Alhaitham cringed every time one sunk into his roommate's feet. His own weren't covered, but at least he was conscious to be able to avoid them.
Somehow they managed to get to the other side of the living room, safe from the glass and onto the couch. Alhaitham shook Kaveh's shoulders, bracing himself for the horrifying look of terror and the fight yet to come. He flexed his hand, poised to summon his blade.
The glaze of unseeing and distance were blinked away, but instead of summoning his claymore, he doubled over and clutched his leg. The Scribe found that strange considering that was the least affected of his entire body.
"What the hell did you do?" Kaveh groaned in pain.
Alhaitham, by all rights, was offended. "You mean what did you do," he stated, crossing his arms in front of his chest. It did little to stop his heart from pounding against his bones. "You broke my window."
Kaveh looked up, and there was horrible fear painted over his face. It wasn't any better experiencing it the second time around. The blood dripping from his face and neck wasn't helping, either. "I— what?"
"You slept-walked again like I said you would." Alhaitham motioned to the door, fighting to keep his tone even.
The architect stared at the shattered window. A telltale gleam came over his eyes as he rubbed his leg, smearing blood all over his pants. He hissed in pain, seeming to only now realize that he was injured everywhere else.
Alhaitham sighed. "I'll get the disinfectant wipes. Stay here." There was a bite to his voice that he didn't truly mean, but it was all he could manage. It felt like his brain muddled itself when he was around Kaveh.
Besides, he needed a reason to get out of there. His skin was crawling from the tears that were about to spill from Kaveh's eyes. Alhaitham wanted to save Kaveh's pride as much as he could in any case. He figured that by the time he got back, his roommate would've pulled his act together and they could move on with pulling out the glass safely.
Fortunately, his guess proved correct. Kaveh had positioned himself so that any possible weight on his right leg, the one he had been holding, was relieved. His feet were turned sideways for the easiest access, and he held his arms in the air so that the blood from his hands and various other scrapes were seeping through his clothes rather than dripping onto the furniture.
It wasn't a pleasant sight in any case. Despite the obvious blood, Alhaitham was most concerned about Kaveh's leg. The other wounds were visible and surface level, but the way he was favoring the limb indicated a deeper injury.
"Here," he said, extending out the paper towels he had collected. "Use the paper towels to protect your hands from the glass."
Kaveh accepted a wad of towels, his lips pressed firmly shut. They immediately became stained with the blood running down from his palms. Alhaitham set the bandaids and wipes on the couch and sat down on the ground in front of Kaveh.
He wrapped one hand in a paper towel and used the other to grab hold of the architect's left ankle. The Scribe ignored Kaveh's burning gaze, choosing to focus on precariously pulling out one of the many shards sticking out of his foot.
His foot nearly twisted out of Alhaitham's grasp as soon as he'd tugged on the shard. "Archons, that hurts," Kaveh hissed.
"Then you shouldn't have broken my window or stepped on glass," Alhaitham said, already wiping the puncture wound and causing Kaveh to twitch.
"I…" The thought was lost quickly, and Kaveh returned to wiping down the lacerations on his face.
The tension between the two of them was suffocating. It was hard to breathe with the way Kaveh's jaw was clenched and hands were trembling. Kaveh should've retorted to Alhaitham's comment in an indignant voice so they could settle back into their normal rhythm of arguing. Just like the night before, he didn't seem to have the ability to fight back.
Kaveh asked quietly: "Why are you helping me?"
Alhaitham paused, staring at the final bandaid he'd put on Kaveh's foot. It wouldn't last since the adhesive tape couldn't stick very long to the coarse skin on the bottom of his foot. The constant movement that came with walking would jostle the other bandages out of their places, as well. But despite their short lifespans, they would serve their purpose in protecting the cuts from infection and further bleeding.
Ever since they had met, Kaveh had been an anomaly in his life. He was Alhaitham's perfect contradiction; the push to his pull, the sun to his moon, the thunderstorm to his clear sky. When Alhaitham thought he could relax, Kaveh came to stir up trouble.
His entire life had been spent working for one ultimate goal: to live a peaceful and comfortable life. In order to achieve this, he'd developed a strict philosophy that allowed him to look impartially at the world and his surroundings. He only investigated topics that interested him, fixed what was objectively harmful, learned by his own means, and ignored people's opinions on him unless they threatened his well-being.
Kaveh did not threaten his well-being, failed to present topics that interested him, and wasn't harmful to the natural order of the world. He'd never committed any of the six cardinal sins, nor did he show any plans to do so in the future. The only box Kaveh checked was learning — Alhaitham was able to view Teyvat in a way completely opposite to how he normally did.
There had been no adequate reason for Alhaitham to accept Kaveh's request to take residence in his house. He would only actively disrupt the peace and comfort Alhaitham had worked so hard to maintain.
It hadn't taken long for Kaveh to become a natural part of his day-to-day life. Their arguments turned into mere bickering. Cruel insults became meaningless teases. Alhaitham still charged rent, but it had dwindled into a sum barely worth noting. He wore his hearing aids at home so he could listen to Kaveh's rants about architecture and interior design, even though he would pretend he wasn't paying any attention.
The Scribe of the Akademiya cared for no one else's feelings. He looked at the world in an objective and dispassionate light, and he didn't mind what others felt about him. But Kaveh made Alhaitham act in ways he never wouldn't have before.
Alhaitham didn't know why he made Kaveh the exception in his life.
Looking at him now, Alhaitham felt a disconcerting pang in his chest. Kaveh was hurt. He wouldn't talk about the dreams that were bothering him, and that, in turn, bothered Alhaitham. It wasn't just because he was annoyed with the dangerous sleep-walking; he worried about Kaveh himself.
At the current moment in time, the only conclusion Alhaitham could reach regarding Kaveh's question was that his dreams had something to do with his mother and father.
"Do you want me to stop?" Alhaitham asked. The bite in his tone was gone.
Ruby eyes stared at him with uncertainty. "No."
"Then my reasoning should be of no interest to you." His chest burned as though the fire was still devouring his house. He moved onto Kaveh's other foot. "Your leg is hurt more than anywhere else. Do you recall what happened to it?"
Kaveh shrugged, face now painted in careful neutrality. Concealment — a red flag raised in Alhaitham's mind. "The glass bothers me more on this side."
Alhaitham shouldered the lie, though he made it clear with a look that he didn't believe his roommate in the slightest. As Kaveh flinched as Alhaitham picked out a particularly large shard, one of only two in this foot.
"Are you going to tell me about it?"
"There's nothing to tell," Kaveh said, his voice clipped and reserved.
"I had a dream that the house was burning down," Alhaitham heard himself saying. The words were tumbling out faster than he could take them back, and his hands trembled as he put band-aids over the bleeding wounds. "You were somewhere inside and I couldn't find you."
The Scribe could feel his roommates eyes on the back of his head. Alhaitham did not allow himself to feel shame or embarrassment anymore, but there was an unpleasant feeling he couldn't stop from spreading throughout his body. "Oh," Kaveh muttered.
Once again, Alhaitham opted out of telling Kaveh about Lesser Lord Kusanali's guest appearance. Her divine intervention didn't take away from the contents of his dream, nor the way his palms were still sweating from the anxiety of it all.
He is still in danger.
If something didn't change, Kaveh would get hurt again. Alhaitham was certain that his Archon was warning him of this future. It wouldn't hurt, though, to get her advice on how to deal with the situation if Haitham failed to connect with Kaveh tonight.
He finally looked up after cleaning off the last of his roommate's blood from his ankles and feet. Kaveh was staring at the bloodied paper towels in his hands, but his gaze was far away.
"Are you dreaming about your parents?" Alhaitham asked.
They were decidedly not working through Kaveh's problem tonight. Kaveh stiffened immediately and returned Alhaitham's stare with a disturbing glare. "No. It has nothing to do with them."
And Alhaitham believed him.
"Thank you for your help, Haitham, but I'll be going back to bed. I'll see you in the morning," Kaveh got up from the couch, took the wad of paper towels and shards, and walked away. The limp he was trying to mask was obvious, even to the untrained eye.
The Scribe threw out his own shards and paper towels, though instead of retiring to his room he swept up the foyer. His mind ran with the clues Kaveh had left behind in his speech, anything that would indicate the kind of dreams he was having and why he wouldn't open up about them. Unfortunately, Kaveh wasn't making it easyfor Alhaitham.
Normally, Kaveh wore his heart on his sleeve. The only time he closed up was when he was stuck in a situation where he had to:
Speak about his current living situation, where he was unfathomably scared of revealing to people that he was unable to afford his own home and was residing with the Scribe of the Akademiya.
Speak about his mora, or lack thereof.
Discuss his parents, in which he would become eager to switch the topic to something a little more lighthearted.
Relate childhood memories. In most cases, Alhaitham could tell that Kaveh was making something up on the spot in order to keep up with the flow of conversation and not be singled out for lacking a memory that correlates to the subject at hand.
If Kaveh was having dreams about his current living situation, he would've already talked to Alhaitham about it. When it came to just the two of them, Kaveh often complained of his financial situation and the housing market, in which the prices have continued to rise as Sumeru City's population increased. His lack of mora was often a point of contention Alhaitham brought up whenever Kaveh would find some way to spend mora that he didn't have, but his roommate never backed down from such discussions.
Kaveh would have no reason to be acting the way he was now if his dreams' contents consisted of those examples. Alhaitham dumped out the shards that he had wrapped in paper towels and tied a blanket over the window to keep out bugs and the cold.
They would have to look for a replacement window when their schedules aligned.
The topic of Kaveh's parents was often brought up in conversation due to their once being scholars of the Akademiya. However, Kaveh was loath to shed real details beyond the basic facts of the Darshans, achievements, and current states of being. One in the grave, the other remarried in Fontaine.
Whenever he talked about them too long, Kaveh would have a harder time returning to a brighter mood for a later conversation. He couldn't hold a long discussion about his parents at all if he was in a proper social setting; if he did, he had to eventually remove himself from the setting altogether.
Alhaitham, of course, knew the truth of the matter. He figured it out when he was still a student in the Akademiya, even before Kaveh had started giving him details about his parents that he would tell no one else. Guilt plagued the architect's heart. It was his entire reason for his strict ideals and letting himself decompose in the way that he had once done, and in some ways that Alhaitham hated to admit, still did.
Kaveh wouldn't bring them up in casual conversation. But Alhaitham had refused to let Kaveh wallow in his depression and deep-seeded regret when he let Kaveh move into his house, and now Kaveh would open up to Alhaitham if the Scribe were to prompt him on the matter.
As such, Alhaitham didn't believe that Kaveh's dreams related to his parents in a significant way.
That left one option, but it wasn't as simple as it seemed. Alhaitham sat down on the couch and rubbed his face, suddenly noticing the weight of his hearing aids. He glanced in the direction of Kaveh's room and elected to not take them out. If Kaveh went back to sleep and started sleep-walking, he wanted to hear it before he saw it.
Alhaitham had only brought up the topic twice to Kaveh in their entire history. The first time he did it was when they were beginning to become friends and he noticed Kaveh had lied to a group of people about a childhood memory he definitely did not have. Even back then, Kaveh's lies were easy for Alhaitham to pick out, and apparently he was the only one to be able to do it.
Kaveh's response had been incredibly dissatisfying, but not something that Alhaitham concerned himself with. If Kaveh wanted to lie to people, then the Scribe would let him; it was none of his business, anyway. And if Kaveh tried to lie to him, Alhaitham would call him out on his bullshit and proceed with his day.
The second time he brought it up was when they began living together, and Kaveh had passed along a lie to Tighnari during a game of cards. The Forest Watcher hadn't been any the wiser.
Alhaitham then had time to think on why Kaveh was doing this nearly constantly. Whenever he related memories to Alhaitham, he wouldn't make anything up. Some of the memories were fine, but most of them consisted of the days of doing everything he could to please his mother, keep up his grades, and be swallowed alive by his own misery.
The question Alhaitham asked at that time wasn't why he made up the memories, but rather, why he wouldn't tell anyone any of his real memories. It was one thing to sprinkle in lies every now and then, but Alhaitham had never seen Kaveh tell an entirely true story.
His answer had been rather simple, and unfortunately completely predictable: he wanted to fit in with the crowd and not bring the mood down. It was always everyone before Kaveh — he never placed himself in a higher need.
Alhaitham couldn't be certain this was a dream from Kaveh's childhood. He had eliminated the possibilities relating to why Kaveh would be reluctant to speak based on prior information, yes, but that didn't account for what Alhaitham didn't know.
Based on the injury of the architect's leg, he concluded that the dream from this night, at the very least, had been a memory of some sort. Ahaitham couldn't recall any time in the Akademiya when Kaveh had sported a major leg injury, so he either hurt it during his childhood or sometime after graduating. He supposed if he had time he could go through Kaveh's medical records, but that would be a lot of work that he would rather spend talking to his Archon, scholars, and residents of Sumeru City about sleep-walking and dreams.
The more concerning part of this situation was the breaking of the window. In both nights, Kaveh had tried escaping the house. Frustratingly, Alhaitham didn't know enough about the correlation between dreams and sleep-walking to determine if that was merely a by-product of the dream, or if that was just what Kaveh did while sleep-walking. Scholars disagreed on the degree in which dreams affected the dreamer too much for Alhaitham to feel confident in saying one way or another.
Then there was the matter of how Kaveh woke up. On the first night, Kaveh had lashed out with his claymore. He had been startled and scared enough to think himself in real danger. The second night hadn't been that much different. Alhaitham firmly believed that the only reason Kaveh hadn't responded in the same way was because of the pain he was feeling. The lingering fear had been all the same as it was the first night.
Finally, there was the manner of the question he had asked the Scribe that night: Why are you helping me? In his experience, Kaveh only questioned Alhaitham in this way when it was a bad day — when the architect couldn't escape his crushing guilt and regret; when he couldn't fathom that people can do good things for Kaveh for the sake of being good; when he couldn't understand that he didn't truly deserve bad karma or any of the tragedies that had befallen his short life.
Alhaitham took a deep breath and stood. There were two possible relating factors: his immediate reactions when woken up, and his escapades out of the house. The outlying factor was the resurfaced leg injury.
His new working hypothesis was as follows: Kaveh's dream was about a memory from either his pre-Akademiya childhood or postgraduate adulthood that didn't extend beyond the point of when they reconnected. It was not a memory he'd ever talked about before, was more or less unrelated to his parents, was a source of major guilt and/or regret, and consisted of a major leg injury.
The Scribe of the Akademiya went to bed and dreamed of an architectural sketchbook engulfed in flames.
