04: batter down my door when you find me defenseless
Thankfully, Kaveh didn't stay up too late. No matter how tight the schedule or how close the deadline, he couldn't work on any physical layouts until after the proposal design was approved. Alhaitham's assumption was that the micro-layout construction would start the next night, which was going to be lovely for Kaveh's recent lack of proper sleep.
It took a while for Alhaitham to fall asleep. His mind was whirling with ancient books, architectural designs, unknown nightmares, and a Dendro Archon. Usually, he could manage them enough to leave them for the morning, but that night proved to be a challenge. He partially blamed it on the matter of his hearing aids; it was always harder to keep his thoughts quiet with them on.
He opened his eyes to a lightning flash across a dark, vast sea.
Rain pelted against his hair and skin, soaking his shirt and pants all the way through. He shivered beneath the swirling winds as his feet struggled for stability on the wet deck boards. Grabbing for the wooden railing, the ship swayed with the storm. Lightning struck the sky, lighting up the world for half a second once more.
Waves rolled restlessly in the frothing ocean. They leapt like the maw of an angry beast, crashing against the ship and sweeping away the crew stationed near the front. Alhaitham watched as the men and women flopped against the wooden floor. Heaving water out of their lungs, they pulled themselves back up as best they could to man the masts and save their fellow crew members from falling under.
Alhaitham kept his balance as best he could as he let go of the railing and ran across the deck. The hatch was easy to pull open since it was already thrashing in the wind. There was a hand on his shoulder, but he smacked the crewmate away before they could pull him away. He escaped down the stairs the minute water flooded the surface, and he felt the reverberations of someone falling from the mast and onto the deck.
He closed it behind him, preventing as much of the storm from flooding the inside as he could. However, when he turned around, he could see the sides leaking and spraying the inside lightly with ocean water.
He still had another layer to get under. That was where the prisoners were.
Moving past the crewmates lying in their cots either due to injuries, illness, or simply having a death wish, he escaped down to the third layer of the ship. His boots splashed against the pooling water. It came up past his ankles and gushed from the walls like a wild beast in comparison to the tame trickle of the upper layer.
He didn't waste any time, mainly because he didn't have any. If the storm's temper continued for any longer, the ship would collapse. With the crew's inability to stay on their feet, nobody could properly manage the helm. The ship was running on its own course and could capsize or wreck into a rock at any moment. It was why he wasn't helping on the deck— he didn't believe the ship could be saved.
Alhaitham pushed past the wide-eyed prisoners. Their feeble attempts at blocking his path in their desperation to be set free were easily ignored. There was only one person he would stop for, the only reason he came down to prisoner quarters.
He stopped only when he found a blonde-haired man, wrists tightly bound to the beam above his head like the rest of the prisoners. Instead of looking desperate or scared, Kaveh stared at Alhaitham with an entirely inscrutable expression.
Water dripped down his face from where it sprayed onto him from the ceiling and walls. His mouth gag was drenched with hints of red against his lips. Alhaitham pulled down the gag, allowing Kaveh to take deep breaths through his mouth. He shifted against the chains binding his hands, but there was no visible attempt to fingerspell anything.
Alhaitham took the initiative. "We are boarding the first lifesaver off of this boat. I won't leave you here."
All that he got in reply was the guarded gaze of deep ruby eyes, blinking away running salt water. Alhaitham's hands shook as he pulled at the tight knot. It wasn't coming undone easily, and his wet fingers kept slipping from the horse-hair rope. Its dampened state was binding it tighter into itself, requiring more energy to take it apart, and why wasn't it budging?
The boat shifted in the ocean, rocking them side to side. Alhaitham struggled against the tide, nearly collapsing with the sway of the ship. He looked back at Kaveh desperately, but the man was slack in his half-hanging position. Those ruby eyes portrayed nothing as they stared and stared and stared.
Alhaitham retracted his hands momentarily — just to sign a message — and water began filling the bottom of the layer at an alarming rate. A new hole had torn open at the far end of the ship, emptying the ocean's contents into the interior.
"Kaveh," he signed. One hand finger-spelled the letter K while it moved in a circular motion with his other hand, which had its fingers extended and bent toward the other hand. After one full rotation, they pulled apart. "I can't get the knot undone."
On any normal day, he would've used the sword around his waist or the knife in his boot to cut the rope. But for some reason, he didn't have either of them. He looked around, but he couldn't see anything sharp floating in the water or hanging from the walls. There was absolutely nothing he could use to help him save Kaveh.
So he turned back, tried budging the damn rope with everything he had. It scraped Kaveh's already chafed wrists, but the man was unfaltering in his empty gaze. He didn't show any indication that he was in pain. Even his mouth, lined with swollen, torn lips from the gag, remained as straight as a line.
Finally, when the water reached his knees, his legs lost feeling, and lightning lit up the room in blinding light, he signed to Kaveh, "We are going to drown."
Kaveh didn't answer. Alhaitham turned around at the feeling of a tap on his shoulder, finding a little girl sitting on a green swing hanging from the ceiling. The ship rocked violently, sending the still water splashing against the interior walls and prisoners, but the girl and her swing remained steady. Lesser Lord Kusanali smiled sadly at him and released her fingers from the swing chords made out of plant stems.
"Kaveh is breaking his body," she signed. The way she signed his name was different from how Alhaitham did. She formed both her fingers into K's, touching them together in front of her chest. Then, she moved them apart, paused when she reached her shoulders, and ended by pulling them both straight down with flat hands facing inward. "Please hurry, my Scribe."
Alhaitham hesitated after reading her sign, glancing back at Kaveh. Just like before, his unreadable face haunted the Scribe. His wrists were bleeding from where Alhaitham rubbed his chafing with the rope, and the hem of his shirt drifted on top of the waist-deep water.
It was all wrong. He wore dark prisoner drab— his clothes ragged, brown, and dusted with dried blood. His hair was turned dirty blond from being damp, and it was cut slightly shorter than usual. And his eyes, his ruby eyes that betrayed every emotion he felt, were empty.
The Scribe returned to his Archon's glow. Kusanaili frowned and signed while mouthing the words, "The real Kaveh needs you, Alhaitham. Wake up."
Alhaitham heard a crash and an anguished scream, and he opened his eyes to his pitch-black bedroom. Rather than ceasing, the sobbing got louder with each second that passed. It pierced through Alhaitham's hearing aids and disoriented brain fog. As he threw off the bedsheets and hurriedly stumbled to his bedroom door, Alhaitham had only one thought:
Kaveh is killing himself.
The direction of the crying was coming from the architect's room, just a couple of steps away, but he felt like he couldn't get there fast enough. He knew, realistically, that it was highly improbable Kaveh was committing suicide. Kaveh had an incredible appreciation for life, even his own, in a way that Alhaitham struggled to comprehend. The idea of Kaveh dying by his own hand wasn't necessarily unfathomable, but not something he should be assuming first and foremost.
However —
Kaveh is breaking his body. That was an undeniable truth. Whether by suicide, self-harm, or another sleep-walking accident, Kaveh was hurt.
He could hear it in his Archon's voice, even though she hadn't said anything, as he called through the locked bedroom door, "What's going on, Kaveh?" He slammed his fist on the door rapidly. "Open the door! Open the door or I'm cutting it down!"
With the only answer being incoherent words through broken sobs, Alhaitham didn't waste any more time. He summoned his sword in a burst of light and sliced the handle clean off. The piece of metal clattered uselessly on the ground, and he dismissed his weapon when the door swung open under his weight. It slammed into the wall with a resonating bang.
Kaveh was not in his bed.
Instead, he was sobbing in the corner closest to the door, luckily on the opposite side it opens on. He stared up at Alhaitham, face red and stretched with horror as his sobs turned more into half-screams. One leg was pulled to his chest, the other splayed across the floor where the ankle was attached to a rope, which was then tied to an end bedpost.
It was taut and clearly put a strain on Kaveh's leg. When the Scribe took a second longer to examine the scene, he saw the angle at which his foot was twisted and the bone that was nearly protruding out of his skin. Red, angry chafing marks ran all over his ankle, indicating the struggle.
With the way that Kaveh was still trying to pull his leg back, Alhaitham was certain that the architect wasn't quite aware of where he was or who had just barged into his bedroom. His unintelligent mumbling was becoming a little more coherent. Alhaitham heard the first discernible words as, "Get away from me!"
Alhaitham dropped to the ground to get on the same level as Kaveh, unsure what to do with his hands. His mouth was dry and his head was starting to hurt from the scene in front of him. "It's Alhaitham. I'm not trying to hurt you. Look at me, Kaveh."
Kaveh was looking. Staring, actually, but the spark of recognition in his shining ruby eyes never came. He yanked his leg again and let out a scream. "Stop! Let me— let me go home! I didn't— I didn't—"
"Look at me! You're in Sumeru, you're at home. You're nowhere else," he tried, but all Kaveh did in response was clutch his leg and heave. Alhaitham checked, just to be sure, that his roommate's Vision wasn't gone. It was sitting on the nightstand by his side, emanating in the dark room and burning with power. Why, then, had Kaveh not grabbed it and used his weapon to cut the rope? Why couldn't he untie the restraint from the bedpost?
He shook his head and summoned his sword, flinching at the way Kaveh's wailed leave me alone caused his hearing aids to ring sharply with feedback. The rope severed easily under his blade, the horse-hair strands snapping apart and releasing the tension off of Kaveh's ankle and bedpost alike.
Oddly, Kaveh didn't pull his leg back. He just let it lay there as he uncontrollably cried. "I can't do it again. I can't do it. I can't do it," he repeated over and over again, like it would somehow shake him from the reality he was trapped in.
Alhaitham's sword disappointed in a flash of light. He didn't know what to do. "Kaveh, please. Look at me. Look at everything else," he said, his hands hovering in the air because he didn't know if he should try to comfort Kaveh with touch or if that would just scare him even further. "I need to help you but you are making this extremely difficult."
"I can't… I…" Kaveh leaned his head back against the wall before letting out a sudden, sharp groan of pain. "Where am I? Why— Why am I here?"
"You're at our home," Alhaitham replied, fighting to keep his voice even as his attention split between the broken ankle and the tears still flowing down Kaveh's scarred face. The architect twisted at his pain. "Nobody is here to hurt you. It's just you and I."
"The rope," he murmured, his voice quivering. He didn't seem any less scared than he had before, only now he was living in the present. "Why did you tie me down? What do you want from me?" He pressed his hands to the ground in an attempt to get up, but Alhaitham lightly put his hands on his shoulders to keep him down. If Kaveh tried to stand now, he'd likely step on his ankle and pass out from the pain.
Then they would have to go through this whole ordeal again.
"You can't— I can't—" He heaved, shuddering backwards at the direct instance when Alhaitham made contact with his nightshirt. The Scribe retracted his hands as though they'd been burned. "Let me out of here!"
"I need you to calm down. We can leave as soon as you realize you're not in any danger," Alhaitham said. "I've never hurt you. You tied yourself to the restraint last night; I had no part in it."
Kaveh's ombre-red eyes went back and forth between the rope still looped around his ankle and Alhaitham, his chest moving up and down in tandem with his panic. "I wouldn't… I can't… Don't take anything else!"
Despite being a Haravatat graduate, Alhaitham couldn't find the words that would help his roommate. A part of him still felt submerged in the ship rolling in the stormy sea, with Kaveh's blank and judging stare observing his desperate struggle. After a moment of hesitation and watching Kaveh fall back into a sobbing mess, he did the only thing he could do.
He sat down on the wall beside Kaveh, stretched out his legs, and put his hands to rest in his lap. He kept his mouth shut and let the only sound in the room be the cries on his left.
The break was bad. Alhaitham didn't have a license in medicine, but even he could see that the ankle shouldn't have been continuously jostled in its state. The portion of rope still wrapped around the bone wouldn't ease the pain at all. If they let it go for longer than necessary at that point, even a healer wouldn't be able to correct the damage all the way. However, it was obvious that his voice wasn't helping. If they continued the way they were, then Kaveh would likely do something to make the break worse.
So, he stopped. He'd have to let Kaveh come to terms with reality on his own, if that's what it took. At least that way, they could optimally prevent more damage from being done to his ankle.
It was easier said than done.
There was something Alhaitham noticed throughout the hour or so he sat on the floor, listening to Kaveh scream and cry and beg Alhaitham not to do anything to him, was the way he was rubbing his abdomen. It wasn't dissimilar to the way he'd held his leg the other night when it was hurting, even though there had been no more glass on that leg than his other one.
If he'd sustained an injury in that area from the initial fall from the bed, Alhaitham would think that it would have to be severe enough to overpower the pain of his broken and chaffed ankle since he was prioritizing his abdomen. The conclusion he came to was that, like his leg, his abdomen had been hurt somewhere in his resurfaced memory.
That let his mind run with reasonings about what had happened in his childhood. Being hurt in both the leg and abdomen was odd, and based on his extreme adverse reaction to the restraint, Alhaitham's first assumption was torture. Coupled with his hysterical mutterings, he then inferred that it had been the result of a successful kidnapping.
Alhaitham frowned and kept his thoughts to himself. His heart burned with the mental images that wouldn't go away no matter how hard he tried to get his mind to stay quiet. It wasn't like he could risk taking off his hearing aids, either; he needed to hear the moment Kaveh's breathing evened, the moment he indicated that he recognized Alhaitham and the house they lived in.
He couldn't afford to fall into an anxiety attack now, so he kept taking deep breaths and watching that bent ankle as though it would explode if he took his eyes off of it. Kaveh's cries of torture echoed in his bedroom and into his broken eardrums.
"Alhaitham," Kaveh eventually muttered, broken and hurt. "The door was locked."
It took a second for him to respond. His gaze drifted from the now-swollen ankle to meet wide, ruby eyes. "I know."
"Did—" he hiccuped, "Why did you lock it?"
"I didn't. You've been sleep-walking, so you locked it to keep yourself in."
Kaveh never made anything easy for him. The way his lips curled into his teeth and his skin pulled as his eyes scrunched together when the tears started to flow down again made Alhaitham want to scream. Not because he blamed Kaveh, but because he didn't know what to do with the permanent ache in his chest and his own watering eyes.
"I tied the rope, too." Alhaitham hummed in affirmation. The less he said, the better. "Why did I do that? Why? Why… was I so— so stupid?"
"Are you here with me?" The Scribe asked. Perhaps he said it a little too loud, with too little emotion. Most of the time, he couldn't tell when his tone was improper and he'd talk too quietly. It just didn't click with him like it did with other people, namely Kaveh.
Kaveh didn't reply for a second, his hand still rubbing his abdomen like it was an itch he could never relieve. "You cut the chain."
"I did." It was a rope, made of horse-hair and tied in a constrictor knot on both ends. It couldn't possibly be mistaken for a chain. Kaveh turned his head to gaze at his ankle and used one hand to scratch at his eyes. His hair was in absolute disarray, and his nails were still coated with dry blood. There were stained spots along his face and clothes where the scabs must've been reopened.
The architect took a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm in so—" The attempt to fight back the sob failed, but it wasn't due to being in a place that Alhaitham couldn't reach. He was there, living in his bedroom with the Acting Grand Sage by his side, and in active pain. "Everything hurts so bad."
"You broke your ankle. We need to get you to the Bimarstan and treated by a doctor," he said, but the moment he finished, he knew he'd used the wrong words.
"No. No, I can't— I can't go there. They'll take more," Kaveh started, slightly pushing himself away from Alhaitham while vigorously trembling and shaking his head. "They'll take more! You can't force me. You can't! You can't!"
"Kaveh," he began, but he cut himself short. Just repeating what had to be done wasn't going to help. Clearly he wouldn't comply with going to a doctor, and Alhaitham wasn't keen on causing a concussion in order to knock Kaveh out for compliance. That's nothing to say about the carefully-built trust he would break.
There had to be an alternative. He could think of one if he could organize his thoughts properly above his roommate's begs to not go since the doctors will take more, for whatever that was supposed to mean. He found that he almost didn't want to know.
Alhaitham couldn't mend a bone or close wounds with his Vision, and Kaveh could only heal when the injury was elemental-reaction-induced. Since that requirement hadn't been met, at-home healing was out of the picture. They couldn't go to the hospital, and the closest Hydro-wielder they lived to was Nilou, who was currently in Port Ormos to meet with other dancers and performers. She had taken the opportunity as soon as Alhaitham lifted the performance ban on Sumeru.
That left him with Lesser Lord Kusanali, who would be nigh impossible to find. Even if he prayed to her, he assumed the most she could do for them would be to keep Kaveh's ankle from worsening during their trek to seek help. She didn't have any real healing capabilities for mortal injuries; as she had told him before, her healing power only extended to elemental lifeforms.
He looked at Kaveh, with his aching abdomen and shaking head filled with trauma of the past, he remembered someone.
"Okay. I won't take you to a doctor," he said slowly, and Kaveh gazed at him with pained relief. "Do you trust Tighnari?"
"Tighnari?" Kaveh parroted back. Alhaitham held his breath for the rest of the response. Technically, Tighnari wasn't a doctor, but he was an Amurta graduate with significant healing capabilities. Even if he couldn't heal Kaveh's bone all the way, Tighnari could get it to the point where he wouldn't suffer irreversible damage, and they could wait as long as they needed to for Kaveh to be ready to see a real doctor.
Along with that, Kaveh and Tighnari were friends longer than he and Alhaitham were. While they had both met Kaveh at the same time, the Forest Watcher and the architect stayed friends when he and Alhaitham parted ways.
"Of course I trust him," he confirmed after a long, silent hesitation. "You didn't do this to me, so I… He wouldn't. He wouldn't do it, either."
Alhaitham silently thanked Tighnari's existence, even if he'd spent half of his day cursing it. "He's staying at Cyno's place right now. We don't have any time to spare," he said, picking himself off the ground. "You'll have to lean on me so you don't put pressure on that break."
Kaveh nodded, slowly reaching out with a trembling hand to take the Scribe's outstretched hand. His grip was too loose, his hands wet and cold, so Alhaitham had to strong-arm Kaveh to stand. He didn't mind it like he thought he would.
Adjusting their positions so his left arm was wrapped around Kaveh's waist and the other was supporting the architect's arm hanging around his shoulder, they painstakingly hobbled out of their house and onto the street. Kaveh groaned in pain and his breath would hitch with teary eyes every now and then, but overall he managed to bite down on his tears. Alhaitham felt Kaveh lean into his touch more than what was necessary, finding reassurance in the fact that Alhaitham was no longer inducing his panic, but rather easing it.
Cyno's house wasn't far from the Akademiya, and thus, wasn't far from Alhaitham's house. The unfortunate bit of it was that they had to make a shortcut through the Akademiya, which Kaveh was less than thrilled about. Kaveh bit snide remarks to Alhaitham about the studying students judging him, and Alhaitham responded by noting the fact that they were all too exhausted to care.
Even after everything that had happened, they were bickering. Alhaitham struggled to hide his smile.
It was possible to get through to Kaveh. They just needed time.
—
Something that Kaveh mentioned often was how massive Cyno's house was. Alhaitham couldn't argue against that — it was less of a house and more of a mansion. It was elegantly designed in a traditional Sumerian style with a sizable yard and pool on the side. Kaveh had said before that the house itself went to waste considering how little Cyno actually stayed at home. Alhaitham's suggestion had been to convince Cyno to trade places with him, and the response had been a sour look.
After ringing the doorbell, Alhaitham knocked on the front door one, two, three times. They were evenly spaced, and he would've shouted for Cyno or Tignari's name if not for the fact that he didn't want to shout so close to Kaveh. He didn't know if that would trigger anything, and he wasn't in the mood to find out.
Kaveh shifted against his shoulder, accidentally putting pressure on his foot in the process. He doubled over, nearly toppling Alhaitham over in the process. A moment later, the door was pulled open to reveal a disheveled Cyno, who was thankfully fully dressed aside from an extreme lack of footwear. His polearm was clutched in his hand.
"Alhaitham?" The General Mahamatra's sharp vermillion gaze flitting between them. His voice indicated that he'd already been awake for some time. "What happened to Kaveh? Were you two attacked?" He demanded, dismissing his polearm into shimmering sparks.
"Let us inside and get Tighnari. Kaveh's ankle is severely broken and needs to be healed before this becomes irreversible," Alhaitham ordered, then pushed past Cyno the moment he began to step out of the way.
"Since he can't be bothered to say it," Kaveh grumbled, "good morning, Cyno. Thank you for letting us in."
Cyno nodded and followed after them. "Though it's quite early, good morning to you, too. Go to the living room, Tighnari will be down here shortly."
Right. His sense of hearing was better than most people's due to his fox lineage; he'd likely known they were there before they'd even knocked on the door. Their gait had to have been odd, though, which was why Cyno had been wielding his weapon — Tighnari hadn't been able to tell that they were his friends.
Alhaitham set Kaveh down lightly on the humongous beige couch, namely because everything in Cyno's house was big. There was a grand staircase in the foyer with two sets of leading stairs, and an elegant golden chandelier cut it straight in the middle. Kaveh would talk about the design for at least thirty minutes when they came over, and then for two hours afterwards when they returned to their comparably humble abode.
Now, Kaveh stared at the ceiling with his face twisted up in barely-restrained pain as Alhaitham adjusted his leg so his ankle would be propped up against a pillow. Finally, after all was said and done, Alhaitham fished Kaveh's Vision out of his pocket and propped it on the armrest underneath his head. He'd grabbed it on the way out, for he knew how much that Vision meant to Kaveh.
"That rope around your ankle… Were you kidnapped?" Cyno questioned. Kaveh didn't respond, only his teeth gritted to hold back any noises of pain. Thus, the General Mahamatra turned to Alhaitham, his normally blank and hard eyes narrowing with concern.
Before he had to give an answer, thundering footsteps came down the stairs and rushed into the living room. "Kaveh wasn't kidnapped," Tighnari said, pushing past Cyno and Alhaitham to examine Kaveh's ankle. "He had a nightmare and jumped out of bed, breaking his ankle, right?"
Kaveh released a strained breath, and his voice was tight when he said, "Are we just telling the whole world my issues?"
"No. The burn marks around the end indicate more of a struggle," Cyno noted nonchalantly, ignoring Kaveh's commentary. "If someone hurt you, I need to know," he added grimly.
At the lack of an answer, Alhaitham realized that Kaveh wasn't going to answer anything related to his nightmare and injury. Which left it down to the Acting Grand Sage to do all of the talking.
He couldn't find it in his heart to be irritated. Not when Kaveh was watching Tighnari gently touch his ankle with haunted, hurt ruby eyes and the various cuts still apparent throughout his face.
Alhaitham sat down on the edge of an armrest on the loveseat closest to Kaveh and cataloged what he should and shouldn't say. Lesser Lord Kusanali's advising words replayed in his head, warning him of the reason she hadn't revealed Kaveh's past to him. Reservation and trust.
He kept those two words in mind as he responded. "Kaveh has been sleep-walking every night, so he decided to prevent the issue by restraining himself to the bed using a rope knotted around his ankle. When he started sleep-walking tonight, he fell out of bed and couldn't untie the rope. His Vision wasn't on his person, so he couldn't cut it off, either."
If they started to ask for more details, it would get trickier to answer. Nothing he couldn't handle, of course, but it would've been easier if Kaveh had spoken to him more on the topic. That way, he would know what he should and shouldn't say, and what he would get away with saying that would only irritate Kaveh, not destroy his trust.
The General Mahamatra observed him intensely, clearly trying to detect the potential half-truths and lies in his words. He had no doubt that he could. Whereas Tighnari can manipulate a conversation to reveal the truth, Cyno has an innate sense of being able to know based on an individual's hidden or non-hidden tells. His intuition was even better than Alhaitham's.
Cyno opened his mouth to ask another question, presumably about why they chose to go to his house instead of the twenty-four hour hospital, but Tighnari cut in before he could utter a word. "I'll have to numb the area before doing anything else," he announced, mostly to Alhaitham and Kaveh. "The rope will need to be taken off fully before I can set the bone, and both processes will hurt like a Rishboland Tiger attack if you aren't numb or asleep. I don't have the materials to make anesthesia here, so this will have to do."
"Fine," replied Kaveh curtly, though there was a certain level of shakiness in his voice that couldn't have just been from the pain. Alhaitham narrowed his eyes, still unable to put the pieces together on what exactly happened to Kaveh.
His first educated guess had been torture since it was the clearest and most reliable assumption. However, the utter fear of doctors and refusal of a hospital was a sharp curveball that hit Alhaitham right in the gut. He knew it had to be related to the uncovered memory; Kaveh had never shown a reservation to the doctors aside from his apprehension of needles. It was a fairly common phobia, so he had never thought much of it.
Alhaitham wanted to talk to Cyno about it, which was astonishing since he could count on one hand the number of times he'd actually desired to talk to the General Mahamatra. However, this was important; he needed to access cases on past illegal medical experiments and recover kidnapping survivors. As the Acting Grand Sage and Scribe, he had the authority to handle those case files.
Reservation and trust.
He did not hold ill-intent toward Lesser Lord Kusanali, but he respectfully wished he'd never come to her for advice. That way, he would be able to do whatever he wanted without having true wisdom hold him back.
Because, well, he had to admit that she, the Goddess of Wisdom, was right, and Alhaitham shouldn't sift through documents that could prevent Kaveh from ever healing. Any discussion with Cyno about Kaveh's past should be purely theoretical until the man himself reveals the truth.
Kusanali's little hands signing his and Kaveh's name flashed in his mind's eye.
Tighnari retrieved his materials and began working on them in the living room. Cyno didn't pay any mind to this. In fact, there were very few rooms in the house that were actually lived in. As a general rule, Cyno made sure to keep his house neat and uniform, but there were qualities to the living room, kitchen, and bedrooms that separated them from the rest of the areas of the mansion. It showed a life of family and friends, not the barren life of an average rich Akademiya graduate.
Speaking of which, there was someone missing from their impromptu get-together. "Is Collei asleep?"
The Forest Watcher sighed, one of his ears flicked at the question. "She had a nightmare. We had just calmed her down when you two came knocking," he said, looking between Alhaitham and Collei with a critical expression. "I told her she could come down if she liked, but I don't know. She's quite shaken and may want time to herself. And with the contents of her nightmares, this medical treatment might make her uncomfortable."
Alhaitham noticed Tighnari had been in a similar state as Cyno when they arrived. At first, he thought the disheveledness and lack of sleep had been due to an entirely different reason involving certain dreams of a fox. Upon closer inspection, he realized that there were no love marks anywhere to be found, and they lacked any distinct smell. They'd only been awake so long because of Collei.
A syringe was filled carefully with a clear liquid substance that Tighnari had made from paste, which had come from herbs that he'd quickly mashed together. That was another odd quirk about Cyno's house — Tighnari owned more of it than the General Mahamatra himself. Various plants, herbs, and medicinal devices were stored in more than a few rooms in the house, making it look more like a greenhouse than a normal mansion.
In this especially unique emergency, Alhaitham can't complain about it. He'd never particularly cared in the first place, but if he'd ever had any buried reservations, they were now long gone.
"I have to inject your ankle four times to get it entirely numbed," Tighnari warned, handing the architect a hard piece of wood. Kaveh took the wood block and glared at the needle as though it had personally offended him. "Bite down on that. I'm injecting directly into nerves, so it's going to hurt like hell. That'll help you refocus your pain."
Kaveh nodded, placing the thin block securely in his mouth. As the needle got closer, Alhaitham noticed that Kaveh's hands were trembling. It wasn't just that; it was his breathing, labored and uneven, and his ruby eyes that had tried to only reveal his usual, diluted apprehension to shots, now blown wide with fear.
And the way he wasn't even really looking at the needle itself anymore.
"Cyno," Alhaitham started, crossing his arms over his chest, "has Tighnari told you about his dreams yet?"
The first needle was in, pumping the liquid, and out by the time Cyno had replied with a slightly confused, "Yes, but he hasn't gone into detail."
Both the Forest Watcher and the architect were looking at him incredulously. Both had to have been for pretty much the same reasons: one, there was no reason for him to bring up such matters that he didn't care about, shouldn't care about, and two, it definitely was not the right time nor place to talk about them in the first place.
They were right in their assumption in the first contention. Alhaitham didn't care about Tighnari's sexually-charged outside of the humorous vantage point. However, he knew it would catch Kaveh's attention and keep him from spiraling, at least before the first shot was even done. And in that case, he was already proven correct.
Tighnari's ears were pressed back against his head as he pressed down for the next spot to inject. "We are not having this conversation right now."
"Is there something I should know?" Cyno asked. His voice was edged in worry that Alhaitham didn't find as funny as Tighnari's flushed face. The main point of the discussion was brought back to his attention when Kaveh groaned against the wood block, eyes squeezed shut and hands trembling as the second shot was injected.
Alhaitham continued: "Tighnari has learned a lot more about restraints since he has started dreaming. It doesn't come as a surprise to me that he was so quick to understand Kaveh's situation."
"Shut up!" The Forest Watcher hissed.
The syringe was pulled out, and although Tighnari was emanating the energy of what could only be described as seething fury, he didn't falter in the medical procedure. Either he understood what Alhaitham was doing and was playing along, or he only saw the severity of the ankle break and the urgency to fix it. As long as the work was being done, Alhaitham didn't care either way.
"That's… not appropriate for the situation," Cyno said, his eyebrows drawn in confusion.
Kaveh uttered something, but it was ultimately muddled by the woodblock in his mouth. His face was screwed into a horrified, pained expression that only appeared when Alhaitham deliberately made things awkward.
The third shot went in. "I agree. Let's stop talking about it," said Tighnari. His face was still red with heat, and the way Cyno was eying him certainly wasn't helping.
"Honestly, I was shocked that you both had clothes on when I arrived," he added, causing Kaveh to cover his face with his hands and groan. There was only one more injection left.
Cyno shook his head. "I was very tired from work, and we were both worried about Collei. It didn't even cross our minds."
"It didn't cross yours," Alhaitham corrected. "Tighnari has told me—"
"Tighnari hasn't told you anything, Haitham," Kaveh said through gritted teeth, the wood block lying in his hand. The botanist retracted from the ankle, the syringe completely empty. "Stop being lewd. It's incredibly embarrassing."
Alhaitham huffed.
"Moving on! We have to wait until your ankle is entirely numb before I can do anything. The break isn't as severe as Alhaitham thought it was, so I'll only be realigning the bone and putting you in a makeshift splint until you can get a real one," Tighnari informed. "Surgery won't be necessary, but you should still see a specialist. My business is more in illnesses and infections than broken bones."
"... Yeah, of course. I can't thank you enough for your help so far. If there's anything you need, I can—"
Holding up his hand and shaking his head, Tighnari effectively cut Kaveh off. "The way you can repay me is by taking care of yourself. I have no interest in materialistic debt."
"Speaking of which, why did you come here instead of the student hospital? In order to get to my house, you had to cut through the Akademiya," Cyno commented. "You would've received more efficient and professional treatment if you'd stopped there."
Alhaitham made eye contact with Kaveh, who looked like he was caught in the midst of a mental battle. The Scribe made no indication he would assist in the fight. After all, he highly anticipated the answer Kaveh was going to provide. Would he continue to put up a front in front of all three of his closest friends, or would he finally break down and reveal the truth that's haunting his dreams?
He also wondered what kind of excuse he could make up that would appease both Tighnari and Cyno.
"I had a nightmare," he began, and Alhaitham listened with rapt attention. "In it, there were procedures being performed in a hospital against my will. I couldn't even stomach the idea of going to one when I woke up, so we came here instead."
Quiet acknowledgment blanketed the living room. Alhaitham watched Cyno take in the information, the way he searched for any dishonesty or distortion of reality in his words. The Acting Grand Sage had already come to his own conclusion, but it wasn't a detriment to seek a second opinion.
Eventually, Cyno nodded. "Collei has been experiencing a similar phenomenon. I understand your reservation."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Tighnari asked gently.
Kaveh sucked in a breath. "No, I don't."
It was a little disappointing how no one in the room pressed for more information. The way Kaveh answered was equally as much of a let down; it was what exactly Alhaitham had anticipated. Kaveh's words had been crafted like he was making up another childhood memory, diverting the conversation away from his parents, or explaining his utter lack of mora. He wasn't technically lying, but the entire truth was complicated enough that the simplified sentence wasn't sufficient.
It was utterly annoying and in this scenario, concerning. His broken ankle, propped up on the floral-patterned pillow, was the equivalent of poisonous gas in a sealed chamber. Kaveh was breathing in all the toxic air, and his friends were forced to watch.
Rather, Alhaitham was forced to watch. Tighnari and Cyno didn't know the extent of it. They hadn't seen Kaveh behave as though he was a prey animal screaming in the jaws of its predator. The way he screamed bloody murder when Alhaitham tried to calm him down, or the anxiety over phantom pains of injuries long healed.
He thought of young Collei in her room upstairs, alone, and an odd sense of guilt crowded his chest.
"Can you feel this?" Tighnari asked while using a furry-looking leaf to tickle Kaveh's ankle. At the architect's denial, he motioned for Alhaitham. "While the break is bad, the knot is the biggest issue. It's tied almost to the point of cutting off his circulation. Just slice it off — if you try to unknot it, it'll make it worse."
Alhaitham had noticed it. Kaveh's foot had increasingly become discolored as they'd been in the living room. He hadn't seen it in the darkness of their apartment, and he hadn't been looking out for it when they were walking through the city. He mentally cursed himself; he should've cut it at home when he had the chance.
Summoning his sword, he finished the job and did what he couldn't for the Kaveh of his dream.
The skin underneath the rope was black and purple from indentation marks. Crusted blood stained the area maroon along with a bumpy rash, revealing more of the struggle he'd put up against the self-induced restraint. Kaveh didn't make an indication that he'd felt the blade nick his skin or the rope unconstricting his twisted bone.
Cyno was ordered by Tighnari to retrieve supplies to clean the ankle as well as to materials to make a splint, and he'd left without a word against him. Alhaitham almost made a comment to Kaveh about how some people can listen to their roommates, but he reasoned against it. Thoughts of hospitals, surgery, and children kept in chains poisoned his normal behaviors.
Putting his hands on either side of the ankle, Tighnari gave Kaveh no time to think about what he was about to do before a loud crack sounded in the room. The bone aligned itself into its rightful position, and all Kaveh did was look at it with a stunned expression.
"It's not the first time I've had to do it, and unfortunately I don't think it'll be the last," the Forest Watcher said bitterly, leaning back from the ankle. "With the sudden craze over Aranara, adventurers are getting themselves into more and more trouble. It's such a pain."
At that, Kaveh's eyebrows furrowed. "Can Aranara heal people?"
"I believe so, but they seem to be picky about who they do and don't heal, and to what extent," Tighnari answered. His tail twitched in a clear sign of agitation. "I was talking with the Traveler about this topic, actually. They said that Aranara don't all have the same level of power, and most Aranara are too skittish to approach adult humans. I've personally seen children who had their wounds inexplicably treated or healed without having come across a healer or even another human when they got lost in the forest."
"Huh," was all Kaveh said. Odd.
Cyno came back with everything that Tighnari asked for, and he quickly went to treat the rope burn while the botanist worked on the splint. There wasn't anything left for Alhaitham to do except think, which he considered himself to be exceptionally good at. With Kusanali's warnings in the back of his mind, he began to analyze everything Kaveh had said and done since he'd woken up in a panic and broken his ankle.
There were three key facts that Alhaitham learned, without a doubt, happened in Kaveh's childhood memory:
One. Some kind of medical procedure had been performed without his consent or going directly against it.
Two. He had been restrained with at least one chain at some point during his containment, whether that be before, during, or after the medical procedure.
Three. He had been kidnapped away from home.
In comparing the words Kaveh spoke while in the midst of his post-traumatic attack versus after he'd arrived at Cyno's house, Alhaitham found differences that didn't necessarily contrast each other, but simply made finding the truth more complicated. It prevented a concrete conclusion, much to the Scribe's dismay.
Kaveh thought before he did anything. Whether that be speaking or acting, there was always some level of consideration that what he did would change the course of either his life or the person or people in front of him. Even in his state of delirium, his panicked exclamations and desperate attempts at fleeing weren't without merit. They spoke volumes to his state of mind and how he had handled his original containment.
Alhaitham was having a uniquely hard time piecing together all of the information. It floated around in his brain, Kaveh's strained voice echoing in his head. They'll take more. I can't do it. Get away from me.
Can Aranara heal people?
Then there were the injuries; the leg and the abdomen. Were they sustained from surgery, torture, or escape? If it was surgery, what did they take from his leg? The abdomen provided access to a plethora of organs, but the leg only had flesh, blood, and bone. As far as Alhaitham was aware, Kaveh wasn't lacking any bone marrow, nor did he have a steel rod in place of a femur or tibia. Torture could explain both. Escape was a wild card — had he managed to run and find freedom, or did it fail, and he had to wait for rescue?
It just wasn't enough. Without access to documentations concerning child kidnappings, human experimentations, or hospital malpractice lawsuits from twenty years ago, he couldn't say definitively what happened, where it happened, and who did it.
He stared at Kaveh and saw a glowing, Dendro green luminescence outline his form. He blinked, and it disappeared. Kaveh looked back at him with a concerned yet guarded expression.
The Acting Grand Sage wondered what was going to happen when Kaveh had his next nightmare. First was an escape into cold weather. Second was shattering glass and bleeding cuts all over the body. Third was a broken ankle and a post-traumatic attack.
Alhaitham felt his heart fall for a century. He turned his gaze away from red eyes and scars and a swollen ankle, focusing his energy on watching Tighnari make a splint. They carried on a conversation without him.
Lesser Lord Kusanali was right. He shouldn't know what happened without Kaveh telling him. He shouldn't look for the information, and he shouldn't try to piece it together on his own. But not having that material knowledge, not being certain of what happened to Kaveh, left his throat dry and his hands shaking despite his best attempts at controlling them.
"There, it's all done," Tighnari finally said, fitting the splint on Kaveh's foot and ankle. It was halfway made from Dendro and Electro energy, the combined efforts of the General Mahamatra and Forest Watcher, in order to have welded the metal into rods and fitted around the heavy fabric. "Do you want to sleep out here or in a bedroom?"
Kaveh didn't hesitate when he replied, "Here is fine. I'm already comfortable."
"What about you, Alhaitham?"
It was obvious that no one had considered Alhaitham would go back home. Surprisingly, he realized that he didn't yearn for his own bed. All he wanted was to be within arms reach of Kaveh, wherever that may be.
"I'll stay in here," he settled on. He didn't miss the way Kaveh's lips twitched upwards for half a second.
Tighnari nodded and lightly touched Kaveh's shoulder. "I know this is hard for you, but if you ever want to talk about your nightmares, we are always open."
"You could say we are all ears," Cyno added tonelessly.
Honestly, Alhaitham couldn't understand why Tighnari chose him of all people.
Despite the horrible joke, Kaveh smiled and thanked them both. "Sleep well, you two. If Collei is still awake, send her my condolences. I'm having a hard time with this, and I'm an adult. I can't imagine how she's dealing."
And that was that. They promised to carry the message, wished them both a good night, turned off the lights, and disappeared up the stairs. Kaveh shrouded a blanket over himself, floral-patterned and soft to match the pillows. The Scribe moved to a bigger couch further away from Kaveh and ignored the tug in his gut that tried to pull him backwards, closer to the architect.
He splayed himself out over the couch, which was admittedly comfortable. It wasn't as good as a bed, but it was fairly softer and wider than the ones they had at home. He kept his hearing aids on and closed his eyes, reminding himself of Kaveh's presence just a few feet away from him. Alhaitham knew the architect wasn't getting any more sleep that night.
"Hey," Kaveh whispered into the dark after minutes of silence. "Thank you, Haitham."
Alhaitham would've teased him for it. He would've had Kaveh say it two more times, just for the sake of it. He would've made them go back to bickering.
He thought of Kaveh. Thought of him trapped in a burning house, drowning in a ship, chained in a hospital; thought of surgeries, children, and Aranara; thought of Archons, knowledge, and emotional intelligence; thought of Tighnari, Cyno, and Collei.
"I will be there for you." Even if he couldn't help. Even if he couldn't save him. Even if Kaveh suffered alone in his nightmares every night. "Always."
He didn't acknowledge the stifled sniffle and hitched breath. Kaveh deserved at least that much privacy.
