Chapter Text
Six months ago, Kaveh died.
It had started off as an ordinary day; he’d woken up, made himself breakfast and left the house early to meet with his client. As he’d hummed absently while making his morning coffee, how was he to know the fate which would befall him a mere hour later?
He’d been talking with his client at the time, at the Palace of Alcazarzaray, simply discussing the project he’d been working on. Throughout the conversation, his client’s behavior seemed…odd. Almost aggressive, and Kaveh had gotten worried, warning bells ringing in his head. He’d known they were frustrated with the project—had been for a few weeks—and it seemed the longer they talked over the details, the more agitated with it they became.
Kaveh would never have guessed that the simple question, Miss, is everything okay? would lead to this. All he could truly remember about the moment were angry eyes, a flash of silver and a stabbing pain in his chest.
When he finally woke up later in the garden, he didn’t know how long it had been. He thought maybe he had fainted, and his head felt strangely light—his body felt tethered to the earth and as if it could float away at any moment simultaneously.
He could still feel the phantom throb of the dagger right above his sternum, and when he rubbed the place where it had struck him, he could feel raised scar tissue there. It didn’t make any sense.
He knew he’d been stabbed—he had the scar to prove it—but he was obviously still alive, conscious in some form. And he still didn’t know how long he’d been out of it; still though, Kaveh couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something.
The feeling only solidified when he’d tried to leave.
The tethered sensation in his chest grew the further he went from the Palace, until he physically couldn’t step any farther onto the path leading back home, to Sumeru City; the tether squeezed his chest tightly, making it impossible to move past the invisible barrier he’d come across. He eventually resigned himself to sitting patiently in one of the gazebos for someone to come; surely he wouldn’t be stuck here forever?
An indefinite amount of time later—for Kaveh’s sense of time had become strangely warped, and it felt like both the blink of an eye and several long hours at the same time—people started gathering at the Palace. They whispered and gossiped to each other, many staring worriedly around the garden and the Palace. Corps of Thirty members showed up at some point, putting up bright yellow missing person posters and taping the entrance to the Palace off.
Kaveh tried speaking to all of them, yet every person that showed up didn’t—or maybe couldn’t—notice him. He’d belatedly realized that he was the one on the missing person posters, but he still couldn’t understand.
“I’m right here!” he’d yelled, desperately tugging at people’s arms and shouting right in their faces; they still took no notice of him.
Kaveh felt so trapped, confined in his own personal bubble that he’d never wanted to surround him, trying to show the world that he was still here, even when—after trying and trying—he knew it was no use. They stayed oblivious to his presence while he rattled the bars of the metaphorical cage he was now trapped in.
Days passed, and fewer people came to the Palace to search for him. The Corps took down the tape and the posters, and when people steadily began to visit the Palace normally again, there were hardly any whispers of “the missing architect Kaveh”.
And every night, as the visitors trickled down the path back to the city—to home—Kaveh would sit with his knees tucked to his chest, wondering if anyone would notice him, missing his home, his family, his life.
Missing Alhaitham.
Kaveh found himself wondering often if Alhaitham missed him too. He likely did—or at least, that’s what Kaveh told himself. On the two occasions that the man had come to the Palace during the investigation, it was for a very short time, and though his face was a stoic, blank mask, there were dark shadows under his eyes, and his brow had a consistent furrow that Kaveh longed to press his thumb against, to ease the scribe’s worries.
It warmed Kaveh to know that Alhaitham even came at all. He saw how stressed the man was the first time he’d arrived, giving the tiniest of flinches that only Kaveh could see when someone commented on the situation, and Alhaitham was close enough to hear. It only made Kaveh all the more desperate to know what was going on—to know why he couldn’t press against Alhaitham’s shoulder with his own to reassure him.
There were times when he tried—oh yes, many—but he simply passed through every time. Once, Kaveh thought he could see the smallest shift in Alhaitham’s expression, like he could feel Kaveh’s warmth next to him, but it was so small and lasted so short that Kaveh thought he probably imagined it.
It took a long time, but eventually, Kaveh used the tether to find himself.
He’d started experimenting with the tether, trying to see how far he could go from the Palace and wondering when he’d finally get bored of looking at it; he never did—it was his magnum opus after all. The tether hardly let him go five steps onto the dirt path that led away from the Palace, and a few days after giving up trying to go farther than that, he decided to try and see where the tether was its weakest.
He’d anticipated standing somewhere in the middle of the garden; what he hadn’t foreseen was that it would be over his body.
His very much dead body.
When the shock of finding himself, bloodstained and half-buried, had finally subsided, only the grief remained. Grief for his mother, his family, Alhaitham, all wondering what happened to him. Grief for himself, for the rest of the life he could’ve had. Kaveh didn’t know you could grieve yourself, but now, he finally understood.
Death had come for him sooner than he’d expected.
*
Six months ago, Kaveh died.
Alhaitham woke up that morning alone.
It was nothing outside of routine; Kaveh’s day often started much earlier than Alhaitham’s anyway. He simply did what he does every morning, rolling over to Kaveh’s rapidly cooling side of the bed, allowing himself one inhale of Kaveh’s scent and absorbing what remains of the warmth he left behind.
Perhaps, if Alhaitham knew what was going to happen that day, he wouldn’t’ve thrown those sheets straight into the wash as soon as he got up.
He went about his day like normal, and in the evening, when he was just wondering when Kaveh would be home—for he said he’d only be out in the morning—the doorbell rang.
He’d gone to the door with a smug smile already curving along his lips, ready to greet the architect and start on dinner together—Kaveh promised him his favorite pudding for dessert today, and Alhaitham was going to hold the blonde out on that promise, even if he had to bribe that pudding out of him. But he didn’t open the door to the loud, obnoxious ball of energy he was used to; instead, it was a Corps of Thirty member, solemn and apologetic.
Alhaitham’s smile fell instinctually back into the stoic expression he reserved for practically everyone but Kaveh, while internally, he was panicking. His thoughts had immediately jumped to the worst possible scenario; thoughts tend to do that, especially in stressful situations. Alhaitham automatically dismissed all the thoughts telling him that Kaveh was injured, or even dead, as minds always seem to turn to whenever there’s bad news. Those were silly notions; in fact, this probably wasn’t even about Kaveh, just something from work.
Alhaitham couldn’t have been more wrong, and he wishes he wasn’t.
When the man at the door delivered the message, Alhaitham almost laughed. Had he been thinking about something bad happening to Kaveh so strongly that he’d accidentally mistaken what the Corps member said? But no. The man’s expression had hardened at what must’ve been Alhaitham’s disbelieving face, and he stated it again, Kaveh has disappeared, and Alhaitham felt suddenly as if his heart was in his throat, choking him.
He barely managed to accept the Corps’ thin file on the case before slamming the door in the man’s face and just standing there.
Kaveh missing?
Alhaitham wanted to scoff. Wanted to cry a bit. Wanted Kaveh to jump out from behind the couch and proclaim it was all just a silly prank. Wanted to demand more details, because the file truly was pitifully small, and there wasn’t nearly enough information for Alhaitham’s liking. Tall, blonde, male…Last seen at the Palace of Alcazarzaray… It was the bare minimum, and it made Alhaitham’s blood boil.
For the first two days after receiving the news, Alhaitham pestered the Corps for more information—the one paper and reference photo in the file wasn’t enough, and neither were the tacky yellow missing person posters. He felt like they weren’t doing enough; he felt that the whole city wasn’t doing enough.
How could they not be frantically searching for Kaveh? The beloved, famous architect? Why weren’t they putting more effort into his case, into finding out what really happened?
For a whole week, the Corps barely worked on the case at all, other than to go up to the Palace, take minimal notes, and then tape it off from visitors. Speculations and rumors were flying around the city within days. Most of them made Alhaitham angry and irritated—was the Nation of Wisdom always this dense? Kaveh wouldn’t run away, and he certainly wasn’t having a secret love affair with some woman at the Palace.
Alhaitham visited the Palace only twice during the investigation; the first time was hard enough, at the beginning when there was still a large crowd to be often found gathered at the perimeter of the courtyard, and groups of Corps members walking around and pretending to scan for elemental energy, when really they were just staring blankly at the flower bushes. The people at the front—that Alhaitham assumed had been whispering about Kaveh and the lack of evidence of anything having happened—turned both their heads and their gossip to him, and their suspicious comments wondering what he was doing there, actually scanning for elemental traces, made Alhaitham wish they would all rot.
He desperately wanted to scowl at them all, to yell at them to fuck off; he wanted them to quit their gossiping, as if Kaveh going missing was just the next little scandal, and soon enough, another, more interesting story would come along. He wanted to force them to look for Kaveh too, or just scream in their faces. How would they feel if it was one of their loved ones that was missing? Didn’t they understand that Kaveh is a loved one to some people?
Alhaitham often struggles with his emotions, but when listening to those people, he felt repulsed, disgusted. It felt like they had no regard for Kaveh at all, and they might deny it—or may not even intend it—but it felt like every word was another cut along Alhaitham’s back; it felt like they were mocking him. What right did they have to scorn and question Alhaitham’s involvement in the case? They didn’t know anything about Kaveh and him.
It was on Alhaitham’s second visit to the Palace that his scans finally revealed something, and though his heart leapt for a moment—was he finally on to something?—it was only seconds later that he saw the dried blood, and the feeling of hopefulness withered to ash in his chest.
In all, Kaveh’s case stayed open for about a month. The Corps was getting tired of searching, and after the blood and traces of lingering dendro were found, they closed it. Wrote a simple report that Alhaitham was sent a day after his second visit. A monster probably got a hold of him and dragged the body into the forest, they said. Everything points towards his death, they determined.
Alhaitham crumpled the paper in his fists, staring blankly ahead. Dendro thorns sprung from his fingertips and ripped the report to shreds.
The rest of Sumeru may have given up on Kaveh, but Alhaitham would be damned if this was the end of it.