citylogs | [OPEN]

[Alhaitham stops.

The moment is discordant enough that he loses seconds. He blinks rapidly at the door. Kaveh's hand is gripping his wrist, but that isn't Kaveh and Alhaitham.

They would fail to reach synthesis. They would fall apart. Alhaitham would leave before his words could hit the weak point in Kaveh's form again. Alhaitham leaves so that the leave is never permanent. So that it's never years between them again. Kaveh is left behind.

Kaveh lets himself be left behind. It has always been that since that day in the tavern: that Alhaitham always chases, and Kaveh never does.

His fingers curl into his palms. He doesn't turn around.] What? You don't actually want to talk about this.

[ kaveh's hand curls around alhaitham's wrist. it burns, is the thing. kaveh has always run cool. it's alhaitham who runs at a temperature slightly closer to burning, who is like a heartflame in hand. kaveh had discovered this when he had reached for alhaitham's hand to pull towards some distant apparition, a stall or a class or a subject, kaveh isn't certain anymore, but had found himself lingering at it. had looked at his hand in the aftermath in the night, had flexed it for certainty. kaveh still remembers it now. it's against the pads of his fingers; it is a single loop of warmth that ties them both.

funny, how fragile that string is.

it had been kaveh who flitted to the warmth. it had been alhaitham who chased after the storm. and now - they've come to their beginnings, kaveh thinks, as he grips alhaitham's wrist with the hands meant for wresting dreams into reality where dreams go to die - and refuses to let go. ]

What else is there to say! [ kaveh says, and then - ] And that isn't a rhetorical question, that is an invitation. What is there to say about this, Alhaitham. What am I missing?

[ the question unasked: what happened to us, alhaitham? what have i done to us? ]

[Kaveh's fingers dig. If Alhaitham tried he could pry Kaveh off. It would be a fight. It would tear them in two again.

Alhaitham turns. It's only enough to look over his shoulder.] So you get to demand answers but mine are always more questions? You really don't think there's anything from these past few weeks to talk about?

[ kaveh bares his teeth. ]

Don't start. Who deflects my questions with his own? You, Alhaitham. It has always been you. What exactly have you answered ever since we arrived at this city?

Sure, it's always me. [He doesn't roll his eyes, but his tone carries the bite in its stead.

He turns in full, pulling on his arm to force Kaveh to either let go or stagger closer in his space.] You want to start from the beginning, every question I apparently haven't answered since we arrived here? Why stop there, you might as well include every one that wasn't answered to your satisfaction in Sumeru, too.

You don't think there's anything else to say, so what's the question you're really trying to ask?

Then we won't stop there. We will go back to the questions that weren't answered in Sumeru - why, did you think I've forgotten them? The unfinished arguments, the unanswered questions, the bulletin boards and the research papers? Do your think I've forgotten what you wrote in Deshret's script which you left for me? Do you think I've forgotten Sachin?

[ kaveh draws in his breath. ] Do you think I've forgotten that not once have you ever told me why you offered your house to me that day at the Tavern? Alhaitham, what is there to say? I remember the questions, and I don't recall the answers - so who here doesn't think there is anything to say?

[Kaveh spins it at a clip. Alhaitham traces every question to it's final conclusion. It's the answer he won't give directly. It's an answer they can't walk back from.

Alhaitham thinks, he will lose Kaveh when it is rejected. He will lose Kaveh from his fear and guilt.]

... You won't understand any answer I can give you. The fact that you can't answer it yourself after everything is proof enough.

[Because all of those distill to the same thing. They are the same answer, etched again and again in his actions.]

Oh, now it's me.

[ the word truncates between kaveh's pressed teeth. ] You speak like the Herbads in the Akademiya, the ones that take the juniors of their classes and segregate them into strata. These ones are the best because they can guess at what I'm thinking - these ones are the failures for merely following their own train of thought. You never ascribed to that school of thinking, Alhaitham. If you did, you wouldn't be the colossal headache that you are today.

How am I to come to the answer if I don't know what the question is? [ it comes with a roar. kaveh realises - it's the sound of his own blood, rushing. kaveh asks, into the din: ] Alhaitham, what is the question I am not answering?

I'm just reminding the Light of Kshahrewar that he's supposedly a genius yet he can't decipher an easy problem when everything is right in front of him.

[Alhaitham takes one step forward. His gaze sits on Kaveh with tense admonishment.] It's the question you ask yourself after every one of those: why do I do this for you?

[Why did he let him live here. Why does he pay his tab. Why did he look into Sachin. Why is he angry at Midnight. The question is why, why, why.]

Is that the official stance of the Lunatic of the Akademiya? [ says kaveh, with bitter and bittermost cloying at the back of his throat, ] At least I never asked to be called a genius. Instead, I find myself asking the most basic of basic questions because you have the most baffling thought process known to mankind. Logical? Rational? Nobody understands you. You never do anything that doesn't benefit you, and what you consider a benefit is based on an incomprehensible rubric that you've never cared to share.

[ kaveh meets alhaitham halfway. he steps into alhaitham's space. he raises their joined limbs - hand to wrist. he is furious. ] Why do you do this for me? Why did you bite me, and then walk away? At least Midnight's excuse was him being a vampire! Why, Alhaitham. Or are you going to answer that question again with another question? Because that seems to be all you know how to say.

And yet you still know me better than anyone else. [What does that say that even Kaveh writes him off an unintelligible? Alhaitham is sure the answer is that Kaveh doesn't want to know.

He breathes out. He focuses on the easier question.] I told you one of the symptoms I'm experiencing is aggression. You got too close. I did what vampires do.

[A lie of omission. Because he would have done it if he waz more himself, if he thought he could. Because targeting the spot Midnight did was his own feelings.]

Edited 2023-10-22 11:25 (UTC)

And yet it doesn't seem to help me, does it? [ kaveh closes his eyes. he opens them. he looks. the bitter string of it is a noose. kaveh has just left it long enough that he can take two steps into it, to loop it around his throat. to pull. ] Because the more I know you it seems, the more questions I have. I know you better than anyone else. That is your position. I gave you two questions on purpose. You only ever answer the one you think you can get away with.

[ at the bottom of the well, it's the desperation that settles. kaveh asks, softer than dust, softer than light: ]

Why, Alhaitham.

[Alhaitham clenches his jaw. He'd walked into the trap, he realizes. Kaveh hangs them together. Kaveh asks again, why.

Alhaitham breathes in. Closes his eyes. Breathes out. His free hand lifts to cradle Kaveh's face. The palm of his hand is warm. The weight of the gesture is tender. He looks at Kaveh with frustration, with imploring, with faint desire.]

Because it's you.

[ alhaitham steps towards him. he raises his hand. the touch on his cheek is the quality of ice melting from its peak. it skims the contour of his cheek as if tracing the path of something precious, just a rivulet of it along primordial waterbeds. they say the lord of amrita died in tungi hollow. it was said that they died to pacify the corruption that would have overtook the world. they say that the waters that sprung from the lord's body still nourish the land today. even in death, the love of the lord still flows.

kaveh is no river. kaveh is no well. kaveh is the desert that hides it. kaveh has never good enough - not for netzach, not for midnight. not for alhaitham. the world ought not move for kaveh. the world ought not try. kaveh, who has calculated the last drop of his value down to five decimal places, who knows the make of his construction and the weight of his materials, who knows his erosion down to the very year, month, day, hour, minute, second it takes - alhaitham looks at him, and kaveh thinks - it's been some time since he's understood what alhaitham was thinking.

because alhaitham, too, knows. he simply hadn't thought alhaitham cruel enough to say so. ]

... if you were going to deflect one last time, you shouldn't've said a thing.

[ says kaveh, with a voice like heartbreak.

kaveh steps back. kaveh leaves the hand on his cheek. he leaves that hand and the man who holds it out standing there by the door. ]

[Kaveh's voice breaks upon its first syllable. It is the prelude to the words that tumble out and--

The last bit of tension snaps out of Alhaitham's shoulders. Kaveh steps back and his hand is left cold in its aftermath. His arm drops like a puppet cut of its strings. Alhaitham stands in the doorway. It's the stillness of it all. It's the inertia of it all. He expected this would happen.

Everything is always in his expectations.

There's only ash left in his throat.] What did I say? You won't understand any answer I give you.

I don't think you even want to try.

[The swift pivot of his heel. And then he's out the door.]

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