Chapter Text
Kaveh had known for a long time that he wasn’t deserving. Since that fateful day his father left for the desert and never came back, since his entire world had crumbled around him and it was all his fault, he had accepted it as the price for his sins. So Kaveh hoped for nothing. He watched, fearfully at first, and listlessly at the end, as his mother fell deeper and deeper into a pit of her own despair. He made no protest when she eventually packed up and fled to Fontaine with scarcely a glance back at the young son she had left behind to fend for himself. Why would she want to stay around her husband’s killer? The years passed by. His childhood home, once full of laughter and debate, now blanketed by a choking silence, fell to disrepair around him. Alone he was just Kaveh, his father’s killer. His mother’s biggest regret. His own biggest regret.
But that didn’t mean the world had to see it. No, Kaveh told himself, no one but him would carry this shame. His father was gone and his mother could scarcely comprehend what was happening around her, but he would uphold his family’s reputation. He passed the Akademiya exam. He studied until dark bruises made a permanent home under his eyes. He kept up his smile, a shield that hid his weeping wounds. His professors lauded him as a genius, the saving grace of his darshan. His peers loved him as the Light of Kshahrewar, the ever-reliable Kaveh who knew the name of every kind of leaf in the forest, who could whip up a brilliant project proposal in just a night, who knew exactly what to do with the maddeningly vague feedback from a particularly difficult professor. To all who knew him, Kaveh was untouchable. Kind, understanding, larger than life, brilliant.
And if Kaveh went home every night and curled up on the shabby couch in the tomb that was once his family home, weeping with only the cockroaches scuttling across the floor as his witnesses, no one needed to know about it.
Kaveh didn’t hope, because that meant believing he deserved more. No, he resigned himself to whatever trial fate decided to throw before him and survived with several more scars to show for it, because that was how it was supposed to be.
Alhaitham was the anomaly. From their very first encounter, when Alhaitham was a lanky fourteen-year-old with a terrible haircut and far too many opinions, Kaveh knew that his life would never be the same again.
It was physically impossible for Kaveh to maintain the image he’d spent years crafting around Alhaitham. Sometimes all it took was a singular sentence from the grey-haired Haravatat to make Kaveh explode. Alhaitham never knew when to shut the fuck up, and Kaveh couldn’t decide whether he simply didn’t care about etiquette or he was just that oblivious. Kaveh hated everything that came out of his mouth. Archons, he had the worst takes of anyone Kaveh had ever encountered, and yet he spoke with nothing less than conviction. He lost count of how many times the two of them were kicked out of the library for making it the venue of their very heated debates (admittedly, it was mostly because Kaveh would inevitably start screaming).
Kaveh didn’t mind a debate. After all, it was the best way to exchange ideas and consider new perspectives. The issue with Alhaitham was that his perspectives were absolutely unconsiderable because they were simply wrong.
Yet seldom did you see one without the other. Perhaps it was because Kaveh and Alhaitham were the only two people who could truly understand each other. In their own respective ways, they were both outliers from the rest of the Akademiya; Kaveh because he refused to accept the way things were done, and Alhaitham because he simply didn’t care. It made sense, in a way, that the two most polarising figures in the Akademiya would end up gravitating towards each other. Maybe they even completed each other. Plenty of people had hypothesised whether their infamous arguments were, in fact, some kind of bizarre mating ritual. Hearing them yelling at each other down the halls became a staple event in everyone’s schedule. It would be more unusual to start your morning without inadvertently stumbling across their latest duelling ground, since they made no secret of their disputes.
But to Kaveh, who had spent most of his life with a mask glued to his face with the flesh beneath rotting away to nothing, Alhaitham was not an academic rival (not that he would ever tell him that). Alhaitham was Alhaitham, forever unruffled and wholly uninterested most of the time. He reminded Kaveh that coffee was not a replacement for actual meals. He was an anchor who tied Kaveh down when his own ideas threatened to carry him away. He was the voice of reason who’d tell Kaveh he was stupid for spending his hard-earned tuition money on seven kinds of hair treatment. He would gruffly tell Kaveh his hair didn’t look terrible when Kaveh appeared the next morning having gone through a seven-step hair treatment. Alhaitham was not gentle. He was not kind. He was pragmatic, blunt and undoubtedly brilliant.
Alhaitham would never lie to Kaveh. Perhaps that was why it hurt so much when their friendship ended.
Alhaitham saw the truth Kaveh had been trying to deny his whole life, and ripped it out of his chest.
Your ‘altruism’ is a poorly disguised, selfish attempt to alleviate your own guilt.
Those were the words that opened a gaping chasm between them. Prior to that, Kaveh had believed their friendship could survive anything. How wrong he was, he thought as he tore apart his copy of their joint thesis and let the pieces fall to the ground.
I wish I never met you. You’re nothing but an emotionless machine, just like everyone says.
He didn’t look at Alhaitham’s face, didn’t wait for his response, before he stormed out of the room, tears already pouring down his face as his heart ached with a pain he hadn’t felt since the matra came to their house with the news of his father’s passing. And if he came back hours later to gather up the torn pieces and glue them back together, choking on his own regret, Alhaitham did not need to know.
Life moved on. Kaveh graduated, secured his first contract and began his life as an architect. His mother got back in touch, occasionally sent him letters detailing her experiences living in Fontaine. She eventually invited him to her wedding, which Kaveh attended with his best attempt at a joyful smile nailed to his face as he hugged her and shook hands with her new husband. He was happy for her, he truly was. She deserved this.
He returned to Sumeru a few days after the reception and drank until he woke up on the dusty floor of his childhood home, lying amidst the shattered remnants of the glass he’d dropped when he’d passed out, his clothes stained with wine.
He learned that his ideas were too fanciful, too exuberant, so he began the process of whittling himself down. He gained a reputation as Sumeru’s best architect, with all of his clients leaving him beaming reviews. He did not go home, and the house began to gather cobwebs that draped themselves across the walls.
So that’s Faranak’s boy. Bechara, their family has been through such hardship. He’s doing well for himself now, isn’t he?
I heard his mother ran away to Fontaine! Is that true, Amma?
Hush, it’s rude to speculate about such things.
Kaveh was fine. His family’s reputation was preserved. His mother was happy at last. Everything was fine.
Dori offered him the opportunity to exercise full creative rights over her new residence, and he accepted. It went well, until the Withering struck. But Kaveh was not discouraged. He sold the house. He took on debts he was aware he would probably never be able to pay back. Sumeru was watching him, and he, the Light of Kshahrewar, the saving grace of his darshan, son of the Faranak and Kareem, would not fail. No, he would create something that would be immortalised in history.
And he did. He built the Palace of Alcazarzary, the greatest architectural feat ever achieved in Sumeru. His admirers gushed. His adversaries seethed. Kaveh let the praises flow like cheap wine, meaningless words from those who simply wanted his favour. He smiled, he accepted their compliments, he went to Lambad’s and drank until he threw up.
And amongst all of that, who should walk back into his life but Alhaitham, the now Scribe of the Akademiya? It had been years since they had last met. Alhaitham wasn’t any taller, but he was certainly more muscular. His hair had been cut shorter, and, to Kaveh’s surprise, he donned a somewhat fashionable outfit. Perhaps in all their years apart, Alhaitham had finally begun to care about his appearance beyond the bare essentials.
Yet as soon as Alhaitham opened his mouth, it was clear he hadn’t changed all that much. He was still ruthlessly logical, self-centred and blunt. That familiar rage sizzled again in Kaveh’s veins, but he was simply too spent to do anything but stare at his erstwhile best friend. His temples throbbed, and he attempted to massage his head with shaking hands.
And then Alhaitham asked him that question. How has realising your ideals gone for you?
Kaveh laughed hollowly. “What do you want me to say? That you were right all along?” he spat. “I would rather do all of it again than ever subscribe to your callous, worldly ideology.”
“That isn’t what I asked, Kaveh.”
“I know what you asked,” Kaveh hissed poisonously. “If you’re here to gloat, you can just fuck off. You got your victory, didn’t you? Go bask in it, then. Leave me alone.”
But Alhaitham just sat there, quiet and watchful, and a taut thread in Kaveh’s chest suddenly snapped. His tale poured out over his lips like one of Sumeru’s summer deluges of rain; the dam that had been splintering for years now finally crumbled. For hours did Alhaitham listen as Kaveh lamented woe after woe, and not once did he open his mouth. Perhaps if Kaveh had not been drunk, if he had not been drowning in his self-pity, he would have noticed that the Akademiya’s Scribe remained uncharacteristically silent. It was only when Kaveh was finally done, staring at an old stain on the table, that Alhaitham spoke.
A hand on his arm. “Come on, Kaveh. We’re leaving.”
And Kaveh, exhausted as he was, did not resist as Alhaitham pulled him to his feet and led him out of the tavern. He was barely aware of Alhaitham unlocking the door to the house that was supposed to be their shared residence after their project all those years ago. He didn’t even know Alhaitham had guided him into a bed – the first bed he had slept in in weeks – as his eyes fluttered shut and he truly rested for the first time in so many years.
And so Kaveh came to live with the very same man he had sworn to leave behind. Nothing improved about their relationship now that they shared a space. Alhaitham snapped at Kaveh for ‘fiddling around at 3am’ and Kaveh blew up at Alhaitham for ‘leaving his books everywhere except a shelf’. The entire street was kept up by their shouting matches, with Alhaitham’s status and fearsome reputation being the only thing keeping them from receiving noise complaints. But that was all right. Kaveh never hoped for anything else.
Kaveh never hoped for anything, not even love.