🕶️

he didn’t know that it was your last day together. 

he didn’t know that the smile you gave him that afternoon, your eyes sparkling like sunlight upon the serene waves of the ocean, would be the last he’d ever see. that the playful light in your gaze would fade so very soon, slipping through his fingers like sand.

he didn’t know that last night would be the last time he held you close while you drifted off to sleep. he didn’t know that today would be the last time he’d wake up with you.

he didn’t think he’d lose you like this. 

he didn’t think he wouldn’t be able to save you from that blow. 

“please, please,”  he begs, both to you and to whatever force that is just barely holding you together. “just stay with me for five more minutes, please. until i can get you somewhere.” 

the rain soaks him to the bone, clothes and hair sticking to his skin. your lips stay motionless, eyes shut.

“wake up, please,”  he bargains. “you can have all the five minutes of extra sleep you want later, i promise. just—”  his vision blurs, and something shines on the ground before it is gone, swallowed by damp earth, lost amidst drops of falling rain. 

desperately, he tears off parts of his traveling cloak to staunch the bleeding. deep inside, he knows it is futile. he knows your wound is too great. he knows what lies ahead. but he cannot help but press the cloths to your wound and pray. 

please, please tell me it’ll be okay. 

please stay with me, beloved. i’ll read you all the books in the world. i’ll sleep in with you everyday, even if we end up whiling away our time. 

please. stay. stay with me. i can’t lose you yet.  

“— just wake up, beloved.” 

by some miracle, your eye flutters. just a bit. just enough to set hope ablaze, just enough for the grip on his heart to loosen a tiny bit. he buries his face in your shoulder, resting his head against your neck, uncaring of the blood that stains his clothes. your blood. on his clothes. his hands. everywhere. 

no. no. this can’t be happening.

he feels you strain beneath him, your unwounded arm gently, weakly brushing his back. he jolts upright, eyes trained on your face. you send a frail smile his way. he clasps your face softly as you nuzzle into his palm.

“alhaitham—” 

his full name. archons, how long has it been since you called him that?  

“— take good care of yourself, okay?” you tell him, chest heaving, your fingertips touching a tear on his cheeks. “i love you. so much.” 

those are the last words he hears fall from your lips. he presses a kiss to your forehead, to your eyelids, and to your cheeks and to your lips, over and over and over until he feels your breath slow, hoping they’ll say what he knows he cannot manage to choke out.

i love you. 

he stays there next to you for who knows how long, holding you until the rain slows and a faint rainbow smiles in the sky.

until he can’t smell camphor anymore.

—

every person has their curiosities. 

they’re just the little traits that set them apart from others, the things that make them tick just a little bit differently, the things that make them, them.

for instance, someone may be obsessed with collecting tiny furniture, while another eats the crusts off their sandwich before actually consuming it. someone may have an affinity for the most niche aspects of linguistics, while another can accurately predict the next raindrop that slides down a window pane.

after all, no two people are exactly alike, are they?

alhaitham knows he’s got his fair share of these curiosities himself. his aversion to soup and all things that resemble it, to name one. and with you, he’d noticed two things. 

number one: the scent of camphor that seems to linger on every inch of your person. 

he’d caught whiff of it almost immediately the first time you met. you were but one of his juniors in the akademiya, filled with bright-eyed curiosity and anxiety to match. you had tripped over a stair and bumped into his table in the library, bringing the mountain of books in your arms crashing down.

and with subsequent coincidental meetings, he learnt that the subtle scent of camphor dancing in the air meant you weren’t far away. 

you were, unfortunately, one of the poor souls who seemed to be cursed with constantly recurring minor illnesses, and almost always walked about with a stuffy nose. and so, you always carried a small disc of camphor in a handkerchief, as well as in your pocket.

you swore up and down, left, right and center that sniffing the vapors helped make breathing easier.

‘it’s my grandmother’s remedy, alhaitham! camphor always works wonders. well, that and eucalyptus oil.”

alhaitham may not know the validity of your claim or the legitimacy of the cure, but he knew to never, ever question a grandmother’s remedy. that, and he’d much rather refrain from starting a back-and-forth about something so small.

and number two: your neverending pleas of different variations of ‘just five more minutes!’ 

“five more minutes, ‘haitham. please.” you’d whine grumpily when he woke you up to start your day. “let me sleep in for five more minutes.” 

“five more minutes, habibi,” you’d ask when he put down the story you’d requested he read out to you before bedtime. “read me the part where she finds the music box?”

“five more minutes, baby,” is what you’d tell him when he asks how much longer you’d take getting ready. “you can’t rush perfection!”

those five more minutes were never five minutes long. 

but he’d always, always indulged you and those pleading eyes of yours. as stoic as he appeared to be, you lived in his heart. of course he could never deny you anything under the sun.

—

alhaitham remembers that silly little song you sang over and over, the one you’d learnt from a kid in the bazaar. he’d taken you to see one of nilou’s performances, and, friendly soul that you were, you’d struck up a conversation with some of the eager audience members before the play. 

“oh, how i wish i was a bird flying free,

i’d see the world, every mountain and every sea!

oh, how i wish i was a cloud in the sky,

wouldn’t you like to wave to me as i pass by?”

you’d hum that rhyme on every idle afternoon.

loss is inevitable. he knows that, with how logical and rational and straightforward he is. he’d lost his parents, but he was far too young to remember. he’d lost his grandmother, but she passed in her sleep of old age, serene and wise.

but you? he didn’t think you’d leave him this soon. a singular wish sits in his soul, making its home in his bones. 

a wish that you’d come back, somehow. 

he wishes you gave him five more minutes, just as he always did.  but he knows that you could’ve given him five more hours, five more days, five more years and five more decades and it would still not be enough time spent with you. 

a blue feathered bird comes to perch on his shoulder, interrupting his musings just as he raises his face to the sky. he sees the heart shaped cloud that floats idly above sumeru city.

 he thinks of the rhyme again, and something in him tells him to wave. and so he does. a scent so familiar lingers, faintly brushing his nose in the wind that picks up.

“alhaitham, it's time to go.”  kaveh calls his name softly.

 alhaitham doesn't move. “five more minutes,”  he says, echoing your favorite phrase. “i smell camphor in the breeze.” 

✦ extra notes: my alhaitham characterization for this fic stems from how i believe that when alhaitham is attached, he's attached. so i focused more on that, and less of all that rationality and whatnot. this one loves deeply, yk?

that camphor thing is a real grandma remedy in our household (my mom would tie some in a hanky and put some under my pillow and still to this day reminds me to do it when i'm sick) which is what originally sparked the idea for this

when i'd initially started this wip, i didn't expect it go this way. usually i write with my brain, but i think i wrote this one with my fingers working faster than i can think hsjhsj so sorry if it's kinda out of place lmao but yk what? i'm happy with it still even though i feel like it doesn't have my usual quality.

thanks for reading.

speak of the devil, alhaitham. you could vaguely make out his broad silhouette, shadows in the fog becoming larger as he walked towards you. your boots seemed to refuse to move – frozen in the very presence of this man. alhaitham now stood before you, his towering stance seemingly softening at the sight of how cold you were.

the unspoken question hung in the air as he stared at you, not unkindly. why were you out here, at such an unfathomable time of the morning?

”i couldn't sleep.” you exhale. the air feels a little colder, an obvious sign of the coolness the two of you shared.

“nor i.” he lets a small smile grace his features before taking a quiet breath. ”my aunt–”

”yes, she was here.” you nod. there was no need for trivialities.

the silence seems to only amplify after your four words, slowly filling in the crevices of the conversation – until alhaitham steps forward.

“how can i ever make amends for such behaviour?” he whispers, addressing the elephant in the room. a brave step – one you couldn’t have bore to take. what amends, alhaitham? how do you dare to speak of amends you could make when you have done nothing wrong in my eyes?

“after what you've done for kaveh, and i suspect, for nahida also, it is i who should be making amends.” you look back up at him, almost uncertainly. you wonder if you should revert your gaze back to the earth.

you see him sigh softly. gather yourself together, alhaitham is something you can glimpse at, by the weary look on his face.

“you must know, surely you must know, it was all for you. you are too generous to trifle with me. i believe you spoke with my aunt last night and it has taught me to hope as i’d scarcely allowed myself before.”

hot, salty tears gather, threatening to spill over. please, don’t you dare to betray me. you've betrayed me once.

“if your feelings are still what they were last april, tell me so at once.” alhaitham continues. he straightens his back, looking at you straight on now. he looks … glowingly different. almost empowered. “my affections and wishes have not changed, but one word from you will silence me forever, i promise.”

no, alhaitham – how foolish it would be to think that it would have changed. do you not see it? how the light returns to me the second i hear you speak, how i stop to listen to you even when my soul remains obstinate – my affections will never allow themselves to be changed, they belong to you, and you alone.

“if however, your feelings have changed – i would have to tell you, you have bewitched me body and soul, and i love... i love...”

”i love you.”

oh.

“i never wish to be parted from you from this day on.”

oh, alhaitham. there is no doubt about it now – salty tears have won their freedom, flowing down your cheeks only to be caught and thumbed away by his hands. he holds you so gently; do you deserve this kindness, little bird? do you deserve to be held so dearly?

you look at the spark of light in his eyes – it is warm, inviting, loving. he loves you. there is no doubting it anymore. you whisper those three special words into his chest, burying your head into him when you feel him nod and rest his head atop yours in acknowledgement. he feels ... safe.

i love you.

“well, then. your hands are cold.” you chuckle wetly, holding his hands tightly in yours. and maybe, just maybe –

he squeezes your hand back tighter.

Kafka

While there were the occasional members of the Stellaron Hunters that had never sustained any injuries worth mentioning, a certain someone helped keep the average amounts of scars on the Crew’s body at an unhealthy equilibrium. Kafka herself was no stranger to them and while Elio would feed her enough information to keep herself from getting harmed too much, her inability to fear brought the Kafka of old worryingly close to death on more than one occasion. 

That being said. You had taken quite a while to get your first lasting mark, growing more and more cocky with each time you managed to escape unharmed. But just like everything else, your lucky spree wouldn’t last forever.

“How bad is it?”, you asked, worry seeping from your voice as you desperately tried to get a look of the scar on your exposed back yourself, to no avail.

“Stop moving, I’ll shoot a pic”, Silverwolf demanded as she whipped out her phone and pressed a few buttons, the light from her camera blinding your eyes. When she turned the screen towards you however, you couldn’t help but suck in air through your teeth.

“A bit more on the cool side, but I doubt you’d win a beauty pageant with it”, the girl joked, the fact that you didn’t lunch at her for the remark a clear sign of your self-control as you had to settle for glaring at her.

“What do you think, Kafka?”, she asked, turning towards the woman that had up until now stared at it in complete silence, only for the corners of her mouth to move slightly upwards the moment your gaze landed on her as well.

“From what Elio told me I thought it would be worse. You got off lucky~.”

“Speaking of-. Where’s Elio?”, you scanned the room around you, only to find it awfully devoid of his presence, the sound of Kafka chuckling quickly grabbing your attention.

“He didn’t want to be present when you saw your scar”, she explained, only adding fuel to the theory quickly assembling in your brain.

“So you knew this would happen. Why didn’t you warn me?”

You watched as the woman made her way towards you before taking a closer look at the scar, “He told me you’d either get one of these or a pretty little tomb-stone.”

“It suits you, makes me take you more seriously right away. Welcome to the club”, Kafka half-joked, slapping you on your back only for you to flinch in pain.

“Ah right, fresh scar. Well, take care!”

And just like that, she was gone, leaving you to sulk in the room alone… Or at least as “alone” as a room with Silverwolf and Blade could be. The former once again typing something on her phone.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m still scarless.”