oh boy, here we go again

Kadar nodded solemnly. That was true. He had personally counted at least four unoccupied cushions and two stools in the room alone.

"Who was also—" Malik continued, pacing in full agitation now. "—holding the Apple like a melon at market! A melon, Kadar—!"

Malik threw both hands in the air, aborted the gesture on account of only having one, looked even angrier about that, before continuing with renewed violence.

"The same ancient cursed artifact we nearly died retrieving! The thing we are currently hiding from Al Mualim! The thing Altair acts rabidly possessive over if we so much as breathe in its general direction, but Desmond? No, Desmond gets to sit there on his lap with both hands on it like he's helping choose produce—and Altair has the gall to look at us as though we are the unreasonable ones?!"

Kadar hummed thoughtfully. "He did look offended."

"Insultingly!" Malik snapped, stopping short to glare at the air. "As though we had interrupted some perfectly reasonable situation. As though men regularly find novices in their laps with a Piece of Eden in their hands and think nothing of it!"

Kadar nodded sagely. "I do not think that is the correct use of either a novice or a Piece of Eden."

"It is a gross misuse of both!" Malik shrieked.

He resumed pacing.

"It is like he's—he's—" Malik struggled for a word grand enough to fit the crime, but gave up almost immediately with an irritated huff. "Hot and cold!" He settled on lamely, gesturing with his one arm in a way that somehow conveyed the outrage of two.

Kadar tilted his head. It wasn't an elegant description, but it was a depressingly accurate one.

"He snaps at Desmond in the morning and saves him the good figs by evening." Malik continued, aggrieved. "He calls him 'a burden sent by God to test me' but then threatens a Templar for looking at him wrong—in the same hour!"

"That does seem mixed." Kadar agreed because he had also witnessed the fig thing. He had, in fact, actually reached for one of the good figs himself and received a look so cold that he'd even apologized—to the fig.

"Mixed?" Malik scoffed. "It is deranged."

"It is a little deranged." Kadar agreed, because he was supportive.

Malik turned around on his heel instantly, vindicated by the agreement.

"Exactly!" Malik said. "I am glad that I am not the only one seeing this nonsense."

Kadar straightened faintly at the praise.

Malik jabbed a finger toward the general direction of the castle. "And it's always something, too. If Desmond speaks, Altair tells him to be quiet. If Desmond is quiet, Altair asks why he stopped talking. If Desmond wanders off, Altair stalks after him like an angry cat. If Desmond sits beside anyone else for too long, suddenly Altair has a task for him."

"And!" Kadar added, leaning forward—because it seemed important to be thorough. "Last week, when Desmond said he was cold, Altair gave him his outer robe and claimed Desmond might as well have that one since he was going to get a new one anyway!"

"Exac—what?" Malik began before the words registered and he stopped pacing so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet.

Because wait.

Wait.

His mind, very unwillingly, supplied the image of the robe in question and Malik very nearly had a spiritual event right then and there because that had been the new one. The very new one that Altair had spent the better part of a week hovering over and tormenting that poor tailor about because the shoulder sat wrong, the weight of the cloth was off, the fall of it was not clean enough, and if the old robe was to be replaced at all then it would at least be replaced properly.

And he had given it AWAY.

Because Desmond had said he was COLD.

Malik turned to stare at his brother.

"Yes." He said, faintly. "Yes. That—that is the sort of thing I mean."

Encouraged now, Kadar pressed on. "And when Desmond cut his hand on a broken cup, Altair said, 'You should learn not to handle things carelessly' but used his own sleeve to stem the bleeding."

Malik made a sharp, emphatic gesture. "Yes!"

Because that, too, had been absurd. The cut had been so small Malik had barely noticed it all. However, Altair had reacted as if Desmond had lost a finger in open combat.

"And when Desmond said that his practice blade was too heavy—" Kadar continued, unaware that his brother was being struck repeatedly by psychic flashbangs of specifics. "—Altair told him that, 'If it feels heavy, then that is your failing, not the weapon's' but I saw him leave a lighter one for Desmond to find the next day."

Malik made a strangled sound.

Because of course he had.

Of course Altair would call Desmond weak to his face and then go behind everyone's back to make sure his wrists did not ache.

Kadar, now fully committed to the work of scholarship, lifted a finger. "And when Desmond said he wasn't hungry the other day, Altair asked if the food the castle served was suddenly beneath him and put food in front of him anyway, and said that if Desmond didn't eat, he'd report him to Al Mualim for direct insubordination against Masyaf's supply lines."

Briefly, Malik closed his eyes, pained, because what Kadar missed—what Kadar's innocent, naive soul had completely glossed over—was that that had not been the castle's standard rations that Altair set in front of Desmond either. He knew what came from Masyaf's communal kitchens and the mass-produced lentils and dry barley bread typically shoveled out to the lower ranks did not look like that.

The khubz had still been steaming, freshly pilfered straight from some poor bakers' private hearth. The cheese had been the good, salted goat's curd usually found at Al Mualim's table. There had been dates and olives and damningly enough, a small, hand tied pouch of the exact kind of roasted pistachios that Altair routinely threatened to break fingers over if anyone got any ideas over and therefore almost never shared—but had this time.

With Desmond.

Ya Allah.

"And—"

"He is impossible." Malik declared before he could completely lose it. "He is either behaving like a man possessed or suffering from a condition no doctor has yet named."

Kadar, who had been nodding along with increasing conviction, went still because yes, that… was true. It did resemble an ailment. One that seemed to make Altair glare like he wanted Desmond thrown from a tower one moment, only to spend the next quietly rearranging the world so Desmond was never more than an arm's reach away.

"What is it?" Malik demanded, not really to Kadar but to the room, the house, to Allah Himself. "What manner of affliction is this?"

Kadar crossed his arms and frowned thoughtfully, because honestly, he didn't know.

But… he knew someone—or rather, something—that might.

-----

Masyaf at night was never truly asleep. Somewhere, there was always a guard shifting his weight, a pair of boots scuffing stone, or a novice snoring where he shouldn't. Moonlight spilled through the narrow slits in the walls in long pale bars and Kadar slipped through them silently, trying very hard not to think about the fact that he was, almost certainly, doing something monumentally stupid.

No, not stupid, he corrected himself. He was conducting research.

Important research.

Possibly even vital research.

For the good of the Brotherhood.

And, admittedly, because once he and Malik had talked about Altair's strange behavior aloud, he hadn't been able to stop seeing it. For the last few days, Kadar had watched Altair oscillate between withering disdain and bizarre, protective softness with such speed it seemed medically concerning and honestly, at this point, Kadar felt entitled to answers.

Which was how he finally found himself here two nights after, slipping into what Desmond had taken to calling, The Forbidden Chamber—which, was actually just a forgotten little storage room buried beneath Masyaf. The sort of place no one went to unless they had misplaced a crate or a body.

Altair, at Desmond's direction, had hidden the Apple there after it became immediately clear that leaving the ancient mind-breaking artifact in Altair's room was not, in fact, a serious long-term plan.

So, it had been stashed here instead—tucked deep in the back of the room, half-shrouded beneath an old cloth that did absolutely nothing to make it look less ominous or like a golden egg containing several extremely bad ideas.

Kadar approached with the reverence one might offer a venomous snake.

Or a bomb.

Or Altair in a bad mood.

(Which, honestly, wasn't entirely far too different.)

Even half buried under various junk, the Apple looked wrong—too round, too gold, too quiet for something so unspeakably important. In daylight it looked imposing, but here in the dark, with only the barest of moonlight catching along its curve from the high slit in the wall, it looked worse somehow. Quieter. Stranger. Like the sort of thing that didn't need to move in order to ruin your life.

Kadar stopped a careful distance away and stared.

He knew it was dangerous. Altair had said so. Malik had said so. Desmond had said so while holding it, which had… somewhat undercut the message but that was neither here nor there.

Either way, Kadar knew he shouldn't be here, but in his defense, he only had one question.

Just one.

A really quick one.

He'd be in and out before Desmond—or Altair—were any wiser.

Kadar drew a deep breath, stepped forward, and bracing himself, he made what would become one of the most educational mistakes he'd ever make in his entire life—

He touched the Apple with both hands.

And the moment he did, the world folded inside out.

Gold exploded through his skull and for one blinding moment, it felt like his head had split open to let the universe in... but instead of wisdom, prophecy, or anything remotely useful, his brain was hit with absolutely uncurated psychic debris—

a cup of bath-tea (???) bobbing in a hammam, a gleam of gold scales thrashing inside a wet, wooden cask, a man with sharp, distinctly Mediterranean features in oddly cut black garments lifting a glass of red wine in a room full of amber light, an angry goat he somehow knew was named William wearing a crown

—before the image disappeared and he was tumblring into another kaleidoscope of nonsense.

Kadar saw all of it and understood none of it—which was the most terrifying part. None of it connected to anything or made any remote sense but his mind kept trying to find order in them anyways—trying to decipher meaning out of madness before it vanished. For one deranged second, he even became convinced the crowned goat was important. 

Not just symbolically important. 

But like, actually important.

(Then, for one impossible instant, something looked back.

A pair of spectacles. A pointed hat. The vague impression of someone giggling in a manner that suggested poor judgement, zero remorse, and far too much personal enjoyment before something white and violently round struck the vision and the image was swallowed by everything else.)

Kadar's mind was still trying to file the visions into categories when the torrent cut out so abruptly that his thoughts slammed into the sudden silence like a man running full speed into a brick wall. He barely had a second to recover when a voice reverberated in his mind.

//QUERY.//

Kadar flinched so violently he nearly concussed himself on the Apple.

It didn't sound like a person. It sounded clear. Too smooth. Polished, too, in a way no living voice could ever emulate. As if something ancient and terrible had listened to humanity for thousands of years and decided the ideal tone was mild administrative impatience.

//QUERY.// It repeated after what Kadar realized was several seconds of him staring at the Apple in mute alarm.

Kadar's Adam's apple bobbed. "By God."

//GOD NOT FOUND.//

Kadar made a strangled noise.

//PLEASE REPHRASE.//

The Apple didn't sound angry. If anything, it sounded bored—which was somehow worse.

Kadar swallowed. He had not exactly thought this part through—and truth be told, he hadn't really expected to get this far—but he was here now and if this ended with Altair strangling him in a courtyard, he would at least like the satisfaction of getting an answer first.

So, because he was already touching a forbidden artifact and leaving empty handed now felt somehow more embarrassing than dying, Kadar asked very cautiously, "Why is Altair... like that?"

There was a pause.

Then—

//INSUFFICIENT CONTEXT.//

Kadar faltered. "What?"

//…PLEASE NARROW QUERY.//

Kadar stared at the Apple.

Because the terrible thing was, that was fair.

There were, in fact, many things wrong with Altair.

"No." He said to it quickly. "Not generally. I mean with Desmond. Why is Altair like that with Desmond?"

And just in case that was still a little too vague, he shoved every relevant memory at it in a panicked mental heap: Altair demanding Desmond be quiet, then asking why he had stopped talking. Altair calling Desmond distracting, only to then track his location across the fortress like an eagle with emotional problems. Altair acting insulted by Desmond's very existence while also reacting to every minor inconvenience that happened to him as though the world itself had committed an unforgivable sin.

The Apple, keeper of the secrets of The Ones Who Came Before, processed this.

Then—

//TSUNDERE.// It intoned.

"...What?" Kadar asked, unsure if he'd heard right.

'Soon… d'rey?'

The Apple, apparently deciding this required elaboration, flooded his thoughts with text, diagrams, and what appeared to be a deeply unnecessary illustrated chart.

//TSUNDERE. A CHARACTER ARCHETYPE DESCRIBING ONE WHO IS COLD, HOSTILE, OR VIOLENT OUTWARDLY WHILE SECRETLY HARBORING DEEP AFFECTION. OFTEN BEHAVES WITH EMOTIONAL CONTRADICTION.//

//ETYMOLOGY: COMPOUND OF TSUN-TSUN AND DERE-DERE, OF JAPANESE ORIGIN.//

//TSUN-TSUN: IRRITABLE, ALOOF, HOSTILE, PRICKLY, DEFENSIVE.//

//DERE-DERE: AFFECTIONATE, SOFT, DEVOTED, LOVESTRUCK, PATHETIC.//

Kadar choked. "Pathetic?" 

The Apple paused, apparently interpreting this as a follow-up question—

//IN THIS CONTEXT: EXTREMELY PATHETIC.//

—before it returned to its full instructional assault. 

Kadar could only stare in helpless silence as the chart expanded.

//COMMON BEHAVIORS INCLUDE: DENIAL, INSULTS PAIRED WITH ACTS OF CARE, PROXIMITY SEEKING WHILE CLAIMING ANNOYANCE, AND SPOKEN PHRASES CONSISTENT WITH: "IT'S NOT LIKE I LIKE YOU OR ANYTHING."//

It's not like I like you or anything. 

The phrase reverberated through him and Kadar went still as the words seemed to strike some private and previously undiscovered part of his being. The nonsensical little phrase shouldn't have meant anything, but somehow, it explained everything.

Because the contradiction. The juxtaposition. The subtext.

It all hit with the force of revelation that he wondered, briefly, if this was how prophets felt. 

"Show me." Kadar breathed, transfixed. "Show me the tsun. Show me the dere."

And the Apple obliged, with the awful serenity of something that had outlived empires and was now using that power for this. 

Light burst across Kadar's vision. It projected a holographic replay of the morning that had started all this—the moment he and Malik had found Desmond perched on Altair's lap—only now, it stripped away the context and highlighted the micro-expressions. 

It showed Altair's scowl when Malik spoke, magnified to every crisp detail. 

//TSUN.// The Apple labeled in bold script helpfully. 

//DEFENSIVE RESPONSE. FEAR OF VULNERABILITY. AGGRESSIVE DEFLECTION.//

Then, the image shifted. It highlighted the subtle softening of Altair's jaw when he looked at Desmond—the way his hand had instinctively moved to support Desmond's back when the other man had leaned a little too far back. 

//DERE.// Said the Apple. //PROTECTIVE RESPONSE. AFFECTION LEAKAGE. HOSTILITY MASK TEMPORARILY COMPROMISED.//

Kadar's mouth fell open. 

The Apple, sensing an eager student, continued. 

//SUBJECT ALTAIR EXHIBITS HIGH LEVELS OF 'TSUN' WHEN OBSERVED BY PEERS TO MAINTAIN AUTHORITY.// The Apple explained. 

The projection fast forwarded, now highlighting Desmond's hand on Altair's arm, the way Altair had not moved it, and the way his body had gone still around the contact rather than away from it. 

//SUBJECT EXHIBITS HIGH LEVELS OF 'DERE' IN PRIVATE OR WHEN PHYSICAL CONTACT IS INITIATED BY DESMOND MILES.//

Kadar hadn't blinked once in the past thirty seconds.

"Tell me more." He implored with an urgency that bordered on religious.

And the Apple did. 

It explained denial. It explained emotional repression. It explained contradictory attachment behaviors. It explained why a person might speak as though someone were a burden while arranging his entire day around where that burden was, whether he had eaten, what he was carrying, and whether he had adequate footwear.

It showed him more instances of the tsun.

It showed him more instances of the dere.

It explained, with a terrible and ancient certainty, that Altair Ibn-La'Ahad was not behaving strangely at random.

He was, in fact, a type.

By the time Kadar finally pulled his hands away from the Apple, he no longer felt like the same person who had entered the chamber. 

He sat down very carefully in the dark, a changed man. 

-----

The surveillance began the next morning. 

Not because Kadar doubted the Apple, exactly—but because Kadar was, at heart, a serious scholar and a serious scholar did not simply accept a world shattering revelation delivered by an ancient glowing sphere and leave it at that. A serious scholar verified. He corroborated. He gathered evidence. He tested the hypothesis in the field. 

Also, if Altair truly was a tsundere, then Kadar felt—on a deeply personal level—that he deserved to witness it again.

Which was how Kadar found himself at the training yard at dawn, crouched behind a stack of hay bales with the focus of a man who had found his life's purpose and it was stupid.

At first, nothing happened.

One minute turned to five, five became fifteen, fifteen became twenty, but there was still nothing—which was mildly insulting.

Kadar had expected—if not immediate catastrophe—then at least something. A glare with suspicious undertones. A snapped command followed by an act of inexplicable care. A visible symptom.

Instead, Altair spent the first stretch of dawn being exactly what he always was: upright, controlled, vaguely severe in a way that made lesser men stand straighter by instinct. Desmond, meanwhile, lingered nearby in that loose, watchful way of his, hands tucked into his sleeves against the morning chill and saying very little.

Kadar frowned, shoulders sinking as he watched the morning training end and the novices disperse because this was… rather anticlimactic.

Perhaps the Apple had been wrong.

Perhaps he had misunderstood.

Perhaps tsundere was some ancient concept too vast and terrible for the human mind to comprehend and he was simply—

"Stop following me." Altair said.

Kadar froze, heart leaping into this throat. For a second, he thought Altair had somehow spotted him, but before he could mentally come up with an excuse, he realized that Altair wasn't even looking in his direction. He was glaring directly at the man walking next to him.

Desmond, who had been only just a pace away, blinked. "I'm… not? We're going to the same place."

"Then go there less closely." Altair said.

Desmond stared at him for one, incredulous beat, then huffed and slowed just enough to drop back a few paces, clearly opting to indulge the unreasonable request for the sake of peace. 

Altair continued walking.

One step.

Two. 

Three.

Then, his head turned—and Kadar watched him realize that Desmond was no longer precisely where he wanted him.

Altair stopped.

"What are you doing?" He demanded.

Desmond blinked, looking somewhat unsure. "Not… following you?"

Kadar nearly inhaled a strand of hay.

Altair frowned. "I didn't tell you to fall back."

Desmond's jaw dropped. "You—you literally told me to stop following you!"

"I told you—" Altair said, with the dangerous patience of someone inventing his own logic mid-sentence. "—to stop hovering."

Desmond stared at him.

Kadar stared harder.

Altair made an irritated sound like it was Desmond being the slow one, before he stalked over, caught him by the sleeve, and hauled him a few steps forward until Desmond was, once again, exactly where he had been before—at Altair's side.

Altair released him immediately. 

"There." He said. "Now walk properly." 

Kadar put a hand over his mouth because if he didn't, he feared he might actually start screaming. 

Because the Apple had not been speaking in riddles or even exaggerating. Altair had—with his own mouth—told Desmond to go away and then—with his own hand—dragged Desmond back to his side, all the while acting like this was somehow Desmond's fault and not him performing the emotional equivalent of falling down the stairs and claiming he meant to do that. 

Kadar didn't know it was possible for an ancient artifact to be vindicated, but he could feel it happening. Somewhere in The Forbidden Chamber, the Apple was probably glowing with self-satisfaction. 

He hated it. 

(He respected it.) 

Still—no matter how compelling the evidence—one could not establish a pattern from one incident alone. He was not some novice who drew conclusions from a single exchange. He needed more. 

For the record. For his mental archive.  For his own crumbling sanity. 

So, he kept observing.

By mid-afternoon though, the evidence had become frankly embarrassing.

Desmond had, at some point, tripped on an uneven bit of stone. Not badly or even dramatically to warrant any real worry or anything like that. His foot had simply caught on a raised lip of stone, making him pitch forward for one graceless second before he caught himself with a short noise of annoyance. It had just been a momentary hiccup because the path was old, Desmond had been yawning, and the universe had apparently decided to inconvenience him in the smallest way possible.

Altair, however—who had been three paces away—turned so sharply it was practically violent.

"Try to remain upright, novice." He barked, his words fast and cutting enough to make Desmond startle. His eyes swept over him once, cold and unimpressed, as if the stumble had been done deliberately to disappoint him. "It is not a difficult discipline to simply walk."

Then, he turned away and continued down the path before Desmond could so much as open his mouth. Desmond stared after him—half-affronted, half-exasperated—before he sighed, already deciding this particular strain of Altair was not worth arguing with. 

Kadar, concealed behind a sun-warmed column, paused. 

Because okay. That was, by itself, normal. Perhaps even a little tsun. Altair was usually tsun in the broad sense. Perhaps the first incident had just been a fluke—

—but then Altair slowed his pace, and moved, without a word, to the rougher side of the path. Subtly. Gradually. Just enough that when Desmond fell into step beside him, he had ended up steered into walking on the smoother stretch of stone while Altair took the uneven ground for himself. 

Kadar stared.

Because that was not a fluke at all. That was not coincidence. That was—

'DERE.' The word blasted through his skull like a war horn. 'DERE DERE DERE.'

Kadar had to grip the stone to stay upright. 

It didn't stop. It got even worse—somehow—and by late afternoon, Kadar had completely abandoned all scholarly dignity and degenerated into aggressive, shameless stalking. 

Worse, had become a lurker. 

He lurked near the library. He lurked near the inner courtyard. He lurked near the walls—until a sentry asked if he was ill.

(He was a little ill, actually. The illness was knowledge.)

But everywhere he looked, there it was. The pattern. The type.

Altair telling Desmond, "If you are tired, say so instead of dragging your feet"—but then subtly changing their route that required the least amount of stairs.

Altair seeing Desmond about to jump from a tower onto a beam slick with rain and saying, "Do you actively find ways to break your neck or does it simply come naturally?"—but then crossing first anyway, testing the wood with his own weight before jerking his chin for Desmond to follow the exact path he had just taken.

And the gloves. 

(Oh God, the gloves.)

Altair had taken one look at Desmond's oversized climbing gloves and said, "Did you truly arrive to training with subpar equipment and expect me not to notice?"—which meant nothing by itself. Altair found a way to insult everyone, somehow. It was practically a greeting. 

Except then Kadar, mid-lurk near the storerooms, had overheard him eviscerating the provisioner over the state of novice equipment for a full twenty minutes over the stitching and sizing and the general disgrace of it all—before cornering Desmond an hour later and throwing a better-fitted pair at his chest with a curt, "If you insist on wasting my time, at least do it properly equipped."

Desmond had caught the gloves, blinked down at them, and said, "Uh, thanks?"

Altair had grunted—a short, dismissive sound engineered to convey that thanks were neither required nor welcome—and looked away so fast Kadar heard his neck crack from behind the rain barrel.

Kadar, at that point, had abandoned all pretense of emotional neutrality and promptly pressed both hands over his face.

Because there was the tsun. There was the dere. 

The Apple had been right. 

No, worse—

The Apple had undersold.

The final blow came later that evening, when the light had gone gold over the courtyard and Desmond, who had been on his way to his quarters, had spotted a feather on the stones below the parapet.

It wasn't an especially grand feather—or even a rare or particularly clean one, really—but it was a feather and Desmond, who had spent half that afternoon rolling one shoulder after overextending it during climbing practice, zeroed in on it with the immediate and undignified focus of a pigeon spotting a bread crumb three streets away. 

Then, because the feather was apparently worth more than self-preservation, he leaned half his body over the edge to reach for it with that same arm. 

Kadar, who had been watching from a respectable scholarly distance, had just enough time to think that Desmond had found a new and deeply unnecessary way to worry people when Altair disastrously turned the corner, took in the scene, and lost all composure so quickly that Kadar had to do a double take. 

Because that look on Altair's face wasn't one he'd seen before.

It wasn't irritation, or annoyance, or even that usual cold, long-suffering glare Altair wore whenever Desmond did anything remotely Desmond-shaped.

No, no—it was panic. Pure, sharp, undisguised panic. The kind of panic that struck so fast it arrived before reason had time to catch up and before Kadar could so much as blink, Altair had crossed the courtyard, caught Desmond by the back of his sash and hauled him backwards hard enough to make him yelp.

Desmond clapped a hand to his shoulder with an offended hiss. "Dude, what the fu—"

"If you fall—" Altair snarled, letting go the moment Desmond had his balance again. "—who do you think, exactly, is responsible for scraping your corpse off the stones?"

Desmond made a face. "Altair, you realize I am an assassin." He said, like that explained everything. 

It did not. Altair just looked unimpressed. "A poor one." 

Desmond crossed his arms. "I literally put you on your back in the ring the other day." 

Altair clicked his tongue. "Once or twice means nothing."

"Still enough to keep you bitter about it, apparently." Desmond said dryly and went to lean over the parapet again—only to be yanked back by the sash a second time by Altair. He whirled around, shooting Altair a dirty look. "Altair—!"

"Have you learned nothing?!" Altair snapped. 

Desmond threw his hands in the air. "About what?!" 

"About not throwing yourself off the castle!" 

"I'm not throwing myself off anything!" Desmond refuted. "I'm just trying to grab—" He made a wordless, exasperating motion downward. "—that." 

Altair followed the motion—and promptly paused.

Because there, lodged in a crack between two stones like the world's most pathetic treasure, sat the feather.

Altair stared at it. 

Then at Desmond. 

Then back at the feather. 

"...That?" Altair asked at last with terrible calm. "You are risking bodily injury for a pigeon feather?"

Desmond crossed his arms. "What? I'm not allowed to have hobbies?" 

Altair didn't even bother deigning him with an answer. Instead, he exhaled once through his nose—like he'd survived the crusades but somehow found this more trying—before he vaulted over the low wall in one smooth motion. He reached down, plucked the feather free, and as he swung himself back over, wiped it once against his own sleeve so quickly that Desmond missed it entirely. 

(Kadar did not though. 

Kadar saw everything now.)

"There." Altair huffed irritably, shoving the clean feather into Desmond's hand. "Try not to risk your life for garbage again."

Desmond went still.

For a moment, he only looked at the feather lying across his palm like he hadn't quite expected the absurd little mission to end in success. Then, his fingers closed around the feather and he turned it carefully by the quill so the evening light caught the soft, grey barbs.

And for once, there was no grin. No immediate smart remark or any jab at Altair's attitude that usually came when the other man was being particularly difficult. He just kept turning the feather between his fingers before he glanced up at Altair. 

"Huh." He said, soft with genuine surprise. "...Thanks."

Then, he smiled.

Not the sharp grin he wore when he was challenging Altair or that brittle one he used to deflect. Just that soft, easy smile Desmond sometimes got on his face when something caught him off guard in a good way—a small, warm, crooked thing, touched around the edges with something almost shy. 

It would have been harmless in front of anyone else. 

Unfortunately, Altair was not anyone else. 

Altair Ibn-LaAhad—Master Assassin, Eagle of Masyaf, the man who had faced armed men and Master Templars alike without ever losing his composure—visibly faltered.

And Kadar watched it all in real time. 

He saw the slight hitch in Altair's breath. The tiny, fatal pause before he looked away. The way the tips of his ears went pink first before the color crept along his cheekbones, too—subtle and damning but unmistakable in the golden evening light.

It was horrible.

Desmond, oblivious as a saint or a fool, only turned the feather again between his fingers and brushed the vane lightly against his lips with quiet satisfaction.

Altair watched that motion with dilated eyes and recovered badly.

"I—" He started, then stopped. Swallowed. Looked anywhere but Desmond's face. "That is—I was merely—" 

Desmond glanced up from the feather and frowned. "Uh, you good, Altair?" 

"Yes." Altair said quickly before making a sound somewhere between a cough and a grunt. "Refrain from—from assigning meaning to this. You were being reckless." He managed at last, the words tripping over themselves in their hurry to escape. "I was merely preserving Masyaf from the inconvenience of your death from foolishness. Do not mistake practicality for affection."

Desmond made a vague, unconvinced noise, but either out of mercy or because he was already used to Altair being well, Altair, he let it go.

But Kadar—

Kadar ceased, for one holy instant, to be a mortal man in a courtyard and became instead a witness to revelation.

Because there it was. Altair had said the thing.

He hadn't said the exact phrase that the Apple had shown him, but it had the same structure. The same shape. The same meaning—

Do not mistake practicality for affection.

It's not like I like you or anything. 

And Kadar felt the part of his soul that still revered Altair for his mystery and composure—the part that had once looked up to him as a figure of terrifying, untouchable grace—quietly pack its bags, climb into a cart, and leave Masyaf forever. 

Kadar didn't wait to see more. He just couldn't. His brain was full. The goat with the crown made more sense than this.

He sprinted full speed out of Masyaf. 

-----

By the time Kadar reached the Al-Sayf ancestral home, he was no longer certain whether he had come to report a discovery, confess a sin, or simply ensure that he did not have to carry this knowledge alone.

He settled, instead, on opening the door, stepping inside, shutting it carefully behind him, and standing there in silence, his mind empty except for tsun tsun dere dere echoing in the ruins.

Malik, who had apparently decided that even on his temporary leave from Jerusalem meant relocating his work to the dining table, looked up from his papers the moment Kadar came in—and did a double take.

He took in Kadar's heavy breathing, the dust on his robes, the stray pieces of hay still clinging to his sleeves, that terrible shine in his eyes—and promptly made peace with the rest of his evening. 

"Why…" Malik asked slowly. "...do you look like that?"

Kadar didn't—couldn't—answer that question. Not honestly. Not without spiraling so violently that he might never return. So instead, he did the only thing he could: he crossed the room, sat down across from his brother, and folded his hands in front of him calmly as if he wasn't emotionally standing neck-deep in madness and pretending everything was fine. 

"I have completed my research." Kadar said seriously.

Malik stared at him. 

"Your what?"

"My research." Kadar repeated. "On Altair. I know what afflicts him now." 

"Kadar." Malik's expression went flat. "Be specific. Altair is afflicted by many things." 

Kadar didn't argue with that because that was, unfortunately, true.

But this was different. This had a name. A taxonomy. A diagnosis.

So, Kadar leaned forward and gripped the edge of the table to steady himself. His eyes were wide and haunted because he had looked into the abyss and the abyss had stared back with Altair's face, Altair's scowl, and Altair's crippling inability to be normal about Desmond.

Then, voice low, Kadar delivered the terrible truth that had ruined him:

"It's not like I like you or anything."

Malik's face tightened. 

"...What?"

"That is the affliction." Kadar replied gravely. "In its purest form. I cannot explain it further—you would not survive it." 

"I would not—" Malik stopped, shut his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose in a futile attempt to stave off the headache he could already feel approaching. "Kadar. That is gibberish. You just said gibberish to me—those words mean nothing." 

"They mean everything." Kadar breathed quietly and for one terrible moment, his eyes drifted, unfocused, towards the direction of the fortress, to the courtyard, to wherever Altair was, in this very moment, likely telling Desmond that a strained shoulder was no excuse for poor form… while privately revising the next morning's training so he would not have to lift that arm at all.

It would never stop, Kadar realized. Altair was just… like that and there was no cure—only witnesses. 

And now that he had seen it—the true and deeply unfortunate nature of Altair Ibn-La'Ahad—he understood his elder brother now too.

He had always known that Malik found Altair exhausting. He had heard the complaints, endured the long-suffering sighs, the muttered curses, and watched him develop a very specific eye twitch that only appeared at the mention of Altair's name, incompetence, and acts of God. It had become worse after Solomon's Temple—after the blood and ruin and Malik coming home with one arm and far less patience for Altair than before—but Kadar had only understood the anger. He had not—until this very moment—understood the scale of the spiritual cost.

Because his brother hadn't just been being dramatic about Altair.

Malik had been under siege.

Altair was not merely a difficult man. 

He was a full-time spiritual burden that had been inflicted upon the Al-Sayf household of which Malik had been bearing the brunt of—and shielding Kadar from—for years.

Kadar's expression went distant, then stricken, then softened into sudden, horrible sympathy.

"Brother…" Kadar murmured earnestly. "You have been very brave." 

Malik stared at him in utter silence. Then, he set his papers down. 

"Kadar." He said, tiredly. "What did you do?" 

Kadar rose and somehow, that made everything even worse. 

"Kadar?" Malik said again and his eyes narrowed in immediate suspicion when Kadar came around the table with the gravity of approaching a deathbed. Then, his younger brother set both hands on Malik's shoulders.

Malik startled despite himself, then went very still when Kadar looked at him with an open, awful gratitude that set off every alarm in his body.

"Altair is your problem now." Kadar said with terrible serenity.

For one second, Malik could only stare, words failing him at the sheer audacity of that sentence, before he managed, "Kadar, what—"

"I believe in you." Kadar assured him, which did not help. In fact, Malik actually looked personally injured by the encouragement. 

"Kadar—"

"You have survived this long." Kadar continued, looking him in the eye with both pride and compassion. "That must mean something." 

"Kadar—"

"Good luck, brother." Kadar said, giving Malik's shoulders one last, meaningful squeeze. "Stay strong."

Then, he released him, turned, and walked towards his room, peaceful in the ancient and sacred younger brother tradition of making his older brother Deal With It™ before becoming unavailable himself. 

For a moment, Malik could only sit there—mouth opening and closing wordlessly, his whole body apparently unable to process the sequence of emotional crimes Kadar had just committed against him—before he shot to his feet so quickly that the chair scraped violently against the floor.

"Kadar, you can't just—just say things like that and go to bed!" Malik shouted after him, papers forgotten. "Kadar? Kadar! You come back here this instant!" 

Kadar shut the door gently. Then, for good measure, he leaned against it, closed his eyes, and exhaled. 

At last… he was at peace. 

From the other side of the door came a sharp thud, a pained hiss that could only have been from Malik accidentally banging his knee against the table in his haste for pursuit, a muttered curse as something fell over, and then his brother's voice—sharp with outrage from betrayal of family, fate, and the continued existence of Altair Ibn-La'Ahad—

"Kadar!" Malik yelled. "He was already my problem!"

-----

Hehehe... (⊙‿⊙✿)

Surprise! LMAO this entire thing happened (and spiraled) because I saw Tsundere!Altair and was reminded of this one manga/light novel I read a LONG time ago called, The Play-By-Play Commentator Endo-kun and Colour Commentator Kobayashi-san's Live Commentary on the Tsundere Villainess Liselotte—

(1000% would recommend btw. Absolute food for the soul if you're into villainess stories, comedy, and romantic disasters being psychoanalyzed in real time.)

—and once my brain made the connection between Altair and Liselotte... it was over for me. I was finished. Cooked. Something unlocked inside my head and I ascended.

Which caused... this.

SO.

Massive credit to @sneaky-eel for setting off this entire chain reaction in my head. I remain lowkey obsessed with your art in the most respectful way.