(no subject)
Fandom: Assassin's Creed
Characters: Altair Ibn'La-Ahad, Malik Al-Sayf
Rating: PG
Warnings: Kink meme request: Five times Malik caught Altair crying. (And two times he didn't.)
let it follow
Despite Al Mualim's hopes that they would not be neglected of love because they would not know to seek it, even the most notorious assassins began human. As children, sometimes it bled out from the chinks of armor they were only just beginning to forge around their caged hearts. Before they reached the cusp of adolescence, the boys were taken in to tail and run errands for the journeymen. Separated from their families for the first time, sometimes they wept, curled into heaps in a cold castle, trembling in their loneliness.
Malik squeezed his eyes shut against the threatening burn of tears and almost cried that first night, thinking of his mother and his father and his bright-eyed baby brother, safe and together in their home at the foot of the mountain. They were so far away, he thought, until a shuffling sound came from the body closest to his bedroll. Malik cracked open one eye to find a shorter, stoic-faced boy staring at him, skin cast pale and stone-like by the moon.
“Why are you upset?” asked the boy, turning his head into his cushion as if he were trying to tilt it into the ground. His voice was low for his age, quiet, calm and deep like a running river and somewhat detached. It sounded like what an assassin in training should sound like and it whipped up a contrasting fire in Malik, made half from envy and half from embarrassment.
Feeling his ears burn, Malik channeled the heat rising up his neck into a snarl as he slapped a bare hand against the bare floor and hissed, “It is no concern of yours! What are you looking at? Turn around!”
The boy said nothing, frowning slightly in a way that seemed more disapproving than irritated before rolling onto his back, hands folded over his chest, a little off to his left so that his little hands almost shielded his heart. He closed his eyes and did not stir again, though Malik kept an eye on him as if daring him to even so much as sniff, until sleep overtook his petty vigil and carried him through that first, difficult night.
Malik remembered that instant three months later, when the boys were finally allowed back home for a brief respite from their training. Malik wrapped his arms around Kadar and over the dark, curling tufts atop his brother's head, swept an eye over the other trainees as they returned to their homes. He spotted one child hanging back, standing at the base of the mountain, stiff-backed and unmoving. No one came for Altair - as the night grew dark and the crowd grew thin, he drew his hood up and hid his face, unable to mask the slight hitch of his shoulders before he stilled them into submission by clenching his fists.
He stood there until Al Mualim smiled and drew Altair back to the castle with a hand on his shoulder. Malik lingered and stared until his mother called him home.
Altair grew arrogant in his skillfulness and grew skillful in the loneliness imposed by his arrogance. Malik, like the other boys, hated him in the way that children grew childishly spiteful of each other, but they did not have the ability or cruelty in their hearts to do anything about it. In a world so treacherous, there were enough things to pit themselves against that even as teenagers, they knew not to turn on each other. What else did assassins have, after all, if not each other and the Creed?
Though that did not mean they worked well together.
They were still young and reckless, hopelessly competitive and helplessly eager. They fought little scrabbles and bragged about little victories. They had a running bet on who could best who, gambled with hours of duty and candied dates, traded secrets about how to defeat each other, or, more commonly, how to beat Altair.
Of all the trainees, only Abbas and Malik ultimately managed the feat. Abbas had overpowered the smaller boy with brute strength when he had managed to back him against a wall. It was Altair's mistake; he only had himself to blame - he had spent the first three minutes of the sparring match skirting around his opponent, big-headed and confident that he would not be out-maneuvered until Abbas threw his practice sword out in a furious swing that managed to upset a trowel of water nearby. The sudden soak of his clothes had thrown Altair off-balance to disastrous ends. Abbas had walked around like he was the king of the Masyaf for a week. Altair had never been careless around water again.
On the other hand, Malik had waited until the final year of their training to finally take up Altair on one of his carelessly thrown-out challenges. Though Altair had been surprised he had risen to the bait at all, he had slipped into his single-minded battle focus almost immediately; it was nowhere near as easy as it had been with Abbas. They were older, almost men, and there was a tension brewing between them that had taken years before this point and would take years beyond it to mature. They had launched into a clash of iron wills and swords in the same instant, as if they were both fighting to the beat of the same drummer.
The fight left Malik with a small concussion and Altair with a split lip and a scar that would never quite heal over the tender flesh of his lips. They had been vicious and terrible with each other - Altair had disarmed Malik with a forceful parry, and Malik had twisted his arm in retaliation until he dropped his sword, but he was still young and angry, given a rare upper hand and heady with the adrenaline while Kadar was watching. He had twisted that extra fraction more until something sick popped under the skin of Altair's right shoulder. Malik had let go only when Altair sucked in a sharp, sudden breath, watching as he pitched forward like a puppet with cut strings.
They had suffered similar injuries before, but Malik knew enough about dislocated shoulders to realize that no matter how familiar, they were never welcome. He stood there both proud and ashamed until an instructor pushed past him with a barked order to fall back, and the last thing Malik saw before averting his eyes was Altair hunched over like an injured animal, forehead pressed to the dry, dusty floor, his shadow from the high afternoon sun falling and almost masking the dark spots in the ground where the grand total of two tears had fallen to the parched earth.
Malik turned into a crowd of other boys, cheering and clapping his back, and Altair knelt quietly in the ring while the instructor pushed his bones back into place.
Of the tens that had begun their training, only a handful completed it, and fewer still managed to make it past the initiation ceremony that would mark them as assassins. Rauf had outright yelled when they had taken his finger, Abbas had made an aborted growl of pain, but Malik had only managed a soft grunt, too busy digging crescent-shaped holes into the butt of his palm. Altair had bit right through the tender skin on his bottom lip, but unsurprisingly, had remained silent.
For once, Altair was not the luckiest of the pack this time around - only his hand managed to infect, perhaps because of his impatience and the constant picking at his bandages. It was a small wound, but the infection still managed to throw him into a three-day bout of fevers and nausea, when the only person who visited to him was the medic that changed his bandages and occasionally ran a wet cloth across his forehead.
All of Masyaf knew he had no family.
On the second day, Malik escorted Kadar into the sick quarters to have someone bandage up the shallow cut on his brother's calf. At the age where Kadar was constantly trying to prove himself separate of his brother's reputation, Kadar had feigned nonchalance and shooed Malik out of the area in a silly and unnecessary display of bravado. Malik had passed Altair's bed on the way out.
Altair's eyes were wide and glassy, shining a muted gold in the daylight, his face flush and damp. He was sitting propped up against the cushions, arms in a limp sprawl to his sides, and his eyes looked wet, matting his lashes against his cheeks whenever he blinked. The sight made Malik stop in his tracks, made him hesitate with one hand on the door and begin asking, almost incredulously, “Why are you-”
There were no chairs pulled up to his bedside, no candles or favors left near his bed.
“You know, it is not a fatal wound. You will heal,” Malik said instead, only slightly kinder.
Altair's gaze wavered, like he was having difficulty focusing. “This is weak,” he croaked after a moment, voice brittle and cracking after every breath, and only then did it dawn on Malik the real reason Altair looked so miserable. The epiphany set his face into an unimpressed frown, spurred a jealous bitterness in his throat when he realized he had no reason to be pitying this stupid fool. Of course, thought Malik angrily, Altair was just upset that he wasn't as amazing as he thought he was. It served him right; he could do with more than a little bit of humbling.
“It is,” Malik answered with a scoff, turning a cold shoulder to the corner Altair occupied. “How strange that must be for you,” he added dryly, before leaving the room.
They became assassins and tears became too much of a luxury to shed - as with all transitions into adulthood, some things changed.
They became outcasts, one thrown into Jerusalem, one thrown into a drawn-out death sentence. Malik told Altair to go cry in a corner, and even if Altair did, it wasn't as if there was anyone there to care.
(Some things didn't.)
Malik found them in the gardens, the tiled floor of the paradise-like terrace strewn with spilled blood. The sky was turning gray as the temperature dropped and even the flowers seemed to lose their vibrant color. Altair stood over a cooling body, his head tilted up to a shining, golden mirage, his hand wrapped around a strange metal sphere. Al Mualim lay at his feet, expression oddly victorious in his defeat, looking old and withered in a way that Malik had never been able to imagine him being when he was alive.
Malik spared one glance at the mysterious spinning image hovering in the air and turned to something more important. He took a step forward, brow furrowing, and reached his hand out until it fell on Altair's wrist, the touch light and cautious. “Altair,” he called, tugging the other man closer and out of his reverie.
Altair turned to him, expression haunted and irises glinting gold in the flickering light of the hologram. The evidence of the past year and the Grandmaster's treachery were written plainly across his face. There were shadows falling on his features in all the wrong places. They seeped into the crease of his brow, the hollows of his cheeks, the crinkles at the edges of his eyes, and for once, Malik was not indifferent. He frowned, feeling awkward and ill-prepared for a situation where someone would have to be gentle with the Eagle of Masyaf, for a situation where that someone would have to be him.
“He is dead,” Altair said suddenly, snapping Malik out of his thoughts. The assassin reported the obvious with almost mechanical efficiency, as if he were simply relaying the news of yet another successful elimination to him back at the bureau, as if he had another soiled feather tucked under his belt, doused in the blood of the closest thing he had ever had to a father. Malik had felt his heart break when he realized his teacher had betrayed them all, but he could not know how many times - if it was twofold, threefold, tenfold - more painful it was for Altair, to whom Al Mualim had been almost everything in lieu of a family that didn't exist.
In the end, all Malik managed was a soft, stilted, “Yes.”
Malik pulled Altair to him.
Altair fell against him like a heavy weight, borne down by armor and weariness, his face pressed to the side of Malik's neck. He did not shake or fall or cling, but something hot and wet fell against the base of Malik's throat after what could have been ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, pooling in the dip of his collarbone, cooling there against his skin. The Apple fell from Altair's fingers and rolled off the instep of their boots, the clattering sound the only break in the silence. Because they were assassins, Masyaf was quiet in its mourning, so Malik wrapped his arm around his shoulders and ultimately did not have to say anything at all.
There would be a public farewell later, one that the other assassins would attend, but this one was private and without high-handed words, for no one's eyes but their own. Altair pressed his mouth against Malik's jaw and the bridge of his nose, against the corner of his mouth, against the center. Malik stilled him with a hand on his neck and pressed his own against Altair's temple like a benediction, and Altair mumbled quietly into the space under Malik's chin, against the bob of his throat, working soundlessly to choke back any word that could have possibly sounded like, 'Goodbye.'
“We will succeed, we will have help there. I know what I am doing, and even if you don't trust me, Maria knows. You trust us, don't you? I know the boys are not initiated yet, but you know they are skilled. I will be fine. You will be fine. The templars know to stay away from Masyaf. They would not risk your anger,” Altair was murmuring, barely a whisper.
The candle had burned away, leaving only a cooling, half-opaque pool of wax sitting at the bottom of the pan that held it. Maria had fallen asleep, gone to watch over her children after pushing her adieus and 'I will miss you's into Malik's skin like her husband was doing now. Altair had hung back until after she had left, awkward with words and considerably more so with twice the audience, even if it now seemed as though he couldn't run out of them.
“Say something, Malik,” he pleaded at last, drawing back and cradling the other man's face in his hands.
Mongolia was so far. “I believe you,” Malik said on an exhale.
Altair reeled him in until their foreheads bumped into each other and they sat there, breathing quietly in the darkness, treasuring that blessed sound. He rubbed the pads of his thumbs into the roughness of Malik's cheeks, sweeping in wide circles until the warm wetness that had trialed down the sides of his face evaporated into his skin. Malik fisted his hand into the loose fabric on the side of Altair's waist, keeping him there, in front of him and within reach. He did not mention it when he felt something warm drip onto the inside of his forearm, catching in the fine hairs standing on end from the chill in the air. They had known each other for almost the entirety of their lives, and suddenly it wasn't enough.
“When I come back,” Altair began.
Malik surged onto his knees, pushed Altair down onto his back and onto the bed. “No,” he said, voice rough and determined, using the moonlight to burn this image into his memory. “No, none of that.”
There was nothing to mark an assassin's passing except a hole in the ground, except the memory of the few that remembered them, which would also come to pass once they met their ends. It was just a rectangular patch of ground, the grass more sparse and uneven - new grass that had grown over overturned dirt. It was not even as big as it should have been, because the body had been so frail and small.
A shadow fell over it as Altair knelt at one edge, lingering there despite the creaking protest of his old bones, the aching thrum of his heart.
“Oh,” said Tazim, pausing in his approach. “Grandmaster. I...did not know you would be coming.”
Altair did not look up. His head was bent and the quiet air of mystery that he carried around him, one that seemed to suggest he knew too much, had seen too much, cloaked what part of his face that his pointed hood did not. “Do you visit your father often, Tazim?” he asked.
“Once in a while,” Tazim answered after a long moment, a shuffle of cloth sounding from his direction as he shuffled his feet. “I know he would not want us to grieve. He never did like seeing people cry, even when I was a child, but...he was my father, Grandmaster. It has been a long time, but sometimes...the feeling lingers,” he said hastily, almost defensively, as if daring Altair to call him out on his weakness. It was behavior indicative of a new generation of assassins - free to love but finding difficulty in reconciling their hearts with their lifestyle - a good, young, brand new generation.
“I think your father would understand,” Altair said, quiet humor echoing in his voice as he pulled himself to his feet. Tazim made no effort to stop him, stepping back with a nod of quiet respect, and Altair made it halfway down the hill before turning back, watching as Tazim stood stiffly at his father's grave, his back turned but his hands pulled into fists.
Altair lingered and stared until Darim's voice broke through the evening calm and called him home.
Characters: Altair Ibn'La-Ahad, Malik Al-Sayf
Rating: PG
Warnings: Kink meme request: Five times Malik caught Altair crying. (And two times he didn't.)
let it follow
Despite Al Mualim's hopes that they would not be neglected of love because they would not know to seek it, even the most notorious assassins began human. As children, sometimes it bled out from the chinks of armor they were only just beginning to forge around their caged hearts. Before they reached the cusp of adolescence, the boys were taken in to tail and run errands for the journeymen. Separated from their families for the first time, sometimes they wept, curled into heaps in a cold castle, trembling in their loneliness.
Malik squeezed his eyes shut against the threatening burn of tears and almost cried that first night, thinking of his mother and his father and his bright-eyed baby brother, safe and together in their home at the foot of the mountain. They were so far away, he thought, until a shuffling sound came from the body closest to his bedroll. Malik cracked open one eye to find a shorter, stoic-faced boy staring at him, skin cast pale and stone-like by the moon.
“Why are you upset?” asked the boy, turning his head into his cushion as if he were trying to tilt it into the ground. His voice was low for his age, quiet, calm and deep like a running river and somewhat detached. It sounded like what an assassin in training should sound like and it whipped up a contrasting fire in Malik, made half from envy and half from embarrassment.
Feeling his ears burn, Malik channeled the heat rising up his neck into a snarl as he slapped a bare hand against the bare floor and hissed, “It is no concern of yours! What are you looking at? Turn around!”
The boy said nothing, frowning slightly in a way that seemed more disapproving than irritated before rolling onto his back, hands folded over his chest, a little off to his left so that his little hands almost shielded his heart. He closed his eyes and did not stir again, though Malik kept an eye on him as if daring him to even so much as sniff, until sleep overtook his petty vigil and carried him through that first, difficult night.
Malik remembered that instant three months later, when the boys were finally allowed back home for a brief respite from their training. Malik wrapped his arms around Kadar and over the dark, curling tufts atop his brother's head, swept an eye over the other trainees as they returned to their homes. He spotted one child hanging back, standing at the base of the mountain, stiff-backed and unmoving. No one came for Altair - as the night grew dark and the crowd grew thin, he drew his hood up and hid his face, unable to mask the slight hitch of his shoulders before he stilled them into submission by clenching his fists.
He stood there until Al Mualim smiled and drew Altair back to the castle with a hand on his shoulder. Malik lingered and stared until his mother called him home.
Altair grew arrogant in his skillfulness and grew skillful in the loneliness imposed by his arrogance. Malik, like the other boys, hated him in the way that children grew childishly spiteful of each other, but they did not have the ability or cruelty in their hearts to do anything about it. In a world so treacherous, there were enough things to pit themselves against that even as teenagers, they knew not to turn on each other. What else did assassins have, after all, if not each other and the Creed?
Though that did not mean they worked well together.
They were still young and reckless, hopelessly competitive and helplessly eager. They fought little scrabbles and bragged about little victories. They had a running bet on who could best who, gambled with hours of duty and candied dates, traded secrets about how to defeat each other, or, more commonly, how to beat Altair.
Of all the trainees, only Abbas and Malik ultimately managed the feat. Abbas had overpowered the smaller boy with brute strength when he had managed to back him against a wall. It was Altair's mistake; he only had himself to blame - he had spent the first three minutes of the sparring match skirting around his opponent, big-headed and confident that he would not be out-maneuvered until Abbas threw his practice sword out in a furious swing that managed to upset a trowel of water nearby. The sudden soak of his clothes had thrown Altair off-balance to disastrous ends. Abbas had walked around like he was the king of the Masyaf for a week. Altair had never been careless around water again.
On the other hand, Malik had waited until the final year of their training to finally take up Altair on one of his carelessly thrown-out challenges. Though Altair had been surprised he had risen to the bait at all, he had slipped into his single-minded battle focus almost immediately; it was nowhere near as easy as it had been with Abbas. They were older, almost men, and there was a tension brewing between them that had taken years before this point and would take years beyond it to mature. They had launched into a clash of iron wills and swords in the same instant, as if they were both fighting to the beat of the same drummer.
The fight left Malik with a small concussion and Altair with a split lip and a scar that would never quite heal over the tender flesh of his lips. They had been vicious and terrible with each other - Altair had disarmed Malik with a forceful parry, and Malik had twisted his arm in retaliation until he dropped his sword, but he was still young and angry, given a rare upper hand and heady with the adrenaline while Kadar was watching. He had twisted that extra fraction more until something sick popped under the skin of Altair's right shoulder. Malik had let go only when Altair sucked in a sharp, sudden breath, watching as he pitched forward like a puppet with cut strings.
They had suffered similar injuries before, but Malik knew enough about dislocated shoulders to realize that no matter how familiar, they were never welcome. He stood there both proud and ashamed until an instructor pushed past him with a barked order to fall back, and the last thing Malik saw before averting his eyes was Altair hunched over like an injured animal, forehead pressed to the dry, dusty floor, his shadow from the high afternoon sun falling and almost masking the dark spots in the ground where the grand total of two tears had fallen to the parched earth.
Malik turned into a crowd of other boys, cheering and clapping his back, and Altair knelt quietly in the ring while the instructor pushed his bones back into place.
Of the tens that had begun their training, only a handful completed it, and fewer still managed to make it past the initiation ceremony that would mark them as assassins. Rauf had outright yelled when they had taken his finger, Abbas had made an aborted growl of pain, but Malik had only managed a soft grunt, too busy digging crescent-shaped holes into the butt of his palm. Altair had bit right through the tender skin on his bottom lip, but unsurprisingly, had remained silent.
For once, Altair was not the luckiest of the pack this time around - only his hand managed to infect, perhaps because of his impatience and the constant picking at his bandages. It was a small wound, but the infection still managed to throw him into a three-day bout of fevers and nausea, when the only person who visited to him was the medic that changed his bandages and occasionally ran a wet cloth across his forehead.
All of Masyaf knew he had no family.
On the second day, Malik escorted Kadar into the sick quarters to have someone bandage up the shallow cut on his brother's calf. At the age where Kadar was constantly trying to prove himself separate of his brother's reputation, Kadar had feigned nonchalance and shooed Malik out of the area in a silly and unnecessary display of bravado. Malik had passed Altair's bed on the way out.
Altair's eyes were wide and glassy, shining a muted gold in the daylight, his face flush and damp. He was sitting propped up against the cushions, arms in a limp sprawl to his sides, and his eyes looked wet, matting his lashes against his cheeks whenever he blinked. The sight made Malik stop in his tracks, made him hesitate with one hand on the door and begin asking, almost incredulously, “Why are you-”
There were no chairs pulled up to his bedside, no candles or favors left near his bed.
“You know, it is not a fatal wound. You will heal,” Malik said instead, only slightly kinder.
Altair's gaze wavered, like he was having difficulty focusing. “This is weak,” he croaked after a moment, voice brittle and cracking after every breath, and only then did it dawn on Malik the real reason Altair looked so miserable. The epiphany set his face into an unimpressed frown, spurred a jealous bitterness in his throat when he realized he had no reason to be pitying this stupid fool. Of course, thought Malik angrily, Altair was just upset that he wasn't as amazing as he thought he was. It served him right; he could do with more than a little bit of humbling.
“It is,” Malik answered with a scoff, turning a cold shoulder to the corner Altair occupied. “How strange that must be for you,” he added dryly, before leaving the room.
They became assassins and tears became too much of a luxury to shed - as with all transitions into adulthood, some things changed.
They became outcasts, one thrown into Jerusalem, one thrown into a drawn-out death sentence. Malik told Altair to go cry in a corner, and even if Altair did, it wasn't as if there was anyone there to care.
(Some things didn't.)
Malik found them in the gardens, the tiled floor of the paradise-like terrace strewn with spilled blood. The sky was turning gray as the temperature dropped and even the flowers seemed to lose their vibrant color. Altair stood over a cooling body, his head tilted up to a shining, golden mirage, his hand wrapped around a strange metal sphere. Al Mualim lay at his feet, expression oddly victorious in his defeat, looking old and withered in a way that Malik had never been able to imagine him being when he was alive.
Malik spared one glance at the mysterious spinning image hovering in the air and turned to something more important. He took a step forward, brow furrowing, and reached his hand out until it fell on Altair's wrist, the touch light and cautious. “Altair,” he called, tugging the other man closer and out of his reverie.
Altair turned to him, expression haunted and irises glinting gold in the flickering light of the hologram. The evidence of the past year and the Grandmaster's treachery were written plainly across his face. There were shadows falling on his features in all the wrong places. They seeped into the crease of his brow, the hollows of his cheeks, the crinkles at the edges of his eyes, and for once, Malik was not indifferent. He frowned, feeling awkward and ill-prepared for a situation where someone would have to be gentle with the Eagle of Masyaf, for a situation where that someone would have to be him.
“He is dead,” Altair said suddenly, snapping Malik out of his thoughts. The assassin reported the obvious with almost mechanical efficiency, as if he were simply relaying the news of yet another successful elimination to him back at the bureau, as if he had another soiled feather tucked under his belt, doused in the blood of the closest thing he had ever had to a father. Malik had felt his heart break when he realized his teacher had betrayed them all, but he could not know how many times - if it was twofold, threefold, tenfold - more painful it was for Altair, to whom Al Mualim had been almost everything in lieu of a family that didn't exist.
In the end, all Malik managed was a soft, stilted, “Yes.”
Malik pulled Altair to him.
Altair fell against him like a heavy weight, borne down by armor and weariness, his face pressed to the side of Malik's neck. He did not shake or fall or cling, but something hot and wet fell against the base of Malik's throat after what could have been ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, pooling in the dip of his collarbone, cooling there against his skin. The Apple fell from Altair's fingers and rolled off the instep of their boots, the clattering sound the only break in the silence. Because they were assassins, Masyaf was quiet in its mourning, so Malik wrapped his arm around his shoulders and ultimately did not have to say anything at all.
There would be a public farewell later, one that the other assassins would attend, but this one was private and without high-handed words, for no one's eyes but their own. Altair pressed his mouth against Malik's jaw and the bridge of his nose, against the corner of his mouth, against the center. Malik stilled him with a hand on his neck and pressed his own against Altair's temple like a benediction, and Altair mumbled quietly into the space under Malik's chin, against the bob of his throat, working soundlessly to choke back any word that could have possibly sounded like, 'Goodbye.'
“We will succeed, we will have help there. I know what I am doing, and even if you don't trust me, Maria knows. You trust us, don't you? I know the boys are not initiated yet, but you know they are skilled. I will be fine. You will be fine. The templars know to stay away from Masyaf. They would not risk your anger,” Altair was murmuring, barely a whisper.
The candle had burned away, leaving only a cooling, half-opaque pool of wax sitting at the bottom of the pan that held it. Maria had fallen asleep, gone to watch over her children after pushing her adieus and 'I will miss you's into Malik's skin like her husband was doing now. Altair had hung back until after she had left, awkward with words and considerably more so with twice the audience, even if it now seemed as though he couldn't run out of them.
“Say something, Malik,” he pleaded at last, drawing back and cradling the other man's face in his hands.
Mongolia was so far. “I believe you,” Malik said on an exhale.
Altair reeled him in until their foreheads bumped into each other and they sat there, breathing quietly in the darkness, treasuring that blessed sound. He rubbed the pads of his thumbs into the roughness of Malik's cheeks, sweeping in wide circles until the warm wetness that had trialed down the sides of his face evaporated into his skin. Malik fisted his hand into the loose fabric on the side of Altair's waist, keeping him there, in front of him and within reach. He did not mention it when he felt something warm drip onto the inside of his forearm, catching in the fine hairs standing on end from the chill in the air. They had known each other for almost the entirety of their lives, and suddenly it wasn't enough.
“When I come back,” Altair began.
Malik surged onto his knees, pushed Altair down onto his back and onto the bed. “No,” he said, voice rough and determined, using the moonlight to burn this image into his memory. “No, none of that.”
There was nothing to mark an assassin's passing except a hole in the ground, except the memory of the few that remembered them, which would also come to pass once they met their ends. It was just a rectangular patch of ground, the grass more sparse and uneven - new grass that had grown over overturned dirt. It was not even as big as it should have been, because the body had been so frail and small.
A shadow fell over it as Altair knelt at one edge, lingering there despite the creaking protest of his old bones, the aching thrum of his heart.
“Oh,” said Tazim, pausing in his approach. “Grandmaster. I...did not know you would be coming.”
Altair did not look up. His head was bent and the quiet air of mystery that he carried around him, one that seemed to suggest he knew too much, had seen too much, cloaked what part of his face that his pointed hood did not. “Do you visit your father often, Tazim?” he asked.
“Once in a while,” Tazim answered after a long moment, a shuffle of cloth sounding from his direction as he shuffled his feet. “I know he would not want us to grieve. He never did like seeing people cry, even when I was a child, but...he was my father, Grandmaster. It has been a long time, but sometimes...the feeling lingers,” he said hastily, almost defensively, as if daring Altair to call him out on his weakness. It was behavior indicative of a new generation of assassins - free to love but finding difficulty in reconciling their hearts with their lifestyle - a good, young, brand new generation.
“I think your father would understand,” Altair said, quiet humor echoing in his voice as he pulled himself to his feet. Tazim made no effort to stop him, stepping back with a nod of quiet respect, and Altair made it halfway down the hill before turning back, watching as Tazim stood stiffly at his father's grave, his back turned but his hands pulled into fists.
Altair lingered and stared until Darim's voice broke through the evening calm and called him home.