Chapter Text
The dove always lays its eggs in such precarious places, almost as if it does not wish to see them survive.
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Alhaitham never slept on his stomach.
So why, then, had he awoken so prone? He tried to lift his head up to investigate, but was immediately thwarted by a searing soreness that shot up from his back and settled at the base of his skull. As he dropped his face back down into his flattened pillow, he groaned, finally remembering all that had transpired the evening prior.
There had been nothing wrong with the arrangement of the house. Though unspectacular, it was orderly, and anything could be found more-or-less near its proper place. This hadn’t been good enough for Kaveh, however, and he had whined and griped until Alhaitham had had no choice but to help him rearrange the entire abode. Unfortunately, “help”, in this case, had meant moving furniture to-and-fro while an indecisive Kaveh agonized over which placements were best. By the end of it all, most of the furniture had returned to their original positions save for one sofa that found itself three feet closer to the wall. If Alhaitham hadn’t been so wracked by back pain, he would have given Kaveh more than a well-deserved earful.
Alhaitham placed his palms flat against the mattress and pushed, using his arms to lift his body up from the bed. It was much more of a struggle than he expected, though, as his elbows trembled under an unexpected oppositional pressure, a great weight that seemed to bear down on him from above. Such was the force of fatigue, he figured, as he guided himself first into a sitting position, and then onto the floor. However, he barely lasted a moment upright before the vexatious weight suddenly started to pull him backward, forcing him to throw out an arm and catch himself on the nearby wall.
That godsforsaken architect was never going to hear the end of it.
Once he was steady, he released himself from the wall and shuffled toward the bathroom, keeping his head down to avoid aggravating the strained muscles in his neck. With each step, something soft seemed to bump against his back, an inexplicable sensation since he was only clothed in a pair of fitted boxer briefs. Yet, he did not stop to question it, for he was in far too much pain to care.
Upon entering the bathroom, Alhaitham dragged himself to the washbasin and gripped its smooth edge with his clammy hands. He leaned upon it for support as he gulped down a hasty breath, expelling it just as quickly in exchange for one that was only a little deeper. After a few more of these shallow, shaking gasps, he finally willed himself to look up into the mirror and gaze upon the wreck he had become.
A wreck. If only that had been the full extent of his metamorphosis.
Folded upon his back were two enormous wings, reaching high above his head and extending far beyond the widest parts of his body. They were covered in crisp gray feathers, stiff to the eye but soft to the touch. When he looked down, he discovered that their tips were stained a bold black, the only adornment on an otherwise austere appendage.
The world started to spin, sending him careening out of the bathroom and onto his bedroom floor. Shocked and thoughtless, he suddenly forgot all words, giving one of his wings the opportunity to unyoke itself from his will. Although he was too lightheaded to check, he thought he felt it snap open and swipe across his desk, sending piles upon piles of books and baubles crashing to the ground.
He wasn’t sure how long he knelt there, watching the deep greens of his carpet slowly darken into a fuzzy grayish-black. All the while, his rogue wing stayed perched upon the desk, not daring to move lest it cause any further destruction. The other stayed tightly clamped against his back, obedient even in the absence of command.
“Alhaitham?” a voice called, although Alhaitham wasn’t sure if it was real. It was followed by a series of clicks and pops, culminating in the opening of his locked door.
“Alhaitham, what in the Lesser Lord’s name is going on in – “ Kaveh said, suddenly freezing mid-sentence.
“Gods almighty,” he whispered.
Alhaitham shut his eyes and sucked in a breath as Kaveh’s footsteps resounded around him.
“What – what happened?” Kaveh asked, but Alhaitham didn’t even have a barb to throw back, much less an actual answer. He kept his eyes closed as Kaveh’s quivering voice rambled on.
“You haven’t made any enemies in Amurta, have you?” he asked. “Oh no, of course you have. Probably in Spantamad too. But they couldn’t do something like this, could they? No, definitely not. The alchemical arts haven’t progressed that far. And if they have, there has to be some kind of rule against it, right?”
Alhaitham said nothing, focusing instead on suppressing a sudden urge to throw up.
“But if they really did hate you, then they wouldn’t care about rules, would they?” Kaveh asked. In the pause that followed, Alhaitham could hear the shuffling of paper as Kaveh presumably picked some of the books up off the floor. “No. This is just too far. There’s no way anyone would – “
“Just stop,” Alhaitham croaked, hanging his head. “Please.”
The shuffling ceded to more footsteps, which then faded into the rustling of cloth just in front of his face. He opened his eyes to find Kaveh kneeling down before him, dressed in nothing but a velour bathrobe.
“You’re shaking,” Kaveh said, taking one of his limp, ashen hands in both of his. He then peered down at the quaking fingers with something akin to softness, something akin to sadness. Whatever it was, its presence was far too immense to be witnessed, forcing Alhaitham to cast his gaze toward the ground.
Kaveh held his hand for a moment more, then gently placed it back down so he could get up and begin folding the outstretched wing. Carefully, he guided it toward Alhaitham’s back, only letting go once it was a perfect mirror of its twin.
“You know, this is probably all just a dream,” he said as he crouched next to Alhaitham. “Really makes you miss the Akasha, doesn’t it?”
“Only you…only you would miss…” Alhaitham tried to say, trailing off as the floor started to rock beneath him.
“Shh. Let’s get ourselves back to bed and sleep this off, alright?” Kaveh said, catching Alhaitham as he started to lean a bit too far to the left. “We can have a good laugh about it when we wake up, then get back to work on the living room. I finally figured out where I want to move the bookshelves.”
Before Alhaitham could even consider the proposal, Kaveh had slung him across his shoulder and lifted him to his feet. As they started to move toward the bed, Alhaitham was able to catch a glimpse of Kaveh’s expression. Though it exuded a calm confidence, he knew that it wasn’t anything to go by. After all, most of Kaveh’s features could embody any reality they wished, no matter how factually accurate it was. Only his ruby eyes remained honest, tethered to the truth and beholden to its brutality.
Alhaitham tried to peer into them, but they suddenly darted away, unwilling to be witnessed. Perhaps that was an answer in itself, but Alhaitham could barely so much as think, let alone reason through the hidden meanings of subtleties. If Kaveh truly wished to tell him something, he would have to use his words.
He dropped his head as Kaveh’s hand found his hip, coaxing him up onto the bed. At first, he tried to lay on his side, but found that the mattress pushed the bottommost wing up into its neighbor. Though it was tolerable for a moment, it soon aggravated the strained muscles in his back, making him wince and shoot back up into a sitting position.
“Hm,” Kaveh said as Alhaitham pulled his wings close to his back, huddling under their weighty warmth. “Can you try sleeping on your stomach?”
Alhaitham nodded, then started to return himself to the position he had awoken in. Once he was settled, he felt the silk sheet drop onto his legs and the lower half of his back, stopping just beneath the place where his new growths attached to their host.
“Try to get some rest,” Kaveh said, and Alhaitham complied by slightly opening a wing and angling it over his head. In the ensuing darkness, the perils of the outside world slowly ceased to be, allowing ugly, earthly emotions to finally begin to recede. When there was naught left but a hollow husk, a new, slumbering sensation suddenly began to flow forth, pooling first in his head and then his heart. There, it continued to collect, until soon he had no choice but to shut his eyes and once again join the dreamer’s reverie, losing himself to its lesser insanity.