Chapter Text
There is water in his lungs, flowing into them through his throat to fill every nook and caveat as it holds him below the surface. He never gets a break, a breath of air.
It is the reason for everything, that he loves so unabashedly, feverishly, trustingly.
No matter how much he loves it, too, he needs air.
But everywhere he goes, the current will follow, abandoning it's bed and choking him by giving too much of itself.
Swirling around him and shoving everything from it's trajectory, pulling him down into the dark at the bottom when it's center is struck.
And when it's centerpiece is taken away, a typhoon rises in the desert until it takes him back or he is returned.
When he is, the waves pull him down into their depths, tugging him about as it tries to wash debris and dirt from his skin as it presses further inside to make sure nothing is left and coloring red.
The more often he is taken, the harder it gets to reach the surface. If the current notes his ascent toward the air, it will pull him back down to it's ground where nothing else should ever reach him.
He wasn't born with gills to breathe with.
His eyes open all of a sudden, shoving at the weight keeping his lungs from expanding the entire way.
Panic gives him strength and he lifts it off, darting off the cot.
A cacophony of hissing pulls him to the present, reminds him he isn't drowning and he collapses back onto the chair beside the bed, a hand in front his mouth like fluid wouldn't just slip between his fingers as he pants.
"...I'm fine." He tells himself. "I... am fine."
He straightens up, pushing the heel of his hand against the middle of his chest, where air makes it's way in and out.
A monitor beeps louder, faster next to his face and a gentle ghost woman fazes through the wall to check. "That's new." She tells herself, no look to Kalim while she floats over to her patient who's currently trying to squirm off the bed and...hissing...
Yes, Jamil is actually hissing along with the snakes in his air. Those are turned toward their past number-one target, twitching like they want to escape their host's scalp right then.
His temperature rises as well, slowly climbing back toward a dangerous temperature like a particularly determined vulture over a savanna.
For a moment, everything in him strains against the notion of touch, the weight in over his lungs.
Then his mind catches up to the fact that this is Jamil. Kalim is the one who wants to hang on. Always.
Before he knows it, he is at his friend's side again, fingers sliding down his wrist because the other grasped for him too quickly and grabbed onto his lower arm instead. Hand locked around the limb like a band of steel.
Pulling at him so hard his master has to strain against it to stay upright.
"Jamil, I'm fine, you'll be okay-" This is starting to shove his heart rate further.
The hold slackens abruptly, the loudest hiss peters out, the smaller ones quietening over a minute and a little more before they lose the motivation to move and are now randomly strewn across one another like lifeless toys.
Culprit is a small syringe in the long-haired boy's arm, mirroring the new imprints of nails on Kalim's.
He pulls back, swallowing the tightness in his throat.
I can't do this.
It's shameful to fear one's own servant, but the master flees to the corridor. Making his way to Scarabia.
Breaking through the momentary cold of the dorm mirror, he returns to his home.
This place is always filled, much like the caverns of his heart. Beating with the ebb and flow of gathering and moving.
It is silent now, two small trails of warmth making their way down his wrist. The dorm blows a bout of hot wind at him, ruffling his hair and making the ornaments on his ears and wrist jingle.
He smiles weakly. "Hello, Scarabia." Kalim's greeted his dorm many times, though not even Jamil has yet realised he does so including the pocket dimension as well.
His room... No, he doesn't want to pretend he is less alone than he is.
Not to mention, it is the Housewarden's. He stole it anyway, it isn't his to have.
He collapses onto one of the couches, shoulders beginning to shake. There is nobody to hear him, he doesn't have the energy to give the pressure on his chest an audible presence.
Then he giggles, lips pulling up. Who is he kidding?
Kalim Al-Asim is happy and oblivious and trusting.
That's who he is!
What is he if not energetic and willing?
No one and nobody, because he is and owns nothing of himself.
.
.
Kalim isn't smart.
It has been said to his father, by frustrated tutors and impatient teachers more or less directly, depending on their relationship status with the head of Asim and their own rank and fame.
The whispers rose through the roots of his family tree, up through the trunk and the branches. Especially the pruned ones twisted away in displeasure and envy after the opposite failed to block out the light.
Only Jamil had ever said it to his face. The recipient of his scorn had laughed and dragged him to another game of mancala.
All he could say was rehearsed, his tongue moving while his brain remained woefully clouded. It stayed that way, reinforced, until he recited the poems, recipes and spells in poison-induced fever hazes.
.
.
He could dance, classic as well as acrobatically though he prefers the latter for the rush and it sweeping his head clear. He could match at least ten traditional dances to each region and execute them flawlessly.
Jamil was better at that, he taught the other half of what he knew.
He could throw parties like no other, entertaining guests personally keeping entire halls full and celebrating.
Jamil was better at that, for he provided everything, but his master's own body, to entertain them with.
Kalim was bright and positive and trusted with his head on the line.
Jamil is better than that.
That's also why he couldn't wear anything backless for a long while.
The Viper is better at each and everything Kalim is best at.
"He would've been better for you, all of you." He's never been good at being sad. There was no use to it. It wouldn't garner any sympathy from the people he needed it from the most. Those with messages and batons and blades and cameras-
A thud echoes from right in front the couch. There stands the Housewarden's scepter, eye sockets and top of the hood still empty without his own wand providing the crimson for them.
He fishes out his pen, holding it out and closing his eyes as both fuse together, generating a bright light obscuring the process.
When he opens them again, the staff tips over and the side of the cobra's hood hits him in the gut and he wheezes before grabbing the smooth part below the head.
"I don't know why you even offer it at all." He coughs, pulling it over his lap and petting over the head and between the eyes of the snake. "An affirmation of a status I didn't earn."
In the evening, the desert always grows cold. But by virtue of a Housewarden's spell, it never enroaches into the halls of the dorm past his welcome. Now, however, the climate's maintainer has no thought for it and the torches grow dim before they leave just the memory of their light's fuel behind.
After Octavinelle left, the water from Oasis Maker didn't disappear. Without another climate or country to disappear to, there are now clouds in Scarabia's sky and frost in it's halls.
Kalim can't find it in him to care as everything cools down until he may sit in a freezer. The enchanted fabric does it's part, but it wasn't specifically made with the intention to hold heat. Quite the opposite, in fact.
He finally gets up when the staff starts to hum in his hand and his breath makes white clouds in front of his face.
His room'll be too cold...
And instinct carries him to Jamil's door instead. It unlocks when he sets his hand on the knob and swings open with barely any pressure.
This room should be warm and comfortable because it is his.
The dimension obeys, the spell concentrating on the new focus point, leaving everything else to freeze.
He longs for Jamil. But less complicated. Like when they were little, tiny children and he honestly believed they were friends, they would stay together, they loved each other.
His gaze falls onto Jamil's bed. He shouldn't. But that's never stopped him anyway.
Sneaking toward the servant's side of the room like someone outside is listening for any sound, he settles a hand on the unmade bed.
He really must have been excited... Jamil is a perfectionist, his bed's always been made when he came in before. Good for himself, though, the other won't notice he was here.
Kalim drops himself onto the bed, face pressed into the pillow. As soon as the scent registers, he gets goosebumps, cold infiltrating the room again and he near falls off the bed.
His breathing makes clouds again. Little, hacked-off, pathetic clouds.
He scoots away, waving a hand in front of his face to rid his nose of the scent.
His lungs still feel cold, despite Scarabia being not at all difficult to work with. The dorm is forthcoming for it's current one resident, but it still feels like they shoved the concept of the Ice Queen's winter down his throat.
"I can breathe... I can..." He tries to soothe himself, holding onto his own arms.
He nods to himself and retreats to the bed on the other side of the room until his back hits the frame. The owner left in a terrible hurry, Kalim can understand why. *The thought of having been sleeping in a room with a boy who planned to take control of the entire dorm, someone who risked all their lives when he didn't get what he wanted, someone who stole his entire dorm's autonomy and made them serve like slaves as he saw himself before.* Didn't even wash the sheets before he went.
Seriously, like his Housewarden hadn’t been doing it for years at his most helpless.
Turning his head, he pulls the pillow down onto his lap before lifting it to his face. He knew the boy as one knows someone in close proximity to a loved one. Enough to turn his brain off when he breathes in with instinctive recognition. Not an enemy.
A Scarabia student, the one whose scent lingers in the same room as the one his Housewarden burst through the door for every other day. Now the very same idiot uses him to drown his favorite person out.
The one he opened his eyes for in the mornings, the first person on his mind no matter how cluttered his schedule or time spent with the best of friends, the voice he dragged himself out of oblivion for, the hands that made his meals and fed them to him when he couldn't, the burns and cuts and everything that left a scar Kalim could name by week of the year it happened and how and Jamil who did the same for him, the only one whose touch felt natural, the face he loved watch shift when the tip of his tongue peeked out in concentration if the other finallly managed to challenge him genuinely-
And now he would never do any of that again. He would wipe it away until he forgot how Jamil's weight felt on his arms when they danced, the one occasion where the servant could trust that his master, for all his unearned priviledge and prevalent stupidity, was the best partner for him...
His fingers dig into the pillow, the seams groan in the agony of holding both the pillow and it's thief together.
He would turn Jamil into another face in the corner of the room until he forgot every detail that made up his Viper. Someone he could lose in a crowd and not look twice for.
And then he would let him go as one of a dozen.
They both would be free from each other and Al-Asim would make himself believe it was his happy ending too. A big family is something he'll get either way, he'll have something to cover the void until it becomes a part of life just as any other wound ignored until others cut away the festering material and it blends in with all the other gaps in his memory.
People live on without their hands and a lesson learned.
Kalim is overdue, after all, it's not like he ever used his own.
He takes another breath of the student's scent. Can't even remember his name, disgrace. He gets back to his feet, fluffing the pillow up before setting it back where it belongs. Your memory needs to die with his.
Returning to his room for the first time since yesterday, he spots his phone on the nightstand. So many people he could call, the fewest of which'd answer.
*What time is it back at home? What was the difference again?* He picks it up and unlocks it, staring at Najma's contact on his list. Jamil's phone is never on mute, but it remained silent, so she must not know of the Overblot. Neither do his parents. They'd kill him for trying to kill me.
Can't call her, then. She's great at everything her brother is perfect at, but their parents were the harshest teachers. They'd read it off her expression somehow.
His gaze lowers to Jamil's contact, and his finger moves on its own when he sees personalized voicemail.
Would you like to add a personalized voicemail for this contact?
And again.
Yes.
The beep sounds, and for the first minute, he doesn't know what to say. He returns to the beginning. He should be quick, his battery his low after he forgot to charge it again.
Many times. It remains dark outside, but no wind reaches the Housewarden's room.
Finally, he starts, "Hey, Jamil, I know you'll never hear this, because you'd never voluntarily call for me and you're always with me against your will and if you're not I've always got mine on me-"
A hicup interrupts him. "But just for once, there should be something tangible of me, y'know?" He's thought about this many times, but not even his Viper got to know about it. "And, if anyone, I'd want you to have it."
He sits down on his bed, having walked around his own in slow, irregular intervalls for quite a while. "Cause, you know, the jewelry was my father's once and it'll simply go to his second child. Because the current head is the fourth of his own. Did you know?" Shifting back against the pillow, throwing the thick blanket over his legs. He usually only sleeps on top of it.
The cold finally washes into the room, but he's barely bothered. He's holding his staff over his thighs and his abdomen, and it warms without his doing so. "My phone can be wiped, my fabric reused... no, it'll probably be thrown away, not like my family lacks anything in terms of wealth." The wind lifts his hair and drops it again, repeating the motion every other second. "Though one of the aunties might steal them for her son."
Like this, he doesn't feel as alone as he is. "And on every photo you'll burn or delete, I'm smiling. Always, always smiling." He sighs into the microphone, allowing his head to fall back onto a lush pillow. "I'm not... really that happy, you know? Whatever way you slice it, I have no reason to be. Yes, I'm rich and whatever money can buy is at my fingertips, but..."
The staff heats up further, breath against his forehead slowing. "So many more people want me dead than those who want me to live." He doesn't quite know how to continue for a few seconds, his throat is trying to close and his eyes are burning, but he doesn't feel the sorrow. "...And you're among them."
His breath hitches, but he's laughing, not crying. "Then cut away, I guess. Poison me. Hit me with a construction rod." He can't stop giggling at the thought. "After all, that's what you've endured for me. It stands to reason you'd want to do it to me. Would you want to kidnap me the three seperate times too?"
He feels lighter already. "Do you think that's how often I was kidnapped?" He asks, airpipes opening back up. "No, you know of two more ransoms." A pause. "Well, there were... twenty-two, twenty-five... either twenty-nine or thirty-one. You know, memory issues. Ask your mother for my records, she's got access to the stuff even mine probably doesn't know. Father probably doesnt care to remember the exact number."
The air feels heavier. "It just... melds together after the sixth time. Also, I don't think you have to bother doing that stuff to me, the people did it to me before you came and had to experience it too." He stretches his arms above his head, his smile widens genuinely as the cobra's hood once again hits him, but this time in the shoulder as it slips off his elbow. "Less work for you, for once, yeah? Is it nice to know I've felt part of your pain?"
He takes his phone back toward his mouth, pulling his staff back over himself. "I think it does, for at least one time, I've understood you." It really is getting cold in here. "Which... hm. I thought you were the only one who loved me back at home, you know? Mother didn't really spend that much time with me past before my birth."
Petting around the cobra's gem, he has to level his tone consciously. "You know, someone who'd grieve me if I hadn't woken up after two weeks." The wind around him begins to howl as it spins around the room. "Turns out, you would've probably been the happiest if I hadn't."
Finally, he raises his voice as notebooks, papers and a waterbottle tip off the desk's surface. "Well, fiftieth time or so might be the charm!" He never lifts his gaze from the smiling profile picture of his first friend. "You could be free from me soon." His blanket doesn't shift an inch.
He swallows, breathing in and out a few times. "You adore curry, you like winning against me every time though it gets boring, you love Najma and want to spoil her more though you'd never tell her, you like basketball, you enjoy breakdancing because dancing's become an instict and you don't think when you do it, you're top of the class with Ancient Magic and you adore compliments about your honed skills, you love when your magic bends the world around you because it proves you're superior." And he has to catch his breath after counting it off. "I wanted to remember what makes you happy so I could make you so. And I'm sorry I counted myself on the list that did."
The room's door is shoved open, a hundred howls joining the one in his own abode. "Since I tell you the obvious all the time, it shouldn't be a surprise, though surely you've known." He doesn't mind screaming the words. "I'VE LOVED YOU SINCE THE FIRST YEAR I KNEW YOUR NAME, BEAUTIFUL, I LOVE YOU NOW AND I'LL LOVE YOU UNTIL MY TOMB CLOSES BEHIND MY COFFIN!" Something wooden, far off, splinters at the last word before his entire dorm goes still. "Don't talk to me about it." And he goes quiet too, ending the message after one last sentence. “Oasis Maker should’ve been yours, for the one who’s given me everything should be the richest in the desert.”
A cheerful text-emoji face confirms the message was saved.
What was I thinking? He stares until the green notification disappears. Putting him on the spot again?
I should delete that.
His phone choses that moment to finally turn off. That's fine, he'll do so tomorrow...
Instead, he throws his phone against the wall. He hears the sharp krrgh as it crumples and a thud as it falls to the floor.
The tears finally fall, a warm drape of fabric curling around him after having fought the stubborn air for so long, tassels crossed over his collarbone.
At least the carpet would mourn him, what a loyal friend.