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Nadir is twelve when he realizes that a rock is enough to crack a skull. The sand foxes have delicate little skulls, he knows, and their brains are so tiny but so soft when he holds the bone fragments apart. It’s the perfect place for his mechanism to rest, and after the third attempt he’s figured out how to attach the stickers he made with the right lobes to power it with the brain’s own electricity.
It fails another two times, Nadir watching with great interest as the foxes writhe on the floor of the make-shift shack. The brain can’t compute it, he thinks, or maybe it’s transferring the electrical impulses into the wrong lobes like conduction and that’s too much. The fox always stills eventually, and once the brain has stopped he can pick it apart around his mechanism.
He takes his notes, carefully coded in the language crafted between mirror images. He knows that he’s onto something, that he’s right , but he knows that he can’t show this to anyone until he has the proof to back it up. One day, once he manages to make a properly enhanced fox, he can move onto humans. That’s the way science goes, he knows, you do your trials and your experiments and then you move to human trials, and then…
And then he will be recognized for his genius. He will be more than just half of the local prodigy, he will be known in the way the academics from the Academia are. Published and given funding and let loose to experiment with abandon: it makes him grin. It makes him hum, a silly old nursery rhyme he remembers from childhood and accompanied by the sound of his knife where he skins the pitiful experiment.
When the sky starts to pinken, he washes his hands and burns the pilfered tarp he wears over his clothes. His hair gets spots of pink but he can’t do much about that, and the next morning he’ll blame it on the flowers that crawl up the wall of their house. His brother will narrow his eyes, but Nadir will kick him under the breakfast table, and Farouk will not mention that their shared room only has one occupant most nights.
--
Nadir is sixteen when he is accepted into the Academia. It’s the goal of anyone who has a modicum of intelligence, the gem that crowns Sumeru’s worldwide acclaim and he wastes no time in making his arrangements for the two-day travel from his home village to its grounds.
Farouk makes his arrangements separately. It’s fine.
They don’t talk much these days because Farouk doesn’t understand . He falls short of what it takes to make actual progress, not just regurgitated words from a textbook and it’s a pity, but that’s alright. People with Visions always take longer to understand the laymen’s world.
He’ll come around eventually. Nadir knows it, because he knows Farouk; they’re mirror images, after all, like the sun and the moon.
They don’t talk in the Academia. His brother falls in with a group of idiots, and when Nadir follows him to his dorm one night, bag full of thick books from the restricted section of the library, Farouk tells him that he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to know, not if Nadir hasn’t realized what he’s doing is wrong.
That he doesn’t want to associate with people like him, that it doesn’t matter that they’re twins because Nadir is making the wrong choices. He’s making mistakes.
--
Nadir is put on a month of academic probation, and receives a letter from his family asking that he doesn’t come home for the break. They don’t think he’s a good influence for his younger sister, and they tell him to apologize to his brother for what he did.
He burns the letter over a candle, lets the flames lick at his fingertips. No grand scientist has a family. Advancement cannot be made without sacrifices, both from the created and their creators.
Later that night, he goes to a party. Nadir doesn’t like parties, but he met another great mind from Fontaine in his alchemy lecturehall, and they have money and connections and like parties. He likes them.
He starts to wear an earring after that, a little glass vial filled with a substance as soft as sand but pure white. The cap unscrews with a little spoon attached, and the bags under his eyes get heavier the more it empties.
Sacrifices must be made to leave a legacy as big as the one he is working towards, and Nadir has never once hesitated.
--
Nadir is twenty when he presents his research to the Council.
It is thick and carefully bound in leather, and he has spent countless hours writing and rewriting, hypothesizing and concluding, and he knows that it is only a matter of time before he makes his future a reality. They’ll read it, he knows, and they will praise him for the advancements he’s suggested and provided proof of.
They’ll read it, and finally, finally , someone will understand what he wants to do, what all of this blood and tears and sacrifice has been for. Someone will understand his research, his goals, the possibilities that these machines and man-made humans can give and Nadir feels weak with the rush of joy at it.
Everything will pay off. It has to, it has to, he did everything right and now, finally, it will matter . It will change the world, foster greater innovation than a mere human can produce already, and he’s already made notes about how research with Fontaine’s scholars could help finalize designs.
It’s just this last meeting, and then the world is fully in the palm of his hand. No distractions. No weakness. Just his research and the potential that can come from it.
--
Il Dottore is twenty-one, and he doesn’t really believe in the Archons. Sure, he cherishes the ideals of his homeland and, alright, he’s pledged his life into the Tsarista’s care, but he doesn’t believe in them.
Il Dottore believes in one thing and one thing only anymore, and that’s the fact that his research will only continue to advance human understanding-- to advance humans as a whole. Il Dottore believes in himself.
No Archons. No Visions. No people.
(Not even the Delusions. He helped in their creation, and yet he refuses to wear one even for uniform. He doesn’t have delusions.)
They’re unpredictable.
Just what he knows will stand up. Things that are proven, that are possible, and one day-- one day everyone else will understand it, too.