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Altair promptly jumped in the roof garden and immediately dropped himself to the ground. He put a trembling hand over his mouth to muffle his pants and pressed the other one on his shoulder to try and stop the bleeding; he barely managed to prevent his groan of pain from crossing his lips. He kept still as he heard the guards running next to the wooden edifice. He tried to make himself as small as possible: if any of the men checked in the garden, he was a dead man. He slowly led his hand away from his mouth and kept it in the air, ready to trigger his blade. If tonight was the day he finally died, he was bringing at least one man down with him.
Luckily, he heard the steps get lower and lower as the swarm of guards ran away. He used his Vision to look around : he was alone. For the first time of the day, odds were kind to him.
He let himself lay on the ground for a few minutes, finally heavily breathing like his body had been begging to for the last minutes. His shoulder hurt like hell and his head spun from the adrenaline, the heat and the pain; he needed to go back to the bureau and quick.
He vaguely heard the city’s bells resonating as he jumped out of his shelter, checking for any guards around. He kept his right hand on his shoulder as he went in the direction of the bureau; the wound didn’t seem deep, but he was heavily bleeding and was starting to feel seriously light-hearted from the loss of blood. He picked up his pace.
He had hoped that he could finally have a break as he reached the bureau, but he fell nose to nose with two guards as he jumped down from a higher roof. The first guard didn’t have time to realize what was happening that Altair’s blade was embed in his neck; he fell to the ground as the assassin took his sword out and countered the pathetic attack of the second one. Their eyes crossed for a fraction of second ; he looked like a teenager, and a terrified one. Probably a new recruit or just the son of the now dead other guard; the boy yelped as Altair kicked his stomach with his foot and pushed, making him fall on his ass. He looked for his sword; his eyes widened as he saw it fall from the roof behind him. He looked back at the assassin, and Altair could not help but chuckle. What a terrible opponent.
He usually wouldn’t have spared any guard who had the terrible idea to accidently wander so close to the bureau, but killing someone so young wasn’t something to be delighted about. He sighed and sheathed his sword.
“Go.”
The teen froze, visibly unsure of if he had heard right. Altair slowly sunk down to his knees, creeping slightly closer to the kid.
“Get the fuck outta here,” Altair whispered to his ear. “Unless you prefer I slice your throat the way I did to your friend?”
The vision of his blade just before the teenager’s face was quick to get him out of his paralyzed state; he took to his heels and disappeared without even bothering to pick his sword back, yelping something that vaguely resembled a “thank you sir”.
Altair sighed and walked to the hidden entrance of the bureau, hissing from his aching shoulder. He just wanted to finally get his equipment off and get his shoulder taken care off, but he knew that he wouldn’t get any of that before getting yelled at first. He wondered what he had done wrong this time.
He hadn’t even landed in the yard that he got his answer.
“How did you even get the title of master assassin in the first place, Altair? Do you even know what discretion is?”
“Discretion wasn’t of my resort in this case, Malik.”
“Oh of course, find excuses for your incompetence. You are a disgrace to the brotherhood, Altair.”
Jeez, Malik seemed in a terrible mood today. Altair had not even made it to the fountain and he was already using his ‘disgrace to the brotherhood’ card.
Only this time, Altair had done nothing to deserve such words.
“Yell at me all you want to make up for your shitty day, Dai, but I assure you I have done nothing wrong during this mission.”
Malik jumped forward and grabbed him by the collar, making Altair growl; he pushed him against the wall and Altair huffed as his back hit the brick.
“And then what do I hear right now, Altair? Other than your stupid arrogant words, of course.”
“The fucking bells, Malik.”
Malik almost hissed in his ear. “And why do I hear them, you incompetent bastard?”
“Because of Sanj…” He hadn’t finished his sentence that Malik’s hand had dropped his clothes and hit his cheek with a violent noise. Altair staggered, confounded.
“What the f-“ He stopped mid-sentence, too groggy to end it. He felt for a second like he was going to pass out and just collapse on the ground.
“Get the fuck out of my bureau until you learn how to be an actual assassin, novice.”
Altair tried to answer, but he still felt the ghost of Malik’s knuckles on his cheekbone and his head spun too fast to organize a sentence. He heard Malik close the door.
What in Allah was wrong with this man? Altair’s robes were soaked with his blood by now, there was no way that the Dai hadn’t noticed; but Malik didn’t seem like he even knew that it was his job to heal him. And why had he hit him? It really wasn’t Altair fault that the bells were ringing. He hadn’t made any mistake, and this is how Malik fucking greeted him?
He found himself on the ground. He silently stood up and rested on the fountain next to him. He could barely see clear; he drank as much water as he could, hoping that it would help him get better. He felt like throwing up, but he still climbed up the wall to exit the security of the bureau; He felt like he was going to pass out, and he certainly didn’t want to be in reach of Malik’s angry fist in case he did fell unconscious.
The sun hit him in the face almost as hard as Malik’s fist had done a few moments prior. He sat down on the roof, legs dangling off the edge, and took off his belt.
After several minutes of struggling with the blood and the satin, he somehow managed to make a fortune bandage with his red sash; it was terrible and would only hold the bleeding for a few hours at best, but it was the best he could do at the moment. He wondered if an informant would be kind enough to take care of his wound, but he quickly remembered that the informants in the city were all eager to openly roast him whenever they saw him. Getting the smallest information from any of them was a nightmare; there was no way that one of them would accept to lose their time helping him. As usual, he could only rely on himself.
He hesitated to jump back down and storm in the office to remember Malik that healing him was his fucking job, that he had no right to refuse him shelter, but he was too tired to fight. He had heard enough screaming for the day, he didn’t need his old friend yelling at him for something he wasn’t responsible for to end the day on an even worse note. He just wanted to hide from the sun until his head stopped spinning, to find something to eat and to wait for the bleeding to stop.
A faint sound of steps from the bureau prompted him to try to distance himself from the place. He let himself fall down, miraculously not losing his balance as he landed. He took a few seconds to regain some lucidity, and silently walked to a busier street to blend in the crowd before Malik would try to find him.
Malik found the yard empty. He groaned in exasperation and let the bandages and suture material fall on the floor. Of course that idiot had went back to roam on the roofs of the city with an open wound.
He went back to work; Altaïr's idiocy was not his problem, and if the man had deemed reasonable to go out in such a state, that was only pay-off for his blatant incompetence of today. Seriously, how a fool like this man had even been accepted as an assassin was beyond any logic; no amount of discretion could compensate for such hubris.
A faint sound in the yard took his eyes away from the map he was working on; Sanjar, the novice who had left earlier on his first mission, sprinted inside the bureau. Malik immediately noticed the trail of blood who followed him and quickly went to pick up his medical material. He made him lay down on the ground and started to attend to his wound.
"What happened? You were a few centimeters from getting fatally hit, you got very lucky out there."
"I... tried to interfere with the execution of some old woman guards are chosen to execute as 'example for the others'. It didn't go w-Ouch!" He yelped as Malik gave him a flick on the forehead.
"That was suicide! You do not even have you own sword yet. What did you expect?"
"I'm sorry, I just... I didn't think." The young man looked around. "Is Altaïr back yet? He took some harsh hits."
Malik stopped in his bandaging. He looked with an unfathomable stare at the apprentice.
"He was with you?"
"Oh yeah, he's probably the only reason I'm still alive," the young man awkwardly chuckled. "He just swooped down and went to fight. He had to kill several men so we'd have an opportunity to flee... Are you okay? You're all pale?"
Malik blinked. "He went to help you? Are you sure it was Altaïr? That does not sound like him."
"Uh yes, I'm sure. Isn't he the only one of our brothers with master's robes in the city at this moment?"
Malik found that he had nothing to answer, so he kept silent.
"So, hum..." the young man continued after a moment. "Isn't he home? He stayed behind, but I hoped he'd be back... I was sure I had seen a trail of blood on my way here, so I thought he was already at the bureau. I hope he's okay... Where are you going?"
"Don't touch your bandages. I'll be back tonight to change them; lay down and rest." Malik grabbed his medicine material, put it into his pockets, sprinted outside and urgently climbed the fountain.
Tracking Altaïr would usually have been near-impossible, but the fact he was bleeding made Malik's job easier. He saw from the roof some bloody footprints in the street below; had the man went down? In such a state, staying on the higher points of the city would have allowed him to avoid the majority of guards. What was this idiot thinking?
He walked through the busy streets, panting under the raging sun above them. The heat was particularly harsh that day, and he regretted having kept his coat on.
The streets shivered and shone under the merciless sky; he had to stop after a few minutes only, sitting on a bench under the shade of a building as the sound of his own bloodstream echoed through his ears.
He discreetly looked around, careful to not attract the guards' attention; there were only a few, whining in a corner and drowning in their own sweat. He waited for a few minutes before standing up again; his whole body strongly complained about it when he did. He regretted not having drunk before going out.
He continued in the near desert streets, and only climbed onto the tops of the houses when he almost ran into Templars at the corner of a small street. He made sure he had been unseen in doing so before turning around and swiftly jumping on roofs.
The heat was far worse at the top of the city and he realized he could not stay up there for long, but barely had he passed three buildings that a raspy breathing coming directly from a roof garden made him stop.
He passed his head through one of the curtains and looked down, finding without surprise a man in white and red lying on the floor like a starving dog.
"Altaïr."
For a second, the man kept immobile as a dead man, and the Dai almost worried. Then, slowly, his hand raised, trembling under the crippling heat, languidly coming to an halt, before finally flicking him off.
Malik turned his heels around and pretended to start leaving: a groan of fake fear made him stop and walk back in, laughing.
"Are you still alive?" He half-jockingly asked, noticing the quite impressive amount of blood on the floor.
"Are you still a bitch?"
Altaïr was his usual grumpy self, but his voice was low and he didn't seem to be on the ground by choice. Malik promptly took bandages out of his left pocket and jumped to his side.
"Sanjar came back and explained what happened. I'm impressed you actually went to help him. That is... unlike anything the Altaïr from a few months ago would have done."
He carefully took off the sash Altaïr had awfully tied around his wound, drawing a hiss out of the assassin's throat. "You lost a big quantity of blood."
"Thanks to who?" Altair groaned, a rasp in his voice. He was probably extremely dehydrated, Malik realized.
"I have my fault there, but why in Allah did you decide to just walk away from the bureau with your shoulder in such a pitiful state?" Malik complained, rolling his eyes.
"Because it was safer outside than in your bureau?" The assassin snapped back with an accusing tone.
The Dai did not throw venom in return, surprising even himself in not doing so. He only sighed. "Yes, I apologise for earlier. I am so used to you being the scum of the earth, I tend to forget you even have some amount of competence in that small mind of yours."
Perhaps a bit too mean, he thought as he spoke. But he was born with the most spiteful tongue in existence, and he rarely if not ever controlled the poison that streamed through his lips.
Altaïr blinked twice, visibly in awe of such a terrible apology. He opened his eyes to answer after a moment of processing the Dai's words, but water flowed on his shoulder and he only yelped in surprise.
"Sorry. I have to clean it before anything."
"Keep some for me to drink, I don't think I have any drop of water left in me."
"I have my own gourd in my pouch, don't worry." The gourd in question was only full at two thirds, but Malik kept that detail from the assassin. "The blade was a few inches away from touching many nerves, Altaïr. You got lucky, very lucky. You could have lost at least some mobility in your arm."
"Sorry." Malik almost choked; he could not even recall having heard the man apologize. "I could not counter all men's attacks, with the novice to defend as well-"
"That's okay," Malik interrupted him, trying to dissimulate his joyful confusion. Altaïr admitting his faults, and even more, apologizing for something he couldn't do anything about, was something he had never thought he could hear one day. Had the heat finally achieved to turn him mad? "You did well. Sanjar came home, a bit shaken but almost unharmed."
Altaïr raised his head as his friend was talking; he froze, and for a second Malik wondered why he was staring with such intensity at the wooden panel of the roof garden.
"Someone out there?"
"Two guards, including an archer. Two roofs away." Altair said, eyes following something beyond the plank.
"Shit." Malik hissed through his teeth. "Do you think yourself capable of walking?"
"I don't have a choice," Altaïr said, almost whispering, eyes not moving. He put the palms of his hand on the floor and pushed himself up without a single noise: Malik did the same, although the bottom of his coat made the slightest of noise when it brushed on the floor. He winced, but Altaïr smiled at him to reassure him that the guards hadn't heard.
They jumped out of the roof garden; Malik noted that Altaïr was faltering, barely keeping his balance. He showed him the street down below: if Altaïr were to faint, it'd be far better to do so at ground level. They plumbed down before the guards could notice them and disappeared in the maze of streets.
They stopped at half-way when Altaïr started to slow down and pant, which Malik wasn't sure having ever seen him do before. They walked under a small tree, just big enough to have an useful shadow in such a weather. Malik took out his gourd and brought it to his mouth: he did nothing more than dipping his lips in the liquid and only pretended to drink. He then gave the gourd to Altaïr, who unsurprisingly drank all of what was left in it in one go in record time.
The sun was starting to disappear behind the hills, submerging the city in bright oranges and elongating black shadows. A few people wandered around, carefully staying in the shade, but the heat had won over the majority of the inhabitants and many stayed in the cool of their house instead of fighting the sun. the city was as a result bathed in a tranquil silence that Malik had never seen before in such a big city.
"Are you feeling better?" He asked after a while, looking down at Altaïr who had sat on the ground. The man slowly expired.
"Yeah. Just a bit light-hearted. And tired." The assassin admitted.
"You ran, fought and have lost a lot of blood. You'll have plenty of time to rest at the bureau," Malik said as he sat to his side. "How about we grab cups of water at the bureau, get onto the roof and admire the sunset?"
Altaïr chuckled. "Have the heat gotten you soft?" though he did a terrible job at hiding that his smile was from genuine excitement.
A lady passed by, wearing a basket of fruits. Her eyes fell on Altaïr's blood-soaked robes: she gasped and hastened her pace to distance herself from the assassins.
Malik looked at her disappear in a corner. "We should probably leave. You need to change clothes." He said as he stood up, turning to Altaïr who did the same. "Ready to go? We are not far away anymore."
"I know." Altaïr answered before suddenly springing forward. Malik took a second to realize and soared behind him.
"A race? Seriously?" He laughed.
Altaïr gave him a smile and continued running. "First to the fountain!"
Malik chuckled. Once an idiot, always an idiot.