Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Those were the wrong footsteps on the stairs. 

Alhaitham felt a familiar frown stealing over his face as he reached to turn his headset down. Down went the strings. Down went the trill of the flute. Up went the sound of someone approaching. The light of his lamp was the only bright spot in this entire wing of the Academiya, the stack of completed books off to his side the proof of the hours he had been sitting at his desk, waiting. But he’d been waiting for the right footsteps all night—the past few nights actually—the soft shuffle of bare feet on stone, not this clunk clunk clunk of heavy boots. 

Who the hell other than the right person was after Alhaitham at this hour? 

No one that Alhaitham was interested in seeing, that was for sure. He was of half a mind to go shut the door and make it very clear he didn’t want visitors, but then the footsteps were in the hallway, steadily approaching his office and before Alhaitham had the chance to rise, the wrong person was there, framed in his doorway. 

Archons, Tighnari looked awful. 

“Can I help you?” Alhaitham asked, settling back into his chair. He was never completely sure where he stood with Tighnari. Were they friends? Possibly. Probably. They drank together, at least. But Tighnari was a little too sharp for Alhaitham’s comfort; he always felt a little transparent under his eyes. But now those eyes weren’t focused on him. They weren’t really focused on anything. Tighnari looked half-mad with exhaustion, hair mussed and ears twitching wildly. He leaned one hand heavily against the doorway as he slumped in place. 

“Where is the Temple of Silence?”

A beat. 

“Sorry?” Alhaitham managed after a moment. Of all the questions he’d expect out of this…wrung-out version of a Forest Ranger, that wasn’t it. 

Tighnari’s hand against the doorframe curled into a fist and he took a few steps into the office, eyes losing their bleariness and returning with that unnerving gaze. “Where is the Temple of Silence?” Tighnari demanded, voice rough but thunderous in the quiet of the night, and Alhaitham had never seen his composure slip so much. Tighnari’s hands landed on his desk with a thud that knocked his pile of books right over. “Where is it?” he gritted out. “If anyone knows where it is, it’s you.” 

Alhaitham cast an eye to his fallen books, to Tighnari, and unease stirred in his stomach, just a little churn. Something was wrong. He worried at his lip for a few seconds and then steepled his fingers. He hated to give an answer Tighnari wouldn’t want to hear but there was no helping it. “I don’t know. There’s no records in the archives or a trace on any map. I haven’t ever found a member of the Academiya who admits to being there. The temple is effectively invisible.” He stared hard at the papers on his desk, as if reports on the Darshans could possibly hold anything but drivel. The Temple of Silence had always been an elusive annoyance. There were far too many places in the desert that remained hidden and it would take more than his lifetime to discover them all. 

Of course, he had a source now, but asking for the answer would be caving into the mystery, admitting defeat, and like hell Alhaitham was going to do that. Still. He doubted Tighnari had the same personal vendetta against places that couldn’t be found. “Why can’t Cyno tell you?” Cyno had to be back in the city soon. He said he’d only be taking a few days off. (Hence Alhaitham’s very presence there.) 

Tighnari’s fingers clenched in Darshan reports as he hung his head, hair sweeping across his face to hide his expression as his shoulders drooped, his entire body collapsing bit by bit. Finally, he whispered, “Because Cyno is dying. And I really, really need you to find the Temple of Silence.”

***

The wagon was on the outskirts of the city, not quite out into the wild, but far from peeking eyes. Good. If something was wrong with Cyno, they couldn’t have Sumeru City finding out. Who knew what sort of uproar that would cause? The Sumpter Beast attached to the wagon had decided to nap, not really caring that it was taking up the entire road, not that there was much traffic this late anyway. Alhaitham felt for the Sumpter Beast. Tighnari had insisted he bring a pack of all his desert maps and even paper got heavy when he had approximately a million and one maps to lug along. Tighnari had picked up a second wind since Alhaitham’s office and it was all Alhaitham could do to keep up with the bob of Tighnari’s lantern. Not everyone made it their daily routine to forgo the streets and trek through trees, thank you.

The contents of the wagon had been covered with a blanket, and Tighnari glanced both ways for possible spectators before twitching it aside and holding the lantern aloft. 

Now, Alhaitham was getting pretty used to the sight of Cyno unconscious. Or at least asleep. On nights that Kaveh invited him over for some Genius Invokation TCG—better him than Alhaitham—sometimes it made more sense for Cyno to sleep on the sofa rather than go all the way back to the Matra Headquarters, especially if they’d been drinking. And lately, Cyno had developed the habit of falling asleep when he arrived back from a mission to write his report. Since his reports went to Alhaitham anyway, they’d gradually drifted to the conclusion that Cyno could just write his up in Alhaitham’s office, which was far more comfortable anyway due to the nice armchairs Alhaitham had stolen from the vacant sage offices. They’d spent enough nights there when Alhaitham was the Acting Grand Sage anyway, arguing back and forth and then finally agreeing on how to restructure the Academiya. So now, over a year after Alhaitham returned to his career of choice, Cyno would give himself away with the soft pad of his footsteps—the right footsteps—down the hall, sometimes indicating a limp, and arrive all bruised and beat up to make his report.

After the first few times, Alhaitham had caved and bought some first-aid supplies. He couldn’t have Cyno getting blood on his nice chairs. 

Tracking down books on first-aid had been obnoxious. But strangely enough, he found it very worthwhile. Maybe it was the chance to boss the General Mahamatra around a bit, but he found it very satisfying to steer Cyno into a chair and inspect the cuts and bruises, to wipe the blood away and patch him up while Cyno watched with wide eyes, some expression Alhaitham couldn’t recognize etched upon his face. And more than once, Alhaitham would finish bandaging a leg or wrapping a twisted ankle only to find that Cyno had sunk back into the chair, those wide eyes finally closed and his breath a steady rhythm. 

Maybe that was how it had started, Alhaitham’s chest feeling strangely tight with the knowledge Cyno could trust him enough to fall asleep like that. Or maybe it wasn’t how it started. It was how Alhaitham first noticed . How he first had his little existential crisis. How he would ghost his hands over warm skin and decide that it was worth it. He would finish up whatever he was working on, ready some parchment for Cyno’s report once the other woke, and then generally relax in the other armchair with a book. Cyno would wake in a few hours all bleary and with his voice slurred and his handwriting on the report would be atrocious, but Alhaitham didn’t mind. He deciphered ancient runes—he could handle some scrawled out letters. If it was night, Cyno seemed content to fall right back asleep. And, well…Alhaitham would be a total jerk to just leave him there, right? And the chairs were incredibly comfy. 

Anyway , the point was that Alhaiham knew what Cyno looked like asleep. (Soft. Peaceful. Alhaitham felt privileged to be able to see it. He knew not many people did.)

This wasn’t sleep. 

Tighnari unlatched the back of the wagon and let it swing down so there was no longer a barrier of wood between them and the figure lying there, cushioned by layers of blankets. Cyno’s bare head tossed back and forth, his skin coated with sweat yet still shivering uncontrollably. His hands were at his throat, fingers slipping in the sweat and catching upon his uniform, leaving long red marks. Maybe it was now a habit, but Alhaitham’s eyes scanned for a wound, something severe enough to cause this. He turned his headset off completely—this deserved his full attention. “What’s happening to him?” he asked Tighnari at last, wishing his voice didn’t croak so. 

Tighnari sighed and pointed to Cyno’s neck, or more specifically, the black band he always wore there. “Take a look.”

Alhaitham raised a brow, but Tighnari didn’t offer any other explanation. He climbed up onto the wagon, hoping the thud of his feet didn’t disturb Cyno, and settled right down next to him. Alright. He could do this. 

Alhaitham slipped the simple black band up Cyno’s neck and felt himself take an involuntary sharp intake of breath. He’d always thought the band was just for style. And yet:

A purple ring inscribed with sigils snaked its way around Cyno’s neck, writhing like a snake around and around, sparking as it went. It was just like the sigils that would circle up Cyno’s arms when he called upon Hermanubis’ power, except this was darker and too tight—Alhaitham could see how it constricted Cyno’s air flow. Cyno’s breath was a terrible wheeze, face twisted as he fought to fill his lungs, hands at his throat as if to tear the marks away, but his weak fingers scrabbled at nothing. The marks weren’t a necklace or a different cloth band but set directly into his skin.

And yes, it was killing him. 

“Cyno,” Alhaitham whispered, fingers hovering over the sigils, and he hissed when the electricity bit at his hand. He wavered, unsure of where to touch down if it wasn’t to try to study the chokehold. This was…wrong. It was wrong. Cyno wasn’t supposed to look like this. This wasn’t…this wasn’t how he was supposed to come back. Alhaitham wanted to grab Cyno’s hands from where they clawed at his throat, clean away the blood beneath his fingernails and then hold on tight. He wanted to reach into his skin and peel those sigils away until they were just a crumpled ribbon in Alhaitham’s hands. He wanted Cyno to open his eyes and give Alhaitham that wonderful unimpressed look and tell him ‘not one word’ before Alhaitham had the chance for even a single witty comment. 

He settled for sliding a hand into Cyno’s hair and tucking it behind his ear. It was what his grandmother used to do when he was feeling sick and it had always felt so nice. If Cyno was somehow aware in there, he hoped Cyno knew he was there, that he understood that Alhaitham wasn’t going to let some stupid band of ancient sigils steal him away from him. 

Except Cyno wasn’t his, he reminded himself as the thought flickered across his mind. They were colleagues. Friends. Close friends, certainly, but he still didn’t have the right to think that way. “How soon are you leaving?” he demanded of Tighnari, who didn’t react to the harsh tone but rather wrapped a hand around Cyno’s ankle, because he did have the right. 

“As soon as Collei gets back with supplies.” 

“I’m coming with you.” 

Tighnari glanced at him then. “Why do you think I made you bring your maps? Since the Temple of Silence has kept itself hidden, we need to check the big blank areas of desert. Do a grid search, perhaps.” 

They didn’t have time for a grid search. They both knew that, staring at each other with what had to be matching hopeless expressions. “How did this happen?” Alhaitham asked at long last. 

Tighnari’s jaw tensed and he wrapped his arms around himself. “He was visiting me at Pardis Dhyai. We were talking about…just talking, and all of a sudden he was on the ground.” His arms tightened, fingers trembling. Had Alhaitham ever actually seen Tighnari afraid? “Thank the Archons he was with me and not somewhere on a mission.”

Thank the Archons. Alhaitham juggled the pack of maps on his back. “Would Lesser Lord Kusanali be of any help, you think?”

Tighnari shook his head. “I thought about it on the way here. But Archons are only gods, in the end, and this must be Hermanubis, right?”

Alhaitham glanced back at the choking sigils. Tighnari was right. That had to be it. There was no other reasonable answer. Hermanubis was trying to kill his host. A parasitic god. He nodded. “It must be.”

Tighnari rubbed at this temple. “So if a god tries to defeat a god that’s in Cyno’s body, he might become collateral damage. But the Temple of Silence was where Cyno made the contract. The people there will understand that contract and what’s happening far better than we can, including Lesser Lord Kusanali. And as for where it is, how could she know about a temple that has kept itself secret for hundreds of years while she was imprisoned? You know as well as anyone that she’s still learning. Unless Cyno sat down for a heart to heart with her—which we both know never happened—there’s no way for her to know. You were the better choice. Also way easier to get an appointment with.”

All valid points. Alhaitham jerked a thumb towards the wagon. “Can the Sumpter Beast handle me in there as well? I can’t really map while walking.”

“It’s a Sumpter Beast. It can handle it. Oh, there she is!” Tighnari glanced past Alhaitham and hurried up the road to where Collei was running towards them with supply bags swinging from her hands. 

“I got them! I got them Master! I had to wake the merchant up but I got them!”  

Tighnari nabbed the bags and marched back towards the wagon to toss them inside. “Alright. We’re set.” He spun back around to face Collei, digging into one of the pouches on his belt and tossing her a few coins. “It’s dangerous out there. Find an inn here and stay, alright?” 

“But Master…” 

Tighnari’s hands were already ushering her away. “No arguing. Stay safe. Hopefully we’ll be back soon.”

Collei huffed in what Alhaitham thought was a fairly uncharacteristic show of disobedience, but did stand patiently while Tighnari helped Alhaitham settle the packs where they wouldn’t accidentally fall on Cyno while still giving him room to spread his maps out. Once the wagon was set though, Collei crept closer and placed a small—so small—hand on Cyno’s arm. She looked up to where Alhaitham was already unrolling his map of the northern desert. “He saved my life once,” she whispered. “Please. Please save him.” 

Fuck. There was so much desert, too much desert, desert all over creation and he was lost in the middle of it. Still, Alhaitham nodded. He didn’t trust his voice. Collei nodded back and shut the back of the wagon, the mechanisms clicking into place. Alhaitham tucked the corners of his map into the small spaces between the wooden boards beneath him to keep it flat. Flat-ish. Workably flat. He heard Tighnari cluck at the Sumpter Beast and the wagon jolted into life. He could feel Collei’s eyes on them all the way down the road until they rounded a bend. He wondered how Cyno had saved her life. From a ruin grader or horde of hilichurls, most likely. 

Tighnari seemed to have hold of the only lantern, leading the Sumpter Beast along the road. Alhaitham unclipped his Vision. It was bright enough to work by. 

A thought struck him and he leaned back against the side of the wagon, watching Tighnari and wondering how long it had been since he’d slept. “You’re not exactly built for desert heat, are you?” 

“I’m aware,” Tighnari called back. “Don’t worry about me.” 

Alhaitham was going to worry. He didn’t need Tighnari passing out on him once they got out there on the sands. He couldn’t handle two dying people at once. Speaking of—Cyno’s struggle to breathe mixed with the sound of the wagon wheels rumbling over pebbles. Alhaitham used the end of his cape to wipe at the sweat on Cyno’s brow. His skin was lit in a sickly glow by the sigils around his throat. This wagon was far too slow, but Alhaitham couldn’t think of a better way to transport someone writhing and slowly choking to death. 

“Does this thing trot?” he called to Tighnari. 

“If you can hold Cyno steady, then it will. Did you find the Temple of Silence yet?”

Archons. “No. Still working on it.” 

“Work faster!” And then Tighnari was clambering onto the back of the Sumpter Beast, knocking its sides with his boots. The beast gave a small bellow and then the wagon was moving at twice the speed, probably unsafe considering the dark. Every stone beneath the wheels made everything jump. Cyno began to slip off his bed of blankets. 

“Fuck,” Alhaitham murmured, and gathered up as many blankets as he could into his lap before dragging Cyno to him as well. He tucked Cyno’s head beneath his chin and placed an arm across his chest, keeping him secure. He could feel Cyno’s sweat beading and sliding down his own skin to soak into his clothes. Cyno convulsed in his grip and Alhaitham held him tighter, occasionally feeling the sharp spark of electricity when he got too close to the ring of sigils. He could have pulled the black band overtop once more in some attempt to shield himself but…maybe he just felt better for the little bit of pain the sigils gave him too. “I’ve got you,” he whispered, like Cyno could hear him. Like Cyno would understand the words beneath the words. “I’ve got you.” He used his other hand to spread the map back out. Gods, if only Cyno could wake for a moment. Could jab a finger down onto the stretches of sand. Could tell them where they needed to go to save his life.

Alhaitham should have asked. The night that Cyno first opened up and told Alhaitham about the god Hermanubis who resided inside him, the pact he had made, Alhaitham should have asked where the damned Temple of Silence was. He doubted Cyno would have told him. Alhaitham didn’t need to know and Cyno was careful with his secrets. But what if he had? What if Alhaitham now knew exactly where they needed to go? 

But he hadn’t asked and Cyno hadn’t given him an answer and all Alhaitham could do was hold him tight and try to study his maps at the same time and hate his stupid, stupid past self for all the things he’d ever done wrong, all the things said and not said, and questions that could remain stalled on his tongue forever. 

***

The wagon reached Caravan Ribat by dawn and rumbled through the city at a slow pace, careful not to disturb the merchants setting up their wares for the day. With matra on patrol, Alhaitham pulled a blanket back over to hide Cyno from their gaze. It didn’t stop the twitching or the choking sounds and if any of them looked close, it would seem that the Academiya Scribe was partaking in human trafficking. Oh well. He’d gone through three maps already trying to deduce where the Temple of Silence could be but no concrete evidence had presented itself. He doubted the temple would be too near the Mausoleum of King Deshret, and if it was anywhere near Aaru Village then every single one of those villagers would have had to keep it a secret for hundreds of years. Unlikely. But someone had to know! He’d read Cyno’s file—not exactly officially—when Cyno had been appointed the General Mahamatra. Sure, they may never have really talked, but it wasn’t like Alhaitham wasn’t aware of this potentially dangerous new player in the complex game of the Academiya. Going even further back, like he couldn’t be aware of the student from the desert who had walked around with his arms full of books and a god in his bones, or so the rumors had claimed. Cyno had always been a fascination. Alhaitham just hadn’t seen the need to strike up a conversation.

Reading that file, it hadn’t exactly surprised him to find out the Academiya had taken an interest when word came of a child who had made a pact with a god. It hadn’t been exactly surprising to find out that the Academiya had ‘collected’ him. But that meant that they’d had to know where to go! Someone out there knew where the Temple of Silence was but the file hadn’t mentioned who went to retrieve Cyno, who had given the intel, or Alhaitham would have found and interrogated them on the spot just to sate his own curiosity, to solve the mystery. Years later and his ignorance had returned to bite him. Someone out there knew where they needed to go and Cyno was dying and Alhaitham had to find this place on his own because the Temple of Silence was their only hope now that Hermanubis had turned against his vessel.

They stopped just outside Caravan Ribat. Tighnari dug through the supplies to hand out honeyed rolls and water. Together, he and Alhaitham managed to hold Cyno’s head still and force open his mouth to try to get some water down there, but if he was struggling for air, who knew how successful they were? 

It was easier to study the maps under the sun rather than using his Vision. Alhaitham clipped it back into place on his cape and spread out another map as they moved along. Could it be further west, where the dragon was rumored to roam? No. That land was crawling with the Nagarjunites, idiots that they were. So-called Skeptics . Alhaitham wasn’t even sure if the Temple of Silence was part of the Academiya. There were stories that suggested it was and they had given Cyno up without much of a fight, or so it seemed, but then how did the place manage to not exist in official Academiya records?

Wait, he’d lied. There had been one mention of the Temple of Silence he’d found a few years ago in a scholar’s journal. The Academiya was forbidden from researching technology from Khaenri’ah, as ordered by the Temple of Silence. There. One measly little hint. The scholar whose work Alhaitham had read had, naturally, raged against this and said he was off to the desert to investigate the giant ruin golem to the south, taboos be banned…and that was the end of the journal. Maybe the desert had claimed him. Maybe the Temple of Silence had taken action. Either way, the technology of Khaenri’ah remained mostly a mystery. As was the location Alhaitham still needed to find.

Alright, so not to the northwest. And not near any other large settlements. Where could a temple be to stay hidden for hundreds of years? 

A fuckton of places, actually. Alhaitham sighed and let the parchment roll back up to its natural state. Maybe they’d have to make nice with some Eremites and see if the tribes knew anything. 

The wagon hit a rock and shuddered. Alhaitham reached for Cyno once more to hold him against his chest. Was it the sun or had the fever spiked? Alhaitham wiped the worst of the sweat away and laid Cyno’s head on his shoulder. The hot puff of his wheezing breath bloomed against Alhaitham’s cheek. Alhaitham held him tight as they passed the Wall of Samiel. 

Had it been two weeks ago now, that he’d found himself in a similar position? Cyno had shown up more battered than usual. The idiot had taken it on himself to take out a nest of Consecrated Beasts, because apparently the way to fill time between actual missions was to try to get himself killed. There had been a deep gash on his thigh that he’d slapped some makeshift bandages on before limping his way back to Sumeru City. 

There was no report to file. It hadn’t been a mission. But still Cyno had shown up at Alhaitham’s office and Alhaitham had steered him into a chair. Cyno had hissed as Alhaitham cleaned the wound and his head had dropped to Alhaitham’s shoulder. Archons, if he knew what that did to Alhaitham’s heart. “Sawbones,” he’d muttered. 

“Hey, I’m doing this for free.” Still, Alhaitham had been so gentle, so very gentle, as he’d numbed the area with Cryo Slime potion and started on the stitches, careful little stitches so hopefully the wound wouldn’t even scar. Afterwards, he’d dug some wine out of one of his drawers and they’d passed it back and forth, foregoing glasses. “That was stupid of you,” Alhaitham had told him, and Cyno had smiled, sand still caked to his skin. His smiles were so rare. Alhaitham always felt he was stealing something from the vaults of Celestia to see one. 

“And yet you took care of me anyway.” 

Now, in the wagon, Alhaitham couldn’t see if the stitches had helped or not, covered once again by Cyno’s uniform. Cyno’s cheek had been unexpectedly soft when he’d laid it on Alhaitham’s shoulder, his eyes almost playful as he passed Alhaitham the wine. And yet you took care of me anyway .

Idiot, Alhaitham thought, wincing as the sigils sparked against him. I would take care of you through anything. If you came to me with a papercut, I’d pull out a bandage. Sure, maybe we didn’t start out on the right foot—decapitation would have been a setback, even for me—but you fought with me to free Lesser Lord Kusanali. You sat at the other side of my desk and we argued our way to a new Academiya. You have followed me into the den of a mad scholar using only the signs I left behind and I knew you would come. I trusted you to come, and trust is not something I hold in spades. You manage to sleep with two eyes closed in the chairs of my office so you must trust me a little as well. You have to know as well as I do that we keep the Academiya balanced upon our shoulders, sages be damned. I can’t imagine anyone but you helping me to carry that weight. 

Please. Please give me another night of passing a wine bottle back and forth and the chance to make you smile. 

“The…the road’s getting too small to…” Tighnari trailed off from his perch upon the Sumpter Beast. He wasn’t looking great, ears drooping and face already dusting with sunburn. Dammit. 

“I’ll walk, you ride,” Alhaitham offered in an order sort of voice, and the fact that Tighnari didn’t argue back meant he really was feeling out of it. The wagon rumbled to a halt and Tighnari slid off the Sumpter Beast. Alhaitham opened the back of the wagon and lent a hand to help him in, and then closed everything back up and went to take the reins. As far as he could tell, Tighnari just collapsed next to Cyno and didn’t budge. 

The Sumpter Beast was an agreeable sort of fellow and probably would have continued along the path to Aaru Village without a guide. After an hour of strolling beside the beast, Alhaitham backtracked to the wagon and asked Tighnari to hand him one of his maps. Tighnari groaned as he found the map and tossed it over. “Please tell me we’re looking for a shady location.” 

Alhaitham held the map out and studied it as he walked alongside the Sumpter Beast. Not too close to the mausoleum. Not too close to any of the mapped out ruins. There had been way too many scholars and students out there over the years—including Alhaitham—studying those places. The Temple of Silence would have been found. Probably not to the northwest. And now that he actually considered it, not close to any Eremite camps either. Both Cyno and the Eremites—despite being able to work together on occasion—had made it clear he was not one of them, so they couldn’t be connected to the temple. 

That left Alhaitham with…three most likely options. There was north, hidden among where the Wall of Samiel began to jut out of the ground. There was south, far south of the Eremite tribes, where nothing much was mapped out at all. And the third option was the worst: the tricks of the desert were infamous: invisible walls, traps in the ruins, and puzzles that had gone unsolved for centuries. The Temple of Silence could be hidden in plain sight anywhere on the map there was a smidgen of blank space and they would never find it. 

It was past noon when Aaru Village came into sight. Alhaitham reached for the Sumpter Beast’s reins to guide it to a stop. Once upon a time, he’d rounded this corner with the Traveler and Paimon at his side, just for someone to try to end his life three seconds later. Strange how those memories could turn to fond ones, bad qualities transformed to good. Stubbornness turned to conviction, bluntness turned to honesty, recklessness turned to bravery. And the memory of how close Cyno had come to killing him would become a comfort when he thought of the General Mahamatra fulfilling his duties. Ruthless. Cunning. And armed with immeasurable strength. It was what let Alhaitham nod Cyno a goodbye before he set off on an assignment. He could have complete faith Cyno would return, albeit with a few cuts and bruises.

But not how he was now. Now, he wasn’t capable of anything. Alhaitham walked back to the wagon and draped his arms over the side, staring hard at Tighnari, who lifted his face from the boards and groaned. “I’m not fine.”

“I noticed.” 

“But I have to—”

“Collapse dead in a sand dune? Look, I’ll stay with Cyno, and you go across the bridge. Find Candace and tell her what’s going on.” He liked Candace. She was sensible. “Maybe she’ll be willing to come with me to find this damned temple.”

Tighnari wrinkled his nose in a small form of protest, but if the heat was affecting him after half a day in the sun, there was no way he could accompany them into the wilds of the desert. He sat up and tugged his glove off before laying a hand on Cyno’s brow. Nothing had changed. Still sweating. Still squirming. Still struggling to breathe. 

A better person would have the words to tell Tighnari that if Cyno survived— when —it would be because of him. Because of course Tighnari would grab a wagon and start off to find the Temple of Silence. Because of course Tighnari would take one look at those sigils choking the life out of Cyno and decide to fight a god. But Alhaitham had never been good with those sorts of words. They always came out so wooden he could practically taste the bark. So instead of saying anything, he opened the back of the wagon so Tighnari could climb out. “I’ll be quick,” Tighnari promised, and managed a decent hustle to the bridge. Alhaitham listened to his boots thunking over the planks and then turned his attention to the dying one. There really wasn’t much to do, as infuriating as that continued to be. The only thing that happened if Alhaitham tried to fiddle with the choking sigils was his fingers went numb with electric shock. 

If Cyno happened to be aware of anything happening around him, Alhaitham hoped he knew how tightly Alhaitham held his hand.

Because here was the thing. The really awful thing about all of this. Well, Cyno dying was obviously awful, but there was something else. 

Alhaitham had been waiting for the right steps. Because last night? Alhaitham had finally scraped and scoured every bit of his soul for the guts to tell Cyno he loved him. And now he might never have the chance.

Chapter Text

Tighnari returned with Candace and the village doctor within ten minutes of leaving. Tighnari was still drooping but Candace striding forward with purpose was a beautiful thing. “Alhaitham,” she greeted with a small nod, and Alhaitham let his hand slip from Cyno’s so she could come around the back of the wagon. She bit her lip and placed fingers on Cyno’s wrist, checking his pulse. It was elevated, she would find, but Alhaitham didn’t interrupt. The doctor came around to her side and stared down at Cyno before giving a small shake of his head. “This is clearly spiritual. We can try to cool his body down, but nothing will treat the source or give long-term relief. On the other hand…” He turned to where Tighnari was leaning against the Sumpter Beast. “You I cannot allow out into the desert. You’ll be dead within a day. Candace will have to take over.” 

Tighnari nodded and shut his eyes, face pained. Archons. Alhaitham tried to imagine how it would feel to be told he had to stop now, to give Cyno over, to not be there when needed most. Wait. He looked at the doctor with a snap of his head, who jumped a little under the sudden attention. 

“I’m fine to go. I come out into the desert all the time to study the ruins.” There, settled. He turned to Candace. “Does nobody in the village know where the Temple of Silence is?”

She dropped Cyno’s wrist and went to pry open one eye, other hand firm across his forehead to hold his head still as she examined the enlarged pupil. “No. We all know of it, of course, and I can say which parts of the desert we know well enough to say it most likely isn’t there, but Cyno is the only person I know who grew up there and you know as well as I that he doesn’t talk much about his childhood.” She huffed through her nose and brushed Cyno’s bangs from his face. “Where are the maps Tighnari was telling me about?”

Alhaitham stretched to reach his maps and spread them out where she could see. “I’m hoping we can cross out the northwest area. The Skeptics are located out there and, honestly, if the Academiya had ever stepped foot in that area to go get Cyno from the Temple, they wouldn’t have shut up about their freedom of denial or whatever, so there would be some paper trail, somewhere, and I would have found it.” 

“Are you sure?”

Alhaitham nodded. “Either there would have been something in Cyno’s file or in our information about the Skeptics. I had to look into them before I went up that way a few years ago. And when I arrived, they didn’t stop whining about being oppressed and my professor received a bunch of letters of complaint. That I delivered for them, mind. They didn’t have anyone else handily heading in that direction.” 

Tighnari snorted into the fur of the Sumpter Beast. Candace splayed a hand across the northwest area of the map, blocking it out. “Alright. Any other areas you’re hoping to cross off?”

“Either way north or far south.” Alhaitham indicated the Wall of Samiel, arcing up to the north. “There could be a temple hidden here.” Or anywhere. There was a lot of north.

Candace hummed, and then placed her other hand over that area as well. “I was a child myself when it happened so I don’t remember it well, but the scholars who collected Cyno stopped in Aaru Village for the night. I’m sure they would have preferred to avoid that, and if the temple was up north, there would have been no reason to go out of their way to the village rather than carry on straight to Caravan Ribat. South seems most likely.”

South was also an awfully broad search area. Alhaitham studied the map with an air of betrayal. Research so rarely let him down like this. “So do we head south and pray?”

Candace straightened and set a hand to her hip. “We head south and search the most secluded areas. Cyno could possibly wake and give us directions. We can’t lose hope of that.” She glared down at the sigils. “His god has turned against him for a reason, but he wasn’t killed instantly. If Hermanubis is open for negotiations, then perhaps allowing us to find the Temple of Silence would be in his best interest.” 

Well, no point in losing time. Alhaitham gestured to the Sumpter Beast. “Do you want to lead or should I?” 

Candace lifted an eyebrow. “A Sumpter Beast won’t get us there fast enough.” 

“What, so we pick him up and run?” 

“You’re going to hate this,” Tighnari promised, and Alhaitham was suddenly very afraid of Candace’s expression.

***

It was a boat. A boat for the sand. Tighnari was right. Alhaitham hated it. “This actually works?” 

Candace snapped the sail out and began tying ropes every which way, securing it in place. “It works. I’m no expert at it, but we’ve all hopped on it at one point or another since Habachi built it. It’s better than running or a Sumpter Beast in case of a real emergency. Across open desert, the wind can take us faster than a ship in the sea. You…” She pointed to the little divot in the shallow hull, “Will sit there with Cyno. I want you tied to the mast so you don’t fall off. There’s a cavity for supplies. I’ll do the actual sailing.”

Well, yeah, he’d hope so. Alhaitham sat cautiously in the small hollow, waiting for the whole thing to tip over, but the hull was too wide and shallow. He glanced over to where they’d forced the poor Sumpter Beast up the hill they’d be setting off from. Tighnari, still looking like he was going to pass out, was helping the village doctor unload Cyno from the wagon. Alhaitham hated the way his head lolled before Tighnari apparently had the same thought and adjusted to hold it steady. And then Alhaitham once again had a very sweaty, gasping, squirming man in his arms, head on his chest and body trailing down between his splayed legs. Alright. Nothing he hadn’t been doing for the past twelve hours, albeit without a nice layer of blankets to act as a barrier between them. (It was fair to say this was not how he’d daydreamed this much bodily contact.) The village doctor opened a small hatch at the back of the hull to load their supplies as Tighnari began to tie Alhaitham and Cyno in place. The rope scraped along Alhaitham’s arms but he was glad for it. He didn’t trust this sand sailer worth shit. 

“Are we ready?” Candace asked, sitting in place where the sail wouldn’t take her out and grabbing hold of the tiller. 

Tighnari finished tying off his knot and then leaned in quickly, bonking Cyno’s forehead against his own. “Come back safe,” he whispered, and the lack of accompanying insult told Alhaitham anything he might need to know. Tighnari lifted his eyes to meet Alhaitham’s and Alhaitham nodded, tightening his arms around Cyno’s chest. He’d either bring Cyno home safe or die in the desert himself, searching for the goddamn Temple of Silence. 

“Ready,” Alhaitham told Candace in the least-ready voice he could imagine as soon as Tighnari backed away. She nodded sharply and cast a gaze to Tighnari and the doctor. 

“A push?”  

The doctor was the one to step forward, digging in his feet and shoving the boat forward until it teetered on the edge of the hill. Candace steered the sail to catch the wind and suddenly the boat was off, careening down the hill and across the flat sands, heading south. Alhaitham shut his eyes and mouth against the sand that billowed up and pulled Cyno to him tight in spite of the ropes holding them to the mast. The boat hit a small sand dune and jolted up and down before he heard Candace grunt and the sail creak as she adjusted it. Alhaitham brought one arm to try to protect his eyes and risked a glance at their surroundings. King Deshret’s Mausoleum was a massive landmark to their right, a rolling landscape of dunes and worn paths ahead. This wasn’t going to be a smooth ride. 

He didn’t dare try looking back, but he was certain Tighnari was still standing at the top of the hill, watching them go. It was what he would have done, afterall. Watching, watching, watching until the sand sailer was a blob on the horizon, and then out of sight.  

***

Since there was absolutely no way to study his maps while on the sand sailer, Alhaitham locked both arms around Cyno and closed his eyes against the sand. He drifted. He hadn’t slept last night, afterall, and hadn’t really logged in the hours the night before either. As the wind beat against his face, he imagined the landmarks Candace must be passing. The Eremite camps. The ruins. The lairs of beasts. It wasn’t exactly restful and he jolted awake immediately when the boat slowed to a stop.The sand stopped flying into his face but was all gummed around his eyes and up his nose. Alhaitham tried to wipe it away best he could with his cape before craning his neck back to look at Candace. She met his gaze and grimaced before standing, arching her spine backwards with an audible pop of vertebrae, and reached to draw in the sail. “Let me tie this down first. Then I’ll get to you guys.” 

Alhaitham nodded and took stock of their surroundings. It was nearly dark, the sun barely a blip on the horizon. King Deshret’s Mausoleum was still a towering monolith of light. Candace had stopped at a small oasis with nothing but flat sand for ages—they couldn’t possibly be ambushed here. But Candace knew the desert and how to survive it so Alhaitham shouldn’t be surprised by her strategic camping location. 

Candace roped the sail in place and knelt to free Alhaitham and Cyno from their ties. “I know we want to take advantage of the cool, but I need to rest or at least eat and we should check if Cyno’s condition has changed at all.”

The ropes had chafed at Alhaitham’s skin more than he’d predicted. Combined with a slight sunburn, his arms ached, but he still helped Candace carry Cyno to the edge of the oasis. They stared down at him silently, and then Alhaitham tapped a single finger against the sigils, earning a zap. “It’s gotten tighter.” Cyno’s wheezing had gone up in pitch as well—something Alhaitham had missed while in the sand sailer—his limbs losing even more strength. His hands still clutched at his throat, but his fingers no longer drew blood or even left scratches. He was sticky with sweat though, and Alhaitham went to dip his cape in the warm waters of the oasis. Screw style, he supposed, wiping the sweat away. A cape was a small price to pay for the way Cyno seemed to settle under the attention, limbs no longer quaking quite so hard. Candace checked his eyes and pulse once more before returning to the sailer and grabbing their supply packs. “Can you get my maps?” Alhaitham called, and she took a few steps to backtrack before bringing along his bag as well. Alhaitham relocated his Vision to his belts, tugged his cape from his shoulder, and ripped a piece away to leave a wet cloth on Cyno’s forehead before taking the bag. He spread his map of the southern desert out on the nearest rock. “So where are we now?” 

Candace paused in unpacking food and water to point at a small blotch of blue. “Here. The path I want to take goes near the cliffs, which is why I want to rest. It’s the fastest way with the best wind with the way it comes through the canyons, but it’s also treacherous.” She handed Alhaitham some sort of hard cracker and a canteen. “Also, I’ve found many abandoned temples set into the cliffs completely by accident, so it’s not a bad place to search. Unless you’ve narrowed it down?” 

Alhaitham shook his head and took a bite of cracker. “It’s a good idea. Would we spot any temples in the dark, though? Especially one that’s been hidden for hundreds of years?” 

Candace frowned. “Probably not.” 

Alhaitham nodded. “Well, do you have another place to camp? If you take us over to the cliffs, I can hop out and investigate a little more thoroughly. And you can take Cyno ahead and let him rest a while longer. I doubt it’s actually helping him, this sand sailing of yours. Once day breaks, I’ll join up with you and we’ll continue on.” 

Candace hummed around a bite of cracker. “Sounds fair. Do you think we can get Cyno to drink?” 

Alhaitham shrugged. “Tighnari and I tried. I’m not sure how successful we were.”

It turned out that Candace was much, much better at force-feeding someone water. Alhaitham should have guessed. Rather than holding Cyno’s head back and hoping for the best, she pillowed his head in her lap instead and dribbled a few drops of water on cracked lips. After a minute, Cyno’s tongue darted out to lap up the drops. It was the most aware Alhaitham had seen him yet and Candace was infinitely patient as she tipped the slightest bit of water down Cyno’s throat. “Alright,” she said at last. “Let’s rest for an hour or two. I’ll take first watch.” 

“I’ll take full watch. I rested enough in your boat.” Alhaitham took another bite of cracker and went to lean against a tree. Candace didn’t fight him on it. Instead, she curled up in the sand beside Cyno and was asleep within moments. 

It was a very boring watch. The flat landscape all around them meant the only thing Alhaitham spotted was the occasional fox and tumbleweed. After the moon had shifted in the sky enough to indicate two hours, he lifted Cyno—difficult to get a grip on when he was so damn sweaty and squirmy—and carried him to the sand sailer. It was easy enough to tie him to the mast and Alhaitham used the rest of his cape to cover where the ropes would otherwise rub. He stored their things away and then finally woke Candace. “Time to go.” 

Instead of tying himself down this time, Alhaitham kept a death grip on the mast while Candace steered towards the cliffs. Last night around this time, Tighnari had appeared in his doorway and hell had started. How could it have only been a day? He felt like he’d been watching Cyno die for a million years. And yet, those million years had been compressed into a few seconds because they were running out of time and Alhaitham had no idea what to do. 

It should have been Cyno last night. It should have been the right footsteps. Soft. Like a stalking predator. It should have been Cyno, peering around the doorway with that stubborn expression because Alhaitham always rolled his eyes when he saw how Cyno had gotten himself hurt this time, even if it was just a nick. And then Alhaitham would have steered Cyno into his chair and bandaged that nick and maybe Cyno would have smiled and Alhaitham would have gotten out the wine and complained about his work a bit and Cyno would have made fun of him with an expression bordering on amused on how Alhaitham couldn’t handle a couple of feeble sages and probably told one of his terrible puns and waited eagerly for Alhaitham to laugh. Alhaitham never laughed, but he had taken pity on Cyno eventually and complimented his creativity. (Cyno had beamed, so it was worth it.)  And then, when the level of wine in the bottle had decreased significantly, Alhaitham would have told him. He’d promised himself. No more keeping it locked up inside and building pressure. Last night, he would have told him. 

Fuck, everything had gone so wrong.

It wasn’t a long ride to the cliffs, and Alhaitham jumped off the sand sailer with pleasure and called back to Candace. “You’ll stop up ahead?” 

She nodded. “I’ll go a little further south and then come back for you at dawn. Just follow the cliff line.”

Alhaitham nodded in return and stole one last glance at Cyno before heading for the cliffs. He heard Candace snap the sail out to catch the wind and sand spattered his back as the sailer set off once more. 

Ah. Now he knew how Tighnari had felt, standing alone and watching Candace bear Cyno away from him. He hated it. But there was no point in dwelling. He sighed as sand filtered into his boots when he accidentally tread through a small dune and went to place his hand along the rock face. He wouldn’t get lost this way and he might happen upon some mechanism that would cause a secret temple to appear. So he started off, feeling the cliffs for any clue, any unusual cavities, anything that could give them hope. But for hours, all he felt was unforgiving stone. The sun was tentatively peering out over the horizon when he spotted the sand sailer heading back his way. Candace eased it to a stop and pulled in the sail when she neared. “Anything?”

“Nothing.” Alhaitham didn’t bother asking about her own success. It was obvious enough from her expression. “How’s Cyno?” 

Candace slid from her seat and frowned when they both leaned over Cyno’s prone form. “I think the sigils are getting tighter.” 

She was right. Cyno’s thrashing had gotten weaker and the tips of his fingers were going purple. Even if they managed to find the Temple of Silence and stop the sigils from killing him, Cyno would probably suffer brain damage from lack of oxygen starting soon. 

“We’re running out of time,” Candace whispered, like saying it softly would prevent it from being real. She reached for Cyno’s wrist and felt his pulse. Alhaitham was pretty sure it wasn’t a medical check this time but a reassurance that a pulse was still there. “We need to figure out where the temple is. If we keep blindly searching, he won’t make it.”

Alhaitham threaded fingers in his hair. “Maps. I need my maps.”

He and Candace knelt over the maps, keeping them pinned down with their knees when the wind gusted up. “So we’ve checked the cliffs all along here.” Candace dragged a finger down the map. “Do we head west? Much of that area is isolated.” 

Alhaitham stared at the map and then traced his own finger along the cliffs and then off to the west. Open sands. The Temple of Silence would need to be hidden by traps and tricks to stay secret out there. Was it even worth a search? 

“Are you sure you know nothing about where it could be?” Candace asked, just a bit of desperation leaking into her voice. “I don’t think Cyno has another full day left in him.” 

Alhaitham just groaned and dropped his head to his hands. He heard the shift of sands as Candace stood and then rummaging in the boat, the glug glug of water being poured. He glanced over that way and saw her using another piece of his cape to put a wet cloth on Cyno's forehead and then dripping small drops of water onto his lips. It didn’t look like he reacted this time. Dammit. Candace gave up after a few minutes and trudged back over to him, sighing as she sat. She offered him a canteen and, when he refused, took a deep sip. 

Was he sure he knew nothing? Was he sure? The only hint he’d ever found was that crazy old…

Wait. Alhaitham let the big map spring back into a roll and grabbed for one that focused on the southeast. He knew he started to babble as he talked, but this was important . “There was this journal left behind by a scholar. Two hundred years ago, maybe? It was the Temple of Silence that forbade exploring technology left by Khaenri’ah, but the idiot decided to ignore that and wrote that he was going anyway. And that’s the end of the journal. I assume he never made it back to write anything more.”

Candace nodded, canteen pressed against the back of her neck. “And I assume you’ve made some brilliant deduction?”

Hardly brilliant. It was embarrassing he’d taken so long to come up with the idea. “The Temple of Silence has a reputation, even if it may be unearned. It has…become embellished since Cyno became General Mahamatra, but even before then, people thought that Madam Faruzan had been taken by the Temple of Silence. That rumor existed for a hundred years until she reappeared.” 

“Yes?”

“So what if we go to the Khaenri’ahn ruins? Deep south, I think. It’s the most isolated example and where that scholar was headed. There are tribes near other traces of Khaenri’ahn civilization, but the giant golem out here…” He jabbed at the map. “...is far from everything. It was blasting intruders to bits until about a year ago. Must have finally run out of battery. That scholar could have just died out here of course, but what if he actually reached the golem and got detained for it?”

Candace placed the water aside and her finger joined his on the map, pointing at the sketch of the golem. “So your plan is to get captured by the Temple of Silence?”

Alhaitham tried to shrug it off as no big deal. His shoulders didn’t really get the message. He managed to vaguely flop one arm up and down. “They probably won’t kill us since we have Cyno.” He tried shrugging again. Same pathetic arm wobble. “We need to find these people.”

“And you think this is our best bet?”

Fuck. He was basing whether Cyno lived or died off some old codger’s half-mad journal entries and a desperate grasp at straws. But if they sat here among the sand dunes doing nothing, that was as much a death sentence as making the wrong guess. 

“I can’t think of anything else.” 

Candace nodded and thrust the canteen in his direction, very mom-style. “Then I know the way.” She stood, dusted off her legs, and shielded her eyes to stare up at the sky. “If the wind is to our favor, we can be there by dusk. Get ready to sail.” 

Great. More of their nauseating ride. Still, Alhaitham tied himself to the mast this time and pulled Cyno to him, arms tightening as Candace unfurled the sail and let the wind take them once more. 

Archons, he hoped he wasn’t directing them straight to Cyno’s death. 

***

To try to focus on something other than their bumpy ride, Alhaitham made silent promises as the sand beat against his face and the sun assaulted every piece of exposed skin. 

Cyno, when you survive this, I’ll learn how to play your blasted card game. I think I understand the rules from listening to you trying to teach Kaveh how not to lose quite so badly. 

Cyno, when you survive this, you don’t have to come to my office when you get back to the city. Just come home. To my home. It can be your home too, if you want it. I’ll be waiting. I’ll patch you up there. The lighting is better and the wine selection more expansive. You can sleep in my bed. I can almost guarantee it’s more comfortable than your matra quarters. I won’t even complain if you leave sand on my pillows. I’ll gladly take the sofa.

Cyno, when you survive this, just leave a note on your office door telling everyone where they can find you: with me. Just move in. Let’s spend our days at the Academiya in those comfortable stolen armchairs. You can…do whatever needs doing and I’ll divide my mail into ‘will look at when I feel like it’ and ‘kindling’. And you’ll probably look at me judgmentally but you know that’s how I work. You know me. 

Cyno, when you survive this, I will find all the things that make you smile. I will write a list and make it sacred. I will try to make you smile every day. Sometimes, maybe I will even make you laugh, and that will be sacred too. 

Cyno, when you survive this, I’m going to tell you the truth. People think I always tell the truth. They’re wrong. I tell truths, obvious statements that any fool could have realized. But there are truths and then there’s The Truth that I keep hidden because I’m always afraid of what people who know it will think. Will they understand my deepest thoughts and true feelings, the things I desire that are carved into my soul? It’s easier to block the world out with a cool facade and some barbed comments than risk letting people see me, all of me. Because here’s The Truth: I’m afraid to lose anyone else in my life. I lost my parents. I lost my grandmother. I am so afraid to lose you too. I’ve never actually experienced the emotion before, not this particular form of it, but I’m in love with you, insane as that might be. That’s it. The Truth. So come back to me and I’ll bare everything, and then I’ll take everything you want to give me in return. It doesn’t have to be love. I realize how ridiculous it is to expect that. But a smile. I’ll settle for a smile and some wine passed back and forth. 

Actually, I’ll ask for one thing. Cyno, when you survive this, please let me hold you. Not for long. I know it’s asking for more than I deserve. But please let me hold you against my chest, except you won’t be sweating and choking and spasming. You can be still, and safe, because I know you’re the stronger of the two of us but I would keep you safe from anything. If I can only save you from a god, please let me hold you for just a moment so I can replace the memory of this journey with you safe and healthy in my arms. 

Cyno, when you survive this, there are so many things I want, even if I’ll never have them. I’m greedy. I want to take and take and take. Take your time, take your smiles, take your laughter, take your warmth. Take the sand that sticks to your skin and your bloodstains on my armchair. The Truth is that I want everything, I think. I’ll settle for bare bones but I want everything that you are. I never got the chance to tell you that. I’ve never been good at feelings. But neither are you so maybe that’s alright. We can communicate through being mutually terrible at emotion. Let me love you and want and want and want, and it’s okay if you never want me back because the wanting in itself is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had. 

Cyno, when you survive this, the thing I want is to etch you into my life and never let you go. Is that stupid? Maybe it is. But now that you’re here, I can’t believe I never noticed your absence before. There was a space beside me everywhere I went that you were meant to fill. It was simply vacant for far too long. 

Cyno, when you survive this, when I’ve told you The Truth, maybe I’ll also tell you this: I don’t know when it started. Was it the first time you trusted me to wrap a bandage around your ankle? The first time I heard you laugh, a muffled snort you seemed almost embarrassed by? The first time I saw one of your smiles, a quick flash of teeth and a sheen in your eye? I could fall in love all over again every time you smile at me. 

Maybe it was watching you sleep on my sofa after a long night of thrashing Kaveh at TCG. You’re a restless sleeper. Well, unless it’s in your chair in my office. But usually you toss around and frown so hard it makes me wonder if the expression will stick. I want to wake you from bad dreams and listen to you finally open up about them. I want to hold you until you settle down. 

Or maybe the start was staring at your stupid, stubborn face across my desk, your stupid, stubborn arms crossed and eyes glaring in the shadow of your headdress because there was a time you didn’t ever take it off. There was a time you never took off that mask that lets you hide your face in shadow. There was a time I never turned off my headset that lets me block out the meaningless babble of the world. Maybe the start was the night you finally set that mask aside and I could see the way your emotions escape through your eyes . Maybe the start was the night I wanted to listen to the world simply because you were in it.

Or maybe the start goes back right to the start. Maybe it was mid-argument in Aaru Village, an hour after you tried to kill me, and I realized that we’re sort of the same, aren’t we? Both extremely good at hiding who we actually are behind titles and sharp words and weapons. You simply showed the first crack in your facade. Maybe I didn’t love you then. But maybe that was the seed.  

Maybe that was the seed. Maybe they all were seeds. Maybe I’ve grown an entire forest in your name.

Candace had to follow the way along and through the cliffs to find a path to lead to the Khaenri’ahn golem, but once in the valley, the sand was nice and compact and the wind strong. The boat clipped along at a good pace. The monolith came into sight a little around midday, a giant hunk of metal poking over the edge of the cliffs, and the sky was fading into orange when Candace finally slowed the sand sailer and halted just in the shadow of the golem. “Alright,” she said in a whisper. This was a whispering sort of place. “What now? Go over and bang on it?”

“I…guess?” 

They abandoned the sand sailer. Alhaitham hoisted Cyno onto his back. The ring of sigils zapped him every few seconds and they considered pulling the black neck band back over top just for a bit of respite, but in the end decided that the Temple of Silence, if they were going to be captured, would pay more attention if the sigils were visible. Cyno hadn’t—as far as Alhaitham knew—been home in twenty years. His connection to Hermanubis might be the only thing that would be recognizable. Candace went ahead, shield up, head constantly swiveling around to watch the cliffs around them. Alhaitham’s attention was split two ways—as always, there was Cyno, who just tended to take up his attention, and then there was the golem. He’d always wanted to see the thing but for those Academiya rules. Which you would think he wouldn’t care about but by the time he actually had the funding, the matra had that new hardass in charge who was the vessel for a god so perhaps he had to be more careful…

Oh the irony.

Archons, the thing was huge though. Alhaitham could easily see how certain scholars over the years would have wanted to get their hands on such a weapon. The Temple of Silence had the right idea in forbidding it. 

Candace led the way to the ruin and glanced back at Alhaitham once before knocking a fist against one twisted metal leg. The sound vibrated up and down the gigantic limb, more like bells than anything. A few buzzards perched on the knee flew off with squawks of protest. Candace knocked again for good measure and then turned back to Alhaitham. 

“Do we wait?” she asked in the same reverent whisper, and Alhaitham felt sick, stomach sinking all the way to the sand beneath his feet. He’d guessed wrong. The Temple of Silence was probably somewhere way off to the west, happily hidden until the end of time. 

He’d killed Cyno. 

And then they were ambushed. 

Chapter Text

Alhaitham managed a few glimpses of people in brown robes before the hood was shoved over his head. He heard Candace cry out and then a thump. A body hitting the sand. Hopefully a living body. Hands started to tug Cyno away from him and Alhaitham fought back at that, locking his arms around Cyno’s thighs and getting tugged off balance, stumbling backwards until something collided with his head and his grip slipped for a fraction of a second. Cyno was whisked away and a hard shove between his shoulder blades sent Alhaitham reeling forward until he was face-down in the sand and a knee was pinned firmly in the small of his back. His sword was ripped from his side, sticking in his belt and yanking against his hips in the process. He heard the clip of his Vision being snatched. Sudden manacles of rock appeared around his wrists. Fucking ow. He could feel blood leaking from where he had been struck and congealing in the hood. How many enemies? At least ten. And one of them with a Geo Vision, which explained the ambush. Sand had to be easy to maneuver with a Geo Vision.

Were they enemies, though? He could hear them muttering among themselves. Cyno’s name. Cyno’s name but lacking the hatred Alhaitham would expect from Fatui or Treasure Hoarders. 

Hermanubis . 

The name was a low murmur, passed between unknown lips. They knew Hermanubis. This was the Temple of Silence. 

Alhaitham was so busy being flooded with relief he didn’t mind the rough treatment as their captors led them along the desert path. They got spun around a few times, but the worried conversation in whispers around him made Alhaitham certain that the temple members were just as concerned with Cyno’s condition as he was, so there were probably a lot of ‘prevent the intruders from learning the way to our secret headquarters’ steps that got skipped. He could tell when they entered the shade and then heard the scrape of stone, likely a puzzle. There was probably quite a complicated sequence to enter the temple. And indeed, it was probably three minutes later that Alhaitham heard the rumble of doors opening to them. They were probably on the very outskirts of Sumeru itself, the temple concealing itself so effectively by hiding behind the very technology they had forbidden. 

It turned suddenly cold when they were forced inside the temple and the doors shut behind them, sand giving way to stone beneath their feet. Labored breathing sounded off to Alhaitham’s left and then he felt Candace at his side, warm skin and familiar clothes. So mostly alright then, if she was walking on her own. Alhaitham wanted to avoid another bang to his head though, so he didn’t speak. He merely reached a pinky out as far as he could with bound hands and poked at her waist. He hoped it came across as silent reassurance. 

The temple members kept muttering about Cyno and Hermanubis, and then Cyno’s wheezing breath disappeared further down the hall. Part of Alhaitham raged at the idea of Cyno being taken away. The rational side of him said that these were the people they’d tracked down specifically to take care of Cyno so he should probably let that happen. He got pushed between the shoulders soon enough and walked along a hallway, the cold air and frigid stone floor he could feel even through his boots making him break into goosebumps. Candace was probably even worse off with her bare feet and general more bare-ness. 

The echo of his own steps signified entering a larger room and finally the hood was removed. Alhaitham’s eyes darted to Candace—ruffled but fine—the temple members around them—dressed in plain brown robes that had doubtlessly also helped with the ambush—and the Temple of Silence itself. What a place! Torches lined the walls, the endless canvas of stone wall covered in intricate scripture and carvings inlaid with rare stone, blue and white and orange sparkling in the firelight. There sat a long table decorated with even more carvings and a stone throne carved right from the floor, gems radiating out from the occupant like rays of the sun. 

Alhaitham hadn’t expected the children. He should have. Cyno had been born here. Still, the sight of little brown-cloaked figures peering at him and Candace from around the corners of branching off corridors made him pause. This wasn’t just a temple. It was a home. 

There was no time to dwell on the thought, however. Around the long table, the figures in brown had deemed to lower their hoods. Many of them had Cyno’s bright sand-colored eyes, but the white hair must have been due to Hermanubis because otherwise their hair was black and often pinned up into intricate braids and buns. Signs of fancier clothing could be spotted where the robes rode up a leg or the collar gaped, so between that and the sheer opulence of the temple, it seemed that being invisible made them very well off. 

The figure in the throne was the one exception to the whole white hair deal. She probably rivaled Faruzan in terms of years but hadn’t exactly aged as well. She was decked out in purple and gold, much like Cyno, but where Cyno’s clothing allowed him to fight, her robes were embroidered with gold thread, weighing them down. Her hood was up, but didn’t conceal her face, instead framing it in jewels sewn into the cloth.

Cyno had been placed at her feet, held upright by her hands on his shoulders. The sigils around his neck sparked and flashed, almost like being in the Temple of Silence was setting them off. Perhaps that was exactly what was going on. 

“When did this begin?” the woman asked, and it wasn’t the croak Alhaitham had expected. Had Cyno gotten his commanding voice through copying her? 

Let’s see. He wasn’t sure how long Tighnari had taken to get to Sumeru City, but considering the narrow trails and the width of a Sumpter Beast, probably about twelve hours. Another six hours to Caravan Ribat, and they’d reached Aaru Village past noon. Then it had been journey by the sand sailer onwards. Into the night. Into the morning. To dusk. 

“About two and half days, roughly,” Alhaitham answered. Though Cyno was on the floor, the woman’s hands were gentle on his shoulders, one of them even smoothing up and down, not seeming to care about the little bolts of electricity that chased her fingers.

“How did you find us?” 

“Desperation.” 

Her eyes narrowed. Was he being a jackass? Oh fuck, please don’t let his terrible personality ruin this now. “So years ago the Academiya came to take my grandchild away and now the Academiya returns him near death. By rights, Hermanubis should have woken and destroyed your city before it came to this.” 

Alright, alright, so Alhaitham would allow himself to talk here. There were some major misconceptions floating around. “Ma’am…leader…I’m sorry, is there a proper title I should use?” 

“Officially I am Tentamun Amunet Tuthmosis. Leader is fine.” 

“Leader. Great! So, I do work for the Academiya, but…well..” He was digging his own grave. “I know that the Academiya took Cyno. And they did do bad things for a little bit, but a professor stopped them before it went…further than it would have. Professor Cyrus. Weird guy. Great professor. He took Cyno in. And now Cyno works for the Academiya too! Well, not directly, because when we restructured we granted the matra more independence to work outside the Academiya’s influence so it’s more of a partnership and I’m sort of the intermediary but…” She didn’t look impressed. He had to stop rambling. “I’m just the Scribe. I write things down. And Candace isn’t with the Academiya at all. She protects Aaru Village.” He gestured wildly in her direction with jerks of his head. Could these shackles come off soon? “We aren’t here as the Academiya. We’re here because we care about Cyno and don’t want him to die. That’s all. We don’t want him to die.” It didn’t feel enough. “Please Leader. That’s all we want.”

She definitely wasn’t convinced. The people seated around the long table didn’t look impressed either. “The Academiya has held the secret of our location over our heads as a threat ever since they came for him.” A weathered hand stroked from the top of Cyno’s head through to the ends of his hair. Did he lean into the touch or was it Alhaitham’s desperate hope? “And now they betray us?”

“No!” Alhaitham glanced over his shoulder for the bag of maps on his back but of course…not there. Back in the sand sailer. “I just…I’ve been in the desert a lot, studying ruins, and Candace lives in the desert, and we just…narrowed down the possibilities. The only hint I had was this old journal from a scholar who said he was going to come down south to explore the Khaenri’ahn golem. And that was the end of the journal. Like I said, we were desperate. I figured that since the Temple of Silence was the one who banned studying Khaenri’ah, maybe that scholar was captured by you. So we decided the best chance of finding you was to let you find us. That’s all. I swear. We are not here as the Academiya. Just Cyno’s friends.” He caught her eyes and held the orange glow. “Please. I will quit the Academiya on the spot if you want me to. Just say you can save him.” 

She met his gaze for a long time, the way Cyno tended to do. Alhaitham didn’t blink. “You’re a talkative one,” she said at last, and gestured at the figures around the table. They descended like buzzards, picking Cyno up off the floor with painstaking care and ferrying him down one of the passages where the young children still lurked. Archons, he looked so small. 

Talkative? Him? Alright, yes, he’d been a bit verbose. Only when it came to saving Cyno’s life maybe. 

When it came to Cyno passing a wine bottle back and forth in his office in the dead of night. 

When it came to Cyno in general, maybe. The way Cyno’s eyes would settle on him with that same orange glow and stick as Alhaitham complained about the minutiae of his day, gracing him occasionally with a slight smile. Alhaitham had those damned scholars and sages to keep in line. Cyno was the General Mahamatra. They both knew what it was like to carry a heavy load. And Alhaitham was so, so glad that it was Cyno with the world upon his shoulders right beside him, because Cyno knew how to listen and he knew when to speak and if Alhaitham had spent years building walls to keep the world out, he was glad to open the gate when he heard the right footsteps approaching in the hall. Maybe because he knew that in Cyno’s own way, he also dismantled his walls to let Alhaitham in. They merged their walls, was what they did, and created a little world that was just the two of them, even if only for a few hours stolen in the night. 

Or at least, that was how it had been at the start. Suddenly Cyno was pulling Tighnari along with him through his own little gate, and then Collei and Candace and Dehya and even Kaveh was bearable when bemoaning his fifth loss of TCG in a row and the walls were so filled with people they might as well not even be there. And Cyno would tell his… creative jokes that made Tighnari groan and Kaveh would refill their cups and where two years ago Alhaitham would happily sit with his nose in a book, now it felt odd to be alone. Not just because he had that space beside him that Cyno had always been meant to fill, but because—oddly enough—the world became more bearable the more people he allowed inside it. He’d never imagined it would work like that. 

He needed Cyno to live. This whole new life that had been spun around him…he needed Cyno to keep spinning it, though he doubted Cyno actually knew what he was doing. Emotionally dense, but brave and loyal and people would follow him anywhere, whether it was storming Sumeru City or collapsing into the chairs around Alhaitham’s table at the tavern.

His limbs definitely twitched, every particle of him screaming to follow Cyno down the hall, but that definitely wouldn’t be polite. 

“Will you be able to help him?” Candace asked softly, and it must have been the magic of Candace because Tentamun sighed and shuffled off the throne. 

“Seti,” she said, and a young girl leaning against the wall snapped her fingers. The shackles around their wrists shattered, and now that Alhaitham looked, she was holding two extra Visions to accompany her own. She scowled at him but tossed his Vision in his direction before doing the same for Candace. Considering how sore his arms were from the sand sailer, it was a miracle he managed to catch it. His sword at Seti’s waist and Candace’s spear across her back stayed firmly in place. Alhaitham clipped his Vision back to his belt with no small degree of relief before looking back to Tentamun, who beckoned them to follow her. It was down the wrong hallway—Cyno was over there —but Alhaitham followed. 

The hallways they walked along were just as opulent and under any other circumstances, Alhaitham would be glued to the walls, trying to decipher the writing there. But the old woman was surprisingly fast. The children flocked to her side as she went, casting wary gazes at him and Candace, but her hands tweaked at their braids or patted their shoulders and they scurried off again. 

“Bye Jida!” 

“Bye-bye Jida!” 

Alhaitham raised an eyebrow at Candace. “Grandma, I think,” she whispered. 

“We are a whole family,” Tentamun called back to them as she sent another child off with a pat on the head. “Every child born is everyone’s child to raise. Every elder is everyone’s to care for as they age and grow weak. I happen to be Jida. Everyone’s grandmother.” 

The script on the walls turned to carvings that stretched from floor to ceiling. Gods, Alhaitham realized, when he noticed the jackal ears and spear held in the hand of one of the carvings. Hermanubis. And another god. Another. Another. 

“The Temple of Silence isn’t just for Hermanubis, is it?” he asked, and Tentamun led them off into a branching room. This one was plain, with just a few torches and a simple table. She gestured for them to sit and then took her own seat at the opposite side. 

“No. It is not just for Hermanubis.” She squinted at them. “We are aware of what the Academiya did. We are aware of Cyrus. And we are aware of Cyno’s position as the General Mahamatra. Just because we are hidden does not make us ignorant.”

Alhaitham beat his fingers against the stone. “Sorry. I thought a full explanation would—” 

“Can you help Cyno?” Candace pressed again. “Leader?” 

Tentamun hummed and Alhaitham could hear her feet shuffling beneath the table. “I think so. Though this is the first time a god has turned against their host.” 

Alhaitham opened his mouth with a million questions about gods, but then it all funneled down to one. “Why are you telling us this? Aren’t these secrets?”

“Hermanubis turned against Cyno under your watch,” she said, matter-of-fact. “I will need information from you. You will need it from me.” She pulled her hood down, revealing a mass of braids threaded with golden beads. “The Temple of Silence is dedicated to the old gods, the ones even the desert people have forgotten. It was decided with the fall of Khaenri’ah. The Archons fought amongst themselves and some sought to gain the power of the entities around them. Liyue called upon the adepti, Inazuma called upon the yokai, and Fontaine upon the people of the ocean. The gods feared they would become instruments of war as well, and so decided to be sealed away until the world could be trusted again. But there is still much turmoil. Archons rise and fall. The Academiya attempts the forbidden. We know that the gods must not yet return to full glory.” She touched her chest as she spoke, and the way she said ‘we’ sounded…odd.

“You are a vessel,” Alhaitham guessed, and she nodded. 

“I was there when the gods made the decision to be sealed. It was of their own choice. To prove a human vessel was possible, I took Athoth inside, and she rests there. Even if she is dormant, her power leaks into me. As you can see—” She spread her arms with a wry little smile. “—I was not granted eternal youth and beauty, but I have lived since the fall of Khaenri’ah, a witness to all, as befits a goddess of wisdom. Athoth also gives me the gift of scrying, which is the ultimate way I will decide whether or not you are our enemies.”

Oh. That was good, probably. “Do you want to talk and scry at the same time?” Alhaitham ventured, and her grin widened. 

“Talkative and hasty.”

Sure, but only when Cyno was dying. He could be hasty. 

“I have a Hydro Vision,” Candace said. “Can you scry in water?” 

The old woman—ancient woman—held out cupped hands. “I can.” 

It was a very long two minutes as Tentamun stared at the water in her hands, and the look she gave Alhaitham afterwards was…worrisome. Was he about to get killed? But she simply dumped the water onto the floor and dried her hands on her robe. “So you are trustworthy. Burn that journal when you return home.”

So what had happened to the author? It was a question that could wait. “Of course, Leader.” 

Tentamun nodded and stood, beckoning them to follow her once more out of the room and back into the corridors. “A god and a human must be compatible to allow for a vessel. Athoth is also associated with motherhood, and as I was already matriarch for my people, we reached an agreement.”

“And she just rests in you? And occasionally leaks power? If the gods rest, why is Hermanubis killing Cyno?”

“The gods all differ in power and personality.” Tentamun slowed so Alhaitham and Candace could walk by her side. “While some gods long to have a vessel, others are…more selective. Hermanubis had not found a vessel in five hundred years before Cyno was born.”

Candace’s eyebrows raised. Alhaitham just huffed a small, unsurprised breath. Typical. 

“So what do the gods who don’t have a vessel do?” he asked. 

“They wait.” Suddenly her hand was around his wrist. “You will see. As I have seen.”  

The Temple of Silence had to extend forever into the cliff. They walked for another five minutes before Alhaitham popped another question. “So how did the Academiya get Cyno?”

“A traitor,” Tentamun replied, grip tightening around his wrist until he felt the bite of her nails. “Someone who thought they could leave our family for gold and live happily. They left the temple and went to the Academiya. Betrayed us. Let our child be taken.”

Alhaitham felt Candace stiffen. “And where is this person now?” Alhaitham had a very vivid image of a brown-robed figure dead in the sand with Candace’s spear through their back. 

But Tentamun just waved her free hand. “Did the idiot think she could outrun the gods? Long dead.” 

“And it was because of Hermanubis’ power that they turned traitor? That you were not betrayed before then?” 

She nodded. “Hermanubis ruled among the old gods as a bringer of death and the ends of empires. He is a god of strength, of battle, and of victory. He also recognized the dangers of his existence as Khaenri’ah fell into ruin. It was Hermanubis and Athoth who came to their worshippers and proposed being sealed.”

“So a bunch of gods simply…agreed to be sealed?”

She made some sort of protective symbol across her chest. “Not all. Acheth is a god of destruction. She had to be forcibly subdued by the other gods. No one but myself knows where she is located and all we can hope is she will lose power and be forgotten in time . But the other gods inhabit their shrines where once they held court as rulers of this land. They are sealed in their likeness, and sometimes they find a vessel. The awakening of Hermanubis was a surprise to all of us. Cyno was so young when he offered himself as a vessel. None of us even saw him enter the shrine, and yet when he walked out, Hermanubis had taken residence. Of course we wished to train him in the ways of being a vessel, but it was only a week or two before he was taken from us.”

“Why did you let them take him, if you have all these powerful gods?” Alhaitham received a jab to the side from Candace, but the old woman hummed. 

“Our secrecy is our most powerful possession. The Academiya offered a choice: either we gave them Cyno, or they revealed us to all. The gods would no longer be safely sealed. They would be let loose into this tumultuous world. Perhaps even Acheth would be freed and would destroy us all. Even now, we know that we must obey the Academiya lest they give away our location.”

Alhaitham scowled. “Do you know their names? Was it the sages? Scholars? Whoever knows where the Temple of Silence is, I can make sure they never talk.” Hell, could Lesser Lord Kusanali erase minds? 

“Now, we trust in Cyno to protect us in his position,” she answered calmly, which…fair. If Cyno knew he had to protect his home, consider it protected. 

(Still, Alhaitham could make some inquiries.)

“We will place Cyno in the shrine to Hermanubis and open the pathways for them to negotiate their contract,” Tentamun continued. And then her nails in Alhaitham’s wrist constricted enough to cut. “You will be there too.”

“What? Me?” Alhaitham glanced to Candace, down to Tentamun, back to Candace, and then to where his hand was being pried from his arm. She was actually drawing blood straight through his glove. “Just me? Or me and Candace?”

“We have had our exchange of information. I have answered your questions. I saw your path in the water. It is just you,” she replied, and turned a corner before she could elaborate. A couple of brown-robed people stood around a door. They stopped whispering amongst themselves and stood straight when Tentamun appeared. 

“Has he woken?”

A general bob of heads gave the answer. One temple member reached automatically to open the door. Tentamun let go of Alhaitham’s wrist as she stepped through and Alhaitham hissed and shook it slightly as he followed. 

It was obviously a medical room, with clean beds, a table of white cloths and basins of water, and shelves lined with jars filled with all colors of medicines. And there, lying in the farthest bed, was a familiar figure, being tended to by who had to be a doctor. “Cyno!” Alhaitham called before he could curb himself, and the world regained color as Cyno turned his head upon the pillow and stared at him with those bright orange eyes. The sigils still sparked around his neck, but their grip didn’t seem as tight. 

“Daneeth is a vessel,” Tentamun explained, even as Alhaitham broke ahead. “She is a tremendous healer both physically and spiritually.”

Good for her. Alhaitham was already on his knees at the side of the bed, knowing he looked like a lunatic grinning so hard. “Hey. Nice of you to join us.”

“Ngh.” 

“Chatty as always.” Alhaitham smirked when Cyno shot him one of those wonderful unamused expressions. But his gaze slid past Alhaitham and he wheezed as he pushed himself up onto his elbows. 

“Jida.” 

Tentamun appeared at Alhaitham’s side, placing a firm hand on Cyno’s forehead and guiding him back down. “Lay still, my reckless one.” 

Cyno sighed. “Yes, Jida.” His eyes slid shut once more. 

The doctor—Daneeth—leaned down and pushed a spoonful of some mushy red stuff against his lips. “Eat. It will give you a few moments more.” 

Cyno obeyed, the medicine leaving a stain on the very edge of his bottom lip. 

“You know what you must do?” Tentamun asked, hand still on his head. Cyno nodded. 

“I’ve angered Hermanubis. He wishes to be in his shrine so he can inhabit it once more should our contract fail.”

“Then we will give you a moment.” Cyno nodded again. The beads in her hair jingled as she nodded as well. 

“Thank you Jida.” Cyno muttered without opening his eyes. “Daneeth, for your care. Candace, for bringing me here.” 

Hey, Alhaitham had helped with that. Cyno didn’t have any words for him?

“Of course,” Candace replied, reaching out a gentle hand and touching Cyno’s knee. She responded easily when Tentamun took her elbow, guiding her back towards the door. Daneeth was already exiting into the corridor. Alhaitham waited for some guidance, but when Tentamun started off without him, it was Cyno’s sudden hand on his that kept him from rising. He stared at Cyno as the door softly shut. 

“No thanks for me?” Alhaitham asked after a few silent seconds, and Cyno opened his eyes halfway. He wasn’t being actively strangled anymore, which had been such an improvement Alhaitham really hadn’t noticed how dark the shadows beneath his eyes were, how dull his skin was, how the hollows of his cheeks seemed deeper. 

“I can’t stay awake for long,” Cyno explained, his fingers trembling around Alhaitham’s. Alhaitham scowled and flipped his hand over to encase Cyno’s in his. Cyno glanced at their hands and then back up at Alhaitham. “You need to come with me into the shrine.”

When was a good time to inform someone you’d happily do a triple flip into the molten brimstone of hell for them? “I will. Sure. Why?” 

Cyno’s mouth opened, closed, opened, closed, and then he turned his head on the pillow so Alhaitham could no longer see his face. “Will you do something?”

“I just said I’d go into—”

“It’s not that.” Cyno yanked his hand from Alhaitham’s in a series of jerking movements that made Alhaitham’s chest hurt in an odd way. “Tell me you hate me.” 

A pause. 

Something in his chest gave out entirely and fractured.

“What?” Alhaitham rose up higher on his knees, trying to see Cyno’s expression, but Cyno simply stared at the wall. 

“Tell me you hate me.”

“Why the hell would I say that?” Broken pieces inside, jabbing at his lungs, his stomach, his heart…

Cyno’s shoulders tensed. “Because you have to. Tell me you hate me. That…that I’m unbearable.” He huffed and turned his head back to stare at the ceiling, jaw set and eyes squeezed shut. “You don’t like me. You could never like me. We don’t get along. I’m just an annoying colleague who you…really, really hate.” 

Little, tiny, microscopic broken pieces. If he coughed too hard, would the shards fly out?

Alhaitham stood and knelt on the bed, face hovering over Cyno’s, willing him to open his goddamned stubborn eyes. “Why would I say something idiotic like that? You know none of that’s true.” Wait. “You do know that none of that’s true, right? Cyno?” No response except a slight furrowing of his goddamned stubborn brow. “Cyno, I don’t hate you. I couldn’t hate you. Fuck, I made a list in my head to tell you…to tell you I’ll play Genius Invokation TCG with you. And…and you should just come home. Not my office. Just come home. To my home.” This was going so smoothly. Alhaitham groaned and hung his head. “I’ll take care of you there,” he promised. “Just spend the night. And then during the day, you really should just use my office. There’s room for two. I want you there. I really…just like it when you’re there. I…”

“Alhaitham,” Cyno whispered, and brought a hand up to cover his eyes. “You’re making this harder.” 

He was doing his best, with his insides all broken. “I don’t hate you!” Alhaitham insisted, leaning in so their noses nearly brushed. “Why are you asking me to lie?” 

“Because otherwise I’ll die,” Cyno said, and that took all the fight from Alhaitham’s sails, pieced him back inside a little with glue weak from fatigue and stress. He sagged, elbows buckling. He braced himself so as not to squish Cyno beneath him as his face landed in the pillow beside  Cyno’s head, mouth right at his ear. He shut his eyes tight and lied.

“I hate you.”

Cyno shuddered. They were so close it felt like Alhaitham shuddered as well. Maybe he did. “Again.”

Fuck. “I hate you. You are…infuriating in every way. I have never liked you and never will. I hate you.” 

Cyno nodded, not decisive but mechanical, and then lay there still beneath Alhaitham. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

I would happily do a triple flip into the molten brimstone of hell for you.

“Cyno?” Alhaitham lifted his head back up, shifting one hand to tangle in the ends of Cyno’s hair. 

“Yes?”

Was that how Cyno felt about him? Did Cyno hate him? Find him unbearable? Did he want his own emotions reflected back on him with every cruel word? Why else would he want Alhaitham to say such things?

And yet you took care of me anyway. And Cyno had smiled. No. No, if Cyno hated him, then their entire friendship—the entirety of the relationship they had built—was fake. A ruse. A very cruel ruse. Cyno wouldn’t do something like that. If he wanted to get back at Alhaitham for something then he would hash it out then and now, not create a massive deception for over a year as some form of twisted revenge. 

Cyno didn’t hate him. There was something else going on.

Alhaitham shook his head and stood from the bed. His fingers slipped from Cyno’s hair. “Should we go to the shrine?” 

Cyno stopped hiding his eyes beneath his arm, though he kept his gaze resolutely on the floor.. He nodded and struggled to sit up. “I will need your help.” He gestured to the sigils. “Hermanubis will wake once more soon. Daneeth could only subdue him temporarily.” He managed to get sitting perched on the side of the bed. “A hand?” 

“Why am I the one who needs to be with you in the shrine? Why not Candace? She’s known you for longer. Or your leader? Your jida?” Alhaitham grabbed Cyno’s arm and helped him stagger to his feet. 

Cyno fought for balance and wrapped one hand around Alhaitham’s hip. Alhaitham studied him for some sort of direction and, finding none, slipped a hand around Cyno’s back to land on his side, feeling each dent between his ribs. “I…Hermanubis doesn’t always act predictably,” Cyno answered finally. “It was probably a random choice.” 

“But your leader knew that I—”

“You what?” Cyno’s head snapped up so he could stare wildly up at Alhaitham with those sand-bright eyes. 

“...just that I had to go into the shrine with you,” Alhaitham finished, raising a brow. That had been a strange reaction. “That doesn’t seem random.”

“It’s random,” Cyno insisted, eyes back down on the floor. “Let’s just go, please.” 

“Cyno.” 

“Just ignore anything Hermanubis says, alright? The old gods will say anything to get a reaction.” Cyno took a step forward, forcing Alhaitham to follow.

“Is that how he tricked you into—?”

“I wasn’t tricked into anything!” Cyno snapped. “Just ignore anything Hermanubis says. This is between me and my god. You don’t have a place in this.” 

I have a place, Alhaitham could argue back. I made one for myself, because I’m sort of selfish like that. It’s this place, right here with my arm around you. You see, there was always this empty space at my side waiting for you to fill it. Maybe you didn’t have a me-shaped hole at your side, but here I am anyway. Maybe our puzzle pieces don’t fit but I’ve got a pair of scissors and I’m ready to do some altering. 

“Sure,” he said instead, and started for the door. 

***

Daneeth and Candace took over helping Cyno walk far back into the Temple of Silence, where only the echo of their own footsteps and the crack of oil in Daneeth’s lantern filled the dark corridors. The walls were still decorated, but gone were the beautiful jewels and scripture. Instead, the walls were carved deep with simple illustrations. The old gods, almost certainly. Alhaitham could pick out Hermanubis, and he thought one of the recurring characters had a certain wildness to her that could be the destructive god, Acheth. 

“So what exactly am I doing in this shrine?” he asked Tentamun after a few minutes walking and when the two of them had fallen far enough behind to not be overheard. “Cyno didn’t tell me.” 

She shrugged. “I simply saw you there with him when I performed my scrying. I would guess you are somehow involved in the negotiations Cyno must hold with Hermanubis.” 

“So it’s not a random thing?” 

“No. Some of the gods may be fickle, but not Hermanubis. You will be there with a purpose.”

So Cyno was lying to him. Alhaitham sighed and slipped his headset down around his neck. He hadn’t actually used it in days now, but he didn’t want anything impeding his hearing when he was in the shrine. “So Hermanubis wants Cyno to bring me in there.” 

“Exactly what Hermanubis wants is not to my knowledge.” She trailed a hand along the wall, a single finger following the line of a flourishing field falling to drought. “And I don’t dare place myself between a vessel and their god. This is Hermanubis’ first time in a contract with a human. If I—with Athoth inside—were to overstep, it may make things worse for Cyno.” She paused where she stood and ran her hand up the image of the god Alhaitham had labeled Acheth. “I could only stand useless when they took him from me.” She spoke more to the wall than to Alhaitham. “And now he comes back and I can only stand useless once more.” 

Alhaitham scuffed a boot against the ground and then placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. “You…” This was Cyno’s grandmother, for all means and purposes. Alhaitham summoned a smile and thought of all the things he would want to tell his own grandmother, if she could only be there now. “You should be really proud. Cyno is…Cyno is incredible. He helped to save Lesser Lord Kusanali, you know?”

Tentamun glanced over to him. “Yes, I know. I can scry, remember?” A little tug of a grin appeared at one corner of her mouth. “I stopped looking in on him specifically once he was saved from the Academiya, when I could be sure he was safe and loved. After that, I figured it was up to Cyno himself to decide his fate. But now, when I scry for the whole of Sumeru, it’s astonishing the number of times my child comes to the forefront. He is uniquely talented at frustrating immense numbers of people. Well…” She began walking once more. “...I have seen you at work as well. The two of you together are unique in being frustrating, it seems.” 

So he’d been being spied on by the Temple of Silence this whole time? “About this scrying thing…you….?”

“Athoth still slumbers. Her power is limited,” Tentamun replied easily. “And scrying is no science. There is no understanding the gods the way you seek to understand everything, Alhaitham.” She looked back to where he stood rooted, eyes suddenly seeming inhumanly bright. “Just because I knew your face did not mean you had earned my trust. It took much of my power to see whether you and Candace were truly harmless. Well, certainly not harmless, but harmless to us. I saw your intentions and I saw you in that shrine, and that was with you sitting before me, your faces reflected in the water. You can see how limited I am.” She gestured to the pictures in the rock all around them. “When I ask to see Sumeru, it is in a thousand different pictures. People tending livestock, caring for the forest, studying beside a fountain, writing letters, or selling wares on the street. I see suffering, I see joy, I see death and birth and everything over again. And when I’m lucky, the pictures will arrange themselves into a story I can understand. When I’m luckiest, it is a story telling me that our stolen child is whole and happy. Feared by many, yes, but not by all. He has built a family for himself.” She jerked a thumb down the hall, where the other three were quickly disappearing with their only light. “I did not foresee Hermanubis taking control like this. It is not a thing that has ever happened before. I did not foresee that, nor did I foresee your coming.” Alhaitham followed at her gesture, the two of them continuing down the corridor. “And I am not spying on you as you sleep at night, if that was what you were truly asking,” she finished. Alhaitham snorted a little laugh through his nose and left the picture of Acheth long behind. 

The walls began to lose the number of carvings, but not because none had ever been there. It looked more like hands had run over the stone hundreds of thousands of times, taking the stories there with them. It was a little unnerving, the dissonance between this and Alhaitham’s experience with Lesser Lord Kusanali. He was so used to meeting his archon surrounded by greenery, by sun, by life. Everything was open, everything was new, and as much as he knew Lesser Lord Kusanali was a god far more powerful and wise than himself, there was always a certain innocence to her in the way she smiled and laughed and asked questions. This, down deep in the desert cliffs, was a reverence to ancient times and an ancient power. They were headed to the shrines, where the gods had once held court. That was what Tentamun had said. 

The belief was nearly a sound in itself, like the whispered prayers of all those who came before them had been stored within the rock, devotion leaking out. 

Finally, they hit a door. A plain wooden door. Daneeth handed the lantern back to Tentamun and pushed. As the door cracked open, Alhaitham immediately knew they had reached where the gods slumbered. His jaw dropped a little despite himself as they all shuffled inside the chamber. The jewels decorating every surface reflected the light of the oil lantern a thousand times, almost like they had just walked into daylight. The vaulted ceiling was a fresco of the gods Alhaitham had seen again and again in plain carvings on their way down, except now every detail was depicted in precious gems, perfect faces in serenity as they stood in their ruling court. Even the stone beneath their feet had shifted to flawless marble, crystals running like rivers radiating towards each of the enormous stone doors—the entrances to the shrines. Each door and doorway were just as intricately decorated as the walls and ceiling, but here Alhaitham was able to make out some individuality in style and color. Some of the doorways were smoothed edges with calming blue and white, while others were rougher hewn, with yellow or red or black. Cyno extricated himself from Candace’s hold and stumbled to one of the doors, the stone inlaid with deep purple gems. Alhaitham squinted and studied the mosaic of the god above the door frame. Jackal ears, a spear, and an unyielding expression. Hermanubis. 

Cyno didn’t glance back as he yanked at the gold handle set into the door. Alhaitham tried to picture a child Cyno walking all the way back here by himself, entering that room with no witnesses, and going to make a pact with a god. It was far too easy to imagine, actually.

The stone scraped as the door opened and the sigils around Cyno’s neck suddenly flared to new life, the light of it flashing back a thousand times on every shining surface. Cyno cried out and held himself up against the door, wheezing for breath once more.

There was no more time. “Bye Jida,” Alhaitham blurted out, and sidestepped Candace to catch Cyno under the arms and kick the door open far enough to drag him inside. Stupid move. Solid stone. Ouch. He glanced up at the three in the antechamber. The doctor just looked anxious. Candace bit at her lip and gave a small wave. Tentamun met his gaze and nodded. Alhaitham took that as permission. He pulled Cyno into the shrine and let the door boom shut behind them. 

Darkness. Compared to the brightness of before, it made Alhaitham’s eyes ache. Cyno was very still in his arms and Alhaitham couldn’t hear a thing but his ragged breath, even with his headset off, as if that door had cut them off from the rest of the world completely. 

He nearly leapt out of his skin when the torches on the wall flared to life. Blue firelight filled the small space and Alhaitham could actually examine the shrine. Other than a small path to the opposite wall, everything was covered in beautiful mosaics of Hermanubis, Hermanubis, Hermanubis, fighting and feasting and ruling the gods. Across from them, a throne like the one for Tentamun at the entrance hall of the Temple of Silence sat carved out of stone, but here a statue of Hermanubis had been carved around it so the seat was more a piece of leg and fluttering robe than an actual chair for human use. The statue of Hermanubis reached the ceiling, the warrior god hefting his spear and staring upwards. Did the old gods even participate in the Archon Wars? Alhaitham felt a chill creep slowly up his spine studying Hermanubis’ carved expression. They didn’t act like deities that had ever lost. In fact, they sealed themselves away when the Archons clashed at Khaenri’ah. What if some gods had simply taken their own part of the world and chosen to keep it rather than fighting for the rule of an entire nation? He had never heard of Athoth or Acheth or even Hermanubis before he heard of Cyno. Sure, he knew about King Deshret and other popular desert lore but the old gods here in the Temple of Silence? Nothing. 

How did something go unseen? Either by being too small to notice or by being so large that you couldn’t see a world without it. 

Alhaitham hadn’t noticed Cyno’s breath even out, but he did notice when Cyno straightened and brushed his hands away. “Cyno…”

Cyno ignored him, choosing instead to walk calmly across the stone to the grand statue of Hermanubis. He looked like a ghost moving in the light of the blue flames. 

They were the wrong footsteps. Cyno’s steps never thudded like that, full contact of heel to toe. He padded. He crept. He didn’t stride . Alhaitham swallowed and straightened and was careful to lower his eyes respectfully when Hermanubis reached his own throne and took a seat, scrawling sideways with chin propped up on one hand. 

A god had made it home.

Chapter Text

There was a long moment of silence, stretching out like tree sap. It was Hermanubis who snapped the string.

“You are at fault.” 

It wasn’t Cyno’s voice. Cyno’s mouth hadn’t moved. The deep timbre reverberated around the shrine, coming from nothing and yet everywhere.

Alhaitham blinked and raised his eyes to meet Hermanubis’. Bright red eyes, like the desert sun at dusk. 

Or blood. If he wanted to be dramatic. 

“I’m sorry?” he said slowly. There were better responses, but the god had a literal chokehold on Cyno at the moment and maybe sass wasn’t the answer. “I’m sorry for what I did.” 

“It took many centuries for me to find a vessel to my liking.” 

“He’s a nice vessel,” Alhaitham said, because wasn’t flattery a good thing? He still wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong. 

“He is no longer worthy.”

“What?” Alright, so Alhaitham wasn’t great at kowtowing. “How isn’t he worthy?” He stared at the statue instead of the thing inhabiting Cyno’s body. 

“He did not honor our agreement.”

Just ignore him, Cyno had ordered. He will say anything to get a reaction. 

“You mean the agreement you made with a child? That fully-formed, consensual agreement with a party who completely understood the consequences?” 

What amazing self-control he had. 

Hermanubis was silent for a moment, and then seemed to decide ignoring that last part was for the better. “ He pledged himself to me. But now he can no longer act in my name.” 

“This seems like a conversation you should have with Cyno.” Alhaitham crossed his arms and wished he could rub himself warm without losing face. “Not me. Why am I here?”

“I instructed my vessel to bring you to me. Because you are at fault.” 

“At fault for what?” 

The shrine flared bright, making Alhaitham grunt and shield his eyes, and when he looked again, Cyno’s figure lay prone. The glowing sigils had disappeared. “Oh fuck.” Alhaitham probably bruised his knees falling before the throne, fingers at Cyno’s throat, feeling for a pulse. There was one, even though it was weak, and Alhaitham let himself have a brief moment of relief before he had to wonder where the hell Hermanubis had gone. 

“He pledged himself to me.”

The voice was all around him and yet whispered straight into Alhaitham’s ear. 

“A vessel without loyalty will only bring destruction. He cannot act in my name.”

Alhaitham kept a steady finger on Cyno’s pulse just in case Hermanubis decided to toy with his life some more. Also, he was done even pretending to have respect for this nonsense. “Do you have the faintest idea who it is you made your contract with? If Cyno gave you his word, that’s it. He doesn’t go back on promises. You should know that. If you’ve been paying the slightest bit of attention, you should know that.” 

“He pledged himself to me,” Hermanubis insisted. 

“And he’s keeping the damned pledge! So why did you almost kill him? And what the hell am I doing here?” 

“He pledged himself to ME.”

“And?”

A hiss over his left shoulder. “So he cannot pledge himself to you as well. A vessel without loyalty will only bring destruction.”

Alhaitham kept careful fingers on Cyno’s pulse, refusing to look over his shoulder to see if there was someone to see. “Cyno hasn’t pledged himself to me.” 

“Perhaps not to your knowledge.”

Alhaitham stared at Cyno’s soft, sleeping face, just like if he was asleep in his chair back in Alhaitham’s office. Not to his knowledge? Fuck, how had it come to this? When was the last time they’d talked? Actually talked, before Cyno began being murdered from the inside. It had been about a week before, right? Cyno had dropped by his office in the afternoon, still limping a little from the gash in his leg Alhaitham had fixed up. “I’m taking a few days off,” he’d said, hopping up with his good leg to perch on the edge of Alhaitham’s desk. He’d brushed his hair back behind his ear, leaning over the reports Alhaitham was in the middle of because he was always nosy about whatever Alhaitham was actually spending time on. 

Alhaitham had spread his hand over the reports just to be annoying and smirked when Cyno looked at him, unamused. “Do you need my permission now?”

“I’m simply informing you,” Cyno had said, and plucked at Alhaitham’s fingers until he could keep reading. “So you don’t fret.” 

“When do I ever fret?”

“All the time, by my experience. Or is there a different reason you stay here into the early hours of the morning and slapping bandages on me is simply a welcome distraction?” 

“It’s not my fault you can’t complete a single mission without getting yourself injured.”

“I go uninjured plenty of times. You just overreact to a papercut.”  

“I don’t want you getting blood on my chairs.”

“You stole those chairs.” 

“Yes. So they’re mine. Fairly stolen.”

Cyno had rolled his eyes, gesture obvious even beneath the shadow of his headdress. “Well, I’m letting you know I’m taking a few days off, so you don’t have to worry about me getting blood on your chairs. Do you want me to set some matra on him? Just to watch?” Alhaitham had studied the name Cyno’s finger had landed on. Some Amurta scholar who had been coming into mysterious money lately.

“Couldn’t hurt.” 

Cyno had nodded and slipped back off the desk. “Alright. I’ll assign two matra to keep an eye on him. They’ll report to you if anything changes. And I’ll see you again in a few days.” 

“I’ll have the bandages ready.” 

He’d just laughed when Cyno used his polearm to tip over the precarious pile of scrolls he’d abandoned by the door and his chest had felt warm at the sight of Cyno’s departing smile. He wanted to tell him. He should tell him. Just to get this warmth out of his chest before he burned from the inside out.

And then Cyno had returned, dying. 

“He hasn’t pledged himself to me,” Alhaitham repeated to Hermanubis. “Cyno doesn’t pledge himself to…he pledges himself to ideals. To rules. To justice. To keeping people safe. He uses your power to keep people safe. I know that you’re a war god, or something, but Cyno basically fights a war every day. Him versus all the stupid stuff the people here do to put themselves or others in danger. He’s at war with the whole world. And he wins. Most times. You’re all about victory, too, right? I’ve never known a fight he hasn’t won in the end because the bastard just won’t stay down no matter how many times he’s kicked.” Cyno’s pulse beat weakly against his fingertips. “He’s so loyal. He’s…so loyal. To everything he believes. And to everyone he cares about. I know he’s loyal to you too. He would never break a pledge. It doesn’t matter if he was a kid when he made it. He could never go back on his word.” 

“He has .” 

Did Cyno get his stubbornness from his god? Archons above, Alhaitham couldn’t form a rational argument against an ancient deity unwilling to listen. “He hasn’t. And he definitely hasn’t pledged himself to me. He doesn’t listen to a word I say.” 

A whisper in his right ear: “He would make himself yours.”

What? 

“Sorry? What was that?”

“You know what it is I said. I was woken from my slumber when he made the realization. When he realized he had betrayed me.” 

He would make himself yours. A triple backflip into molten brimstone. Alhaitham raised his other hand to brush Cyno’s bangs from his face, fingers lingering at the corner of his eye, feeling the fan of white lashes. He remembered half-delirious promises made aboard the sand sailer. 

I’ll take everything you want to give me. 

I’ll settle for bare bones but I want everything that you are. 

I want to etch you into my life and never let you go. 

He breathed out slowly and unsteady, lowering his forehead to the cool stone and nestling into the space between Cyno’s neck and shoulder. He couldn’t let himself dwell on Hermanubis’ words. There was something far, far more important at stake. “That isn’t how it works.” 

“How what works?”

Alhaitham raised his head once more and shook it very slightly back and forth. “You’re a god. You wouldn’t understand something like…human emotions.” Was that a warmth at his back? He couldn’t tell. How long could a god exist as nothing without some sort of vessel to protect them? “If I…” How was he supposed to explain this? “I believe in the Dendro Archon. I have pledged myself to her as much as I could pledge myself to any god. But I would…” Why did he have to be making this confession to Hermanubis when Cyno was right there, unconscious beneath his fingertips? “...I would make myself his. I would give myself to Cyno. Everything. Everything he’d accept. But that wouldn’t mean I no longer serve Lesser Lord Kusanali. Because belief and allegiance to your god is different than…than human love. It’s very different.” He took his fingers from Cyno’s pulse to pinch at the bridge of his nose, eyes sliding shut. “Cyno has lots of people in his life he loves. His father. His best friend. Their…little adoptive daughter. He’s got lots of friends actually, even if he doesn’t fully realize it since he’s a little dense about those things.” He opened his eyes once more, throat tight. “And if they aren’t his friends, they’d still follow him into hell because they know he will march them right back out again in the end. But it’s different. Human love is so different from what we feel for gods.” How was he managing to have a conversation with somebody even worse at understanding emotions than he was? “If Cyno…if…” Fuck. “If Cyno has pledged himself to anyone but you, it isn’t the same type of pledge.” 

The shrine went quiet, save for the crackle of blue flames along the walls. 

“He has betrayed me,” Hermanubis finally said because he was an idiot. Alhaitham jolted when the sigils appeared around Cyno’s neck once more, squeezing tight. Cyno spasmed and gasped even as Alhaitham tried to hold his shoulders down, to open his airway as much as possible. Dammit dammit dammit. What could he do? What could he possibly do? Hermanubis wouldn’t understand. Hermanubis wasn’t even trying to understand. He was going to murder Cyno right here in front of Alhaitham and then probably just float into his statue to wait another five hundred years for the next suitable vessel. 

Cyno was going to die and it was Alhaitham’s fault, for whatever Hermanubis blamed him for. He would give himself to you . There was a time to turn those words over and over in his head but he didn’t have a spare second now. Cyno didn’t have the time. 

Cyno was out of time. 

Alhaitham spun around, but there was nothing there, not even a shimmer in the air. “Break your contract!” he ordered. “If Cyno isn’t loyal anymore, then break the contract. Let him live. He’s been a good vessel for years, right? So break the contract. Let him live.” His eyes skipped from torch to torch to torch, blinding him with the flickering blue. “Take me instead,” he told the nothingness. “I’ll be your vessel. But let Cyno live.”

He wasn’t sure what he expected. A sudden foreign presence trying to shove itself down his throat? But instead, Hermanubis spoke right into his ear again. 

“Your loyalty is already to him.”

So fucking stubborn. Alhaitham fought back a shiver and made his offer once more. Sorry Cyno. I guess all those things I wanted to tell you? Maybe it’s better if they all go unsaid. It’ll hurt both of us less that way. “My loyalty isn’t to him. I just explained this. I’m not his subject. He’s not my god. He’s not my lord. And you can have me if you let him live.” 

More silence, and then shifting on the seat behind him. Had Hermanubis taken the deal? Alhaitham turned back around, and then hands were at his jaw, clutching hard, Cyno’s face with the blood red eyes nearly forehead to forehead. When Hermanubis spoke next, it was through Cyno’s mouth, Cyno’s voice. “You could never be mine. I am a god of war and of victory and of death. I hold the ability to judge men’s hearts. You think I cannot tell who your heart belongs to?” Electricity sparked along his arms, his hands, the sigils at his throat. Lightning tingled across Alhaitham’s skin.

“Then take my heart!” He meant for it to be a proud, defiant cry. Instead, Alhaitham’s voice broke in the middle. “Take my whole body. That’s what I’m telling you. I will be your obedient vessel. Just let Cyno live. Let him go.” 

Hermanubis’ fingers on his jaw began to ache, like he wanted to crush the bone. “Fool. If I wanted a vessel like you, I would have taken it.” 

It was impossible to talk right with his jaw in a vise. “So…you still…want Cyno?” 

Hermanubis released him with a scoff and sat back in the throne, arms crossed in such a familiar stubborn way. “Of course. Why else would I wait so many centuries for the right vessel to appear before me?” 

“So if he…if he didn’t want to give himself…” Oh. That was why. That was why Cyno had asked Alhaitham to hate him. It was a last minute attempt to…

That had been Cyno’s last minute attempt to not…

A last minute attempt to not love Alhaitham, because Alhaitham would never love him back. 

Oh Archons above.

“What…can I do?” Alhaitham asked, voice a croak. Please, let there be something he could do. Hermanubis released his jaw and shifted in his seat to lounge sideways once more. He waved a dismissive hand. 

“Remove the problem.”

Remove the problem? What did that even mean? How could he remove love? How could he remove what Hermanubis saw as loyalty but was actually something else? Maybe if he tried he could wind his thoughts around and around until he managed to logic himself out of loving Cyno, but what was he supposed to do with Cyno sitting there, a god staring through his eyes? Scream into his ear? I hate you, I hate you, I hate you? And hope that it somehow filtered through?

Or he could remove the problem. Alhaitham met Hermanubis’ steady gaze as he realized what the god really meant. 

Oh fuck that . He was not killing himself because an ancient god was having a tantrum. Giving himself as a vessel to Hermanubis was one thing—his own choice, a fair deal. There would be some meaning there. But offing himself because some idiot god saw it as the easiest solution? No way. 

If Alhaitham became a vessel so Cyno could live, Cyno would be furious for sure. If Alhaitham died so Cyno could live, he didn’t even want to consider it. Cyno, with his rock-solid ideals, holding himself responsible for a death because he couldn’t be strong enough against an actual god ? No. Not going to happen.

That was not going to happen. 

Alhaitham was done being polite. He crossed his arms and spat out, “You’re the problem here. Not me.”

Hermanubis raised a brow. Cyno couldn’t do that, not one brow at a time. It was a strange expression to see on his face. 

“Loyalty should be earned,” Alhaitham went on, volume rising, voice growing harsher. “I don’t know exactly what your presence in Cyno’s body does to him, but he has suffered, and battled, and bled, and now you reward him for years and years of service by strangling him to death for having something as natural as feelings. How are you a god worth being loyal to, if that’s how you would treat your vessel?”

Hermanubis narrowed his eyes. “Careful, human. Watch your tongue.” 

Alhaitham threw his hands in the air with a little snarl. He was so sick and tired of dealing with this sort of idiocy. This was why he built walls to block the world out. Idiot people and idiot gods and the one person he felt he could let those walls down for was going to be taken away from him by this idiotic world. “Well either you listen to me or you kill me to get me to shut up, and that would remove the problem, wouldn’t it?” 

“Insolent—” Hermanubis’ feet hit the floor. Was Cyno somehow taller when being possessed? 

No time. “Yes, I’m insolent! Because you’re not listening. Don’t you…don’t you remember the days before you decided to be sealed? The people who worshiped you? I don’t know how it worked. Maybe you walked among them in physical form. Maybe you lived in your shrines and your statues. But can’t you remember the people who believed in you?” His hands weren’t his own anymore, waving all over the place, gesturing to the pictures on the walls. “Those were the people that, when the world started falling apart, you chose to be sealed away so you couldn’t cause them harm. You chose, not because you couldn’t win, but because there would be collateral damage. And the people who worshiped you, the ones you desired to save? They loved. They loved each other. They continue to love. They hid inside this temple and continue to love each other. The leader of this place? Tentamun? The one that took Athoth inside? She loves the people in this temple so much that everyone sees her as their grandmother. And Athoth hasn’t decided to kill her now, has she? Five hundred years of loving, and those two seem to get along just fine.” 

“My sister does not hold the same powers of destruction.”

Hands akimbo. “So it’s a really good thing that Cyno came along, right? You knew he was worthy of being your vessel! When he was just a kid! There is no one else in the world I would trust with your sort of power. Cyno will never cause destruction. I know that.” He stared at the god in front of him and his arms fell limp at his sides. “You’re the one who’s inside of him. Just look. Look at who he is. Look at how he has suffered for you. How he acts in your name. He can be loyal to you and still love, same as the people who worship you still love.” He heaved in breath, forcing himself to keep Hermanubis’ eyes. “So Athoth is your sister. Can’t you trust in her judgment?  She’s a god of wisdom, right? Trust in Cyno. Trust in that…that stubborn little kid who came here to become your vessel. Trust the man that boy grew into. He is true to you. And maybe he thought that being in love would change that. But it won’t. The fact he even had that thought—felt so strongly that it woke you—is proof of how seriously he takes his responsibility. Cyno isn’t great with emotions. But love won’t change his loyalty. That’s not how humans work. The humans that you gave up so much to protect.”

There. That was all he had. Archons, this was more nerve wracking than saving Lesser Lord Kusanali. Alright, perhaps about even, but this was so…he’d never had to drag up parts of his soul to try to win an argument before. But logic hadn’t worked. Trust? Love? Those weren’t part of Alhaitham’s arsenal. And yet…

Hermanubis blinked and sank back down to the throne. “I must confer with my vessel.” 

“I want Cyno back,” Alhaitham whispered, like that wasn’t obvious. 

Hermanubis leveled him with the same unimpressed look he was used to from Cyno, and then brought a single finger up to the choking sigils. The finger dug into the sparking band, dragging it out of the skin, and then it snapped, fading into nothing. No. Not nothing. Faint black marks. Harmless faint black marks. “You claim I cannot understand love.” 

Alhaitham shrugged. “It’s too human. Messy and irrational. How could a higher power understand something so bizarre?”

“Hmm.” Hermanubis frowned slightly, the tense atmosphere in the shrine evaporating as he considered, looking more like a confused child than a god of war.

“Hmm,” Alhaitham repeated, for lack of anything else to say. Hmm indeed. 

Hermanubis leaned back on his throne, one arm cushioning his head. “You would have given yourself to save him? You would have become my vessel?”

Alhaitham nodded. “Well, the world hasn’t been the most peaceful lately. Maybe we’re getting closer to the day someone with your power will be needed to save the people of Sumeru. So I’d do it for them. And I’d do it for him. Because love truly is messy and irrational and I’ll probably spend my whole life trying to understand it, and I’m the one who’s experiencing it.”

Hermanubis hummed again, and then, slowly, peeled up one leg of Cyno’s shorts. The stitches were healing nicely, obvious even in the blue firelight. “He was always a reckless child.” His eyes slid back to Alhaitham. “I sleep within my vessel. I cannot protect him from himself. This love of yours…you will care for him?”

“If he lets me, I will care for him until the day I die.” Gods, that was probably the most heartfelt promise he’d given in his life.

Hermanubis nodded. “Alright. Let me discuss love with my vessel.” His eyes closed. Alhaitham grimaced. A discussion about love between Cyno and Hermanubis. That had to be the most awkward conversation imaginable, even worse than the one that had just occurred. 

It left Alhaitham with absolutely nothing to do but study the shrine. He threaded his hands together behind him and strolled up and down the walkway between throne and door, admiring the mosaics. If he had his notebooks, maybe he could try decoding the language. He would have to settle for memorizing as much as he could. Maybe Cyno could help. Now he’d been here, Alhaitham had hundreds of questions about the Temple of Silence and he doubted he’d ever be invited back.. 

He stared at a picture of jackal-headed Hermanubis surrounded by worshipers. He had loved his people enough to seal himself away. It was love. A god’s love. One that Alhaitham would never understand, just like Hermanubis would never understand his own. 

A dream flickered across his mind. His office, late at night, with him and Cyno passing a wine bottle back and forth. Something they had done before. But this time, Alhaitham’s fingers could linger on Cyno’s hand when they exchanged the wine and Cyno could smile, and Alhaitham could toy with the ends of his hair, wrapping the strands around and around until Cyno told him to knock it off. But he’d still smile. If that was what Alhaitham could get from this love, he would take it happily. He would take anything and be happy. 

There was a thunk from the throne, and Alhaitham spun around to find Cyno picking himself up off the floor. Or at least, he thought it was Cyno. Orange eyes met his and Alhaitham allowed himself a momentary sag of relief before hurrying to Cyno’s side and hauling him up off the floor and back onto the throne. Injuries? He should check for injuries. He pressed fingers to Cyno’s pulse (normal) and felt at his neck (just faint black marks of the sigils left behind) and stared into his eyes (pupil size normal). He was just about to feel Cyno’s head for any bumps from falling on the floor when Cyno caught his hands, looking thoroughly bemused. 

“I’m alright,” he said, and Alhaitham wondered how he could have ever thought Hermanubis spoke with Cyno’s voice. They didn’t sound at all alike. Sure, the tone was the same, but Cyno didn’t drawl. Instead, his words were rough, like you’d expect of someone who’d been choking for three days straight. Cyno folded his fingers around Alhaitham’s and brought them down to his lap. “I’m alright. Stop fretting.” 

“But it’s my new hobby,” Alhaitham argued back, and Cyno smiled. It was all worth it for that smile. Alhaitham clutched Cyno’s hands back. His palms were all sweaty, he realized. Bickering with a god had made him nervous. 

The Truth. He’d promised to tell Cyno The Truth. “So, everything is alright between you and your god?”

Cyno nodded. “He’s asleep.” He freed one of his hands to slip the black band into place from where it had ridden high on his throat the last few days, now hiding the sigil marks from the world. 

“Then I want to tell you something, before we leave here.” 

“Alright.”

Alhaitham stared at their hands clasped tight in Cyno’s lap. “I don’t hate you.” Cyno squeezed harder, a little heartbeat of a squeeze. “I don’t hate you at all, actually. In fact, I think I’m in love with you.”

Another squeeze. “Yes. Hermanubis told me.” 

Alhaitham’s head snapped up. “The bastard . He stole my confession?” 

And Cyno laughed, that muffled snort, and then his head was on Alhaitham’s shoulder. “I think he probably stole mine too.” 

“Dammit.” 

Cyno laughed again, and then sighed, whole body relaxing. It was so easy to slip an arm around his waist, drag him down off that awful throne, and deposit him safely in Alhaitham’s lap. Here. This was what Alhaitham had wanted. Cyno pressed against him, warm and safe and sort of sleepy. Not dying. 

“Anything you want to give me, I will take and be happy,” he murmured, finally getting a hand up in Cyno’s hair and sweeping it behind his ear. “I just want you there. That’s all I need.” 

“I’m right here. I’m right here. I’m not leaving.” Cyno’s breath was hot against his neck. 

Yes. Perfect. 

Trust Cyno to ruin it of course. “We should probably let the others know we’re alright.”

Not perfect. Alhaitham tightened his grip when Cyno stirred. “Or we could just stay.”

“Or we could let them know we’re alive.” Cyno had very unfairly strong arms with which to push himself off of Alhaitham’s chest. 

“This looks like you leaving,” Alhaitham observed from the floor as Cyno stood and dusted himself off. “That thing you said you weren’t going to do.”

Cyno scoffed and straightened his shorts where Hermanubis had examined the stitches in his leg. “Well, either you come with me or I’ll come back. Is that a more realistic promise?”

It was. It didn’t mean Alhaitham had to like it. He groaned as he got to his feet. “We have things to talk about.”

“Alhaitham, I hurt everywhere . Can’t we talk somewhere comfortable?” Cyno snatched his arm and dragged him by the wrist towards the door. “And you probably need to eat. You forget to eat way too often.”

Wow. Having a god steal your love confession really sucked the charm out, didn’t it? “Can we pretend that your god didn’t destroy romance as we know it and re-do this whole confession thing sometime?” 

“Sure. Surprise me with it when we get home and I’ll pretend to be shocked.”

“You are such an ass,” Alhaitham informed him just as Cyno shoved the door open, meaning those were the first words the three in the antechamber heard. 

Candace didn’t bother hiding her grin. “You two are back to normal, I see.” 

Tentamun simply stepped forward and folded Cyno into her arms. “Ah. Let me hold you now, my child.” 

“Jida,” he mumbled into her robe, not resisting the hug, and Alhaitham thought of Hermanubis and Athoth, the siblings who had decided to be sealed, asleep in their respective vessels. “Candace,” Cyno said after a moment, and carefully extricated himself to go clasp Candace’s hand in both of his. She was having none of it, using that hand to pull him in for another hug. “I’m pretty sure you saved my life,” Cyno said, perching his chin on her shoulder, “And you, Daneeth. Thank you.” 

Daneeth gave a little head tilt, face graced with a gentle smile. A third vessel for an old god. 

“I don’t get any thanks? I was the one who found this place, afterall,” Alhaitham interjected, half to annoy Cyno and half to have his attention back. 

Cyno didn’t break his hug with Candace. “Yes, and you will show me exactly how you did so when we return to the Academiya so I can destroy all traces.” 

Such an ass. 

Still, it was Alhaitham whom Cyno fell into step beside during the trek back from the shrines. Alhaitham kept his headset down around his neck, happy to listen to the right footsteps. Tentamun was going on about a feast, something to fill them up before they set back off across the desert combined with some sort of celebration of Cyno visiting home. Cyno shook his head and glanced up at Alhaitham, eyes tired. Alhaitham weighed his chances and then reached out to grab Cyno’s hand. A big dinner and sleep. Then they could head back to Aaru Village. It would be cruel to keep Tighnari waiting longer than necessary. Cyno stared down at their hands and then slowly folded his fingers through Alhaitham’s. “When we get home,” he whispered in the halls that rang with the memory of devotion. “You said that. To come home to your home. Did you mean it?”

Alhaitham folded his fingers back. “What do you think?” 

“I think I’d like that a lot.” 

“We could kick Kaveh out if we need extra room.” 

“Kaveh is a dear friend and you wouldn’t pull through on that threat anyway so no.” 

Yeah, he’d figured. “But it can be home? As a permanent sort of measure?” 

“How else will you shock me with your completely out-of-the-blue confession?”

Alhaitham groaned, but the chuckle somehow snuck in there. “And my office? It has comfortable stolen chairs.” 

“I’ll consider it.” 

Alhaitham squeezed his hand. That was fine. He’d wait forever on an answer. Still, there was another question. “Cyno?”

“Hm?” 

“What happened? What happened to start this?” 

Cyno frowned as he raised his free hand to the band around his neck. “I was…I was simply talking with Tighnari. He was asking after everyone in Sumeru City and when he asked after you, when I thought of you, I…” He broke off, and even in the dim light of the lamp Daneeth held ahead of them, Alhaitham could see him going red. “I guess I realized something, and next thing I really knew, I was here. I remember bits and pieces, but mostly I was trying to breathe while Hermanubis kept calling me a traitor in my head. And a part of me thought he was right. But we…” He cleared his throat. “We talked about that. In the shrine. It’s alright now.” 

Yeah, it had not been a fun few days. Still. “What did you realize?” Alhaitham prodded, just to see Cyno turn even redder. It was a cute look on the fearsome General Mahamatra. 

“I think you know,” Cyno gritted out. 

“No, I’m actually quite clueless.” 

“You know .” 

Alhaitham did a quick check up ahead that no one was watching and then leaned in, fighting a smirk. “Something about how you’d make yourself mine?” 

He was definitely expecting to be whacked upside the head when Cyno swung his hand around, but instead that hand fisted in the front of his shirt and yanked him down to Cyno’s level. “You are so infuriating,” Cyno muttered, eyes locked on Alhaitham’s, but the vulnerability in his face didn’t match his words. Alhaitham felt the urge to verbally spar drain away. He raised his free hand and slowly, with plenty of time to pull away, combed a hand through Cyno’s hair, infinitely gentle. Cyno’s eyes went wide, but his head tilted into the touch. “Infuriating,” he repeated, and pulled Alhaitham closer so their foreheads rested together. Damn, Alhaitham wanted to kiss him. But their light was fast disappearing down the corridor and if they had to have an ancient god ruin their grand confessions, at least Alhaitham could try for a perfect first kiss. Midnight by the Academiya fountain perhaps, or between sips of wine in his office right after Alhaitham managed to make Cyno laugh. Maybe when Cyno showed up on his doorstep after a mission with his usual cuts and bruises, and Alhaitham could lean his polearm against the wall and tug that headdress away and when their lips touched, Cyno’s would still be caked with sand because he never seemed to manage to leave it all behind. 

There were many possibilities and time to think of the best one. Because they had time again.

Alhaitham slid his hand around to Cyno’s cheek and gave it a little tap. “Do you want to miss your grand feast? Your jida seems quite enthusiastic.” 

Cyno groaned and leaned back, releasing his grip on Alhaitham’s shirt. “What do you think?”

Cyno did always love being the center of attention. Alhaitham huffed a laugh and started off down the corridor, dragging Cyno along by their enjoined hands. “One little feast. You can make it. And you need to eat something anyway. And drink something. Hydrate. Tighnari managed to make it to Aaru Village before he had to tap out so we really should get back to him. Try for an early start tomorrow.”

“Tighnari…” 

“Threw you in a wagon the moment something went wrong and set off to find the Temple of Silence. I was just the guy with the maps he recruited along the way.” Alhaitham threw a smile over his shoulder. “He had to stop in Aaru Village but this was all his endeavor. You have one hell of a best friend.” 

Cyno smiled back at him. “I really do.” 

And then Tentamun spun around and bustled back to Cyno’s side and there wasn’t a chance for words after that, not with a feast to plan. Alhaitham floated through the next few hours. There was a dining hall, brilliant in precious stones, and good food—desert food he often didn’t recognize—and poor Cyno was seated at the head table surrounded by adults who kept ruffling his hair and cooing about how big he’d gotten. Alhaitham sat next to Candace, a goblet of wine in hand, and watched in bemusement. Candace rested with her elbows on the table and sighed in relief. 

“So they’ve been hidden behind forbidden technology for five hundred years. That was a good call. You saved his life.” 

Alhaitham hummed and took another sip of wine. “You were at the helm of that infernal sand sailer. You saved his life too. And Tighnari, of course. And the doctor gave him that medicine that allowed him to wake up. Tentamun knew exactly what to do when we got here. And Cyno saved his own life, in the end. No matter how much I argued with Hermanubis, it was only after he spoke with Cyno that he went back to sleep.”

Candace looked over to him, eyebrows high. “You argued with Hermanubis?” 

“Let’s call it a debate. That sounds better. Less childish.” 

Candace shook her head and took a bite of some sweet dessert topped with candied nuts. “Unbelievable.” She dinged Alhaitham’s fork with her own when he tried to steal some dessert. “Get your own.” Alhaitham grinned. Three days ago, he wouldn’t have imagined being so casual with Candace. With anyone, really, except maybe Kaveh if they were having an armistice sort of day—and Cyno of course—but maybe sailing across the desert in a desperate mission to save a life was one of those strange bonding experiences. Like saving Lesser Lord Kusanali and arguing a renewed Academiya into existence. Things like that. 

His headset still hung around his neck. His ears were naked. Look at his walls going crumbling down. 

They were given separate bedrooms for the night. Or early morning. Whatever time it was. Maybe the people of the Temple of Silence lived by their own clock. Alhaitham wasn’t sure how long he’d spent in the shrine. It had seemed so short, in one way, a desperate plea, a waterfall of words trying to convince Hermanubis not to choke the life out of Cyno. But again, the weight of that belief had borne down on him like a physical force, thousands of years of worship inserting themselves into every second. 

Alhaitham had just stripped off his shirt, winced at the sunburn on his shoulders, and examined the way the sand flying into his face had left his skin raw when his door creaked open. He wasn’t exactly surprised to hear footsteps padding up behind him. He was a little more surprised when Cyno’s arms laced around his chest and a cold nose was pressed between his shoulder blades. 

“Is this a show of affection or some secret matra trick to lull your victim into a false sense of security?” 

“The matra aren’t assassins.” Cyno’s voice was muffled, his breath hot. His arms tightened. “And we don’t use… seduction as a method.” 

He sounded so disgusted by the very suggestion. Alhaitham smirked. “This is your idea of seduction, is it?” 

Cyno huffed. “I’m doing my best here.” 

Alright, all jokes aside, Alhaitham knew he was. This was new. New and exciting and frightening all at once. Alhaitham placed his hands atop Cyno’s. “Anything you give me, I will take and be happy,” he murmured. “I meant that.” He turned in Cyno’s grip and sent a little tiny thanks to whoever might be listening that he looked good without a shirt on. Not to be narcissistic or anything. But Cyno just stared up at him, jaw set. 

“Can we share a bed tonight?”

Oh thank you kind deity. Still, the request was so unexpected that all Alhaitham could do was nod. His tongue seemed glued to the roof of his mouth. 

Cyno nodded decisively. “Good.” And he reached for the decorative collar of his uniform. Thank the Archons that Cyno ran around in so little clothing on the daily or Alhaitham might have perished on the spot. He slowly unwound his belts and placed them, along with his Vision, on the nightstand. His music player, safely stored away, tugged at his headset through the wire, and he slipped it from his neck and placed it beside his Vision. Cyno just tossed his things on the floor. Away went the collar, the gloves, the leg coverings, the black semi-shirt thing, and the shendyt. He looked very thin without it around his waist to bulk him up. He was left with his shorts and the black band around his neck that hid the remains of the sigils, no sense of shyness. Maybe it was a matra thing. He clambered into Alhaitham’s bed while Alhaitham was still removing his boots. Smiled. Reached out and slid a finger along Alhaitham’s ear. “This is new.” 

A pile of sand fell to the floor when Alhaitham tipped his boot upside down. Ugh. “I’ve always had that ear.” 

“I like seeing it.” Cyno shuffled backwards so he could lift the covers and tuck himself away. “Alright. Goodnight.” 

Alhaitham paused in tugging his other boot off. “Wait, that’s it?” 

“That’s it what?” 

“Well, I…” Wasn’t there supposed to be something more to sharing a bed than ‘goodnight’? “Well, this isn’t that large a bed. And if…if we ever want to share a bed in the future—mine, most likely—maybe we should figure out which side is whose.” 

Cyno shot him a scornful look. “That’s trivial. What’s important is that we share a bed.” 

But what was the point if they didn’t cuddle? Not that Alhaitham would actually say the word ‘cuddle’ in his lifetime, but come on . “Limbs must be entwined,” he said, knowing full well he sounded like an idiot. Cyno definitely agreed, judging by the way he stared and then slowly lifted a fist to muffle a snort. “Shut up,” Alhaitham grumbled, and tossed the second boot away so he could crawl up the bed and collapse at Cyno’s side. “You said you were sore. My body heat will help with that.” 

“Oh, so this is entirely practical thinking on your part?” Cyno was definitely still laughing at him. Alhaitham crawled under the covers and raised his arms. 

“Just come here.” 

Cyno scoffed but came as summoned, tucking his head beneath Alhaitham’s chin, all warm skin and limbs roped with muscle. “So I am on the right side of the bed. Is that acceptable?” 

Alhaitham shut his eyes and tried to memorize the feeling of soft hair tickling his neck, the scent of that oil that Cyno and Candace and many desert folk were fond of using, the motion of the muscles in Cyno’s back shifting beneath his fingertips. “We might have to conduct clinical trials.” 

Cyno yawned and flung an arm over Alhaitham’s waist. “Alright. When we get home.” 

Home. Yes. They were going home. Alhaitham moved as little as possible to lean over and turn off the lamp before settling into the mattress. Though, really, when he considered the idea, he realized that Sumeru City wasn’t his destination. This could be home. A little bed in a hidden temple, surrounded by slumbering ancient gods. As long as Cyno was holding him, anywhere could be home. 

And that was The Truth.

Chapter Text

Members of the Temple of Silence walked them out to where they’d left the sand sailer the next morning, sun peeking out over the cliffs and casting the shadow of the Khaenri’ahn golem out in long stretches that made it seem twice its size. They didn’t bother with the bags over their heads this time, but the Temple of Silence had disappeared into the cliffside when Alhaitham looked back over his shoulder. 

For so long the existence of the Temple of Silence had been a nagging question whenever Alhaitham studied his maps, decoded old runes, or trekked out across the sands, wondering if one of the desert’s mysteries was there, waiting to be found. Cyno had been the temptation to break and ask for the key to the puzzle, yet never taken advantage of, because Cyno would never tell and Alhaitham’s pride would never let him ask. But now that he could mark the temple on one of his maps, there was no satisfaction in finding his answer. Merely a relief that few ever had. 

“So, that scholar who wrote the journal…” Alhaitham finally asked, walking beside Tentamun. “...what happened to him?”

“We took him in and he lived to around eighty before dying in his sleep,” she answered easily. 

“So imprisonment?” 

She shrugged, the gold threads in her robe shining. “He was not allowed to leave. But he was not in a cell or in chains. He ate at our table and did his share to help our family thrive. Eventually, he was considered one of the family himself.”

“So your scrying is why Candace and I are allowed to go. We aren’t threats.” 

Tentamun nodded. “I offered your scholar the chance to leave, once I knew he understood why the Temple of Silence must not be found. But he chose to stay. Make of that what you will.”

Alhaitham thought of the scripture inside Hermanubis’ shrine, the long stretches of corridor with writing and pictures so old that hands tracing over them had almost rubbed them from existence. Yes. He could understand a scholar choosing to stay forever. Even if his findings would never be published, it would be a life of constant discovery. 

“Want me to steer?” Cyno offered as Candace unearthed the sailer from the sand that had blown over it in the night. 

“You’re funny,” was all she said. 

Alhaitham busied himself tying himself to the mast while Cyno got swamped by family members who wanted to say goodbye. Tentamun probably kept him in her arms for a full five minutes. Alhaitham understood the appeal. Waking up that morning with Cyno drooling on him had been unexpected bliss. He’d played with the ends of Cyno’s hair and swallowed a laugh at the way it made him scrunch his nose. It seemed that a very tired matra didn’t sleep with one eye open at all. It was fine. Alhaitham would decapitate any threat that came through the door. When Cyno had finally stirred and wiped his mouth with a little ‘eugh’ sound, he’d poked Alhaitham’s cheek. “I know you’re not asleep.” 

“You don’t know that.” He’d refused to open his eyes.

“I do. You breathe slower when you’re asleep.” 

Alright, that had deserved open eyes for a good bemused eyebrow raise. “Some people would find the fact you notice those things unsettling.” 

“As if you don’t notice them too.” Cyno had sat up in bed and stretched his arms up. “Come on. I don’t want to worry Tighnari any longer than necessary.” 

Which had been a valid point. They’d had a quick bean porridge breakfast and Alhaitham and Candace had officially been given back their weapons before they’d been weighted down with a new pack of supplies and escorted outside. 

“Don’t be reckless,” Tentamun scolded now, patting Cyno’s cheek. “I say this while knowing you will ignore my warning, of course.” 

“I’ll be careful, Jida,” Cyno replied, voice meek and obedient. He glared over his shoulder when
Alhaitham coughed pointedly. 

“I raised a liar,” Tentamun agreed, and Cyno huffed before giving her one last hug and joining Candace and Alhaitham at the sailer. Alhaitham patted the space in the hull between his spread legs. Cyno gave him a slightly doubtful look. Archons above, they’d shared a bed last night. This was hardly an absurd notion.

“Do you want to fall off? It would probably hurt.” Alhaitham lifted the length of rope he’d looped around his waist. Where did the remnants of his cape get to? Ah, there. He ‘oof’ed slightly when Cyno deposited himself in his lap, but set about padding the rope with fabric so it wouldn’t chafe against Cyno’s exposed skin. 

“I’m not going to break from a little rope burn,” Cyno murmured, though he laid back against Alhaitham’s chest and was still as Alhaitham tied them together. 

Alhaitham shrugged. “I promised your god I’d look after you. Because he also thinks you’re reckless.”

“Wait, you did what?”

Candace interrupted by finishing fiddling with the sail and sitting at the tiller. “Alright. We’re set.” She called over to the temple members in their brown robes. “Can we get a bit of a push until we catch the wind?” 

Several flocked over and shoved at the back of the sand sailer, feet kicking up sand until the sail snapped full of wind and they began to glide away down the canyon, picking up speed. Cyno squirmed in Alhaitham’s lap so he could turn and wave to his family, rapidly disappearing as the boat skidded along. Alhaitham closed his eyes against the sand flying into his face and simply wrapped his arms around Cyno when the other settled down. They’d left the Temple of Silence behind. 

It was a much more pleasant ride now that Cyno wasn’t dying. It let Alhaitham think of things that weren’t desperate pleas and promises. Such as how he was going to fulfill those promises, for one.“Cyno?” he called out after an unknown amount of very sandy time had passed. “You’ll teach me how to play Genius Invokation TCG, right?” Ugh, sand in his mouth. 

“Of course!” Cyno squirmed in his lap a little more, probably from excitement. “I have my deck with me! And when we get back to the city, we can buy you a Casket of Tomes and I’ll build you a starter deck. You can play against Kaveh for now, I think, as a beginner. I’m certain you’ll be more reliant on your support cards rather than your actual combatants—that’s much more your style. So I suggest…”

Alhaitham got lost about thirty seconds in. Cyno seemed to expect him to know the names of ten billion different cards and exactly what they did, which he definitely did not pick up from listening to Kaveh lose brilliantly in the background of whatever book he was reading. But Cyno seemed happy to talk about the one thing he never seemed to have an audience for and Alhaitham was happy just to hear his voice. He was a bit surprised that his libido didn’t even peek its guilty little head into sight. He would have thought having Cyno pressed so close and squirming around (and not dying) would be…at least mildly exciting. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t had urges . It was part of why Cyno had been such a revelation. All his life, Alhaitham had drifted through life vaguely aware that he didn’t seem to operate like everyone else. Schoolboy crushes had never formed. Teenage lust was something that happened to other people. The idea of finding a sort of special someone had been absurd. Love? That wasn’t for him. Physical attraction? He couldn’t care less. So what if he was different? It didn’t negatively impact his life. And then some random night, months after he and Cyno started working together, he’d glanced at Cyno’s sleeping face against the cushion of that stolen armchair and thought ‘pretty’. And then a few weeks later, while wrapping a bandage around his bicep, came the thought ‘I want to touch him’. But by that time the seeds had been planted and he’d noticed the trees beginning to grow and then his thoughts turned to ‘I want to touch him because I love him’ and by then there was no going back. He hadn’t wanted to go back. 

 But this? This was just comfortable. Like sharing a bed for the first time had been comfortable. There was no rush, no itinerary to frantically cross objectives off of. Hopefully someday he could poke his libido awake, but for now, he was completely content just to have Cyno there.

The sun rose high in the sky as they dipped under the cliffs and emerged from the canyon into the open plains of the desert, King Deshret’s Mausoleum that familiar hulking presence. Candace stopped the sailer a few times for water breaks, but otherwise they were heading straight for Aaru Village, leaving the shadow of the cliffs and simply following the shortest route now there was no temple to search for. Alhaitham estimated they’d be back at the village by tomorrow mid-morning, maybe a little later, judging by the wind and their position relative to the mausoleum. It had taken them about a day and a half with two hours of rest to find the Temple of Silence, so if they could shave that half a day off, that was pretty good timing. He knew Candace was just as eager as he was to return to Tighnari. Fuck but the last few days must have been hell for him. 

They stopped atop a sand dune with a nice vantage point when dusk arrived. The Temple of Silence had packed them far more food than necessary. “It’s vulture meat wrapped in cactus leaves,” Cyno said with a bit of a smile when Alhaitham picked at a suspicious looking piece of their meal. “And this is bread, obviously. And that’s duqqa in the flask. Dip your bread in it. It’s high in protein, so perfect for living out here.” 

“They were very kind to give us all this,” Candace said around her own piece of bread. 

“Well, they did jump us and tie us up and whack me on the head,” Alhaitham countered, touching the slight bump hidden beneath his hair. 

“That was your first time visiting since…since you were taken?” Candace continued on, ignoring him completely. 

Cyno frowned and folded his knees up to his chest, rolling some sort of bean paste between his palms. “Yes. I’ve thought about going back before but…I don’t know. How I left was so sudden and then there just never seemed to be time. First I had to focus on being a student, and then on being a matra, and then the General Mahamatra and that does fill up my calendar.” He took a bite of the paste, chewed slowly, and swallowed. “I could have taken time off but I always prefer using that time to visit Tighnari and Collei.” His frown deepened. “Which of course could just be an excuse for not visiting.” 

“But they were so happy to see you,” Candace pointed out, going all mother-mode again with her gentle voice. 

Cyno dug his feet into the sand and rolled the paste in his hands some more. “I wasn’t sure. I worried that they’d be disappointed. Hermanubis is the most powerful of the old gods and I…” He groaned. “Well, I definitely did disappoint. Turning up after twenty years with Hermanubis trying to kill me from the inside? Some great vessel I am.” 

Alhaitham picked up some of the vulture meat and squished it between his fingers. “Simply an outsider’s observation, but they seemed happier to have you back than Hermanubis.” He took a little bite. Not terrible. “That whole feast thing last night? That was about you being back, not about your god.” Actually, the meat was really good. The Temple of Silence lived in style. “Your jida was telling me a little bit about her scrying ability, and what she said was that she’s happiest when she can tell you are safe and happy with people who care about you. Not when you’re doling out justice using Hermanubis’ power.” He popped the rest of the vulture wrap in his mouth. Maybe he should have asked for recipe cards. Would the Temple of Silence have given him recipe cards? 

Cyno went very quiet for the next few minutes, digging his feet further and further into the sand. “Candace, do you want me to steer?” he asked at last. “I’m perfectly capable.” 

“No,” she answered simply, and ten minutes later, they were off again. This time, Alhaitham was able to appreciate the night sky as they sailed along, tilting his head back and staring up at the stars and sliver of moon. Even with the light of the mausoleum, the stars were so much more visible out here than in Sumeru City, or even the jungle, where the trees blocked the view. 

“What’s so fascinating?” Cyno asked at last, leaning his head back onto Alhaitham’s shoulder and lifting an arm to shield their faces from the sand spray. 

“I’ve never appreciated the nebulae you can spot from here.” Alhaitham pointed. “I’ll need to get my astronomy journals out when we get back. I want to chart that one.” 

Cyno hummed. “See the bright star in the middle? And the line of stars off to the left?”

Alhaitham followed his directions with his finger. “Yes?”

“Then down to that cluster there, and up again to the bright star. That’s the Birth of Athoth. Both Athoth and Hermanubis were born of the sky. They created the second generation of old gods from the desert sands, and the third generation is made up of the children of the gods. There are twelve in total. The only exception is Acheth.” He pointed to the moon. “Acheth was made of a piece of the moon and fell to Sumeru.” His voice got quieter, almost inaudible above the sound of the sailer, and Alhaitham lowered his arm to wrap around Cyno’s chest. “Acheth is a god of chaos and destruction. Athoth sensed her coming so the gods were prepared for her arrival, but even though she was captured immediately, her fall sowed seeds of destruction all across the desert that would later spur the ruin of other desert deities. But the old gods took her in and gave her a place at their council and she did rule relatively peacefully for a long time. But the war in Khaenri’ah woke something inside of her and she had to be sealed away where she would never find a vessel, because if we know anything, it’s that she would hollow that vessel out and be completely free to cause havoc. I know the one thing Hermanubis had me promise when I first made the contract with him was that I would stop Acheth if she ever became free.”

The sand sailer skimmed along for a long moment. 

“Cyno?”

“Yes?”

“When you say ‘the old gods’, you mean very old, don’t you? As in, the first gods of the desert.”

“Yes.” 

“Why did none of them fight to become Archons?”

“My jida always said that they were content with the believers they had and the space in the world they had carved out for themselves. Nobody else wanted the piece of desert they had claimed and none of the council saw the point in either endangering their lives or putting our little piece of sand at risk for the chance at something more. They had devoted followers and all had a good life. Even now, even though he sleeps within his shrine, Dinim’s blessings of bounty still affect the land—if you had time to explore the temple, you would have found chambers of crops that grow without sunlight and herds of animals that are always fertile. So while perhaps Hermanubis could have fought to become an Archon or to rule the desert alone, they chose to become forgotten by most of the world for the sake of their home and their believers.”

“That is very un-godlike behavior.” 

Cyno wiggled his shoulders and settled more comfortably against Alhaitham’s chest. “They are strange gods. And yet they survive, which is more than we can say for the other desert gods. And they have survived as Archons have died and been replaced or simply died with no successor. I don’t know when they will decide it is safe to be unsealed, but so far their instinct for preservation has been quite accurate.” Another pause, but this one was pregnant. “One could say a Hel-thy sense of survival,” Cyno finally added, so in other words, he was all better. “Wait, you won’t get that one.” He cleared his throat for the inevitable explanation. “Alright, so when Acheth fell, there was one god she brutally injured while being captured. Helris. Athoth and Hermanubis put him back together and he survived, but he also became known as a god of longevity and survival. So, when saying the gods had a Hel-thy sense of survival, I was referencing not only Helris’ position as a god of longevity, but also…” 

Alhaitham shut his eyes and perched his chin on top of Cyno’s head, humming occasionally. Was he going to get lectures in theology with all these oh-so creative jokes now? Whatever. TCG or ancient gods, he just wanted to hear Cyno talk. 

They took another break to let Candace rest in the middle of the night, and finally in the early hours of the morning, she allowed Cyno to take control of the tiller.  “I borrow this occasionally when my target has a head start,” he explained to Alhaitham while Candace tied herself in. She fell asleep probably thirty seconds into the ride and Alhaitham closed his eyes not long after, dozing. In other words, it was a boring ride. Luckily, Aaru Village came into view after just a few hours, and at mid-morning, Cyno pulled the sand sailer to a stop and folded in the sail. Alhaitham and Candace freed themselves from the mast and dug their packs out of the hull. They were all too exhausted to try hauling the boat back to the village. They had just made their way up the sand dune that allowed them to see the village as a whole when a figure darted out from among the buildings and nearly broke the beams of the bridge running across so quickly. Cyno sucked in a surprised breath and then he was running too, colliding with Tighnari in the middle so hard they stumbled and almost fell into the sand. Even from the dune, Alhaitham could hear Tighnari’s greeting. “You idiot! You absolute idiot! I was so worried. You know how worried I was? Very! Don’t ever do that again. I will kill you if you do that again…” 

“I’m sorry.” Cyno ran a soothing hand up and down Tighnari’s back. “I won’t do it again. I’m sorry.” 

Tighnari lifted his head from Cyno’s shoulder and scrubbed at his eyes as Candace and Alhaitham joined them. “Took you long enough.” 

“Missed you too,” Alhaitham snarked back. “You look awful. Did you sleep?”

“Yes!” Tighnari shot back in a voice that meant ‘no’. “Anyway, what happened? You found the Temple of Silence? Is Hermanubis still…are you still his vessel?” 

Cyno carefully extricated himself from Tighnari’s arms and held a hand out. A rope of sigils wound itself up his arm, the glow diminished in the sunlight. “I am. But I think we understand each other better now.” 

Tighnari ‘hmmph’ed and started thumping his way back towards the bridge. “Well, he’s on thin ice.” Like Tighnari would go and kill a god. Actually, he might try. Tighnari was a rather frightening individual. 

Alhaitham hung back so Tighnari and Cyno could walk together uninterrupted as Cyno started his own interrogation. “So, where did my weapon end up? And my headdress? You know people don’t really recognize me without them.”

“Collei has them. She’s in the city. We should get back to her. You scared the hell out of the both of us, you know.” 

“If we start off now then we’ll be back by tonight.”

“Are you insane? You nearly died! We are not heading back to Sumeru City until you are fully rested and recovered!”

“I’m recovered!” 

“You are not!”

“The vessel of an actual god of healing gave me the okay to head off across the desert. I’m fine!”

Candace laughed a little, falling into step beside Alhaitham. “He is fine, isn’t he?” 

Meaning: we actually did find the Temple of Silence and save his life, didn’t we? 

“Yeah,” Alhaitham agreed. “He is fine.” 

Candace glanced over at him, smile traveling up her face to become a sheen in her eyes. She leaned over and bumped Alhaitham with her shoulder. And he didn’t mind it. He liked it, actually. He bumped her back. 

His headset still hung useless around his neck. Alhaitham wasn’t sure he would bother building the walls back up. Not yet. Not today.

It wasn’t all bad, letting people in. Maybe next time, he could even forgo the life-and-death experience. 

***

Cyno won the argument in the end and they started off in the wagon within an hour, Candace standing just outside Aaru Village, watching them go. Alhaitham led the Sumpter Beast. It seemed fair. He’d had the journey in the sand sailer to confirm Cyno was alive. Tighnari needed his own time. He could hear Tighnari chatting as they walked along, with Cyno interjecting every once in a while. There were a few groans that indicated a joke had just been told and explained in full. 

He had to laugh at the way Cyno slumped down in the wagon when they traveled through Caravan Ribat. He really was bothered by not having his weapon or full uniform. They steered the wagon to the side of the road outside the city and gorged on the rest of the food the Temple of Silence had given them. It was sort of obvious from the way Tighnari’s eyes kept darting to Alhaitham’s bag of maps that he was dying to ask where it was. Well, Alhaitham would leave that to Cyno. If he felt he could trust Tighnari with the location, then that was his choice. 

It was peaceful. Walking was simple. Listening to Tighnari and Cyno banter was pleasant. And the thought of Cyno coming home to him was warmth in his chest. It was so odd how that fact had settled over him. He loved Cyno. And it seemed like Cyno loved him back. It was…it was like a truth that had always been waiting to be told, and now that it had been, it seemed like he had always known. Maybe it was the fact that the truth had been revealed under…unique circumstances, but he preferred to think that it was simply an inevitability. An inevitable conclusion since the moment they met, a blanket of reality on his shoulders. 

Without trotting the Sumpter Beast, it took them until midnight to reach Sumeru City. A lantern lit up an anxious young face sitting on the steps of one of the homes on the outskirts. Tighnari sighed. “I thought I told her to stay at a hotel,” he grumbled, and hopped off the moving wagon to where Collei waited. But there was another figure waiting on the steps. 

“Cyrus,” Cyno said, and hopped off the wagon as well because who cares about road safety? Alhaitham stopped the Sumpter Beast and watched as Collei ran right past Tighnari’s scolding to throw her arms around Cyno, Cyno looking a little shocked at the show of affection and Collei looking a little shocked she had given it. 

“I’m glad you’re alive,” she muttered, and Cyno patted her head awkwardly, just to squawk a moment later when the professor grabbed him around the neck and ruffled his hair with a hearty laugh far too loud for this time at night. 

“Gave me a fright when young Collei here told me what was happening. Good to see you, kiddo. And Tighari, always nice to have you around.” He peered in the dim light of the lantern. “And the Scribe. You’re a bit of a stranger, I’ll admit, but this whole affair has been stranger than I ever imagined could happen so why not another oddity or two?” He ruffled Cyno’s hair again, resulting in a sigh. 

“Cyrus, I’m not eight anymore.” 

Cyrus released Cyno just to stick his hands on his hips. He wasn’t a particularly large man, but he seemed to take up so much more space than his body allowed. It was sort of how Cyno operated. Thinking about Tentamun and her commanding presence and the way Cyrus’s personality expanded beyond the reaches of his skin and bones, it was little wonder Cyno had ended up the way he was. “Do I still count as your dad?” Cyrus asked, and Cyno’s expression softened. 

“You’ll always be my father.” 

“Well, then I’ll treat you like an eight-year-old if I want to.” 

Alhaitham stifled a laugh as he looped the Sumpter Beast’s reins around a branch—why couldn’t the sages be as easy as Sumpter Beasts?—and went to shake Cyrus’ proffered hand. “It’s nice to see you, Professor. I might be a stranger to you but your reputation in the Academiya was impossible to ignore.” 

Another far too loud laugh. “I’m hardly a professor anymore, and that reputation wasn’t all good. Buttering me up?” 

“Alhaitham is always very concerned with what others think of him,” Cyno replied, deadpan. “Come on. Let’s get inside. Has Collei been with you this whole time?”

Cyrus went on talking as Cyno steered him inside his home. “Well, I saw the young lady waiting in the road and decided to talk with her and a little bit of wine later I found out the full story…”

“Collei!” Tighnari chided. “Dad!” Cyno gasped, affronted. 

“What? In my youth, the drinking age was much lower than today’s standards.” 

“It’s not your youth!” 

Alhaitham stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered inside Cyrus’ home. He wasn’t sure if he would be welcome to stay long, but this was entertaining. 

“But Master, you drink all the time!” Collei.

“Don’t be such a stickler for rules! As if you and Tighnari didn’t get into mischief often enough as students.” Cyrus.

“I’m an adult! You’re a child. And you shouldn’t let strange men give you alcohol.” Tighnari. 

“Cyrus, if you bring the boar incident into this…” Cyno.

“But he’s Cyno’s dad! He isn’t strange!” Collei.

“Oh, come now! The Great Boar Run is one of my best stories!” Cyrus.

The way Cyno and Tighnari managed to synchronize their groans was very impressive, actually. Tighnari pressed fingers to the bridge of his nose. Cyno rubbed at his temples. The goofy grin fell from Cyrus’ face and he squeezed Cyno’s shoulder. 

“Your bed is still ready. You want to stay here for the night? All of you? I can get some stew going. Maybe some tea? Sound good?” 

Actually, as much as Alhaitham was looking forward to getting back to the house and to his nice comfortable bed and bringing Cyno with him—home, home, home—a night in the confines of Cyrus’ place didn’t sound bad. No more walking, for example. And the ex-professor had decorated his walls with what had to be hundreds of pages of notes on Spantamad teachings. It was definitely worth a look. He caught the way Cyno’s eyes flickered to him and smiled a bit. If he’d nearly died and his grandmother was still alive, he would gratefully welcome a night back where he had spent his childhood. 

It was an easy calm as the five of them gathered around the fireplace eating stew and drinking sweet, milky tea. Cyrus rocked back in his chair and sighed. “I’ll sleep right here. Not good for an old man to move around too much, eh?”

“Are you having joint pain?” Tighnari’s ears perked up as he asked. Cyrus just shrugged. 

“I’m getting old. It’s natural. And it was much more chivalrous to offer Collei my bed for the past few nights. Didn’t have to air the place out, for one. And I figured Cyno might need his own bed when he got back.” 

It was an easy sort of ‘when’. Cyrus had listened to Collei’s whole story and decided he better be prepared for when his son got back. It was a sort of rock-solid relief that made Alhaitham smile in spite of himself. 

“Anyway.” Cyrus waved a hand. “Either you lot can squish up or find some blankets to make the floor a little softer. It’s your choice.”

Squishing up sounded perfect.

Alhaitham helped Cyno gather dishes while Tighnari and Collei did a quick washing job. Cyrus had fallen asleep in his rocking chair five minutes after finishing his tea. Tighnari’s canines flashed when he yawned. “So…I take it you two are sharing?” He pointed between Cyno and Alhaitham. Alhaitham raised a brow. So Cyno had divulged quite a bit during his ride with Tighnari. He was surprised he hadn’t been threatened with dismemberment yet. It was probably coming, knowing Tighnari. Collei had gone pink in the cheeks. How scandalous. Alhaitham wondered how fast and far the news would spread of the Academiya Scribe and General Mahamatra  falling for each other. Probably like a flash flood. 

The upper story of Cyrus’ home was a little cramped, not really meant to hold bedrooms, but Alhaitham walked stooped and the rest of them were short enough not to matter. Cyno grabbed Alhaitham’s wrist in two fingers and led him towards his childhood room, waving goodnight to Tighnari and Collei as he did so. Those two probably shared tents and cots and…spongy mushroom beds all the time while completing their Forest Ranger duties. Cyno’s room had also been taken over by Spantamad studies, though a few kamera photos dotted the walls. A very young Cyno next to a Cyrus with no gray in his beard. A slightly older Cyno in Academiya uniform. Cyno and Tighnari, arms around each other and grinning like fools. For some reason, what had to look like two hundred wild boars milling around on Treasure Street. Alhaitham would really have to find out about the boar story. A couple more photos of Cyrus and Cyno, and then Cyno on his graduation day. And then what had to be the day he became General Mahamatra, solemn, dressed in full uniform and polearm at the ready. He looked so…innocent, even with that stern expression. He’d not yet seen the things that would cause him to harden. 

Untrue. He’d already been taken from his home, treated like a lab weasel until Cyrus snatched him away to safety, and went through the Academiya as the only student from the desert, working twice as hard to appear half as good in people’s eyes. His years of being the General Mahamatra had simply let those experiences form an armor he was careful to maintain until the moment he felt safe without it. 

Like now. Cyno sat on the end of the bed, armor fallen away, walls just piles of bricks torn down around him, and smiled at Alhaitham, a smug little smile. “Do limbs need to intertwine?” 

“We need to swap sides of the bed,” Alhaitham answered quickly so Cyno wouldn’t get the idea he was funny or anything. (He definitely thought he was being funny.) “Those clinical trials I mentioned.” 

“Ah, yes. Those.” Cyno flopped down onto the mattress, not bothering to remove his uniform. They were probably both coated with sand, grit sticking to old sweat and catching in their hair. Alhaitham could understand now how Cyno always seemed to bring half the desert back with him. He joined Cyno on the bed, stealing the right side this time. 

“Are our limbs entwined now?” 

“You’re not funny.” 

Cyno hummed and scooted close until he could grab Alhaitham’s waist. “No. I’m not. You’re funny. That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard you say. Is the Academiya Sage so afraid of the word ‘cuddle’?” 

Of the list of words Alhaitham thought would never leave the General Mahamatra’s mouth…

“ Cuddling ,” Alhaitham corrected, gathering Cyno close to his chest, and now, Archons above, he’d said it too, “Is reserved for young children and their stuffed toys. This is a more intimate and adult…action, and…”

“It’s cuddling,” Cyno informed him, and Alhaitham could hear the smirk in his voice. 

“Just go to sleep,” he muttered, and Cyno laughed, body shaking in Alhaitham’s hold. His arm around Alhaitham’s waist tightened, like he was daring someone to try to separate them. 

The left side, Alhaitham decided. He’d preferred the left side of the bed. His hair didn’t flop in his face the same way, obscuring his vision. And with all the promises he had made, desperate out on the desert sands, he wanted to be able to record every detail of these moments, make a list and memorize it, make it sacred. 

He would not take a single second of this for granted, what with how close he’d come to never having it at all. 

***

Cyrus let them sleep in. Alhaitham woke at the sound of Tighnari’s boots on the stairs. Cyno was dead to the world. He’d need a few more days of solid rest to get back those matra senses. Alhaitham enjoyed lying there until the knock on the door roused them. “Breakfast!” Collei called through the wood. “Well, brunch, I think. There’s food.” Cyno groaned just a little and rolled out of bed to answer her.

She was waiting with Cyno’s headdress and weapon when he opened the door, going a little pink once more when her eyes caught Alhaitham still in bed. “H-here you go!” she squeaked. “I kept them hidden.” 

Cyno stuffed the headdress on so fast his hands nearly blurred. “Thank you Collei.” 

Breakfast was pancakes. A Mondstadt meal, if Alhaitham wasn’t mistaken. The fluffy texture on his tongue was a little unfamiliar, but Tighnari and Cyno at least seemed used to the meal. He wondered how many times Cyno had taken Tighnari home over the course of their friendship. Collei seemed delighted. 

“Collei and I met in Mondstadt,” Cyno explained. “I think she always enjoys her trips back.” 

Wait, what? That was a story Alhaitham didn’t know. Well, he knew about the trips back—like he wouldn’t be aware of Cyno traveling to Mondstadt—but he hadn’t a clue that was how the two of them met. 

Was that when Cyno saved Collei’s life?

Cyno was a little insistent on getting back to his post. Even if he’d asked for a few days off, he was long overdue. So it was around noon that they gathered outside Cyrus’ home. Collei gave Cyno another hug of mutual surprise. “Scare me like that again and you’re dead,” Tighnari warned, and then his gaze wandered over to Alhaitham. The threat was there, no words needed. Dismemberment, definitely. Or being tied to a tree in the middle of a Withering Zone. That would be creative. Still, Tighnari’s expression broke after a moment and he rolled his eyes with a little grin. Definitely calling them both idiots in his head. 

Like a friend would. So that was where he stood with Tighnari, at the end of all this. Or maybe at the beginning and he didn’t know it yet. Maybe Tighnari had come to him as the guy with the maps and as a friend. He was still a little too intelligent for Alhaitham’s comfort, but that was alright. None of what had happened over the past few days had exactly had Alhaitham’s comfort as a priority. 

He rather liked the idea of being able to place Tighnari squarely in the ‘definitely a friend’ category. With Candace. And Kaveh, on their armistice days. Cyno had recently kicked himself out of that box into a brand new one, but his presence still lingered. It was a nice box, Alhaitham decided. He could even make it bigger.

Cyrus tweaked the ribbons of Cyno’s headdress and ordered him to come for dinner more often. Apparently his tomato crop this year would be to die for. And then they were off, popping the bubble of Cyno’s childhood and emerging back into the hustle of Sumeru City .

They were a bit of an awkward procession walking a Sumpter Beast through the streets at noon, but luckily no one wanted to get in the way of the General Mahamatra with his big old headdress and his polearm, so it wasn’t as slow going as it might have been. Alhaitham and Cyno walked Tighnari and Collei right to the gate, Cyno made promises to visit and not die, and then waited until the trees had swallowed them up, Collei turning to wave every five seconds until she disappeared. 

“So, you met Collei in Mondstadt?” Alhaitham prodded as he and Cyno started for the Academiya. 

“That’s not my story to tell,” Cyno answered shortly. Alright, fine. Alhaitham could respect that. 

“I’ll find that journal and burn it.”

“Please do.” 

“You’re stressed.” 

“A little.” 

“You should come to my office. Better chairs.” 

Cyno shot him a small smile. “Another time. I should be close at hand in case anything has come up. Like that Amurta scholar we agreed to set a guard on, remember?” 

Alright, fine . “But you’ll come home tonight?” 

A firm nod. “I’ll come home tonight.”

Good. “I’ll wait for you. I’m sure there’s something that happened that people want me to take care of.” 

“That is the problem with proving your competence. Then people have expectations.” 

Alhaitham sighed dramatically as they continued up the winding way. “Poor us. Tragically competent.” 

Cyno reached out and grabbed his hand to squeeze twice and let go. “But then we wouldn’t have gotten so much quality overtime together.” They rounded the corner and the front doors of the Academiya came into view. A passing matra bowed their head at Cyno. “Let’s go home tonight,” Cyno suggested in an order sort of voice, and left Alhaitham to walk the rest of the way while he stopped to grill the matra on everything he had missed. 

Alhaitham’s fingers tapped at his headset. Should he slip it back on and block out the world? Maybe for now. Just while dealing with particularly idiotic people. 

Baby steps.

His ears were covered once more and he started up the soft background music to his life. Tonight he would let his walls back down. He wouldn’t need them anymore.

***

Cyno must have had a fuckton of paperwork because Alhaitham was waiting outside his office for ages. He’d rather expected it though, hence the book he carried. The library staff were in a bit of a tizzy over a small fire breaking out, but otherwise the building was calm. (He’d been careful, of course. Only the one little journal went up in flames. But it had been an amusing emergency to watch unfold.)

Finally, Cyno emerged from his office, tired but bright-eyed. “So that Amurta scholar was indeed selling off illegal strains of a virus to Treasure Hoarders,” he told Alhaitham with a decisive little nod. “The threat has been neutralized.” 

“Great. Home. I’m hungry. I hope Kaveh cooked.” 

Cyno seemed to have worked off a bit of that stress by his day in-office, at least. He tugged at Alhaitham’s sleeve to get him to hurry up. Alhaitham slipped his headset around his neck and felt for his Vision at his waist. He needed to get a new cape made. Maybe tomorrow. He doubted any sort of pressing matter would come up. Or at least, one he considered more pressing than a visit to the tailor’s. 

The Academiya was nearly empty, the path back down to the main city just as much so. It was as they walked that Alhaitham’s eye caught on a message board. One of those idiots had hung up a sign complaining about the matra hindering progress and how the General Mahamatra wasn’t a true believer in the pursuit of knowledge. Nonsense of course, and Cyno had never seemed bothered by it, but Alhaitham thought of the flash flood news their relationship would create and felt his stomach flip. “Hey.” Alhaitham took Cyno’s arm and pulled him to the edge of the path, wary of eavesdroppers. He wanted to set his stance on this now. “I don’t want to hide what we are from the world. You know I don’t give a damn what people think of me, but I need to know how you feel.”

Cyno frowned and fiddled with one of the tassels of his headdress. “People will gossip.” 

Yeah. That was the problem. But it was fine, if Cyno didn't want the world to know. They could keep this secret. Certainly two people as intelligent as they were could keep this a secret…

But then Cyno shook his head and smirked. “Usually the Academiya gossip is nonsense.” He pointed around Alhaitham to the message board. “We should give them something real to talk nonsense about.” He looked to Alhaitham then. “People might go after you, if they know what you mean to me.” 

Alhaitham shook his head with a little sigh of relief. Let the people talk nonsense. Brilliant. “Amazingly, after facing down a god, I feel alright about that.” 

Cyno reached to tap Alhaitham’s scabbard. “Just spar with me once in a while so I know your fighting skills aren’t getting dull. You do spend most of your time behind a desk.”

Sure, if that was all it took to keep Cyno happy. As long as he didn’t lose his head. “So you’re alright with everyone knowing?” 

Cyno grinned. He’d been doing that so often the last few days. Post-dying of course. “Amazingly, after facing down a god, everything else pales in comparison.”

Archons, Alhaitham loved him. He crossed his arms and stared him down, the words piling up on his tongue, filling his mouth, flowing down his throat. I love you, I love you, I love you . He swallowed them down with a burn. “It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if I confessed now, would it?” 

Cyno shook his head. “I couldn't even pretend to be shocked.” 

“Thought so.” And, because he could, because Sumeru could have interesting nonsense to gossip about for once, he reached out to grab Cyno’s hand. Small hands, deceptive hands, hiding the muscles in his wrists. “Let’s go home.” 

***

Kaveh took to the idea of another roommate with amazing ease, which made Alhaitham worry. Had he somehow given himself away? Stared at Cyno for a little too long, made some suspicious comment, somehow revealed his secrets to Kaveh, of all people, maybe before he even realized he had a secret? 

“I cooked for two,” was all Kaveh said when they got home. 

“Cyno’s going to live here now,” Alhaitham informed him. 

Kaveh looked up from the blueprint he was working on. “Oh. Well. I guess I’ll cook for three from now on.” 

Alhaitham grabbed Cyno’s shoulders and steered him towards the washroom, divesting him of weapon and headdress as he did so. “Take a bath. You’re still sandy.” 

It was while Kaveh set the table for three and Alhaitham buried his face back in his book that he asked the question: “So is Cyno staying on the sofa or…?”

“He’s sleeping with me,” Alhaitham said, and turned a page. 

“Alright. So that’s settled. Wine?” 

“Please.” 

Kaveh just hummed as he grabbed the wine and their mugs. He was taking this disturbingly in stride. 

“Did someone say something to you?” Alhaitham asked, lowering his book to watch Kaveh overtop. 

“No. I’m just not as dumb as you always treat me.” Kaveh did send him a rude hand gesture at that point, balancing the universe out once more. “You’ve been acting weird about him for months. Anyway, dinner is ready whenever Cyno’s out of the bath. You look pretty sandy too. What were you doing out in the desert?” 

“Holding an audience with ancient gods,” Alhaitham answered, just to be vague and annoying, which was when Cyno emerged from the washroom, still wringing out his hair. 

“Dinner smells very good, Kaveh. Thank you for making it stretch.” 

Kaveh sighed dramatically, not that he knew how to sigh any other way. “Well, I would say you need to set aside Mora to contribute to the grocery fund now, but you could probably buy this entire house for yourself from your TCG nest egg.”

“Part of it, probably,” Cyno agreed, since he still didn’t always quite catch sarcasm when it was leveled at him, and went to take a seat. “I can try to learn a few recipes so I can contribute to making meals, but I don’t think you’d find my usual fare up to standard.” 

Alhaitham slid into his seat next to Cyno and reached to stroke a hand down his back. “Those vulture wraps weren’t half bad.”

“Do you really want me grocery shopping each time I visit the desert?” 

“The duqqa stuff was decent too.” 

“I can make that with ingredients from here, yes.” Cyno speared a tomato and glanced over at Kaveh. “You’re looking at us strangely.” 

“Well…it’s a little unexpected,” Kaveh admitted, and buttered his bread. “A few days ago you were just like normal, but one trip out to the desert and now you’re moving in? And being all domestic and…touchy? It seems awful fast. Just what the hell happened?” 

“Ancient gods,” Alhaitham repeated. Cyno kicked him under the table. 

“A trip,” he answered instead, and something in Cyno’s voice closed the subject for good. 

Two hours later, with Alhaitham bathed, floor swept of sand, dishes washed, and some of Kaveh’s old clothes foraged up for some sort of pajamas for Cyno to wear, Cyno bid Kaveh a sincere goodnight and good luck on his blueprints before following Alhaitham to his bedroom. There it was. The fantasy. Alhaitham flipped the covers down and claimed the left side of the bed. Cyno raised his brows. “Are the clinical trials over?” 

“I have wanted you in my bed for quite some time,” Alhaitham told him, fluffing the pillows. “Granted, I sort of imagined I would be on the sofa.”

Cyno circumvented some piles of books and clambered onto the bed. It was odd how he looked more vulnerable now in long pants and a t-shirt that gaped at the neck than he ever did in uniform. He looked softer. “You’d be bothering Kaveh. His client wants those plans in two days. But why would you be on the sofa?”

Ah, fantasy time. “Well, you would come back from a mission all beaten up,” Alhaitham explained. “But I would take you here instead, and patch you up, and then you could sleep in my bed and I would take the sofa.” His mouth twitched up on one side. “I told you that I would be happy with whatever you would give me. If what I got was sleeping on the sofa while knowing you were safe and probably getting sand in my sheets, then I would be happy. Of course I’ll take more. And you can have as much as you want in return.” 

Cyno tipped his head to one side, studying Alhaitham with that gaze that scared the hell out of criminals. Alhaitham loved being the one stealing his full attention. “How long have you felt this way?” he asked at last. 

Alhaitham shrugged. “For some time. Longer than I realize, probably. One day, I just knew. And I was ready to tell you, except the night I finally gathered the gumption, it was Tighnari who showed up, telling me to grab my maps because you were dying.” 

“That was incredibly bad timing.” 

“I’m fairly certain that ‘incredibly bad timing’ is our calling card.” 

Cyno flopped into the pillows. “Possibly.” He tucked himself up next to Alhaitham as soon as Alhaitham turned off the lamp and lay down. Cyno was very warm. He always brought the desert with him. 

“I still get to redo my confession,” Alhaitham reminded him, threading fingers into Cyno’s still damp hair. 

“And I will pretend to be surprised.”

***

He waited a week. A week was long enough. Alhaitham needed those words in the open again. He stole a copy of Cyno’s schedule and planned. If he could plan a coup, he could plan a surprise.

So finally, a golden afternoon, Alhaitham let himself into the matra meeting room. Heads snapped up. Fake laughter died on lips. At least Alhaitham seemed to have saved them from puns. Cyno stopped from where he’d been speaking at the front of the room and frowned. “Is something wrong?” 

Alhaitham nodded solemnly and walked briskly up to Cyno before bending down and sweeping his hair back, a gesture far too intimate to go unnoticed by the room. “I love you,” he whispered in Cyno’s ear, and had to bite back a grin as he spun around to march right back out the door. He allowed himself a little peek as the door was closing behind him. Cyno had gone completely red in the face. Excellent. 

Alhaitham reached his office, heart feeling like it was about to burst, and sat down in his comfortable stolen chair. Wait for it. Wait for it. And there he was, causing a commotion as he raced up the stairs. Cyno burst into his office, still red, slammed the door shut, and stalked over to Alhaitham. He was gentle, though, as he pushed Alhaitham’s headset away. Less gentle throwing his headdress to the floor with a clatter. “I’m kissing you now,” he declared, and grabbed Alhaitham’s shirt in a fist to clash their teeth together in a messy, awkward, beautiful kiss. Alhaitham got his hands on Cyno’s hips, pulling him down to straddle his lap so their height difference wouldn’t present such a problem, and then guided Cyno closer by the small of his back. “Infuriating,” Cyno informed him between kisses, and then pulled back so he could meet Alhaitham’s eyes, hand unclenching in his shirt and migrating down to above his pounding heart. “I love you back.” 

“Yeah. Your god sort of told me,” Alhaitham said, just to tease, and Cyno groaned before leaning in and trying for a gentler kiss, one that didn’t threaten to bruise their lips. Yes. This was something Hermanubis hadn’t been able to steal. Cyno, warm in his lap, chapped lips moving slowly against his own. Perfect, perfect, perfect. 

“Umm, Grand Scribe?” came a hesitant voice from outside the door. 

“He’s occupied,” Cyno snapped in that terrifying matra voice, and Alhaitham muffled a laugh into their next kiss. The entire Academiya would be abuzz come sunset, talking about some real nonsense for once. But it didn’t matter. 

“I love you,” he whispered. “Whatever you give me. Your smiles, your laughter, anything. I want it forever. And whatever you want of me…”

Cyno shut him up with a kiss. “Gods, Alhaitham, you don’t understand at all. I realized I loved you so hard that it woke up the god sleeping inside me. Can you imagine just how much I love you back?” His hands moved to cup Alhaitham’s jaw, callused fingers stroking gently. “I give you everything. And I’ll take everything in return. I want a life shared with you.” He paused, a bit of red returning to dust his cheeks, glanced away, and then nodded firmly. “And I think your office has room for two desks.”

I will find all the things that make you smile. I will write a list and make it sacred.  

I want to etch you into my life and never let you go.

Now that you’re here, I can’t believe I never noticed your absence before. There was a space beside me everywhere I went that you were meant to fill. It was simply vacant for far too long. 

Desperate promises delivered across the desert, promises made hoping he wasn’t steering them to Cyno’s death. 

Love truly is messy and irrational and I’ll probably spend my whole life trying to understand it.

An admission to a god who understood even less about love than he did. But it had worked. 

Thank you, Hermanubis, for finally listening. You know, once you stopped being a stubborn ass about it all. Thank you for agreeing to be confused about love.

Alhaitham brushed Cyno’s hair to the side and left a soft kiss upon his neck, right above the band that hid the sigils. He shivered when Cyno’s fingers lingered around his ear, almost ticklish. Their armor was off, their walls crumbling. Maybe they weren’t created as puzzle pieces made to fit but Alhaitham didn’t care about completing the perfect picture, as long as Cyno was the one kneeling beside him, putting together a bit of sky to call their own, like desert gods claiming just a little spit of sand and happiness for their people. Yes, they could make do with a sliver of sky.

“Just promise to always come home,” Alhaitham whispered, shutting his eyes and finding sanctuary. “Come home to me. I’ll be there.” 

“I’m home.” Alhaitham could hear the words as a vibration in Cyno’s throat. “And I’ll always come back.”

Good. Alhaitham inhaled the scent of desert oil and warm skin. Make a home in me, like I have made in you.

“I’ll always come back,” Cyno repeated, softer. And Cyno would never break a pledge. Never.

Alhaitham nodded, winding the ends of Cyno’s hair around his fingers, so gentle. “I’ll be waiting.”  Waiting with a pile of books to pass the time and first-aid kit ready. Waiting to wrap twisted ankles and bandage cuts and hopefully take those stitches out soon to see if the wound would scar. Waiting to take Cyno to bed and steal the left side. Waiting to kiss him deep and taste the sand because Cyno always brought the desert back because the desert lived in him. Waiting to love him and be loved back and to discover what sort of messy and irrational and utterly human an adventure that would be.

Always waiting for the sound of the right footsteps. 

He had made those a sacred thing already long ago.