Chapter Text
Constant impact. Until the sand broke. Until the inside broke.
Alhaitham—Spider-Man—knew where to hit. How to stop him.
He had webbed Zandik's—The villain, the Doctor—sword away mid-combat. Far enough that his sand couldn’t reach without leaving Zandik defenseless.
Then Alhaitham drove his fist through Zandik’s chest wall of sand. Again. And again. Zandik screamed. Sand tried to reform—but Alhaitham was faster. Stronger.
Time was ticking.
Kaveh was stuck waiting in the broken roof.
This needed to end.
Alhaitham slammed Zandik through a concrete pillar, stone crumbling around them, and as the impact stunned the man, Alhaitham saw it—sand revealing pale, raw flesh.
Thwip—the sword came back to Alhaitham’s hand.
Without hesitation, he plunged it into Zandik’s chest.
The scream that tore from Zandik’s throat was inhuman.
The controlled sand around him pounded on the floor—as if screaming with him. It convulsed, writhed. It pulled Alhaitham backward, the sword nearly ripping from his hands as Zandik bled behind his awful beak mask.
Then—
A horrifying crack.
The rest of the roof buckled.
There was an alarmed shout.
Kaveh.
Alhaitham’s heart stopped. He turned on instinct, sprinting back toward the previous rupture in the rooftop—
The Doctor’s sand snapped around his legs, yanking him back.
“Wait, I’m okay!” Kaveh’s voice, loud over the chaos. “Just beat him up!”
But Alhaitham couldn’t. He fired a frustrated line of webbing to Zandik’s chest and ripped him across the rooftop, pinning him to a shattered beam. He ran back to the hole, skidding on ash and rock.
And there Kaveh was.
Bodily wrapped around a broken support beam, gripping the ledge with bloody fingers.
Alhaitham shot out a thicker, braided line of web—reinforced, double-twisted, just like he’d practiced for extreme weight.
“Grab on!”
Kaveh did. Shaking, gasping, holding onto both the support beam and the web.
But then—
“SPIDER-MAN!”
A voice soaked in fury.
Alhaitham was slammed away. He scrambled up, blocking another blow, dodging a third.
The sword was still lodged in Zandik’s chest. He was slower. Weaker. Yet, he was desperate.
Then—
A low groan of metal.
“Alhaitham!” Kaveh’s voice again. Panicked.
Alhaitham webbed Zandik away again, launched toward the sound, swinging over broken rubble and scaffolding.
His eyes darted wildly inside the hole.
Kaveh was still holding the braided web-line, swinging gently in the open air, but far below the broken rooftop. A gash cut across his temple. His palms red and raw.
But he was smiling.
“I’m fine!” he shouted, breathless. “I caught it!”
Alhaitham barely managed to exhale—
“I don’t think he’ll be fine, Spider-Man.”
A sandy tendril, gleaming with glassy sharpness, snapped through the air—
And sliced clean through the web-line.
For one sickening second, the world held still.
Then—
Kaveh was falling.
Alhaitham saw it—the impossible, slow-motion arc of Kaveh’s body, arms flailing, red and gold a blur against the grey concrete of the Zandik Building.
He could see the way his eyes were wide.
Could see the terror in them.
Time slowed. The world blurred.
Alhaitham leapt, full body stretching, lungs burning, chest splitting open with pure terror.
His webs caught.
Too many at once. Too fast.
One—thwip—shot to Kaveh’s shoulder. Another—thwip—wrapped around his knee. Then another and another and another. Each one desperate. Each anchor a prayer.
He couldn’t care if he used up all of them.
Slow him down. Need drag. Reduce terminal velocity. Use physics. Physics—
He attached the lines to Kaveh’s limbs, his torso, his waist—and every surface he passed. Steel beams. Concrete slabs. Half-shattered walls.
The webs pulled taut.
And for half a second, Alhaitham thought—
He thought he had him.
He had to have him.
But—
Kaveh’s body jerked midair. Momentum fought restraint. Force. Deceleration.
Then the last web line ripped free—
A sound cracked through the chamber.
Like stone shattering.
Like something sacred breaking.
Kaveh’s body hit the ground.
It didn’t register.
Not right away.
Alhaitham dropped.
Landed hard beside him, too fast, too loud—heart in his throat, everything suspended.
“Kaveh—”
He reached out—
fingers brushing golden hair, then pale skin—
And froze.
Kaveh’s body was crumpled. Head turned to the side. Blood pooling too quickly, too dark, from beneath him.
His eyes—closed.
Too still.
Alhaitham’s mind pieced it all—too fast, too clear.
He blinked.
Once. Twice.
This wasn’t—
“Kaveh?” he tried again, softer. “Hey. Hey—”
He touched his shoulder. Shook it. Just once.
No response.
No movement.
Nothing.
His hands pulled him in, cupped his cheek—like he could rewind this, undo it, fix it. But Kaveh’s head lolled. No resistance. He touched Kaveh’s chest. His throat. Felt for breath. For a pulse. For anything.
His mind screamed no respiration, no cardiac rhythm. But his heart—
“No—”
He pressed his fingers harder to Kaveh’s wrist. To his collarbone. To the soft space just beneath his jaw.
Still nothing.
“Kaveh.” Louder this time. As if volume could undo reality. “Wake up.”
And yet—his eyes remained closed.
Silence. Stillness. Too much of both.
Alhaitham shook his head, eyes wild now, heart slamming against his ribs. “No. It’s your head. You’re only—You’re unconscious. You just—hit your head—”
But his voice was cracking.
Splintering around the truth.
That sat beside him like a shadow.
Kaveh was—
He gathered him closer. Trembling arms around limp limbs, blood soaking into his suit.
“You’re okay. I’ve got you,” he insisted. “You'll be okay. You said I owe you, remember? We’re—we’re going home —and you’ll get your answers.” His throat tightened. “I need to—”
Call for help. Call for Lumine. Anyone.
But his hands were shaking too hard against his comms. “Traveler, I—”
His voice was strangled. Unrecognizable. His hand fell.
He didn’t even know if anyone could help now.
“Please.” A whisper. A plea. “Kaveh. Say something—”
There was no breath. No flutter of fingers. No second chance.
Just a body in his arms.
Warm—but rapidly fading.
A sob clawed its way up and out, sharp and involuntary.
“No—no, no—” His forehead pressed to Kaveh’s chest. Fingers smearing the blood on his cheek. “You’re not —you don’t get to do this. Don’t leave—not now —”
The world didn’t move.
Didn’t blink.
Didn’t care.
Alhaitham let out a broken sound. Wordless. Ragged.
“Please,” he whispered. Again. Again. “Kaveh, please.”
And still, nothing changed.
No one answered.
Just the unbearable quiet of someone already gone.
His com device crackled in the distance.
A creak of boots. A slow approach. Then—
“…Alhaitham?”
Cyno.
But Alhaitham didn’t lift his head. Didn’t speak. Didn’t care that his identity was out there in the open.
He was still holding Kaveh.
Still holding tight.
Like he might hear a whisper back.
Alhaitham withdrew from everything after that.
From Cyno. From Tighnari. From Lumine and Paimon.
From the fight. From the city.
They had tried.
Cyno showed up at the apartment once, eyes tired. “Let me in. You need to eat,” he said. Alhaitham closed the door without a word.
Tighnari left a bag of groceries on the doorstep later. Alhaitham opened the fridge. Saw Kaveh’s favorite yogurt still there. And threw the entire thing away.
Paimon knocked on his window incessantly. Lumine threatened to break his front door.
He never even heard them over the silence of the apartment.
Spider-Man was dead.
First went the mask. Then the suit. Then the web-shooters. Carefully destroyed dismantled.
Alhaitham made sure of it.
He didn’t check the news. Didn’t ask about the city.
Didn’t ask about the reactor. Or the Doctor. Or the thumbdrive.
Didn’t care to tell anyone when he had seen it fall out of Kaveh’s hand, covered in blood. Because Alhaitham didn’t see it as the city’s salvation. Didn't see it as the greater good.
He only saw it as the thing that lured Kaveh to the rooftop.
The vile reason why Kaveh was no longer here.
Kaveh’s bedroom door hadn’t been opened in weeks.
But the apartment still smelled like him.
Still had the notes on the fridge in his handwriting. Still had his pens and blueprints scattered over a table. Still had his coat hanging by the front door. Still had his coffee mug in the sink
Alhaitham stared at it for a long time.
Then he packed a single bag and left.
The house was still there.
His grandmother’s.
Silent. Dusty. Too big. Too empty.
But it was safe. Safe from memory.
Months stretched into an arid landscape.
Alhaitham navigated it with detached precision, each day a replica of the last.
The quiet had ceased to be solace; it was simply the background hum of absence.
Years Later
Alhaitham never meant to stay in Fontaine.
It had started with a trip to deliver a few of Kaveh’s things—old notebooks, scattered models, pieces of half-sketched blueprints—to his mother. She had opened the door with a hesitant smile.
When she'd seen the boxes, her hands had trembled.
“Oh,” she’d whispered, as though the weight of her son’s life had just arrived in cardboard and tape. “Alhaitham, correct? My boy always talked about you. Complained all the time. But not really complained.”
She’d laughed then, watery and wistful. “It was always with that little huff of his. You know the one.”
Alhaitham knew the one.
She had dug through the box and pulled out a small lion keychain. Plastic, sun-faded.
Alhaitham had required a whole twenty minutes just to unclip it from the spare housekeys.
“He said you told him off for wasting money on this 'for charity,’” she had chuckled. “Especially when he could barely afford groceries.”
She had smiled as she handed it out to him.
“Thank you. For taking care of him all this while,” she'd said softly, eyes misty and kind. “Come by anytime.”
Alhaitham had almost broken right there.
And so he stayed. Not in Sumeru. Not Mondstadt. Fontaine. Far away enough that no one asked questions. Quiet enough that the silence didn’t feel like punishment.
He edited academic papers. Occasionally taught seminars when the Fontaine Youth Research Institute was short-staffed. Ate alone. Slept rarely.
A dusty, quiet existence.
Until—
One afternoon, digging through his desk drawer for a student’s project file, he pulled out a drive.
Routine. Mindless.
He plugged it in.
But what loaded wasn’t a student’s data at all.
It was a collection of older files.
Kaveh’s files.
/Sand Suspension Prototype – Dev Log 1
/Restructuring Alloy Stability Testing
/Notes for Emergency Shelter Integration
Alhaitham stared at them as if they'd physically struck him. His hand moved—instinct, revulsion—and almost yanked the drive from the port.
But then he saw. A play button. A video file.
Sand thing, diary 1.mp4
He hesitated. Knew it would hurt.
He clicked on it anyway.
Kaveh’s voice filled the room.
Bright. Animated. Alive.
“Okay—so I figured it out. The key is vibration diffusion. If we can stabilize the material against vertical shock, we can use it in impact zones—like shelter floors, or crash sites. Maybe even earthquake recovery—"
Alhaitham’s throat tightened. The desk blurred at the edges. He wanted to click off.
"This can help people, imagine implementing this in safety shelters—"
But the next video auto-played—
And Kaveh’s face appeared.
Crimson eyes wide with thought, a pen tucked behind his ear, hair half-tied, lips pursed at the start of a grumble Alhaitham knew all too well.
“Fine, the first try was a fail. But who succeeds on the first try, right? …I mean, I’m sure a lot of people do, but that’s not important here.”
Alhaitham didn’t laugh. He couldn’t.
“What’s important is that my roommate is an absolute ass.”
Kaveh huffed. Annoyed. Fond. So familiar it made Alhaitham’s chest ache.
“But! He’s an asshole that gave me an idea! Something about energy dispersion through non-Newtonian granular flow. Basically if we reverse the layering of the microstructure, we might get a flexible load-bearing matrix. I hate that I have to give him credit if this works out.”
A pause. A sigh.
“Maybe he’ll never know? Ugh. Of course he’ll know. Stupid Alhaitham.”
He froze. Paused it there—at the sound of his own name.
It was the first time in years he’d heard it. With exasperation. With familiarity. With affection.
Something inside him gave way—cracked open, silent and unguarded. Despite years of careful preservation.
He let it.
The prototype had been shelved after Zandik Corp rebranded. Their lead Materials scientist was gone. It was predicted.
But Alhaitham… started working on it. Late at night. Quietly.
Reconstructing the last version Kaveh never managed to deploy.
Refining it. Reinforcing. Running Kaveh’s old calculations alongside his own.
The sheer, vibrant optimism of Kaveh's past self, so full of dreams for a better world—a jarring, agonizing contrast to Alhaitham's silent, empty present.
Eventually, he submitted the results—anonymously—to the Fontaine Research Institute. He didn’t ask for funding. Didn’t ask for acknowledgment.
Just attached a signature:
Kaveh.
The material was tested. Then distributed.
First in flood zones. Then in refugee shelters. Earthquake buffers. Emergency flooring. Children’s hospitals. Schools.
Then it made it to neighboring nations. To Sumeru.
It worked. It helped people.
And every time Alhaitham read about Kaveh's magnum opus, perhaps a blurb in a research digest or survivor account, he went back to that drive.
Pressed play.
And let Kaveh’s voice fill the room again.
He didn’t return as Spider-Man.
But sometimes, he donned a spare suit—highly conditionally.
If Lumine was desperate.
If it involved Cyno, Tighnari, Paimon, Kaveh’s mother.
If the threat was so destructive that Kaveh would have been the first to leap into action.
A direct fulfillment of Kaveh's altruism.
A silent promise to a ghost.
Despite the dinners with Cyno and Tighnari, the hopeful reports from Lumine and Paimon, the repetition of his day job—
Alhaitham was tired. Grief didn't fade—it calcified. And sometimes, when he was perched over the city at 3AM, he whispered to no one:
“You were right. Spider-Man is a public menace.”
Then, softer:
“I hope you'd approve anyway.”
Because it wasn't Spider-Man doing the saving. It was Kaveh.
One night, many years later—
Alhaitham will sit on the same rooftop where Kaveh used to scold him for being reckless with himself and buildings. The city quiet. The wind humming.
And in the distance, he’ll see a child with white hair—crying, confused, running, as if not knowing where she was going.
Straight off a ledge.
He wouldn’t hesitate.
He’ll jump.
And in the blur of motion, web and air, he’ll hear it:
“I’ve got you.”
His own voice.
Solid.
Certain.
And for the first time in years—
It wouldn’t break.