Work Text:
Certain ideals ran through the brotherhood that no text would read and no voice would speak, yet still shined through the cracks; apparent and obvious truths to which the Hidden Ones should adhere.
One of these ideals was the notion of death, or perhaps, rebirth. The life an initiate once lived would be forgotten and left behind with the cut of their finger, those who knew them would no longer see them, those that once loved them would never again meet them. Perhaps it was only natural for such an ideal to be born among people who had loved and lost everything they had, who had no choice but to turn to the brotherhood. To leave behind who you once were. To be someone new.
It was one of the many ideals that Hytham had embraced the most thoroughly.
He had left everything behind. That of which he had clutched and tried to keep had been ripped from his hands, and the rest he had let go of willingly. When he no longer had a home, or family, he could let go of the rest of his intangible possessions. When the opportunity came to step into the shadows and become someone new, he had let go of everything; his friends, his name, his memory.
He came to the Hidden Ones as a child; thirteen years of age, voice still soft and unbroken and light, a small body hidden under clothes that were too big, hair cut haphazardly with a blunt blade until it was little more than uneven fuzz. Two years since that day on that tower, he was finally welcomed as a recruit to the ranks of the Hidden Ones. Here, he would be trained and cared for. Here, he could be someone new. Here, he could become the man he always wanted to be.
As the years passed, despite it all, he did not feel like he was lying. Not when his fellow initiates used his new name with such ease and familiarity, not even when he was asked about his life before the Hidden Ones and he made vague excuses about a life rather forgotten, and his fellow brothers and sisters nodded with solemn understanding. He did not feel like he was lying when he snuck out to the lake by the mountain’s foot at night to bathe away from the eyes of others, when the body that was not his own reflected on the water’s surface by the divinity of the moonlight. He stepped into the cold and felt it pool around him, higher and higher, until it clung to his hips that were too wide, then to his waist that was too small, his chest which was now too prominent and heavy. He could not grow a beard, his skin was soft and smooth, but his hair was short and his muscles were growing stronger, his eyes were intense when he looked at his own reflection.
When he had washed up, he would leave the water and dress again in the clothes that fit better, but still concealed him greatly. Fabric was wrapped around his waist, and then his chest, to pad and hide his body respectively, and then he dressed in the robes he had been given, and he was the man they knew once more.
Perhaps it could be considered lying. Perhaps it would be considered outwardly so when he told people his name, led them to believe that he was a man. If it was a lie then it was one he told gladly, yet he would not consider it one. What could a stranger possibly know about him, what he should have been, more than he himself would?
He was who he was, and no one would ever be able to take that from him.
“You know,” Basim said one day, as they lounged in a bureau close to the inner parts of golden city. “You remind me of someone I met, once.”
Hytham, now quite a few years older, looked up from the notes he had been reading — missives, letters from Rayhan, reports on their latest mission and studies of Norse, which he knew would become very important soon — and glanced over to his new mentor. Basim laid neatly amongst pillows and cushions and soft rugs, an arm tucked behind his head as he looked up at the ceiling beams. Hytham himself sat not too far from him, crosslegged on the floor with all his reading material sprawled around him in a sort of organised chaos. The bureau was empty at this time of day, save for the rafiq who would be multiple rooms and at least one floor away from them, leading them to the relative privacy that seemed to have prompted Basim’s breaking of the silence.
“I do?” Hytham asked, with a certain curiosity.
Basim hummed nonchalantly, stretched with the laziness of a streetcat, made some small grunt of contentment before letting the silence settle once more. Hytham had half a mind to imagine that that was all he had to say and therefore return to his papers, before Basim continued.
“You have her eyes,” he said simply, as if it wasn’t one of the most cryptic answers he could have given. “The same blue paleness that I had never seen before, not from people from the Caliphate, at the very least.”
Hytham looked at him properly, now, papers laying forgotten in his lap. Basim had closed his eyes as if he was simply musing on old memories, which he was. Hytham wondered, momentarily, if this was going where he thought it was, if Basim had remembered him better than he thought he had.
“It was in Karkh that I met this girl,” Basim continued. “She couldn’t have been more than ten years old, and yet she had clambered all the way up a minaret. Her friends were begging and pleading for her to come down, and yet she could not.”
Hytham sighed, closed his eyes, leaned further into the cushion that had supported his back and remembered the day with a certain embarrassment. He had been so sure of himself until his feet reached the edge of the wooden platform by the minaret's top, and it felt as if the tower extended up into the sky when he had looked down. He still remembered how his legs had shaken. He remembered Basim and his name, yet he had never tried to remind the man of that day, bring up the coincidence that had come from it being him who, after all these years, were still sent to be by Basim’s side.
When Hytham opened his eyes, Basim was looking at him with his own curiosity. Hytham nearly wished to scoff at how obnoxiously kind he looked, even when he knew that the older man was trying to study him like a scholar would a bug.
“I climbed up to her, of course.” Basim’s expression remained a sort of sympathetic neutrality as he continued to look at his new acolyte. “She told me, then, that she had wished to jump, and in that way gain the attention of the Hidden Ones. I told her to find me when she was old enough to hold a weapon, and you know what?”
“What?” Hytham asked.
“She never did.”
Basim gave a light shrug and turned his attention back to the ceiling beams, as if this entire conversation had been entirely inconsequential.
At this point, Hytham had known Basim long enough to guess the point of this story. Indeed, it would be foolish to assume that Basim hadn’t caught on to the similarities between the girl on the tower and the boy right next to him. Perhaps Basim was lying in wait, waiting for Hytham to crack and admit that he had once been the girl, that he had recognised Basim from the moment Rayhan had uttered his name when giving him his mission, that he had not said anything in fear of ‘being caught’. But he didn’t, and he wouldn’t, admit anything to him. Despite what the past year or so they had spent together had done for their bond, he would not be caught blindly trusting the man next to him, nor would he tell him anything that he wouldn’t tell anyone else. Basim had no right to know what he apparently seemed so very curious about.
“I suppose,” Hytham said lightly, turning back to the papers in his lap, “you were simply not in Baghdad for long enough for her to seek you out.”
If he had expected any specific reaction from Basim at all, perhaps the soft laugh the man let out was the most calming one. It was disarming, and yet he would never admit that it made his body untense just slightly.
“No, that is true,” Basim agreed finally, once his soft laughter was a mere whisper between the bureau walls. “Constantinople became my territory not long after I met her, indeed.”
A short silence settled. Hytham had never considered himself a liar, or a coward, or a man with shame, but right now, it felt safer to keep his gaze at the papers, on the words he should have been able to read. Hoped, perhaps, that Basim was done now. Hoped, perhaps, that he wouldn’t continue to pry.
“It might have been for the best, anyway,” Basim said then, followed by a soft sigh of content. He waved his hand in the air, as if to dismiss the entire sudden story, as if it was nothing more but an aging man's anecdotal monologuing. “If I shall have an apprentice, I would prefer you.”
Hytham couldn’t help the way he felt his cheeks burn, and he did not need to fully look at Basim to know that the man must be grinning at such an obvious reaction. A part of him wished to scoff, remind him that he himself had said that he preferred him over someone more competent, yet the words remained stuck in his throat. Perhaps, indeed, he could blame it on what almost had seemed like a compliment, perhaps he could tell himself it was just the close-call.
“Right,” Hytham choked out.
“Right.”
“No.”
“I am not asking, Hytham. Off.”
The acolyte’s hands shook with strain and exertion as he held his mentor’s wrists, clutched at the man whose hands instead clutched Hytham’s own blood-stained robes. Hytham felt years and years worth of scars burning like hellfire over his skin as his lungs fought and the blood continued to spill out of his chest. Through his harsh breathing, his face screwed in a grimace of pain and anger, teeth bared and eyes squeezed shut, yet still able to feel Basim’s expression of cold, dead fury.
It had happened on the outskirts of the city, close to the olive grove where they had sparred for the first time, some year and a half ago. A quick walk, they had said, to let off some steam and stretch their legs before their next mission. What even the sharpest of their senses had not noticed was that they had happened to walk right into a bandit ambush. The bandits — slow, clumsy, and disorganised as they were — must have thought them easy victims, seemingly had not noticed or cared for the swords that rested by their hips or thought to flee when they saw the finesse with which the two men carried themselves. Indeed, perhaps these bandits would have been easy victims, but the two assassins had been outnumbered. When Hytham had slashed his sword across one of the bandits, another had caught a vulnerable opening. By the time the battle was over, Hytham had suffered a nasty cut to his chest, and Basim had just about managed to drag him away from the corpses before the acolyte’s knees would have given in under his own body.
The body, of course, which was exactly the reason why he was refusing to let Basim help him.
“I am not letting you bleed out when I am here to help, you stubborn fool,” Basim growled. “If you don’t cooperate I will strip you by force.”
Hytham, indeed, was not ashamed of himself or his body, did not find himself particularly wrong or disgusting for what he was, but he could with certainty say that he would rather have bleed out and died in this soft grass than let Basim see him bare and exposed.
“You—” His attempt at a threat was lost, made severely less intimidating as he hissed a pained sound through his teeth. A deep breath, and another try. “Don’t— don’t you dare.”
Basim didn’t seem threatened for even a moment. In fact, Hytham — as unfocused as his vision was — was convinced he saw him roll his eyes, even through his obvious anger that pulled his lips into a clear sneer.
“You may be able to intimidate palace maids, but you cannot intimidate me, you dumb fool.” Basim snarled, his grip on Hytham’s clothes impossibly harder. “Swallow your damn pride and let me help you.”
Hytham used all the strength he still had in his body to keep Basim’s hands exactly where they were, keeping them from getting any closer or letting him do what he wanted — what he had — to do. But he was still bleeding, it seemed as if the world became more and more blurry and the grip he had was quickly weakening with the last of force he had. Even through the pulsating pain, he continued to struggle.
Perhaps it was sheer stubbornness, something born from having hidden something from everyone for this long, the fear of someone knowing, the power they would hold over him if they did. Perhaps it was, indeed, that he was scared of Basim knowing. He had never feared the consequences before, yet the longer he seemed to lay there, the worse it started to feel. Through his squeezed-shut eyes he saw a thousand different ways for this to end, of dying of stubbornness, or alone in humiliation. Was the wound that severe? The adrenaline was no longer blocking the horrid pain and even when laying flat on the ground it felt as if the world spun around him. Perhaps Basim was right. Perhaps he would die if he did not allow him to help him.
What a cruel fate. Stuck between admitting his most hidden secret or dying one of the most embarrassing deaths in the history of their brotherhood.
“Fine,” Hytham snarled, using his last strength to throw his arms out to his sides and into the grass, away from Basim’s wrists. “Fine.”
Basim took that as his only go-ahead. Hytham squeezed his eyes closed even tighter and tried to breathe as felt Basim slowly turning him, moving him just enough so he could get the straps of his waistguard on his back without agitating the wound. It was, again, almost cruel how horribly complex their robes were and how hard it was to undress from them. Soon Basim would remove the robes from his torso entirely, until the acolyte was stripped down into nothing but his breeches and his boots.
Hytham didn’t want to see the look on Basim’s face when he would inevitably realise.
“Keep your eyes open,” Basim muttered. “Or I’ll think I’ve lost you.”
Perhaps he would be embarrassed at the noise he made, a short sound of discontent or pain that nearly sounded like a whimper, as he took another sharp breath. Either way, Hytham forced himself to oblige, but turned his head to look across the olive groves.
At least he was cooperative — and perhaps conscious — enough to lift his arms when Basim pulled his robes off of him, exposing him.
What Basim could now see were the multiple players of thick, now yellowed and frayed, lengths of fabric bandages that were wrapped around Hytham’s upper torso. The cut, sharp and forceful as it had been, had cut through not only his robes, but the bandages, too, making contact with his skin and only narrowly avoided nicking his very ribs. Hytham’s skin, his robes, and the bandages had all been covered in that deep, sticky red which had been pulsating out of him for the last five minutes.
The older inhaled sharply, but otherwise said nothing. Hytham could no longer tell if Basim actually had known, if this would just have been the final confirmation, or if he had read too much into Basim’s behaviour and that he actually didn’t know. Both options got something bitter and vile to rise in his throat.
Basim still said nothing, but unsheathed his hidden blade.
The killing blow which Hytham, purely by instinct, had braced himself for, never came. Instead he felt the hem of the bandages being lifted as the older man used the knife to cut them loose, before gathering the linen with one hand and throwing it somewhere to the side.
There was no hiding now. Hytham kept his eyes squeezed shut and his head turned, refusing to look at Basim.
The wound, perhaps thankfully, had been put so perfectly over his chest that it was, mostly, right above his breasts. Perhaps he would have been momentarily thankful for that, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but a sense of sickening exposure. He heard how Basim began to rummage through the satchels he wore on his waist, gathering medical supplies he always seemed to have on hand. Basim used a rag, first and foremost, and put it against the wound. Then he held his hands there, evenly spread across the length of it, to put the appropriate pressure on it. He seemed considerably calmer, now, in his movements. They were not rushed or forceful, but... Gentle, actually. Like he had calmed himself just by the notion that Hytham was allowing him to do this.
“So...” Basim’s tone was soft now, too. Soft enough that Hytham actually dared to open his eyes in quite a bit of surprise. Basim dutifully kept his gaze away from the acolyte’s chest when he could, now looking straight at Hytham's face. “Would you like to say something?”
Despite everything, despite the myriad of sickening feelings within him, Hytham snorted, which felt like a bad move when Basim pressed down against his ribs in such a way.
“No.”
Basim shrugged slightly.
“Suit yourself, then. We will be here for a while.”
He knew that, regretfully. Just this step could take a quarter of an hour and there would be more steps to come. Cleaning the wound, potential sutures... He couldn’t help but sigh.
“I hope you know,” Basim continued, “that there was no need to hide this. Women have always been welcomed within our Brotherhood.”
Now it was Hytham who took a sharp breath, keeping himself from gritting his teeth. Of course Basim wouldn’t drop this.
“I didn’t hide because I thought the Hidden Ones didn’t accept women,” he hissed. “Don’t you dare try to assume—”
At that, Basim raised an eyebrow.
“I’m afraid I have no other option but to assume, if you will not explain.” Basim made a light shrugging motion with his shoulders, but kept his hands steady and firm on Hytham’s chest. “After all, I believe I recall you never having corrected me when I’ve called you a man.”
Hytham huffed, a noise that could have been excused as having his chest compressed, had it not been for how hard he rolled his eyes.
“You have no reason to stop calling me a man, either.” Hytham retorted. “Don’t you dare try to act like you know more about me than I do.”
Basim continued to stare at him for a moment. Perhaps it was just the pain and upset coursing through Hytham’s body that made him imagine that Basim was trying to challenge him, like he had so many times before. When the mentor kept his gaze and dared him to fight or break, to stand tall or yield. But finally, Basim sighed. The older turned his gaze away from Hytham’s face and back to the wound.
“Are you hiding from someone, or something?” Basim asked quietly then, surprisingly soft and genuine with his words. The mentor moved his hand slightly over the area of the wound and the rag, as if to make sure he had put pressure on every inch of it. Hytham inhaled a sharp breath.
“No.” He did, logically, understand why Basim was asking, but it felt ridiculous to even consider it. Did he have to be hunted to dress and present himself in the way he did? Those who had once known him thought him dead, anyway. If he was hunted it was not by someone who knew him before he became the man he was now, someone who would have given him a reason to disguise himself.
He refused to say more on the matter, and turned his head away again so he could avoid looking at his new mentor. Basim just hummed slightly, seemingly in thought, for once actually considering what he should say.
“I think I understand,” he said finally. Hytham got a feeling that there was more to his words than he would actually say. “Perhaps not entirely, but enough.”
Perhaps he could blame it on the exhaustion, but he felt himself relax, if only slightly.
“I won’t judge you for feeling as such, either.” Basim moved one of his hands almost comfortingly against his chest, still taking care to avoid areas he didn’t need to touch. Perhaps he would have explained it as merely keeping the pressure everywhere. “But I merely wish to say that I hope you are happy the way you are now.”
Had it not been for his gentle tone of voice, perhaps it would have sounded pointed. I hope you are happy, like he had done something wrong and was suffering the consequences of his actions. But Basim’s words were kind and made him feel, almost, like he was genuine with it. Hytham could practically feel himself deflate against the soft grass, momentarily wondering how he managed to use so much energy to be so tense for so long.
“I would have been happier if you didn’t know,” he admitted quietly. “But if you won’t tell anyone else...”
“I know,” Basim said softly. “And I won’t.”
Hytham didn’t answer. He just continued to look towards the olive trees, and tried to not wince too much when Basim finally removed the pressure from his chest.
The rag was stained, of course, but the active bleeding had stopped. It was a good sign that the wound was not too deep, and at most would only need a few sutures to be held in place due to the length of the wound. At least Hytham wasn’t struggling, and merely laid there and allowed Basim to clean the area with another — less coarse — rag and clean water from his waterskin. It stung like all hell, but Hytham just bit his lip and didn’t complain.
At the very least until he felt a familiar, foul-smelling liquid being rubbed into his chest. He couldn’t help but let out another hiss of pain as Basim just continued with what he was doing.
“It will help to numb the skin,” he explained casually, “and protect the wound from dirt before and after I have sewn it.”
A reasonable explanation, but Hytham could barely hear it, too caught up in trying to steady his breathing and breathe through the horrid pain right above his ribs and lungs. Soon the stinging turned into something cold and, indeed, numbing. Basim taped his finger against the edge of the area to test, and Hytham didn’t feel it at all.
He continued to keep his gaze away as Basim began to suture his injury.
“I am not doing any of this to hurt you, you know.” Basim’s voice was a low hum as he focused on his task. “I hope you are aware of that.”
It was obvious he wasn’t just talking about having to sew his skin shut. Hytham made a noncommittal hum, somewhere in the back of his throat, unaware what he was supposed to answer to that.
“If I’m going to be honest...” Hytham made an attempt to get a better look at his mentor, currently hunched over his body. “I didn’t expect you to react this... Calmly.”
Relatively calmly. Indeed, it is a sin to dress like the other sex, and while Basim had never struck him as particularly religious, he was still a man of faith. Basim had questioned it, yes, and made his own assumptions, but he was unconventional, too, and perhaps, then, that is why he simply accepted this as a fact that it was.
He felt Basim moving slightly, probably looking at him with a raised eyebrow.
“No?” Basim couldn’t help but give a short, humourless laugh. “Because you were expecting me to be cruel, I bet.”
Whether he meant that the expectation of cruelty would have come from the way others had spoken of the older man, or Hytham’s own assumptions over what the mentor may have done in this situation, remained unsaid.
“You knew I was a spy,” Hytham explained. “And yet you saved me, and kept me by your side, and now...”
It wouldn’t have been unreasonable to assume that this could have broken their trust, if only because it was another lie Hytham had lived by without telling him. But now he was patching his wounds even after Hytham had been fighting him on it. Now he had seen his biggest secret and made no big commotion over it. Perhaps he should have expected it when so many of Hytham’s lies and secrets and defiance had only been met with some sort of kindness from Basim. Hytham made a vague gesture with a numb hand to his chest, where Basim continued, slowly and carefully.
“And I guess you don’t believe it is because I prefer you over someone more competent?” Basim teased, recalling the conversation they had some year or so earlier, when it all had come to light. Hytham made a short sound at recalling that bitter insult.
“No,” he agreed. “If I am incompetent enough to be caught as a spy, I would be too incompetent to be useful for you, too. And neither would warrant you caring.”
It was a bit of a bold thought, but when he glanced at Basim’s face, the man was smiling slightly.
“True.” Basim tied off the end of the thread and cut the remainder, now done with the wound. He reached his hand out and let Hytham take it, helping him into a sitting position. “I guess you caught me.”
Hytham huffed, but he felt his cheeks turn warm. Basim nudged at his arms to get him to raise them, so he could tie new bandages over the wound. Hytham let him, without any fighting. Basim bandaged not only the area of the wound, but the entirety of his chest like he had before, even if they weren’t wrapped as tight as he would have preferred, though much to his own relief. Basim took great care in that, too, making sure that there was even pressure everywhere, and that Hytham still would have room to breathe. Hytham didn’t question any of this.
It was, however, when Basim helped him stand up and once more got his robes and began to dress him in them, that Hytham raised an eyebrow.
“I can dress myself, you know.”
Basim hummed once more.
“Sure.”
He didn’t stop, and perhaps Hytham could have blamed it on the exhaustion, but he felt no need to fight him about it, either. The large hole in his outer robes did make the younger grimace slightly, as Basim stood at his back and fiddled with the straps of his waistguard. The hole didn’t show anything it shouldn’t, but it did give a large view of the bandages underneath his clothing.
Wordlessly, Basim glanced at where Hytham was looking, then unwrapped one of the scarves from his own robes, and instead proceeded to wrap it around the younger’s shoulders, letting it droop just enough to obscure the hole from view. Hytham just stared, first at the scarf and his chest, and then at Basim.
Basim merely raised an eyebrow at the confusion, and then shrugged.
“It will hide the bloodstains, too,” he said simply. “Until we can get you a new robe.”
Sure it would, he was right in that, but it didn’t feel like enough of an explanation to warrant quite literally the clothes off of his new mentor. For quite a long moment, Hytham just stood there, staring at his now scarf-less mentor. And yet Basim merely raised what was left of his hood, and took a moment to make sure they hadn’t lost anything. Their weapons were sheathed, the only thing left were the bloodied bandages that, frankly, could be left in the grove to rot. After a while and a small nudge, Hytham raised his hood, too, taking some stumbling steps closer to his mentor.
“Come now,” Basim said, a smile only barely visible from under the hood. “It’s time to go home.”
They fell in step together, down the familiar path back to Constantinople, and Hytham felt a warm, large hand on his shoulder, now. Basim said nothing more, but Hytham took a deep breath, and relaxed.