#like seriously kaveh comes back to the akademiya in ruins only to find out belatedly how much danger alhaitham was in?

[silversnowblossom]

kaveh remembers returning from the desert, from his project, only to find the akademiya thrown into utter disarray. the sages gone, a large portion of the ground near the sanctuary of surasthana collapsed and crumbling, and rumours spread like wildfire. remembers realizing just how much he’s missed, how much danger alhaitham was in without his even knowing (alhaitham was injured, and he was none the wiser—). remembers hearing divine knowledge capsule and the scribe in conjunction and ice flooding his veins until he finds alhaitham, alive and well, in the house of daena. only then does the cold finally fade.

still. it could’ve so easily gone wrong. he could’ve returned only to find alhaitham dead, or gone, or his sanity shattered.

(there are fates worse than death, kaveh knows. that—that would’ve been one of them.

what is alhaitham, without that cunning, that stubbornness, that surprising deep-seated kindness? what would be left of him, without his mind?

kaveh has nightmares about it sometimes, about how he could have come back to find alhaitham an empty shell of himself, that brilliance so neatly excised. to see him without any of his sharp intellect, to look into his eyes and find no recognition there. for all their disagreements, kaveh does not think he would have been able to withstand that.)