Chapter Text
kintsugi
金継ぎ , golden joinery
n . the japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with golden lacquer
—
Kaveh, unlike what many people think about him, did not break the day his father died. His knees did not have pads on them when he hit the ground wailing, and his knuckles had nobody to wrap them after he’d finished pounding at the walls, but they did not shatter. They bled, sure, tiny cracks planting themselves in his porcelain skin, but they did not break. Kaveh did not break.
The first time his mother flinched at the sight of him, the cracks on his hands spread outwards and upwards, spindling hands reaching for his heart. It was only fitting, he supposed, for the hands that had killed his father to crack and ache — so he did not bandage them, instead adopting long sleeves and gloves in an attempt to shield the world around him from the sight of his ugly, cracking body. The world descended into a cold mist at some point between when his mother left for Fontaine and his first year in the Akademiya, and when the fog lifted for a brief moment, the cracks on his knees had spread down his calves. They curled around his ankles and added a wobble to his step that most overlooked, and there were marks on his hips from where his body had grown too quickly for his skin to keep up.
Then, in his third year at the Akademiya, he meets Alhaitham — his skin untouched, unbroken, and Kaveh wants . He knows that the cracks running through his body are ugly, and he knows that the mist that spills from them whispers toxins in the ears of those who get close enough to see them. (Those are few and far between, and fewer still dare to comment on them.) He knows all of this, knows it as well as he knows the callouses on the back of his hands, and yet he still wants. He wants to be Alhaitham; flawless, cold Alhaitham who holds everyone far enough back that he cannot get hurt, cannot crack like Kaveh has.
They grow together, and Alhaitham’s skin becomes less flawless — the marks of a growth spurt begin to caress his broadening shoulders, but he is not weak like Kaveh. Alhaitham is not made of porcelain, and so Kaveh knows that he need not worry about cracks spreading across Alhaitham’s skin.
A moniker begins to swirl around Kaveh in his fifth year. “The Light of Kshahrewar,” they call him, “the greatest student this darshan has seen since Pir Kavikavus.” The title lands heavily on his shoulders, bearing down upon his already tired limbs, yet Kaveh trudges forwards.
Nobody explains how difficult it is to wade through water when the water is inclined to seep into you — perhaps it is that nobody knows, or perhaps nobody dares speak of it. The water rises, and rises, sinking into the cracks on Kaveh’s body, and yet something drives him forwards anyway.
“You are not broken , Kaveh,” Alhaitham shoots at him during an argument in the House of Daena — an argument that Kaveh would later begin to think of as the argument, the fight to end all fights, to end the relationship he held dearest to him. “You are not broken, but you are going to find yourself in shards if you keep doing this. These students do not deserve your help.”
Kaveh laughs bitterly, and it sounds like glass shattering deep within his chest. He knows that tomorrow he will wake up to new cracks, and he opens his mouth anyways. “You know, Haitham, perhaps if you were willing to take any moment out of your precious freetime to consider the wellbeing of others, you would understand why I do the things that I do.”
Alhaitham’s hands — unbroken, smooth, flawless compared to Kaveh’s — slam down on the table in front of them. “You are not as hard to understand as you think, senior ,” he drawls, the word senior spit out with something like vitriol.
Kaveh knows he is shaking — with anger, or with fear, or with the force of the cracks in him deepening, he does not know. “Then explain myself to me, Alhaitham,” he returns. “Tell me why I am like this, I beg.” Alhaitham’s eyebrows twitch. Kaveh only notices because he has spent enough time with this man to know every one of his tells. He says nothing.
Kaveh slams his book down on the table in front of them, only narrowly avoiding the other man’s fingers. “I said tell me why I’m like this! Since you seem to know fucking everything about me!”
When Alhaitham's eyes meet Kaveh’s, they are narrowed. A cacophony of orange and teal promises to leave a mark that Kaveh will not forget — one behind his eyelids, this time, instead of on his skin. “It is not my responsibility to cater for your guilt,” the younger man spits, hands curling into fists. “I agreed to work on this project with you , not with the little ducklings who follow you knowing that they can abuse your idealism.”
Kaveh groans, throwing his breaking hands up into the air. “Because god forbid the great egoist Alhaitham do anything with another person!”
“And god forbid you ever learn that you do not exist for others.” Despite the emotion, the anger that Kaveh can hear in Alhaitham’s voice, his face remains flat and uncaring.
“What the hell do I exist for if not for others?”
Alhaitham does not answer his question. “Your altruism, Kaveh,” and he spits his name like venom, “is going to get you killed just the same as your father.”
Distantly, Kaveh hears students muttering around them. They are in a public place, after all, but his ears roar and he thinks that if he were a human, with blood and flesh instead of the porcelain emptiness that makes up his limbs, he’d certainly be bleeding — for Alhaitham’s words sink deep into his skin and he flinches.
He does not look up at Alhaitham. “I wish I’d never become friends with you,” Kaveh hisses, his voice sharp and choked with tears. “I should’ve known,” he murmurs, and then he is stumbling out of the House of Daena, leaving a trail of tiny ceramic shards behind him.
—
When the Palace of Alcazarzaray falls under the pressure of the Withering, Kaveh allows himself to cry. He cries bullet tears — they streak down his face with a burning passion, like every other emotion he expresses. He sobs, in the lonely passage between his mother’s old bedroom and his, and then he wipes his face and goes to find Lord Sangemah Bay.
Kaveh refuses to let this be. His hands may be sculpted of cheap, flawed clay, and his insides may be hollow, but he has worked so, so hard to turn his body into something that creates . Kaveh may break, but his buildings will not for as long as he is alive, so he strikes a deal with Dori. He does not feel much when he sells the house he had gained his first cracks in. He keeps his eyes down when he goes to the Bazaar to sell the nicer of his tools — he can work with a shitty charcoal pencil and cheap paper, but he cannot work with Dori’s loan sharks hovering over him because they know he has more to give.
He sleeps at the construction site for months. The Palace is rebuilt by his shattered hands, and it becomes a spectacle. The aunties at the city talk of its splendor, wondering about the successes of the mysterious architect. They do not know, Kaveh thinks bitterly, that the ‘mysterious architect’ they speak of stands behind them, pillaging through the dumpsters of their cafes for that day’s meal. They do not know that the Palace has cost him everything.
The only person Kaveh tells is Lambad, when he’s far too drunk to keep his tongue tied to the roof of his mouth. He does not mean to, truly, but he develops a habit of spending his nights at the tavern as long as he can before Lambad kicks him out. When he is deep into his cups, the cracks that adorn his body feel less impossible to weakly tie together. Lambad takes pity on him, offering to let Kaveh stay at the tavern for a few weeks in exchange for a redecoration of the second floor.
In the end, it is not the absence of his parents, or the fight with the closest friend he’s ever had, or the carnage of the Withering that breaks Kaveh. It is those quiet words, murmured to him by his old friend, that drive the final crack through his body. “How has realizing your ideals gone for you?” Alhaitham asks, in the dim light of the fading sun, and something in Kaveh settles. It does not hurt like all the others had, no. But Kaveh remembers, in that moment, that he would not have broken if he were not so weak. Kaveh has graduated, the Palace of Alcazarzaray has been built, and he has told Alhaitham he is sorry for his words in the House of Daena — there is nothing left to hold himself together for.
The architect places his head in his hands, elbows propped on the table between him and Alhaitham. A smile cuts across his face, and small tears leak from his eyes. “It’s done,” he says, voice rising into something like hysteria.
The fractures littering his body have been held together by whatever Kaveh could get his hands on. Tears, bandaids, string, blood — never anything pleasant on his fragile skin, so he finds great joy in listening to them slowly crackle apart. And there, sitting in Lambad’s tavern, Kaveh lets his porcelain body shatter.
——
Alhaitham has never been a very artistic man. It is simply not common in Sumeru — with perhaps the exception of Nilou, with no academic upbringing yet a stunning talent in her dance, artists do not thrive amongst the city of scholars. This hypothesis Alhaitham has held rings true each time it is tested, and most recently, rumors reach him of Lord Sangemah Bay and her palace. Quieter, voices around the Akademiya talk of the the Light of Kshahrewar, and how nobody has seen the architect himself in months. Kaveh’s childhood home has been sold, so Alhaitham assumes he has simply moved, and he shuts down any thoughts of Kaveh for the rest of the week.
“ I should’ve known,” Kaveh says, voice wet with tears. He turns from Alhaitham and Alhaitham is lost, outstretching a hand and his mouth agape in a silent call — a call Kaveh does not hear, will never hear again. Quietly, the librarian of the House of Daena comes up behind him, placing a warm hand on his back and leading him into a small room behind his desk. He shoves a cup of tea into Alhaitham’s trembling hands and leaves without a word.
‘What should you have known, Kaveh?’ Alhaitham wonders, sitting in that back room. ‘That I am as heartless as they say? What do you think you know? ‘
‘You are wrong,’ Alhaitham thinks. His chest hurts. ‘You are wrong. I must have a heart, for it to hurt this badly.’
Alhaitham is not a very artistic man. It is obvious in the decoration within his house — so minimal it makes the occasional auntie who comes over to give him food lecture him. It is obvious in his words, which he has learned to trim short enough for people to insert their own emotion into. It is obvious in the way he walks, with all the elegance of a gymnast yet none of the gentleness to back it up.
He picks up pottery anyway.
It is rather easy to gather and create his own clay, once he has learned the recipe. It involves sand, and trips to the desert, but he manages. The clay is wet and messy on his wheel and his hands, but he does not mind as much as he once might’ve. The discomfort at the sensation is drowned by brilliant red eyes behind his eyelids, saying “It’ll be good for you to get your hands dirty for once, Alhaitham” with a smirk.
It’s not like he picked it up for anything noble — his interest in the craft is purely practical. He works only with his hands in tight shapes, curled around pencils and quills, and Tamara of Bimarstan had informed him kindly on one of his yearly checkups that he was going to develop carpal tunnel and other joint issues if he didn’t pick something up to otherwise use his hands.
It is helpful, not to have to buy new kitchenware. He is not particularly good , at first — his creations are all simple pinch-pot bowls, the occasional cup. Their edges are too thin, or too thick, or they are not even and Alhaitham certainly cannot let anyone see these. But he does not talk to people, apart from the aunties and uncles of the neighborhood that have taken it upon themselves to ensure he is eating, so he leaves the ugly, mangled cups on the countertops.
The clay he works with is always slightly too dry, or too wet, and it is a cheap grainy kind created to be able to harden in the sun. There is nobody in Sumeru that makes kilns, after all, so he cannot use the nicer clay that the books talk of.
As the years progress, Alhaitham’s clay recipe improves — he learns to add salt, starch, and the occasional spice. He only half unwillingly talks to the women who’ve adopted him into their neighborhood, and they share their tips for improving his shapes until he reaches a point where he’s creating dishes he can actually eat out of. He checks out books from the House of Daena on how to make sealant for the clay that is food-safe, and starts experimenting. He learns how to shave the edges, so his fingerprints are not so obviously outlined on the dishes.
Some of them break — Alhaitham’s hands shake when he is tired, he learns, and somehow he ends that day on his knees in the kitchen, picking up ceramic shards. He should throw them away, but something in him hesitates. This was once the first cup he ever made, and while Alhaitham does not think himself to be a sentimental person, he finds himself cupping the shards carefully and depositing them in a large bowl meant to be used for fruit.
There is something special, he finds, about being able to pick any piece of clay out of his bowl and identify the story behind it.
—
Alhaitham needs a drink.
Days like these are rare — days where Azar insists he stay past his explicitly written office time, days where everything is a bit too loud and too bright. His fingers hurt, and the muscle that controls his pointer finger aches all the way up to his elbow, and so he finds himself at Lambad’s.
Kaveh is impossible to miss. He sits alone in one of the corners, nursing a dandelion wine and humming gently to himself. Alhaitham meanders over to him, ordering a glass of wine for himself as he does so, and sits gently in the booth across from Kaveh.
“Alhaitham,” Kaveh says. His voice holds none of the same anger it had held that day. It is quiet, instead, and Kaveh’s vermillion eyes do not meet Alhaitham’s own.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham returns, with not quite warmth but not quite his typical coldness, either. “What has you back in Sumeru?” And it is odd , to make something like small talk with this man. This man, whose voice Alhaitham can recall whenever he needs a bit of spite to spur him on. This man, who Alhaitham had once known like the handle of his own sword.
Kaveh snorts, swishing the wine in his cup. It compliments his cloak well, Alhaitham absently realizes. “‘Back?’ I never left,” he responds. He leans back and Alhaitham finally catches a glimpse of his face — there are eyebags beneath his eyes so deep they’d be better called caverns.
Alhaitham places his elbows on the table, leaning forward slightly. “Ah, but nobody could find you for months. Keeping up the ‘mysterious architect’ moniker, are you?”
Kaveh’s head shakes. “I’ve merely been keeping to myself, is all,” he claims, and even to Alhaitham’s ears — trained in the technicalities of over twenty languages, yet incapable of deciphering the emotions of his own — he sounds like he’s lying.
“Do tell,” Alhaitham prompts, “what reason would the Light of the Kshahrewar have to do that?”
Kaveh looks up at him then. It is the first time they have truly made eye contact since the House of Daena, and something in Alhaitham jolts. He is struck with the urge, suddenly, to figure out how to line patterns into the sides of his clay creations so that he can attempt to capture even a fraction of this beauty.
There is something calculating in the other man’s eyes — he scans Alhaitham’s face, and then must come to some conclusion, because his confident, bright facade is suddenly crumbling. “The Palace,” Kaveh mumbles bitterly, wine sloshing in its cup. “I was so stupid,” he continues. “Honestly, to think that Lord Sangemah Bay would simply finance me to build my dream building with no cost to me? That was not something I deserved, and so I paid for it.”
Alhaitham sips on his wine quietly, occasionally making motions with his hands to signal Kaveh to continue. “Someone like me does not get opportunities like that, so it’s no surprise the Withering spread to Alcazarzaray. I should’ve expected it.”
At this, Alhaitham shifts. He’d briefly seen the report that the Forest Rangers had sent in about that Withering, but he hadn’t paid too much mind to it at the time. “The Withering?”
Kaveh nods miserably. “It destroyed the foundation, and the entire building went crumbling a month before it would’ve been finished. Dori wanted to give up on it,” he is rambling now, words slightly slurred by the alcohol on his tongue, “but Alcazarzaray is — that Palace is not allowed to fall before I die.”
“So you paid for it to be rebuilt,” Alhaitham says. It is not a question.
“It was either pay for it,” Kaveh mutters, “or die before it could finish falling. And I don’t want to die.”
There is no logic in this, but there has never been an abundance of logic in Kaveh. Despite his incredible brain, his never ending intellect, his blueprints, sketches and papers with endless angles and lines and equations that Alhaitham only understood because he’d learned them specifically for Kaveh, the man did not have a logical piece in his head. He ran off fumes, pure passion, his hands and eyes burning with a flame so bright it had named him the very Light of Kshahrewar.
There is a question burning in Alhaitham’s mind, then.
“How has realizing your ideals gone for you?” he asks, and Kaveh’s eyes go wide. Then, slowly, Alhaitham watches as something he cannot name possesses Kaveh, and he is laughing. Laughing, and laughing, and then there are tears in Kaveh’s eyes and hiccups in his chest, and —
Alhaitham may have made a mistake.
He pays for both of their drinks and quietly leads Kaveh out of the tavern, back to the solitude of his own house. Looking around his living room like this , with a drunk and grumbling Kaveh slouched on his shoulder, it suddenly looks all too bare. It still looks too much like their research center, and if he looks hard enough he swears he can see his younger self, shoulders burdened by the loss of his grandmother and tongue sharp with criticism towards the senior he so desperately wanted to keep in his life.
His first shittily-crafted cups are sitting on the counter, he realizes with something like panic threatening to make his fingers tremble. Kaveh’s eyes must land on them, he must see them, but he says nothing as Alhaitham leads him into the guest room.
“There is a bathroom down the hall,” Alhaitham says, attempting to keep any emotion out of his throat so it cannot leak into his voice. “My bedroom is across from it.”
He hesitates, as he is going to step through the doorway. He is not a heartless creature, and something in him knows that if he wakes up again and Kaveh is gone, he will not be able to recover into the same Alhaitham he has made peace with being. “. . You still like zaytun peaches, I presume,” he asks. Kaveh makes a quiet noise of affirmation, sipping on the water Alhaitham had gotten him. “Alright. I will buy some on my way home from the Akademiya tomorrow, then.”
Stay. He does not speak the words, but Kaveh squeaks and Alhaitham hopes he hears the words he does not know how to say. Stay, Kaveh, for I do not know what I will do if I lose you again.