A little something written out regarding Malik's loss, his amputation, and his recovery.

Not shippy, but, you know what, Malik deserved a little character delving and more appreciation, so here it is!

Totally helped by one of my friends who roleplays Altaïr. Couldn't have been done without her.

PREFACE.

The year is 1191, and assassins Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, Malik Al-Sayf, and Kadar Al-Sayf find themselves thrown into turmoil.

In Solomon's Temple, templar Robert de Sablé manages to avoid his untimely death, throwing Altaïr into a wall that gives way and crumbles. Blocked, the master assassin has no way to aid either of his comrades; he stands on the other side, hearing the barking request for blood before the crack of blades and desperate shouts bubble amidst the silence.

He does not have the Piece of Eden his master Al Mualim expects of him. He flees and returns to Masyaf, the taste of failure unknown to him.

When he returns, he does not return alone.

THE FIGHT.

Malik and Kadar draw their blades, and they are on their own. Robert de Sablé wants them dead, and he'll very well get what he wants if they don't act fast.

Malik hates Altaïr but wonders, hopes, he finds a way back to them. He is a better fighter, and though he is arrogant, he and Kadar are outnumbered and the air weighs heavy with the whisper of death.

Altaïr will return. Altaïr will find a way. They'll escape somehow.

Assassins and Templars exchange blows, and in the flurry of cracking blades, Kadar eventually falls, sword through this chest that now pours blood. Kadar is Malik's only world beyond the assassins - something of family, love, and warmth, his eyes like their mother's and his determination like their father's - and, suddenly, they are both gone.

Altaïr does not come.

Somewhere in the middle, Malik screams his throat raw. It scratches and aches, and never has he felt a loss so profound.

He feels the prick of the blade in his lungs, too, but his brother dies and he does not. He is angry and seething, and his hatred for Altaïr roars like a torrent in his ears. It makes him fight harder because he's lost a life.

But he is still outnumbered, and quickly, Malik decides it best not to fight. Kadar lies on the ground, dead and unmoving, and Malik takes one last look before he snatches the Piece of Eden and makes his way up weak wooden structures and walls. He is wounded and slower, and his heart is wrought with profound grief - like an illness eating him alive - but he will survive.

However, weakened, an archer manages to hit him, the arrow piercing his left arm rallying anguish. Malik stifles his need to yell and trudges on, but stationed guards catch up. There is a brief excursion. Enemy steel slices into the open slit, and his arm tightens with searing pain before Malik plunges his sword into their hearts. Body heavy with metal clatter to the ground, pools of blood soaking the dusty earth beneath him.

Malik is out of breath and bleeding profusely, but he makes it out of the temple, Robert de Sablé hot on his heels.

Collapsing onto his steed, his left arm is limp beside him. Kadar's horse follows without its owner.

THE JOURNEY.

The sun mocks him, hanging high in the sky with its scathing heat. The trip to Masyaf normally takes seven to eleven days.

Malik wants to be there by seven.

Robert de Sablé has set off messengers to rally a force to initiate a siege on the Assassin Fortress in Masyaf. He doesn't think the fleeing assassin will make it as wounded as he is, but still, he prepares.

Day one.

The day is hot and unforgiving, and the night is full of anticipation and fear. His body shivers with agony, and his skin pales. His shaking hands spike pain through his veins like fire as he treats his angry wound. It is red and swollen with inflammation. His ointments and crude bandaging agitate the glaring gashes running fissures through his skin.

His body is tired, but he must make it back to Al Mualim. He desires the artifact that rests safely beside him.

More than anything, however, he wants to tear Altaïr in two. Altaïr, the man with whom his brother idolized, the assassin whose name Kadar spoke with wide, dazzled eyes. Awestruck. Marveled.

Perhaps if he'd been as strong as that bastard, perhaps if he'd been as skilled…

In his brief rest, he hears Kadar's screams.

Day two.

He stirs from his first fleeting nap upon escaping Jerusalem. The sun barely crescents the horizon, and his left arm burns with infection. Malik has little to treat it, and he thinks faintly that surely he will die, but he refuses to dwell on the thought.

Unpacking a quick meal, Malik eats his bit of rice and drinks his dwindling water. He saddles up and resumes his journey, too cautious to rest for long.

Robert de Sablé still wants his blood.

Day three.

The infection in his wound rages, pus eating away along the corners. Malik groans and knows it is lost.

He rides under the angry Syrian sun, thinking of everything that has slipped between his fingers.

First, Kadar, and with him, his last tether to a life beyond death and blood. Innocence.

Second, his arm, his life as an assassin undoubtedly over.

And, third - his jaw clenches at the thought - Altaïr. They were never close; they did not share laughter and stories, did not spend fleeting seconds walking in one another's company, but he was still his brother by oath. He believed in his skill. He believed in his strength. He entrusted him with his life, and he felt his safety well guarded beside him. Their lives had woven so tightly together, and Malik allowed it.

He'd given him more than he lets on, but, in the end, he was betrayed.

Malik feels lonelier than he has his entire life. Rage is the only friend that accompanies him.

Day four.

The fever is spiraling out of control, the tainted blood in his limb churning toxins in his veins. Malik's muscles slack, too tired to continue, but Masyaf nears and he cannot stop.

Both his food and water will last the journey, but beyond hope, he finds only a miracle can save him.

Day five.

There is a crunch in the dark, and Malik throws a knife at the sound. It hits a fox dead in the skull, and the assassin mutters a curse for his paranoia.

He is becoming undone, his head delirious with the poison in his body.

If he falls, he thinks, de Sablé and his men will find him.

They will take back the Piece of Eden, and as Robert towers over him, he will smirk. Leave him to die on his own, he would say. He is well on his way already.

Malik's body almost fails as the pain grows.

Day six.

The trail is so familiar it ached, its dirt path trampled by the feet of walking civilians.

Malik rushes past the travelers who shout swears and curses at him, but the words fall on deaf ears.

Day seven.

Masyaf's gates open for him. Heaven favors him for he is home.

THE AMPUTATION.

Malik scorns him, his words dripping like venom from a serpent's fangs. Altaïr regards him silently, eyes like amber, strong and unrelenting. It makes Malik's blood boil, and he yells harsher, louder, wants to rush forward and smash his fist into that face—feel the collision of bone on bone and hear its sickening impact.

But the Templars arrive and Hell erupts.

Soon, bodies litter the earth, and Altaïr's name flits through the crowd like a nasty secret. Al Mualim grips Malik's shoulder with one hand as the other holds onto the recovered treasure, a look of pride in his sharp eyes. The master congratulates Malik for his work with a leveled voice, but his victory is short lived.

Assignment completed and Templars thwarted, Malik finally crumbles, hungry, thirsty, weary, and weighed with infection. The air around him smells like death, and the decision is made: he must undergo surgery.

Stirring, Malik finds himself prone on a crude table, naked to his waist and sweating with a ravaging fever. It struck his body like a war, a conquest that aimed to steal his breath and steal his life. Sweat rolls down his body in streams, agony biting at the corner of his eyes until they nearly welled with tears.

"Do not move, brother," someone beside him says, his voice calm, but pleading. "I will make it as quick as possible."

They cannot wait to amputate after his fever dies. The infection would seize him before he recovers.

Lying there, he sounds like a dying man, breaths broken and words choked. His lashes flutter as his eyes close tighter and tighter. Feet grind against the surface of the table, head turned sharply away from the dead arm beside him. It reeks. It makes his stomach flip.

The doctor drugs him with opium, so much his brain swims with empty thoughts and empty threats. This is Altaïr's fault, that arrogant fool.

He hates him.

A cloth is pulled tight above the wound, and soon the agonizing sting of alcohol bleeds into the gaping hole. "Relax, Malik," someone says, and he has to wonder how they think any man can endure this. It slices through his opium haze like nothing, and it hurts, hurts, hurts. Malik yells despite himself - still stubborn - the sound of which carries through the base's hallways. The others hear it, and they wish they were deaf.

Serrated teeth grind into his lame arm, ripping and tearing ribbons of useless muscle. Blood surges forth, gurgling and bubbling where the heavy blade meets his flesh, not abating no matter how tight the tourniquet. It drips and collects into a bucket, the wet warmth spilling all over the table. The body beneath the surgeon's hands violently flinches, shaking and quaking and threatening to break.

Everyone believes Malik has been pulled into a torture chamber.

They are right.

Another man lays his callused hands against Malik's jaw, a pathetic attempt to calm and soothe. The assassin wrenches away from the contact, and soon more hands are forced upon him to keep him still. Three? Four? He doesn't care. His legs thrash and his lungs feel full of contempt and torment, so heavy and thick it crushes the air. It feels as though he is drowning, head submerged in a sea of lead that grips him tight with misery.

Forcing a crumpled shirt into his mouth, they try to silence his screaming. It gives him something to bite on, but his clamped jaw feels ready to snap. When they finally reach bone and hear it crack and fracture, it does him in.

Malik blacks out.

When he wakes again, his left arm is finally gone, and he collapses as the reality of it hits him. He felt fingers that weren't there anymore.

POST-OPERATION.

Alcohol and drugs swim through his system like a river, the days feeling fleeting and empty. Nothing sticks. Nothing lasts.

If Altaïr ever pays him a visit born out of sweet regret, he cannot recall.

He lives in delirium, and it robs him of thought.

RECOVERY.

Some speak of a one-armed assassin, and hushed snickers and sickening doubt bubbles within the order. Who has ever heard of that? they say, distraught, voices calming into fierce whispers as familiar footsteps approach.

Malik mounts his horse, empty sleeve stitched up.

He has been promoted to Dai, and it is a title that should make him proud, but he mounts his steed with something heavy in his gut.

As he rides off, he can faintly make out someone say, "It is for the best. An invalid can't be that much of use to us."

It hits him harder than than he confesses.

And as he enters the bureau, he sees shelves filled with books and an empty desk calling his name. It hurts to look at, but he settles down and makes the place his home even though the rooftops yearn for his return.

Open skies and skylines, exhilarating nights dashing under bright stars…

Malik dips his feather into the inkwell, a Dai with power feeling anything but victorious.

He is strong, and he knows it, but no one else does. They have no desire to learn, either. The citizens of Jerusalem regard him as a worthless cripple, never knowing the tales that lie in those angry, fierce scars; they speak of a struggle, these marks of a warrior, so brutal and harsh and unsightly.

Ink stains his parchment as he works on his maps. It has always been his hobby, but, somehow, it feels insulting.

Solomon's Temple deprived him of family and friend, but sitting in the bureau, Malik can't help but to think it'd robbed him of the only life he'd known. Jerusalem laughs at him. It has taken so much from him, and here he sits.

DEFIANCE.

But he is not weak, for such a word could never describe him. Relentless, deadly, and quick, he was as fatal as the thrust of a blade. Still is. His name christened him king of the sword, and he would not shatter.

Not now. Not ever.

The order may have banished him to Jerusalem - swept away almost, like a disgusting rumor Al Mualim sought to kill - but he is no victim.

He is still a killer; he has always been. Nothing can change this simple fact, just as the laws of the world and the words of God.

But a sound tears him from his thoughts, and Malik looks up from the book he'd been reading.

It is Altaïr dressed in novice robes, shoulders tight with insolence, rage and shame in his eyes. The clothes look good on him, Malik thinks mockingly.

"Safety and peace, Malik," the assassin says.

We've both fallen from grace, Malik considers, before he hisses in response, "Your presence here deprives me of both."