FF – Assassin's Creed

Time

Warnings: None
Characters: Malik Al-Sayf, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad
Summary: Prompt - Sword

A/N: This was supposed to be a 100 word drabble along with others, but… meh.

It is three days, two hours and forty-five minutes when Malik eventually wakes from his coma from the surgery. Surgery, was, in fact, a delicate way of putting it. As with all medieval doctors, the only thing that knew to do when a situation was beyond their repair, was to cut it away.

In Malik's case, it meant amputating his arm.

It is ten days, seven hours and fifteen minutes from the Solomon Incident before Malik is willing to resign himself to fate that Kadar is lost, and that he is the only person left.

He loses track of the number of nights he cries himself to sleep.

It is one day, eight hours and seven minutes when Al Mualim comes to see him in the sick bay after he awakes, with news of his promotion to Rafiq of Jerusalem, one of their main and most important bureaus in the area.

To Malik, it is a fate worse than death.

It is three weeks, five days, four hours and fifty minutes after his relocation to Jerusalem that he meets Altaïr again.

It is two minutes and thirty-two seconds before he loses his barely-existent patience and sends Altaïr out and away again.

His days are miserable. He counts the seconds when he's not working, and rearranges the bureau at least twice a day to kill the anxiety that grows steadily inside him. No one notices, and he doesn't expect anyone to. He avoids his own reflection in the fountain pool, because he can't stand seeing what he has become.

It is four months, ten days and six hours before he is able to genuinely consider forgiveness.

It is two hours, five minutes and eight seconds when he decides that he can forgive Altaïr, and he does.

It is five months, three days, four hours, seventeen minutes and twenty eight seconds of his time as a Rafiq, when Altaïr returns to the bureau with news of Al Mualim's betrayal. He doesn't remember how long it takes for him to recover and round up the other rafiqs to meet Altaïr in Masyaf.

At some point in time, he stops counting.

It is, however, eight months, two weeks and five days before he admits that he is no longer able to use a sword, and he wraps his blade up in a brown cloth and leaves it on Altaïr table.

It is seven years ago when he would have scoffed at anyone who might remark that Malik might allow another to even touch Aslan. Today, he is resigned to fate. Aslan is a finely crafted sword, one of the best, his father used to say, but it is wasted on him.

Aslan was his family heirloom, and he gives it away.

It is precisely two hours and twenty-seven minutes when he returns to his room and finds a sword resting on his bed.

Aquila. Altaïr's sword.