A Padisarah Amongst the Roses

Chapter 3: A Confession

Kaveh POV

Did he just say he loves me?

"Alhaitham..."

"I really love you Kaveh. I'm sorry."

Then Alhaitham broke into a fit of tears and fell to his knees. The blooming flower of misery in my heart wilted, and I began to cry. My stomach churned, full of happiness and relief. Wiping my tired eyes, I spun around to head to Alhaitham.

But the ground beneath me shook.

It crumbled under my feet as my breath caught in my throat. Alhaitham screamed.

"KAVEH, NO-"

I fell backwards. All went blank in my mind, except for flashes of past memories with Alhaitham. Just tiny glimpses of who I was long ago, coming back to me. I saw things, things that I had never remembered in a long time. Things from long years ago, when Alhaitham and I were studying in the Akademiya. Things from my childhood, my mother, my father, my love for engineering and architecture. Also the bad things. What it felt like to have a parent leave me. Having family die. The fights with Alhaitham. All those days spent in the rain watching my secret lover/roommate hustle off in fury, heavy water soaking my boots and my clothes, pulling me ever closer to the earth's cold surface. The pain and the bliss mixed as I fell farther and farther. Think of this as my repayment, Haitham.

All the sudden, warmth surrounded my body, and with a green flash of light, Alhaitham held me close to his body and shielded me from the fall. He wrapped his legs around mine, covering as much of me as he could from the rocks that scraped against his body as we tumbled. It was then when I learned that the all-important grand scribe of the Akademiya was wiling to jump off a cliff just to save an ordinary wallflower like me.

***

Alhaitham POV

I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream and let everything out, but I couldn't. I had to hold the pain in for Kaveh.

The cliff edge was sharp, and it tore through my back. My Dendro Vision didn't do a damn thing. It was a burning, searing pain that stretched from my head to my feet.

The fall seemed to last forever, but at last, Kaveh and I landed in a kind river, waterfalls rippling the surface.

Silence drowned my ears. Thank the archons we didn't land on solid ground. My mind blanked out, and for a moment, I swore I saw stars.

The first thing I thought of was if I had done enough to keep Kaveh alive.

Kaveh POV

I was choking, letting the water run down my throat and into my lungs. Come to think of it, the feeling wasn't too bad. It didn't hurt, it just made me dizzy more or less. I wondered where Alhaitham was and if he was okay. I mean, he had just fallen off a cliff with me in his arms.

I shot up out of the water to look around.

"Haitham?! ALHAITHAM?! WHERE ARE YOU-"

My horrid screeching was cut off by river water rushing down my throat. Nevertheless, my bloodshot eyes kept frantically searching for Alhaitham. Behind me there was a frighteningly large- and growing- dark red color staining the water around Alhaitham's floating body, which was a few meters from mine.

"ALHAITHA-"

Mouth open, a sudden wave filled my mouth with water. It was unpleasant when I choked and swallowed some. I tried screaming some more, but to no avail. The scenery around me grew hazy, and eventually, I blacked out as I succumbed to my fate.

***

"...Where the hell am I..."

Wherever I was, it was not water.

"Oh crap-"

I clutched my side and winced, only now realizing that blood was pooling in the floor next to me. I guess I had broken a rib upon impact with the water. Apart from that, my vision was hazy and blurry, so I barely could make out anything in front of me.

But I could tell that the figure lying down on the shoreline was Alhaitham. His blood soaked body rocked with the gentle waves coming in from the lake. I screamed with every ounce of breath I had left.

"ALHAITHAM!!"

Blood dripped as I ran to his side. It seemed as all the pain in my body disappeared when I saw him. I couldn't imagine how much pain he was in.

"HEY! Hey, are you okay?! ANSWER ME!"

Then my knees buckled and I fell on the sandy dirt next to him. Crawling closer was the most painful thing I had ever experienced. With a mouthful of mud and not a single crap to give for anything or anyone else, I hovered my hands over his nose.

He wasn't breathing.

A worried expression grew on my face- Alhaitham wasn't just bruised from the fall, rather torn up to practically shreds. But as hard as I tried to stop the bleeding, it wouldn't end.

It felt like I let him down. Like he suffered because of me. This was the second time I cried so hard, second to my father's death, but it felt more painful than ever.

Now I had really lost everything.