Malik returned to Faqir's family after that.
They were off to the side, away from the main procession. Just under a cluster of cloth canopies, the kind thrown up last minute to give mourners somewhere to sit and break their backs from too much crying.
He hadn't meant to stop. He just wanted to leave a pouch. Maybe slide it into Faqir's wife's hand. Maybe leave it at her feet. Say a quiet goodbye. Then vanish again.
He noticed what he should've long before now.
The family... they were only three...
THERE WERE ONLY THREE OF THEM.
There should've been four. Four. Four. Four. Not fucking three. FOUR.
The pale-faced widow was there, holding a boy in one arm and gripping her daughter's hand in the other. Right. The older boy was missing... Yusuf. That cute little Yusuf. He was missing. Where was he? Where was the boy?
Malik, silent as could be, slowly followed the widow's gaze.
They landed on coffins.
But one of them was small.
It was so small that the yellow cloth covered all of it.
He... he stared at it like it was lying to him. Maybe if he looked hard enough, it'd vanish. Maybe it was a trick. A mistake. Some other child. Some misunderstanding.
Malik felt the wind die.
He muttered it. A curse. A prayer.
"...What killed the boy?"
Of course they didn't.
He looked down at his blade.
Tempted to reset. Tempted to blink.
Tempted to pull the string and unravel it all again.
But his hand shook, and the blade...
It fell, landing on the cobblestone.
Malik stared, then sighed, picked it up, and sheathed it.
Face covered. Eyes hollow. Soul trembling just beneath the surface.
Aside from the trembling soul, he wasn't much different.
He had his cloak pulled over, scarf tight across his face, hood drawn low. Only his golden eyes were visible, and they had never been duller before now.
"Are you Faqir's wife?"
She turned and stared at the Stranger.
At first, she didn't answer, only looked at him.
But then, after a few seconds, she finally dipped her head, an attempt at a nod perhaps, slow and stiff, like it hurt to move.
Malik joined her, looking down as well.
"He was good... he was a good brother... a good man."
His voice was hoarser than he thought possible.
"He... he fought real hard."
She nodded again, a tiny, jerky motion.
Her fingers tightened around her kids.
Her whisper was so soft, any mortal would find it impossible to catch it over the city's screams.
For a while after that, they just stood there, awkward, not knowing what else to say.
The little girl peeked up at Malik from behind her mother's skirt, blinking those big, wet eyes at him. She sniffled once, then tugged hard at her mother's sleeve.
"Mama... Mama, is the man going to bring Baba back?"
A long second went by, and nobody breathed.
Until finally, the widow let out a sound—half gasp, half sob—and yanked the girl into her side, pressing her face against herself like she could hide her from the world.
Her voice broke in the middle.
"Don't—don't say that, my love, please..."
The girl squirmed, confused, her little hands fisting into the widow's worn dress.
She insisted, louder this time:
"You said the good men can fix things!"
The widow just clutched her tighter, squeezing her words shut.
"Not... not this, mama... n-not this."
Malik looked down even further, eyes reaching his boots.
He wanted to be anywhere but here.
Anywhere but standing in front of this wrecked family, with nothing to offer but a lie.
His throat burned, and he forced himself to look up again, barely.
He started, then stopped.
Malik, for all he had gone through, never had consoled anyone but himself.
This was all foreign territory for him. He had absolutely no words for this.
At least none that mattered... maybe he never would have the words.
Maybe there wasn't any.
Giving up on that completely, he reached into his belt.
His fingers brushed the two pouches on there, and he pulled the lighter one free, holding it out to her.
He forced the lie out past the mountain on his chest.
"This belonged to your husband."
The widow looked at the pouch, then at the Stranger, then back at the pouch.
She did that repeatedly, seemingly confused at this... revelation.
Eventually, her mind processed the truth, and slowly...
Her hand reached out, landing on his palm.
Her eyes caught his once more.
She hesitated, but as she saw him nod, her fingers curled around the pouch.
The widow pulled it back to her chest, holding it like it was the last warm thing left in the world.
Her voice cracked so badly that Malik barely understood her.
"Thank you. Thank you, Stranger. Thank you."
She kept saying it, over and over, each "thank you" a little quieter than the last.
Like, if she said it enough times, it might mean something.
Malik, meanwhile, swallowed hard, his mouth dry.
Again, he should've left. He should've turned and walked away right then.
But before he could, the little girl peeked out from behind her mother's skirt a second time.
Like her mother, she hesitated, then reached out and touched him.
Just a tiny hand pressing against his own.
It was barely anything.
But he almost crumpled right then and there.
His eyes stung so bad he had to bite his lip to keep anything from falling.
Distracting himself, he looked at the boy in the widow's arms.
"...Can I... can I hold him?"
The widow showed a soft smile, then nodded and held out the boy.
Malik took him off her almost reverently, acting like he was made of glass.
Leaning him on his chest, he stared at the sleeping boy, feeling a knife twist, twist, and twist deep in his second heart.
"Faqir would've loved you."
He looked up at the mother.
"My husband… he wanted to name him after this… this..."
She choked up, unable to finish.
Malik blinked hard and handed the baby back, careful.
To him, he was returning something he didn't believe to be worthy of.
The boy's father, his brother, was a man who should've lived, if not for him, he might've...
He actually might have...
It was because of him.
He killed his own brother.
Malik couldn't take it anymore.
Once the boy was back home, he fell to his knees before them.
Unable to bear the guilt, he took her free hand and pressed it to his forehead.
The widow softly gasped, not understanding what was happening.
She started to say something, maybe asking him to stand up, but his words beat her to it:
Instinctively, awkwardly, she tried to hush him—patting his head with a trembling hand, as if he were the one grieving. As if he were the one needing comfort.
"It's all right... It's not your fault..."
But Malik's voice cut through her softness:
Again, she didn't know why he said that.
She didn't know who he was.
She didn't know what he meant.
But even then... the tears came anyway.
A waterfall of tears broken only by shaking sobs.
And her daughter—seeing her mother cry—began to cry too.
And the baby, sensing it, woke up and let out a loud wail that everyone could hear.
There was only one thing he could do...
He could only ask for forgiveness.
Forgiveness for what he deemed the most heinous of crimes.
He needed her to forgive him, for he would never forgive himself.
To everyone else, it probably just looked like a family drowning in grief.
Maybe some poor boy who lost his father. Maybe a son on his knees, begging for his mother not to leave too. Maybe just another tragedy, another broken thing in a city full of broken things.
They didn't know how far off they were.
This wasn't a son crying for his dead father.
This was a murderer, asking his victim's family to let him keep breathing.
It was guilt in its rawest form. Rotten, ugly, bottomless guilt.
Malik wasn't kneeling for Faqir.
He wasn't kneeling for himself.
He wasn't kneeling for the city, or the dead boy, or the widow, or the baby in her arms.
He was kneeling because somewhere along the way, something inside him had finally shattered so deeply that even if one day he stitched it back together, it'd never be human again.
Malik knelt there for a long time. Long after the mother stopped trying to pull him up. Long after the baby quieted. Long after the little girl's sobs became sniffles.
The city didn't stop for them.
The world didn't stop for him.
He stayed there anyway, forehead pressed to her hand, whispering the same two words to them, over and over and over like a damn fool: