Jamil grabs his hand immediately and forces it away. "Don't touch it," he says, sounding strangled. He doesn't know what to do about this. His mind is totally blank with horror as he watches Kalim's flesh wither away.
He has to stay calm, that's the first thing. He has to be in control of the situation. Smooth, like still water. "We should probably wait to do anything until the changes have finished. You said it doesn't hurt?"
Kalim's eyes flicker anxiously over Jamil's face. He drops his hand to his lap and shakes his head, sending some loose hair and decaying scalp dust into the air.
"It doesn't." He tries to keep his voice from shaking. He can tell Jamil is freaked out. "It just feels. I don't know. My head feels weird."
Jamil goes a little green when Kalim does that. He tries not to think about sweeping up bits of Kalim's withered skull later.
"Ah, weird how?" He isn't sure he wants to know, but maybe distracting Kalim with conversation will keep him from poking his fingers into the ruin of his own head.
Kalim swallows and deliberately does not nod. "Okay."
He's really, really glad Jamil was with him when this happened, he doesn't know what he'd have done if he wasn't, but he feels kind of bad about that when it's so obvious Jamil has been shaken up by whatever he just watched. He can't make it worse by freaking out more.
"Hey," he says, trying to force himself to chill out, "it really doesn't hurt any more." He reaches to put his good hand on Jamil's arm – two gold fingers and two meat ones – and looks at him hopefully. "It's, um, it's probably going to be okay."
Jamil finally looks away from the mess to meet Kalim's gaze for the first time in several minutes. Horribly, the reassuring look in Kalim's eyes in combination with the hand on his arm makes his stomach do a flop. That sucks. He pulls his arm from Kalim's grip and turns away before he can embarrass himself any further.
"I'll find a brush," he says, his voice a little high. It doesn't take him long to locate where he put his own, which isn't at all hygienic but he doesn't feel comfortable leaving Kalim alone to find another one right now, so he'll just have to burn this one and get a new one. It's Fine.
He settles in behind Kalim without further comment so he can prepare to brush away the remaining decayed brain matter, or whatever it is left clinging to the newly formed gold filigree that now constitutes Kalim's scalp. Lovely.
Kalim obediently holds still for him, electing not to ask what the brush is for so that Jamil doesn't have to explain.
Unfortunately, a significant amount of the... debris... has ended up on the other side of the scalp lid, inside the empty cavity of Kalim's head. If Jamil intends to brush that stuff away... he's going to have to... open it...
Jamil has definitely noticed, and he doesn't want to think about doing it. He doesn't want to be doing this at all, but if not him then who else? Who else would he allow to? He closes his eyes and takes a breath, steeling himself, then takes the brush lightly down the top surface of the filigree, enough so that the bristles barely protrude into the cavity underneath on their way. His stomach flops for an entirely different reason, seeing that.
The parts of him that have turned to metal aren't without sensation – he isn't sure if what he feels when he touches things with changed fingers is just because the gold is connected to his flesh and bone or if the metal itself is capable somehow of sensing, but either way, although it feels different from his skin – texture and pressure are dulled, temperature is heightened – it does still feel.
But the way it's felt to touch things with his golden hands definitely didn't prepare him for what's happening at the back of his head right now. The same kind of filigree pattern has been forming much more slowly on his fingers, and he's been curious enough to, say, poke a blade of grass through the holes, but... those holes are way smaller, and this is his head.
He clenches his fists in his lap. He's not going to freak out. He's not going to ask what exactly Jamil needs to brush away. But...
"Um, Jamil, would it be easier if I just – took a shower or something?"
No, that's even worse, somehow. Unwanted, an image fills Jamil's mind of water filling up in Kalim's hollow head cavity to turn the--material--still in there into mush and that overflowing everywhere. And he'd still have to clean that up. Just the thought of it is enough to make him want to hurl. Nope, he is just going to disconnect himself and pretend he is cleaning up something much less disturbing, which is a tactic he has used many a time before. Granted, all of them were still less disturbing than this.
"Stay here," he says like Kalim hadn't made a suggestion, then gets up to fetch a towel before resettling into his original position. He presses one hand into Kalim's back and puts the other on his shoulder. "I'm going to lie you back."
He lets him, of course. He lies back cooperatively – although his eyes do widen in discomfited surprise when he feels gravity move the back of his head just slightly as the angle changes. It's a good thing he's still got his headwear on or it would have swung all the way open, but he can feel it resting against the fabric and the unfamiliar sensation is bizarre.
Jamil lowers Kalim carefully, leery of triggering any vertigo, as he settles behind him so that Kalim's head rests on the towel in his lap. From there he unwinds Kalim's headwear the rest of the way, then gently tilts Kalim's head forward, Jamil's hand supporting his neck, so that his other hand can get to the tip of the lid that now slopes down Kalim's skull.
He hesitates before trying to open it, his fingers trembling and his breath coming nervous and shallow.
"Tell me if this hurts," he says first. "If it doesn't, I need you to stay still, though, all right?"
And before he can talk himself out of it, he pries open the back of Kalim's head.
It comes open smoothly, like the hinge is well-oiled.
"Ah--"
It's a good thing Jamil acts so fast, because it means Kalim doesn't have time to worry too much about what's going to happen. It does mean it comes as a surprise, though, and he can't help letting out a little gasp of alarm.
"It doesn't hurt," he says, sounding a little shocked. It feels like it should hurt. The sensation is bizarre. He holds still, like Jamil asked him to, but it's an effort.
Thankfully, now that the hinge is fully open Jamil can lower Kalim's head back onto his lap. Some of the material spills out onto the towel as he does, which he is not going to look at or acknowledge for the time being. He realizes belatedly that he really should have brought gloves, but if he doesn't get this over with now he'll lose his nerve entirely.
"Stay still," he reminds Kalim again, and then with one last, shaky inhale that he holds--because he isn't sure he won't puke otherwise--he reaches the brush into the cavity of Kalim's head and sets to work sweeping it all into the towel in his lap.
He doesn't look directly at the mess, so he can pretend he's cleaning up something else instead. A horrible dust bunny, maybe. It's just like that time he found a dead rat at the bottom of a vase in one of the lesser-maintained treasury rooms. Cleaning that up was horrible but he got through it. It's fine. He's cleaning something else. He just needs to keep working until it's done.
Occasionally, despite his best efforts, his hand will brush against some of the debris and he has to stop to swallow a gag and take a moment to recollect himself before he continues. But otherwise, he maintains stony silence as he works.
He stays still. It's really really hard, not to fidget or shift to try to see what's happening, but he has plenty of practice holding still while Jamil does some thing or another, behind him or in front of him or wherever. The thing is. though, that none of that has ever felt this utterly alien.
He can feel the brush inside his head. He can feel the surface it's touching, and the sensation is utterly nonsensical – this faint, dulled scraping feeling at a spot that shouldn't be capable of feeling anything at all, because in the ordinary course of things if anything was touching this part of his head it would be so over that there'd be no point in pain.
He's trying really, really, really hard not to think about what this means for his brain. Conversations from his childhood leak out of his mental vault, ones people had around his recovery bed about the potential after-effects of certain poisons, about concussions incurred during particularly clumsy kidnap attempts. This has to be way worse than any of that, right, if what he's pretty sure must have happened to his head is actually what's happened. But he feels normal, mentally. He doesn't feel like he's just...lost half his brain. He doesn't feel like half his brain is being swept out of his head.
He lets himself fidget just his hands, clasped together over his stomach. That should be okay. He curls and uncurls his toes in his sandals. He's pretty sure he can still move everything alright. But...
"Jamil," he says, apparently out of nowhere, partway through this revolting task. "Can you – quiz me on something? Like, school stuff. Math or history or anything."
Jamil manages to lose himself in the soothingly familiar motions of sweeping as long as he avoids thinking about what he's actually cleaning. Kalim being quiet actually helped contribute to the illusion, but his question breaks it, brings Jamil back to the here and now and he stops short in surprise. Part of him is angry that Kalim broke his reverie and made all this real again, but snapping at him for it would hardly be productive. It's not like Kalim did it on purpose; he has every right to be anxious, considering the circumstances. Even Jamil can admit that much.
"What purpose would that serve when you'd get the questions wrong regardless?" he says, not quite managing to hit his typical smug note. "How about... naming all your siblings. That'll keep you occupied, you always forget one."
(He doesn't, actually, but it's easy to convince him that he did.)
He really would have preferred to try to remember history facts; if it turns out he really can't the names of any of his siblings, that'll be so much scarier than if he just can't remember things from Professor Trein's class. He doesn't even want to acknowledge that possibility out loud, though, so he sighs, closes his eyes and starts listing off brothers and sisters.
"Nesrine, Tariq, Ridwan, Fozia, Muna..." He starts out listing them in age order, counting on his fingers as he goes, but somewhere around sibling twelve he hesitates over that. "Ah, wait, is Idris older than Husam or the other way round...?"
In his defense some of these kids' birthdays are, like, days apart.
The chatter serves the same purpose that the silence did, and Jamil is able to return to work with Kalim sufficiently distracted. Now it's like any other time Jamil has redressed Kalim's injuries while he's babbled on, and while the comparison isn't exactly comforting, it's at least still familiar. Having to talk gives him something else to focus on, too.
"Idris is older than Husam but Halima is older than Isam," Jamil reminds Kalim, turning his hairbrush into the intricate corners of the filigree. He's almost done. It's--whatever substance the inside of Kalim's head is made from seems clean, as far as he cares to look at it. As his task list progresses toward disposal, some of the nausea fights to come back.
"Right! Right." Kalim smiles up at him as best as this slightly awkward angle allows, and also as best as his current body horror head nightmare allows. He's smiled more convincing smiles, is what I'm saying – although the gratitude and fondness are one hundred percent genuine. "Thanks, Jamil."
He obviously doesn't just mean for remembering his ten-year-old siblings' birthdays.
Jamil pauses, meeting Kalim's gaze--as if he needs the complication of feeling some kind of way about Kalim's overbearing gratitude right now--and nods wordlessly in acknowledgment. He feels like opening his mouth at the moment might be a dangerous idea.
The gruesome exercise is more or less done, or it's as done as Jamil is willing to make it right now. He gathers the towel in his lap around the desiccated scraps of Kalim's brain matter, making sure not to let anything spill, and silently stands up with the bundle of it in his arms, leaving Kalim lying on his back on the bed. Then he turns and walks to the adjoining bathroom.
Jamil puts the towel and its cargo into the bin near the sink. He'll burn it later, when he has the wherewithal, but right now there are more pressing matters. Next, mechanically, he kneels in front of the toilet, makes sure his hair is safely tucked behind his shoulders, and then vomits neatly into the bowl.
Kalim lies there where Jamil left him, staring at the ceiling. The idea of moving his head feels a bit daunting, unsurprisingly, so he figures getting up can wait -- but even Jamil can't throw up so discreetly that no one hears it.
"Jamil?" He sits up quickly, only to be left reeling and dizzy from the off-balance feeling of his half-empty head and the bizarre and unfamiliar sensation of the lid swinging on its hinge. He sits there for a moment, blinking hard, before he manages to collect himself enough to follow up. "Jamil, are you okay--?"
Jamil hasn't exactly been eating great since they were brought to Patho-Gen, which at least means there isn't much to heave back up; it isn't long before he's just left panting against the toilet, waiting for his equilibrium to return. He groans when he hears Kalim try to get to his feet. The last thing he needs right now is for Kalim to fall over and injure himself.
"Stay there," Jamil wheezes. This was always the worst part of Kalim's recovery period, he refuses to just stay in bed like the doctors want. "'M fine. Almost done."
He doesn't actually insist, though. His head feels so wrong. It still doesn't hurt, but he doesn't trust himself to keep his balance standing up. He does as he's told and shuffles back on the bed to sit with his back against the wall.
"Are you sure you're okay?" he mumbles, even though he knows the answer is no and he knows Jamil isn't going to say so.
Jamil doesn't even respond. Instead he keeps going about procedure: he gets unsteadily to his feet, wipes his mouth, flushes the toilet, and washes his hands, all while avoiding looking at the bin next to the sink. Then he reemerges into the room where he left Kalim, pale and shaky but overall at working capacity. There really isn't that much reason for Kalim to worry; it's not like this is the first time Jamil has thrown up on the job.
He picks up Kalim's headscarf from where he'd set it aside and sits back in place on the bed next to Kalim. Now to make him look decent. "Turn your back to me."
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He has to stay calm, that's the first thing. He has to be in control of the situation. Smooth, like still water. "We should probably wait to do anything until the changes have finished. You said it doesn't hurt?"
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"It doesn't." He tries to keep his voice from shaking. He can tell Jamil is freaked out. "It just feels. I don't know. My head feels weird."
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"Ah, weird how?" He isn't sure he wants to know, but maybe distracting Kalim with conversation will keep him from poking his fingers into the ruin of his own head.
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"Stay seated, don't try to walk around until you adjust. I'll," he swallows, "clean it up in the meanwhile."
He doesn't move just yet. What does he even use for this? A hairbrush? Holy shit.
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He's really, really glad Jamil was with him when this happened, he doesn't know what he'd have done if he wasn't, but he feels kind of bad about that when it's so obvious Jamil has been shaken up by whatever he just watched. He can't make it worse by freaking out more.
"Hey," he says, trying to force himself to chill out, "it really doesn't hurt any more." He reaches to put his good hand on Jamil's arm – two gold fingers and two meat ones – and looks at him hopefully. "It's, um, it's probably going to be okay."
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"I'll find a brush," he says, his voice a little high. It doesn't take him long to locate where he put his own, which isn't at all hygienic but he doesn't feel comfortable leaving Kalim alone to find another one right now, so he'll just have to burn this one and get a new one. It's Fine.
He settles in behind Kalim without further comment so he can prepare to brush away the remaining decayed brain matter, or whatever it is left clinging to the newly formed gold filigree that now constitutes Kalim's scalp. Lovely.
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Unfortunately, a significant amount of the... debris... has ended up on the other side of the scalp lid, inside the empty cavity of Kalim's head. If Jamil intends to brush that stuff away... he's going to have to... open it...
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"Can you feel that?"
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The parts of him that have turned to metal aren't without sensation – he isn't sure if what he feels when he touches things with changed fingers is just because the gold is connected to his flesh and bone or if the metal itself is capable somehow of sensing, but either way, although it feels different from his skin – texture and pressure are dulled, temperature is heightened – it does still feel.
But the way it's felt to touch things with his golden hands definitely didn't prepare him for what's happening at the back of his head right now. The same kind of filigree pattern has been forming much more slowly on his fingers, and he's been curious enough to, say, poke a blade of grass through the holes, but... those holes are way smaller, and this is his head.
He clenches his fists in his lap. He's not going to freak out. He's not going to ask what exactly Jamil needs to brush away. But...
"Um, Jamil, would it be easier if I just – took a shower or something?"
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"Stay here," he says like Kalim hadn't made a suggestion, then gets up to fetch a towel before resettling into his original position. He presses one hand into Kalim's back and puts the other on his shoulder. "I'm going to lie you back."
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He lets him, of course. He lies back cooperatively – although his eyes do widen in discomfited surprise when he feels gravity move the back of his head just slightly as the angle changes. It's a good thing he's still got his headwear on or it would have swung all the way open, but he can feel it resting against the fabric and the unfamiliar sensation is bizarre.
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He hesitates before trying to open it, his fingers trembling and his breath coming nervous and shallow.
"Tell me if this hurts," he says first. "If it doesn't, I need you to stay still, though, all right?"
And before he can talk himself out of it, he pries open the back of Kalim's head.
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"Ah--"
It's a good thing Jamil acts so fast, because it means Kalim doesn't have time to worry too much about what's going to happen. It does mean it comes as a surprise, though, and he can't help letting out a little gasp of alarm.
"It doesn't hurt," he says, sounding a little shocked. It feels like it should hurt. The sensation is bizarre. He holds still, like Jamil asked him to, but it's an effort.
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"Stay still," he reminds Kalim again, and then with one last, shaky inhale that he holds--because he isn't sure he won't puke otherwise--he reaches the brush into the cavity of Kalim's head and sets to work sweeping it all into the towel in his lap.
He doesn't look directly at the mess, so he can pretend he's cleaning up something else instead. A horrible dust bunny, maybe. It's just like that time he found a dead rat at the bottom of a vase in one of the lesser-maintained treasury rooms. Cleaning that up was horrible but he got through it. It's fine. He's cleaning something else. He just needs to keep working until it's done.
Occasionally, despite his best efforts, his hand will brush against some of the debris and he has to stop to swallow a gag and take a moment to recollect himself before he continues. But otherwise, he maintains stony silence as he works.
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He can feel the brush inside his head. He can feel the surface it's touching, and the sensation is utterly nonsensical – this faint, dulled scraping feeling at a spot that shouldn't be capable of feeling anything at all, because in the ordinary course of things if anything was touching this part of his head it would be so over that there'd be no point in pain.
He's trying really, really, really hard not to think about what this means for his brain. Conversations from his childhood leak out of his mental vault, ones people had around his recovery bed about the potential after-effects of certain poisons, about concussions incurred during particularly clumsy kidnap attempts. This has to be way worse than any of that, right, if what he's pretty sure must have happened to his head is actually what's happened. But he feels normal, mentally. He doesn't feel like he's just...lost half his brain. He doesn't feel like half his brain is being swept out of his head.
He lets himself fidget just his hands, clasped together over his stomach. That should be okay. He curls and uncurls his toes in his sandals. He's pretty sure he can still move everything alright. But...
"Jamil," he says, apparently out of nowhere, partway through this revolting task. "Can you – quiz me on something? Like, school stuff. Math or history or anything."
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"What purpose would that serve when you'd get the questions wrong regardless?" he says, not quite managing to hit his typical smug note. "How about... naming all your siblings. That'll keep you occupied, you always forget one."
(He doesn't, actually, but it's easy to convince him that he did.)
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He really would have preferred to try to remember history facts; if it turns out he really can't the names of any of his siblings, that'll be so much scarier than if he just can't remember things from Professor Trein's class. He doesn't even want to acknowledge that possibility out loud, though, so he sighs, closes his eyes and starts listing off brothers and sisters.
"Nesrine, Tariq, Ridwan, Fozia, Muna..." He starts out listing them in age order, counting on his fingers as he goes, but somewhere around sibling twelve he hesitates over that. "Ah, wait, is Idris older than Husam or the other way round...?"
In his defense some of these kids' birthdays are, like, days apart.
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"Idris is older than Husam but Halima is older than Isam," Jamil reminds Kalim, turning his hairbrush into the intricate corners of the filigree. He's almost done. It's--whatever substance the inside of Kalim's head is made from seems clean, as far as he cares to look at it. As his task list progresses toward disposal, some of the nausea fights to come back.
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He obviously doesn't just mean for remembering his ten-year-old siblings' birthdays.
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The gruesome exercise is more or less done, or it's as done as Jamil is willing to make it right now. He gathers the towel in his lap around the desiccated scraps of Kalim's brain matter, making sure not to let anything spill, and silently stands up with the bundle of it in his arms, leaving Kalim lying on his back on the bed. Then he turns and walks to the adjoining bathroom.
Jamil puts the towel and its cargo into the bin near the sink. He'll burn it later, when he has the wherewithal, but right now there are more pressing matters. Next, mechanically, he kneels in front of the toilet, makes sure his hair is safely tucked behind his shoulders, and then vomits neatly into the bowl.
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"Jamil?" He sits up quickly, only to be left reeling and dizzy from the off-balance feeling of his half-empty head and the bizarre and unfamiliar sensation of the lid swinging on its hinge. He sits there for a moment, blinking hard, before he manages to collect himself enough to follow up. "Jamil, are you okay--?"
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"Stay there," Jamil wheezes. This was always the worst part of Kalim's recovery period, he refuses to just stay in bed like the doctors want. "'M fine. Almost done."
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He doesn't actually insist, though. His head feels so wrong. It still doesn't hurt, but he doesn't trust himself to keep his balance standing up. He does as he's told and shuffles back on the bed to sit with his back against the wall.
"Are you sure you're okay?" he mumbles, even though he knows the answer is no and he knows Jamil isn't going to say so.
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He picks up Kalim's headscarf from where he'd set it aside and sits back in place on the bed next to Kalim. Now to make him look decent. "Turn your back to me."
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