This is the second writer!anon from before. I must apologize in advance because this story is slightly different from OP’s request. Instead of getting little hints throughout their entire lives, they only start feeling it a little later and Malik’s appearance is not the same as he possesses both arms in this story. Lastly, but not least, this turned out a lot darker than I intended at first (fear not, it does have a happy ending). TW for panic attacks (not sure if this warrants a TW, but just to be safe). I am really, really sorry if OP wanted an accurate rendition of their prompt and I did it no justice! If OP dislikes this, or feel it does not tend to their original prompt, feel free to ask a mod to delete this (really).
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As a history teacher in one of the most prestigious universities in Canada, Malik Al-Sayf never believed in anything that hadn’t been proved by the past. As such, when Kadar and his longtime girlfriend, a cute french brunette by the name Anne, treated him to a quick lunch in between his classes and she offered to read his hands, he quickly shook the idea off. His brother simply chuckled, mentioning how he had seen it coming, but she was insistent and told him she had never failed before. He agreed then, if anything to get it over with before she pulled out his hand to prove her point.
Anne wasn't a religious person ("Too many religions, tried almost all of them, none of them made me feel comfortable" she would say. "I don't get why I should feel guilty before someone I don't know instead of enjoying my life to the fullest. If God - or Gods - created me, they would want me to be happy, right?"), but she was incredibly superstitious ("Don't leave your shoes turned upside down, they're bad luck!"; "Did you see the black cat wandering around town? Kadar and I will try to find him some shelter, it's no good having a black cat wandering across the campus, but I can't just leave him in the streets either."; "Malik, you should see the dreamcatcher Kadar gave me last week, it's beautiful!"). Kadar had told him it bordered on fanaticism sometimes, but she rarely talked about it when they were together and he never saw anything negative about it, so he leaves her be ("It's endearing, she's always bringing me these things to decorate my room, and believe it or not, I haven't had a single nightmare since she started doing this.").
The last thing Malik wanted was to upset his brother or make her sad by refusing her reading, so he accepted, almost regretting it when she beamed at him, promptly capturing his hand between hers and bringing it closer to her face. She looked and turned it around and gleamed and made such a serious expression he was sure she was not capable of. Then she let out a loud "Woah!" that made Kadar look over her shoulder hoping to see what it was. Malik simply raised an eyebrow.
"What is it?" his brother asked, still trying to understand despite not knowing a single thing about palm reading.
"See this line?" She traced the line that went from between his thumb and index fingers, curving it down until it reached the end of his hand, where it connected with his wrist. "The life line. It's even longer than yours Kadar."
"Well, we're brothers." Malik pointed it out nonchalantly.
"Even among family members, it's not common to find similar lines. Not rare, but... Well, this kind of line is pretty rare, they usually reach just the middle of the hand" She brought up her own to show what she meant and indeed, her lines were much less accentuated and the one she's been tracing was much longer on his hand. "What is unusual is to find such rare lines so close to each other, even more so amongst family." her reply silenced him. "It's very long too. You've both been around for a long time."
He glanced at Kadar, who merely shrugged.
"Like, past lives and that sort of stuff." Kadar looked at his own hand and extended it next to Malik's, so they could compare. "She told me it means we've reincarnated a lot."
"No, not necessarily," Anne batted his hand away and focused on Malik's again. "It means your souls are old and they've been around for a long time, but not necessarily reincarnated a lot. The longer the line, the furthest you've been in history."
The last part piqued his interest - and she knew, for as soon as his eyes widened, she grinned. It was gone as suddenly as it appeared though.
"You are probably from the 10th or 11th century, or something close to that. When your soul was born, I mean."
"Do I have karmas?" Malik asks in an almost mocking tone. As nice as the whole idea is, he is still a very skeptical person and never cared much for past lives - he's living here and now and that's what matters, not the past, as much as he reprimands himself for thinking so due to his career.
"Who knows?"
“That makes no sense. My line goes from one side to the other on my hand and I’m only from 10 centuries ago? What about the people who were born in the 4th or 5th century?”
“Double lines.” Anne traced another line very close to the first, curving it just like the original. “The first line represent this millenium, the second - the one before, and so on. This little line here” she pointed a very faint, tiny line just above the one she traced before “it represents the beginning of this millenium. The one below was the second. That’s incredibly rare though. Double lines are hard enough to find and I’ve only heard about three or four lines in old Palmistry books, like, really old books, 100 and 200 years ago, that’s when the last one was spotted by doctors and documented by Palm readers.
“Soooo, what? Does that mean I knew my brother from before this life?” Kadar peered curiously at his own hand again. Malik noticed his brother’s life line wasn’t as apparent as his, being slightly more faded at the beginning and middle.
Anne shrugged and released the teacher’s hand.
“Not impossible, they say siblings tend to stay together through time. I could probably find out if I made a thorough study of both your hands, but right now it’s impossible to say.”
“Not even something?”
“C’est la vie, mon ami. I’m not a specialist, I just know what I know because of some books I read when I got interested.
Kadar opened his mouth to say something, but stopped when noticed his brother getting up.
“Going already?”
“Sorry, long day, I need to prepare some notes for today’s classes.”
“Alright.” he nodded. “I’ll call you later.”
Malik nodded and glanced a smile at Anne, who waved at him before he turned and left. They frequented this small restaurant inside the campus often - great for Malik who barely has the time to leave and perfect for Kadar who often comes to visit Anne, all the more so now that it’s her last semester in psychiatry. Giving one last glance at his wristwatch, he quickened the pace and headed to the building.
That day, like many others, had little significance and impact in his life. It was a common thing for him to meet his brother inside the campus for lunch so casually. If anyone asked him then do you remember that day your brother’s girlfriend read your hand? he would probably reply he didn’t even remember she could do such a thing.
Which is why, after a year and two months since then, Malik could not understand why he remembered that day so vividly out of a sudden. Much less now, of all times, after waking up with a jolt from the worst nightmare he could remember ever having.
He was panting, unable to suck air in, as if he had spent the entire day working out. The sheets were humid with his sweat and his fingers shook with fear when he closed them around the fabrics. His head exploded with an excruciating pain and his heart was beating so fast he could hear it, feel it in his head. It pumped vigorously and it hurt, pressuring his chest as if it was a container about to burst.
Tired, but completely awake, Malik shook his head many times, trying to forget the vivid image of the long sword running through his brother’s gut and only stopping when it reached his throat, before aiming towards him. It was all too fast to remember the details but it was there and it was the worst feeling in the world. Malik pulled his knees up and rested his forehead on top of them. He was tired, impossibly exhausted but he had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to sleep for the rest of the night.
The frustrating part was that he still had no idea why the first thing that came to his mind after waking up in such a state was that regular day. But perhaps even more frustrated was Kadar when, during the next morning, Malik casually asked him for a dreamcatcher, pretending it wasn’t a big deal. He had never been more grateful when his younger brother made no questions about it.
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A few weeks after that night, Malik still refused to believe a tiny hula hoop with strings, feathers and beads managed to keep his nightmares away. They still returned during two nights, but definitely a lot less violently than before (and they certainly didn’t contain a dying young brother) and not as vivid.
They felt like memories, something he did a few years ago and then it faded over time, like old tapes. In the first dream he had after hanging the dreamcatcher above his bed, he was someone else. Someone who resembled him, but it was hard to see. Blurred shots of a hill, of a fortress - a castle? There was a knife, it looked like one, reaching for his left arm and it took one of his fingers. He woke up abruptly, breathing a little faster than usual, but he was fine - no adrenaline, no tight pressures in his chest, no headaches. It wasn't anything compared to what he felt weeks ago.
Regardless, he managed keep a good night’s sleep overall, but refused to admit such thing was responsible for it. “Stupid thing.” he would complain while shooting narrowed glances in its direction.
As he sat across his bed with a book in his hands, he looked up at the dreamcatcher. It was just superstition, after all. Convinced this was the case, he removed it and carefully put it away on his nightstand drawer.
It was no surprise then, that after he woke up at 2am that night, feeling like vomiting his dinner all over the place, he hurriedly tossed the drawer aside and grabbed the object between his shaky fingers, trying and failing miserably to hang it on the wall again. Panting violently and too tremulous to see clearly, he only managed it after a few tries (he nearly fell from the end of the bed when he got too exasperated because he didn’t get it right on the fifth try).
He cursed in French, English and another language he didn’t even know (could it have been Arabic? He had heard his parents talking in Arabic sometimes, but it was such a long time ago, he never learned it, so how could this be possible?), which made him even more confused and he screamed in rage. Stinking with sweat he rushed to the bathroom and let the cool water hit him hard.
But the image of his own bloodied arm being sawed right in front of him, while he screamed and flounced around, didn’t let him sleep well for another two nights.
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One day, like many others in the same restaurant as they always meet, Kadar pointed out that he was hypocritical.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Kadar put down his glass of water to speak “You’re a history teacher, soon to become a professor. You clearly love what you do, but you don’t care about your own past at all.”
“Kadar, she’s rubbing off on you.”
“Maybe, but she still raises a valid point.”
“Where is this even coming from?”
Kadar let out a heavy sigh and somehow that was enough to grab Malik’s attention. His brother relaxed in his seat and played with the cup in his hands.
“The other day she wanted to a make a family tree of us. I was frustrated when I couldn’t tell her her any names before our grandparents.” Another sigh. Knowing his brother, this was eating him inside. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was? I mean, I want to have kids one day and it’s gonna be so awkward seeing her talking about all her fancy ancestry while I have nothing to show.”
Malik never choked so hard before.
“Kids?!”
“Don’t change the subject.” rolling his eyes, Kadar took another sip of his drink. “I’m being serious here.”
He gave it some thought, he really did. Not now, long before. It was something he simply chose not to delve into. When their parents died in France and he was left in charge of his small brother, he got financial aid to attend to a school in Canada and moved with him. Despite having always been a fanatic history lover, he never cared for his own past. He was always too busy looking into the future, for his brother’s sake, to look at it. It was better this way. But he knew about some things, bits and pieces he heard from his father and mother, like how they were born in Lebanon and moved to France after marrying. But that was it. He made no efforts in learning any more, there was just no point in it.
“Isn’t history all about the people who made it?”
Malik was brought from his reverie when his brother spoke. Thankfully he didn’t have to reply his previous question - he didn’t know how to. “History is all about changes, not people.”
“But people make the changes.”
“And then they die. Changes don't.”
“Touché.” Kadar lifted his hands, signaling the end of it. “You win, but still, it would have been nice to know more about us.” He placed his elbow on top of the table and supported his chin with his hand. “Are you okay? You seem a bit pale.”
Malik shook his head, rubbing his tired eyes. “Sorry, didn’t get much sleep. I’ll be fine though.”
For the entirety of the day, he felt dizzy and almost collapsed during his last class. He ended it early when two of the front row students rushed to his side to support him.
Whatever was happening to him, he hated it and he just wished it would go away.
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All palmistry references here are things I remember learning in my childhood, which is not much, so this could be completely wrong and I totally invented some things, so please don’t take any of it seriously asdfghjkl;
Dream Catcher - Prologue
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As a history teacher in one of the most prestigious universities in Canada, Malik Al-Sayf never believed in anything that hadn’t been proved by the past. As such, when Kadar and his longtime girlfriend, a cute french brunette by the name Anne, treated him to a quick lunch in between his classes and she offered to read his hands, he quickly shook the idea off. His brother simply chuckled, mentioning how he had seen it coming, but she was insistent and told him she had never failed before. He agreed then, if anything to get it over with before she pulled out his hand to prove her point.
Anne wasn't a religious person ("Too many religions, tried almost all of them, none of them made me feel comfortable" she would say. "I don't get why I should feel guilty before someone I don't know instead of enjoying my life to the fullest. If God - or Gods - created me, they would want me to be happy, right?"), but she was incredibly superstitious ("Don't leave your shoes turned upside down, they're bad luck!"; "Did you see the black cat wandering around town? Kadar and I will try to find him some shelter, it's no good having a black cat wandering across the campus, but I can't just leave him in the streets either."; "Malik, you should see the dreamcatcher Kadar gave me last week, it's beautiful!"). Kadar had told him it bordered on fanaticism sometimes, but she rarely talked about it when they were together and he never saw anything negative about it, so he leaves her be ("It's endearing, she's always bringing me these things to decorate my room, and believe it or not, I haven't had a single nightmare since she started doing this.").
The last thing Malik wanted was to upset his brother or make her sad by refusing her reading, so he accepted, almost regretting it when she beamed at him, promptly capturing his hand between hers and bringing it closer to her face. She looked and turned it around and gleamed and made such a serious expression he was sure she was not capable of. Then she let out a loud "Woah!" that made Kadar look over her shoulder hoping to see what it was. Malik simply raised an eyebrow.
"What is it?" his brother asked, still trying to understand despite not knowing a single thing about palm reading.
"See this line?" She traced the line that went from between his thumb and index fingers, curving it down until it reached the end of his hand, where it connected with his wrist. "The life line. It's even longer than yours Kadar."
"Well, we're brothers." Malik pointed it out nonchalantly.
"Even among family members, it's not common to find similar lines. Not rare, but... Well, this kind of line is pretty rare, they usually reach just the middle of the hand" She brought up her own to show what she meant and indeed, her lines were much less accentuated and the one she's been tracing was much longer on his hand. "What is unusual is to find such rare lines so close to each other, even more so amongst family." her reply silenced him. "It's very long too. You've both been around for a long time."
He glanced at Kadar, who merely shrugged.
"Like, past lives and that sort of stuff." Kadar looked at his own hand and extended it next to Malik's, so they could compare. "She told me it means we've reincarnated a lot."
"No, not necessarily," Anne batted his hand away and focused on Malik's again. "It means your souls are old and they've been around for a long time, but not necessarily reincarnated a lot. The longer the line, the furthest you've been in history."
The last part piqued his interest - and she knew, for as soon as his eyes widened, she grinned. It was gone as suddenly as it appeared though.
"You are probably from the 10th or 11th century, or something close to that. When your soul was born, I mean."
"Do I have karmas?" Malik asks in an almost mocking tone. As nice as the whole idea is, he is still a very skeptical person and never cared much for past lives - he's living here and now and that's what matters, not the past, as much as he reprimands himself for thinking so due to his career.
"Who knows?"
“That makes no sense. My line goes from one side to the other on my hand and I’m only from 10 centuries ago? What about the people who were born in the 4th or 5th century?”
“Double lines.” Anne traced another line very close to the first, curving it just like the original. “The first line represent this millenium, the second - the one before, and so on. This little line here” she pointed a very faint, tiny line just above the one she traced before “it represents the beginning of this millenium. The one below was the second. That’s incredibly rare though. Double lines are hard enough to find and I’ve only heard about three or four lines in old Palmistry books, like, really old books, 100 and 200 years ago, that’s when the last one was spotted by doctors and documented by Palm readers.
“Soooo, what? Does that mean I knew my brother from before this life?” Kadar peered curiously at his own hand again. Malik noticed his brother’s life line wasn’t as apparent as his, being slightly more faded at the beginning and middle.
Anne shrugged and released the teacher’s hand.
“Not impossible, they say siblings tend to stay together through time. I could probably find out if I made a thorough study of both your hands, but right now it’s impossible to say.”
“Not even something?”
“C’est la vie, mon ami. I’m not a specialist, I just know what I know because of some books I read when I got interested.
Kadar opened his mouth to say something, but stopped when noticed his brother getting up.
“Going already?”
“Sorry, long day, I need to prepare some notes for today’s classes.”
“Alright.” he nodded. “I’ll call you later.”
Malik nodded and glanced a smile at Anne, who waved at him before he turned and left. They frequented this small restaurant inside the campus often - great for Malik who barely has the time to leave and perfect for Kadar who often comes to visit Anne, all the more so now that it’s her last semester in psychiatry. Giving one last glance at his wristwatch, he quickened the pace and headed to the building.
That day, like many others, had little significance and impact in his life. It was a common thing for him to meet his brother inside the campus for lunch so casually. If anyone asked him then do you remember that day your brother’s girlfriend read your hand? he would probably reply he didn’t even remember she could do such a thing.
Which is why, after a year and two months since then, Malik could not understand why he remembered that day so vividly out of a sudden. Much less now, of all times, after waking up with a jolt from the worst nightmare he could remember ever having.
He was panting, unable to suck air in, as if he had spent the entire day working out. The sheets were humid with his sweat and his fingers shook with fear when he closed them around the fabrics. His head exploded with an excruciating pain and his heart was beating so fast he could hear it, feel it in his head. It pumped vigorously and it hurt, pressuring his chest as if it was a container about to burst.
Tired, but completely awake, Malik shook his head many times, trying to forget the vivid image of the long sword running through his brother’s gut and only stopping when it reached his throat, before aiming towards him. It was all too fast to remember the details but it was there and it was the worst feeling in the world. Malik pulled his knees up and rested his forehead on top of them. He was tired, impossibly exhausted but he had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to sleep for the rest of the night.
The frustrating part was that he still had no idea why the first thing that came to his mind after waking up in such a state was that regular day. But perhaps even more frustrated was Kadar when, during the next morning, Malik casually asked him for a dreamcatcher, pretending it wasn’t a big deal. He had never been more grateful when his younger brother made no questions about it.
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A few weeks after that night, Malik still refused to believe a tiny hula hoop with strings, feathers and beads managed to keep his nightmares away. They still returned during two nights, but definitely a lot less violently than before (and they certainly didn’t contain a dying young brother) and not as vivid.
They felt like memories, something he did a few years ago and then it faded over time, like old tapes. In the first dream he had after hanging the dreamcatcher above his bed, he was someone else. Someone who resembled him, but it was hard to see. Blurred shots of a hill, of a fortress - a castle? There was a knife, it looked like one, reaching for his left arm and it took one of his fingers. He woke up abruptly, breathing a little faster than usual, but he was fine - no adrenaline, no tight pressures in his chest, no headaches. It wasn't anything compared to what he felt weeks ago.
Regardless, he managed keep a good night’s sleep overall, but refused to admit such thing was responsible for it. “Stupid thing.” he would complain while shooting narrowed glances in its direction.
As he sat across his bed with a book in his hands, he looked up at the dreamcatcher. It was just superstition, after all. Convinced this was the case, he removed it and carefully put it away on his nightstand drawer.
It was no surprise then, that after he woke up at 2am that night, feeling like vomiting his dinner all over the place, he hurriedly tossed the drawer aside and grabbed the object between his shaky fingers, trying and failing miserably to hang it on the wall again. Panting violently and too tremulous to see clearly, he only managed it after a few tries (he nearly fell from the end of the bed when he got too exasperated because he didn’t get it right on the fifth try).
He cursed in French, English and another language he didn’t even know (could it have been Arabic? He had heard his parents talking in Arabic sometimes, but it was such a long time ago, he never learned it, so how could this be possible?), which made him even more confused and he screamed in rage. Stinking with sweat he rushed to the bathroom and let the cool water hit him hard.
But the image of his own bloodied arm being sawed right in front of him, while he screamed and flounced around, didn’t let him sleep well for another two nights.
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One day, like many others in the same restaurant as they always meet, Kadar pointed out that he was hypocritical.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Kadar put down his glass of water to speak “You’re a history teacher, soon to become a professor. You clearly love what you do, but you don’t care about your own past at all.”
“Kadar, she’s rubbing off on you.”
“Maybe, but she still raises a valid point.”
“Where is this even coming from?”
Kadar let out a heavy sigh and somehow that was enough to grab Malik’s attention. His brother relaxed in his seat and played with the cup in his hands.
“The other day she wanted to a make a family tree of us. I was frustrated when I couldn’t tell her her any names before our grandparents.” Another sigh. Knowing his brother, this was eating him inside. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was? I mean, I want to have kids one day and it’s gonna be so awkward seeing her talking about all her fancy ancestry while I have nothing to show.”
Malik never choked so hard before.
“Kids?!”
“Don’t change the subject.” rolling his eyes, Kadar took another sip of his drink. “I’m being serious here.”
He gave it some thought, he really did. Not now, long before. It was something he simply chose not to delve into. When their parents died in France and he was left in charge of his small brother, he got financial aid to attend to a school in Canada and moved with him. Despite having always been a fanatic history lover, he never cared for his own past. He was always too busy looking into the future, for his brother’s sake, to look at it. It was better this way. But he knew about some things, bits and pieces he heard from his father and mother, like how they were born in Lebanon and moved to France after marrying. But that was it. He made no efforts in learning any more, there was just no point in it.
“Isn’t history all about the people who made it?”
Malik was brought from his reverie when his brother spoke. Thankfully he didn’t have to reply his previous question - he didn’t know how to. “History is all about changes, not people.”
“But people make the changes.”
“And then they die. Changes don't.”
“Touché.” Kadar lifted his hands, signaling the end of it. “You win, but still, it would have been nice to know more about us.” He placed his elbow on top of the table and supported his chin with his hand. “Are you okay? You seem a bit pale.”
Malik shook his head, rubbing his tired eyes. “Sorry, didn’t get much sleep. I’ll be fine though.”
For the entirety of the day, he felt dizzy and almost collapsed during his last class. He ended it early when two of the front row students rushed to his side to support him.
Whatever was happening to him, he hated it and he just wished it would go away.
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All palmistry references here are things I remember learning in my childhood, which is not much, so this could be completely wrong and I totally invented some things, so please don’t take any of it seriously asdfghjkl;