To Abuse and Adore
#70 - Winter
Malik Al-Sayr, having been born in a desert, grown up in a desert and lived in hot, exotic countries for the majority of his young life, was ignorant in the fact that snow existed. In his defence, he had only seen rain three times in his life. Certainly, he had read about it, heard about it and been subject to many a raised eyebrow and perplexed look whenever he asked about it, but the point remained that he still did not know what it looked like, yet alone felt like or why people got this glimmer of childlike glee in their eyes whenever it was brought up. A long suffering Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad, who in a twisted scenario of role reversal, was adamant to answer Malik’s bombardment of questions about it, especially because, secretly, he liked it how the brunette would get so excited over the thought of something as innocent and simple as snow.
“Alright, essentially, it’s just frozen water,” Altaïr began, getting the basics out of the way. God forbid that Malik, the scholar that he was, would commence his inquisition and plague him with questions about the science of snow, of all things, but for now, frozen water it was. “It’s just rain freezing in the sky and falling down.”
“That’s it? Are you sure?” Malik asked in confusion, little nose wrinkling. He rubbed his chin, perplexed as to the simplicity of snow. “Everyone makes it sound so magical…” Altaïr smiled at his little sarcastic eye-roll. “So, it freezes in the sky and can fall down anytime? Why do I never hear about it in summer?”
“No-no-no,” the elder assassin sighed, shaking his head. “You’ve got it mixed up. It has to be as cold down here on the ground as it is up in the sky. If it’s too warm, snow can fall but it’ll just melt into rain. Or if it’s too cold, then the snow simply won’t fall at all.”
“What?!” Malik exclaimed in astonishment. “It can be too cold for snow?!” At Altaïr’s nod, he rocked back in his chair and said simply, “Bizarre.” There was a silence; Malik drummed his fingers on the armchair. Altaïr threw more logs on the dying fire and prodded it agitatedly with a poker. “So, what…” the brunette began slowly, staring into the flames curiously. “What does it look like?”
Altaïr cocked an eyebrow; it felt weird having Malik ask the questions and himself answer them. Quite the turn of events, he thought in bemusement. “It’s just… God, I don’t know how to describe it…” Altaïr thought for a bit and made circular movements with his hands, tongue sticking out in concentration. “It’s just white. White and cold and wet. It covers everything like a blanket. If you hold it in your hands, it turns to liquid; if you pack it together and stand on it, it’s solid. It falls in tiny flakes but can build up into walls and hills. People in the far North build houses out of it and it never melts!”
Malik’s face was a picture. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“That’s amazing!”
Altaïr had to suppress a fond smile and squashed his sudden affection for the teenage brunette down deep into his subconscious. “Well, I suppose when it snows every day, it’s not quite as amazing. Suddenly sunshine and heat waves seem the stuff of legend.”
“You have a point, but still…” Malik laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them. He was being engulfed by an enormous cushioned armchair the colour of spilt burgundy wine, knees drawn up to his chest and bundled up in enough clothes to make his slim figure seem ridiculously bulky. Altaïr had noted Malik did not like the cold and most certainly could not deal with it like a man at all. The brunette was constantly shivering slightly, despite being indoors, despite the roaring fires. Ever the suspicious one, Malik continued hesitantly, “Is it… I don’t know, dangerous?”
“Dangerous?” repeated Altaïr incredulously.
“Well, yes,” flustered the brunette, feeling embarrassed. “I mean, all weather can be dangerous somehow, right? Rain turns to floods; sun turns to heat waves…”
“Murderous snowflakes,” Altaïr said in perfect deadpan, holding his thumb and forefinger centimetres apart. “With teeny-tiny swords this small. It’s a real problem in Acre, I hear. They contribute to a thousand deaths per winter…”
Malik snorted and thumped a clenched fist against Altaïr’s bicep in admonishment. “Grow up.”
“You won’t be laughing when they stick you in the head.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll feel the tiny prick of a needle when it snows.”
“Kill the unbeliever!”
“Answer the question.”
“Well, yes, I suppose you could say it is dangerous if you’re caught in a snowstorm or if you don’t dress warmly enough and get hypothermia and that kind of thing… it can burn you as well, if you graze your skin on it.”
“That…” Malik raised his eyebrows, shook his head and smiled. “That is the oddest thing that I’ve ever heard. Ice burning you like fire?”
“It’s true!” Altaïr exclaimed indignantly.
A thoughtful smile was flashed his way. “I believe you, don’t worry. You could tell me that the grass is blue and the sky is green and I would believe you anyway.” Altaïr felt a tiny, genuine smile tug at his lips. How sentimental. Oddly so for Malik anyway. Malik stretched out his muscles languorously like a dozing wildcat and sighed. “I want to see it so badly now. It sounds beautiful.”
“Hmm,” was all Altaïr could murmur, pretending not to pay attention but watching every tiny move Malik made out of the corner of his eye.
They both lapsed into a pensive silence. Malik had all but nodded off, tanned face warm and radiant from the glow of the firelight and Altaïr had slumped in his armchair, watching the flickering shadows on the walls and occasionally stealing the odd guilty look at his best friend, curled up and cold, just begging for his embrace. Fingers trailed thoughtfully over the hem of his robe before curling back, the owner sighing. Altaïr pushed himself out of his seat, disappeared from the room and came back, clutching a thick blanket. He had to tell himself not to let his fingertips linger too long on the small gaps of Malik’s bare skin as he draped the coverlet over his slight, shivering frame. Feeling ridiculous, Altaïr fought back the urge to do something affectionate; to stroke his hair, to curl up next to him to share body warmth, to kiss his forehead… something! Anything!
He got away with just a squeeze of his best friend’s shoulder.
I’m pathetic, Altaïr groaned inwardly, thumping the back of his head on the locked wooden door behind him, but tries to change to a more philosophical tact. Like I would have helped anyway: I’m freezing cold all the time too.
#13 - Misfortune
(…your ancestor sucks hard at poker.)
(Shaddup, your ancestor sucks hard at my ancestor, oh burn.)
(Why do I have to share an Animus with you anyway, you jackass? You haven’t taken a shower in days. This is a violation of my human rights.)
(Mm, I’ll violate you.)
(Must you turn everything I say into innuendo?)
(In-YOUR-endo, baby.)
(Oh, thank God, the memory’s load-)
“Royal flush,” crooned Agrippa Afanasii, tossing her cards down onto the roughly hewn wooden table, much to the disbelief of the other players. “I think that makes me the vinner, da?” On her left, her husband Borislav Ippolit - the Master of the Assassin’s Brotherhood of Russia - threw down his cards in veiled irritation, mumbling envious words of congratulations to his albino wife. Her willowy pale arms scooped up the heap of gold coins from the centre. “Oh, vell, darlings, better luck next time, da?” she practically sang.
On the other side of the table, Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad merely gawped at his pathetic set of cards while Malik went apoplectic with rage and jumped to his feet, slamming his hand on the table. The candles juddered indignantly, flames snapping. “NO!” the brunette yelled, flapping his cards agitatedly. “I REFUSE TO LOSE TO A WOMAN WHO CANNOT PRONOUNCE HER W’S PROPERLY. THIS IS PREPOSTEROUS.”
“Cheers!” an already tipsy Altaïr cried haphazardly and seized the opportunity to steal Malik’s barely touched mug of ale, getting froth on the tip of his nose.
Agrippa shrugged her skinny shoulders with a wicked grin on her face. “Aw, Malik, but I von fair and square; you von’t begrudge an old lady her hard-von vinnings, vill you? That would be very ungallant, da?”
“Now now, you’re thirty seven, Agrippa,” her pale haired, translucent eyed and weather-beaten husband amended calmly, looking over his cards solemnly. How a man that was nearly 120kg and two metres of muscle could be so quiet was an impossible question to answer. “Hardly the epitome of senility and wisdom quite yet.”
“Oh, hush your mouth, Borya, I’m old compared to the boys that just got their arses kicked, that’s for sure,” Agrippa retorted, flicking back strands of her cropped short chestnut and snow white hair. Altaïr bristled at being called a ‘boy’, while Malik was feverishly checking and re-checking Agrippa’s and Borislav’s cards for signs of foul play. She snatched them from his fingers with a sharp toothy grin and tickled the one armed assassin underneath his chin. Altaïr’s hackles rose with jealousy. “Care for another game?”
“Oi, oi, hands off the cripple, he’s mine,” said Altaïr warningly, taking a well-needed gulp of ale. Malik smacked him upside the head with his arm with an embarrassed almost-whine of “Altaïr, don’t use that word!” The assassin rolled his grey eyes. “Alright, alright, hands off the cripple, he’s his own property.”
Malik muttered something along the lines of “why do I bother?” Borislav began gathering up the cards and shuffling them carefully, until Agrippa got impatient, snatched them from her husband and sent them soaring through the air in an arc before catching them all, perfectly shuffled in her other hand. “Aié, Borya, take your time, vhy don’t you?” she said, irritated. “Fetch me some vhisky.”
“Sorry, my love,” the great bear of the Russian man said meekly, rising carefully to his feet and padding over to the bar, barely making a sound. “Yes, my love.”
Altaïr turned to Malik. “There, you see? Why can’t you be as submissive as that?”
“Bite me, my love,” Malik said sweetly, sarcasm dripping off every word.
“Men,” Agrippa said philosophically, smiling sympathetically as she dealt the cards showily again, showing off with her ostentatious techniques. “Vhat can you do?” Borislav returned from the tavern’s bar with pewter mugs of liquor, which Agrippa gulped greedily from, showing her approval with smacking dark lips.
“Tell me about it,” sighed Altaïr and banged down on the table. “Barkeep, more ale!”
“AYE, MORE ALE!” Agrippa screeched, like nails down a chalkboard, which even made her bulky husband wince. “NONE OF YOUR VIMPY ARAB STUFF EITHER, BRING OUT THE GOOD - how you say - SHIT! RUSSIANS CAN ONLY PLAY STRIP POKER VHILE COMPLETELY HAMMERED!”
Borislav and Malik exchanged identical weary looks.
Altaïr lost, much to everyone’s delight.
#9 - Dance
“We hear tell that there’s someone in this room that looks good in a skirt,” Buru Zuberi rumbled, referring to himself and his other personality, as he always did. Altair wondered briefly, as he always did, if having bizarre speech patterns was a prerequisite to being Master of a Brotherhood: Shula replaced her S’s with Z’s, Daiyu referred to herself in the third person and Buru had never said the word “I”, being a stubborn schizophrenic. Al Mualim sounded the sanest out of all of them and he was… well, he was Al Mualim.) However, the Master of the Assassin’s Brotherhood of Africa was a comforting, exotic persona, with glistening ebony skin, brown eyes so light they looked like lion yellow and dressed in exquisite patterned robes and fine animal skins. “We’re assuming it’s the woman with the head of strawberries.”
“Not me, darling,” the Persian redhead said, laughing, while her and Altaïr’s fingers shot up to point frantically at Malik, who blushed in outrage and flailed his arms. “That would be the pretty zhort one with the head of chocolate.”
“Delicious,” chuckled Altaïr, looking positively delighted at the opportunity to pull one of his dry racial jokes out of his hat, stemming from his own awkwardness with his unique, controversial ethnicity. “I’m the one with the skin of vanilla. We would just make a fantastic dessert together.”
“God damn it, Master Zuberi, it was once! Once!” Malik cried, torn between humiliation and rage. “I cannot believe that you heard that gossip and stupid rumours all the way in Africa! Let me just set it straight: it was for a mission in a brothel, I got tricked, ha-ha, everyone laugh at Malik in a dress, now let’s move on.” He crossed his arms, turned his back on everyone and sulked.
“I didn’t see you get rid of that dress though, Mal,” Altaïr said.
“And you did look zo pre-e-e-etty in make up, darling…” Shula sighed wistfully.
“All of you should shut your mouth,” Malik replied crankily.
“We ask,” Buru continued patiently, clasping his hands together and making his bracelets of beads and animal teeth clatter. “Because we were curious as to the dancing skills of this one. He may improve his skills if we teach him our different methods. Our tribes all thrive on dance, our assassinations are born from dance, we are a dancing culture.”
“Hey,” snapped Shula. “Back off, that’s Perzia’s thing, darling.”
“No-no-no, you misunderstand us, Desert Rose,” Buru said, with a purr lacing the undertones of his voice. Shula raised her wedding ring on her finger like a crucifix to a vampire. Malik pressed his fingers to his lips to keep his giggles in: her husband, Mirza Khorvash, would not be pleased to hear about this. “We understand that the Sisterhood’s assassinations stem from seduction and that is woven into dance, but also into other mediums, such as song and martial arts. Our assassinations from Africa are all about communing with the earth. Dance too lightly on the ground, and the earth thinks you are weak; dance too strongly, and the earth will give your position away.”
Altaïr, who had been nodding off, leaning cross-armed and sullenly against a stone column, in complete and utter boredom at all this talk about nature, jerked awake with an exclamation of “Oh! Vibrations!”
Malik threw a disgusted look his way, but was surprised when Buru proudly replied, “Yes, that is it, Eagle!” The brunette sulked; he hated being outshone by Altaïr. “The earth carries your every step, Wildcat,” Buru continued to Malik, voice wise and sombre. “So you must treat it with respect. Dance on it and it will remain quiet. The earth will not whisper your position to the enemy.”
“I get it…” said Shula slowly. “But… what doez thiz have to do with chocolate-boy?”
Malik cried, “Hey!”
“Why, everything,” said Buru in amusement. “Why do you think we travelled all the way from Africa to instruct this one in the ways of our culture? He did ask, remember, to study all the different factions of assassins…” Altaïr mumbled ‘swot’ underneath his breath and Malik, without breaking eye contact with Buru, stamped hard on the delicate skin of his foot. Eyes watering, lips tight, Altaïr moodily stayed silent. “What blood runs through you, if you do not mind us asking, Wildcat? It will help us.”
“Er…” Malik said, embarrassed by the question. Altaïr felt his pain; neither of them knew much about their parents. Only where they were buried. “I’m half Arab, half Persian, if that’s what you mean. I was born outside Damascus.”
Buru rumbled his approval. “Ah, we see… half earth, half fire then. And you, Eagle, what blood-?”
“What, you couldn’t tell by the way I’m so white, I glow at night?” Altaïr interrupted. Buru chuckled, deep in his throat, and the assassin had to smile, grey eyes crinkling; the sign of a genuine, honest to God smile. Malik merely rolled his eyes and shook his head. “English and Arab. Born in London.”
“You come from the Land of Water, yet you have eyes like the air!”
“Yes?” said Altair slowly, very confused at all this nature and mystical mumbo-jumbo and such. Malik, normally such a critic and an advocate for logic and reason, was eating all this tarot and zodiac stuff up voraciously, star-struck. Literally.
“We are astonished.” Buru swivelled around to face Malik, who unconsciously snapped to attention. “You are twenty one now… so that would mean you rose from the earth in… 1173… and if our Arabian history is correct…” He began counting on his thick jet fingers, mentally rifling through numbers and Altaïr was surprised to see his expression fall, eyes sombre. The air seemed to thicken, the laughter seemed to die. “Allah… our child, you were in the raids?”
Malik nodded stiffly, memories obviously painful.
“Which Tribe?”
“Flame.” The word was dry and emotionless, muttered.
A sigh. “We are sorry.”
Altaïr’s expression twisted with confusion. Tribes? Outside Damascus? What is this? There’s nothing outside Damascus apart from ruined land, sand and graveyards… As Buru laughed a rather contrived, awkward laugh and encouragingly wrapped his fingers around Malik’s skinny wrist, dragging him, squawking indignantly into the centre of the ballroom, Altaïr leaned slightly towards a silent Shula and whispered - lips barely moving - “Raids?”
Shula pretended to pay attention to where her stepson was being shown the bold, stamping dance patterns of the African assassins but in reality, murmured back to him, “Yez, darling, the raidz on the Four Elementz Tribez of Damazcuz… you would never have heard of it: the whole incident was lozt, huzhed up by everyone. You were juzt a child…” The redhead shifted her weight and sighed, twirling a lock of hair around a thin finger. “But then again, so waz he, poor darling.”
“What happened?” Altaïr’s morbid curiosity whispered.
“Templarz, of course,” Shula whispered, before unleashing a forced whoop of encouragement to her stepson who had just shouted out happily, ‘Shula, watch me!’ “There were eight hundred people, living in harmony with one another, two hundred to each Tribe. They were called gypsies and fortune tellers. Peaceful and zpiritual people, they were, darling. Very intellectual. Pacifizts: they made sure to never raize a hand in violence to anyone.”
That would explain why Malik vomits his guts out every time he is forced to kill someone, Altair thought. It makes sense now. Perfect sense.
“When one iz born there,” Shula continued. “You have the mark of your Tribe tattooed onto your zkin, more often or not, above your heart. Kadar wazn’t born there, but Malik’z ztill zhould be there.”
But Altaïr shook his head vehemently. “No… no, he doesn’t. He definitely doesn’t. He takes his shirt off in training when it gets hot. No tattoo there at all, just a massive scar- oh.”
Shula gave him a darkly significant look.
Bile rose in his throat at the thought of his friend mutilating himself just to literally cut away his blood-soaked heritage. Altaïr felt a sick sense of shame from prying into his best friend’s darkest and well kept secrets. But he had to continue. The more he learnt about it, the more adamant he was on the fact that he would avenge the damage that was done to Malik; inflicted and self-inflicted. “But what did the Templars do?”
“They did what they do bezt, zveetheart…” Shula crooned, a slight manic gleam in her eyes. “They burned everything… razed it to the ground. And they slaughtered everyone. Men, women and children…” Her fingernails dug into her soft palms violently. “…zo much blood… zimply becauze they did not follow the Templar’z wayz. Zimply becauze they were ‘infidelz’.”
Shula touched her fingers to her lips, as if tasting the metallic tang and acrid stench of spilt blood and smoke again like she did that night. “I found my two darlingz drenched in crimzon that night… huddled over the corpzez of their parentz and the dead Templarz nearby; Kadar and Malik, barely able to ztand for zlipping in blood, holding knivez and … and they were zo ztill. Zo ztill… like ztatuez.”
Altaïr recognised the symptoms: he had frozen, muscles locked in place, the first time he had killed. It was not uncommon. It was seeing the light die from someone’s eyes for the first time. “Their first experience of a kill,” murmured Altaïr. “Their first taste of death.”
He’s not moving… Shula heard her memory whisper and had to shake her head to dislodge the tiny, horrified whisper spilling over the cherubim lips of one innocent, blood-soaked child. He’s n-not m-moving… d-did we do it right?
Did we do it right? Shula shivered.
She nodded in response, to distract herself. “You ever wondered why Malik-darling became an azzazzin? Becauze he wantz revenge. Why do you think he dizlikez killing yet doez it anyway? Becauze all he can remember from his childhood is the ztench of blood and smoke and death. Why do you think a beautiful zoul like that…” Shula’s hand cut through the air to indicate where Malik was flowing through the dance that Buru had just taught him, smiling at the dark man’s laughing words of encouragement. “…dancez through his azzazzinationz? He wantz to make murder beautiful, darling, to juztify it to his heart.”
“He wants to make it art…”
#82: Can You Hear Me?
“Bloody new guy getting the cushy new room,” Desmond Miles grumbled morosely, staring gloomily at the white washed ceiling of his cell in Abstergo Industries from his reclining position on his bed. “So he has swanky DNA just like me; he should get the same treatment, dammit! Lucky bastard even gets the camera turned off when he showers…”
There was the screech of a PA being switched on and a dispassionate voice echoed around his cell, emanating from a speaker in the wall. “Mister Miles, please refrain from bitching out loud to yourself. Mister Thompson gets the camera switched off because he does not masturbate proudly in front of the cameras like a certain someone we have in solitary confinement.”
“I was doing a scientific experiment!” Desmond objected hotly, swinging himself up into a slouching position and glaring at nothing in particular. “How dare you get in the way of the advancement of science, you Visigoth bastards!”
A pause before the speaker crackled into life again. “A scientific experiment?”
“Yeah. My vital capacity. Want a peek at the results?” Desmond grinned. There were several stifled cries of disgust as several security guards of varying gender had the misfortune of having “Mister Miles” pull down his pants and flash his egotistical organ rather proudly. He nodded smugly and buttoned up his trousers, satisfied with scarring at least one person for life. “Yeah, baby, vital capacity, demonstrations twice nightly. I warn you, you might want to waterproof that camera pretty damn quick. I tend to get messy-”
“Keep your damn nocturnal emissions private!”
“Ooh, fancy phrase for slapping the salami, guys…” Desmond said approvingly, stroking his unshaven chin.
“Shut up, Subject Seventeen!”
“Subject Seventeen has urges! Subject Seventeen hasn’t had sex in over three months! Subject Seventeen’s penis is practically screaming at him! Subject Seventeen needs to shag someone… or hell, something!”
A distraught female security guard hammered on the button to open up the link to the speaker in Desmond’s room. “Fine fine fine!” she squawked desperately, sweating slightly. “We’ll switch off the camera for a bit, just don’t ruin the equipment! It took two hours to clean up after you last time!”
Desmond patted his crotch fondly as the electricity to the camera was cut. “Aw, I knew I kept you around for a reason.”
In the adjoining room, separated by a thick glass wall inches thick, the door swung open. Desmond turned himself around to be a disparaging audience, lying on his belly on his bed, legs swinging idly as he saw that poor bastard Subject Eighteen be dragged limply in by two bodyguards who were at least twice the size of him. Desmond cheerily waved at the cute nurse who blushed and squeaked after giving 18 his medication and scurried out, looking pleased. When the bodyguards muscled their way out, Subject Eighteen flopped over bonelessly onto his bed, eyes lidded, injection already taking its toll. “D’mn dr’gs…” Desmond heard him slur softly.
“Oi, Jace, wake up.”
No response.
“Jace, can you hear me?” Silence. A sigh. “You dumbfuck.”
Sympathetic to a fault, Desmond unlaced one of his sneakers and threw it, frowning, against the glass wall. “Wake up, you stupid shit, or they’ll just drug you even more when you sleep!” he yelled. The dull thunk attracted the attention of an extremely disorientated Subject Eighteen, who then rolled onto his back, pointedly away from Desmond. “Turn around, you fucker, I’m talking to you!”
“G’t b’nt…”
“Now, motherfucker!”
Jason Thompson, Jace to Desmond and his friends and commonly known in Abstergo as Subject 18, the descendant to Malik Al-Sayr, shakily but obstinately gave Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad’s (just as) cocky descendant the middle finger.
“Oh, that was uncalled for.”
Jason raised his middle finger on his other hand.
“IQ of 177 and that’s all you can come up with? I’m ashamed.”
Jason tried to work his dry tongue around his mouth which seemed to feel like it was stuffed with wet cotton wool. “Says the guy who just flashed his dick at a load of bad guys so you can jack off over another guy who’s been dead for 900 years… oh, and also happens to be my great-great-great times a hundred grandfather,” he croaked. “Real tasteful, Desmond, real fucking tasteful.”
“Oh, shut up,” the elder man sulked, running his hand over the black twigs of shaved hair on his skull. “Just shut up. You’re such a pain in the ass sometimes.”
Jason smiled wryly and tried to waggle his tongue around in his mouth to try and create some saliva: his throat felt like sandpaper. What the hell did they inject him with anyway? Horse tranquilizers? It felt like it, in any case. He rolled listlessly over in his sheets and eyed Desmond balefully with those big brown eyes of his. “Don’t think you can order me around just because your ancestor was banging my ancestor.”
“What is this, a playground game?” Desmond complained. “Ooh, my sandcastle is bigger than your sandcastle. My toy’s better than your toy. My ancestor fucked your ancestor against the fucking wall; and your ancestor liked it.”
Jason actually let loose a laugh. “Holy shit, you played through that memory too?!”
“Hot, huh?” smirked Desmond.
“Practically on fire. My compliments to your superior DNA.”
“Did you see Lucy’s face after you played it?”
“Oh my God, it was fucking hysterical. She accidentally linked the footage to every computer screen in the building. I think Vidic had a hard-on or something.”
“They should re-name the whole fucking project to Assassin’s Cock.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m getting hard just thinking about it…”
“Please don’t make a mess.”
“I can’t, I think they just turned the camera back on. I’ll try anyway.”
“Get your hands out of your pants, Mister Miles.”
“Motherfuckers.”
Malik Al-Sayr, having been born in a desert, grown up in a desert and lived in hot, exotic countries for the majority of his young life, was ignorant in the fact that snow existed. In his defence, he had only seen rain three times in his life. Certainly, he had read about it, heard about it and been subject to many a raised eyebrow and perplexed look whenever he asked about it, but the point remained that he still did not know what it looked like, yet alone felt like or why people got this glimmer of childlike glee in their eyes whenever it was brought up. A long suffering Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad, who in a twisted scenario of role reversal, was adamant to answer Malik’s bombardment of questions about it, especially because, secretly, he liked it how the brunette would get so excited over the thought of something as innocent and simple as snow.
“Alright, essentially, it’s just frozen water,” Altaïr began, getting the basics out of the way. God forbid that Malik, the scholar that he was, would commence his inquisition and plague him with questions about the science of snow, of all things, but for now, frozen water it was. “It’s just rain freezing in the sky and falling down.”
“That’s it? Are you sure?” Malik asked in confusion, little nose wrinkling. He rubbed his chin, perplexed as to the simplicity of snow. “Everyone makes it sound so magical…” Altaïr smiled at his little sarcastic eye-roll. “So, it freezes in the sky and can fall down anytime? Why do I never hear about it in summer?”
“No-no-no,” the elder assassin sighed, shaking his head. “You’ve got it mixed up. It has to be as cold down here on the ground as it is up in the sky. If it’s too warm, snow can fall but it’ll just melt into rain. Or if it’s too cold, then the snow simply won’t fall at all.”
“What?!” Malik exclaimed in astonishment. “It can be too cold for snow?!” At Altaïr’s nod, he rocked back in his chair and said simply, “Bizarre.” There was a silence; Malik drummed his fingers on the armchair. Altaïr threw more logs on the dying fire and prodded it agitatedly with a poker. “So, what…” the brunette began slowly, staring into the flames curiously. “What does it look like?”
Altaïr cocked an eyebrow; it felt weird having Malik ask the questions and himself answer them. Quite the turn of events, he thought in bemusement. “It’s just… God, I don’t know how to describe it…” Altaïr thought for a bit and made circular movements with his hands, tongue sticking out in concentration. “It’s just white. White and cold and wet. It covers everything like a blanket. If you hold it in your hands, it turns to liquid; if you pack it together and stand on it, it’s solid. It falls in tiny flakes but can build up into walls and hills. People in the far North build houses out of it and it never melts!”
Malik’s face was a picture. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“That’s amazing!”
Altaïr had to suppress a fond smile and squashed his sudden affection for the teenage brunette down deep into his subconscious. “Well, I suppose when it snows every day, it’s not quite as amazing. Suddenly sunshine and heat waves seem the stuff of legend.”
“You have a point, but still…” Malik laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them. He was being engulfed by an enormous cushioned armchair the colour of spilt burgundy wine, knees drawn up to his chest and bundled up in enough clothes to make his slim figure seem ridiculously bulky. Altaïr had noted Malik did not like the cold and most certainly could not deal with it like a man at all. The brunette was constantly shivering slightly, despite being indoors, despite the roaring fires. Ever the suspicious one, Malik continued hesitantly, “Is it… I don’t know, dangerous?”
“Dangerous?” repeated Altaïr incredulously.
“Well, yes,” flustered the brunette, feeling embarrassed. “I mean, all weather can be dangerous somehow, right? Rain turns to floods; sun turns to heat waves…”
“Murderous snowflakes,” Altaïr said in perfect deadpan, holding his thumb and forefinger centimetres apart. “With teeny-tiny swords this small. It’s a real problem in Acre, I hear. They contribute to a thousand deaths per winter…”
Malik snorted and thumped a clenched fist against Altaïr’s bicep in admonishment. “Grow up.”
“You won’t be laughing when they stick you in the head.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll feel the tiny prick of a needle when it snows.”
“Kill the unbeliever!”
“Answer the question.”
“Well, yes, I suppose you could say it is dangerous if you’re caught in a snowstorm or if you don’t dress warmly enough and get hypothermia and that kind of thing… it can burn you as well, if you graze your skin on it.”
“That…” Malik raised his eyebrows, shook his head and smiled. “That is the oddest thing that I’ve ever heard. Ice burning you like fire?”
“It’s true!” Altaïr exclaimed indignantly.
A thoughtful smile was flashed his way. “I believe you, don’t worry. You could tell me that the grass is blue and the sky is green and I would believe you anyway.” Altaïr felt a tiny, genuine smile tug at his lips. How sentimental. Oddly so for Malik anyway. Malik stretched out his muscles languorously like a dozing wildcat and sighed. “I want to see it so badly now. It sounds beautiful.”
“Hmm,” was all Altaïr could murmur, pretending not to pay attention but watching every tiny move Malik made out of the corner of his eye.
They both lapsed into a pensive silence. Malik had all but nodded off, tanned face warm and radiant from the glow of the firelight and Altaïr had slumped in his armchair, watching the flickering shadows on the walls and occasionally stealing the odd guilty look at his best friend, curled up and cold, just begging for his embrace. Fingers trailed thoughtfully over the hem of his robe before curling back, the owner sighing. Altaïr pushed himself out of his seat, disappeared from the room and came back, clutching a thick blanket. He had to tell himself not to let his fingertips linger too long on the small gaps of Malik’s bare skin as he draped the coverlet over his slight, shivering frame. Feeling ridiculous, Altaïr fought back the urge to do something affectionate; to stroke his hair, to curl up next to him to share body warmth, to kiss his forehead… something! Anything!
He got away with just a squeeze of his best friend’s shoulder.
I’m pathetic, Altaïr groaned inwardly, thumping the back of his head on the locked wooden door behind him, but tries to change to a more philosophical tact. Like I would have helped anyway: I’m freezing cold all the time too.
#13 - Misfortune
(…your ancestor sucks hard at poker.)
(Shaddup, your ancestor sucks hard at my ancestor, oh burn.)
(Why do I have to share an Animus with you anyway, you jackass? You haven’t taken a shower in days. This is a violation of my human rights.)
(Mm, I’ll violate you.)
(Must you turn everything I say into innuendo?)
(In-YOUR-endo, baby.)
(Oh, thank God, the memory’s load-)
“Royal flush,” crooned Agrippa Afanasii, tossing her cards down onto the roughly hewn wooden table, much to the disbelief of the other players. “I think that makes me the vinner, da?” On her left, her husband Borislav Ippolit - the Master of the Assassin’s Brotherhood of Russia - threw down his cards in veiled irritation, mumbling envious words of congratulations to his albino wife. Her willowy pale arms scooped up the heap of gold coins from the centre. “Oh, vell, darlings, better luck next time, da?” she practically sang.
On the other side of the table, Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad merely gawped at his pathetic set of cards while Malik went apoplectic with rage and jumped to his feet, slamming his hand on the table. The candles juddered indignantly, flames snapping. “NO!” the brunette yelled, flapping his cards agitatedly. “I REFUSE TO LOSE TO A WOMAN WHO CANNOT PRONOUNCE HER W’S PROPERLY. THIS IS PREPOSTEROUS.”
“Cheers!” an already tipsy Altaïr cried haphazardly and seized the opportunity to steal Malik’s barely touched mug of ale, getting froth on the tip of his nose.
Agrippa shrugged her skinny shoulders with a wicked grin on her face. “Aw, Malik, but I von fair and square; you von’t begrudge an old lady her hard-von vinnings, vill you? That would be very ungallant, da?”
“Now now, you’re thirty seven, Agrippa,” her pale haired, translucent eyed and weather-beaten husband amended calmly, looking over his cards solemnly. How a man that was nearly 120kg and two metres of muscle could be so quiet was an impossible question to answer. “Hardly the epitome of senility and wisdom quite yet.”
“Oh, hush your mouth, Borya, I’m old compared to the boys that just got their arses kicked, that’s for sure,” Agrippa retorted, flicking back strands of her cropped short chestnut and snow white hair. Altaïr bristled at being called a ‘boy’, while Malik was feverishly checking and re-checking Agrippa’s and Borislav’s cards for signs of foul play. She snatched them from his fingers with a sharp toothy grin and tickled the one armed assassin underneath his chin. Altaïr’s hackles rose with jealousy. “Care for another game?”
“Oi, oi, hands off the cripple, he’s mine,” said Altaïr warningly, taking a well-needed gulp of ale. Malik smacked him upside the head with his arm with an embarrassed almost-whine of “Altaïr, don’t use that word!” The assassin rolled his grey eyes. “Alright, alright, hands off the cripple, he’s his own property.”
Malik muttered something along the lines of “why do I bother?” Borislav began gathering up the cards and shuffling them carefully, until Agrippa got impatient, snatched them from her husband and sent them soaring through the air in an arc before catching them all, perfectly shuffled in her other hand. “Aié, Borya, take your time, vhy don’t you?” she said, irritated. “Fetch me some vhisky.”
“Sorry, my love,” the great bear of the Russian man said meekly, rising carefully to his feet and padding over to the bar, barely making a sound. “Yes, my love.”
Altaïr turned to Malik. “There, you see? Why can’t you be as submissive as that?”
“Bite me, my love,” Malik said sweetly, sarcasm dripping off every word.
“Men,” Agrippa said philosophically, smiling sympathetically as she dealt the cards showily again, showing off with her ostentatious techniques. “Vhat can you do?” Borislav returned from the tavern’s bar with pewter mugs of liquor, which Agrippa gulped greedily from, showing her approval with smacking dark lips.
“Tell me about it,” sighed Altaïr and banged down on the table. “Barkeep, more ale!”
“AYE, MORE ALE!” Agrippa screeched, like nails down a chalkboard, which even made her bulky husband wince. “NONE OF YOUR VIMPY ARAB STUFF EITHER, BRING OUT THE GOOD - how you say - SHIT! RUSSIANS CAN ONLY PLAY STRIP POKER VHILE COMPLETELY HAMMERED!”
Borislav and Malik exchanged identical weary looks.
Altaïr lost, much to everyone’s delight.
#9 - Dance
“We hear tell that there’s someone in this room that looks good in a skirt,” Buru Zuberi rumbled, referring to himself and his other personality, as he always did. Altair wondered briefly, as he always did, if having bizarre speech patterns was a prerequisite to being Master of a Brotherhood: Shula replaced her S’s with Z’s, Daiyu referred to herself in the third person and Buru had never said the word “I”, being a stubborn schizophrenic. Al Mualim sounded the sanest out of all of them and he was… well, he was Al Mualim.) However, the Master of the Assassin’s Brotherhood of Africa was a comforting, exotic persona, with glistening ebony skin, brown eyes so light they looked like lion yellow and dressed in exquisite patterned robes and fine animal skins. “We’re assuming it’s the woman with the head of strawberries.”
“Not me, darling,” the Persian redhead said, laughing, while her and Altaïr’s fingers shot up to point frantically at Malik, who blushed in outrage and flailed his arms. “That would be the pretty zhort one with the head of chocolate.”
“Delicious,” chuckled Altaïr, looking positively delighted at the opportunity to pull one of his dry racial jokes out of his hat, stemming from his own awkwardness with his unique, controversial ethnicity. “I’m the one with the skin of vanilla. We would just make a fantastic dessert together.”
“God damn it, Master Zuberi, it was once! Once!” Malik cried, torn between humiliation and rage. “I cannot believe that you heard that gossip and stupid rumours all the way in Africa! Let me just set it straight: it was for a mission in a brothel, I got tricked, ha-ha, everyone laugh at Malik in a dress, now let’s move on.” He crossed his arms, turned his back on everyone and sulked.
“I didn’t see you get rid of that dress though, Mal,” Altaïr said.
“And you did look zo pre-e-e-etty in make up, darling…” Shula sighed wistfully.
“All of you should shut your mouth,” Malik replied crankily.
“We ask,” Buru continued patiently, clasping his hands together and making his bracelets of beads and animal teeth clatter. “Because we were curious as to the dancing skills of this one. He may improve his skills if we teach him our different methods. Our tribes all thrive on dance, our assassinations are born from dance, we are a dancing culture.”
“Hey,” snapped Shula. “Back off, that’s Perzia’s thing, darling.”
“No-no-no, you misunderstand us, Desert Rose,” Buru said, with a purr lacing the undertones of his voice. Shula raised her wedding ring on her finger like a crucifix to a vampire. Malik pressed his fingers to his lips to keep his giggles in: her husband, Mirza Khorvash, would not be pleased to hear about this. “We understand that the Sisterhood’s assassinations stem from seduction and that is woven into dance, but also into other mediums, such as song and martial arts. Our assassinations from Africa are all about communing with the earth. Dance too lightly on the ground, and the earth thinks you are weak; dance too strongly, and the earth will give your position away.”
Altaïr, who had been nodding off, leaning cross-armed and sullenly against a stone column, in complete and utter boredom at all this talk about nature, jerked awake with an exclamation of “Oh! Vibrations!”
Malik threw a disgusted look his way, but was surprised when Buru proudly replied, “Yes, that is it, Eagle!” The brunette sulked; he hated being outshone by Altaïr. “The earth carries your every step, Wildcat,” Buru continued to Malik, voice wise and sombre. “So you must treat it with respect. Dance on it and it will remain quiet. The earth will not whisper your position to the enemy.”
“I get it…” said Shula slowly. “But… what doez thiz have to do with chocolate-boy?”
Malik cried, “Hey!”
“Why, everything,” said Buru in amusement. “Why do you think we travelled all the way from Africa to instruct this one in the ways of our culture? He did ask, remember, to study all the different factions of assassins…” Altaïr mumbled ‘swot’ underneath his breath and Malik, without breaking eye contact with Buru, stamped hard on the delicate skin of his foot. Eyes watering, lips tight, Altaïr moodily stayed silent. “What blood runs through you, if you do not mind us asking, Wildcat? It will help us.”
“Er…” Malik said, embarrassed by the question. Altaïr felt his pain; neither of them knew much about their parents. Only where they were buried. “I’m half Arab, half Persian, if that’s what you mean. I was born outside Damascus.”
Buru rumbled his approval. “Ah, we see… half earth, half fire then. And you, Eagle, what blood-?”
“What, you couldn’t tell by the way I’m so white, I glow at night?” Altaïr interrupted. Buru chuckled, deep in his throat, and the assassin had to smile, grey eyes crinkling; the sign of a genuine, honest to God smile. Malik merely rolled his eyes and shook his head. “English and Arab. Born in London.”
“You come from the Land of Water, yet you have eyes like the air!”
“Yes?” said Altair slowly, very confused at all this nature and mystical mumbo-jumbo and such. Malik, normally such a critic and an advocate for logic and reason, was eating all this tarot and zodiac stuff up voraciously, star-struck. Literally.
“We are astonished.” Buru swivelled around to face Malik, who unconsciously snapped to attention. “You are twenty one now… so that would mean you rose from the earth in… 1173… and if our Arabian history is correct…” He began counting on his thick jet fingers, mentally rifling through numbers and Altaïr was surprised to see his expression fall, eyes sombre. The air seemed to thicken, the laughter seemed to die. “Allah… our child, you were in the raids?”
Malik nodded stiffly, memories obviously painful.
“Which Tribe?”
“Flame.” The word was dry and emotionless, muttered.
A sigh. “We are sorry.”
Altaïr’s expression twisted with confusion. Tribes? Outside Damascus? What is this? There’s nothing outside Damascus apart from ruined land, sand and graveyards… As Buru laughed a rather contrived, awkward laugh and encouragingly wrapped his fingers around Malik’s skinny wrist, dragging him, squawking indignantly into the centre of the ballroom, Altaïr leaned slightly towards a silent Shula and whispered - lips barely moving - “Raids?”
Shula pretended to pay attention to where her stepson was being shown the bold, stamping dance patterns of the African assassins but in reality, murmured back to him, “Yez, darling, the raidz on the Four Elementz Tribez of Damazcuz… you would never have heard of it: the whole incident was lozt, huzhed up by everyone. You were juzt a child…” The redhead shifted her weight and sighed, twirling a lock of hair around a thin finger. “But then again, so waz he, poor darling.”
“What happened?” Altaïr’s morbid curiosity whispered.
“Templarz, of course,” Shula whispered, before unleashing a forced whoop of encouragement to her stepson who had just shouted out happily, ‘Shula, watch me!’ “There were eight hundred people, living in harmony with one another, two hundred to each Tribe. They were called gypsies and fortune tellers. Peaceful and zpiritual people, they were, darling. Very intellectual. Pacifizts: they made sure to never raize a hand in violence to anyone.”
That would explain why Malik vomits his guts out every time he is forced to kill someone, Altair thought. It makes sense now. Perfect sense.
“When one iz born there,” Shula continued. “You have the mark of your Tribe tattooed onto your zkin, more often or not, above your heart. Kadar wazn’t born there, but Malik’z ztill zhould be there.”
But Altaïr shook his head vehemently. “No… no, he doesn’t. He definitely doesn’t. He takes his shirt off in training when it gets hot. No tattoo there at all, just a massive scar- oh.”
Shula gave him a darkly significant look.
Bile rose in his throat at the thought of his friend mutilating himself just to literally cut away his blood-soaked heritage. Altaïr felt a sick sense of shame from prying into his best friend’s darkest and well kept secrets. But he had to continue. The more he learnt about it, the more adamant he was on the fact that he would avenge the damage that was done to Malik; inflicted and self-inflicted. “But what did the Templars do?”
“They did what they do bezt, zveetheart…” Shula crooned, a slight manic gleam in her eyes. “They burned everything… razed it to the ground. And they slaughtered everyone. Men, women and children…” Her fingernails dug into her soft palms violently. “…zo much blood… zimply becauze they did not follow the Templar’z wayz. Zimply becauze they were ‘infidelz’.”
Shula touched her fingers to her lips, as if tasting the metallic tang and acrid stench of spilt blood and smoke again like she did that night. “I found my two darlingz drenched in crimzon that night… huddled over the corpzez of their parentz and the dead Templarz nearby; Kadar and Malik, barely able to ztand for zlipping in blood, holding knivez and … and they were zo ztill. Zo ztill… like ztatuez.”
Altaïr recognised the symptoms: he had frozen, muscles locked in place, the first time he had killed. It was not uncommon. It was seeing the light die from someone’s eyes for the first time. “Their first experience of a kill,” murmured Altaïr. “Their first taste of death.”
He’s not moving… Shula heard her memory whisper and had to shake her head to dislodge the tiny, horrified whisper spilling over the cherubim lips of one innocent, blood-soaked child. He’s n-not m-moving… d-did we do it right?
Did we do it right? Shula shivered.
She nodded in response, to distract herself. “You ever wondered why Malik-darling became an azzazzin? Becauze he wantz revenge. Why do you think he dizlikez killing yet doez it anyway? Becauze all he can remember from his childhood is the ztench of blood and smoke and death. Why do you think a beautiful zoul like that…” Shula’s hand cut through the air to indicate where Malik was flowing through the dance that Buru had just taught him, smiling at the dark man’s laughing words of encouragement. “…dancez through his azzazzinationz? He wantz to make murder beautiful, darling, to juztify it to his heart.”
“He wants to make it art…”
#82: Can You Hear Me?
“Bloody new guy getting the cushy new room,” Desmond Miles grumbled morosely, staring gloomily at the white washed ceiling of his cell in Abstergo Industries from his reclining position on his bed. “So he has swanky DNA just like me; he should get the same treatment, dammit! Lucky bastard even gets the camera turned off when he showers…”
There was the screech of a PA being switched on and a dispassionate voice echoed around his cell, emanating from a speaker in the wall. “Mister Miles, please refrain from bitching out loud to yourself. Mister Thompson gets the camera switched off because he does not masturbate proudly in front of the cameras like a certain someone we have in solitary confinement.”
“I was doing a scientific experiment!” Desmond objected hotly, swinging himself up into a slouching position and glaring at nothing in particular. “How dare you get in the way of the advancement of science, you Visigoth bastards!”
A pause before the speaker crackled into life again. “A scientific experiment?”
“Yeah. My vital capacity. Want a peek at the results?” Desmond grinned. There were several stifled cries of disgust as several security guards of varying gender had the misfortune of having “Mister Miles” pull down his pants and flash his egotistical organ rather proudly. He nodded smugly and buttoned up his trousers, satisfied with scarring at least one person for life. “Yeah, baby, vital capacity, demonstrations twice nightly. I warn you, you might want to waterproof that camera pretty damn quick. I tend to get messy-”
“Keep your damn nocturnal emissions private!”
“Ooh, fancy phrase for slapping the salami, guys…” Desmond said approvingly, stroking his unshaven chin.
“Shut up, Subject Seventeen!”
“Subject Seventeen has urges! Subject Seventeen hasn’t had sex in over three months! Subject Seventeen’s penis is practically screaming at him! Subject Seventeen needs to shag someone… or hell, something!”
A distraught female security guard hammered on the button to open up the link to the speaker in Desmond’s room. “Fine fine fine!” she squawked desperately, sweating slightly. “We’ll switch off the camera for a bit, just don’t ruin the equipment! It took two hours to clean up after you last time!”
Desmond patted his crotch fondly as the electricity to the camera was cut. “Aw, I knew I kept you around for a reason.”
In the adjoining room, separated by a thick glass wall inches thick, the door swung open. Desmond turned himself around to be a disparaging audience, lying on his belly on his bed, legs swinging idly as he saw that poor bastard Subject Eighteen be dragged limply in by two bodyguards who were at least twice the size of him. Desmond cheerily waved at the cute nurse who blushed and squeaked after giving 18 his medication and scurried out, looking pleased. When the bodyguards muscled their way out, Subject Eighteen flopped over bonelessly onto his bed, eyes lidded, injection already taking its toll. “D’mn dr’gs…” Desmond heard him slur softly.
“Oi, Jace, wake up.”
No response.
“Jace, can you hear me?” Silence. A sigh. “You dumbfuck.”
Sympathetic to a fault, Desmond unlaced one of his sneakers and threw it, frowning, against the glass wall. “Wake up, you stupid shit, or they’ll just drug you even more when you sleep!” he yelled. The dull thunk attracted the attention of an extremely disorientated Subject Eighteen, who then rolled onto his back, pointedly away from Desmond. “Turn around, you fucker, I’m talking to you!”
“G’t b’nt…”
“Now, motherfucker!”
Jason Thompson, Jace to Desmond and his friends and commonly known in Abstergo as Subject 18, the descendant to Malik Al-Sayr, shakily but obstinately gave Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad’s (just as) cocky descendant the middle finger.
“Oh, that was uncalled for.”
Jason raised his middle finger on his other hand.
“IQ of 177 and that’s all you can come up with? I’m ashamed.”
Jason tried to work his dry tongue around his mouth which seemed to feel like it was stuffed with wet cotton wool. “Says the guy who just flashed his dick at a load of bad guys so you can jack off over another guy who’s been dead for 900 years… oh, and also happens to be my great-great-great times a hundred grandfather,” he croaked. “Real tasteful, Desmond, real fucking tasteful.”
“Oh, shut up,” the elder man sulked, running his hand over the black twigs of shaved hair on his skull. “Just shut up. You’re such a pain in the ass sometimes.”
Jason smiled wryly and tried to waggle his tongue around in his mouth to try and create some saliva: his throat felt like sandpaper. What the hell did they inject him with anyway? Horse tranquilizers? It felt like it, in any case. He rolled listlessly over in his sheets and eyed Desmond balefully with those big brown eyes of his. “Don’t think you can order me around just because your ancestor was banging my ancestor.”
“What is this, a playground game?” Desmond complained. “Ooh, my sandcastle is bigger than your sandcastle. My toy’s better than your toy. My ancestor fucked your ancestor against the fucking wall; and your ancestor liked it.”
Jason actually let loose a laugh. “Holy shit, you played through that memory too?!”
“Hot, huh?” smirked Desmond.
“Practically on fire. My compliments to your superior DNA.”
“Did you see Lucy’s face after you played it?”
“Oh my God, it was fucking hysterical. She accidentally linked the footage to every computer screen in the building. I think Vidic had a hard-on or something.”
“They should re-name the whole fucking project to Assassin’s Cock.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m getting hard just thinking about it…”
“Please don’t make a mess.”
“I can’t, I think they just turned the camera back on. I’ll try anyway.”
“Get your hands out of your pants, Mister Miles.”
“Motherfuckers.”