Fanfiction: Visitors (Gratuitous Wish-Fulfilment Edition), Part Three (Assassin's Creed)
My Visitorverse writing thunders on into eternity. This is absolutely ridiculous. (I've now written 38,000 words for it in total. VISITORS WAS ONLY SUPPOSED TO BE A 3,200-WORD ONESHOT. THIS FIC IS OVER ONE THOUSAND PER CENT LONGER THAN I INTENDED.)
As before, it's probably easiest to keep track of this 'verse on AO3; I'm mainly posting my scenes here as a backup (and an exercise in harnessing these ficlets into a slightly less confusing chronological order). In this section I fulfil a long-standing Assassin's Creed dream by getting Ezio to make out with himself.
(I've excluded one of my scenes (this one) because it doesn't make any sense without the context of the full cowritten 'verse.)
Title: Visitors (Gratuitous Wish-Fulfilment Edition), Part Three
Fandom: Assassin's Creed
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Shay Cormac/Aveline de Grandpré, occasionally
Wordcount: 8,400 (this part; 25,000 cumulative)
Summary: Visitors was a collection of scenes from a universe in which most of the Assassin's Creed protagonists kept meeting through involuntary time-travel. This is the same, only now they all cuddle and fall asleep on each other. Don't give me that look.
Notes: These side-stories may occasionally conflict with the established Visitors timeline. It's the gratuitous wish-fulfilment edition and everything is permitted.
Part One
Part Two
“Shay!” a voice exclaims, and Shay finds himself being dragged out of the tavern just as suddenly as he found himself in there. “You’ll do. Come on.”
“I’ll do for what?” Shay asks, bewildered.
“I think M-” Edward suddenly cuts himself off, glances around, although nobody’s giving them a second look. Maybe dragging invisible people around is a commonplace sight amongst drunken pirates of the Caribbean. “I think Kidd’ll have my head if I let one more visitor go by without introducing him. One head or another. Going by the behaviour of certain other visitors, I was starting to regret... but you’ll be fine. You’re faithful, aren’t you? I don’t have to worry about leaving you with him, do I?”
Was that supposed to be an explanation? It’s only left Shay more confused.
Shay knows of Kidd; he’s seen him a couple of times before on visits, and he’s heard Edward speak of Kidd with a respect it must have been hard for a lad so young to win. It seems Edward’s told him about the visitors. It’s never really occurred to Shay to talk about them with anyone he knows in person, Haytham excluded, but he can get that far and make sense of things.
The rest of it...
“Faithful?” Shay asks. “Faithful to whom? Or to what?”
Edward freezes. “You’re not there yet?”
Not... where, exactly? Shay has the nasty feeling he’s about to learn of his future. It seems like something best avoided; he’s seen Haytham pacing, dwelling on his death at his son’s hands.
“Faithful to the Templar cause,” Edward says after a moment, to Shay’s relief; he’s there after all. “You wouldn’t kiss an Assassin, would you?”
“What?” Shay asks.
“Wait. Christ. You would, wouldn’t you? Just... don’t kiss Kidd, all right? Promise me.”
Shay takes a moment to go back over that in his mind, check that he’s heard right. “What?”
Edward shrugs. “Mock me if you have to. I won’t see that again.”
“Why are you - why would I - wait, one of us kissed Kidd? Aveline?”
Edward stares at him. “No,” he says, after a moment. “Do you think she would? God, I thought Aveline would be safe, at least. Maybe I should make sure she’s from later on. After...” He gestures to Shay, perhaps hoping that Shay is going to finish his sentence, but Shay hasn’t the slightest idea of where it’s supposed to go.
“I haven’t understood a word you’ve said,” Shay says. “Why would I kiss Kidd? Why is this something that worries you?”
Who kissed Kidd already, if it wasn’t Aveline? Perhaps that’s too intrusive a question. But he’ll sell the Morrigan if it was anyone but Ezio.
Edward brightens. “Those are the questions I like to hear. Come on, then; I’ll happily introduce you.”
Well, Shay knows about men on long voyages. Edward’s a friend, and he’s got precious few of those left, so maybe it’s best not to pry further. There are differences more easily overcome than Assassins versus Templars.
Edward leads him up onto a roof, because of course he does. Shay has occasionally wondered what binds them all together as visitors. Some of them are related by blood, some of them have been viewed through this ‘Animus’ thing, all of them have certain skills of perception, but sometimes Shay’s thought that visiting might just be something you catch if you climb enough buildings.
“Kidd!” Edward calls, as they reach the rooftop. “I hoped I’d still find you here.”
“I’m staking out a warehouse, Kenway,” Kidd says. “It’s not exactly gone on a stroll. What so important that you’re interrupting me?”
“Brought someone new for you to meet,” Edward says. He lights up around Kidd. Shay wonders how he never saw it before. “This is Shay Cormac.” He glances pointedly at Shay. “He’s extremely trustworthy.”
“So this is Shay?” Kidd asks, looking more interested now. “Let’s meet him, then.”
And Shay finds himself in Edward’s body. He’s taken control before - sometimes with permission, sometimes not - but he’s not used to being given it without warning, and the sudden shift in his position and the way he’s holding his weight (and, he quickly realises, the amount of drink he’s taken) leaves him struggling not to fall over.
Kidd watches him, arms folded, until he’s righted himself. “You know how to make a first impression.”
“Shay Patrick Cormac,” Shay says, holding out Edward’s hand, trying to keep any embarrassment out of his voice.
Kidd smirks and takes the hand. “Pleasure.”
As they shake hands, Shay catches sight of the blades at Kidd’s wrists; they’re something he’s always careful to watch for. Suddenly Edward’s ‘you wouldn’t kiss an Assassin’ question makes more sense. Not a lot more sense, but some.
This... this is before Shay’s time, isn’t it? Yes, definitely before; he’s seen a younger Adéwalé here (and his chest tightens as he thinks of the mission this visit has called him away from). There’s no chance Shay will have made a name for himself as a Templar in this time, no way Kidd will have heard of him.
“So,” Kidd says, his eyes narrowing slightly, “Edward tells me you’re a Templar.”
Shay dives out of Edward’s body. This isn’t a conversation he came here prepared for.
“He left?” Kidd asks, watching Edward reel as Shay did a moment before.
“He’s still here,” Edward says, gesturing to Shay. “Just being a coward. She won’t harm you, man! You’d have to be in me; she’s not exactly going to put a blade through my neck, is she?”
“Confident of that, are you?” Kidd asks. “Thought I’d asked you not to call me that in company.”
“Everyone present already knows,” Edward says, waving his hand dismissively. “Or do you think there are more invisible people listening under the eaves?”
“She?” Shay asks, staring at Kidd. Now that he really looks at him... her?...
Edward stares at him for a moment.
“Everyone present already knows or lives in a different time, so they’re not really relevant,” he amends.
“Kenway,” Kidd growls.
“Well, I didn’t know!” Edward protests. “He knew it the last time I met him! How was I to know he’d learnt it here?”
“Even so, you’re not exactly careful to keep it from your visitors, are you? This one’s not that far in the future, you said. He could be around in my lifetime. And he’s a Templar.”
“He might not know the other thing,” Edward says, tapping the blades at his wrists.
Kidd throws up her hands. “Subtle, Edward.”
“I’d sort of guessed the other thing,” Shay says. Edward apparently decides not to relay that to Kidd.
“Just for that, maybe I’ll kiss this one as well,” Kidd says.
Oh.
“Shouldn’t I have a say in this?” Shay asks. Yes, it’s been a while for him, and there’s something about a woman in trousers... but something advises him against involvement with someone he can only see through visiting. And an Assassin, to boot.
She’s dangerously close to being exactly his type, actually: dark-haired, well-muscled, quick on her feet and quick to mock. Probably best not to look directly at her.
“You wouldn’t,” Edward says, staring at Kidd. “You don’t want to. You haven’t seen Shay. He’s hideous.”
“Hey,” Shay protests.
“Good thing he’ll be looking like a dashing pirate captain, then, isn’t it? Now bring him back.”
Edward shakes his head. “No.”
“Shay!” Kidd says, raising her voice. “Come here and talk to me, or I swear I’ll seek you out in my old age and kill you myself.”
Something tells Shay it’s best to take her seriously. He jumps into Edward, leaving the body’s owner protesting noisily in the background.
“That’s you, isn’t it?” Kidd asks. “You don’t have to look so nervous. I’m not actually in the habit of murdering Kenway’s friends.” She considers him. “Templars, on the other hand...”
Shay takes a step back from her. “I have my reasons.”
“We all have our reasons,” she says. “But, like I said, you matter to Kenway, and I’ll never hear the end of it if I kill you.”
Something catches in Shay’s throat at that. When he’s returned to his own time, he’ll be on his way to kill Adéwalé. He tries not to glance guiltily over at Edward.
Is there any way he can avoid it?
“Sounds like you might be in the habit of kissing Edward’s friends, though,” Shay says, mainly for the sake of changing the subject.
Kidd grins. “That’s what you’re so worried about? I just said it for his expression. We can kiss if you’d like, but you’ll need to swap out straight after so I can see his face.”
“Why mistreat me like this?” Edward wails. “What have I ever done? Shay, if you kiss her I’ll - I’ll - I’ll seduce Aveline.”
“What?” Shay asks, completely lost. “Why?”
“I just will, all right? You won’t like it.”
Seduce Aveline? What sort of threat is that?
But he did promise Edward he’d keep his distance from Kidd. Sort of. Although he didn’t really understand the circumstances at the time.
Shay turns back to Kidd. “You seem a fine lady, and I can respect your cause.” (Behind him, Edward groans.) “But I can’t kiss you. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll survive,” Kidd says. “And I’m hardly a ‘fine lady’.”
“Shay,” Edward says, fervently, “you are the best of all the visitors. The very best. You will always be welcome here.”
Shay smiles uneasily back at him, thinking of Adéwalé.
-
“This is an all-too-familiar sight,” Shay remarks. “What’s that bird carrying that’s going to bring you grief?”
Ezio stays in his crouch, not taking his eyes off the pigeon. It shuffles its feathers a little, and looks around at him, and coos, mockingly. It seems perfectly content to sit where it is, in the middle of the roof, but Ezio knows it’ll take off again the moment he gets near it, the bastard.
“A mission for a new recruit,” he says. “I realised my error the moment I let it loose. The task itself is simple, but the location is a Templar stronghold. Valentina has the makings of a great Assassin, but she is still inexperienced. If she follows those orders, she will die.”
“I see,” Shay says. “But you think you’ve got it in hand, do you?”
“I think pigeons are loathsome birds that flew into this world through the arsehole of Lucifer,” grumbles Ezio.
Shay claps him on the shoulder. “We’ve never been so strongly in agreement, you and I.”
And then Ezio finds himself displaced from his body.
“Shay, what-” Ezio begins, and then he curses. He just outright told a Templar that he was in the middle of very delicate, easily-sabotaged Assassin business. He still forgets, sometimes, that he and Shay aren’t on the same side. It seems such an impossible thing to forget, an insurmountable difference, and yet...
Shay is creeping, very slowly, towards the pigeon.
“I’m a bit of an expert at this by now,” he whispers, in Ezio’s voice. “Don’t get your hopes up too high, though; some of these little bastards are nigh uncatchable. If I can just... ha!”
The pigeon flutters helplessly in his hands.
“But why would you do this for us?” Ezio asks, frowning at it.
“I’m not doing this for the Assassins,” Shay says, detaching the message. The pigeon flies off gratefully, taking nothing but its idiotic pigeon face to headquarters. “I’m doing it for you, and for this Valentina. I could let her go, but all that’d happen is she’d get killed and the job would still get done; you’d send someone else to do it. I can’t stop that. So there’s no point letting her die trying to...” He gets the message open and looks at it. Frowns. “Seduce a Templar’s wife?”
“Valentina is very seductive,” Ezio says.
“Don’t know why I’m surprised; it’s you. Do you ever send out any missions that don’t involve seduction?”
“Regrettably, yes,” Ezio says. “Some problems can only be solved with a death. The Brotherhood and the brothel are very different things, Shay.”
“Both run by Auditores,” Shay says. “Both...” He tails off and waves the piece of paper in his hand.
“Slightly different things,” Ezio allows.
-
“Ah, he’s awake!”
It’s a familiar voice. From home, he thinks. Did he get so drunk he somehow sailed all the way to Wales without realising it? But what are the chances of that happening twice?
He opens his eyes. He’s on the floor of his cabin, and...
Oh. Turns out it’s his own voice. Because his body’s standing a few feet away from him, which it doesn’t really have any right to be doing.
And next to it...
“Mary?” Edward asks, scrambling to his feet. She’s here as Kidd, though, so it’s no surprise she ignores him. He tries again. “Kidd?”
But no, she can’t hear him, of course.
So who’s in his body? Ezio? God, he hopes not; they could have been getting up to anything while he’s been sleeping off the rum.
“I was just speaking to Monsieur Kidd,” the other Edward says, slightly giving it away. Now that Edward’s listening for it, he can hear a hint of Aveline’s accent in his voice. Wales by way of... wherever Aveline’s from. France? That’s not right, is it? Somewhere French, anyway.
Aveline should be one of the safer visitors. But, just to be sure... “Kidd’s a woman, you know.”
Aveline laughs and looks back at Kidd. “You were right. He’s very keen for me to know.”
“You’d think I’d had the lot of you, the way he acts,” Kidd says. “I only kissed Ezio. So far, at least.”
“‘You were right’?” Edward echoes. “What have you been saying about me? And - and why are you in my body?”
“You were asleep,” Aveline says. “Or perhaps ‘unconscious’ would be better. Kidd was here. I wanted to meet this person you always spoke so highly of.”
“Don’t say that in front of her!” Edward protests, as Kidd smirks. “You couldn’t have woken me up?”
“You told me I should feel free to take over if you were ever in a drunken stupor,” Aveline says. “You said you trusted me to look after your body better than you, at such times.”
“I definitely never said that.” Maybe it’s true, but he never said it.
Aveline shrugs. “In that case, I suppose you’ll tell me in your future. Impressed by my behaviour on this occasion, I’m sure.”
Edward hesitates. “Well, if I said you could... wait, how do I know you’re not just making this up?”
It’s strange to see Aveline’s grin on his own face.
“Aveline.”
“I did try to wake you,” she says. “Given that I couldn’t, I thought Kidd would be better company.”
All right. That’s fair. He probably wouldn’t mind someone taking him over under normal circumstances; it’s just that, given previous events, he’d like to know exactly how his visitors are behaving around Kidd. But Aveline’s all right, isn’t she?
“And you’ve just been... talking, have you?” he asks.
Aveline starts laughing again, and repeats his question to Kidd. Edward is definitely not giving her drunken takeover permission in his future.
“What else would we have been doing, Kenway?” Kidd asks, innocently.
“Here we are in his cabin,” Aveline says. “A fine, soft bed just there. This body’s much the worse for wear, and you must have been exhausted after dragging him all the way from the tavern. Perhaps he thinks we might have needed some sleep?”
Edward stares at them in mounting horror. Can he really not let anyone near Kidd? “She’s a woman! You’re both women!”
“He would like to remind us that we are women,” Aveline reports. “He seems very concerned that we’ve forgotten.”
“That so?” Kidd asks. Edward really wishes she didn’t enjoy his suffering quite so openly. “Seems to me there’s no one here but us gents.”
“In any case,” Aveline says, turning back to Edward, “what business is it of yours what Kidd does? Aren’t you married?”
Caroline. Bold and beautiful, and so far away.
“I am,” Edward says. “To the most magnificent woman. But that’s nothing to do with - it’s the principle of the thing, it’s what people are doing with my body! And don’t think I don’t know about the whole business with you and Gérald and Shay!”
Aveline stares at him.
“Me and Gérald and Shay?” she asks, after a moment.
“I know that look,” Kidd says, watching her. There’s a hint of concern in her expression, which at least is an improvement on the open delight at Edward’s misery. “Is Kenway giving out secrets again?”
“Me and Gérald and Shay?” Aveline repeats to herself, quietly. “But... no.” She looks up at Edward. “Shay is a Templar now.”
Oh. This is an early Aveline.
In his defence, it’s not as if he could have judged her age; she’s wearing his face.
“If he’s said something that troubles you, best to forget it,” Kidd says. “It’ll be nonsense anyway. The amount of shit that comes out of Kenway’s mouth, it’s a wonder there’s any left for his arse.”
“Unfair and untrue,” Edward objects, before catching sight of Aveline’s conflicted expression. Maybe it’s best not to be too firm on this. Especially as Kidd can’t even hear him. “Somewhat untrue.”
“You were inventing things?” Aveline asks, focusing on him instantly.
Edward shrugs. “Perhaps you’d touched a nerve. Forgive me if I tried to throw something back.”
She’s still frowning, just a little. “But then why would you mention Shay? Why not... Ezio? Someone more plausible?”
“If you think it’s implausible, why let it worry you?”
“I don’t know.” She’s quiet for a moment. “Have you seen his future? Does he come back to us?”
“The Assassins?” Edward asks. Should he talk any more about the future? She already knows Shay’s a Templar; it’s probably safe for her to know he’s going to stay one, right? “Don’t think so. Sorry.”
She lets out a long breath.
“But he’s all right, you know,” Edward says. If he puts in a good word for Shay with Aveline now, can he take the credit for all their future happiness? “He’s a friend to me, whatever side of your conflict he’s on. And he behaved himself with Kidd.”
Aveline smiles a little at that. Shares a glance with Kidd, then looks back at Edward. “You’re truly worried about what might have happened, aren’t you?”
“Oh, we’re back to me?” Kidd asks. “Best if we leave him wondering, I’d say.”
Edward throws up his hands. “Fine. Not that I care. I’m very fortunately married. And this isn’t going to be a situation like you and Gérald and Ezio.”
Aveline laughs, the frown clearing from her face at last. Maybe she won’t dwell too much on his slip-up.
Or maybe she will, and he really can take credit for her and Shay. He’ll have to ask her in her future.
-
It takes Desmond a long moment to make any sense of what he’s seeing.
Ezio. Okay. Making out with someone. Okay. So far, so normal, for a world where ‘normal’ can include seeing your fifteenth-century Italian ancestor in eighteenth-century American woods.
Ezio is making out with a dude. Less expected, but still not that surprising in the ‘hanging out with your ancestor in a time that doesn’t belong to either of you’ grand scheme of things.
Ezio is making out with himself.
That’s definitely weird, right? No matter what the situation, there’s no way that’s not weird.
Ezio moans into Ezio’s mouth and pulls him closer. Desmond drags his eyes away and sees Haytham and Connor standing nearby, watching the scene with almost identical expressions of distaste. They’ve never looked more like father and son than they do in this moment.
Desmond edges closer to them. “You can see this as well, right?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Connor says.
“I didn’t think we could visit ourselves.” Well, yeah, this is all Desmond’s own stupid hallucination, but his stupid hallucination has rules. It feels weird when it suddenly veers off-track.
“Ezio is not visiting himself,” Haytham says, “as you’d have realised if you paid any attention to our surroundings. He is visiting me, and he is visiting Connor. The timing is... unfortunate.”
“Ezio doesn’t seem to think so,” Desmond says. “Ezios? Ezios don’t seem to think so?”
Haytham gives him a strange look that quickly turns thoughtful. “It’s Italian,” he says, after a moment. “Ezii, perhaps.”
Desmond’s learnt to look away quickly when he drops in on his ancestors in compromising situations, but somehow it’s hard to tear his eyes away from the Ezii or Ezios. Who meets himself and decides this is the logical next step? Ezio, apparently. Somehow, Desmond finds he isn’t actually that surprised.
“Was there any kind of... lead-up?” he asks, out of some kind of terrible curiosity.
“Desmond,” Haytham says, “am I giving any indication whatsoever that I’d like to discuss this?”
The situation’s weird enough to mostly override Desmond’s normal feelings of paralysing embarrassment at scenes like this, at least. Or maybe they’re just eased by the solidarity in knowing that Haytham and Connor are standing next to him, equally unhappy.
What’s the largest number of visitors who could all meet up in person? There’s a while when Haytham, Connor, Aveline and Shay are all alive at once, he’s pretty sure. So would it be possible for Ezio to visit all four of them while they’re in the same place?
Okay, he really doesn’t need to start picturing some kind of Eziorgy. (Particularly as, if it ever happens, he’s pretty much guaranteed to see it.) He drags his mind back to... yeah, okay, two Ezios making out, which is not a huge improvement, but it’s something.
Is this meant to be saying something about his subconscious? If so, he really doesn’t want to know what it is. The constant parade of nude visitors has given him enough to worry about.
Speaking of nudity... whoa, okay, it’s definitely time to look away now.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Haytham mutters, averting his eyes as well.
“Father,” Connor says, suddenly. “I know how we can stop them.”
“I’ve attended Ezio’s death, Connor, and unfortunately it will take place far too late to curtail this undignified scene.”
“We can move apart,” Connor says. “One Ezio will have to stay with you, one with me. They will not be able to remain close to each other.”
Haytham stares at him for a moment.
“Occasionally, Connor,” he says, eventually, “you are all I could ask for in a son.”
“Father?” Connor asks. It’s hard to miss the strain in his voice.
Haytham is already striding away. Connor and Desmond watch him go.
Desmond kind of really needs to hear that from Haytham himself. He tries not to think about it.
Not thinking about it becomes considerably easier when both Ezios break out into noisy protests, which at least is an improvement on the noisy arousal.
“No!” shouts one Ezio, older by perhaps a decade, as he stumbles backward over the soil. “No, not this again! Desmond, call Haytham back here.”
“Uh,” Desmond says, “I’d love to, but...”
“Connor, follow him!”
Connor only shakes his head. The older Ezio doesn’t pursue it, maybe because he knows it’s hopeless; he’s already seen this from the other side, after all.
“Why would he choose this moment to leave?” the younger Ezio demands, straining at the invisible barrier keeping him close to Connor. “Does he not realise this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?”
The older Ezio smiles nostalgically. Haytham has stopped moving, and so he has too; apparently Haytham is content to leave the two of them within conversing distance. “Ah, but the beauty is that you already know it will be twice.”
A smile breaks out across the younger Ezio’s face as well.
Fine. So long as Desmond only has to see it once, that’s fine.
Three days later, he pays an ill-timed visit to Aveline (or possibly Shay) and sees himself on the other side of the bed, visiting Shay (or maybe Aveline; they’re far too close to each other to tell). His future self gives him a look of deeply unhappy sympathy.
-
“Edward!” Shay exclaims. “Thank God. I was afraid for a moment you’d be Aveline.”
“On the Jackdaw?” Edward asks, amused. “Had a falling-out, have you? I’ll give you shelter as long as you’re here.”
Shay frowns slightly. “We haven’t fallen out. Or... no more than usual. I mean, she’s still an Assassin, and I’m...”
“What’s the issue, then?” Edward asks.
A long hesitation. “It’s hard to explain.”
Edward gestures expansively to the sea around them, his other hand still on the tiller. “We’ve nothing ahead of us but a long sail and my men giving me strange looks. I can take the time to listen.”
It looks for a moment as if Shay’s about to say something, but then he shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Look,” Edward says, “something’s not right. If all were well, you’d want nothing more than to visit Aveline.”
Shay turns strangely pale at that. “Oh, God, have I been that unsubtle?”
Edward laughs. “If you wanted it to be a secret, you’re worse at keeping secrets than I am.”
“You think she knows? God, no, don’t tell me.”
It’s possible, Edward suddenly realises, that this is Shay from before his relationship with Aveline.
“It’s been unbearable,” Shay says. “And the worst thing is I can’t stop hoping. I mean, maybe there could’ve been something there, back when we were both Assassins, but...” He shakes his head, fiercely. “We’re on different sides.”
How to approach this?
“Maybe she’s not as averse to the idea as you might think,” Edward says.
Shay groans. “I don’t need you giving me more hope. I need you to... to take my mind off her.”
“I mean it,” Edward says. “I was there in that cave, remember? Have you been through that yet? She certainly seemed eager to share her body heat with you.”
“So did you,” Shay points out, which, to be fair, is true. He closes his eyes for a moment, as if in pain. “That wasn’t the last time, either. Fell asleep on a freezing night, woke with her pressed against my back. That was hard. Difficult, I mean. And knowing she’d done it out of kindness, and I was repaying her with such thoughts...”
Edward is starting to feel it’s a miracle the two of them ever got past this stage. “Adé, take the helm. I’ve a friend who needs consoling.”
“There is nobody there,” Adé says, with the flat despair of a man who’s said it thirty times before.
Edward ignores him and follows Shay to the side of the ship.
“She keeps changing in front of me, too,” Shay mutters. “I try not to look, but she’ll always ask me to fasten her gown if I’m around. I need some excuse to refuse. I swear I’ll lose my mind if it happens once more.” He leans back against the rail and presses his face into his hands. “How can the world torment a man like this?”
Edward very nearly shouts at him. This man is an idiot, and Aveline is twice the fool for choosing him out of all the visitors at her disposal. But he takes a breath, and tries to adopt the role of the supportive friend who doesn’t necessarily know Shay’s future but does, at least, have the faintest idea of how human interaction works.
“The world’s not tormenting you, mate,” Edward says. “She’s tormenting you. And it’s likely you’re tormenting her just as much.”
“What d’you mean?”
“These things aren’t happening by accident, Shay. You always say you make your own luck; how is it you don’t see when someone’s trying to hand you armfuls of the stuff?”
Shay hesitates for a long moment. “You’re not saying she...”
“Say it never occurred to you and I’ll throw you overboard,” Edward says. “How do you steer the Morrigan when you’re as blind as your own backside?”
“She’s just... she’s friendly,” Shay says. “She’d be the same with any of you. She’s able to put aside our differences enough to see me as a friend. I should be satisfied with that.”
Enough. Whatever the consequences of letting Shay know what awaits him, they’ll be better than the consequences of listening to this for a moment longer.
“Last time I visited you was in your future,” Edward says. “It looked to me like you’d worked things out with her. Honestly, save yourself some anguish and kiss her next time you see her.”
Shay stares at him for so long Edward starts to wonder whether he’ll ever get around to reacting. Eventually, though, he almost flinches away, shaking his head. “You’re trying to make a fool of me.”
“Aveline’s a friend, just as much as you,” Edward says. “You think I’d push you at her if I thought she didn’t want you? Besides, you’d end up bleeding your life out in the gutter. Wouldn’t amuse me as much as you seem to think.”
“Then you didn’t see what you thought you saw. Honest mistake, maybe, but it can’t be true. She knows I’m a Templar. She wouldn’t.”
“Hard to mistake. The last time I visited, I promise you, you were so far inside her I doubted you’d find your way out.”
There’s a pause. Shay opens his mouth and then closes it again.
“Vivid,” he says, eventually. “Thanks for that.”
“Ah, Shay!”
Shay freezes, his eyes going wide. For a moment, Edward genuinely thinks he’s about to fling himself off the side of the Jackdaw.
“And Edward,” Edward says. “Not that it matters.”
Aveline laughs. “Yes, of course. Sorry, Edward. So what were you... Shay?”
“I’m fine,” Shay says, instantly.
“We were just discussing ships,” Edward says, tempting as it is to tell her every word of Shay’s ridiculous self-pity.
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Aveline says. “I’d like to improve my understanding of... Shay, you don’t look well.” She lifts a hand to his cheek. Shay takes a step back and looks pleadingly at Edward.
Edward draws a deep breath in through his teeth, then seizes Shay’s arm and begins dragging him across the deck. “I am going to lock both of you in my cabin, and you are going to stay there until-”
But Shay vanishes as he’s speaking. Edward frowns. He was looking forward to seeing it, too.
Aveline looks like she’s trying very hard not to laugh. “Shay from before?”
“Shay from before,” Edward confirms. “How did you have the patience?”
She shakes her head. “In all honesty, I’m not sure. But I’m glad I can still visit him at this stage. It’s always a pleasure to see the look on his face.”
Edward laughs. “You’re a cruel woman.”
Aveline only smiles.
-
Connor tenses, furious, or as close to furious as he can reach through his grief. Shay. The man who possessed Connor to attack Achilles, the man who-
But Connor’s friends are no safer around the true Connor, are they? Not with Kanen'tó:kon lying dead at his feet.
“Leave,” Connor says. “I do not wish to see you.”
“Easy,” Shay says, holding up his hands. “I’d leave if I could.”
His eyes trail from Kanen'tó:kon’s body to Connor’s wrist, and Connor realises too late that his hidden blade is still extended, the blood not yet cleaned off it.
“He was your friend, wasn’t he?” There’s something soft in Shay’s voice.
Connor feels a need to justify himself, to say he didn’t know this would happen, to say he would give anything for the outcome to have been different, but his throat closes up around the words.
“I do not need pity from a Templar,” he says instead.
“Look,” Shay says, “I know something about losing friends.” He nods towards Connor’s wrist. “Like that. We could talk.”
Connor meets his eyes, and the sorrow and sympathy there make rage flare up inside him.
“You and my father wiped out the Assassins in the colonies,” he says. “But we are rebuilding the Brotherhood. Your friends should never have died, and now you have killed them in vain.”
Shay takes a step back, shock and anger crossing his face, to be replaced by a strange, closed expression.
For a long, long moment they stand there, looking at each other from different sides.
“I think about it all the time,” Shay says at last, quietly. “Whether I did the right thing. Whether it had a point. But I have to believe it was right, or I’ll lose my mind.”
Connor looks down at Kanen'tó:kon, and suddenly all he can see is his own future in what Shay is saying. He draws breath, meaning to say... he doesn’t know what.
Shay is gone when he looks up.
-
Connor never saw his quest ending this way. But here he is, sitting at an inn table, silently sharing a drink with Charles Lee.
They both know that Lee will not leave this place alive. Considering Connor’s condition, perhaps neither of them will.
There’s a movement at the corner of Connor’s vision, but he refuses to take his eyes off Lee. A moment later, someone walks into his line of sight.
It’s his father.
Of course his father is here, at the end.
Haytham’s eyes travel from Connor to Lee. “This is 1782, isn’t it?”
Connor nods. Perhaps he had the year from Desmond. Or a future Connor, although Connor finds it hard to envision anything past this moment.
Haytham sighs. “Very well.”
A moment later Connor finds himself standing against the wall, where Haytham was a moment before. Haytham, in Connor’s body, touches his fingers to Connor’s side and winces at the blood on his hand.
“Father, what are you doing?” Connor asks.
Haytham ignores him. “Charles.”
Lee frowns slightly at the address.
“There are things that have gone unsaid between us for a very long time,” Haytham says. “Perhaps it’s cowardice to leave them until this moment. You have served the Order loyally and well. But you attacked a boy in the woods many years ago.”
He doesn’t sound like Connor. He sounds like Haytham. He’s speaking carefully, deliberately bringing Connor’s voice as close to his own as he can. It’s strange and unsettling to Connor, watching himself speak with his father’s voice.
“You may not have realised it,” Haytham says, “but I was there that day. It put a certain strain on our relationship.”
Lee is shaking, his eyes wide.
“Don’t,” he whispers. “Kill me, if that’s what you’re here for. But not as him.”
Haytham shakes his head. “No, it’s useless to talk about this. It’s far too late. Forget I spoke of it.” He lifts the knife from the table. “You’ve always been dear to me, Charles, but there are people dearer. I do not do this without regret. Goodbye.”
“Father, no!” Connor cries.
Haytham pauses with the blade halfway to Lee’s throat.
“You would kill a friend just to rob me of my revenge?” Connor demands.
“I would kill a friend for a number of reasons,” Haytham says. “You’ve killed both friends and... enemies, before, and it’s clear they weigh on you. Do you think you’ll walk away happy, having killed a man who clearly has no intention of fighting back? He has to die for you to be free, but his death would be a burden on your conscience. Let that burden fall on someone better equipped to carry it.”
He’s still gripping Lee by the collar. Lee is shaking his head, his eyes closed tightly. “No,” he whispers. “No. It’s impossible. I thought we... I always tried...”
Connor, watching, feels a strange twinge of compassion for this man he has hated for as long as he has known what hatred is.
“Besides,” Haytham adds, with a grimly resigned smile, “I understand I’m dead by this point, so at least his loss won’t cost me his support.”
Lee whimpers.
“Father,” Connor says, “this man spoke at your grave. He loved you. To let him die thinking it was by the hands of your spirit...”
“It would be more or less accurate, wouldn’t it?” Haytham asks, his eyes on Lee.
“It would be cruel,” Connor says. “I came here to kill Lee. I did not come to kill him cruelly.”
Haytham pauses.
“I was there when he attacked you,” he says. “As a visitor. Do you remember?”
Connor’s throat constricts; it always does when he thinks of that moment. He nods.
Haytham focuses again on Lee. “You could not have known the boy in the woods was my son, Charles,” he says. “But you could not have failed to know he was a child.”
Lee swallows, and opens his eyes. “M-Master Kenway?” he asks, his voice shaking so badly he can barely get the words out.
“I’m sorry our last meeting couldn’t be under better circumstances.”
“You saw... you knew about the boy?”
“I’ve seen a great many things.”
Lee lets out a shaking breath.
“So you’ve hated me all these years,” he says.
Haytham’s expression softens, just slightly.
“I hated your actions that day,” he says. “I’ve always had great faith in you, Charles. If my desires were the only ones at play here, you would lead the Order until long after my death. But my son will never be at peace if you live, and he will never be at peace if he kills you.”
“I can make my own decisions,” Connor says, hard-edged.
Haytham looks up at him and seems about to say something sharp for a moment, but then he sighs. “Very well. You never were one for obedience, even when your father lived. Naïve of me to think I could have any real influence in your life when I no longer had any real presence.”
“I will end this myself,” Connor says.
“Of course you will,” Haytham says. “And it will haunt you, and you’ll speak to no one about it. But it’s your decision, of course.”
Connor shakes his head. “It will haunt me less than it would haunt you. I do not believe you could kill a friend and feel nothing.”
Haytham smiles, very slightly. “Perhaps,” he says. “But I understand a father is supposed to protect his son. I’ve done rather a poor job of it so far.”
Connor hesitates.
“I will end this,” he says, again.
Haytham nods, and a moment later Connor finds himself back in his aching body. Haytham pauses by the wall, then walks around the table to place a hand on Connor’s shoulder. Connor could shrug it off, but for some reason he doesn’t.
Connor looks at Lee, at his trembling hands, at the pain and fear in his expression. He won’t meet Connor’s eyes.
“My father will not harm you,” Connor says. “He cared for you, whatever you might have done.”
Lee looks instantly at him. “You’re not...?”
Connor leans forward.
“My name is Ratonhnhaké:ton,” he whispers in Lee’s ear. “I am the child you almost killed twenty years ago.”
Relief floods Lee’s face. He grips Connor’s sleeve. “Thank you.”
Connor nods, and lifts the knife.
-
Aveline would never wish away her visitors, but visiting can occasionally be... inconvenient. Particularly now that she and Shay have settled down in person. Back when they could only know each other as visitors, it was the end of the visit that was the problem. Now...
Well, she and Shay were having an extremely pleasant evening, and she’s unimpressed to find herself suddenly lying on the floor of some sort of... small, rectangular glass-walled room, being rained on.
Warm rain. Hot rain. Indoors?
Yes, this is all very mysterious, but she’s happy to let these mysteries remain unsolved for now. Shay was being very attentive, and she’s very nude, so it’ll probably be best for all involved if she cuts her visit short. Ideally before the other occupant of this room gets through his resigned sigh and actually looks down at her.
Aveline closes her eyes and tries to focus, tries to find that click in her mind that will send her back into Shay’s arms.
But Shay’s arms have done their job a bit too well, it seems. She hasn’t stopped trembling; she can’t concentrate. For a moment she allows herself to be pettily angry with him, although she knows it’s unfair.
And now she’s going to have to go the long way through this visit, which is already not off to an ideal start. She feels naked without her weapons. The fact that she actually is naked doesn’t exactly make her feel clothed, but the lack of weapons is bothering her more. Not that she actually intends to stab any of her visitors; she just likes to keep her options open.
She didn’t really take in who she’d come to see before closing her eyes, but she hopes it’s Haytham; at least his reaction will be amusing. Or another Shay. That would save some trouble.
“Well,” a familiar voice says, “at least I knew this was comoh FUCK-”
There’s a loud crash, and Aveline opens her eyes, alarmed.
Desmond is huddled in the corner of the glass room with his back to her, his arms wrapped over his head.
Poor, poor Desmond. He’s always been the worst of them at coping when it comes to situations like this, so it’s perhaps unfortunate that he seems to drop in on her and Shay more often than anyone else.
The situation’s never been reversed like this, though. Or semi-reversed, at least. He’s just as nude as she is.
Out of courtesy, Aveline tries not to stare. Or to laugh.
“You’re not Edward,” Desmond says, in a sort of squeak.
“Edward?” Aveline asks, sitting up. The rain is still falling. In a way, it’s strangely pleasant.
Desmond curls further into himself.
“You were expecting Edward?”
“I don’t mean - I mean, we hadn’t arranged to meet or anything,” Desmond says, slightly muffled. “And he was gonna have clothes. I mean, I think he was gonna have clothes. He didn’t say.” A pause. “Fuck.” Another pause. “Uh, so where are your clothes?”
“Some distance in the past, I suppose,” Aveline says. “I’m afraid I didn’t remove them for your benefit.”
“No, I get that. I’m really sorry.”
For a moment the only sound is the drumming of the water on the tiled floor beneath them.
“Uh,” Desmond says, very hesitantly, “I think I should probably get out of the shower. And I think that means I have to... I mean, if I don’t want to fall and die...”
She could offer to catch him if he does fall, but she suspects the idea will only distress him more.
“You need to open your eyes?” she asks. “I understand. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, after all.”
Desmond makes an agonised noise. “Why does this keep happening?”
He stands up, keeping his eyes firmly on the wall and his hands firmly over the join of his legs. Aveline takes pity on him and looks away; he’s making such an effort not to look at her, after all.
The water stops, and there’s some rustling, and then a towel hits her in the back of the head. She wraps herself in it and turns to see Desmond in a towel of his own, carefully studying the ceiling.
“You can look,” she says.
He still can’t look straight at her; he sort of looks in her direction, but he keeps his eyes focused on a point slightly to her left. She has to smile.
“Sorry about that,” he says, eventually.
“You had no control over it,” she says. “And you were a perfect gentleman. I’m sorry I wasn’t the man you were waiting for.”
Desmond shakes his head. “God, and I’ve still got that to look forward to.”
There’s a pause.
“Thought you could stop a visit when you wanted,” he says, evidently trying to sound casual. “Did something go wrong?”
There’s a plea in his voice: tell me something went wrong, tell me you didn’t just stick around to watch me squirm.
“It doesn’t always work,” Aveline says, shrugging. He probably doesn’t need to know exactly what the obstacle was.
She could probably leave now, come to think of it. It’s a tempting prospect.
But poor Desmond still looks mortified, and she thinks of the sacrifice he’ll make to save the world, and she can’t bring herself to go yet. She can try to make sure his memory of this visit isn’t just a painful one, at least.
He’s always seemed to enjoy introducing her to the strange new things in the future. She’s tempted to ask about the shower, but she has a feeling that might not help.
“Do you have a computer here?” she asks instead.
Now he looks at her. “What? Not in the bathroom. Why do you need a computer?”
“You mentioned them to me once,” she says. “Years ago. You said they’d take too long to explain.”
“Oh, yeah,” Desmond says. “I think that was last week for me, actually. They haven’t gotten any less complicated since then.”
“Well, we can make a start, can’t we? I’d like to know.”
Desmond hesitates, then shrugs. “Okay. Why not? Rebecca’s next in the shower; we can use her laptop.”
The room through the door is well-lit and warm, a pleasant change from the temple. “We get a hotel room when we really need to wash,” Desmond explains, once Rebecca’s disappeared inside the bathroom and the water is running. He keeps his voice low; Rebecca gave him a very strange look when he came into the room still talking to Aveline.
A ‘computer’, it turns out, is a device that mainly lets you look at cats. Aveline can understand its value as an invention, although she isn’t sure why Desmond and his team need so many of them for their work with the Animus.
The mood’s gone entirely when she eventually does return to Shay, though. At least he understands.
-
Ezio knows what is about to happen by the time the fourth visitor appears. All eight of them have gathered before for a number of occasions, some happy, some sorrowful. But usually they all gather to say goodbye.
He is at home in Firenze, sitting in the sunlight. His wife and daughter are in sight. There are worse places.
He sits there, watching Sofia and Flavia, as the visitors gather. Gradually the chatter surrounding him quietens; they are realising why they are there.
Desmond stands apart from the others and watches Ezio for a while. Ezio smiles at him; he glances away. Eventually, though, Desmond approaches, looking uncomfortable.
“Uh,” he says, “thanks. For everything.”
“For the skills you learnt through the Animus?” Ezio asks. “Or for those fine sights when you visited me at the Rosa in Fiore?”
Desmond turns a strange colour, and Ezio laughs.
Does Desmond ever wonder why he attends all their deaths so young? Perhaps not; he still claims to think that none of this is real. And yet why would he feel the need to thank Ezio, if he truly believes that?
He is a strange young man. Ezio will miss him.
Altaïr is the last to appear. He is younger than he usually is at these gatherings, not yet thirty. Ezio is glad to see it. An Altaïr towards the end of his life would not have the strength for what Ezio must ask.
“Altaïr.” Ezio beckons him to sit beside him, and Altaïr does, displacing an indignant Edward.
Ezio puts an arm around Altaïr’s shoulders. Altaïr closes his eyes for a moment, exasperated, but he puts up with it.
“Did you wish to speak?” Altaïr asks at last. “Or am I here to serve as your armrest? Edward would have fulfilled the role, and willingly.”
“He’s right, you know,” Edward puts in, leaning against the side of the bench.
Altaïr does not know what this moment is, Ezio realises. This is the first death he will have seen. Or... not the first death - far from the first death - but the first death of a visitor.
“Altaïr,” Ezio says, quietly, “I am about to die.”
The shock on Altaïr’s face lasts only a moment, before it’s chased out by the stubborn anger he’ll never entirely leave behind. “You cannot know that.”
“I have a request.”
“Live and fulfil your own requests, old man.”
Ezio smiles. He will be sorry to leave behind Sofia, and their children, and this strange collection of travellers who have become a family to him. But he is glad to have them nearby, at the end.
“I do not feel very unwell,” Ezio says. “I do not know what will take my life, but I know it will be sudden. I ask you to take it for your own before it has the chance.”
Altaïr goes very still.
“You ask much of me,” he says, after a long moment.
“Perhaps too much,” Ezio agrees. “But I hope you will allow me a moment of selfishness in my old age.”
“Ezio,” Haytham says, sharply. “Your wife and daughter-”
Ezio looks instantly over at Sofia and Flavia. This is his fear - that his coming death will be at the hands of an enemy, that they might be in danger. But they are safe, they are laughing as they look over the stalls.
“They are strong,” Ezio says. “They will weep, but they will survive. I would stay if I could.”
“If Altaïr kills you, it will look like you’ve stabbed yourself,” Haytham says. “Do you want them to spend the rest of their lives wondering why?”
Ezio’s breath catches.
No. He has known for a long time how he would like his life to end, but... no. That is not a burden he can leave them with.
He looks to Altaïr. “When death comes upon me, I would like you to hold me, if you can.”
Altaïr nods, looking relieved. “Of course.”
And when the pain comes and Ezio clutches at his chest, he feels Altaïr easing him gently off the bench. He feels warm arms around him, lips pressed briefly to his forehead, and he cannot see who has taken his hand with their own, but he knows that, whoever it is, it is a friend.
Part Four
As before, it's probably easiest to keep track of this 'verse on AO3; I'm mainly posting my scenes here as a backup (and an exercise in harnessing these ficlets into a slightly less confusing chronological order). In this section I fulfil a long-standing Assassin's Creed dream by getting Ezio to make out with himself.
(I've excluded one of my scenes (this one) because it doesn't make any sense without the context of the full cowritten 'verse.)
Title: Visitors (Gratuitous Wish-Fulfilment Edition), Part Three
Fandom: Assassin's Creed
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Shay Cormac/Aveline de Grandpré, occasionally
Wordcount: 8,400 (this part; 25,000 cumulative)
Summary: Visitors was a collection of scenes from a universe in which most of the Assassin's Creed protagonists kept meeting through involuntary time-travel. This is the same, only now they all cuddle and fall asleep on each other. Don't give me that look.
Notes: These side-stories may occasionally conflict with the established Visitors timeline. It's the gratuitous wish-fulfilment edition and everything is permitted.
Part One
Part Two
“Shay!” a voice exclaims, and Shay finds himself being dragged out of the tavern just as suddenly as he found himself in there. “You’ll do. Come on.”
“I’ll do for what?” Shay asks, bewildered.
“I think M-” Edward suddenly cuts himself off, glances around, although nobody’s giving them a second look. Maybe dragging invisible people around is a commonplace sight amongst drunken pirates of the Caribbean. “I think Kidd’ll have my head if I let one more visitor go by without introducing him. One head or another. Going by the behaviour of certain other visitors, I was starting to regret... but you’ll be fine. You’re faithful, aren’t you? I don’t have to worry about leaving you with him, do I?”
Was that supposed to be an explanation? It’s only left Shay more confused.
Shay knows of Kidd; he’s seen him a couple of times before on visits, and he’s heard Edward speak of Kidd with a respect it must have been hard for a lad so young to win. It seems Edward’s told him about the visitors. It’s never really occurred to Shay to talk about them with anyone he knows in person, Haytham excluded, but he can get that far and make sense of things.
The rest of it...
“Faithful?” Shay asks. “Faithful to whom? Or to what?”
Edward freezes. “You’re not there yet?”
Not... where, exactly? Shay has the nasty feeling he’s about to learn of his future. It seems like something best avoided; he’s seen Haytham pacing, dwelling on his death at his son’s hands.
“Faithful to the Templar cause,” Edward says after a moment, to Shay’s relief; he’s there after all. “You wouldn’t kiss an Assassin, would you?”
“What?” Shay asks.
“Wait. Christ. You would, wouldn’t you? Just... don’t kiss Kidd, all right? Promise me.”
Shay takes a moment to go back over that in his mind, check that he’s heard right. “What?”
Edward shrugs. “Mock me if you have to. I won’t see that again.”
“Why are you - why would I - wait, one of us kissed Kidd? Aveline?”
Edward stares at him. “No,” he says, after a moment. “Do you think she would? God, I thought Aveline would be safe, at least. Maybe I should make sure she’s from later on. After...” He gestures to Shay, perhaps hoping that Shay is going to finish his sentence, but Shay hasn’t the slightest idea of where it’s supposed to go.
“I haven’t understood a word you’ve said,” Shay says. “Why would I kiss Kidd? Why is this something that worries you?”
Who kissed Kidd already, if it wasn’t Aveline? Perhaps that’s too intrusive a question. But he’ll sell the Morrigan if it was anyone but Ezio.
Edward brightens. “Those are the questions I like to hear. Come on, then; I’ll happily introduce you.”
Well, Shay knows about men on long voyages. Edward’s a friend, and he’s got precious few of those left, so maybe it’s best not to pry further. There are differences more easily overcome than Assassins versus Templars.
Edward leads him up onto a roof, because of course he does. Shay has occasionally wondered what binds them all together as visitors. Some of them are related by blood, some of them have been viewed through this ‘Animus’ thing, all of them have certain skills of perception, but sometimes Shay’s thought that visiting might just be something you catch if you climb enough buildings.
“Kidd!” Edward calls, as they reach the rooftop. “I hoped I’d still find you here.”
“I’m staking out a warehouse, Kenway,” Kidd says. “It’s not exactly gone on a stroll. What so important that you’re interrupting me?”
“Brought someone new for you to meet,” Edward says. He lights up around Kidd. Shay wonders how he never saw it before. “This is Shay Cormac.” He glances pointedly at Shay. “He’s extremely trustworthy.”
“So this is Shay?” Kidd asks, looking more interested now. “Let’s meet him, then.”
And Shay finds himself in Edward’s body. He’s taken control before - sometimes with permission, sometimes not - but he’s not used to being given it without warning, and the sudden shift in his position and the way he’s holding his weight (and, he quickly realises, the amount of drink he’s taken) leaves him struggling not to fall over.
Kidd watches him, arms folded, until he’s righted himself. “You know how to make a first impression.”
“Shay Patrick Cormac,” Shay says, holding out Edward’s hand, trying to keep any embarrassment out of his voice.
Kidd smirks and takes the hand. “Pleasure.”
As they shake hands, Shay catches sight of the blades at Kidd’s wrists; they’re something he’s always careful to watch for. Suddenly Edward’s ‘you wouldn’t kiss an Assassin’ question makes more sense. Not a lot more sense, but some.
This... this is before Shay’s time, isn’t it? Yes, definitely before; he’s seen a younger Adéwalé here (and his chest tightens as he thinks of the mission this visit has called him away from). There’s no chance Shay will have made a name for himself as a Templar in this time, no way Kidd will have heard of him.
“So,” Kidd says, his eyes narrowing slightly, “Edward tells me you’re a Templar.”
Shay dives out of Edward’s body. This isn’t a conversation he came here prepared for.
“He left?” Kidd asks, watching Edward reel as Shay did a moment before.
“He’s still here,” Edward says, gesturing to Shay. “Just being a coward. She won’t harm you, man! You’d have to be in me; she’s not exactly going to put a blade through my neck, is she?”
“Confident of that, are you?” Kidd asks. “Thought I’d asked you not to call me that in company.”
“Everyone present already knows,” Edward says, waving his hand dismissively. “Or do you think there are more invisible people listening under the eaves?”
“She?” Shay asks, staring at Kidd. Now that he really looks at him... her?...
Edward stares at him for a moment.
“Everyone present already knows or lives in a different time, so they’re not really relevant,” he amends.
“Kenway,” Kidd growls.
“Well, I didn’t know!” Edward protests. “He knew it the last time I met him! How was I to know he’d learnt it here?”
“Even so, you’re not exactly careful to keep it from your visitors, are you? This one’s not that far in the future, you said. He could be around in my lifetime. And he’s a Templar.”
“He might not know the other thing,” Edward says, tapping the blades at his wrists.
Kidd throws up her hands. “Subtle, Edward.”
“I’d sort of guessed the other thing,” Shay says. Edward apparently decides not to relay that to Kidd.
“Just for that, maybe I’ll kiss this one as well,” Kidd says.
Oh.
“Shouldn’t I have a say in this?” Shay asks. Yes, it’s been a while for him, and there’s something about a woman in trousers... but something advises him against involvement with someone he can only see through visiting. And an Assassin, to boot.
She’s dangerously close to being exactly his type, actually: dark-haired, well-muscled, quick on her feet and quick to mock. Probably best not to look directly at her.
“You wouldn’t,” Edward says, staring at Kidd. “You don’t want to. You haven’t seen Shay. He’s hideous.”
“Hey,” Shay protests.
“Good thing he’ll be looking like a dashing pirate captain, then, isn’t it? Now bring him back.”
Edward shakes his head. “No.”
“Shay!” Kidd says, raising her voice. “Come here and talk to me, or I swear I’ll seek you out in my old age and kill you myself.”
Something tells Shay it’s best to take her seriously. He jumps into Edward, leaving the body’s owner protesting noisily in the background.
“That’s you, isn’t it?” Kidd asks. “You don’t have to look so nervous. I’m not actually in the habit of murdering Kenway’s friends.” She considers him. “Templars, on the other hand...”
Shay takes a step back from her. “I have my reasons.”
“We all have our reasons,” she says. “But, like I said, you matter to Kenway, and I’ll never hear the end of it if I kill you.”
Something catches in Shay’s throat at that. When he’s returned to his own time, he’ll be on his way to kill Adéwalé. He tries not to glance guiltily over at Edward.
Is there any way he can avoid it?
“Sounds like you might be in the habit of kissing Edward’s friends, though,” Shay says, mainly for the sake of changing the subject.
Kidd grins. “That’s what you’re so worried about? I just said it for his expression. We can kiss if you’d like, but you’ll need to swap out straight after so I can see his face.”
“Why mistreat me like this?” Edward wails. “What have I ever done? Shay, if you kiss her I’ll - I’ll - I’ll seduce Aveline.”
“What?” Shay asks, completely lost. “Why?”
“I just will, all right? You won’t like it.”
Seduce Aveline? What sort of threat is that?
But he did promise Edward he’d keep his distance from Kidd. Sort of. Although he didn’t really understand the circumstances at the time.
Shay turns back to Kidd. “You seem a fine lady, and I can respect your cause.” (Behind him, Edward groans.) “But I can’t kiss you. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll survive,” Kidd says. “And I’m hardly a ‘fine lady’.”
“Shay,” Edward says, fervently, “you are the best of all the visitors. The very best. You will always be welcome here.”
Shay smiles uneasily back at him, thinking of Adéwalé.
-
“This is an all-too-familiar sight,” Shay remarks. “What’s that bird carrying that’s going to bring you grief?”
Ezio stays in his crouch, not taking his eyes off the pigeon. It shuffles its feathers a little, and looks around at him, and coos, mockingly. It seems perfectly content to sit where it is, in the middle of the roof, but Ezio knows it’ll take off again the moment he gets near it, the bastard.
“A mission for a new recruit,” he says. “I realised my error the moment I let it loose. The task itself is simple, but the location is a Templar stronghold. Valentina has the makings of a great Assassin, but she is still inexperienced. If she follows those orders, she will die.”
“I see,” Shay says. “But you think you’ve got it in hand, do you?”
“I think pigeons are loathsome birds that flew into this world through the arsehole of Lucifer,” grumbles Ezio.
Shay claps him on the shoulder. “We’ve never been so strongly in agreement, you and I.”
And then Ezio finds himself displaced from his body.
“Shay, what-” Ezio begins, and then he curses. He just outright told a Templar that he was in the middle of very delicate, easily-sabotaged Assassin business. He still forgets, sometimes, that he and Shay aren’t on the same side. It seems such an impossible thing to forget, an insurmountable difference, and yet...
Shay is creeping, very slowly, towards the pigeon.
“I’m a bit of an expert at this by now,” he whispers, in Ezio’s voice. “Don’t get your hopes up too high, though; some of these little bastards are nigh uncatchable. If I can just... ha!”
The pigeon flutters helplessly in his hands.
“But why would you do this for us?” Ezio asks, frowning at it.
“I’m not doing this for the Assassins,” Shay says, detaching the message. The pigeon flies off gratefully, taking nothing but its idiotic pigeon face to headquarters. “I’m doing it for you, and for this Valentina. I could let her go, but all that’d happen is she’d get killed and the job would still get done; you’d send someone else to do it. I can’t stop that. So there’s no point letting her die trying to...” He gets the message open and looks at it. Frowns. “Seduce a Templar’s wife?”
“Valentina is very seductive,” Ezio says.
“Don’t know why I’m surprised; it’s you. Do you ever send out any missions that don’t involve seduction?”
“Regrettably, yes,” Ezio says. “Some problems can only be solved with a death. The Brotherhood and the brothel are very different things, Shay.”
“Both run by Auditores,” Shay says. “Both...” He tails off and waves the piece of paper in his hand.
“Slightly different things,” Ezio allows.
-
“Ah, he’s awake!”
It’s a familiar voice. From home, he thinks. Did he get so drunk he somehow sailed all the way to Wales without realising it? But what are the chances of that happening twice?
He opens his eyes. He’s on the floor of his cabin, and...
Oh. Turns out it’s his own voice. Because his body’s standing a few feet away from him, which it doesn’t really have any right to be doing.
And next to it...
“Mary?” Edward asks, scrambling to his feet. She’s here as Kidd, though, so it’s no surprise she ignores him. He tries again. “Kidd?”
But no, she can’t hear him, of course.
So who’s in his body? Ezio? God, he hopes not; they could have been getting up to anything while he’s been sleeping off the rum.
“I was just speaking to Monsieur Kidd,” the other Edward says, slightly giving it away. Now that Edward’s listening for it, he can hear a hint of Aveline’s accent in his voice. Wales by way of... wherever Aveline’s from. France? That’s not right, is it? Somewhere French, anyway.
Aveline should be one of the safer visitors. But, just to be sure... “Kidd’s a woman, you know.”
Aveline laughs and looks back at Kidd. “You were right. He’s very keen for me to know.”
“You’d think I’d had the lot of you, the way he acts,” Kidd says. “I only kissed Ezio. So far, at least.”
“‘You were right’?” Edward echoes. “What have you been saying about me? And - and why are you in my body?”
“You were asleep,” Aveline says. “Or perhaps ‘unconscious’ would be better. Kidd was here. I wanted to meet this person you always spoke so highly of.”
“Don’t say that in front of her!” Edward protests, as Kidd smirks. “You couldn’t have woken me up?”
“You told me I should feel free to take over if you were ever in a drunken stupor,” Aveline says. “You said you trusted me to look after your body better than you, at such times.”
“I definitely never said that.” Maybe it’s true, but he never said it.
Aveline shrugs. “In that case, I suppose you’ll tell me in your future. Impressed by my behaviour on this occasion, I’m sure.”
Edward hesitates. “Well, if I said you could... wait, how do I know you’re not just making this up?”
It’s strange to see Aveline’s grin on his own face.
“Aveline.”
“I did try to wake you,” she says. “Given that I couldn’t, I thought Kidd would be better company.”
All right. That’s fair. He probably wouldn’t mind someone taking him over under normal circumstances; it’s just that, given previous events, he’d like to know exactly how his visitors are behaving around Kidd. But Aveline’s all right, isn’t she?
“And you’ve just been... talking, have you?” he asks.
Aveline starts laughing again, and repeats his question to Kidd. Edward is definitely not giving her drunken takeover permission in his future.
“What else would we have been doing, Kenway?” Kidd asks, innocently.
“Here we are in his cabin,” Aveline says. “A fine, soft bed just there. This body’s much the worse for wear, and you must have been exhausted after dragging him all the way from the tavern. Perhaps he thinks we might have needed some sleep?”
Edward stares at them in mounting horror. Can he really not let anyone near Kidd? “She’s a woman! You’re both women!”
“He would like to remind us that we are women,” Aveline reports. “He seems very concerned that we’ve forgotten.”
“That so?” Kidd asks. Edward really wishes she didn’t enjoy his suffering quite so openly. “Seems to me there’s no one here but us gents.”
“In any case,” Aveline says, turning back to Edward, “what business is it of yours what Kidd does? Aren’t you married?”
Caroline. Bold and beautiful, and so far away.
“I am,” Edward says. “To the most magnificent woman. But that’s nothing to do with - it’s the principle of the thing, it’s what people are doing with my body! And don’t think I don’t know about the whole business with you and Gérald and Shay!”
Aveline stares at him.
“Me and Gérald and Shay?” she asks, after a moment.
“I know that look,” Kidd says, watching her. There’s a hint of concern in her expression, which at least is an improvement on the open delight at Edward’s misery. “Is Kenway giving out secrets again?”
“Me and Gérald and Shay?” Aveline repeats to herself, quietly. “But... no.” She looks up at Edward. “Shay is a Templar now.”
Oh. This is an early Aveline.
In his defence, it’s not as if he could have judged her age; she’s wearing his face.
“If he’s said something that troubles you, best to forget it,” Kidd says. “It’ll be nonsense anyway. The amount of shit that comes out of Kenway’s mouth, it’s a wonder there’s any left for his arse.”
“Unfair and untrue,” Edward objects, before catching sight of Aveline’s conflicted expression. Maybe it’s best not to be too firm on this. Especially as Kidd can’t even hear him. “Somewhat untrue.”
“You were inventing things?” Aveline asks, focusing on him instantly.
Edward shrugs. “Perhaps you’d touched a nerve. Forgive me if I tried to throw something back.”
She’s still frowning, just a little. “But then why would you mention Shay? Why not... Ezio? Someone more plausible?”
“If you think it’s implausible, why let it worry you?”
“I don’t know.” She’s quiet for a moment. “Have you seen his future? Does he come back to us?”
“The Assassins?” Edward asks. Should he talk any more about the future? She already knows Shay’s a Templar; it’s probably safe for her to know he’s going to stay one, right? “Don’t think so. Sorry.”
She lets out a long breath.
“But he’s all right, you know,” Edward says. If he puts in a good word for Shay with Aveline now, can he take the credit for all their future happiness? “He’s a friend to me, whatever side of your conflict he’s on. And he behaved himself with Kidd.”
Aveline smiles a little at that. Shares a glance with Kidd, then looks back at Edward. “You’re truly worried about what might have happened, aren’t you?”
“Oh, we’re back to me?” Kidd asks. “Best if we leave him wondering, I’d say.”
Edward throws up his hands. “Fine. Not that I care. I’m very fortunately married. And this isn’t going to be a situation like you and Gérald and Ezio.”
Aveline laughs, the frown clearing from her face at last. Maybe she won’t dwell too much on his slip-up.
Or maybe she will, and he really can take credit for her and Shay. He’ll have to ask her in her future.
-
It takes Desmond a long moment to make any sense of what he’s seeing.
Ezio. Okay. Making out with someone. Okay. So far, so normal, for a world where ‘normal’ can include seeing your fifteenth-century Italian ancestor in eighteenth-century American woods.
Ezio is making out with a dude. Less expected, but still not that surprising in the ‘hanging out with your ancestor in a time that doesn’t belong to either of you’ grand scheme of things.
Ezio is making out with himself.
That’s definitely weird, right? No matter what the situation, there’s no way that’s not weird.
Ezio moans into Ezio’s mouth and pulls him closer. Desmond drags his eyes away and sees Haytham and Connor standing nearby, watching the scene with almost identical expressions of distaste. They’ve never looked more like father and son than they do in this moment.
Desmond edges closer to them. “You can see this as well, right?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Connor says.
“I didn’t think we could visit ourselves.” Well, yeah, this is all Desmond’s own stupid hallucination, but his stupid hallucination has rules. It feels weird when it suddenly veers off-track.
“Ezio is not visiting himself,” Haytham says, “as you’d have realised if you paid any attention to our surroundings. He is visiting me, and he is visiting Connor. The timing is... unfortunate.”
“Ezio doesn’t seem to think so,” Desmond says. “Ezios? Ezios don’t seem to think so?”
Haytham gives him a strange look that quickly turns thoughtful. “It’s Italian,” he says, after a moment. “Ezii, perhaps.”
Desmond’s learnt to look away quickly when he drops in on his ancestors in compromising situations, but somehow it’s hard to tear his eyes away from the Ezii or Ezios. Who meets himself and decides this is the logical next step? Ezio, apparently. Somehow, Desmond finds he isn’t actually that surprised.
“Was there any kind of... lead-up?” he asks, out of some kind of terrible curiosity.
“Desmond,” Haytham says, “am I giving any indication whatsoever that I’d like to discuss this?”
The situation’s weird enough to mostly override Desmond’s normal feelings of paralysing embarrassment at scenes like this, at least. Or maybe they’re just eased by the solidarity in knowing that Haytham and Connor are standing next to him, equally unhappy.
What’s the largest number of visitors who could all meet up in person? There’s a while when Haytham, Connor, Aveline and Shay are all alive at once, he’s pretty sure. So would it be possible for Ezio to visit all four of them while they’re in the same place?
Okay, he really doesn’t need to start picturing some kind of Eziorgy. (Particularly as, if it ever happens, he’s pretty much guaranteed to see it.) He drags his mind back to... yeah, okay, two Ezios making out, which is not a huge improvement, but it’s something.
Is this meant to be saying something about his subconscious? If so, he really doesn’t want to know what it is. The constant parade of nude visitors has given him enough to worry about.
Speaking of nudity... whoa, okay, it’s definitely time to look away now.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Haytham mutters, averting his eyes as well.
“Father,” Connor says, suddenly. “I know how we can stop them.”
“I’ve attended Ezio’s death, Connor, and unfortunately it will take place far too late to curtail this undignified scene.”
“We can move apart,” Connor says. “One Ezio will have to stay with you, one with me. They will not be able to remain close to each other.”
Haytham stares at him for a moment.
“Occasionally, Connor,” he says, eventually, “you are all I could ask for in a son.”
“Father?” Connor asks. It’s hard to miss the strain in his voice.
Haytham is already striding away. Connor and Desmond watch him go.
Desmond kind of really needs to hear that from Haytham himself. He tries not to think about it.
Not thinking about it becomes considerably easier when both Ezios break out into noisy protests, which at least is an improvement on the noisy arousal.
“No!” shouts one Ezio, older by perhaps a decade, as he stumbles backward over the soil. “No, not this again! Desmond, call Haytham back here.”
“Uh,” Desmond says, “I’d love to, but...”
“Connor, follow him!”
Connor only shakes his head. The older Ezio doesn’t pursue it, maybe because he knows it’s hopeless; he’s already seen this from the other side, after all.
“Why would he choose this moment to leave?” the younger Ezio demands, straining at the invisible barrier keeping him close to Connor. “Does he not realise this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?”
The older Ezio smiles nostalgically. Haytham has stopped moving, and so he has too; apparently Haytham is content to leave the two of them within conversing distance. “Ah, but the beauty is that you already know it will be twice.”
A smile breaks out across the younger Ezio’s face as well.
Fine. So long as Desmond only has to see it once, that’s fine.
Three days later, he pays an ill-timed visit to Aveline (or possibly Shay) and sees himself on the other side of the bed, visiting Shay (or maybe Aveline; they’re far too close to each other to tell). His future self gives him a look of deeply unhappy sympathy.
-
“Edward!” Shay exclaims. “Thank God. I was afraid for a moment you’d be Aveline.”
“On the Jackdaw?” Edward asks, amused. “Had a falling-out, have you? I’ll give you shelter as long as you’re here.”
Shay frowns slightly. “We haven’t fallen out. Or... no more than usual. I mean, she’s still an Assassin, and I’m...”
“What’s the issue, then?” Edward asks.
A long hesitation. “It’s hard to explain.”
Edward gestures expansively to the sea around them, his other hand still on the tiller. “We’ve nothing ahead of us but a long sail and my men giving me strange looks. I can take the time to listen.”
It looks for a moment as if Shay’s about to say something, but then he shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Look,” Edward says, “something’s not right. If all were well, you’d want nothing more than to visit Aveline.”
Shay turns strangely pale at that. “Oh, God, have I been that unsubtle?”
Edward laughs. “If you wanted it to be a secret, you’re worse at keeping secrets than I am.”
“You think she knows? God, no, don’t tell me.”
It’s possible, Edward suddenly realises, that this is Shay from before his relationship with Aveline.
“It’s been unbearable,” Shay says. “And the worst thing is I can’t stop hoping. I mean, maybe there could’ve been something there, back when we were both Assassins, but...” He shakes his head, fiercely. “We’re on different sides.”
How to approach this?
“Maybe she’s not as averse to the idea as you might think,” Edward says.
Shay groans. “I don’t need you giving me more hope. I need you to... to take my mind off her.”
“I mean it,” Edward says. “I was there in that cave, remember? Have you been through that yet? She certainly seemed eager to share her body heat with you.”
“So did you,” Shay points out, which, to be fair, is true. He closes his eyes for a moment, as if in pain. “That wasn’t the last time, either. Fell asleep on a freezing night, woke with her pressed against my back. That was hard. Difficult, I mean. And knowing she’d done it out of kindness, and I was repaying her with such thoughts...”
Edward is starting to feel it’s a miracle the two of them ever got past this stage. “Adé, take the helm. I’ve a friend who needs consoling.”
“There is nobody there,” Adé says, with the flat despair of a man who’s said it thirty times before.
Edward ignores him and follows Shay to the side of the ship.
“She keeps changing in front of me, too,” Shay mutters. “I try not to look, but she’ll always ask me to fasten her gown if I’m around. I need some excuse to refuse. I swear I’ll lose my mind if it happens once more.” He leans back against the rail and presses his face into his hands. “How can the world torment a man like this?”
Edward very nearly shouts at him. This man is an idiot, and Aveline is twice the fool for choosing him out of all the visitors at her disposal. But he takes a breath, and tries to adopt the role of the supportive friend who doesn’t necessarily know Shay’s future but does, at least, have the faintest idea of how human interaction works.
“The world’s not tormenting you, mate,” Edward says. “She’s tormenting you. And it’s likely you’re tormenting her just as much.”
“What d’you mean?”
“These things aren’t happening by accident, Shay. You always say you make your own luck; how is it you don’t see when someone’s trying to hand you armfuls of the stuff?”
Shay hesitates for a long moment. “You’re not saying she...”
“Say it never occurred to you and I’ll throw you overboard,” Edward says. “How do you steer the Morrigan when you’re as blind as your own backside?”
“She’s just... she’s friendly,” Shay says. “She’d be the same with any of you. She’s able to put aside our differences enough to see me as a friend. I should be satisfied with that.”
Enough. Whatever the consequences of letting Shay know what awaits him, they’ll be better than the consequences of listening to this for a moment longer.
“Last time I visited you was in your future,” Edward says. “It looked to me like you’d worked things out with her. Honestly, save yourself some anguish and kiss her next time you see her.”
Shay stares at him for so long Edward starts to wonder whether he’ll ever get around to reacting. Eventually, though, he almost flinches away, shaking his head. “You’re trying to make a fool of me.”
“Aveline’s a friend, just as much as you,” Edward says. “You think I’d push you at her if I thought she didn’t want you? Besides, you’d end up bleeding your life out in the gutter. Wouldn’t amuse me as much as you seem to think.”
“Then you didn’t see what you thought you saw. Honest mistake, maybe, but it can’t be true. She knows I’m a Templar. She wouldn’t.”
“Hard to mistake. The last time I visited, I promise you, you were so far inside her I doubted you’d find your way out.”
There’s a pause. Shay opens his mouth and then closes it again.
“Vivid,” he says, eventually. “Thanks for that.”
“Ah, Shay!”
Shay freezes, his eyes going wide. For a moment, Edward genuinely thinks he’s about to fling himself off the side of the Jackdaw.
“And Edward,” Edward says. “Not that it matters.”
Aveline laughs. “Yes, of course. Sorry, Edward. So what were you... Shay?”
“I’m fine,” Shay says, instantly.
“We were just discussing ships,” Edward says, tempting as it is to tell her every word of Shay’s ridiculous self-pity.
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Aveline says. “I’d like to improve my understanding of... Shay, you don’t look well.” She lifts a hand to his cheek. Shay takes a step back and looks pleadingly at Edward.
Edward draws a deep breath in through his teeth, then seizes Shay’s arm and begins dragging him across the deck. “I am going to lock both of you in my cabin, and you are going to stay there until-”
But Shay vanishes as he’s speaking. Edward frowns. He was looking forward to seeing it, too.
Aveline looks like she’s trying very hard not to laugh. “Shay from before?”
“Shay from before,” Edward confirms. “How did you have the patience?”
She shakes her head. “In all honesty, I’m not sure. But I’m glad I can still visit him at this stage. It’s always a pleasure to see the look on his face.”
Edward laughs. “You’re a cruel woman.”
Aveline only smiles.
-
Connor tenses, furious, or as close to furious as he can reach through his grief. Shay. The man who possessed Connor to attack Achilles, the man who-
But Connor’s friends are no safer around the true Connor, are they? Not with Kanen'tó:kon lying dead at his feet.
“Leave,” Connor says. “I do not wish to see you.”
“Easy,” Shay says, holding up his hands. “I’d leave if I could.”
His eyes trail from Kanen'tó:kon’s body to Connor’s wrist, and Connor realises too late that his hidden blade is still extended, the blood not yet cleaned off it.
“He was your friend, wasn’t he?” There’s something soft in Shay’s voice.
Connor feels a need to justify himself, to say he didn’t know this would happen, to say he would give anything for the outcome to have been different, but his throat closes up around the words.
“I do not need pity from a Templar,” he says instead.
“Look,” Shay says, “I know something about losing friends.” He nods towards Connor’s wrist. “Like that. We could talk.”
Connor meets his eyes, and the sorrow and sympathy there make rage flare up inside him.
“You and my father wiped out the Assassins in the colonies,” he says. “But we are rebuilding the Brotherhood. Your friends should never have died, and now you have killed them in vain.”
Shay takes a step back, shock and anger crossing his face, to be replaced by a strange, closed expression.
For a long, long moment they stand there, looking at each other from different sides.
“I think about it all the time,” Shay says at last, quietly. “Whether I did the right thing. Whether it had a point. But I have to believe it was right, or I’ll lose my mind.”
Connor looks down at Kanen'tó:kon, and suddenly all he can see is his own future in what Shay is saying. He draws breath, meaning to say... he doesn’t know what.
Shay is gone when he looks up.
-
Connor never saw his quest ending this way. But here he is, sitting at an inn table, silently sharing a drink with Charles Lee.
They both know that Lee will not leave this place alive. Considering Connor’s condition, perhaps neither of them will.
There’s a movement at the corner of Connor’s vision, but he refuses to take his eyes off Lee. A moment later, someone walks into his line of sight.
It’s his father.
Of course his father is here, at the end.
Haytham’s eyes travel from Connor to Lee. “This is 1782, isn’t it?”
Connor nods. Perhaps he had the year from Desmond. Or a future Connor, although Connor finds it hard to envision anything past this moment.
Haytham sighs. “Very well.”
A moment later Connor finds himself standing against the wall, where Haytham was a moment before. Haytham, in Connor’s body, touches his fingers to Connor’s side and winces at the blood on his hand.
“Father, what are you doing?” Connor asks.
Haytham ignores him. “Charles.”
Lee frowns slightly at the address.
“There are things that have gone unsaid between us for a very long time,” Haytham says. “Perhaps it’s cowardice to leave them until this moment. You have served the Order loyally and well. But you attacked a boy in the woods many years ago.”
He doesn’t sound like Connor. He sounds like Haytham. He’s speaking carefully, deliberately bringing Connor’s voice as close to his own as he can. It’s strange and unsettling to Connor, watching himself speak with his father’s voice.
“You may not have realised it,” Haytham says, “but I was there that day. It put a certain strain on our relationship.”
Lee is shaking, his eyes wide.
“Don’t,” he whispers. “Kill me, if that’s what you’re here for. But not as him.”
Haytham shakes his head. “No, it’s useless to talk about this. It’s far too late. Forget I spoke of it.” He lifts the knife from the table. “You’ve always been dear to me, Charles, but there are people dearer. I do not do this without regret. Goodbye.”
“Father, no!” Connor cries.
Haytham pauses with the blade halfway to Lee’s throat.
“You would kill a friend just to rob me of my revenge?” Connor demands.
“I would kill a friend for a number of reasons,” Haytham says. “You’ve killed both friends and... enemies, before, and it’s clear they weigh on you. Do you think you’ll walk away happy, having killed a man who clearly has no intention of fighting back? He has to die for you to be free, but his death would be a burden on your conscience. Let that burden fall on someone better equipped to carry it.”
He’s still gripping Lee by the collar. Lee is shaking his head, his eyes closed tightly. “No,” he whispers. “No. It’s impossible. I thought we... I always tried...”
Connor, watching, feels a strange twinge of compassion for this man he has hated for as long as he has known what hatred is.
“Besides,” Haytham adds, with a grimly resigned smile, “I understand I’m dead by this point, so at least his loss won’t cost me his support.”
Lee whimpers.
“Father,” Connor says, “this man spoke at your grave. He loved you. To let him die thinking it was by the hands of your spirit...”
“It would be more or less accurate, wouldn’t it?” Haytham asks, his eyes on Lee.
“It would be cruel,” Connor says. “I came here to kill Lee. I did not come to kill him cruelly.”
Haytham pauses.
“I was there when he attacked you,” he says. “As a visitor. Do you remember?”
Connor’s throat constricts; it always does when he thinks of that moment. He nods.
Haytham focuses again on Lee. “You could not have known the boy in the woods was my son, Charles,” he says. “But you could not have failed to know he was a child.”
Lee swallows, and opens his eyes. “M-Master Kenway?” he asks, his voice shaking so badly he can barely get the words out.
“I’m sorry our last meeting couldn’t be under better circumstances.”
“You saw... you knew about the boy?”
“I’ve seen a great many things.”
Lee lets out a shaking breath.
“So you’ve hated me all these years,” he says.
Haytham’s expression softens, just slightly.
“I hated your actions that day,” he says. “I’ve always had great faith in you, Charles. If my desires were the only ones at play here, you would lead the Order until long after my death. But my son will never be at peace if you live, and he will never be at peace if he kills you.”
“I can make my own decisions,” Connor says, hard-edged.
Haytham looks up at him and seems about to say something sharp for a moment, but then he sighs. “Very well. You never were one for obedience, even when your father lived. Naïve of me to think I could have any real influence in your life when I no longer had any real presence.”
“I will end this myself,” Connor says.
“Of course you will,” Haytham says. “And it will haunt you, and you’ll speak to no one about it. But it’s your decision, of course.”
Connor shakes his head. “It will haunt me less than it would haunt you. I do not believe you could kill a friend and feel nothing.”
Haytham smiles, very slightly. “Perhaps,” he says. “But I understand a father is supposed to protect his son. I’ve done rather a poor job of it so far.”
Connor hesitates.
“I will end this,” he says, again.
Haytham nods, and a moment later Connor finds himself back in his aching body. Haytham pauses by the wall, then walks around the table to place a hand on Connor’s shoulder. Connor could shrug it off, but for some reason he doesn’t.
Connor looks at Lee, at his trembling hands, at the pain and fear in his expression. He won’t meet Connor’s eyes.
“My father will not harm you,” Connor says. “He cared for you, whatever you might have done.”
Lee looks instantly at him. “You’re not...?”
Connor leans forward.
“My name is Ratonhnhaké:ton,” he whispers in Lee’s ear. “I am the child you almost killed twenty years ago.”
Relief floods Lee’s face. He grips Connor’s sleeve. “Thank you.”
Connor nods, and lifts the knife.
-
Aveline would never wish away her visitors, but visiting can occasionally be... inconvenient. Particularly now that she and Shay have settled down in person. Back when they could only know each other as visitors, it was the end of the visit that was the problem. Now...
Well, she and Shay were having an extremely pleasant evening, and she’s unimpressed to find herself suddenly lying on the floor of some sort of... small, rectangular glass-walled room, being rained on.
Warm rain. Hot rain. Indoors?
Yes, this is all very mysterious, but she’s happy to let these mysteries remain unsolved for now. Shay was being very attentive, and she’s very nude, so it’ll probably be best for all involved if she cuts her visit short. Ideally before the other occupant of this room gets through his resigned sigh and actually looks down at her.
Aveline closes her eyes and tries to focus, tries to find that click in her mind that will send her back into Shay’s arms.
But Shay’s arms have done their job a bit too well, it seems. She hasn’t stopped trembling; she can’t concentrate. For a moment she allows herself to be pettily angry with him, although she knows it’s unfair.
And now she’s going to have to go the long way through this visit, which is already not off to an ideal start. She feels naked without her weapons. The fact that she actually is naked doesn’t exactly make her feel clothed, but the lack of weapons is bothering her more. Not that she actually intends to stab any of her visitors; she just likes to keep her options open.
She didn’t really take in who she’d come to see before closing her eyes, but she hopes it’s Haytham; at least his reaction will be amusing. Or another Shay. That would save some trouble.
“Well,” a familiar voice says, “at least I knew this was comoh FUCK-”
There’s a loud crash, and Aveline opens her eyes, alarmed.
Desmond is huddled in the corner of the glass room with his back to her, his arms wrapped over his head.
Poor, poor Desmond. He’s always been the worst of them at coping when it comes to situations like this, so it’s perhaps unfortunate that he seems to drop in on her and Shay more often than anyone else.
The situation’s never been reversed like this, though. Or semi-reversed, at least. He’s just as nude as she is.
Out of courtesy, Aveline tries not to stare. Or to laugh.
“You’re not Edward,” Desmond says, in a sort of squeak.
“Edward?” Aveline asks, sitting up. The rain is still falling. In a way, it’s strangely pleasant.
Desmond curls further into himself.
“You were expecting Edward?”
“I don’t mean - I mean, we hadn’t arranged to meet or anything,” Desmond says, slightly muffled. “And he was gonna have clothes. I mean, I think he was gonna have clothes. He didn’t say.” A pause. “Fuck.” Another pause. “Uh, so where are your clothes?”
“Some distance in the past, I suppose,” Aveline says. “I’m afraid I didn’t remove them for your benefit.”
“No, I get that. I’m really sorry.”
For a moment the only sound is the drumming of the water on the tiled floor beneath them.
“Uh,” Desmond says, very hesitantly, “I think I should probably get out of the shower. And I think that means I have to... I mean, if I don’t want to fall and die...”
She could offer to catch him if he does fall, but she suspects the idea will only distress him more.
“You need to open your eyes?” she asks. “I understand. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, after all.”
Desmond makes an agonised noise. “Why does this keep happening?”
He stands up, keeping his eyes firmly on the wall and his hands firmly over the join of his legs. Aveline takes pity on him and looks away; he’s making such an effort not to look at her, after all.
The water stops, and there’s some rustling, and then a towel hits her in the back of the head. She wraps herself in it and turns to see Desmond in a towel of his own, carefully studying the ceiling.
“You can look,” she says.
He still can’t look straight at her; he sort of looks in her direction, but he keeps his eyes focused on a point slightly to her left. She has to smile.
“Sorry about that,” he says, eventually.
“You had no control over it,” she says. “And you were a perfect gentleman. I’m sorry I wasn’t the man you were waiting for.”
Desmond shakes his head. “God, and I’ve still got that to look forward to.”
There’s a pause.
“Thought you could stop a visit when you wanted,” he says, evidently trying to sound casual. “Did something go wrong?”
There’s a plea in his voice: tell me something went wrong, tell me you didn’t just stick around to watch me squirm.
“It doesn’t always work,” Aveline says, shrugging. He probably doesn’t need to know exactly what the obstacle was.
She could probably leave now, come to think of it. It’s a tempting prospect.
But poor Desmond still looks mortified, and she thinks of the sacrifice he’ll make to save the world, and she can’t bring herself to go yet. She can try to make sure his memory of this visit isn’t just a painful one, at least.
He’s always seemed to enjoy introducing her to the strange new things in the future. She’s tempted to ask about the shower, but she has a feeling that might not help.
“Do you have a computer here?” she asks instead.
Now he looks at her. “What? Not in the bathroom. Why do you need a computer?”
“You mentioned them to me once,” she says. “Years ago. You said they’d take too long to explain.”
“Oh, yeah,” Desmond says. “I think that was last week for me, actually. They haven’t gotten any less complicated since then.”
“Well, we can make a start, can’t we? I’d like to know.”
Desmond hesitates, then shrugs. “Okay. Why not? Rebecca’s next in the shower; we can use her laptop.”
The room through the door is well-lit and warm, a pleasant change from the temple. “We get a hotel room when we really need to wash,” Desmond explains, once Rebecca’s disappeared inside the bathroom and the water is running. He keeps his voice low; Rebecca gave him a very strange look when he came into the room still talking to Aveline.
A ‘computer’, it turns out, is a device that mainly lets you look at cats. Aveline can understand its value as an invention, although she isn’t sure why Desmond and his team need so many of them for their work with the Animus.
The mood’s gone entirely when she eventually does return to Shay, though. At least he understands.
-
Ezio knows what is about to happen by the time the fourth visitor appears. All eight of them have gathered before for a number of occasions, some happy, some sorrowful. But usually they all gather to say goodbye.
He is at home in Firenze, sitting in the sunlight. His wife and daughter are in sight. There are worse places.
He sits there, watching Sofia and Flavia, as the visitors gather. Gradually the chatter surrounding him quietens; they are realising why they are there.
Desmond stands apart from the others and watches Ezio for a while. Ezio smiles at him; he glances away. Eventually, though, Desmond approaches, looking uncomfortable.
“Uh,” he says, “thanks. For everything.”
“For the skills you learnt through the Animus?” Ezio asks. “Or for those fine sights when you visited me at the Rosa in Fiore?”
Desmond turns a strange colour, and Ezio laughs.
Does Desmond ever wonder why he attends all their deaths so young? Perhaps not; he still claims to think that none of this is real. And yet why would he feel the need to thank Ezio, if he truly believes that?
He is a strange young man. Ezio will miss him.
Altaïr is the last to appear. He is younger than he usually is at these gatherings, not yet thirty. Ezio is glad to see it. An Altaïr towards the end of his life would not have the strength for what Ezio must ask.
“Altaïr.” Ezio beckons him to sit beside him, and Altaïr does, displacing an indignant Edward.
Ezio puts an arm around Altaïr’s shoulders. Altaïr closes his eyes for a moment, exasperated, but he puts up with it.
“Did you wish to speak?” Altaïr asks at last. “Or am I here to serve as your armrest? Edward would have fulfilled the role, and willingly.”
“He’s right, you know,” Edward puts in, leaning against the side of the bench.
Altaïr does not know what this moment is, Ezio realises. This is the first death he will have seen. Or... not the first death - far from the first death - but the first death of a visitor.
“Altaïr,” Ezio says, quietly, “I am about to die.”
The shock on Altaïr’s face lasts only a moment, before it’s chased out by the stubborn anger he’ll never entirely leave behind. “You cannot know that.”
“I have a request.”
“Live and fulfil your own requests, old man.”
Ezio smiles. He will be sorry to leave behind Sofia, and their children, and this strange collection of travellers who have become a family to him. But he is glad to have them nearby, at the end.
“I do not feel very unwell,” Ezio says. “I do not know what will take my life, but I know it will be sudden. I ask you to take it for your own before it has the chance.”
Altaïr goes very still.
“You ask much of me,” he says, after a long moment.
“Perhaps too much,” Ezio agrees. “But I hope you will allow me a moment of selfishness in my old age.”
“Ezio,” Haytham says, sharply. “Your wife and daughter-”
Ezio looks instantly over at Sofia and Flavia. This is his fear - that his coming death will be at the hands of an enemy, that they might be in danger. But they are safe, they are laughing as they look over the stalls.
“They are strong,” Ezio says. “They will weep, but they will survive. I would stay if I could.”
“If Altaïr kills you, it will look like you’ve stabbed yourself,” Haytham says. “Do you want them to spend the rest of their lives wondering why?”
Ezio’s breath catches.
No. He has known for a long time how he would like his life to end, but... no. That is not a burden he can leave them with.
He looks to Altaïr. “When death comes upon me, I would like you to hold me, if you can.”
Altaïr nods, looking relieved. “Of course.”
And when the pain comes and Ezio clutches at his chest, he feels Altaïr easing him gently off the bench. He feels warm arms around him, lips pressed briefly to his forehead, and he cannot see who has taken his hand with their own, but he knows that, whoever it is, it is a friend.
Part Four