Chapter Text
Connor stays ahead of Haytham, and some distant voice that sounds like Achilles scolds him for it.
Allowing a Templar, the Grand Master himself to have full access to your exposed back? I taught you better, Connor.
He grips the next ledge more harshly than he needs to, using all his muscles to pull up and settle onto the roof, molars clenched together as he tries to block out the voice. Unwise or not, Haytham hadn’t need Connor’s exposed back to put him down before, and Connor would rather not look at the man.
It would be easy if he was just angry, but he isn’t, and he doesn’t have time to figure out what he really feels.
So he keeps moving, almost irritated that Haytham has absolutely no trouble keeping stride with him. No matter where he climbs or how quickly, his father steadily keeps up, his breathing measured and mostly normal even after a rapid ascent up the side of a church.
Connor pauses, glancing back, and Haytham is still right there. Steady and foreboding as ever. He seems to wear a permanent expression of either unimpressed disdain or blankness.
He wonders what had charmed his mother, and thinks maybe she was foolish.
He instantly regrets the thought, shaking his head in what’s almost a shudder as though to banish it.
It doesn’t shake loose the insistent longing he’s had since he was very small to meet the man now walking across slate tiles to stand at his side.
The fact that their first meeting had been a threat somehow hasn’t killed that part, and Connor bites down a little harder on the little boy in the depths of his heart that feels…something to know Haytham is here and knows who he is.
“The nearest point I’ve been able to reach is the next roof over,” he says, pointing across another row of buildings towards their target in a building hollowed and blackened with fire. The redcoats are swarming it, and if Haytham truly isn’t in service to the King then he probably has little more safety walking into them than Connor himself does. “There must be something of worth left there, or else they would not guard it so fiercely.”
They haven’t caught up to Church, so the pair of them are following other trails, trying to unravel what the King is planning in the face of an infant country still boldly defying him. The fact that the King is getting outside of the Templar influence and his own man is causing him the run around must irritate Haytham to his core.
Haytham comes to a stop behind him, eyes following the direction of Connor's hand towards the derelict structure. His expression barely changes as he frowns at its crumbling state and the heavy redcoat presence. He’d been wearing that look anyway.
"Best not to dawdle then." He waves an impatient hand. "I'm certain you're well acquainted with sneaking around. If you know a closer spot, take us to it. I have my spyglass."
"That was in much darker weather, thick with fog. Getting closer now would be unwise," Connor says, crouching as close as he dares and studying the landscape. "A musket will not reach so far but they have brought in more of the men in black jackets who are not afraid to leave their post. I have also heard rumors of rifles, though I haven't seen any yet."
He scans the building and shakes his head. "This way, it's as close as we can manage in the light."
He stands and paces quickly across the peak of the roof, dropping lightly down to the next level. Two more levels and he settles again, nodding to the angled view of the destroyed building.
"There. Perhaps your spyglass can make out that symbol where I cannot."
He points to charred masonry, a group of patrolmen crossing briefly.
Haytham follows, crouching on one knee and using it to steady his arm as he peers with the scope in the direction indicated. "Can't say I'm familiar,” he remarks, observing the sign. “Though it may well be a merchant's insignia, if Church has found a preferred company for his dealings.”
Straightening, he steps closer to the edge of the roof and turns his head into the sunset. "Fog isn't the only thing that can offer cover. The shadows are long and that chimney is tall. Though better still would be their attention diverted entirely…" He looks again at the redcoats in the street and tracks a calculating eye over the other elements at play.
Connor is about to say something else when movement across the roof catches his eye. His brain doesn't process it fully before his body does, recognizing instinctively that the movement across the roof is in tandem with Haytham shifting himself.
He says nothing, only grabs Haytham's lapel in both hands and swings him around just in time to hear the weapon release.
A bow, to his subdued surprise, and though he feels a sudden blow against his left shoulder he feels no pain, pushing Haytham backward into the cover behind a chimney.
He isn't aware of the arrow point jutting cleanly through, just under his collarbone. For a moment there's nothing–a clean cut in cotton.
Then blood blossoms quickly across white fabric. Connor's eyes are on Haytham alone, checking to make sure he wasn't hit.
The movement is sudden. Haytham’s initial reaction is one of irritation: that was unnecessary, springs to mind, and I’m perfectly capable of reacting on my own. Then he sees the blood, and necessity and I’m not so fast anymore dawn on him with the same force as if the arrow had found its intended target.
“Connor…” His eyes widen, expression staying the calm side of panic yet there’s a sudden urgency in the way he clutches at Connor’s clothes, feeling the hot bloom of crimson spreading beneath his hands. He can’t look for the archer. Can’t berate Connor for throwing himself in the arrow’s path until the question that’s just sprung to the front of his mind has been answered: will the breath he just felt Connor take be his last?
The tip of the arrow now pointing at him like a taunt threatens it might.
Connor’s body is still in shock, the pressure in his shoulder not yet turned to pain, the wet on his chest not yet noticed as blood. He misreads Haytham’s expression, frowning lightly and ignoring the hands on his chest. “Were you hurt? We have to move before he can nock another.”
He hasn’t felt it. Haytham blinks with the realisation.
“Then you’d better be able to climb, because I certainly can’t carry you.” The fact he’s upright and talking says he isn’t imminently about to keel over, but he’s going to feel it when it hits. “ I’m unharmed, Connor. Pay better attention and take a look at yourself.”
Haytham is looking. The viciously pointed arrow tip protrudes obscenely beneath Connor’s collarbone, and Haytham feels keenly that the only reason it isn’t buried in his own chest right now is that Connor had flung his own body in its path as sacrifice.
“We need to get off this roof…”
He drags his eyes away, slipping into eagle vision long enough to glance in the shooter’s direction and notice the hostile flicker of red several rooftops away. Who are they? There isn’t time to answer that question. But they’re damnably out of range of Haytham’s pistol.
“Come, and don’t you dare lose consciousness.” He balls a bloody fist in Connor’s clothes and, more roughly than he wishes he had to, drags him around the side of the chimney as he eyeballs a path off the building that offers relative cover.
Connor feels an instant surge of anger at the tone Haytham takes with him, and with that surge comes pain.
If he had the presence of mind to catch it, he would have recognized the fact that Haytham's sharpness is worry. As it is, all of his focus diverts to the warm wash of blood sticking his robes to his chest. He wonders how he'll ever get it out.
His breathing hitches and he half hears what Haytham continues to say, is only partially aware of what he next does. His hand goes to Haytham's as he grabs the front of his robes, somewhere between breaking the grip and holding back to keep from falling. A hard breath escapes him and he sucks in another, the pain blossoming all the way through his shoulder and into his chest like someone poured hot water into a space he never knew was hollow.
He looks down at the arrow tip but doesn't even have time to think about pulling it out before Haytham is dragging him away.
Again, his body knows what to do before he does and though his left arm is all but useless getting down at least has the blessing of gravity as an aid.
The landing is clumsy and undignified. Haytham reaches to keep Connor upright and soon realises he'd hardly manage it were Connor not still able to retain some control of his balance for himself. He must certainly be feeling it by now, but Haytham will count their blessings that by some miracle, he hasn't snagged the arrow and made things worse.
"Damn this," Haytham hisses, dragging Connor close against the side of the building and then turning to face his back. With thoroughly bloodied hands, he grabs the protruding arrow shaft and doesn't give Connor chance to react or protest before commanding, "Hold still," and snapping it off as close to the skin as possible.
The rest still needs to come out. He'd rather that happen when he's better equipped to deal with the bleeding.
"What were you thinking, throwing yourself in the path of an arrow?" Oh, now the anger is coming out. Hot and irrational when he knows exactly why Connor did it and it feels completely unearned. "We need to get off the streets."
The inn feels a long way away when the sight of a native covered in blood will draw the redcoats like flies to meat. Nor will the shooter have likely lost interest.
The snapping of the shaft may as well be part of Connor’s own body for how much it hurts. He bites on a cry, breath hitching and his vision going white. He manages not to be sick but he does suffer one retching contraction as he braces against the wall.
His breathing burns. He doesn't know if he can taste blood.
He still hears Haytham's scolding and he grits his teeth, shooting him a snarl.
"Why do you care?" he spits, moving forward none the less, vision clearing as a new surge of adrenaline takes over. He wants to say more, to point out that Haytham had ordered him hung and then greeted him with a blade to his throat at their first interaction, but their situation prevents it and he focuses his anger into action.
"Call it disappointment that my son should be prone to such acts of recklessness and impulsivity that now we have to abandon our mission," Haytham snaps back, "though, I suppose I should expect nothing else from an Assassin. Your Order believes that obeying impulse is a God-given right."
Connor isn't doing well. Haytham can see it in his face, the way he carries himself…the way the blood still hasn't stopped pouring.
Yet still he's upright and moving. Haytham isn't going to have to drag him anywhere. Yet.
"Consider, at least, that we can't remain out in the open. There's a general store nearby; the owner knows the Templars' have deeper pockets than the redcoats. If you can make it that far, we can wait it out while they grow tired of searching. I should at least be able to stem the bleeding."
“Next time I will allow you to get shot and save myself the trouble,” Connor snaps back. He has his arm tucked into his side but he doesn’t stop, Achilles’ training combined with his first abandonment in Boston knowing just what the consequence will be if he slows down.
He doesn’t want to settle in the back room of a general store under the safety of a bribe. He hates trust bought by money. But he has little option else. He certainly cannot make it back to the homestead and dressing this alone is going to be impossible. He isn’t even certain he’d be able to remove the shaft.
His strength manages to hold until they make it to the store, though he does sag as they get through the door. Clumsy, he takes the few steps more to get to the counter and leans heavily, trying in measured, painful gasps to pull enough air into his lungs.
The merchant has watched his progress with an uncertain look of alarm, but Haytham’s presence behind him seems to ease the concern. That, or the coin purse set down on the counter. “We aren’t here,” Haytham says sternly. “Now, room in the back and medical supplies, if you would.”
A brief check of the pouch’s weight, and the merchant jerks his head in the direction of a back room. “Didn’t see a soul,” he affirms. “I’ll move some stock into the back.”
Haytham nods in acknowledgment (and maybe actual gratitude) and touches Connor’s good arm. “Now that the gentleman has to clean your blood off his counter, best to get out of sight.”
He hopes Connor can make it. Judging that it might be a struggle, the touch to his arm reaches further and snakes round Connor’s back, inviting him to lean on Haytham should his strength fail.
His breathing is sounding worse. Haytham silently prays that the puncture is clean and blood isn’t right now pooling in his chest.
Connor doesn't want to accept Haytham's help. He leans on the counter, blood dripping from the tip of the arrow with an alarming frequency, and Connor's eyes set on the pouch of money. He works his jaw, face creasing in a grimace and a half snarl at the same time, and he pushes off the counter, managing one step alone before he sags into Haytham's arm.
He doesn't pass out, doesn't need Haytham to drag him, but he cannot take full credit for making it to the back room either where he all but falls into a bed of flour sacks.
There’s a faint puff of stray flour taking to the air as the sacks absorb Connor’s weight, but Haytham pays whatever dust or dirt may be back here no heed. His own clothes are already bloodied, but the contrast on Connor’s white robes is even starker as crimson continues to seep.
How much blood does he even have? He’s a big man. Certainly plenty. Though that also means he needs to keep more of it…
It’s too late to spare his cuffs staining, but Haytham sheds his outer coat and hat anyway before kneeling by Connor’s side. The shopkeeper shows his face again to leave a crate of supplies nearby and gruffly ask that they try not to ruin too many sacks, but quickly resumes the charade of knowing nothing.
Haytham rolls up his sleeves and leans closer. “Here. Perhaps this might be sufficient reason to find better attire than these damnable robes.” He needs better access to the wound. The fabric certainly won’t peel away easily, so Haytham hooks his fingers into the hole surrounding the arrow head and tears.
Connor flinches at the tearing, turning his head away and squeezing his eyes shut. Distantly, he is aware that the fingers on his left are trembling, the ache and the stress of the wound radiating all the way through a shoulder stiff with swelling. He keeps on breathing, jaw clenched, and sweat coats his skin even though the early time of year doesn't begin to require it.
He coughs weakly and is sure he can taste blood.
His throat works as he tries to keep nausea at bay, but as Haytham peels back more fabric and he feels how sodden it is, he cannot help looking down at the sharp tip splitting his skin.
It's a jarring thing, and he just stares at it, wondering for the first time since getting hit if this miserable room is the farthest he is going to get. The thought first strikes with a deep shame and fear for his people– then for himself.
He isn't ready to die. Not remotely. And he finds himself looking to Haytham for some counter expression to tell him that he won't.
Haytham doesn’t look at him. Not right away. He’s focused on the wound, examining the arrow and judging how bad the ordeal will be to pull it out. Without fully understanding what he’s doing, he presses his fingers to Connor’s skin. It takes him a beat longer to realise the significance of it.
Had he known Connor as an infant, as he ought…this wouldn’t be the first skin contact they’ve ever had.
Haytham glances up, meeting Connor’s eyes, and for a moment the look in them arrests him. The contempt hasn’t gone, though it’s retreated, but what he primarily sees right now is fear.
“If there was blood in your lungs, you’d be choking on it by now,” Haytham says softly, both attempting to reassure and pretending not to have noticed. “This will be painful, but it seems nothing vital was pierced. You should count yourself lucky the damage isn’t worse.”
One of his hands is resting on Connor’s chest, wrist lightly touched to his sternum, and it occurs to him that with just a slight change in angle, the arrow would likely have found his heart.
Would have found Haytham’s, had Connor not done what he did.
Haytham looks away, reaching for the basket of supplies and retrieving a wad of bandages, and then in dissatisfaction stretches a little further to take a bottle of rum from one of the storage shelves. “I’m certain this won’t be missed; I paid handsomely enough. Here. Might take a little of the edge off.” He uncorks it and offers it to Connor.
The look of nausea says he might well decline. In any case, absent water, it will do to clean the wound.
“I can taste blood,” Connor admits softly as Haytham tries to reassure him, and he wonders how many men Haytham has seen die from blood in the lungs. Based on how many men Connor himself has killed in a few years, he imagines Haytham has more than enough experience to know what he’s talking about.
He tries to remain still and relaxed while Haytham inspects the wound, but even the gentle touches hurt and the slightest tensing of muscle around the shaft is horribly painful.
When offered the rum, Connor grimaces, hesitates, and then accepts it, taking several large swallows before coughing and shaking his head. He shudders with the taste and his arm twitches, a fresh rivulet of blood running down his chest.
“Please take it out,” he says in a strained voice. “If I am to bleed to death I would rather it be quickly.”
He tries to say it with some of the same levity as their earlier sparring, but it falls flat under the weight of fear and truth.
Truth: He doesn’t want to suffer like this and die slowly if he is to die at all.
Fear: He doesn’t want to die, and staring it down this way is much worse than when he’d had the noose around his neck. He’d known, deeply, that that was not going to be his end. He doesn’t retain that certainty now.
“There will be no bleeding to death,” Haytham says firmly, as though he can simply order Connor not to. He takes the rum back then replaces it with leather from the sword belt he’s shed. “Bite. This will hurt.”
Taking another wad of coarse cloth from the supplies, Haytham presses against Connor’s shoulder with one hand and circles his finger below the flare of the arrow head with the other. “Brace yourself.”
And he pulls.
Connor bites down as instructed, turning his head away and taking two deep, fear fueled breaths as Haytham braces.
This time his vision flashes full white behind his closed eyes, and he makes a horrible, muted roar of pain that ends with his head bowed and a tear striking down one side of his face. He's bitten into the leather but doesn't unstick his jaw right away, numbed and overwhelmed by the pain.
Somehow he doesn't pass out, but a huge wash of blood pours from the wound as he pulls two more ragged breaths through his teeth and nose.
Everything aches, he's light headed, and as he sags into the flour his abused muscles tremble.
He doesn't have the presence of mind to consider it right then, but healing enough to climb well will be a miracle.
As it is, his teeth are still stuck in the leather and his eyes are closed, head bowed to one side while blood coats his back and chest at once.
It isn't fast. Haytham tugs at the arrow with his own teeth grit and knuckles white, inch by slow inch dragging the snapped shaft through the considerable layers of muscle fighting to hold it back. Connor's cries stir something painful in his own chest that he'd long thought screams of agony no longer had the power to evoke.
Haytham ignores the feeling. The arrow comes loose with a horrible, squelching release of tension, and he hurries to press a hefty wad of rags to the wound that suddenly spits a surge of blood like a dam burst.
"There, all done," he mutters, barely thinking about the words as he keeps the pressure on and moves his other hand to Connor's face.
A light touch to his jaw to coax him to release the leather. Haytham notices the tear. "Breathe, Connor."
The touch of tenderness breaks something deep and primal inside and Connor releases, taking in a sob of a breath around the leather before managing to spit it out with a wad of saliva and blood. Weakly, he opens his eyes and looks at Haytham, exhaustion and pain completely replacing the anger from earlier. He simply doesn't have it in him anymore.
He feels terribly weak, and the wound deeper still that the absence of this man caused decades ago aches with a longing he is normally able to deny.
"When did you know?" he asks, voice weak as his body. "That I existed."
His question catches Haytham off guard, but he hides it. If Connor is breathing and talking, he can indulge to answer. The prospect of discussing it suddenly feels less frightening than the possibility he might never again get chance.
"Four years ago," Haytham answers, and for the moment does nothing further to the wound than keeping the pressure on. "Not long after that affair with the tea in Boston harbour. Charles didn't exactly recognise you, but he finally thought to tell me that he'd been to your village years before and saw a boy of mixed blood. And that hardly counts as certainty but…it was enough. That was when I knew."
He stops talking, realising he can't arrange the thoughts in his head into any order to leave his mouth, and so says none of them. With the arrow out of the way, it's easier now to push Connor's clothes off his shoulder to clean and bandage the wound. He makes a start, making no apology for the painful disturbance except a gentle pat on Connor's chest as he finally bares his shoulder.
Connor's coldness finds itself again at the mention of Lee. At the casual recount of a day and a night he will carry as a scar for the rest of his days. He's harshly reminded that it is this man's orders that killed his mother and nearly hung him. And he is angry for forgetting.
"I am glad you never came back then," he says harshly, even though it is a mixed truth tainted with pain. "It would have hurt her deeply to know you cared so little for us after all."
A part of him wants to pull away, but both his weakness and his awareness of his state prevents it. If Haytham does not bind his wound, he will die.
Haytham stills a moment. It would be easy to retaliate: push a little harder, cause a little more pain for that Connor has just unknowingly inflicted. But he doesn't.
It strikes him how much he truly has missed. Connor's words lash at him like those from the tongue of an upset child, and part of him is almost grateful to know how that feels.
"Your mother made it quite clear she never wished to see me again," Haytham says calmly. "I respected those wishes. Had I known of your existence sooner, perhaps things would have been different. But you were almost a man already by the time I learned of your existence. What's done is done."
He's firm as he places fresh cloth on the wound and begins to bind it, but no more than necessary.
"I know she sent you away," Connor says through his teeth, though it is in response to the pain of Haytham compressing the wound rather than anger. "She told me. She went to look for you once, when you did not defy her yourself. When I was grown enough to miss you. You were gone. Away on some business. I do not blame you for that. But did you have such contempt for her after that you would send a man like Lee to burn our home?"
He searches Haytham's expression, his heart beating hard with grief and with anger and with loss. Physical and otherwise. He's awake now with the surge of emotion but with the amount of blood absorbed into the flour around him it's unlikely it will last.
If Haytham had been surprised before, that has him shocked. His hands freeze, and not intentionally. "What are you talking about?"
He's noticed the change in Connor: the sudden alertness that ought not be possible. It has him on edge.
"Lee did come to my village years ago. He found me playing in the woods with other children, beat me for information, told me I was worthless and beneath him, and when I woke from the blow to my head and ran home the village was engulfed with flame."
Connor’s voice is angry, louder, muscles tense under Haytham's frozen touch despite the pain it's causing.
"I found my mother trapped beneath burning timbers," he says it like a weapon, his expression twisted with grief. "She sent me away while I tried to free her, and one of our warriors forced me to obey."
His chest heaves painfully with grief and breaths that don't feel like enough, and he turns his head away, trying not to pass out while tears brim hot.
"If she had lived to know you ordered that," he says after a few gasping breaths, turning angry eyes back onto Haytham. "If she had lived to see me nearly hung at your word, she would have cut your heart from your chest."
For some moments, the shock renders Haytham speechless. His mind scrambles for some explanation, a train of reason that could reconcile Connor's perception with the truth, but a wall of grief has risen before him that he finds none of his thoughts can pass.
Ziio is dead, then.
"I ordered no such thing," he protests, though a part of him doubts, questions did I? "I told Charles to abandon the search for the precursor site. He was to pursue other avenues, I wasn't even on the continent at the time…" Yet, I'm responsible. "I left him in charge."
So that was the reason for the secrecy, then? The fourteen years of silence; the vague account of very little. Had Lee even told the truth about Washington?
Haytham's fingers twitch as he stares down at them coated in Connor's blood, and despises that the metaphor should be so literal.
"I am sorry to learn of your mother's fate." It sounds glib. Insincere. He wishes he could conjure better. "She would be within her rights to claim my heart, as to the hanging. It was Charles' proposal, but to my shame, I consented. I did not rescind the order until it was too late."
And admit to his intervention? To his betrayal of the Templar?
No. That will go with him to the grave.
"We are Assassin and Templar. We may yet kill each other, but it was poor form that I should allow it in such a manner."
Perhaps it would not be so, had he not accepted his own exile. Had he stayed. He and Connor would not be enemies and Ziio would be alive…
"If this is any atonement, I will not let you die today." Haytham loops a stretch of cloth around Connor's shoulder and pulls it taut. "Charles will answer for what he has done." For that, and for every moment that he lied.
Connor finds a tightness in his throat and he only stares at Haytham, silent tears wetting his cheeks. He sniffs after some time, rubbing at his face with his good arm, and nods once.
"So that is the extent of your regret."
He doesn't think it truly is. Something in Haytham had shown for a split second. A true shock and grief at the mention of Ziio's death.
Maybe he truly loved and still loves her then, which is little comfort when it seems that love did not reach far enough to even consider him.
At least he knows his mother hadn't been deceived. At least his existence isn't the result of hatred.
"Perhaps you only work to save me out of obligation and now consider our debt paid. But blood means more to me, and I do not want our separate oaths to be what decides how we part."
Spent from his outburst and the loss of blood, Connor shivers weakly and falls silent, his body heavy with grief. If Haytham is truly only helping him to settle some debt for taking the arrow, if he only regrets the execution attempt because it was dishonorable, then it must be Connor's own longing for a father that interpreted his gentle touches as affection.
He closes his eyes.
"Connor. " Haytham sees his eyes fall closed and is swift and harsh with his rebuke. "No. Resist the temptation to sleep. The bleeding still hasn't stopped."
The more cowardly part of him thinks an unconscious Connor would be easier to deal with and not have to face this conversation, but if Connor sleeps now, he may not wake again.
Haytham touches his face, cradling his tear-damp cheek until he's certain Connor has heard and heeded him.
You don't know the extent of my regret.
Connor's consciousness wavers, but he does manage to open his eyes once more, staring through his exhaustion at Haytham. He blinks once, the last tear striking down to wet Haytham's thumb, and Connor doesn't have the will anymore to pull away. The touch is a comfort even if it shouldn't be.
"She told me how you freed her from slavers," he says quietly. "She was angry, but she forgave you, and she spoke well of you to me."
He blinks again, more slowly, barely getting his eyes open. He swallows thickly, brow furrowing lightly. He knows his strength is fading. "She still held love for you. She would want you to know that. And I spent many years wanting to know you."
With one final look at his father's face, Connor's eyes slip closed and his head sags into Haytham's hand.
While Connor’s words alone have him reeling, any comfort or joy they may have brought is abruptly silenced by the panic of Connor’s face falling slack in his hand.
“Connor, I said stay awake.” His tone is of a man expecting obedience, but truthfully Haytham knows it isn’t coming. The fear heightens as his taps to Connor’s cheek don’t elicit even a flicker, and Haytham crushes his fingertips to Connor’s throat in the hope to find some strength in the pulse ( please , any pulse at all…).
It’s there. Weak and thready, but there.
“At the very least, listen to me when I say keep breathing,” Haytham murmurs to Connor’s unconscious form. He prays he’ll be heeded, knowingly or not.
The bleeding has slowed almost to a stop by the time Haytham finishes tying off the bandages, but the very real worry that Connor simply doesn’t have enough blood left is present as Haytham bends an ear over Connor’s face and listens for breath. He holds his own, contending nonetheless with the blood beating in his own ears, and when he hears nothing he curses violently and lowers his head further still directly to Connor’s chest.
When did he start caring so much? He’d decided long ago that paternal feelings are not something he can afford, yet they’re present anyway, and despite his best efforts nothing seems to silence them.
So don’t let anything silence Connor’s heart now.
Nothing has. As Haytham wilfully slows his own breathing and pulse, he hears it: a soft yet unmistakable rumble in Connor’s chest, faster that it ought to be, yet nonetheless present and defiant in the face of blood loss and shock. It's been there two decades unknown to him. This isn't how he should first be hearing it, yet he finds himself unexpectedly thankful that he is.
“Good lad,” Haytham murmurs, not really thinking about what he’s saying. “You keep fighting.”
Perhaps it’s an hallucination, a dream brought on by loss and shock. By longing. But somewhere, two people stand close by and smile, and Connor senses both.
He cannot speak to them himself, he is too firmly rooted in the land of the living for that. He cannot see them, his eyes are screwed shut in both planes, but they watch him side by side and both have an empathy for him and his father that neither seem to have for themselves.
“He’s going to be alright, son. Tend to yourself,” the Welshman says softly, his brow furrowed with concern as he watches Haytham wrestle with himself in the dark. Worried, conflicted movements and expressions. An all too familiar burden of loss. Loss of grounding. Loss of identity. Loss of control.
He’ll likely have the mask back together by dawn. Or perhaps this is a fatal crack.
Connor’s heart keeps beating and his body remains stubbornly alive, since he is nothing if not stubborn and Kenways are nothing if not fighters. In some other world layered closer than an embrace a Welshman leans towards a Mohawk and says something about both of them coming around eventually.
The Mohawk smiles sadly, and she tries not to worry. She knows Connor is strong. Strong of body. Strong of conviction. Strong of heart.
He got fight from both parents, sense from only one.
“Unfortunately, the sense doesn’t go back another generation,” Edward murmurs. “But the fight does. They’re going to be alright.”
Then again, perhaps it is no hallucination. There are strange things in the world and apart from a whisper across the Aquila, one of these voices Connor has never heard.