Oh that is a little bit older, but I found it again. At that time I haven't known of this smexy, pirate Edward Kenway being the father of Haytham, so he isn't described that nice in the story, but I think it is somehow realistic. Back in time you beat your children, when they were disobedient. I mean they just followed the bible in which stands: those who love their children birch them. So...yeah XD...just read it and tell me if you like it XD
Again I haven't read forsaken .. I am not really found of this book. Sorry ._.
have cookies my lovelies!
And yes, I am totally obessed with them, still, though half a year has gone now and smexy Edward Kenway takes their place ;_;.
When he woke up he could hear a soothing mumbling, reminding him of the wind that was whispering through leaves. It were words unknown to him, spoken in a language that was neither English nor Mohawk. It sounded sad and almost like a song. He concentrated and tried to identify the dark, calm voice that was so familiar to him somehow.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.
And then again the same words. Finally he opened his brown eyes, blinked slowly and then looked to the direction of the soothing words.
He was in a cave. A fire on the bright entrance threw shadows on the wall. Someone, a man, put some woods into the greedy flames. He did not mind him, reciting the poem or whatever it was over and over again. His grey hair was tied back, but he did not wear his normally blue coat, just a white shirt and no hat. It took a while until Connor recognized his own father who seemed now to be so different from the man he had known. An aching pain stirred in his abdomen and he had to take a deep breath. Haytham Kenway turned around, his lips still remaining in this strange liturgy.
They stared at each other, then the older man nodded. The native American nodded back.
The Templar turned slowly back to the fire but his son stopped him.
"What happened?" Connor asked with a cracking voice.
"Nothing you want to know," the older Kenway answered dry.
The young Assassin pressed his lids hard together to get over the pain that seemed to flood his whole body. When he opened his eyes again, his father had come next to him and hold him a bottle. But Connor did not take it.
"I want to know what happened...," he said.
The Templar sighed deeply. Finally he surrendered.
"You don't remember anything?"
The Mohawk shook his head.
"We met a bunch of redcoats. You got shot."
"And the redcoats?," the Native asked.
The older Kenway chuckled.
"Hopefully dead son. Or we might have a problem."
Connor blinked a little bit confused. The Templar had always been a man who took pleasure of someone's death but he himself never got used to it.
He grabbed the bottle and the cool water inside awakened him. He looked at his father.
"How long did I lay here yet?"
Haytham smiled.
"A while, I guess."
The Assassin became annoyed.
"How long?"
"About three days maybe."
"What?," asked the young man and tried to get up, but his wounds tied him back on the ground.
His father's lips curled into an amused grin and Connor had loved nothing better than to wipe off this awful smile in a painful way. He breathed heavy trying to ignore this stirring feeling. He felt his father's eyes on him and seriously he had never felt more vulnerable. As he looked up he recognized a specific tiredness in his father's eyes- as if he hadn't slept for ages.
His father opened his mouth again.
"You should sleep. You need re-"
"YOU NEED SLEEP!," the son answered rough while putting his right hand on his bandaged wound.
There was a horrible silence and Connor wished himself to be somewhere but not here. He behaved like a hypocretic idiot and in his head he saw the pathetic grin of his father. But instead he heard the Templar laugh warmly.
"In comparison to you, my dear boy, I did not dance with death, neither do I have a dangerous wound in my body or amnesia."
The Native American threw his father a look that normal people would have turned into stone, but the older Kenway did not care at all.
"But it is indead sweet how you try to take care of me."
With these words the Templar stood up and went back to the fire, where Connor saw his robe, his weapons and everything else tidy pooled.
Silence lay down, no one spoke besides the tiny flames that were crackling. The dawning light flooded the entrance and slowly the Assassin stood up. First everything whirled and he had to blink thousand of times until he saw clear structures, then, trying to ignore the upcoming pain, he went to his father and sat down on the edge of the cave.
One could hear the animals of the night awakening while the sun dawned behind the forest. Connor remembered moments in his childhood with his mother, or Kanienkehoton, moments of piece and quiet. Right now he felt the same as back in these days. Both men stared outside, watching the world turn, their breathing low, everyone in their daydreams.
Finally darkness fell on this place, turning the warm wind into a cooling breeze, making everything breathing out of relief of the inourmous heat, making the avoider of the light stepping out, their sharp teeth glittering. Even the trees, coloured with the black blood of night, had turned into enormous, strange creatures, protecting the hunters, giving them sphere to avoid the light of the moon.
And then, out of nowhere Connor asked. "What were you singing?"
The Templar's eyes followed a small bird and his son almost thought of never getting an answer.
"It wasn't a song. It was a prayer."
The Native narrowed his eyes.
"Why did you pray?"
"Well you were very injured. It might have been that you didn't survive."
At that moment the Assassin could not really believe what he had heard. But he didn't want to embarrass his father, who answered all his questions very honestly, so he went on.
"And what was that prayer about?"
"It is part of a longer prayer, the rosary. It is a prayer to the holy Mary."
"I always thought God was male..."
The blue eyes of the older Kenway looked at him, a small smile on the lips.
"That's true. "Our Father" and "his son", are quite male, but the mother of the Lord is also very important."
"What did she do?," Connor asked curious.
"Well, she gave birth to the saviour. In the catholic church that is reason enough to pray to her."
The Native thought about the settlement where he lived with Achilles. And he thought about the churches in Boston and New York. He had never seen the picture of a woman, or someone praying to "Mary."
"No one here is praying to-"
"That's because you never met an Irish man, isn't it?"
"You're Irish?"
His father shook his head.
"No. But the Templars are mostly religious men. And I happen to be one of the catholic Church. That's it."
"Why do you believe?"
A deep sigh.
The older Kenway saw right into his sons's brown eyes.
"I don't like the idea of my beloved being in oblivion. I don't care for my self. But for the ones I love, the thought of them being in heaven is soothing for my soul."
And before the young man had a chance to think his tongue worked on its own.
"Do you think mother is in heaven?"
This time, the smile on the Templar's lips reached his blue eyes.
"Yes, I do."
Strangely the Assassin felt as if he was a little child, as if he was again eight years because in his head questions over questions popped up, questions that were too fast to structure, to overthink...
"So, if you believe, you also believe in rebirth?"
Again this gentle, warm laughter.
"Yes, rebirth is something you also will experience."
"What do you mean?"
"In your life you will love and you will loose your love, but you will always meet people that are like your lost beloved ones. That is what I mean with rebirth."
"So one day I will meet someone like mother?"
"And sadly you will also meet someone who is probably similar to me."
"Maybe that "sadly" can be turned into "pleasently" .
"When I am dead, isn't it?"
The Native shrugged. The older Kenway shook his head in disbelief.
"I could even become the new Jesus and you would prefer seeing me dead, don't you?"
"Depends on what you mean with becoming the new Jesus."
The Templar breathed out.
"If I had talked to my father in that way, he would have beaten the living daylight out of me."
The Assassin raised his eyebrows.
"Lovely father you had."
This time the father shrugged.
"He did it just once and I have to say, it wasn't unexpected."
"What have you done?," the young man asked while drinking again a little bit of the cool water.
There was a short pause in that the Templar tried to devalue if he talked or not. Finally he answered.
"I have gone to the Eastern Mess."
Connor waited expecting. But nothing came.
"Well?," the Assassin asked.
"Well it wasn't allowed, my father had forbidden it."
Short silence.
"That didn't give him the right to hit you."
"In his point of view it did. Next to that our priest was a Templar."
"What was the problem of that?"
His father's eyes opened in bewilderment.
"My father was an Assassin. I don't think you will let your children go to church when the priest there is a high-ranking Templar, telling your children every time of the bad manners of their father. Would you?"
The Native shook his head.
"But I wouldn't hit them either."
The old man looked at the ground.
"You're father was an Assassin?"
"Oh yes! He would have loved you. But probably killed me before I had met your mother."
"Why that?"
"Because I am a Templar. I mean he had beaten me, because I had gone to church as a child, what he had seen as a crime against his creed. If I had become a Templar while he was alive, my life-time would have been counted."
A short pause. Then the older Kenway added.
"But maybe with you as my child, he would have given me a chance."
Connor almost had to smile.
The blue eyes of Haytham detected him.
"You're like him in fact. A true Assassin."
The tone of his father had changed. It was colder now.
"Is that the reason you despise us so much?"
His father narrowed his eyes.
"What?," the older Kenway asked rough.
"Because your father was so ...cruel. Is that the reason why you hate our brotherhood so much?"
The Templar looked up, grinning like a wolf.
"Not really."
Suddenly Connor did not want to know of what his father's hatred had been born. But he couldn't change past.
"I despise you, because I had to kill my father to free him from his pathetic death, his own brotherhood had caused. I despise you because your brotherhood took my sister and mother. I despise you because I have seen your creed becoming the justification of slaughtering innocents and making me a despicable man. I despise you because you represent something you don't understand and you're naïve enough to believe in it."
Silence. His father stood up.
"You need rest and sleep. I am not found of the idea staying for eternity in this cave. And as long as you are not fully recovered, I can't use you in a fight."
The Assassin just nodded.
Haytham Kenway was staring for a longer second at him , but then turned into the dark, leaving his son alone.