A/N
Probably apparent, but I'll specify ahead of time that this is based on the trailer for Rogue.
Update (13/09/14): Corrected the flintlock to being an air rifle.
Left Out in the Cold
The North Atlantic is quite cold this time of year.
Actually, scratch that, it's cold all of the time, all of the year. But I don't feel cold. Not now. I can't say I've really felt cold in a long time. Sooner or later, you stop caring about things like temperature.
Or killing.
I've hunted here – whaling's a good business this far north. I've raided here also – ships are rarer, but tend to be lightly defended. I've even had to kill a polar bear. Long.
But now I'm here. Standing on the ice. Hood down, the Morrigan anchored – we'll have to leave soon. If the ice closes in, we're stuck, and we'll get to play the game of seeing whether we freeze to death or starve. But we…I…have business. And the wounded man before me is the only thing that's keeping that business from being completed.
An Assassin. A soon-to-be dead Assassin. An Assassin that reaches out to me as he bleeds to death on the ice, the red liquid mixing in with the black depths of an uncaring sea, falling onto the ice like roses. I wonder how many people he's killed. Whether it's greater, less, or equal to the number of lives that I have taken. I wonder how long it took him to stop counting. Because as I draw my air rifle I realize that I have no idea what number this man will be on my 'kill list.' And as I release the safety, I realize that I want to tell myself that I don't care either.
But I do care. I care because this will be the first Assassin I've killed. The first time I will have shed blood on behalf of the Templar Order. The first life taken in the name of crafting a better world, not destroying it as the Assassins would do. I can see in the Assassin's eyes that he can't understand. Or won't understand. Nothing breeds ignorance like confidence. And in their cause, the cause I once followed…there's no shortage of that particular quality.
I pull the trigger – no shortage of death either.
It's a messy way to kill someone I reflect. No-one will come searching for this man. As I strip him of his weapons, as I roll his body into the water, I reflect that even if they did, no-one would be able to find him either. I watch as the blood spreads further along the ice, as the red begins to dominate the black. Bloody handed, black hearted. Like the cold, I'm aware of such metaphors, but don't care about them either.
History may brand me traitor, rebel, or renegade. But in the end, it doesn't matter how history remembers me. What matters, is that I followed my own creed. Not one dictated by anarchists who would see the world burn. Follow them long enough and…I shiver. I laugh. And I watch the body float away.
In the end, you're just left out in the cold.