A Boorish Man

Mirror and Image

Achilles Davenport was dead. He had been dead for years, it was just that his body didn't yet realize it.

He had been dead since '55, when Abigail and young Connor were taken with the fever. Many didn't believe it at the time, all the Brotherhood had swelled to encourage him, to help him through his grief, to share in his pain at the loss of such a beloved family. Achilles, for a brief time, believed his brothers, believed his body, believed that he was still alive. Forty-five was still young, surely life continued after such a blow. He worked, or tried to, but he slowly became aware that things just weren't the same. Decisions – which were never easy – became harder and harder, and the war seemed to swing to British favor in the span of a fortnight. Once Braddock was killed – something Achilles had at first thought was a boon to them given his allegiances – somehow turned into the start of a downward spiral that would last eight years.

Achilles watched his entire brotherhood dissolve to nothingness, members slaughtered in the fringes of the war, being drawn out into actual battles, or disappearing in the streets of the cities. His lieutenants heard whispers of a new Grandmaster in the Colonies: Haytham Kenway, and Achilles had doubted any veracity simply because the name Kenway held such weight to his own side of the ancient conflict.

Then, on February 10 of 1763, while the English and French were signing their latest treaty in Paris and he was recovering from the latest failure, he received a letter in the flourishing hand of the Templar Grandmaster himself.

"My dearest sir,

"I write simply to inform you the last of your brothers had been slain in the conflict, and that you are all that is left of your long and purportedly noble lineage. We live in a modern world, and we are both, I believe, civilized men. It is, therefore, mutually beneficial if we resolve our friendly rivalry as such modern, civilized men. As you have nothing left, I will not pursue the rivalry further and grant you the mercy of living out your days in peaceful tranquility; amiable to the position society has granted you and amenable to the rest of your life free of the worry of those close to you.

"Your Humble Servant,

"Haytham Kenway"

It was upon reading that letter that Achilles had realized he was dead, had been dead for years. Not only had he died with his wife and children, he had died with Edward Braddock, when Haytham Kenway had killed one of his own to usurp the power and destroy everything else dear to the Assassin. The letter was sobering, and in a moment of divine clarity Achilles saw the role he had played in this game of Kenway's, and he saw his own culpability in the deaths of his brothers. Had he also been complicit in the death of his family? He spent months ruminating on the possibility, meditating on the permutations and "what ifs."

But, in truth, he could not blame himself for the deaths of Abigail and Connor, nor could he completely blame himself for the death of his brotherhood, and that revelation brought him the cold truth:

The world was madness.

And he had no business here, being already dead for eight years.

And still his body did not understand that he was dead. Still his body did not follow the route of his spirit and shrivel, decompose, waste away to the barest fragments of existence. Achilles considered giving his body a clue, to gut himself or hang himself or leap off a cliff for his withering husk to understand, but even with his life in ashes about his feet he was still an Assassin. Assassins did not act, they reacted; assassins waited for the world to change and to wake up and to learn the truth of existence. Achilles could do no less, even to condemn his own misery, and so he waited for his body to catch up, to realize he was dead and follow suit.

For six years he waited.

He endured the superiority of the Bostonians as they looked at the color of his skin, he endured the bone-chilling winters and the oppressively hot summers. He watched autumn with dry, ironic amusement and silently begged his body to follow suit, to shed its trappings and go to sleep, the eternal silence that Shakespeare spoke of in his plays. He saw spring with a bitter taste in his mouth and pollen up his nose, an affront that he had survived another year.

What was his body waiting for? What was he waiting for? That he clung to life year after year for not purpose, no growth, no meaning?

Even the Aquila knew better, a rotten, bloated corpse in the bay, and Faulkner was so piss drunk he did not even visit anymore. The world knew that he was dead, he knew that he was dead, and yet still he was alive. Why? Weren't fifty-nine years of life enough? Fifty-nine years of suffering? Of loss? Of death? Of judgment and racism and slavery to a Creed that offered neither quarter nor comfort? Fifty-nine years of fighting over land as if it had any merit over the conscience of man? Of watching British superiority, watching French arrogance, watching Natives desperate to keep what little they had left?

What was left after all of this? What was there still to do?

And then, as if in answer, there was a knock on his door.

Achilles pulled himself to his feet, a hardy task after so many years of disuse and an injury at Signal Hill – the last major fight of the war – in Newfoundland. Bones creaking as he made his way to the front door and wondered when he had last heard a knock, when he had last had a visitor. The thought brought up the well-tread path to bitterness and desire to be left alone, and this was further branded as a second, more persistent, knock came just as he reached the door. Impatient, impertinent visitor, whoever it was!

He offered a beleaguered, "What?" as he opened the door.

Before him stood a Native, Iroquois by the clothes. Tall, taller even than Achilles before his age began to stoop him, with wide eyes as he gazed up at the manor, ogling the structure he had no doubt never seen the like of in whatever valley or forest he had come from. He was young, too, despite his height, tall and gangly. Thirteen? Fourteen? The boy started when the door opened, and Achilles watched the child pale – he was paler than most natives – and blink.

"Um...," he started, shifting nervously on his feet, moccasins silent on the stonework. He glanced down, clasping his hands to keep them still. "I...," he tried again, "I was told you could train me."

Train him?

… Train him?

What cruel, mad joke was this? Was God having a laugh at poor, dead Achilles? Hoping to toy with him before his body caught up with his mind? He refused to play along.

"No," he said simply, shutting the door in the boy's face.

Train him...? He was still griping when the knock returned, even more insistent, made by a fist instead of knuckles. Such cheek!

"Go away!" Achilles growled, suddenly weary from the energy he had exerted.

"I'm not leaving!" he heard through the door, filled with the petulance and fervor of youth. He shook his head, making his way back to his study.

The knocking continued all through the evening, well past sunset, before the rain came in at last and ceased the noise. Achilles was glad for it, glad to be rid of some scrap of a boy who thought a living corpse like him could train the child. A failure like him? Who had lost his brotherhood to a traitor of the Kenway name? Who had died with his family in spite of the virulent protestations of his body to the contrary? Who would be fool enough to think such a thing? He shook his head, taking a glass of brandy to settle his nerves after such an upset, and began the odious task of hobbling up the stairs to bed.

He awoke to knocking again.

At first convinced he was dreaming, he looked out the window to see the native child was once again knocking on his front door. His skin was indeed pale in the morning light – a half-blood? More's the pity, the child would be cursed for his heritage on both sides, member of neither. Was he not accepted in whatever village he lived in? Did that drive him to Achilles' doorstep? But then how did the boy even know he was here?

… And why was he even thinking about this? The boy was nothing to him, would be nothing to him, and so Achilles settled himself to spending the day in the back rooms of the second floor, away from the knocks on his door and the boy who wanted to be trained simply because he was "told" he could be trained.

Except, an hour later, he heard the knocking come from his back door.

Of all the...!

Determined to chase away the distraction, he put in the effort to open the narrow window of the spare room. He could hear the child pleading. "Please, all I ask is a moment of your time..." The child looked up suddenly, spotting Achilles before he was fully settled against the windowsill. He had good ears, if he heard the window open over the cacophony he was creating. Good eyes, too, to sense movement above him and out of his line of sight. But that was still none of Achilles' concern, and he made himself comfortable before addressing the annoyance.

"I apologize," he said in light tones, "if I've been unclear - or otherwise confused you with my words; it was never my intention to mislead. So let me try to clarify: Get the hell off my land!"

And, as he was slamming the window closed, he heard,

"I'm coming up!"

Did the boy hear nothing of what he just said?! What part of "Get the hell of my land!" was misunderstood? The boy knew enough English to be coherent; clearly he understood how to speak. Did he not know how to listen? And how the hell was the child going to come up? Did he expect to scale a sheer brick wall? The level of arrogance such a statement was shameful. Only an Assassin could climb the rough brick and mortar without doing injury to oneself, and there were none of those left in this part of the world. Only ghosts still existed. Let the boy try and climb, let him wail and pound and knock and kick all he wanted. It served no purpose, because there was no purpose in this world.

Pounding again, this time on the north balcony.

On the second floor.

… How?

Achilles marveled, staring at the door in disbelief. The potential this child had, to climb his house without thought – quicker than any novice he had ever trained, to have good eyes and ears. Yes, there was potential there. But... those days were over, he was little more than the remnant of a bygone era, lost to history save the breath still in his lungs. He was a shell, a monument to what was and what could have been. There was nothing more to-

"Just hear me out! What are you so afraid of?"

And, for the first time in fourteen years, a spark ignited in Achilles Davenport.

A pinprick of something that fluttered his heart and drew all air from his lungs, put pressure on his ears, and burst into the first real emotion he had felt in over a decade:

Anger.

It bloomed in him with such fervor that rational thought at last left him, and he grabbed at the door and yanked it open, out of the startled fists of the boy and marched out onto the balcony.

"Afraid?" he demanded, emotion roaring in his ears. "You think I'm afraid of anything," he overturned his cane and jerked it behind the heel of the child, yanking his weight clear out from under him, unable to defend against so simple a move, "least of all, a self-important little scab like you?!" He stood over the native child, pressing the end of his cane into a vulnerable neck; the boy had his hands up in supplication, eyes wide, afraid. He had been wrong, this boy had no potential at all, just a little chick cawing for attention. Connor looked like that, once upon a time, and the thought of his son sapped all the energy out of Achilles, leaving the familiar, bitter taste in his mouth. "Oh," he said, remembering his son, "you might dream of being a hero. Of riding to rescues, of saving the world - but stay this course, and the only thing you're going to be is dead."

Everyone was dead. All of the important people. Even he was dead. It didn't matter any more. Nothing mattered.

"The world's moved on, boy," he said, turning and righting his cane. "Best you do too." He hobbled back into the house. He slammed the door again, proving his point, and sighing as the depression hit him all over again.

"I will not leave!" cried the boy on the other side of the wood. "Do you hear me? I am never leaving!"

Typical obstinance of youth. Achilles practiced patience, patience that was almost six decades in the making.

He watched the antics from a window, watched the naïve child pace about, talking to himself in his native tongue, pounding on doors or – in a shockingly graceful moment of fluidity and agility – saunter up a tree to gauge his next move. Achilles allowed himself a moment to marvel, to feel that itch of potential he always seemed to have when he found a promising candidate, before the bitterness and depression swept over him again, and at last he turned away, forced himself to tune out the pounding at the doors, at the windows on both floors, the soft but heavy footsteps on his roof. He dozed, on and off, waiting out the siege.

At night the rains came again, and he watched the little scrap move to the stable yard, his haggard ninny of a horse paying no attention to the whelp. The withered old man knew there would be another assault tomorrow, and he wondered how long it would take before he out-waited the boy. Stubbornness the size of that took time to wear down, and Achilles wondered why he, a ghost of a man in a husk of a body, had been chosen to be this boy's trial. The boy lit no fire, only the lantern by the stables to roll out his pack and begin settling in. Another light caught Achilles' attention in the darkness, and his eyes darted to the path leading to his front door. Between the night and the trees it was nearly invisible, but he could see the flickering of a second lantern, and watched said light veer off the path.

Brigands, then, more to chase at a helpless old man and pick its carcass clean. It would not be the first time his home was assaulted, though the boy was at least honest with his siege. He had thought such bandits only existed in the cities: Boston, New York, Hartford or Providence. The pickings must be slim indeed for them to choose a house falling apart with a corpse as its only occupant.

The lantern passed in front of the stables, and eyes that were still as sharp as his youth picked out the native brat walk up and start a conversation. Of all the naïveté and ignorance! That boy was asking for his death!

… More death because of his inaction...

The spark flickered again, deep inside of him, and he thought about the potential of this gangly youth and wondered why he was on this quest. For what purpose had he been sent, what was his goal? Achilles did not know any of this, and he would be damned before he let another die on his watch. If the boy would die, it would not be in his line of sight.

He sighed at the burden placed on him, but at the same time he felt a surge of energy. Not the burst of anger of earlier, but the sense of objective, of goal, of purpose that he had been lacking for six years flowed into him. Muscle memory did the rest, he grabbed a simple peeling knife and cast his cane aside. His limbs felt lighter than they had in years, his limp became less pronounced as he stalked out into the rain. The rain masked his movements, but even fifty-nine years old he was silent, no squelching of mud, no splash of puddles. He was the grave he had long ago accepted, and now he would impart it to save this child.

… And the stench of death would surely frighten the boy back to his village or wherever he had come from.

His surprise was incalculable, then, when he saw two bodies strewn in the mud, bloody and eviscerated, and the boy standing over a third menacingly and demanding answers.

"Why are you here? What do you want?"

Cold, pressed but not tense, relaxed. Achilles blinked and stopped for a brief moment, realizing what God had given him. The boy was ready-made Assassin, no training necessary, a protégé that would not tax him in his old age. He was not on a quest and Achilles the trial to test him, the boy was the gift and Achilles was the teacher. He had a pupil again.

And then the boy was struck by the fourth robber, oblivious of the thief's presence until too late.

… Never mind. The boy was an idiot!

It was like reading an old book, or watching an old play, his body knew all the movements: grab one arm to prevent a counterstrike, stab between the ribs, upward angle, twist. The second, presumably the leader, was killed just as quietly, just as stealthily. He looked down at the bodies as the rain suddenly thickened. All four were covered in mud and blood, the scent of death smothered by the rain but not overpowered. One scrap of a boy saved, and four now dead at his feet.

He had forgotten what a weight life was.

"Thank you," the child said.

The old man shook his head. "Clean this up," he ordered. "Then, I suppose we should talk..."

He hobbled through the pounding rain back up to the house. Could the boy handle something as gruesome as disposing of corpses? Perhaps not, then the little scrap would at last be chased away. Achilles wanted the boy to leave, potential or no. He did not want to feel these things again: hope, potential, purpose. Those things had left him long ago, they had died with him, his family, and his brotherhood. The world had indeed moved on, and Achilles did not want to relive the past, nor any ghost of it. And so he entered back into his home and set himself by the fire, waiting for the silence.

Only, two hours later, the boy was back, soaked to the bone, muddy up to his elbows, and rubbing his arms and shaking out his hair. A shiver ran over his body even in the humid air, and blood soaked his face from the blow the bandit leader had imparted. Achilles felt another emotion enter his person that he had not felt in a long, long time.

Pity. He gestured for the boy to sit.

And watched one of his withered chairs crumple under the child's weight.

He stood up awkwardly, nervous again, shifting his weight and uncertain. He mumbled a worried, "Sorry."

Achilles was struck again by how young the boy actually was; he thought of his own boy, and he found himself softening. Slightly. "Not your fault," he said, "This whole place is ready to come down. Goddamn miracle it hasn't already." He watched the boy take in the exemption, relief flooding across his face before quiet settled. Achilles was impressed again: under the radical idealism of youth and stubbornness born of self-righteous conviction, the boy had a touch of patience in him. A hunter? "Who are you?"

Uncertainty again. Nervousness. Was the boy shy? "My name is Ratonhnhaké:ton," he mumbled.

What a collection of vowels and syllables. "Right," he said slowly, drawing out the word to show his displeasure. "Well, I'm not even going to try and pronounce that. Now tell me why you're here."

That small bit of prompting was all the little scrap needed. "I was told to seek this symbol," he said, pulling out a roughly sketched map, an adequate representation of the coastline, and scrawled in rough charcoal a symbol he had known for over half his life. His gaze lifted to the child, the open face, the wide eyes of youth. This symbol? He was told to be trained, to seek the Assassin symbol, but did he even realize just what he had signed up for?

"Do you even know what that symbol represents? Or what it is you're asking for?"

"... No," he said, his wet hair swinging in thick cords around his face, blood streaking his cheek. He shivered again, rubbing his muddy arms up and down his drenched sleeves before reaching over his shoulder for his bow and fingering it. The little scrap looked like a lost child, helpless and nearly hopeless, except when his gaze caught Achilles' eyes. The implicit trust he gave the old man was astonishing.

"The spirit said that..." he started, "That I've -"

God above, he saw spirits. Achilles admitted defeat at that point. If the old gods wanted Achilles to train this scrap of a boy, the old man was hardly one to argue.

"These 'spirits' of yours have been harassing the Assassins for centuries. Ever since Ezio uncorked the bottle." The boy's eyes widened, not in surprise but confusion. "Ah - but you don't even know what an Assassin is, do you?" A shake of the head. "Well best settle in, then. I've got a story to tell and it's going to take a while to get it all out..."

The explanation was grueling. The native child had a clear grasp of English, but total fluency eluded him. Several times he used words from his own language to explain the vision he had been shown because he lacked the vocabulary to properly convey what he had seen. And, too, Achilles was forced to stop several times to explain certain words or rephrase entire moments of history. The child could not conceive of the politics being discussed, and yet he did not even blink when Achilles explained the old gods and the trouble they caused whenever they chose to show themselves. Then too, the discussion had to be stopped when the boy began to hold his head, echoing visions of his long dead son and pushing Achilles into motion. The cut was not serious, and time by the fire dried and warmed him. The little scrap was tired from his adventures, but Achilles hardened himself against it. The old gods may have thrown a final task to him, but he would be damned if he bowed to it gracefully. He would most certainly not show compassion to the son of Haytham Kenway (and oh, the shock he felt when the boy softly said the name of his father with no understanding whatsoever of the weight of it). Not after everything that had been taken from him, not after everything he had been through. Whatever the precursor people desired, Achilles knew that only pain came to their chosen vessel, and he decided to give no quarter in return. Not to them, not to the Templars, and not even to this overgrown twig of a boy.

"... and so this is why the Assassins have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of the Templars," he concluded. "Because if they succeed - your spirit's visions will become reality."

"Then I will stop them."

It was a child's logic. The sense of civic duty was common to most people of the Iroquois, but this simple certainty that he could simply "stop them," stop the prophecy the old god had given him, as if his very presence would be all that was necessary, was the height of childish arrogance, of idealistic superiority.

All he could say in the face of that was, "Oh, I have no doubt you'll try."

The little scrap frowned at his cynicism, confused and irritated that someone would even doubt him, and Achilles headed off that teenage outburst before it even started. "Come on," he said, changing subject and carefully hoisting his old bones up to his feet. Fifty-nine years old and already so frail. The grave should have taken him sooner. "I've something to show you. Careful. Wasn't a joke when I said this place was coming apart."

Another crack of thunder rolled over their heads. The first storm had passed, but a second was echoing around, deciding whether to assault the manor or not. The rain had not yet ceased, the dull thrumming soft and soothing in spite of the thunder. The whole house was dark, Achilles navigated it with the ease of a man who had lived there for decades, and the child followed with confident steps, unhampered by the lack of light. Another mark in the boy's favor.

"Why don't you repair it?" the native asked.

"What's the point?" Achilles countered. "Besides I don't have materials for the job."

"So buy them."

This boy...!

"Look at me," he said, stopping and looking up the little scrap. In the darkness his skin color was more apparent, Achilles was but a silhouette where the child was a pale form, a ghost in the hall. "You think I can just march into some store, purse full of pounds, and go shopping?"

He could hear the confused blink. "Yes. Why not?"

All Achilles could do was sigh: "So naive..."

The young Iroquois was strong, athletic, agile, a gifted climber; a hunter who did not shy from the sight of blood nor the sight of death – even human death, and had the brass to bury the bodies of the men he'd just killed. Physically he was a gift wrapped assassin, no training necessary, just hand over a hood and send him out to the world. The ignorance, however, was jaw-dropping. That kind of naïveté, that kind of childish idealism, was a bad, bad, mix for an assassin. That uncompromising resolve would slowly destroy him, and if his goal was set as high as preventing visions from the precursors, he would drag the all the colonies down with him in fire and ashes.

The bliss of his ignorance would not last long, and Achilles sought to break that, first and foremost.

That was why he pulled at the wall sconce, why he opened the hidden door, and why he lead the boy down to the root cellar, long converted for other purposes.

He lit the candles, leaving the boy to stand and stare at the hidden room, eyes sucking in everything the candlelight touched, jaw dropping to slide his mouth into an awestruck o. Achilles left him to his wonder and continued his work; finally, he motioned the child to join him, but when he turned he saw the little scrap standing at the old mannequin, the white and blue coat, heedless of the hood but instead reaching down to the box on the ground, that which held the most important piece of an assassin uniform: the hidden blades.

An old pain asserted itself, and Achilles wondered at how much he had been feeling over the last twenty-four hours, the highs and the lows. He much preferred the single, harmonized notes of bitterness and depression, but irritation flooded that thought out, and he strode back over to the native, taking his cane and slapping the child's hands back.

"Don't think you can just come in here, throw those on and call yourself an Assassin," he said, voice low and menacing. The boy may have been gift-wrapped by the old gods, but he was no assassin yet.

The little scrap backed up, shifting his weight like Connor would when he was caught stealing sweets. "I... did not..." he started, fumbling with his words, wringing his hands and looking sheepish. "I would never presume..."

The ghost of his son softened him again, and he sighed.

"That's alright," he said slowly, world-weary and suddenly tired. "I know they've a certain allure."

The boy stood still, eyes downcast, uncertain... humble.

Achilles was done in when he saw that.

"Very well," he said, eyes locked on the boy. "I'll train you. Then we'll know if you've the right to wear those robes."

And, instead of relief or arrogance or smugness, the little scrap showed gratitude, and the old Mentor knew he would have many, many headaches in the days to come.

"Thank you... uh..."

"Name's Achilles. Come on, then. We've work to do."

Author's Notes: Uhm, it's not a teaser of Revelations, but we hope it tides your appetite until later... right?

One of the great things about AC is they have Characters with a capital C. AC1 had Altair, Al Mualim, and Malik; Ezio had himself, Claudia, Caterina Sforza, Machiavelli, and all the Ottomans. In AC3, you have Connor of course, but also Achilles. He was FAR more interesting than Haytham Kenway ever was (though we're probably the only people in the internet who think that) and we really, really, really wanted to know more about him. Though his history was sparse, his sheer presence whenever he was on screen was impressive. We really look forward to writing him next year when we do AC3. Gawd, AC3... so close... just have to get through Revelations...!

In an unrelated note, since someone will eventually ask. Yes, we played AC4. No we did not like it. Eddie Kenway should have been fed to the sharks in, like, memory 2 and done the world a favor as a result. Captain Kidd was infinitely more interesting (miles and away, so much missed opportunity; So. Much. Missed), as was Adewale. Sigh.

Anyway, back to figuring out the logic of Ezio being dragged by a wagon and surviving enough to kick ass afterwards...