Unravelling
Summary: Benjamin Franklin keeps watch over an unconscious Connor. The world that the Apple has woven begins to unravel at the seams. Spoilers for The Tyranny of King Washington.
The young man is burning up, and there's nothing Benjamin Franklin can do about it. He presses a damp cloth to his forehead, feeling the flush heat of the lad's skin, even through the cloth. He plies him with water, pressing the rough wooden bowl to cracked lips and trickles water down his throat, a little at a time so he doesn't choke.
Connor, he thinks, a tiny corner of his brain thinks, and that's why he's followed him all this way, after the two arrows broke the strange shroud cast over his senses, because some part of him trusts this young Native American so desperately, somehow knows him, and that's all he has left in a world gone mad.
Connor.
He's dragged Connor to a makeshift shelter, and not an easy task, after the young man's eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed, dropping the wooden gourd-flask he's been carrying around with him. Some liquid spills out; dark brown, staining the pavement. Franklin dips a finger in it and looks at it cautiously but doesn't taste it. Some kind of tea, perhaps. Connor speaks of ancestors, of spirit animals, of his people.
All things that a rational man would scorn at, consider superstition.
A man who hasn't seen what Washington's Apple has done, the madness that has crept upon all over them and fogged their minds so right becomes wrong.
Connor is still; too still, even though he still breathes. Franklin tips a bit more water down Connor's throat.
He is strong.
The thought seems to come unbidden, he just can't recall where it comes from. A room, with a panelled hallway and delegates. Whisper of cloth. Samuel Adams, and a young man with an ivory soldier's coat, intricate beaked hood pulled down over his face, obscuring his features. Still the strong jaw.
Connor.
A shimmer of golden lines at the corner of his vision, coalescing into the form of a proud man, with a wild beard and long hair. A silver, beaked headdress is on his head, and his robes swirl about him. "The Eagle. The Prophet. The Wolf. You must watch him, construct."
Franklin blinks. "What? Who? Him?" He carefully sets aside the wooden bowl.
Dark eyes stare down at him. Imperious, and yet…as if he is beneath this apparition's notice. "You must know that this is not real. Another construct. Another gateway from which we once accessed the Nexus. And from the Nexus, it is possible for me to access the partitions for a time." He makes a sharp, impatient gesture. "Enough. None of this matters if he does not live."
"Are you talking about Connor?"
"He must escape the construct, leave the Nexus. She will be watching. Her eyes are everywhere in the Nexus, and we realised only too late. We sealed her. The cipher approaches. He will be her hope. He will make the choice. Mera will be too late to stop it. She will be free then. She discards her tools after she uses them. But the Wolf, the Wolf is our connection between past and future…the Wolf must survive. He bridges the two worlds and she will not see until it is too late. He will be her ending. We have walked the possibilities, the futures drifting in the Nexus. This is a seed."
"What?" Franklin asks. He's drowning. He's desperately trying to make sense of it. "What must I do?"
"Do not let him die, construct," the apparition says. "He anchors the possibilities, the futures where she has won. She will think she has won. She will not think to look here. She will forget."
Before Franklin can say anything else, the apparition winks out, in a gleaming of golden lines of light, so bright that he has to shield his eyes with the crook of his arm. He blinks the dark specks away from his vision.
"Well," he says aloud, trying to regain some semblance of normalcy. He reaches for the wooden bowl, realises his hands are shaking.
Connor stirs; a groan escapes those lips, more a croak. "Drink," Franklin says quietly, and tips the bowl again, so Connor can swallow. And then, Connor's eyes snap open.
Franklin stares. He stares, even as Connor stretches, tries to sit up.
Connor's eyes are brown. Had been brown.
"You were feverish," he says. "What…happened to your eyes?"
They focus on him, shift to take in their surroundings. Not blind, then. Franklin's run out of disbelief, anyway. They flick back to him, and it isn't a trick of the light, this bright, iridiscent, disconcerting shade of blue.
Connor blinks, and they still gleam a pale, sharp, reflective blue. Cat's eyes, Franklin thinks. An animal's eyes.
Connor looms over him. He's always been heavily-built, and not for the first time, Franklin is thoroughly convinced that Connor could break him in half if he wanted to. But he hasn't. And they're allies now, trying to bring down the mad King.
He's almost relieved when Connor looks away, and says, gruffly, "Let us go."