Disclaimer: I do not own ACIII. All rights belong to Ubisoft. (Except for some characters I made up)

Chapter Seven

It's Haytham.

I can tell. Maybe it's the bulky boots or just the way the air grows heavy with the seriousness he carries on his shoulders, but I recognize it's him the same moment the handle shakes sideways. Two clunks from two boots, a groan from the door, the grinding of keys, and he's in. The first person I've seen in three days.

It takes an uncomfortable moment of him swinging the door closed before he actually turns to face me. And then, an even more uncomfortable moment of him shuffling the papers—notebook?—in his hands to actually meet my gaze.

He looks different. And I swear, it's not because of my melodramatic angst of not seeing someone for three days. Something with him has changed. I just can't tell what it is.

Another uncomfortable moment. This one with Haytham clearing his throat and then saying a single word: "Hello."

I decide to let silence meet his greeting. Mostly because of my stubbornness, and that the very sight of him is making my empty stomach churn and clench, but also because I'm just too damn tired.

We watch each other for a moment, something, I've noticed, we tend to do a lot of. Deciding to change it up a little, I avert my eyes from his to the notebook gripped in his hands. A black spiral bound, college ruled, a sticky coffee stain in the shape of a ring near the top left corner. It's mine. My notebook. I can't stop the warm surprise and relief that spreads down to my fingertips; I thought they would've tossed it already. My hands itch, and I want to rip that thing out of his own so badly that I almost summon enough strength to frown at him.

He notices me looking. Haytham glances down at the black spiral in his hands, then shifts on his feet the way that people do when they don't know what to do, but they know they have to do something. A ghost of a smile plays with the edges of his lips.

He gestures towards the floor. "Can I sit?"

Is he trying to be funny? Is he trying to make a goddamn ice breaker? I'm so pissed this time I'm able to give him an unamused scowl. Doing it, I feel the split on my lower lip widen.

The ghost of a smile that was on his face vanishes, gone before it could even fully appear. Good. Someone like him shouldn't be able to smile.

He makes that soft gurgling sound as he clears his throat. Apparently, he can't take a message, because he situates himself for what looks like a long stay. Slowly, he settles down, bringing himself into a squat and then lowering to sit directly across from me. My notebook never leaves his hands.

I watch him as he relaxes himself into a sitting position. The silence between us never breaks. My eyes never leave his. Why is he here? They've already asked me enough times if I knew what the hell was going on, so if he's here to question me again, I swear to God, I'm going to bash my own head in for him. That horse was dead about seventeen years before the beatings.

He doesn't seem like he wants to go at it, though. He's much more collected compared to the last time I saw him—more like how he was when we first met, with a cool sense of politeness and authority, not the flustered, angry, instability.

He's been thinking. I can tell.

Folding his hands over his knees, he finally lets my notebook rest on the floor instead of his fingertips. His lips are slightly pursed, as if he doesn't really know what to say, or as if he knows what to say but doesn't know how to say it. That's fine by me. Better yet, how about if he says nothing at all? Even better better yet, how about he unlocks that fancy little door with a stupid cat flap and shows me the way out of here?

That's not going to happen, though, because his lips relax and he opens his mouth. "You have cancer."

Wow. Oh my God, I had no idea. Isn't he rude, breaking the news to me like that.

I don't reply, preferring not to discuss this shit with him. I mean, it's all right there. Right in that stupid black spiral bound. And technically, I've already told him, haven't I? Not verbally, but with words made from pencil and scratched out onto paper.

"When were you diagnosed?"

I can't help myself; I let loose a painful snort, one that makes my throat burn, but it's worth it. Haytham's mouth tilts itself into a frown. "Officially? Right when the Doc said 'Hey, sorry, but you have cancer.'"

The frown of his twists into an exasperated glower. "Enough games. Answer seri—"

"Don't pull that crap on me," I snap, interrupting him. "I'm not the one playing games. You and I both know that. Because why the hell else would you care about something like this? Are you feeling a little sentimental now, Haytham? Your heart warming up a little? How cute."

I have more to say, I can feel it thrashing around inside of me, days of anger and frustration and paranoia and confusion that built up and wadded itself into a disgusting knot in my stomach, and I want to say it, but at this moment, the tortured muscles around my gunshot wound tighten so painfully that the breath gets knocked from my lungs. Wheezing, I hunch over and squeeze my eyes shut.

"Okay, fine," I hear Haytham sigh. "I'd like to know, just out of curiosity, how long you've had cancer."

"Do you know how to read?" I rasp. The pounding in my head, which has been just white noise compared to the pounding in my leg on and off for the past few days, is getting worse. Great. Now isn't the time for another headache. But, that's not really my decision. I can feel that with the way the back of my eyes ache and the base of my skull feels like it's cracking, this one isn't backing down. "You've got my notebook, genius."

Through squinted eyes, I see him purse his lips again. I can't tell if he's getting pissed or not—the collective coolness is still settled around him like a sheet of fabric, sewn to him with unreadable emotions.

It's annoying.

A couple of seconds pass before he speaks again. "Do you need medicine?"

For the love of—

"Well, seeing as there's a hunk of metal lodged in my knee, that would be nice."

"Not for your leg," he says cooly. "For your . . . sickness."

He's gotta be kidding. Is he kidding? He has to be.

I stare at him, thinking hard through the ache in my head. He's definitely not kidding.

Maybe he's worried that I might drop dead if I don't take something. Where would he and chummy Charles be, then? A dead kid and no idea where he got their precious necklace? I swirl different answers around in my head, tasting each one to try to give the correct respond. "I did."

"Did?"

I attempt a shrug. The only thing it really gets me a sharp, stabbing pain in my knee and a good club to my head. "I'm not taking them anymore."

His eyebrows cinch downwards in confusion. He shuffles forward a little on his butt, as if I'm telling a really interesting story and he's curious to learn more. "Why?"

The pounding in my head is a numb buzz now. Not a pleasant kind of numb, though. The kind of numb that you get when your foot falls asleep and a thousand little needles prick at it nonstop. I press my palms into my eyelids in an attempt to block out the light from that dinky little light bulb.

"I don't need to anymore."

I can practically hear Haytham's eyebrows cinch down even further. "So you're not sick?"

God, could you just go away? "No. I still am."

He doesn't say anything after that. I don't bother to look up, keeping my eyes shut tight, knowing that he's still there since there's no telltale sign of the door screeching open or keys jingling. The silence in the room is so heavy I can feel it settling at the bottom of my lungs.

My palms are pushing so hard against my eyelids that colorful little blobs and shapes have started to burst behind them. I focus hard on them, trying to use them as a distraction.

It doesn't work.

"You went into White Mountain to die, didn't you? To kill yourself?"

My hands drop from their position over my eyes, and for the first time in the last five minutes, I actually look at the stranger across from me.

I know what looks different about him: he's tired. Exhausted, even. Dark circles ring the bottom of his eyes and the corners of his mouth tilt downwards with fatigue.

Why does he want this from me? What on Earth could he possibly gain from it?

He knows the answer; he read my notebook. Scratched onto paper in pencil, a sentence given to me first by my body, then a monster, then a stranger, and finally, myself. He knows. So why reply?

I think long and hard. After a while, I decide to choose my words carefully.

"I'm not afraid to die."

Which is true. Back in the forest, when Lee was going all Rango at me, I wasn't . . . scared. Okay, no, that's not right. I was. I was scared.

How do I explain this?

I panicked, I was fueled and driven by confusion and adrenaline and terror, and in the moment, I was scared. Kind of hard not to be. But now, I realize I wasn't scared of the actuality of a bullet going into my brain. I was angry. I didn't want him to kill me.

I wanted to be the one to end it.

I knew what I was doing when I walked into White Mountain. I was prepared.

I was ready to go into that forest and not come out.

But then lo and behold, here came some creepy dude with a creepy mustache who pulls a gun on me and starts shooting. That was not part of my plan, nor did I want it to be. Technically, if Lee followed through, the outcome of wouldn't have changed, but that wasn't the point.

I had accepted it; I'm dying.

I'm dying, and there's nothing I can do. Jack shit. Nothing I can do, but to have the final say. And three dumb jerks come along and try to take that away from me.

"Why are you asking me this?" My voice is scratchy, genuine confusion lying heavy on it.

Haytham sighs and brings a hand up. "You still don't get it, Connor." I cringe at that. I haven't heard someone say my name in three days (three days?), but even after that long, I'm not sure I'm happy hearing it. The way he says it is all wrong. All wrong, laced with that same confusion and hatred and sorrow his eyes had shown on day one, when I first said it to him. It has layers underneath it, just like the ocean. Layers so thick and deep that you can't tell how many of them there are, or what exactly is swimming in them. Layers you can't see.

"I'm your father."

The first thing that happens is that the scene from Star Wars flashes in my mind. Just a quick little snippet—I can't help it.

The second thing that happens is that I start laughing so hard I think I crack a rib, which isn't good, because there's enough of me injured already. The sound is awkward and strained and bounced off the shadowed walls in a very uncomfortable way.

"No, you're not," I hiccup. He watches me with a disappointed look on his face, and I wonder how he's staying serious. "My dad was a jackass like you, but even he wouldn't stoop so low as to torturing a kid. Or be affiliated with someone like Lee."

Haytham's eyes flick downwards towards the musty floor, as if he were ashamed. "I had to know that your weren't one of them."

Of course. Here we go again, with the Templar and the Assassin crap. "Look," I wheeze, "If this is some new, twisted, spazmatic trick to try and get me to confess to something I still have no idea about, you're really stretching it."

He shakes his head. The fatigue on his face has drooped to his shoulders now, and to straighten them, he has to sigh again and push his forehead up with a hand.

"If you could just take this seriously—"

"Oh, like you're taking me?"

He holds my furious gaze unflinchingly. The murky waters behind his eyes splutter and rock back and forth, waves splashing against one another, and for a moment, I think I see a break in them. A glimpse of the sandy bottom.

"You're real name is Ratonhnhaké:ton."

I feel the color drain from my face. The hostility that froze my lips into a scowl is replaced with shock that makes my mouth form a small, surprised O.

"Your mother wanted it, and I had no problem with it, as long as I could pronounce it." That ghost of a smile is back, but it's brought a deep sorrow with it. "I couldn't ever pronounce her's correctly. So I called her Ziio instead."

He got that from my notebook. He had to.

But my name . . . How does he know my name . . .

"You're favorite TV show was Blues Clues, but you only watched it when we weren't reading to you." A faraway look starts to cloud his eyes, and the ghost of a smile starts to spread into a real one. "God, you loved when we read to you. You'd listen for hours just if we read the dictionary."

Something wet is pooling at the bottom of my eyes. It makes my vision blurry, contorts the man in front of me into a blob. I realize I'm shaking my head. Trying to say no, trying to stop him, but the words crumble away in my mouth, lost as soon as they breathe air.

"You never slept with the drapes closed because you loved to see the stars."

"Stop."

"You always wanted a cat, and you wanted to name it Cat." He actually chuckles. "Ziio always got a kick out of that. But I hope your imagination has approved a little since then . . ."

"I said stop."

He falls silent, if just for a moment. That moment is all I need to finally catch my breath. It's like I just swallowed ten snakes alive, and now they're twisting around in my intestines. My cheeks are wet. "Do you really think that any of this matters?" I ask him. "At all?"

I hate how it's hard for me to get the words out. I hate how my voice cracks.

Haytham just shrugs. "I thought you should at least know."

"What, that my dad is a jackass and a psychopath?" I angrily swipe the water off my cheeks with my good hand. "This only makes me hate you more, you do realize that."

My reaction obviously isn't what he wanted; he's looking at me with a patronizing kind of disappointment, the same kind he had earlier but a lot more evident. "I suppose I do." He scratches his chin thoughtfully. "But then again, at least it's all out in the clear."

I glower at him. I have so many questions I want to ask, but I want him to go away. I want him to tell me more, but I can't stomach him being in the room.

He doesn't wait for me to continue. Haytham glances away from me, tapping the cover of my notebook. "I'm actually curious to know what your mother might have said about me. I always wondered what life might have been like had she and I stayed together." The faraway look grows deeper in his eyes. "How is she, by the way?"

You've got to be kidding me. He knows I have frickin' cancer, but he doesn't know this.

"Dead," I say bluntly. "Murdered."

"What?" His gaze jerks back to mine, his composed character cracking for a second, but he regains it just as quickly. "I . . . I'm sorry to hear that."

I feel my heart snap.

Forgetting that there's a hunk of metal in my leg, I lean forward towards Haytham with something much more vile than hatred in my eyes. "Oh, you're sorry?" I put every ounce of venom I can in the words. "I found my mother burning alive. I'll never forget her face as she sent me away. And where were you? Running around with Templars and Assassins and whatever the hell else, looking for some stupid necklace that we already had?"

Suddenly, I realize something. Something that makes my blood freeze and the snakes in my intestines stop squirming.

That night. The Night of Owise. The note. Three days, three days before the fire, three days before my mom died. I remember. I remember when I was given my necklace.

She gave it to me that night.

The memory is as clear and fresh as a newly fallen snow, stark white in my mind and as crisp as if it were something that happened yesterday. She gave it to me as a way to calm me down, to keep me safe. Something she knew I would cherish. She told me it would protect me.

I never thought she was giving it to me so I could protect it.

My mother knew she was going to die in three days.

And she knew the Templars were the ones who were going to kill her.

Bonjour! I hope things are going well for y'all!

I promise things are going to pick up soon, my friends ;) Thank you so much for reading, and (as per usual), like, comment, follow, critique, blah blah blah blahl balhblhabhabh

OKAY.

Hope it was enjoyable. Stay beautiful!

-TWS