i have no idea what happened to this the first time I tried to upload… thank you so much, FateOfChaos for PMing me to let me know this was unreadable, and thank all of you who are reading this right now for being so patient with me.
Haytham strode to the door and flung it open, Ratonhnhaké:ton following closely behind him.
"You," Haytham said. "Talk them down."
"Why me?" Ratonhnhaké:ton demanded, without thinking, regretting the question the second the sounds left his mouth.
"They're your friends!" Haytham snarled, through gritted teeth, all but physically pushing Ratonhnhaké:ton out of the door. Ratohnhaké:ton sighed and stepped out onto the grass, holding his hands up to show that he was unarmed. It wasn't Dobby and Stephane he was worried about, but the guards who had run upstairs, and were now aiming rifles out of the windows, presumably on both sides of the building.
"Stephane? Dobby?" he called. There was silence. "Please stop firing, for now."
There was a further moment of silence, and Ratonhnhaké:ton opened his mouth again, unsure of what to say.
"Aren't you supposed to be with Achiilles?" Dobby's voice rang out, though Dobby herself was still hidden from sight. Her voice seemed to be coming from the nearby trees. Ratonhnhaké:ton hoped that the guards couldn't hear well enough indoors to realise.
"I was worried," Ratonhnhaké:ton replied. There was more silence. "Clipper and Duncan are in the cellar, Jamie too. I was trying to free them, but Hickey appeared, and then so did the others. I was trying to negotiate when you shot through the windows."
More silence. Then Stephane's voice. It sounded as though he were close to the meeting house, although he could not be seen either.
"You are sure they will not harm us if we agree to a truce?"
"No, but this is the best chance we have at getting everybody out of here alive."
Yet more silence followed.
"All right," Dobby called, but remained hidden. Stephane also gave an affirmative moments later.
"Thank you," Ratonhnhaké:ton said.
"Yes, thank you," Haytham called, suddenly only a foot or two behind him. Ratonhnhaké:ton spun, startled, and froze upon seeing the pistol his father had clenched in his hand. He held it near his hip, half-pointed to the ground. A threat, both to him and to the other Assassins. Ratonhnhaké:ton swallowed.
"I will fetch Clipper and the others from the cellar," he said. "And then we will leave. Peacefully, and without further bloodshed."
Haytham's brow creased, and he started to protest.
"We-"
"Will meet another time," Ratonhnhaké:ton said, forcefully. "For now, let us agree to a truce."
Haytham had a sour look on his face, but rolled his eyes and holstered his pistol.
"Fine," he said, in a way that seemed somewhat caustic to Ratonhnhaké:ton. "A truce."
"I shall contact you," Ratonhnhaké:ton promised, following him inside the meeting-house, where Haytham made a gesture and Johnson barked an order in what might have been Gaelic. The remaining guards in the room stood down, and Ratonhnhaké:ton hoped that meant that the guards upstairs did, too. Hickey was still sprawled on the floor, moaning in pain, Johnson and Charles trying to stem the blood.
"We'll have to move him to the house, get water boiling," Johnson said.
"Jamie might be able to help, he's a doctor," Ratonhnhaké:ton offered, pausing a moment.
"Jamie… one of the men in the cellar?" Johnson asked.
"…Yes," Ratonhnhaké:ton said, with a growing sense of dread. He'd not heard gunshots, nor sounds of fighting from the cellars, so surely Clipper and the others were fine, unless something had gone very wrong…
"How many of your men went downstairs?" Charles said to Johnson, hesitantly.
Ratonhnhaké:ton's stomach dropped. If the guards were dead, the truce was good as over before it had begun.
He bounded down the stairs, fearing the worst, only to be met by the sight of Clipper quite calmly untying Jamie and Duncan, both of whom were bleary-eyed and drowsy- they must have been drugged somehow, as part of the trap laid for Jacob. The bodies of the guards on the floor initially sent a spike of panic through his belly, but at a closer glance, they all seemed to be breathing. To be certain, Ratonhnhaké:ton checked for a pulse in the closest one, and, finding one, sighed with relief.
"They are all right," he shouted upstairs.
Clipper looked quizzically up at him, the pointed upward and whispered "Dobby? Stephane?"
"Templars. We have a truce. Come, we are leaving," Ratonhnhaké:ton said, helping Clipper slip the ropes from their comrades.
"Achilles won't be too happy…" Clipper said.
"Achilles is never happy," Ratonhnhaké:ton replied, more bitterly than he'd meant. "I need to speak with him anyway."/p