Under the star-lit nightsky, Connor followed Haytham. Haytham carried no lantern or candlestick upon him, yet in his step he seemed utterly confident in where he walked, as if this was a road he had walked so many times he had memorized the path. His father strolled slowly. Connor decided to ask his father the question that had dwelled in his mind since he had first seen the dead man speak and walk.
"Is mother here?"
"If she is, she has done a superb job avoiding me." Haytham replied with a noticeable hint of despondency in his voice.
Somewhere far away, Connor heard the fluttering of something coming alive and the beating of large wings taking flight. An unnatural screech piercing the night, a wound against rationality to never heal. Connor looked down at himself, half-expecting himself to be in another animal-pelt outfit. But that was not the case. He was still in the clothes he had been wearing when he had entered this world of daydreams and illusions. Haytham was walking off to the side of the path, beckoning for his son to follow him. There were large rocks that formed a hanging edge that rested above them at the path where Haytham stopped his walk. Haytham got to his knees, started to build a fire.
"We rest here, until the sun rises. I would have continued but suddenly I do not like the aura of this place when the world is darkest."
As the flames flickered, Connor briefly gazed upon his father's face. He saw beneath the skin and flesh the white of bone, the vacantness of an empty socket where the eyes once were. Connor's mouth turned slightly downward with a frown of displeasure. Haytham noticed and turned his head, the transparency in his face disappearing as he did so when the father and son locked eyes.
"Is something troubling you, Connor?"
"…nothing. Just thought I saw something." Connor replied uncomfortably.
"Like this?" Haytham tilted his head upwards. Connor's eyes darted to the wound where his hidden blade had punched Haytham's neck in their final duel. It looked fresh, and Connor finally saw all the blood that was stained on his father's blue coat. "You have seemed unnerved since the moment I made myself known. As if I was the person that you never wanted to see again the most. But I've been over your mind... deep down, Connor, you've never forgotten about me. You've always had me back there, thinking about everything that I told you even when you were unaware of it. When the layers have been peeled back, I see nothing that indicates you've grown beyond the misguided angry little boy who thinks he can save the world without losing anything. And what an irony, the two of us. We both ended up working for the men who took our beloved parent from us. And per punishment decreed, we lost everything we truly held dear."
"Are you intending to scare me or force me into guilt, father? That will not work, if that is your intent. Do you wish for me to fall to my knees, hands clenched together, cry and say that I am sorry? Or for me to offer you my sympathies for everything you lost?."
"No, son. I never intended anything of that sort. Just noting an observation of mine." Haytham's voice took a softer tone. "I'm still proud of you in a way, Connor. You are more capable leader than the old man ever was. You have made much self-sacrifice for a greater good, dedicated much of your prime years to fighting for your preposterous Creed. You even kept the family name and acknowledge me as your father, when you could have easily let both die with me in that bombed fort. But yes, in case you were wondering, I still wish I had let those Patriot dogs hang you that day. The loyal Templar in me has not died. Did you kno-"
"Yes, father, I know all about who really saved me from the gallows. I eventually returned to the fort and extracted your journal. I read all of it at once. The day before I took the tomahawk from the post."
"And what did you do with the words?"
"I kept them within me. As for the journal, I have it saved. For someone who may need it one day again in the future." Connor thoughts drifted towards his daughter. She did not be like him, raised in one view only. She deserved to know the full story, to understand the grey world that she would enter if she chose to follow the path of the Assassin.
"Ah. I wonder, Connor. You failed to bring about peace between Assassin and Templar. Do you still cling onto that dream?"
"No, I understand that it is a dream that I cannot bring to fruit in my lifetime or perhaps not even in the next generation. But mark my words, father, one day it will happen. That the wounds shall be healed for good. And from that day, the world shall be for the better. Freedom and order will find a balance."
"Hmph. I doubt that. Your damn Founding Fathers failed after they had won the right to their own flag. After all, why would you have had to hunt down poor Alexander Hamilton had freedom and order been balanced? Our worlds will never be one. You pitiful Assassins are determined to cling onto a dying and antiquated Creed, while we Templars are focused onto the sun rising in the distance. Connor, you have always been a deluded dreamer, and even age has done nothing to change that."
"And father, I can say that you have always been a disillusioned cynic, and that death hasn't livened you one bit."
"We shall agree to disagree, no?"
"Yes, father. Let's stay at that, shall we? I do not want to kill you again."
"Fine then, son. We start walking again at first dawn. We have much to talk about, son." Haytham handed his son a thick blanket. Connor shook his hands. He had slept many lights with no such blankets upon him in the open wilderness, heated only by a flickering fire.
"You need that more than me, father."
"Suit yourself, Connor. The nights here are quite chilly. Do not come crying to me when your toes are frostbitten."
At the first dawn of the sun, Connor instantly sprung awake. He yawned once, and readied himself for the walk ahead. The morning air was chillingly sharp, bleeding away any lethargy there may have been in his body.
"Father, I am ready to depar-" He heard a snore and saw that Haytham was still asleep. Connor prodded the blanketed form twice. But despite a stir, Haytham remained deep in sleep. Connor sighed, and slumped down against the rocks.
"Ten minutes at most." Connor whispered to the sleeping Haytham. "Then I kick you somewhere very painful or find some water to dump on you. And I don't want to go through the trouble of either option. So wake up already, father."
He wished he had an hourglass or pocketwatch on him. Connor sat against the rocks, for who knows how long, waiting for his father to come around. He dwelled in his own thoughts. Thoughts of the past that led to the future. Connor wondered if there was any lesson to be learned here. Perhaps nothing but the ghosts of the pasts left behind finally catching up in the race to the finish.
Connor heard a whistling in the distance. Looking on the barren horizon, Connor saw nothing at first. But he saw a rider on a pale grey horse coming towards him. The rider's form looked familiar. It was lithe and sleek, and it was one that Connor had never forgotten. The figure ahead of him beckoned for him to leave the camp and come to her. Connor looked once at the sleeping Haytham and at the rocks. Whoever it was, it would be a more engaging character than either of these two. As he neared her, he was the first to speak.
"Hello, mother. It's… been a while." And then Connor warmly embraced Kaniehtiio. "Of all whom I've lost, there has been no one that I've missed more."
"Hmph. You've grown." His mother replied humbly as the two released each other. "I've missed you as well, Ratonhnhake:ton."
"Is it really you?" Connor asked, keeping the emotion in his voice under control. He touched his mother's cheek. It felt as real as he remembered feeling it, an unknowing child, innocent and unaware of the sinking ship on which he lived. But he knew deep down that both parents were nothing more than constructs formed by the Apple for whatever reason for him to see. It hurt him. His parents were both dead, but here they both were impossibly within walking distance. Perhaps, he could reunite the family for the first time… "Father… he's with me right now. At least I think it is my father. He thinks that you are avoiding him."
"I know. I wish to speak with him as well, but I am not ready for it just yet. We broke each other's hearts and not all the fragments have been picked from the floor yet. But I found out that you had arrived in the realm beyond through His Apple."
"Who is this person you talk of?" Connor asked.
"My son, I don't want to entangle you in this mystery. This is an enigma that is for children yet to come to solve."
"Why are you here, mother, if I am not the one you seek?" Connor asked.
"I missed the opportunity to watch you grow up. But I couldn't miss the chance to see you one last time."
So he talked with his mother. He talked to her about what happened to him after she died. Of finding the Assassins and becoming embroiled in the cauldron of revolution. Meeting his father and working with the Templar leader to hunt down Benjamin Church until their day of absolution arrived. His misguided pursuit of Lee, and leading the Patriots through several key moments of their revolution. How his journey ended in betrayal and the loss of his best friend and people. His mother's face was marred with both a mixture of sorrow and disappointment as she heard this, but slowly faded as he told her that no matter what happened, he kept moving forward. For even as his hope in others wavered, he refused to let his hope for the future do as well.
He told her of what had happened when the cauldron had simmered down. How he rebuilt the Assassins and ascended his way to mentor of the American Assassins, and faced down the reemerging Templar threat. His ill-fated first attempt at raising a family, and the far more prolific second try. Of how he had retired from the Assassins, and of how the nation he helped forge became embroiled in another conflict with its former empire. How his son, who like him before, fought across North America in the shadows of the war, had sent him the Black Apple. And he told her the hopes he had of finally reconciling with his son, and the hopes he had for his daughter when that crucial day eventually came to tell her the truth.
Kaniehtiio smiled throughout most of this, but she told her son little of what she did here in his dream. But Connor's eyes drifted from his mother to something hanging slightly exposed in a sack on her horse. A spherical object, with a crystalline surface. And as Connor's eyes focused on that crystal ball, he felt an alluring power. Beckoning for him to come and watch, pulling him in. He tried to resist the allure, remembering what his mother had told him about prophecies and riddles not meant for him. But the strain grew too much, he shut his eyes, and when he reopened them
He felt trapped, unable to move, like an observant watcher viewing a murder but unwilling to intervene. Strange visions bolted themselves past Connor. Moons turning to blood. Stars falling from the skies, the surface world alight where they landed. Great spinning columns of fire that extended to the heavens, raging a scalded trail across the earth. Boundless balls of electricity, buzzing their way through the sky. A jackdaw flying across the plain, before a large eagle with azure feathers swooped in for the slaughter. He saw a bald eagle soar through the skies as the jackdaw and azure eagle fell, nightmarish worlds of metal growing on the ground as it felt over it. Where the eagle flew blue skies clouded, tranquility shattered, and the eagle flew until it had stretched from coast to coast. Other cauldrons of fire, bubbling to blazing boils. He heard croaking. Connor saw a raven land on a set of gallows. Approaching the gallows was a large white wolf, its fur matted by blood of previous kills. The raven croaked at it, and the wolf howled back, and the two parted their ways. And at last, Connor saw the rider on the horse.
A man whose face was shrouded in darkness, body hidden in silhouette. Head topped with a hat, a long coat adorned on his figure. Connor saw the familiar bracers of hidden blades on him, pistols held in his grasp. The stranger headed in the opposite way the bald eagle had flown, facing the dark clouds and storms that lit his path. A noose hung around his neck, and he walked his way past events until Connor saw the scene shifting. A graveyard. An old man, holding the Black Apple. An Assassin, hooded and face hidden by wrap, walking towards the old man. The old man spoke as if mocking, but the nameless Assassin calmly started to remove his hood. But before Connor could see who it was, the scene shifted again.
In a cavern somewhere, three whites run as a fourth fellow reaches for a pedestal. Immense power surges through the man as his hands touch the pedestal, and the limp body that was once living collapses. Lost to the cold and the dark. The scene is saddening, but there is a feeling of relief. That the death accomplished something far great that most could only dream of doing. The world changed itself again.
The top of a building so nightmarishly tall it seemed to pierce the very sky itself, greater than any building Connor had ever seen. In the distance, there was a long red bridge. Metallic birds, roaring, were high above. Below the building were the sounds of horseless carriages. Atop the building was another stranger in an unfamiliar garb. The unfamiliar person gazed at the sprawling metal city around him, before pulling on a hood. And the Assassin leapt faithful. And before Connor could observe any more, he felt something pulling him away and a gentle but firm hand slapping him back towards reality.
"I am sorry, my son. I should have taken more care to properly cover it up. But in this world, time becomes strange. You remember to forget and you forget to remember…"
"Mother… what was that? The ball showed me sev-"
"Inquisitive as always, Ratonhnhake:ton. Hmph. Reminds me of when I'd catch you reading the journal. Do you really want to know?"
"Yes. These images would be more troubling if they remained unanswered."
"Predictions. Mere predictions of probable days to come. These visions are vicious, often. I do not wish for you to be dragged into their web, especially after all that you have gone through, my son. It would break my heart, knowing that I was responsible indirectly yet agai-"
"Don't worry, mother. I have forgotten them already."
They talked a few minutes more, before Kaniehtiio got up and walked back to her horse. Before she did so, she handed Connor two dead rabbits and a carving knife as well as some other tools.
"For you and your father. I recall he enjoyed the taste."
"See you again one day, mother."
"I wish that I did not have to leave you again so soon. But the path needs to be kept for they who will one day arrive."
"Do not fret, mother. We both know you never left to begin with." Connor said as the two had a parting hug.
"About damn time you showed up." Haytham said when Connor approached the camp. "Off chasing butterflies, Connor?"
"No. Breakfast." Connor replied.
"How the hell did you find those?" Haytham demanded.
"A mutual friend of our's." Connor said as he cooked over a fire Haytham had built.
"Mutual friend? I doubt that. To my knowledge, you killed all my friends, Connor. And they weren't the sort that would fraternize with you." Haytham shook his head. "I understand killing Hickey and Church, as I had that same temptation many times, but did you have to do in the rest?"
"You know who I am talking about." And as he said that, Connor saw a wave of melancholy quickly sweep over Haytham's face and leave just as quickly as it had appeared. "Father, am I troubling you? I am sorry…"
"No, don't apologize, Connor. There's nothing wrong." Haytham said as he ate his share of the rabbit. "Here, son. Have some of this to drink."
Haytham handed Connor a small cup. Inside was a brown liquid that looked somewhat like coffee, which Connor personally detested the taste of. But it did not taste like coffee. Far more sweet and appetizing, and he finished the cup quickly.
"My father used to take me to this address in London where we would do nothing but drink cups of cocoa by the gallon." Haytham remembered as he held his own cup, looking into the distance. "I sometimes think that he's still watching me somewhere far away, but with a look of shame."
"I like it. It tastes great." Connor said. "I don't think Edward would be ashamed of you, father. Disappointed, yes, but I think that he would understand that circumstances warped you to what you became, not your own volition."
"Hmph. At least that's one thing we can have in common…. son." Haytham replied. Connor saw the doubt in Haytham's eyes regarding what his son had told him. "But once more, my boy, you hold too much goodwill regarding the hearts of people."
"And father, once again, you let your cynicism cloud judgment, even that of your own father."
"Who am I to judge, Connor? I merely state what my time in the world has driven me to believe. But all the power to you, if you choose to believe in inherent goodness and the like. Chasing butterflies is great exercise, after all."
The two finished their breakfast in silence.
And set off on the path again.
The father and son still had much to walk, much to see and discuss.