Shay wasn't sure why he hadn't come back to New York right away. He'd've missed the funeral, either way, but somehow he didn't want to go home and find his visitor, his boss, his friend wasn't there. But he realized that he could only go up and down the river for so long before he had to stop in.

He took a circuitous route, checking on all the buildings, the churches and shops he'd renovated. Some of them had burnt down-it was shocking to see the damage the town was just beginning to recover from. He debated whether to go to Fort George or that one church first, and the church won. As he approached, he "heard" faint whispers, and his hackles rose. Who would be stalking him here, now? He looked around with his other sight, and at first didn't see him; but of course he should have realized: a brawny, half-Native man in a huge white hood had no business blending into the crowd on that bench. He'd never met him in person before, but of course he'd seen him a hundred times, visiting.

"Ahoy, Connor." He dropped down on the bench beside the Assassin, and the civilians on either end looked at them nervously and fled.

"What are you doing here?"

Shay pointed at the little graveyard. "Paying my respects. You?"

"The same."

"From across the street?" Connor said nothing. The moment stretched on. "I wanted-" Shay began, but Connor interrupted him.

"I understand now."

"Understand what?"

"What you tried to tell me. I would not listen, but I remember." Connor's stare was intense, and Shay remembered their aborted conversation over the body of Connor's friend.

"It's-"

"I am sorry."

Shay blinked. He hadn't expected that. "Sorry?"

"I have taken your friend from you," Connor explained.

"I've lost friends before."

"By another's hand?" Shay said nothing for several long minutes, and Connor spoke again. "Achilles is dead."

Shay had to swallow twice before he could talk. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Are you?"

"Aye. He was my Mentor once, too, you know." It was a little silly, really, to be choked up over an enemy's death. But Shay could remember the all-consuming grief that had wracked the man after his wife and son had died. He could remember his own joy and determination the day Achilles had accepted him as a novice. He could remember a hundred things about him, all now tinged with regret for-what? Had he secretly wanted to seek out the old Assassin for some kind of explanation or absolution?

"I had always wondered why he did not send me to kill you as well," Connor said carefully.

"Probably because I showed him mercy." The blood on the ice, the blood on his clothes and his face, Achilles clutching his leg and staring up at Haytham with such rage. Shay knew, suddenly, in a moment of perfect clarity, why the old man had renamed Haytham's son after his own: it was an act of war, of theft, of revenge, of resentment. And yet, the grief in Connor's shaking shoulders spoke of fondness and trust between the old man and the boy.

"Yet you tried to kill him, once, through me."

"That was many years ago. For me, anyway. I grew up." If he hadn't tried, then, to kill him, he might have done it in truth in the far north.

They were silent again for some minutes, and Shay found himself thinking back, trying to remember when he was a child, when his father had died. He had some vague recollection; but he knew that everything he had experienced, Connor now felt hot and fresh and twice over, compounded by guilt and regret and emotions Shay didn't think he could even name. "I'm sorry, Connor. For your losses."

Connor laughed, almost. "One by my own hand."

"And who would understand that better than me?" Shay gestured across the street. "Come. Let's go see it then."

"Is it not...inappropriate?"

Shay shook his head. "What's inappropriate is if a man doesn't visit his father's grave. Even if he hated the man." And how many years was it since he'd seen his own father's tiny headstone?

"I did not hate him," Connor surprised him by saying. "I made a mistake. I see that now." He added, after a moment, "Far too late."

Shay nodded. "And that's something I understand for sure." He wondered where Hope was buried, and Liam, and if he'd be allowed to visit their graves. He wondered if Connor would let him come to the Homestead, someday, to lay a feather on Achilles's grave.

"Wait," Connor nearly begged, and Shay was surprised to see the young man's severe limp, the way he favored what seemed to be an injury in his side. He offered his hand to help, but wasn't offended when Connor refused it; he waited for the Assassin to make his own way across the street, and they walked to the grave together.

A/N SERIOUSLY CONNOR HOW DOES NOBODY EVER SEE YOU SITTING WITH THE WHITE GUYS