After we both agreed that we'd talked about everything we needed to, Connor excused himself, claiming he had some errands he needed to run around the city.
I looked to Haytham.
"You two seem to be getting along better than before." I commented.
"Marginally. He's still stubborn and naive, letting that old fool Achilles' words blind him to the truth." He rolled his shoulders, trying to get a knot out, no doubt.
I snickered. "That's funny, because he reminds me a lot of you."
"How?" His nose scrunched up in confusion.
"You're both unbelievably thick-skulled, kind of arrogant, brash, and neither of you appreciate my quality comedic endeavors." I counted off each quality on my fingers as I named them.
He scoffed. "That's hardly enough to call us similar."
"There's more, but I'm just leaving it at those four for the time being." I grinned.
He rolled his eyes. We sat in silence for a few moments. He looked back towards me curiously. "You mentioned something happened while you were out with Shay. What?"
I chewed on my lip. "We found something regarding the thing that brought me here. Or, at least, something like it."
His eyes widened. "What exactly did you find?"
"A letter detailing what appears to be someone picking up the object and disappearing. Which is exactly what happened to me." I said.
He was quiet for a moment. "Did it say anything about whether it was left behind?"
"It was just as gone as the man who touched it was." I replied.
"Interesting…" A look of deep thought was on his face for a good minute. "And it matched what you remember happening to you?"
I nodded. "While I can't tell what it must've looked like to those around me, it sounds pretty much the same."
"Do you want us to look into the matter further?" A question that I hadn't expected.
"Look… into…?" My mouth struggled to get words out, and my mind was blank.
"Yes, to see if we can locate the artifact and possibly learn how we may return you to your time, if you so wish." His expression gave away nothing, and he spoke emotionlessly.
I swallowed. "Aren't we a bit busy as is?"
"If you wish to return to your time, we'll have to look for it. It seems to be elusive, and finding information about it, much less the object itself, will be difficult. It would be best to start early if we wish to find it." Again, his tone was flat. Why was he doing that now?
"I…" Thoughts were flooding into my mind all of a sudden, the same ones I'd had on that shipwreck, that I'd struggled with in Shay's cabin. "I don't know."
Haytham inhaled sharply. "You don't know?"
"I… well, we're just so busy and-"
"Courtney." His voice was tense. "Stop." He knew me too well for me to lie to his face. I breathed deeply for a few seconds.
After a moment of straightening out my thoughts-tangled and overwhelming though they still were-, I started speaking. "I don't know if I want to go back anymore."
His gaze was about as heavy as the thoughts weighing on my mind. "Why?"
It took a few seconds for me to get the words out. "There's a lot of good things in my time. Things I wouldn't mind having again." Air conditioning, heating, medicine, clean water, better hygiene, electricity, internet. The list goes on. And yet… "But, I've been here a year. And… and I'm a lot happier than I ever was back in my time. I don't have to deal with…" I trailed off, not sure I wanted to talk about what had plagued me since my childhood.
But Haytham didn't want to let it drop. "With what?"
I swallowed again, harder this time because I was trying to keep my voice steady and push down another emotional outburst like the one on the shipwreck. "With my family. My mother." My gaze dropped to the table as my fists clenched. "She always turned shit around so that it was my fault. Insulted me. Blamed me for things she did, made me be the adult of the house when I was a fucking child. I didn't get to even play with other kids 'til I was, what? Eight? And only then because I'd made friends in school. And my dad? My dad was hardly ever there. And when he was? He was fucking afraid of saying a word against her because he knew she'd yell at him."
Haytham didn't say a word, and simply sat there, listening, as I continued. "I didn't get to go outside most of the time, I didn't get help learning things-" My voice quivered with sardonic laughter. "I- I had to teach myself everything. Everything except for archery- and my dad's the one who taught me that. I taught myself to read, to write, to do math and science, I taught myself history, how to cook, how to do laundry, how use basic things that I would've needed later in life. She got pissy whenever I learned things like that, started getting even worse and insulting me and yelling at me and complaining about me to other people more." I lowered my head further, not wanting him to see the way my face was twisted with emotion. "I had to do everything for myself. And she still wasn't happy." My voice cracked, and I willed back the tears in my eyes.
The sound of a chair sliding against floor reached my ears, and then footsteps rounded the table. Haytham stood me up and led me to his room, closing the door behind us. I didn't say it, but I was thankful he hadn't let me cry in front of anyone. My brain screamed at me to stop as it was, and prying eyes would've made it worse.
"Courtney." He said quietly. A glance up at him revealed his expression had softened. "You don't have to go back. You have a choice. You can stay here, if you want."
I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded. A moment of me sniffling and Haytham simply looking at me ended with a small, weak question from me. "Is it okay if… if I hug you?"
Surprise flashed across his face for a second, then arms wrapped around me. It felt weird, like he wasn't quite used to physical contact like this, but I was grateful for it. Instincts that had been built by years of emotional neglect screeched at me to push the Grandmaster away.
Silencing the part of me that begged to be left alone, I tightened my grip on Haytham.
