Here is part 2 of the Christmas double update! Merry Christmas!
The footsteps approaching pull me away from continuing my drawing, a charcoal sketch portrait of Yusuf. Emmett sets a mug of coffee down on the table in front of me.
"You know, people go their entire lives searching for what you had with Yusuf… The kind of love that doesn't just disappear after death. That's the stuff that people through the ages have written, sung songs, and painted masterpieces about. But… Seeing how in love you still are, I wonder if it's really what everyone should want. Doesn't it hurt? Isn't it more of a burden now?" Emmett asks rather bluntly; I lower the sketchbook and place it on the table next to the coffee and look him in the eyes.
"I'm fine. It does hurt… It really does. More than most of the wounds that made the scars on my body. It's a different kind of pain to be so in love and to have the person taken away. Rage, despair, loathing, and emptiness. That's what I felt after he had been murdered. I let it control me just for a few days… And it almost ruined me. If it hadn't be for an amazing friend I might've ended up in a vastly different place." I do my best to explain how it was at first, "But… Once I managed to look past all of that, I realized that he had given me so much to carry with me for as long as I live. He brought me sunlight when I had been living in the darkest night. It hurts that I won't ever see him again. But I wouldn't give up my time with him for anything." I can't help the smile that grows on my face from picturing his goofy smile, "As for burdens… Well, at this point I have too many to count anyway. His memory is certainly one of the heavier burdens, but I wouldn't dream of living without it… And it's actually one that he encouraged me to share as much as I could. Which is why… Well, to be honest… I had been planning on telling you all of this at some point. My plan had been to tell you once the school year had finished…" I confess while picking up the coffee from the little table.
"Well. That plan had a wrench thrown in it, didn't it?" Emmett wisecracks.
"That's putting it mildly…"
We both laugh, and I feel the laugh more genuinely than I have in a long time… Like I feel lighter, maybe I had just gotten used to how heavy the burden of my knowledge is, and having told someone else has eased some of the burden… Just like Yusuf had wanted.
"I've noticed you drawing him a lot… You always seem to start with one thing, like a landscape… And before long you've gone to the next page and are either doing a portrait of him, one of him standing, or a page full of different views of him…" I look back down at the drawing.
"It has been happening more and more over the last decade or so. I guess… I just don't want to forget his face. Although, I think at this point my hands never will." I chuckle a little and Emmett smiles.
"You know… We do have an Animus set-up here. It's not the newest version by any means, but it still does the trick. You could see him again." He gestures to the Animus set up in the other room.
"No… An Animus is a bad idea for me. If I get too worked up, too emotional, it may lead to me using my power… Which could interrupt the session… Which can lead to my mind getting trapped inside or worse. It could be possible, I suppose, if someone else were in the Animus and I were just watching a feed of it." He nods and drinks his own coffee.
"Fair points… Anyway, soon the third person will be coming to get us out of here. And you'll be able to contact your family…" Emmett adds.
"Is it going to be today?"
"No, likely tomorrow, or the next day."
"Do you know who is coming?"
"They haven't told me, but I have a fairly good idea. If I'm right, they're a close friend. Everyone all agreed it would be a bad idea to have someone from your family come, so they had to go to other Assassins. And things have been pretty busy since October…" As if realizing what he was saying he hushes a little more with each word.
"Yeah, I understand that Hermes' staff is in the hands of someone fighting for the Assassins…" I take another sip and Emmett chokes on his a little.
"I thought you were keeping yourself out of all this to keep your family safe?"
"Well, yeah, but something as big as the staff… I had to know where it ended up… So, I used the dark web to find out through whatever means I could. I even saved an Assassin hacker's neck at one point; he really owes me now. I've saved him before in a similar way…"
"But why was it that important? I thought you were wanting to protect your family, going onto the dark web isn't exactly safe behaviour…" He is just like my family, too sharp.
"It's not like I don't know enough about hacking to keep out of Abstergo's eyes. I can make saving someone look like a fluke in the system to most people…" I look to see if he takes that conversation bait, but alas, his single raised eyebrow says otherwise, "Fine, it was a pretty personal matter to find out where it ended up… I was anxious to find out who Kassandra had been waiting for." I get up and go over to the couch. And Emmett follows…
"I should've guessed! Of course you know Kassandra. I bet you know all about the Staff and what not…"
"Well, Kassandra is… Was… one of my closest friends." Then a look of realization passes over his face, and he sits down beside me.
"Oh… So, that day a little before Halloween… when I found you in the hallway…" He starts.
"Yeah, she had been able to use a little of the Staff's power to say goodbye, before she passed it on…" Despite it having been almost six months ago, her absence still feels so fresh.
"You've had to say goodbye a lot… Haven't you?"
"More than I care to admit… But no matter how many times I do… It never seems to get easier."
"That's because you're human. Loss is something we all have to cope with at some point, and it isn't supposed to be easy if you loved them."
We sit side-by-side on the couch for a while, and before I realize it a comfortable sleep overtakes me.
"Good morning… Are you sure you've slept enough? It's only been four hours…" Emmett asks from the kitchenette as I stretch out on the couch.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Like I said, I don't need much sleep. Actually, four hours is decently good for me." I answer while I stand up and walk into the kitchen space where I fill the kettle and he watches me the whole way over.
"If you sure…" He says doubtfully.
"I'm sure." I reassure.
"It's around midnight now, so I'm going to catch some z's myself. Don't let me sleep past eight though." He favours as he walks over to the cots, "The guy coming to get us is going to arrive around ten in the morning and I'm going to have to clean this place out before we leave. So… Eight o'clock wake up call?"
"You bet. I'll even make sure a coffee is waiting for you." I thumbs up him as I wait for the kettle to boil and he flops onto the cot. Snores start to come from the cot before the water is even boiling.
He sure knows how to fall to sleep…
I look over to the cots as I make my way to the couch and see that he is only mostly on the cot. One leg is just dangling off the edge of the cot as though when he flopped down it just didn't even make it on before he fell asleep.
He stays that way for most of the night, and I just sit and draw. I use the wide arm rest of the couch as the perch for my sketchbook. At first, I doodled some random landscape features like mountains. Then I ended up with a couple of small portraits on the page as well, one of Kassandra and one of Yusuf.
Once he begins to stir, I close the sketchbook and go make a couple mugs of coffee and bring them over to the small stool by the couch. To his luck, the time is now a little after seven thirty.
"Her name is Layla, by the way…" Emmett says as he shuffles over to the couch, still coming out of the deep snore-filled slumber.
"Hmm?" I look over at him.
"The person Kassandra gave the Staff to, her name is Layla. A lot happened and she's been moving around a lot lately, so I don't know if you'll ever meet her…" Oh…
"Thank you… But it's probably best if I don't meet her… Alethiea may still be attached to the staff and she will most certainly recognize me… She did when Kassandra and I had reconnected for the first time."
"Oh?"
"Yeah… It was probably around four hundred years after we had originally parted ways. See I had met Alethiea a couple of times with my adoptive family, but Kassandra and I had parted ways before she had gotten the staff from Pythagoras. So, when we met four hundred years after that Alethiea appeared almost right after we had gotten somewhere private. Needless to say, I was pretty surprised… And so was she. It really lent to how well she did with getting her consciousness to follow the staff though…" I take a sip of my coffee.
He sits down on the couch and just looks over at me.
"This is all going to take some getting used to…" He says while shaking his head a little bit and reaching to grab the still steaming coffee.
"You're telling me… I just found out that my family have all been Assassins, kept it from me, and now I am in the position of whether or not I think I should find out if I may have inadvertently interacted with my ancestors… But… In a way, it almost makes sense… This whole time, I've inexplicably been drawn to the Assassins. Throughout history, I just kept ending up right in the fight. Even before they had a name, before Bayek and Amunet's Hidden Ones, and before Darius… And now I find out that maybe it's because I inherited the fight…"
"I've been thinking about it… And I think that as few people should know about this as possible…" Emmett starts.
"Yes… Honestly, I typically try not to let anyone know. But I don't think it's a viable option in this situation. Especially with my family. There will be questions and if I can have a few people aware of the situation the easier it will be to keep everyone else ignorant."
"Yes, I agree. I do think there are some people outside your family who you could find to be beneficial if they know…"
"Oh? Did you already have some people in mind?"
"Yeah, like I said, I've been thinking about it. Although, you may disagree with some, I think they could really make things easier on you… But I also think that perhaps you should wait to decide until you've met each of them and…"
"And…?"
"And after you've told your family." He stands up and heads over to where his pack was on the ground and picks it up, "With the exception of one, the person coming to pick us up later."
"So we are finally leaving this boring hell?"
"Oh, come on… It hasn't been that bad…" He takes the last swig of his coffee, "Okay… It has been pretty boring… But in my defense, I was more prepared for you to have an interest in using the Animus… Which would have made it all considerably less boring. Plus, it's only been a couple of days…"
"Oh, is that right?" I ask skeptically, he just shrugs and grins, "Anyway, I'm going to go pack up my things and go up to the land of the sun for a while." I stand and walk towards the cots area to collect my bag.
"Alright, but Raea?" I turn to face him, "Promise you'll think about what I said." I look over to him holding his bag and stuffing a shirt inside.
"I'll think about it… Also, in your defense… If it had been the old me, I would have been extremely interested in the Animus." I answer.
Packing happens quickly since there hadn't been a whole lot to unpack in the first place, so pretty soon I'm up in the sun laying in the long grass.
I let myself daydream for a while soaking in the heat of a late April sun a little after ten. Then I feel the rumble in the ground. I sit up to see the dust plume from the gravel road leading in the direction.
I get myself high up one the trees closest to the house and as they pull into the grown over driveway, I take a breath and mask everything about myself to the point where even the highest trained Assassins wouldn't be able to detect me.
I see the person exit the plain looking silver sedan, a man with raven coloured hair and his hand places a katana on his hip. I see him go into the house and I dismount the tree into the soft, tall grass the only sound coming from the snapping of a few thicker stalks of grass. I listen carefully inside for signs of struggle, but none come then I hear Emmett greeting the man with friendly tones.
Walking past the car, I see it has Ontario plates on it.
I walk into the house and then towards the basement.
"Ah, there you are you are Astraea. Meet our guide for the next portion of our journey away from your crazed uncle, Kiyoshi Takakura." Must be a more common name than I thought… A decade or so ago I helped a kid in Japan by the name who had almost ended up at the bad end of a katana from a mafia type. The man turns around and his eyes travel up and down as though he were evaluating me.
"So, you are the Little Sister then?" Kiyoshi asks.
"Oh no… Don't tell me they've been calling me that this whole time?" I ask, while it may not bother me so much now that I am more confident in myself, the me that I was before would have been right riled up about being titled 'the Little Sister' without ever getting a chance to be anything else.
"Only to anyone who will listen." Kiyoshi laughs, "Admittedly they are all deeply concerned about you… I have heard from all of them… At least once each."
"Oh boy… I just love to have a reputation… Especially one that sounds so…"
"Belittling?" A snort from Emmett as Kiyoshi lets loose his comedic genius.
"Oh, har har har… Very funny." I say before walking into the basement with the two of them trailing behind me.
"Are you two ready to go?" Kiyoshi asks as we get to the bottom.
"Yeah, we both got set to go and I cleaned up." Emmett gestures to the bleach and other cleaners on the table.
"Alright, we should probably leave quickly. Abstergo has been keeping an eye on the airports in the province so we are going to be going across the Rocky Mountains to the coast to use the bigger airport in Vancouver since it is easier to lose people inside there. I'll explain more on the way, but it is going to be a lot of travelling before you're done." Kiyoshi says suddenly sounding much more serious, as though a switch had been flipped. Without a doubt… This man is the kid I had saved from what would have been a fatal katana attack that left a decent scar on my right wrist.
"Damn… Why are they so desperate?" Emmett's shoulders slump a little at hearing how long our travel is meant to be.
"Well, he did give me that note the first time. And if they let me be for so long after that, they must have thought they at least had a chance of getting to me first…" I say.
"What note?" Kiyoshi asks as we climb back up the stairs and lock the door.
"Well, he had cornered me in a café I had worked in before. Then he had given me an envelop to prove who he was to me. I imagine he was hoping I would feel betrayed by my family for keeping secrets, making me vulnerable to him coming in to comfort me and gain my trust. Anyway, the note inside the envelop had said that they had been trying for a long time to track down me, and or, my siblings before the Brotherhood got to them."
"And you, being the 'Little Sister'…" Kiyoshi comes to the conclusion I was leading into.
"Represent their last opportunity." Emmett finishes.
"Awe… You guys are cute. Finishing each other's sentences." I say as I climb in the backseat and close the door of the car. I hear Kiyoshi say to Emmett 'You can tell she's related to them.' I smile to myself and think, maybe I haven't lost as much of myself as I thought…
We pass the road that leads into Banff, silent besides the occasional comment between those two up in the front of the car. Kiyoshi had explained that we would be flying to LAX where we will find a vehicle to take to San Francisco to catch a plane to New York. Then, from New York we will be going to Bucharest where we will be catching a smaller plane to go to a small town in southern North Macedonia. Which is apparently where my mom's dig is currently based out of. Not in the northern area of Turkey bordering Greece… Like she said… And while it is near some Ancient Greek ruins, she is not looking for Ancient Greek ruins. She is looking for an Isu site that they believe to be in that area. Although, to my knowledge there wasn't much in that specific area… It is decently close to where they would find the ruins of Ilios' lab. By decently close I mean that it would be a day or so of driving to get there.
All in all… This is going to be a long trip. And even better? Emmett and I are being slated as a couple going home on the flight to Los Angeles. Then a married couple heading on a one-year anniversary trip on the subsequent flights. They have even given us a set of passports for the flight to Los Angeles, with a new set waiting in the car parked at the airport there. They've even prepared us with believable luggage for each trip section. Hiding in plain sight indeed.
On this mountain bound trip we are even taking planned pitstops for photos for it to seem more legitimate.
Kiyoshi is only taking us to the airport in Vancouver, then he has to go somewhere else. He just happened to be the best choice at the time they needed someone. It's been an hour and a half, and he hasn't said anything yet… But I have seen him look back at me a few times now… Now, it could be that he thinks I look familiar and can't place me. But it could also be that he does recognize and doesn't want to sound crazy in front of Emmett. And the least likely option, but still slightly possible, is that he is simple looking to try and find similarities between me and my siblings. That last one being the furthest stretch on possibility.
"But we still can't account for why they would be so desperate for you or any of your siblings… There's nothing DNA wise they don't already have access to." Emmett ponders out loud, "What with how they got the DNA of your cousin on your dad's side, and the fact that Moore has pretty much anything else your DNA represents… Besides—" Emmett stops abruptly, and Kiyoshi takes over.
"Perhaps one of our resident hackers will have an answer for you once you arrive at your destination. I understand that Shaun is already at where you are heading… Helping out Aurora actually." Kiyoshi says to me. Shaun, huh? Well… The world just keeps getting smaller… I've encountered Shaun on the dark web before. In fact… He is the Assassin hacker whose trail I swept away just as an Abstergo hacker was about to happen upon it by pure chance. Twice now.
"Hastings? Wow… I imagine that means that—" Emmett starts.
"Rebecca is there too? Of course. They've been a pair since the whole 2012 business." Kiyoshi finishes yet again.
"They must be really hopeful about this supposed site then." Emmett concludes.
"Yes. There have been a lot of things supposedly pointing right to this location." Kiyoshi purposefully looks at me in the rear-view, "Did you use the Animus to take a look at some of your ancestors while you were waiting?"
"Uh… Well, I was a little nervous about it… I've heard bad rumours about what can go wrong and…" I stumble through some flimsy excuses.
"I understand. There are a lot of people who prefer not to use the Animus. Usually however, it is not the people with so rich a… lineage in the Brotherhood." Kiyoshi nods looking at the road again.
"Yeah… Emmett mentioned that I have a lot of family history with this Brotherhood…"
"If it helps… There are a lot of people looking forward to meeting you. Not very many families associated with the Assassins get to be a big as yours." It almost feels like he wants to lead the conversation somewhere but can't find the way to get it where he wants it.
"Yeah, I can imagine if the rival here is a corporate giant like Abstergo…" I already knew that Assassin families are generally small, one or two kids maybe… Almost never five. Which I guess lent to me never even considering that my family could even be Assassins.
"Exactly. Which is why so many want to meet you. I imagine at this point you are probably the most hotly discussed topic." Kiyoshi concludes the line of thought.
"Oh great…" He just chuckles at my comment and we continue along the road to Vancouver... T-minus 10 hours of driving to go.
I try to seem like I'm sleeping in the back for a ways, to at least get Emmett off my back about sleep. But it doesn't take long before Kiyoshi announces that we'll taking a pitstop at the Spiral Tunnels and that there likely won't be another stop until a couple of areas around Revelstoke.
Emmett races out to go to the washrooms first. Washrooms here of course being stalled outhouses. I just head to the railing to look out over the grand valley.
"A lot of people have talked about your family…" Kiyoshi says as he walks up and stands next to me as a train enters the valley and makes its way into the lower Spiral Tunnel, "You have been incredibly lucky to have not been brought into this business sooner considering how involved you family is."
"I suppose you're right. I have been lucky. Even though I didn't always see it." I leave him there and go to the washrooms myself. After Emmett and I take a few coupley photos to help solidify our guise once we are 'heading home' to Los Angeles. According to Kiyoshi, this was mostly Venus' idea; with a peppering of influence from Aquilo.
For the rest of the day we make a few stops, some planned others took some convincing to make but at all of them we added pictures to the collection. Emmett had brought up at it would seem weird that there are no pictures of any other parts of this supposed trip, but I suggested that perhaps I lost the main camera with the pictures to a waterfall just after leaving Calgary.
At each stop we make Kiyoshi chats with me a little bit, each time only saying a little, but it seems like he isn't saying what he really wants to. Although, it seems to be enough to have put me a little on edge, which I was not expecting. I suppose it must be wondering whether he's realized who I am in relation to him, or not.
Notably, I was able to sling a few burns and quips into whatever happened to be the topic of discussion. Often these comments earned a belly-laugh from Emmett and at the very least a grin from Kiyoshi.
For the night, we end up at a small mid-ranged motel with a decently sized pool. We end up with a second story room with a small balcony that hosts a small bistro set. With only two beds however that implies one of us will be keeping watch. For which I volunteered as I was the only one who didn't drive at all. Emmett, having taken over driving after our Spiral Tunnels stop flops onto one of the beds and immediately begins to snore.
I swear, it's a skill for that man.
I go out onto the balcony and sit down with my sketchbook. Not really sure if I'm going to draw but I feel comforted by having it nearby.
"It has never been hard for Emmett to sleep when he needs to…" Kiyoshi says as he steps onto the balcony, he had undone a couple of the buttons on his shirt revealing tattoos on his chest. He must have gotten them when he was with the yakuza…
"You've got tattoos, what are they?"
"Green dragons, two of them. I got them during my time with the Onmoraki-Gumi."
"Cool… So, how did you end up in the Brotherhood?" I ask another to keep him from asking me too many.
"Osoroshiibaba came to us in… 2013 or so. Some of our group had ended up having a misunderstanding with some Assassins in Osaka. It ended up with her taking over the yakuza group and bringing us into the Brotherhood." He answers, and I pause my questions for a moment and only a moment. But a moment too long, nonetheless, "That ring… Where did you get it?" Uh oh… Of all the things for him to notice I didn't really expect it to be my ring…
"I got it from… Someone I cared about deeply." I touch the ring on my right hand's ring finger.
"May I see it closer?" He holds his hand open on the table, I place mine there and he picks it up and looks closely at the ring. "How is this possible?" He asks as he brings his eyes up to examine me a little closer.
"What do you mean?" Hoping I can play dumb a little longer.
"Please, don't play dumb. You answered me the same way thirteen years ago before I had even joined the yakuza in Osaka." He holds my hand firmly and as I try to pull away, he forces my sleeve up my right arm to reveal the three-inch scar I got saving him, "And this. This is exactly where you took that sword to save me."
Shit.
Fuck.
Damn.
Apparently, I need to be less consistent.
"I'll ask again… How is this possible?"
"I didn't think you'd remember me that well, what with the trauma and all… So, I didn't think that you seeing me then would have made this much of a difference. I mean, you were a teenager. In Japan. I wasn't expecting to see you at this point. Not to mention the fact that I had no idea my family was involved with the Assassins." He releases my hand and sits back in his chair, "As for how it's possible… The bottom line is that no one really knows. I can tell you when it all started though if you really want to hear it." I guess Emmett is getting his wish…
"We have time. We can make Emmett drive in the morning." I snort a little laughter at Kiyoshi's quip, and he smiles a little.
So, without going into much detail, I tell Kiyoshi about how I am the youngest sibling of those he's been fighting semi-alongside and the woman who rescued him from a rival gang as a teenager in Osaka.
"So, you've been alive all this time and haven't been able to find out why? Or how?" He asks about five minutes after I finish, then I pick up the pencil that had been laying on my sketchbook and fiddle with it.
"Correct."
"Does anyone in your family know?"
"I haven't told any of them yet…" I fiddle with my pencil again, "But Zeph… He noticed the difference right away, so I had to tell him a little… But I also made a bargain with him. A bargain that's going to be fulfilled sooner than I had originally intended…"
"I am not surprised. Zephyr is very sharp, even in terms of Assassins." Kiyoshi comments.
"You're telling me! He noticed the moment he saw me in the hospital in Italy, even though he hadn't seen me at all for months before the incident." I put the pencil on the table, "So he is probably the first family member I'm going to tell… He deserves that much for going on faith to begin with."
"Does Emmett know?" Kiyoshi gestures to the room.
"Yes… They sent a small army to collect me. I had to do something, or we wouldn't have made it out of the apartment, let alone the city. And he certainly noticed me take out five of them solo before he finished dealing with three."
"He did say that there seemed to be a lot more agents than he had anticipated…" Kiyoshi comments looking very pensive, until he looks up at me and then his watch, "There's still some time if you want to sleep…"
"No thanks. I don't need much rest and I can get some shut eye in the car once we're on the road tomorrow. You go ahead and get some rest; you did more driving than me anyway." He chuckles lightly from my tiny attempt at humour before standing up, saying 'goodnight,' and closing the balcony door.
"Did Kiyoshi take over at any point or have you been out here all night long?" Emmett says as he steps onto the balcony and sits on the chair opposite me.
"I've been out all night long. But I'm fine, I told Kiyoshi to sleep, he drove all the way to get us and then some, so I said as long as I can snag a few hours during the rest of the drive I'll be fine."
"If you say so…" Emmett replies after just looking at me for a few minutes.
"On the note of you waking up though… I'm going to go have a shower."
"Dang it. I guess I'll wait till the next hotel then…" Emmett snaps in an 'Oh darn' swish of his arm. I stand up and go to the door and stick my tongue out at him as I go into the room.
While the water runs down my back, the thoughts begin to plague me over who all I should tell. Having discussed with Kiyoshi about not having told my family brings the fears to my mind. The fears I have been grappling with for centuries. What will my family think? How will my family react? Will they even still love me after knowing how much death I have sown in the world? After they know how much blood stains my hands… And after they know how long I've lived… Will they even still see me as their Astraea? Or will they realize the truth of how far gone I am? That perhaps, despite everything Yusuf said, that I'm truly no longer human in any sense of the word…
Really, though… They were all, apparently, in agreement that even the knowledge of the secret war waged over all this time would cause me irreparable psychological trauma. And… Truth be told, regarding who I once was, they were right. If they had told me about all of this then, perhaps I would have in some sense, given up on the world.
But now… Now I'm stronger. More resilient.
Less…
Human.
And what if they think less of me for it?