The Frye Family

I suppose I'm doing a good job with Lou Ellen's character since one person answered the question :P

Thanks for the support, guys! I see lots of excitement in the Reviews for the Fifth Life, though still some minor confusion.

Peter is NOT Jack the Ripper. However, that does lead into some trivia for this life.

Baring the Sixth Life (which I still have no idea what I'm going to do other than it's WWI), this life had the most deliberation. At first, Peter was going to be Spring-Heeled Jack, a minor character in the game, and a monster in English folklore. The idea behind it was that Faris was the good, kind Christian (God's mercy and forgiveness), Virgil the militant and disciplined Christian (God's wrath and justice), Jake the agnostic due to Mr. Biggs the Egyptian magician, Cheyenne the atheist due to the growing Assassin understanding of the Isu and the Pieces of Eden and her own pain and trauma (how could a "good" God allow of those bad things to happen to her?), and finally, Peter, the Fifth Life, would be a full Satanist.

He would've had a bigger part in the story as Spring-Heeled Jack, with actual supernatural powers given by the devil. His role would've been similar to Che Si Aggira in the Second Life, in that where Ezio kind of just ran into the Prowler of Roma, the Frye twins would've kind of just ran into Jack. However, I couldn't think of any good plot for this route, so I dropped it.

The second idea I had was that Percy was going to be Henry Green, but that was way too weak. Then I thought about OOC Henry Green, in that instead of being a pansy of an Assassin, he was a total badass up there with the likes of Altaïr, Faris, Ezio, Virgil, Edward, Connor, etc., and there was going to be a running gag of Jacob and Evie being a couple of dorky fanboy/girl(s). But I also thought that was too easy, and it offered little in the way of a fun story, so this is what I came up with.

Peter Frye, younger half-brother of Jacob and Evie.

Let's see how this all plays out, shall we?

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or AC

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Inspired by historical events and an over-active imagination, this work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a single-cultural team of one religious faith and belief, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

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Ethan Frye was a damn good Assassin. Loyal, capable, competent, skilled, and devoted to the Creed. He was well-respected amongst his peers in the Brotherhood, and most importantly, loved by his wife, Cecily Frye.

A woman met outside the Brotherhood, then willingly a member after her marriage and the inevitable revelation that her husband was a professional killer. She took the news rather well, even decided to take a leap of faith and joined her husband. She learned how to climb, how to steal, and how to end lives.

Unfortunately, her own life ended when she gave birth to her own children, twins Evie and Jacob, in that order.

Ethan, to put it shortly, was fucked up by the death of his wife. Bitter, resentful, and grieving, the man became the posterchild for bad dads in that he straight up left his newborn kids with their aunt and traveled all the way from Crawley, England, to frickin' India in order to escape the pain brought on by the very existence of his own firstborns.

While in India, Ethan met up with his old friend in the Brotherhood, Arbaaz Mir, and took the man's son, Jayadeep, under his wing as a distraction. Ethan instructed the boy for many years, steadily healing himself, steadily coming back out of his shell. He seemed to be making great progress until one night, November 9, 1851, four years to the day after his wife's passing and the birth of his children, Ethan got low.

Real low.

So low that he drank himself stupid in a tavern and ended up in an upstairs room with a rather pretty girl of about fifteen…to his to his twenty-six at the time. It wasn't rape; the girl was just a prostitute, one that luckily did not pass on any diseases, unless you counted the child she bore as a disease, which wasn't too far since fetuses were technically parasites.

Ethan certainly considered it (his new baby boy) a disease.

All the progress he'd made over the years was undone when that little bitch managed to find him with a bundle in her arms. She was sick and dying from a disease contracted during labor in the unsanitary conditions of an Indian brothel, and it was her dying wish that the father of her child actually raise her precious pride and joy.

Peter was the boy's name, after the disciple and later apostle.

If Peter had one thing going for him, it was that his mother loved him with everything she had. So much that she died ferrying him to his father.

The prostitute passed on there in the alley, and Ethan was left with a baby and a mountain of emotions. Rage, fury, betrayal—he'd betrayed his Cecily; he'd slept with another woman, a young girl at that, and impregnated her. Now he had a permanent reminder of his failure and betrayal in his arms, and that pissed him off in ways that words couldn't describe.

At first, Ethan was going to go the safe route and drop the boy at an orphanage with only his name and nothing else. Ethan was going to forget that he had another son, put him so far out of his mind that he himself would forget the child's name. But on the way, he was intercepted by none other than young Jayadeep. He'd tailed Ethan and witnessed the whole exchange in the alley.

It took few words, and almost getting into a fight to the death with the man, but Jayadeep managed to convince Ethan to not pawn Peter off. But that was it. There was no love in Ethan's heart for Peter.

Only resentment.

Peter was proof of Ethan's infidelity and weakness. Peter was a physical mistake, one there was no coming back from. He was a burden, obviously being a newborn, but more than that. Ethan could only look upon Peter with shame.

His Cecily…how could he have done this to her memory?

With a baby to look after, actually honoring the little whore's request to raise the boy after Jayadeep's urging, Ethan felt he couldn't remain in India. He had three kids now, and he needed to man up and go raise them—the first two, the ones that were actually his and fully intentional. So, he returned to England, sailing from India on a voyage that took about five months with a very curious and lively baby.

His son's energy despite being a newborn annoyed and angered Ethan.

So much so, that one night, when he got drunk enough, the man stood at the railing of the ship, Peter in his hands held above the rolling waves. In his drunken mind, Ethan would've dropped the sleeping child into the water, if not for the old man.

"What in the name of God are you doing!?"

It was nothing short of a miracle that the startled Frye didn't drop the baby. Instead, he went stumbling backwards, clutching Peter to his chest. When he regained his footing, Ethan glared at the man.

"Sod off before I feed you your teeth."

"Why were you about to throw your son into the ocean?"

"My son," Ethan sneered. "This is my bastard. Slid right out of some whore's hole in a brothel."

"Watch your tongue, man! That is your son regardless of the nature of his birth. He is a gift from God, and you will show the Lord that you are a proper father, lest you be punished-"

Ethan let out a guffaw of laughter. Something of a cardinal rule among the Assassins, and even the Templars, was to keep Precursor information to themselves, and not say things to outside people. But Ethan was drunk and angry.

"How little you know, geezer! The Bible, Quran, Talmud—hogwash! Nothing more than a few ignorant men with objects of power left over by an ancient civilization! A couple of glowy balls and the whole world is stuck in delusion. And here I am with this little bastard that can't even wipe his ass or shit anywhere besides his diaper. Should throw him overboard anyway just to cleanse my honor."

The next thing Ethan knew, something akin to a cannonball collided with the front of his mouth. The impact was so hard that he felt two of his teeth come loose, his mouth filling with blood with the new openings in his gums. He also felt his feet leave him as he was actually knocked flat to his back.

Like the angry drunk he was, Ethan staggered to his feet and spat out his lost teeth and a globule of bloody spit. He drew his sword. "I'm going to kill you for that."

The old man was holding Peter in the crook of his left arm, a sword of his own held in his right hand.

Ethan started the duel with a lunge and not only got his sword knocked from his hand, but also got an elbow to the bottom of his jaw. Such was the way the old man had parried and angled his arm. Ethan went into a rolling dive to retrieve his blade, stood and turned—just in time to block. But the force behind the blow sent him staggering so hard he couldn't keep his balance and he fell.

Once again, he wasted no time in getting to his feet. Ethan attacked with a flurry of jabs and swings, and each one was parried, blocked, or simply avoided. He was getting frustrated, snarling and growling as he failed to kill an old man. He finally let out a roar, totally uncaring if he woke the ship, and gripped his sword with both hands for an overhead slash that he knew could cut a man from his head to his balls if he wasn't wearing armor.

The old man raised his sword, and Ethan's broke against it. There was a spray of sparks from the impact point, the top part of the blade skittering across the deck to go overboard. Ethan's momentum carried him forward into a stumble, and the old man nailed him in the stomach with a solid kick. Ethan found himself on his back for the third time in two minutes.

He had to roll over so he could avoid choking on his vomit and getting it on him. The old man could kick.

When he turned back around, he found a sword leveled at his throat.

"Finish it, then, and save me the trouble of raising that bastard," he hissed.

"We have other plans."

The sword was put away and Ethan was hauled to his feet. He stood hunched, clutching his stomach, the fight kicked out of him with his dinner.

"This is your blood. This is your son. He is your child, and you will raise him as such. Or else you will bear your sin until the end of your days. A sword will come for your right arm and your right eye, and they will be destroyed. Such is the wrath of God Almighty. Amen."

The sleeping Peter was handed over to the hunched Ethan, who took the child. When Ethan looked up, he was forced to stifle a scream when he saw the expression on the old man's face.

So terrified by that face that was against him that Ethan ran all the way back to his cabin.

The next day, the talk of the ship was about the death of the old passenger. A brief funeral was held for the man whose name no one knew, and going through his belongings yielded no identification. The other passengers knew next to nothing about him because he was rarely seen, but he did smile and nod cordially when he was out and about.

Ethan did not attend the funeral, and it had nothing to do with baby Peter, now a four-month-old crawling, curious, biting boy.

The body was tossed overboard, and Ethan honestly wished the man lived, at least until the end of the voyage so that Ethan saw him leave and go on down the dock to the rest of his life, because now it felt like he was being watched. Everywhere Ethan looked, it seemed like there were eyes in the wood, the patterns running through the lumber bearing the circular shapes that followed him everywhere he went.

Ethan had never been so happy to leave a ship before in his life.

But during the trip from the London port where the ship docked to Crawley—and hour by car with good traffic today, a few hours more than one by a combination of train and horse—Ethan started rationalizing things.

He had been drunk. He'd thrown up. That whole thing was just a hallucination that stemmed from his stupor. There was no old man that night. There was no Biblical curse or whatnot. Peter was still just a little bastard, and Ethan was under no obligation to treat him any differently.

He was just a reminder of Ethan's weakness and failure, his betrayal of Cecily, and a mistake.

And that was how he introduced Peter to his older half-siblings.

Ethan was greeted at the door to his sister-in-law's house by the young and bubbly twins, eager and excited to finally meet their father whom they'd only ever heard about and received the odd letter from. They were four when Peter had been conceived, and between the nine months of gestation and the five months of sailing, another year had passed, putting the twins beyond five years now.

With their youthful, androgynous, indistinct childlike features, Jacob and Evie would've been indistinguishable from each other if not for the way they had their hair. Jacob's hair was cut like a boy's, and Evie's was pulled into a girlish style.

And Evie was wearing a play dress as opposed to Jacob's shirt and suspenders.

"Hello, children," Ethan said academically. "Evie. Jacob. I am your father, Ethan."

"Father!" they cried out in joy, running forward to hug his legs with all the love in their little bodies. However, as they hugged those muscular legs, they quickly felt something was off. Looking up into the eyes of their father, they saw no returned love there. Just a raised brow like, Get off of me. Now.

The twins disengaged from Ethan's unwelcoming legs, sharing a quick look between them.

"What's that, Father?" Evie asked, pointing at the bundle in Ethan's arms.

The man growled unhappily. He got down on a knee before the twins, and held the sleeping baby out so they could see him.

"This is Peter. He is a mistake I made with another woman that was not your mother, Cecily. He is a physical reminder that I failed your mother, and that I failed both of you. I do not love or him care for him. And I encourage you do to the same. He is a chore and a burden, not your brother. Do you understand?"

The twins, eager and desperate for their father's attention and approval, seeking to prove themselves worthy of him actually staying with them and spending time with them, both nodded, soaking up these words and committing them to doctrine.

"Good," Ethan nodded. "With that out of the way, we can begin your training."

"Training?" the twins asked.

"Yes, training. It's time you followed in the footsteps of me and your mother. It's time you learned of the Creed, and who your family is."

And with that, the twins bid farewell to their aunt, the woman that had raised them and cared for them and loved them all their short lives, and journeyed with their father to the Assassin bureau. During the coach ride, Peter woke up, and the twins got to experience what it was like to have a baby around.

Peter was loud, constantly making happy noises, squirming and reaching for everything he saw, including his siblings. He wanted to touch them and figure out who they were, but the twins, already enslaved to their father's addled mind, dutifully wanted nothing to do with Peter. It only got worse when the baby fouled the air with his waste, and started crying about it.

Jacob learned that screaming at a crying baby to shut up only made things worse, and landed him on the receiving end of his father's glare for making Peter's cries turn into wails.

Not that Ethan cared about the upset baby. He cared about his aching ears.

Evie didn't care for it either.

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As the twins were trained, it became apparent that they weren't normal. They could run faster and longer than their peers, they could pull themselves through the minor obstacle course with greater ease, and their reflexes were shining. For their age, they were extremely advanced even in melee combat, which wasn't really saying much since they were only five, but still.

It was clear to the trainers of the Croydon Bureau that the twins had the Precursor gene, which brought only a foreboding feeling to the Assassins. Arno Dorian and Cheyenne Cormac were the last recorded ones to have the gene, and they spoke for themselves. Before that was the whole Kenway family—Edward, Haytham, and Connor—along with Aveline and Shay himself, and Jake Swallow and Adéwalé. Go back even further, and you had the Cavaliere and Auditore families, and before them were the legendary brothers Faris and Altaïr. The point was that whenever Assassins or Templars showed up with the Precursor gene, shit went down.

Al Mualim and the Nine. The Borgia family and their allies the Pazzis and the Barbarigos. The West Indies and the Observatory. The Colonies that became America. The French Revolution. And now currently, what history would call the Industrial Revolution.

With the Templars in control of London, the most powerful city in the world, making them the most powerful faction in the world.

Talk was already spreading that the Frye twins may just be the ones to liberate the city…or be the ones to finally wipe out the Brotherhood.

As for little Peter, well…

Even for a growing child, he seemed odd. There were times in which he was totally enraptured in something and to try and take his focus away from whatever he so engrossed in was to end up with a kicking, screaming, biting, scratching, screaming child that was mad enough to fight a bear. And that was not an exaggeration.

During one of Ethan's wilderness exercises with the twins and Peter (the Mentor of the Bureau made the man take his youngest son with him, if only to spare the other Assassins Peter's naturally annoying disposition), the little boy had decided to watch a colony of ants go about their business. The elder Frye's were more than happy to leave him alone and not have them in their hair.

That's when a bear, a juvenile one, not a cub and not an adult, had wondered upon Peter, saw him, growled, then charged. Peter had been most unhappy to have been interrupted in his ant-watching, and being four, was arguably too dumb to understand how dangerous a bear was, and decided to fight it.

Ethan and the twins had come running when they heard the noise, and they tore through the brush to find the little boy on the beast's back, strangling it as it thrashed until it threw him off. The bear proceeded to run for its life after that, and never had any contact with humans again for the rest of its life.

"You picked a fight with a bear!?" Ethan roared, somehow angry that his little son had just survived fisticuffs with a beast.

The four-year-old blinked, confused. "I was watching ants and it ran at me."

"Well…don't watch ants anymore!"

"But, you said it was okay since I wouldn't bothering Jacob and Evie…"

"Don't bring us into this," Jacob sniffed.

"Yeah, leave us out," echoed his twin sister.

Peter frowned.

"Honestly," Ethan barked. "Can't even leave you alone to watch ants. Children! We're going back home."

The twins instantly broke into whines of protest, but their father shushed them.

"Obviously, we cannot leave Peter alone, and we can't bring him with us, so the only thing we can do is go home. Now, let's go. And no further noises."

The twins glowered at Peter, and they both shoulder-checked him on their way past. Ethan came to tower over his son, staring down his nose at him.

"Sorry…"

"I don't care about your sorry. You're mistake."

Peter sniffled at being labeled as such by his father.

Ethan also bumped his son as he brushed past, only his larger mass sent the boy to the ground.

The flipside to Peter's intense focus was his tendency to completely zone out. In class, during one-on-one lectures, in general—you could be talking right to his face and his eyes would glaze over and you'd lose him. That was something Ethan totally detested and looked forward to, because it gave him the excuse he needed to discipline his son.

Such discipline led Peter to have nightmares, and with those nightmares, and his young six-year-old body, came a series of unfortunate incidents during sleep.

"Look at this mess!" Ethan thundered at his already distraught and sobbing son.

He violently gestured at Peter's bed, the covers thrown off to reveal the yellow-stained sheet that provided no obscurity to the stained mattress beneath it.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Peter cried.

"I don't care about your sorry! You have ruined this bed that I bought for you with my own money, and I will not tolerate it! You will wash every bit of this until it's clean as when I bought it, and to make sure you never piss yourself like this again…"

Ethan grabbed his son by the neck and forced his little nose into the cool, sour-smelling patch, dragging his face across the sheets like you did with a dog that peed somewhere in the house.

Peter handwashed his wet bedding with his older siblings tasked with watching over him, and they had nothing nice to say. They were disgusted with Peter for wetting his bed, and annoyed that they had to be here to bear witness to his washing, and see his yellow sheets and blankets. This was Ethan's tactic, you see.

He was intentionally breeding animosity between the children out of his hatred for Peter.

The following night, in his damp and cool sheets, not yet fully dry after spending the day hanging outside in the moist Croydon air, Peter warmed them up again. He woke up in the middle of the night and was horrified to see what he'd done. Hardly keen to have a repeat of yesterday, Peter panicked and went tiptoeing through the hall down to his siblings' room.

He went to Evie first, hoping his eleven-year-old big sister would have more mercy on him than Jacob, but it was not so.

Peter gently shook her awake, and she was not happy about it.

"Whaaat?" she groaned.

"Evie, I need your help. I…I…I…"

Evie opened her eyes enough to see the front of Peter's nightclothes, saw how they were darkened in the front. She could smell it, too. Evie wrinkled her nose and sat up.

"You're disgusting!" she rolled out of bed and started marching at Peter, who backpeddled as if she were going to kill him. She had the face for it. "You're a disgusting, smelly, annoying little troll. No wonder Father says you're a mistake. Now get out of my room and go pee somewhere else."

Evie forced Peter out and shut the door gently enough to not wake up the Bureau, but firm enough that Peter got the message.

Little Peter fought down his sniffles and made the mistake of trying to get his big brother's help. Peter considered it a small positive that Jacob didn't actually say anything to him when he woke him up, but Jacob took the cake for the most physical rebuttal.

When he saw what Peter had done to himself, he rolled out of bed just like Evie had done, but then he had done just like he had seen Father do. Jacob grabbed Peter's arm, dragged him to the door, and threw him into the hallway. Then, unlike Evie, Jacob slammed his door shut.

It was two seconds later that a door further down was thrown open, and an angry, disheveled Ethan came out. He looked right, then left, zeroed in on Peter, and went storming down the halls. He was lucky he wasn't a bear, and that Peter wasn't fixated on the electric lamp.

But that luck would run out in the years to come.

Peter's bedwetting ended a few weeks later when he was able to wake from the nightmares, but not before he endeavored to become a dehydrated insomniac.

Something else odd about Peter was his tendency to…flit. At seemingly random times (when his imagination started running and his brain started to really get working) his hands would start to vibrate and shake, he'd make noises like combat with his mouth, and if he was really getting into it, he'd started bouncing and jumping up and down.

Ethan had lost count of how many times he'd barged in on his son to see him just jumping up and down in place, arms flailing, as if he was having some kind of attack. As disturbing as that was, it only served to give Ethan more justification as to considering Peter a mistake, and the twins were more than happy to keep their distance from their mistake of a brother when they saw for themselves one of Peter's episodes.

Of course, Peter was not blind to the discrimination he received from his father and big brother and sister. He was at a total loss as to why everyone seemingly hated him (even the other Assassins of the Bureau weren't keen on being anywhere near him), and bless his little heart, instead of giving everyone the cold shoulder in return, he dedicated his short life into trying to earn everyone's approval.

It was a pathological drive in Peter's mind. He needed to get people to like him. He had to have done something wrong; he had no idea what he did, but he had to make things right. Where this kind of sentiment come from? Good question, because the chief influences in Peter's life were his abusive father and his abusive siblings.

The rest of the Assassins mostly kept their distance because A) they knew something was up with Peter, and B) he was just really fucking annoying. The things he said just made you want to bang your head into the wall. Peter had this habit of going on and on about the most trivial things, and it grated on the sane person's mind. Peter also couldn't take the hint to shut up and leave most of the time.

The problem was that he was a little sweetheart and it was hard to tell him to shut up because he was so nice.

It was just that you saw him coming, and you had to put up your defenses. Peter was just that kind of person that you couldn't really explain why he annoyed you so much, he just did, and out of the goodness of your heart, you put up with him until you found some way to excuse yourself from his presence. Then your thin smile dropped and you finally relaxed.

The method that Peter determined was the best to make amends for whatever he had done was gifts. When he became aware of the concept of birthdays and Christmas, Peter's mind latched onto the idea and refused to accept any substitute. Gifts were it. They had to be it. If he gave people things, things they wanted, things that were beneficial to them, then things would be set right between Peter and whoever he was gifting.

And so he paid attention to the Assassins, listened in on their conversations, and went way out of his way to procure the things for them that he thought they wanted. For the most part, Peter was right on the money, and whoever he was gifting was blown out of their mind and left speechless. And also for the most part, it worked. Opinions began changing regarding Peter, the view around him shifting.

Yeah, he was annoying, but damn was he trying.

One by one, even up to the Mentor, Peter earned the favor he thought he needed. One by one, Peter made the amends for whatever wrong he'd committed. Except for three.

Peter often found the gifts he found for those specific three in the trash. A testament to how odd his mind was, while saddened, he never got mad, and he was never demoralized. Instead, Peter was driven to find something better, to get something better, to try even harder. He was determined to find the bestest gift ever, because he had done something wrong and he needed to make up for it.

Eventually, it came time for Peter's training to start, something Ethan was opposed to but was overruled by the Mentor.

During training, Ethan almost killed his son by pushing him way too hard, but in something of a defense for the despicable man, it soon became apparent that Peter had two things: one, the Precursor gene just like Jacob and Evie, meaning the gene was coming through Ethan somehow, either through his own mother of his father, and the second was that Peter had a disease of the lungs called asthma.

Now, as of 1860, Peter's eighth year, asthma was about as far from "new" as the planet Pluto was from the Sun. Records of asthma go all the way back to 2600 BC in China, and even the old physician Hippocrates had records of the ailment. Inhalers wouldn't be a thing until the 1940s, but being as old as it was, there were dozens of natural aids to battle asthma, such as herbs and liquids.

For Peter, the Assassins got him some red wine and tobacco.

Scientifically, the wine contained the chemical ephedra, which is a historical treatment for asthma, and the tobacco stimulating coughing. For those that didn't know, asthma is the collection of mucus in the pathways of the lungs, which is where the wheezing and restricted breathing come from. But if you coughed all that mucus up, then there was nothing to block the airways….

Remember, this was the mid-19th century.

So there was Peter Frye, the smoking, drinking asthmatic Assassin with a pathological drive to please everybody. With an abusive father and mean half-siblings.

Speaking of mean half-siblings…

Peter was nine when Jacob devised a despicable plan to finally rid he and Evie of Peter. Hopefully. It was a nonlethal plan, so he wasn't going to die (in theory, but that wouldn't be so bad, either, as far as the twins were concerned (Ethan had fucked his kids up with his hatred of Peter)), but it did involve a whole lot of humiliation.

Evie stared at her brother. "Do you think that'll work?"

"Of course, it will. Now, do you have a dress that'll fit him?"

"I think I do. You know how I hate dresses."

"Just find something. We'll steal one if we have to."

Well, the twins found a dress, and Peter thought they were both pretty weird when they told him to put it on, and he thought they were even weirder when they decided to have a tea party of all things, and then go for a walk around the Bureau, showing him off to the Assassins.

Peter looked rather cute in a dress with his youthful androgyny and mixed features of Indian and English. Evie really knocked it out of the park when she brushed Peter's growing hair and tied it up, and Jacob added his own personal touch be renaming his little brother.

"Introducing Priscilla Frye!" Jacob said to everyone he could find.

The Assassins mostly let out unsure laughs, because the general collective thought was what the hell are these two doing. They paraded the dressed Peter like some kind of prize, as if it was some grand accomplishment to manipulate him into a dress. The whole goal of the twins was lost to the Brotherhood. They couldn't figure out what this was supposed to be.

The reason for that was because Peter had an expression of pure, genuine joy on his face the whole time. It was totally lost on him that Jacob and Evie were trying to publicly shame and humiliate him into leaving them alone. The only thing Peter's mind was locked into was the fact that his siblings were finally, willingly spending time with him.

It was the greatest day of Peter's life so far.

He didn't get it or understand why he had to be wearing a dress to get what he wanted, but if that was it took, then so be it. Suffice to say, Jacob's little plan backfired spectacularly, something Evie had some choice words to say about, because for about a month after the incident, Peter kept running up to them in various dresses, eager, excited, and hoping for something of a repeat. Another tea party, perhaps.

Just whatever to spend some time with his siblings that didn't involve mockery or malice.

Well, eventually, Jacob got so fed up with Peter's determination that he bellowed in his brother's face.

"Will. You. CUT IT OUT! Good God, will you just stop it? Please? Just—just stop. That was never about spending time with you—that was about humiliating you enough that you'd leave us alone! We hate you, don't you get it? You're an annoying mistake! A nuisance! All of us here would be better off if you died!"

"Jacob!" Evie hissed.

That was a bit far, even for her.

Then there was Peter, trying so hard be look strong. "I'm-" his voice broke as he choked. "I'm—I'm—I'm-"

"Stupid?" Jacob supplied. "Idiotic? Weird? Need I continue, or do you have the hint by now?"

Peter turned and ran for the door, but when he reached the threshold, he stopped. He stood there for a few seconds just trying to breathe, then he turned around with a watery smile.

"I don't know what I did, but I'm sorry. I'm going to keep trying to make up for it, I promise. I love you guys."

Peter left.

Jacob and Evie were rattled through the whole core of their beings.

With his asthma, Peter was trained extensively in ranged combat to avoid intense fistfights. Guns, knives, archery, and he even brought back the old art from Constantinople, bombs. As such, Peter's room was a dangerous place, full of sharp and volatile objects that were mostly in safe places, and not just strewn about the place. And it was in this room that everything finally came to a head.

Years of abuse finally boiled over.

It appeared Peter had gotten the Precursor gene and his male gender from his father, a little bit of his looks, and everything else from his whore mother. At fourteen, he hadn't started puberty yet. His balls hadn't dropped, mass hadn't started building on him like it did on other boys his age, leaving him with a cut, wiry frame and solid, sinewy muscle, and the way he liked to wear his black hair wasn't helping the image of masculinity.

What Ethan had cornered Peter in is room for this time was that Peter had thoroughly embarrassed his elder nineteen-year-old brother and sister in a recent accuracy exercise, and the Frye patriarch wasn't having it. On top of that, he also knew very well about Peter's…interest.

That day with Jacob and Evie had battered its way into Peter's psyche, and he had taken to sewing his own dresses because wearing one helped him to recapture the happiness he had felt that day. Peter's life was so devoid of any positive reinforcement or comfort that he had no problem wearing a dress whenever he felt down, like he did whenever he was yelled at by his father.

Which was why he'd gone straight to his room and wrapped himself up in his security blanket, only for Ethan to almost break his door down and get even angrier at seeing his mistake of a son wearing a dress.

As Ethan's spittle covered Peter's face, as the man's words hammered through his ears and echoed around his mind, Peter found himself…getting angry. His fist clenched at his side, growing tighter and tighter until his nails punctured his skin and blood started to leak through his fingers.

"…I should have killed your whore mother and you the day she came crawling to me!" Ethan roared.

And Peter hit him.

Hard.

His balled fist came shooting straight up with textbook form and technique, a perfect uppercut that would've had the best boxers that ever lived applauding at the whole movement. Peter's fist collided squarely with the underside of Ethan's jaw, and the man's teeth clacked together, biting through his tongue, filling his mouth with blood. That Precursor strength coming from the fourteen-year-old's blow sent Ethan stumbling back. He lost his balance, fell, and ending up smacking Peter's table.

A throwing knife was jarred enough to where it fell off the side.

And fell right into Ethan's right eye.

He howled in a way that had Peter jumping out of his skin, and then running for the door when the man got to his feet and screamed in fury. Ethan chased his son with murderous intent, blood spilling out of his eye and down his face. This was the last straw. Ethan was finally going to kill his bastard son, and he didn't care where they were or who was around or about his career.

Peter bolted through the halls, mind racing in panic as he tried to figure out a way to live through this, because he could see in his father's remaining eye that he was going to kill him if he caught him. Peter was feeling guilty and distraught enough for what he'd just done, the last thing he wanted was to actually fight his father.

He'd probably kill the man, in all honesty.

Peter's mind came up with a desperate plan. Elsewhere in the Bureau was a fun little contest of strength going on. The Assassins were taking the old heavy weapons from the days of the Renaissance and doing the thing Ezio and Virgil had done, holding them over their heads and chunking them end over end in tests of power and accuracy. Those Assassins would help, Peter was sure of it.

Peter ran for his life, feeling his asthma kicking in as his breaths became wheezes and it got harder and harder to get air into his lungs. Ethan was hot on his tail and gaining as Peter's body failed him, but it was okay. Peter rounded the corner and burst through the door to the training area that hosted the heavy throwing.

What happened in the following milliseconds was nothing short of miraculous and tragic.

Peter bursting through the door startled everyone inside.

One of the men had been right in the middle of bringing his arms forward to throw when the door slammed open, and he flinched. His flinch made him turn around mid-throw and launch his weapon.

Peter saw the spinning broadsword and dove to the side.

Ethan saw the sword too late.

The heavy metal careened straight into his right shoulder, biting deep into the bone and almost taking his arm off then and there.

The fact that Peter was wearing a dress was totally ignored in favor getting medical attention, and getting to the bottom of why Ethan had a knife in his eye and was chasing after Peter with the intent to kill.

The short version of the investigation was that Ethan had his right arm amputated and the knife removed from his right eye, and was stripped of his rank and titles for his behavior. Peter was sent to London as "punishment," but it was to keep him safe from anything Ethan might try. Jacob and Evie were told of these things, that their father essentially went mad after Peter beat them in the accuracy exercise and that Peter had to run for his life, the chase resulting in Ethan's disfigurement, but they weren't told where Peter was sent on the idea that they might seek revenge for their father.

It was a total, disgraceful mess.

And the three Frye's deserved every bit of it.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

And that's the childhood of Peter Frye. An Indian prostitute for a mother, and a father that tried to kill him, and coached his older half-siblings to bear nothing but animosity and resentment for him.

Peter's a bit weird, with his flitting, focus lapses, thought processes, emotional responses, and the fact that he was so scared and burned by Jacob's little stunt that he got really good at sewing and retreats into a dress when feeling flayed and vulnerable after being attacked.

But as you can see, he strangled a bear when he was four.

And he can make bombs.

Starrick is certainly in a lot of trouble.

College starts back up Wednesday the 12th of '22, so updates will slow down based on homework and work, so please bear with me and don't leave :P.

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