That night that I lay awake, my head dizzy from such a dramatic day.

There was something odd about Haytham, I thought, which must have made me help him earlier. I am usually thought by others as a woman with a core hard as steel, and a mask of cold stone in front of my actual warm personality. No matter how firm or harsh I had been with Haytham, no matter how intimidating I tried to be, no matter how much my words grilled and abused him...he reacted in the same, unmoved tone of voice. It drove me wild that I had to hide the amount of effort I was putting into this man to show him that I was boss. Just the way he spoke and the way he treated me...it was peeling away the stone-hard cast around my true self.

I knew that I couldn't suppress my efforts any longer as he took on the men in the tavern. When he was injured, I involuntarily cried out for him. Why? What had made me so concerned? How was he any different to all the other Englishmen? I didn't know.

It also came as a pleasant surprise when I saw him again, a few days later.

Although I hadn't expected him to come riding through the snow one afternoon. I happened to be out hunting. The afternoon sun filtering warmly through the clouds above was a clear sign that spring was on its way: the best time to hunt. However, the heat was not enough that the snow turned to slushy ice and disappeared. It was still there; still causing difficulty.

I had set a trap beneath an old pine. I lingered above on one of its branches, staring down like a vulture waiting for its prey to die. It must have been then when I heard the light padding noise of many hooves.

A deer, perhaps?

My ears pricked up like an alert fox. The light "crunch, crunch crunch, crunch crunch" came ever-closer. If this was indeed a deer, I could feed half the clan! How impressed the Clan Mother would be. The children would not go to sleep hungry for at least a whole day.

There it was. A small furry doe pranced up towards the tree, her staccato footsteps edging closer to me. She shook her fuzzy pelt to free it of a dusting of snow.

Yes! Silently, I reached into the quiver on my back, wrenched an arrow out of it and clicked it into place. I closed one eye and aimed. PING! The creature had paused to eat some emerging grass as the arrow flew past. It collapsed onto the snow-covered ground before it knew what had hit it. I grinned in triumph. Of course catching it was not hard; it was pleasing that I had caught the first.

I was about to dive down from the branch I crouched on and collect my prize when another set of hooves clip-clopping sounded not far from the left. A horseman?

I expected it to be one of the Bulldog's men. I snapped to attention and jerked another arrow into the bow and remained still as a statue. I listened so intently to the approaching clip-clop and rattle of stirrups that my ears may well have been sticking out.

That is strange. The horsemen never come through here. What are they doing? How many are there? What are they looking for? The questions kept forming themselves as curiosity (and slight concern) drifted through my mind.

Now the horseman was close enough for me to see him. There was only one...but it was not at all what I'd expected. I squinted in surprise. My mouth opened slightly. Was it really...?

"Haytham," I breathed.

It really was him. He sat pompously on his black horse; his three-pointed hat tipped slightly to show his black hair swept back into a tight ponytail. His blue-grey cloak rose and fell against the horse's flanks.

What is he doing here? For how long has he travelled? Should I make my presence known, or would that startle him? Either way I crouched frozen as the doe on the ground.

Haytham halted his horse. He dismounted right in front of the tree. Had he seen me? No. He kept his eyes low on the ground. That was when everything became clear: he was marvelling at the fresh-kill below me. I tensed slightly as he approached it, bending down to inspect the arrow sticking out of it His face creased in confusion. I could tell he was thinking: Where is the source of the arrow? Am I safe here?

His head pivoted in all directions, trying to trace back a source to where the weaponry could've come from. Having established that the mysterious hunter wasn't on the ground, he scanned the trees.

He bounded backwards in surprise. "Ziio!" he gasped. "H-how-"

I grinned ever-so-sweetly back down at him. "Hello again."

"I- what are you doing here?" he blundered.

"Hunting." I smirked, pointing to the wooden bow in my hand. "I may ask you the same question."

He shrugged, a little more together than before. "Out for some fresh air, I suppose."

I snorted. "Hm! Fresh air. I suppose you came looking for deer meat as well? Because I am not sharing."

"I'll have you know," he began, deliberately melodramatically, "that I just happened to be passing it and thought it was curious, to see a dead animal at this time of..."

I wasn't listening. Brushing some snow on the branch into a neat ball, aimed, I hurled it through the air. It collided with his shirt, interrupting his drone.

"Ah!" he started, jumping yet another step back. He flashed a playful smile, brushing the sparkling white dust away. "Now that was not fair." He scooped down and started collecting snow like an excited child. It was an unusual sight: where did the dignified and well-spoken Master Kenway go? Instead, there he stood in the snow, energetically hurling a snowball towards me.

It skimmed the top of my head; he was too high to notice, though.

I took the opportunity to play a joke on him. I gave a fake shriek and allowed my body to fall backwards to the bottom of the tree into the biting snow pile beneath it.

Silence. I stifled my shivers and waited for a reaction.

"Ziio!" Haytham cried out. "Ziio? Are you alright? Ziio?"

I could hear him running around the tree. He was standing above me. I focused very hard on suppressing the shivers and staying still. My braids lay askew in the snow; my body locked in a stone-still position.

"Oh, god, no..." he trembled. "ZIIO!"

I could hear the raw terror in his voice. He put a hand across my forehead, another across my chest. I couldn't help but feel my heart flutter a little when his hand touched my neck, feeling desperately for a pulse.

Whoops, he's taken this too seriously. Should I end the joke?

"Scared you, did I?" I said, without even opening my eyes.

He yelled out in shock. "Oh my god!" he exclaimed between desperate gasps for air. "ZIIO! DON'T...YOU EVER... DO THAT... TO ME...AGAIN!"

Despite the sheer rage, fright and trauma in his voice, the words bounced around my ears.

Don't you ever do that to me again. To me again. To me. Me. I opened my eyes. The man standing above me...no, almost crouching directly above me had throbbed my heart again. His eyes convex in anger; his breath shuddery and frantic; his chin trembling. He was terrified about me. I could hear it in his voice. Was he...was he feeling for me?

I immediately adopted an honest smile. "I am sorry," I breathed, "I didn't think you'd be so worried."

"Worried?" he snapped. "Worried? I thought you were...d-dead!"

"I have said sorry," I snickered, like a carefree adolescent being told off. "What more do I owe you?"

His face turned playful again after a few moments of silence. That was when he did the unexpected: he grabbed a lump of snow and smothered it in my face. "That. That is what you owe me."

"Hey!" I laughed, staggering to my feet.

It was an unusual meeting; I will admit that. We spent the afternoon hurling snowballs at each other, laughing like little children. Afterwards, ruby-faced and somewhat puffed, we returned to the tree and sat up against it side by side, looking at the ground and sharing stories and memories with one another.

"So...he ended up having to kill the bastard. Silas deserved exactly what he got." Haytham finished one of his stories, tossing a ball of snow up and down.

I couldn't help but steal a glance at him as he lay up against the tree, cloak and suit spread out and ponytail fallen out. He stared blankly into the melting snow beneath us. It was a wonderful sight.

"I must have...forgotten to say something important to you...after freeing my people that day." My stomach flipped as I said it. Would I have the strength to say it?

"What's that?"

"Th-thank you." I diverted my eyes immediately (his eyes still seemed to bring a burning shame whenever I looked at them).

"Oh," he blushed ever-so-slightly. "Well...in that case, I suppose I owe you an apology."

"Apology? What for?"

"For...for stirring up trouble in the tavern."

"No- I'm sorry I didn't help you fight."

"No- thank YOU for helping me afterwards."

We laughed. Where was this conversation going? I decided to divert it back to where I thought we would need to:

"So...from what those men in the tavern were saying, Braddock's camp isn't far from here. What do you propose that we do?"

Haytham, slightly disappointed that our "happy" moment had ended, dropped the ball of snow he tossed absent-mindedly and cleared his throat. "I suggest we find a way to penetrate his forces first. If one of us can get in there, we can eavesdrop some more. If it's Edward we're talking about, we'll need as much information as possible."

I nodded. "And what of his plans? Of my people?"

"All you can do is keep them safe- but aware of the danger. We do not want more fighting involved...yet."

"Very well. When shall we meet?"

He paused. "Tomorrow. Yes, we'll meet outside the camp tomorrow afternoon."

With that, we departed form one another, leaving my heart and spirits lifted higher than they had been in a long time.