It is a day Altair knows he will never forget- the death of his mentor, the strange golden ball, laying eyes on the other for the first time- but it is a day he wants, more than anything, to just end. In the morning, there will be decisions to make, the fate of the entire order to decide. But for now, he will be happy if he can only sleep.
He keeps the apple with him. He doesn't want anything to do with it, but he wants even less to wake up and find it gone. So when he lies down to sleep, he does so with the apple only an arm's reach away. Just in case.
But he doesn't sleep. Instead, he wakes up. One moment he's in his own room in Masyaf, preparing for sleep, and the next he's dragging his mind out of what feels like a midnight sleep- the kind of sleep that comes in the middle of the night, when the mind is buried most deeply in dreams. He feels sluggish, like he's actually had the sleep he doesn't remember having, and awareness comes slowly as he lies there in bed, wondering what's going on and- again- if he's going crazy.
Awareness comes more slowly than it usually does in the morning. The first thing he notices is- the other is back. And the second thing he notices is- no, he isn't. He can feel the familiar presence, as comforting now as it was alarming at first. But something is different. Before, he always felt the other in his mind, watching but doing no more. Now he feels the other all around him, and he knows suddenly that somehow he is the one in the other's mind, and not the other way around. That when his eyes open, they won't be his eyes.
The other doesn't seem to want to be awake. Altair can feel him drifting back to sleep, and he panics, the first time in decades. He doesn't know what will happen to him if the other falls asleep while he's inside his mind, and he doesn't want to find out. He lashes out with that panic, trying to make himself felt, and is rewarded as the other suddenly jerks awake, eyes snapping open, breathing hard. Altair can feel his chest heaving with the echo of his own fear, and makes an effort to calm himself.
"Shit. Can't even sleep now," the other says in a language Altair doesn't know. He sits up in bed and puts his head in his hands, collecting himself. Altair tries to do the same- it's different being on this side. He feels powerless. He has no control over the body, no choice but to go along with whatever the other decides to do. But his mind feels more open- he can feel the others emotions swirling around, stronger and more complex than they've ever been before. And more than that- now that he's on the inside, he can hear the other's thoughts as well, mostly annoyance at being woken up. Altair doesn't understand exactly what the other is thinking. Like most people, the other thinks in the same language he speaks in, and Altair can pick up no more than the most basic ideas, and the odd bit of Arabic floating past.
He wonders how many of his own thoughts the other has heard.
The other stands, and Altair feels a wave of sudden dizziness. He's not the one standing up, he knows he's not. But he feels the muscles working, legs moving, balance shifting. He knows he's not the one moving, he's just going along for the ride, but it would be so easy to lose track.
The room is dark, and without thinking Altair tries to sharpen his vision, reaching for the sense he's relied on his whole life, to see the truth where others see nothing. The sixth sense is second nature to him, as easy as breathing, but when he reaches for it in the other's mind, he finds it unused and unacknowledged.
Still there, though, and a moment later the other stops dead in his tracks as the room is bathed in the surreal vision. Altair flinches away- he hadn't meant to go poking around through the other's mind, it was just habit. And why had it worked, anyway, when he clearly has no control over anything else the other did?
"What is..?" Altair feels the other swallow down a wave of revulsion as he cautiously approached the closest wall. Altair was still looking around the room- nothing there looks at all familiar- when the other reaches out a hand to touch something. By the confusion he can still feel from the other, Altair realizes the writings on the wall aren't supposed to be there at all. In a world full of strangeness, this is the strangest of all. And, now that he- or rather, the other- is looking at them more closely, he can see them for what they are.
Blood.