AN: HI GUYS WHAT'S GOIN' ON

I don't even know if this fandom still exists anymore, y'all might have died of old age, it's been 84 years etc etc. But, look, I kept thinking people would forget about this story and you guys would not forget – the messages, the reviews – so in the end I couldn't forget either. Thanks. It was actually a really cool thing to see.

Uh. But it HAS been 4+ years so I honestly have forgotten a lot of my Master Plan beyond what was written down, and I simply don't have the time to dedicate to fanfic of this length anymore. If details don't quite mesh – I hope they do! – or if the writing's a little harried – I hope it's not too obvious! – then I can only apologize and ask for your understanding. I haven't even played the last three or four AC games, it's so sad…I will always, always love these characters, though. And as I get ready to finish this fic (yes, finish! And no, it won't take four years for the next update!) and get back to editing my original novel I can see how much better as a writer I grew over the course of writing in this fandom – from way back when and Battle of Eagles to now.

Also I never realized, never thought about it, never knew what we had, but the AC fandom is so chill! and so easy to browse in! and did I mention it's chill! my latest Thing has been Voltron hahaha can you tell please kill me. Next update soon! Thank you so, so much for your patience and your reviews!

Those We Die For

Darim is the first to see them.

He has been bound to a stone pillar, first by a man in assassin's clothes whose hands trembled as he pulled the ropes, who leaned to whisper in Darim's ear that it has all gone wrong, this coup, Abbas a mere figurehead and Ali either scheming or insane, it's not how it should have gone for these assassins whose complaints were on poor assignments and overlooked titles. The assassin pretends to loop a knot around Darim's wrist, Darim can still slip his whole hand free afterwards, and the man says in a hush that the few assassins left among Ali's mottled forces want to fight for Grandmaster Altair Ibn La'Ahad again, they do, and he will help Darim get free if only the boy will put in a forgiving word with his father—

But the man was clumsy in more than just knot-tying; no sooner has he straightened up than one of Ali's mercenary thugs in brown and green comes 'round the corner and kills him, right there, right then. Darim is left tied so tightly his fingers begin to tingle and the rope bites into the flesh above his knees.

The pillar he's been tied to faces the front of the fortress, not the garden, and so what lies before his burning, tired eyes is the spread of the fortress and all of Masyaf: huddled, hampered Masyaf, holding her breath. He can't see a single villager; the whole town looks deserted. There aren't any novices in the training ring or any guards along the watchtowers. What Brotherhood does Ali think he's ruling? Darim wonders, but knows the answer is Ali doesn't care about the Brotherhood at all.

He wilts in the heat, his mouth painfully dry behind the gag, held up by the ropes and his own pride, what's left of it. To be captured in this way, in front of his father, to ruin the great plan…

Darim thinks of how little his ruler father notices him, or seems to notice him, and he thinks of the expression on his father's face just a few hours ago. And he thinks of the argument that has been going on in front of him ever since, drifting done for a while only to spark up again minutes or a half-hour later, between Abbas (useless wretch he turned out to be, Darim thinks petulantly, can't even keep his own rebellion together) and Ali. Abbas is convinced that either Altair will simply vanish with the Apple or he will return and blast them all to bits, captured son be damned. Abbas is convinced there is nothing Altair wouldn't happily sacrifice for his own victory.

Ali is ignoring him, mostly, which means Abbas is mostly arguing with himself, which is typical. Darim has been told many times by Uncle Malik not to mock his elders, but he's pretty sure Abbas doesn't count.

He's pretty sure he's going to be rescued today, but only pretty sure. Hope mixes with the oil fumes of fear to form a nauseous mixture in his belly. Darim's pretty sure his father will never forgive him, but only pretty sure, and he isn't at all sure which would be worse.

Ali is in front of him, leaning over one of the low walls that line this small stone balcony wrapped around a lesser turret just to the side of the master's great window. He has his eyes fixed on the village's main path.

"…and with all the guards dead – and all the guards will be dead, I'm telling you – there's nothing stopping him from doing whatever he wants. I don't understand this, Ali, I don't understand why you've let him go off."

"You've seen him with the Apple yourself," Ali says without so much as a blink. "He can't manage it as he used to. He'll come back with it weak and be weakened further trying to use it, and then we'll take it. Assuming you can at least manage that, O great assassin."

"I don't trust it," Abbas mutters. "Holding that thing…you could feel the demons in it, controlling it, controlling you…Ali, I say we kill Altair and throw that thing out with the body. It can't be trusted in the Brotherhood. It can't—"

"Oh, it won't be staying in the Brotherhood," Ali says, almost pleasant. "My Order's waited long enough for me to make some sense out of your rabble. Don't worry about that."

"What? What are you saying?"

"You can stay here and play king in the dirt with your inbred fellows, if you wish," Ali says. "You can throw yourself off the cliff with Altair's corpse if you wish. It hardly matters to my Order what someone as small and insignificant as Abbas, puppet king of Masyaf, decides to do."

"Puppet-! Ali, you watch yourself! Friend or no, you watch—"

"Altair creates more fear and respect in this place from his desert hidey-hole than you could in a lifetime. Go back to cowering by your idols, Abbas, and leave the real king-work to real men."

"Traitor," Abbas hisses, going for a dagger, "Templar, I should have known…"

"You should have," agrees Ali, still pleasant. "That Raed fellow tried to tell you. He must have dug up my Knights Templar robes in that cave they found him in. I must have misjudged the reach of the floods. Well, no matter. You won't do anything about it now."

"I won't?! I'll cut you down right now, Templar – cursed enemy—" But he doesn't do anything with that dagger, just stands there, looking helpless and lost. And Ali glances at him to confirm this and smiles.

"Now, now," he says, "we're still friends, aren't we? What do you care what my people do in lands far away from here? The Crusades are over, Grandmaster, and once we have the Apple we won't be concerned any longer with what you desert rats are up to. Stay here, run your Order, fight the Mongols, be a king to your people. It's everything you've ever wanted, hmm?"

"And let you Templars destroy us?"

"I just told you, we won't have anything to do with you from here on out. Not for now, at least. And later…well, when you're dead of a rich old age, why concern yourself with later? Anything could happen – God Himself could come down and scatter the earth. Isn't that right, Grandmaster? So rule your little Order and we'll rule ours, and in your life at least you'll have peace. And Altair rotting on a pike. Why then should we quarrel?"

Abbas only stares at him. "You lied," he says. "You've lied to me all along."

"Apple lies," says Ali. "Truly it'll be better off in my heathen hands, wouldn't you say?"

"Heathen hands…"

"Mnph," Darim says, with disgust. The ersatz-Grandmaster looks at him, with something like hate and humiliation but also dignity crossing the crags of his worn face. His beard has gone almost totally white. It doesn't make him look godly, as Darim has been told the old Grandmaster, Al Mualim, used to look. It just makes him look old.

The hate and pride war with each other on Abbas's features, and then something like real life takes hold and he turns toward Ali, who's gone back to staring out at the village, and the dagger is still in his hand and with real assassin's grace he steps forward—

"Mph!" Darim cries, looking past them both. He can't help himself; his heart leaps and his stomach dives.

"There," says Ali with satisfaction, looking also. Abbas freezes midstep. Darim squints to see it clearer. There, in the path, by the mud where the flags should be: His father.

-i-

Sef wakes up from a restless nap, an uneasy something draped across his shoulders that he can't describe. So he stands, brushes off the sand, leaves the little cave room he's been stashed in and goes to find his mother. Outside the courtyard space is crammed with new faces: assassins from Damascus have made it here after all. "We are loyal to your father," says one when he sees Sef. "Tell us what you would have us do."

Sef is too young to tell anyone anything; he knows this now like he knows his reflection. "My mother will say," he announces, and the assassin nods.

But when Sef finds his mother she is standing in the mouth of a hastily erected storage shed, one grimy hand on her hip, hair uncovered and limp with sand, eyes fixed on some uncertain point. Sef remembers when nothing at all was worse than seeing the looks his mother got when she went around bare-headed. Now what does it matter, a dirty look? After everything? Can a dirty look take them back to Masyaf, restore to them his father and brother? No wonder his mother never cared. Sef feels a little less young just then.

"More assassins," he tells her. "Just in from Damascus. There are so many assassins here now, Mother."

She looks at him. Opens her mouth. Shuts it again. Turns back to the horizon line. And her hand finds the hilt of the long sword strapped to her waist and flexes, open and closed.

-i-

His father's features can't be seen clearly from this far away, but there's no mistaking his robes of office or the cowl pulled over his eyes. Or his stance, the disinterested arrogance of it. All things are as a speck of dust to the man who stands this way – this man may be kind or cruel as he wishes it and none shall have the strength to move him. This man is a killer. This man is a master.

"No guards," Abbas says, with his own petulance. "And where's Malik?"

"Must have fallen," Ali says with a wave of a hand. "We did send twelve very well-armed men with them. Never mind him, Abbas. See, he isn't using the Apple. He knows that if he tried it we'd kill his son before it ever reached this far. Go, get the Piece of Eden."

"And why don't you get it if you're so determined to take it, Templar?"

"Don't argue with me now!"

"You've never truly fought anyone. You hid behind me the whole time in the battle for Masyaf and – and the only one you've killed yourself was half dead and spitting blood! Coward!"

"Stubborn mule," Ali screams, "can't any of you assassins be made to see sense!"

"There's no sense in giving up the high ground," says Abbas, who for all his blindness has been well-trained. "Have him come up here."

"Fine! Get me a messenger!"

"It's all your men up here, so send one…"

Darim watches their argument carry them back along the balcony in search of a mercenary. And then, suddenly, his tongue isn't uselessly pushing at cloth but at his lips and the gag is sodden at his feet. His heart leaps – Malik after all, snuck around from behind and over the whole fortress! No one else could ever manage it! "Do my hands, hurry," he whispers, and in answer his father says, "Hush."

Another jolt of his heart. Twisting his neck to see around the pillar he sees Malik's robes but his father's face.

"But aren't you – down there—"

"Don't waste time with silly questions," his father says, "he can't manage it for long."

"What-?" A shout from below: Darim turns back to see shocking gold bursts, hideous unformed things, swirling out from the pathway, bursting against the nearest buildings in great noisy gusts of wood and stone as the walls and roofs give way, and with that noise comes the horrid chatter of a million insects or a million footsteps tripping on gravel.

"Is that Uncle Malik?" Darim breathes. Then the last of the rope around his arms and waist falls loose and he staggers forward, wincing with the blood flow through numb limbs. His father catches him around the shoulders, more gentle than Darim can ever remember him being.

"Careful," he says. "We're going down, come on."

"Wait, they left your weapons all over here. What about Ali and Abbas? Father, Ali is a Templar, he said it himself just now!"

"Malik can't use the Apple much longer," says his father. "It hurts him far more than it does me – he always was the wiser of us."

Screaming from down below. They both turn to watch as golden swarms blanket what up until a moment ago had been a living human mercenary. Now what little can be seen behind the swarm is definitely none of those things.

Darim shivers. The eagerness of it as it consumes, and the sounds…

"It's horrible," he says. His father nods.

"It was made by – by gods, I suppose, or something similar," says the man he's always known as a staunch atheist. "Whatever they are, they might have meant to help, but they don't realize what they ask of us. We aren't their workers. We're our own."

More screams. The swarms are winding between the buildings now, dragging out men with swords and men with knives, like something biblical. Another bit of this and they'll have taken back Masyaf with one flick of a wrist. But then the golden swarms blink – an exact blink, the whole seething mass gone and back again in a flicker – and the figure dressed in his father's robes staggers backwards, back hitting the wooden fence that blocks off the edge of the hill.

"Hurry," says his father, giving him a little shove, not asking if his arms and legs feel better, and Darim feels the sting of that but maybe he understands it, too. Don't compromise the Brotherhood – don't delay while the ones you love die.

-i-

Abbas and Ali are nearby, somewhere – the chatter and rush of voices in his ears tell him as much – but Malik can hardly spare them a thought. Even with his hand wrapped in yards upon yards of fabric (stolen from a herd of novices rounded up, roundly scolded, stripped of weapons and outer layers and sent to find safety outside Masyaf) he can feel the terrible pressure of the weapon at work in his palm. It's killing all these mercenaries because it wants to show him all it can do, but also it wants to be dropped so it can go back into the hands of the Grandmaster, and the vengeance mixed with joy is streaking up his entire arm.

Another minute, he thinks. He can spare Altair another minute. Time enough to get Darim away from here – it has to be.

Black outlines of people come at him in the haze and he swings his arm at them, trusting the Apple to take care of it because it's the only weapon he can use right now. Another minute, another minute…

But the Apple can't, or doesn't, burn away solid steel. The knife that cuts through finds its mark in Malik's good shoulder. He hollers, out of surprise more than anything, and lets the Piece of Eden drop. It hits the ground hard at his feet and faintly hums. Immediately the figures are gone.

And immediately Abbas is there. Malik twists out of the way of his sword at the absolute last second, kicks him back through sheer adrenalin and scoops the Apple up while he can. Altair had better be gone by now: time's up, Malik'll have to run, but where is Ali in all this, with one the other is always close. Malik kicks at Abbas again for the breathing room and turns to jump off the broken fence and down the hill but Abbas lunges with his free hand, grazes his hand against the Apple for all of one second—

Then, sitting on a loose bit of fence with broke-joint grace: Kadar. Smiling at him. Malik skids to a stop, limbs locking up, and Abbas hits him full across the back with his sword.

The pain is instant and astounding. He falls half on his side in an ungainly crumple, on top of the Apple – damned thing gets its protection to the last. Through the shock of it he tries to move his shoulders but his whole back is on fire, carved like roasted meat. He doesn't think his spine's been severed but it might as well have been, the agony its own paralyzing vice. All the extra useless fabric now tangled around him, catching him up, a shroud… Kadar strolls over and peers down; Malik squints up at his shape, backlit by the sun, tasting his own blood from where he bit through his tongue as he fell.

"Hello," his brother whispers. Malik tries to respond and can only groan.

"Kill him and take it." Ali, somewhere near.

Abbas, somewhere even nearer: "No. No, I won't touch that thing again. It doesn't want me!"

"You superstitious idiot, it's not a person, it's a tool." Ali barks out a furious laugh. "A weapon. Or do you really believe the myths you sell the Masyaf peasants? Mystical apples and Altair raising the dead – men created it, wise men far beyond our own, from a better world, and with it we can bring that world back, back to the truth and the light…you stupid rat! Bring it here or I'll gut you!"

"I can feel it," Abbas says. "Even without touching it I can feel how it – they – hates. And learns! Without even my hand on it now it creates that monster…" Kadar giggles. Abbas shouts, "I won't! I'm an assassin! I fear God! Throw it away, Ali, please, you must throw it away."

"Oh, I must," Ali snarls, and there's the crunch of footsteps and sounds of struggle and Malik is still fighting through cloth and pain and misery to see Kadar's face come clear. Then Kadar steps back and Ali comes forward and looks down at Malik with twisted, scabbed lips. Malik tries to grab a knife, a dagger, a sharp bit of rock, but his shoulder doesn't want to move, the whole side of him dull buzzy chills up and down the bones. Ali has no such trouble with his sword, the tip of which he lets drop to Malik's exposed throat. "Don't bother," he spits. "You always knew you'd die for it."

(Once upon a time he lay with his back to the ground of the training ring and Altair's dull blade to his throat and they looked at each other, boys still, stupid but they thought they knew so much and some things, it seems, they did.)

Malik has the strength to smile. "Die for him," he corrects Ali, who sneers and raises the blade for the strike. Malik could close his eyes but doesn't bother.

And then a shadow, reaching claws, a hawk mid-catch and Ali the rabbit between its talons, or maybe – an eagle –

Altair brings Ali down with the force of his Leap of Faith, Ali who rolls and lurches and squeals just like a rabbit and somehow gets to his feet with one hand clamped to his neck, squirting blood in long hot stripes. Trips over his own feet trying to run, but Altair doesn't run after him, stopping instead to haul Malik up by his arm. Malik's body does not want to do that and screams its opinion very loud indeed but when has Altair ever let him fall back into mere human weakness? Get up! he says, over and over, every day of their lives. Come with me! you won't fall behind!

He staggers up, blood falling freely down his back, blood mixed with dirt in his mouth and on his hand. Not paralyzed, then; only wishing he were so the pain would ease. The courtyard and the houses facing onto it are all in shambles. Kadar is back by the fence, head cocked. Abbas is bruised and frozen across the other side, and on him Altair sets his sights: he waits only long enough to snag Malik's eye with his own, once, and then he's off again and Abbas starts to run but thinks better of it and meets him in the middle with a clash of steel on steel.

What an idiot… Malik thinks, muddled, dazed. He was supposed to get Darim out so that we could regroup…why on earth did he come back…

But fighting from above them, on one of the village's higher paths, alerts him to Altair's eldest, sword in hand, handling a handful of mercenaries (no assassins to be seen anywhere for miles) who must have been far enough away to survive the Apple's reach. His face is a focused mimic of his father, as are his steps, as are his swings. Huh, thinks Malik. I suppose…he was ready to train with a real sword after all.

He turns around, slanted and cramped with pain. Kadar, what looks like Kadar, broken and fused, is still watching him.

"Did you know the Apple can drive people mad?" he, it, asks. "Even when they aren't using it? Have you ever heard of the bleed-through effect? I guess not yet, huh." Smiling, it raises one clawed hand to its warped gash of a mouth and licks a finger with a tongue that should be forked and isn't. "Well, I'm gonna stay. I'm gonna stay with you forever."

"No," says Malik. "You aren't."

"But it's what you dreamed of! All this time! Your dearest brother back again."

Malik says, "My dearest brother died years ago. If he came back he'd be a man, like me. You're a child. Younger than he was when he died, even. You're how I think of him. That's how I know you aren't real."

"You should come with me. You always wanted your family back."

"Sorry. My son is waiting for me at home."

"Home, home! What home? And who's gonna make me go, huh? Your darling Altair is busy. Oh, come this way, Akhi, I'll be with you for evermore. You'll hurt like I hurt, like how brothers should share. What else can you do?"

"Kill you," says Malik, and finds his sword.