Connor watches Ratonhnhaké:ton the entire time he's out from the tea. He has half an eye on the woods around them, just in case someone happens to find them, but the forest is absolutely still and silent. It's almost eerie, the way even animals seem to know to avoid the area.

Ratonhnhaké:ton does not move for several minutes, and then his face twists up a little and he growls at something he must be seeing in his dream. One hand moves up to his face like he's trying to brush something away, and Connor reaches out to push Ratonhnhaké:ton's hand away. Ratonhnhaké:ton resists a little, but doesn't wake, and Connor manages to get a look at his face. There are lines like some kind of tattoo burning themselves onto Ratonhnhaké:ton's face, dark and somehow menacing.

Connor frowns as he watches. He really wishes their mother had told them why the tea is supposed to be so dangerous. At least then he would know what to watch for. But all she'd said was you are the son of a man of violence, and Connor has no idea what that means in practical terms.

Ratonhnhaké:ton sits up abruptly, body tense, so that his head cracks against Connor's and they both fall back. "S-sorry," Ratonhnhaké:ton gasps, through his panting. He is already on his feet, though, pacing like he is too full of energy to keep still. Connor watches him bring his hands up to rest on top of his head, then back down to his side. His whole attitude is one of restless, undirected energy, an unexpected contrast to Connor as he sits still on the ground with his forehead aching where Ratonhnhaké:ton had hit him.

Slowly, he stands, wary of the sudden sharpness in the way his double moves. "Are you alright?"

"I have never felt energy like this," Ratonhnhaké:ton says, and his eyes almost seem to glow for a moment as he turns back to Connor. Words tumble out of him, more words than Connor himself usually manages at one time. "You would not believe what I saw and felt while I was there."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Wherever my mind went when I drank the tea. And Connor, I saw- I saw-"

"What?"

"This tea is my destiny, I know it now. I was always supposed to do this, I know it! I saw my descendant, while I was there. He- I'll have to tell you everything he said later, some of it was…" he lets out a deep sigh, half pulls away and then turns back. "It was a long story, but no more crazy than anything else that happens."

Maybe not in this world. Connor bites his tongue and only thinks of how comfortably normal his own world is, and how much he suddenly wants to be back there. "What did you mean?" he asks instead. "About destiny?"

"He had-" Ratonhnhaké:ton touches the side of his head. "Ears like a wolf, like my spirit animal."

"You can pass things like that on?" Connor demands, a thread of horror creeping into his voice.

Ratonhnhaké:ton seems to notice, because he settles a little. "You don't approve," he says. "It worked, but you still don't think it's a good idea."

"It changed you."

"It was supposed to!"

And that is when the soldiers appear from nowhere to surround them. Or not nowhere, but the two of them have been so busy arguing with one another that neither of them had heard- and now they are surrounded.

Connor tenses, wishing he could help. But he is Ratonhnhaké:ton's own personal ghost in this world, and cannot help. Which… well, he's not quite sure if Ratonhnhaké:ton can fight the way he needs to, to take out the half dozen guards that have already surrounded them. Ratonhnhaké:ton is not an assassin. He can fight, but in Connor's opinion his technique is sloppy and untrained, more suited for hunting animals than people.

(Quite frankly, Connor is going to confiscate his hidden blades if Ratonhnhaké:ton keeps using them the way he has, it's like watching a child play with a sword)

And that's when Ratonhnhaké:ton simply vanishes. Connor almost has a heart attack right then and there, because people don't just disappear for no reason. There is a beat of absolute silence while the bluecoats all kind of look at each other, and Connor can just about understand where they're coming from. He doesn't know what's going on either.

The soldiers shuffle their feet. One of them clears his throat, and says "Well-"

And then as everyone turns to look at him, the wolf comes flying out of nowhere, jumping up at the soldier. But it isn't a wolf anymore, it's Ratonhnhaké:ton, and Connor blinks in numb confusion. He can't quite tell when the transition happened, and he wonders if that's because there is something about the wolf in Ratonhnhaké:ton still.

Either way, in less than thirty seconds, the soldiers all lie dead on the ground, torn apart and… and it's just a mess. Connor stares at Ratonhnhaké:ton, and reminds himself that he is not afraid.

-/-

For a long time after that, Ratonhnhaké:ton feels an uncomfortable distance growing between himself and Connor. But at least there is no time to talk about it immediately. They are swept unhappily from disaster to disaster, beginning with the death of the last few people from Ratonhnhaké:ton's village. He and Connor simply return to where they had left the others, and find them… dead. Dying, in the case of the clan mother. Ratonhnhaké:ton only has time to hold her hand, hear her dying words telling him to find Putnam; find Arnold. Names that mean nothing to Ratonhnhaké:ton, especially in light of the senseless death all around him. It is barely any time at all before he and Connor are the only ones left alive in the cave, standing alone in the silence.

"No."

The word is Ratonhnhaké:ton's, whispered from lips that feel too numb to even move. He wants to say something else, to say more for these people, this last reminder of him. Connor hesitatingly puts a hand on Ratonhnhaké:ton's shoulder, but Ratonhnhaké:ton shoves him away. "No!" he says again, and this time the word is angry and scared, loud in the silence here among the dead.

"I know it hurts," Connor says. "It hurts me too. But-"

Ratonhnhaké:ton snarls at him, doesn't listen as he stalks away. He doesn't go far, but even the other side of the cave is enough space for now. Because he doesn't really want to be alone. He just doesn't want to be comforted, doesn't want to be told that everything will be okay when it won't be. When he needs this anger to keep him moving forward and toward revenge.

Toward Washington.

"I'm going to kill him," Ratonhnhaké:ton snarls. "I'm going to-" but he doesn't have the words for what he's going to do to the king when he finds him, nothing but the idea of blood painting itself across his mind's eye. He does not realize that Connor is calling his name until he feels the slap.

It stings, but not much, and at least brings his mind back to the real world. He does not apologize for dropping out of the world for a minute, but Connor looks at him like he understands anyway.

"Washington will die," Connor says at last. "Because of what he has done to the people here, and because of what he has done to so many others. Don't worry about that."

"Do you know where to find him?" Ratonhnhaké:ton asks. "In your world you know him, don't you?"

"He is not so cruel at home," Connor says, a touch defensively. "Not kind, exactly. We have our differences. But nothing like this. As for where to find him…" he looks down at the corpses littering the ground around them. "She mentioned Putnam and Arnold. I imagine they are working with the king in this world."

"And you know where to find them?"

Connor shrugs. "We will find out."

"Not good enough!"

Connor sighs, and turns his back on the cave. "We should leave this place," he says. "It upsets you."

"And it doesn't upset you?" Ratonhnhaké:ton demands. "These are our people, but I am the only one upset?"

Connor shakes his head. "I am sad," he says, slow and soft. "The world is a darker place with them gone."

"If you are not angry," Ratonhnhaké:ton says. "I will be angry for the both of us."

Connor sighs. "That's what worries me."

They walk together for a while in silence after that. For a while, the burn of Ratonhnhaké:ton's anger is enough to keep him warm against the snow and the chill, but even that cannot sustain him for long. Eventually he starts to shiver, and then gradually he realizes that his shivering is from more than the cold, and that there are tears on his face, and that he is crying. So much pain, and suffering, all pointless. Except that for something without a point, it somehow manages to feel an awful lot like being stabbed.

He is not expecting comfort, and is certainly not expecting to feel Connor's arms around his shoulders. Ratonhnhaké:ton does not like to touch, and so he knows that Connor must not like it either. But just this once, he accepts what is offered, and cries into Connor's shoulder for far too long.

-/-

Connor is the one that suggests they stop for the night, but it is not so that they can find somewhere warm to sleep, out of the snow, as he tells Ratonhnhaké:ton. No, he had imagined he saw something as they passed through a small town on the way to the fort where they now know Benedict Arnold is hiding.

And Connor wants to know what it was that he saw, because it had seemed…

Impossible.

There are many people squatting in the abandoned places of the frontier now, and not even Ratonhnhaké:ton raises eyebrows anymore. Connor almost laughs as his double falls asleep, curled up on the floor of a house that would once have been horrified to have someone looking like him in their home. Apparently it only takes the end of civilization to break down the barriers between people.

Connor leaves Ratonhnhaké:ton safely sleeping, and goes to find what it was he had seen on the way in. The… memory, might be the right word. Connor walks toward it on feet that feel like they're made of lead, and stops in front of the flickering, wavering image that hangs like a sheet in the air. It is Connor's memory. Why is it Connor's memory? This isn't his world. But there he is, in the image, leaning forward to stab Lee.

Why this memory? Why here? Why now? Connor had spent so many years tracking him down, and in the end, killing him had changed nothing. It's just another death at his hands that Connor has to struggle with at night, he doesn't need the reminder.

He turns away from the sight of himself and Lee, and goes back to Ratonhnhaké:ton.

In the morning, they start walking again. Once or twice, Connor sees more of the odd not-memories hanging in the air around then, and Ratonhnhaké:ton apparently sees them too, judging by the tentative glances he sends Connor's way. "Are those-"

"Not some of my proudest memories," Connor says. They have already passed the memory of the day that he argued with his father and Washington, and the day he left his village to train as an assassin under Achilles. Connor wonders, if that last scene had turned out differently and he had stayed, if he would be more like Ratonhnhaké:ton now. Or do the differences between them come from Washington, and the disaster that is this world?

"Your world looks strange," Ratonhnhaké:ton observes.

"I do not think I can take that seriously," Connor says. "Coming from the man that can turn into some kind of invisible wolf."

Ratonhnhaké:ton smiles like this is a compliment, and they keep going. And then after a while, Connor gets bored. It shouldn't be possible for boredom, trapped in another world and hunting down a mad king, in the company of another version of himself that is half wolf by now. But they are really just walking across open fields and forests, with nothing at all to distract them. It's dull.

"Hey," he says.

Ratonhnhaké:ton looks at him curiously.

"I want to teach you how to use father's blades."

Ratonhnhaké:ton looks down at the bracers on his arms. "I have been using them," he points out.

"Yes," Connor says, biting down the urge to say something rude. "But these are not just weapons like any other knives. If you use them correctly, you can take out targets unseen, and you can move more quickly than you would carrying ordinary weapons. It's good when you can't be caught, or when you are facing a lot of enemies at once."

"But I can be invisible," Ratonhnhaké:ton points out. "And I can fight as many as I need to- I'm strong now."

"This is a different kind of strength," Connor says. He hesitates, then says, "Let me tell you about the assassins."

-/-

Desmond thinks the assassins sound different when Connor talks about them. Not like the assassins he used to know before running away from home. The assassins Connor is familiar with sound more like a brotherhood, or a family. A real family, and Desmond can't help his jealousy.

He wishes he could do more than just sit and watch while Connor and Ratonhnhaké:ton travel, Connor teaching Ratonhnhaké:ton as they go. He is jealous of the way they seem to be getting closer, while Desmond is trapped as nothing but an observer. He almost wishes Ratonhnhaké:ton would drink the tea again, just so Desmond could talk to him.

He's lonely. When he's awake… or, out of the animus, anyway… he has no one to talk to but Vidic and Lucy. And while Lucy is the kind of girl Desmond thinks he would have liked talking to, under any kind of normal circumstances, these are very far from normal. And Vidic keeps calling him Mutt, which would have been insulting even if he hadn't also kidnapped Desmond. Meanwhile, Ratonhnhaké:ton at least knows that Desmond is looking at things through his eyes, but when they can't communicate it doesn't help Desmond's loneliness much.

But then, when they are nearly at the fort where Arnold will apparently be found, they are cornered by soldiers again. Connor again waits on the sidelines, obviously frustrated by his own lack of agency, as Ratonhnhaké:ton does the fighting for both of them. Desmond can't help noticing, though, that Ratonhnhaké:ton is at least making an effort to use the techniques Connor has been showing him. He grins a little, or at least pretends to. It's hard to do things like that, without a face of his own to actually smile with.

Ratonhnhaké:ton grunts in pain, falling back several steps as a soldier kicks him in the stomach. The soldiers are laughing at him, stepping over their brothers lying dead on the ground, and that is when Desmond feels Ratonhnhaké:ton get really desperate. He reaches deep inside himself, searching for something, anything, that will get him out of this mess.

He finds the wolves. Desmond watches for half a startled second, amazed as ghostly wolves come pouring out of Ratonhnhaké:ton and toward the soldiers. And then- before he has a chance to second guess himself, because this is almost certainly not a good idea- Desmond seizes his chance, and follows them. After all, he is partly wolf himself.

It is the strangest feeling, separating from Ratonhnhaké:ton's mind and into an insubstantial version of his own body. His legs shake unsteadily under him, and Desmond would have fallen if Connor hadn't grabbed him by the shoulders to hold him up. They stare at each other, both entirely surprised to find the other standing there. Distantly, Desmond can still hear Lucy and Vidic (mostly Vidic, actually) shouting at him, but he thinks viciously that they shouldn't be upset by all this. They're still going to be able to see what they want, after all.

"Desmond!" Ratonhnhaké:ton says, and Desmond manages to get his body well enough under control to stand on his own. He turns to see the last few soldiers lying dead, and the other wolves Ratonhnhaké:ton had summoned standing around him.

"Ratonhnhaké:ton," Desmond says, in a voice that is barely even audible.

"How did you do that?" Connor demands. His eyes flick from Desmond's face to his ears, and then to Ratonhnhaké:ton.

"I called the wolves," Ratonhnhaké:ton answers, because Desmond is still busy getting over the surprise of being in another century.

"No," Connor says. "I can kind of understand those." He points to the wolves at Ratonhnhaké:ton's feet. "But what is he doing here?"

"He's basically a wolf," Ratonhnhaké:ton argues, and Desmond nods his support.

Again, Connor looks at his ears. "Oh. Well, sure. Why not, at this point?"

The wolves start to flicker and fade out around Ratonhnhaké:ton's feet, and Desmond feels something pulling at his own mind, trying to draw him back as well. He fights it, and after a while the pressure eases. He would rather stand on his own two feet than inside anyone else's.

"So does this mean you'll be coming with us as well?" Ratonhnhaké:ton asks.

"I think so," Desmond tells him.

"Then let's get going," Connor says, and onward they go.

Back in the real world, Vidic curses with more creativity than Desmond would have given him credit for. Then he sighs, long and loud, and grunts, "Fine. As long as you keep going."