Note: This is replacing the previous chapter 17, because there were several parts of it I didn't like, and I couldn't figure out how to keep going from there.

-/-

Connor stares at the stranger—at Desmond's father. And he stares back. Inside Connor's head, the apple is… it's sort of hard to describe, but Connor thinks it's probably laughing. Connor isn't laughing, Connor is horrified to suddenly find himself facing the father of a friend, being told that he's going to kill him. He does not want to kill Desmond's father.

But you will, the apple says, through its horrible laughter—the voice in Connor's head is smug. You will kill him, of your own free will.

Connor has killed many people. Long ago, before the apple turned his life upside down, he killed because he was an Assassin, and there were certain obligations that came with that. And then he had killed under the guidance of the apple, because he—he would have done anything under the apple's control. But this is different. For the moment, at least, Connor is in full control of his own body. And this is a man he has no reason to kill.

The apple informs him, still with that damnable smugness, that he is going to kill this man anyway.

"No," Connor mumbles, shaking his head (fear clutches at his chest, desperation claws right through him). "No, no, no—"

Desmond's father moves suddenly, reaching forward to grasp Connor's by the arm. His grip is strong, and surprisingly reassuring. "None of that, now," he says. "Things aren't as bad yet as they could be."

"Yes they are, you don't know."

"I know enough," he says. "I've been here many years now, and I've seen more men than I care to count pass through these cells. Whatever you've done to offend the king, you'll just have to take my word for it that there's no point to panicking. It's not going to do you any good at all."

Connor stares at him in silence for a moment—it doesn't seem fair, somehow. Here is this man, a prisoner here because of Connor, because of the things Connor had done under the control of the apple, and he's trying to offer comfort. He thinks they're both the same, both prisoners, when in reality…

It strikes Connor suddenly that he is a prisoner. It's just that… his prison is his own body, his own mind, and—and this tiny, filthy cell is the most freedom he has seen in centuries. Maybe the most freedom he will ever see again. The whole thing is just… it's so unbelievably, crushingly sad.

"My name's William Miles," Desmond's father says, and Connor nods.

"I'm Connor," he says.

"Just Connor?"

He shrugs with one shoulder. It doesn't seem to matter much. Who he is, what he wants. It doesn't matter. Suddenly exhausted, Connor sinks to the ground and huddles against the grimy wall. After a moment, William sits as well, leaning against the wall on the other side of the cell. "Why are you here?" he asks, because it seems less dangerous than asking why does the apple want me to kill you? Connor doesn't want to go down that path, he doesn't want to think too hard about the horrible thing he's being asked to do, and all the horrible things he's already done.

"Well," William sighs. "There's a question I wish I knew the answer to. I've been fighting the King and his forces my whole life. Then he captured me, and I thought I was about to die. But he locked me down here instead, and I have no idea why."

"How long have you been here?" Connor asks.

"I don't know," William says, with more sarcasm than Connor thinks the situation really warrants. "I don't exactly have a clock down here."

Connor just stares at him, and in the face of that glare, William sighs and slumps back against the wall a little.

"It's been a while," he admits. "A very long while." Then, seemingly with a great effort, he forces some energy into his hollow voice. "And what about you?" he asks. "How long have you been a prisoner?"

Centuries.

"A while," Connor hedges. "I don't know how long, exactly."

William nods. "Surprisingly easy to lose track," he says. "Isn't it?

Especially when your mind isn't your own.

"I'm supposed to kill you," Connor says, without quite knowing why. William stiffens, just a little, but he doesn't otherwise react. "That's why they brought me down here, but I don't really know why and I don't want to—"

But you will, the apple points out in his head. Because I will give you what you want more than anything else in the world, if you only agree to kill him.

Connor doesn't even know what he wants more than anything else in the world—not until the apple starts laughing. Not cruelly, but almost like a fond parent might laugh at a ridiculous child.

I will give you your freedom, the Apple announces. I will remove myself from your mind, along with all memories of everything you've experienced in this world. You will return to your own life, just at the moment you left. It will be like nothing ever happened.

There are no words for how badly Connor wants that. Going home—going back to his life. Or—or forget about going home, just to forget all of this would be such a relief. It's tempting. For just a second, Connor genuinely considers doing what the apple wants. Killing a man he's only just met, just to get away.

Then he pulls himself back from the edge. He's not going to kill—he's not. He's just not.

Not today, the apple says, with a terribly smug tone. But someday.

"Why?" Connor demands, and he can feel himself breaking, hear the pain and the terror soaking through the single word. Across from him, William jerks in surprise. "Why are you doing this?"

And suddenly there is pressure on his head, a terrible, choking pressure that feels like pure, concentrated rage. Because you are fighting me, the apple hisses. Because you are no longer useful, and I am ready to throw you away. Either you die here, in this cell, and I pass to a new host, or I have the pleasure of watching you throw away everything you are to save your skin.

Connor doesn't answer this. His breathing is already ragged and uneven, but now he almost stops completely. There's no way out of this. Even if he does what the apple wants, even if it follows through on its promise to take away the memories of what's happened in this world, that taint is never going away, and right now, Connor can't stand the thought of that. He can't do what the apple wants, but he can't think of anything else to try. There's no way out of this.

So… this is where he is going to die.

-/-

It takes Desmond five days of almost nonstop animus use to get through the relevant parts of Altair's memories—Haytham is only vaguely aware of the progress he's making, but he knows right away when Desmond is done. The younger man has been lying still as a statue on the animus for thirteen hours straight when all of a sudden he sits up, tense and obviously angry. He growls out a curse in what might be Arabic, then storms away. He stops in front of the window, where he grips the ledge so tightly it makes his arms shake. Haytham can still hear him cursing, at length and with great creativity, under his breath.

"What's wrong?" Shaun asks. He's on the other end of the room, buried in a pile of books, but he looks up when Desmond storms away.

"No good," Rebecca explains. "The Apple that Altair had ended up in Masyaf."

"Which fell in an earthquake hundreds of years ago," Shaun finishes for her. "Right. Great. Perfect."

"It was all a complete waste of time," Desmond says, without turning back to look at any of them. "All that work, and no apple. Nothing we can use against Connor, or the apple, or whatever the fuck…"

He trails off, anger and frustration draining out of his voice. His shoulders slump, and Haytham thinks for a moment that he looks older than he should.

"So we try again," Vidic says impatiently, and with very little sympathy. "You have more ancestors that have interacted with pieces of Eden."

"And what if that turns out to be useless as well?" Desmond demands.

Vidic opens his mouth to say something—Haytham just assumes, on principal, that it's going to be unhelpful at the very least, and probably both rude and insulting as well. Luckily for everyone, Lucy puts a hand on his arm then and manages to stop him before he can get a word out.

"I'll go talk to Desmond," she says, in an undertone. Desmond's ears twitch back toward them, so Haytham assumes that even though she's whispering, he can still hear every word she's saying. But he doesn't move or protest, and when Lucy heads toward him, he actually looks a little calmer. And Haytham doesn't have that same super-wolf hearing, so he has no idea what the two of them say to one another. It looks private, anyway. None of his business.

He drifts sideways, around the edge of the room, to where a Ratonhnhaké:ton the wolf is curled on a warm patch of floor near a clattering, clanking radiator. The other Haytham, the cursed one, is curled up nearby—he's a squirrel for the moment. He usually is. Occasionally, when the situation calls for it, he'll make the change to eagle. Haytham has never seen him use that… other shape. The monster. And Haytham had been there, in his other self's head, the last time he had to take that shape. It's been centuries since then, and the nightmares still haven't stopped completely. He sits down cross legged on the floor nearby, and tries to calm himself. It's really no use, though. Here they are, a tiny scion of Templars and Assassins, desperately trying to save the world before they're hunted down and killed.

Ratonhnhaké:ton lifts his head a little and looks at Haytham, and Haytham smiles, just a little, as he stretches a hand out to rub Ratonhnhaké:ton behind the ears. "Do you like it here?" he asks. There's no one in the room that can hear him but these two and Desmond, but Haytham keeps his voice low anyway, out of deference to the serious, deflated mood in the room. "I suppose there's not much to like, is there? Hasn't been much to like in a very long time."

He sighs as Ratonhnhaké:ton shifts ever so slightly closer, and looks up at him with as much worry as a wolf can show.

"Are you guys all friends, now?"

Haytham looks up at Desmond, who has apparently finished with Lucy. He still looks rather more hopeless than Haytham would have liked to see, but there's a sort of hard determination in the set of his shoulders.

"That's what happens when you've been through what we've been through," Haytham says. "I don't… belong, on this world. There's no one else that can even see me. I need them for that. And I think—it's hard to tell, but it's always seemed that they can be a little more like themselves when we're together. A little less entirely animal. It's a strange situation, but it does breed an odd kind of friendship."

"I suppose it would have to," Desmond says. There's a little pause before he adds, "I guess that's good."

"It is," Haytham confirms. But he doesn't much want to talk about himself, so he changes the subject as quickly as he can. "And what of you?" he asks. "Are you going back in the animus?"

"Yea," Desmond says. "Lucy's pointed out that there's not much choice. We don't have any other way of tracking down an apple."

Haytham nods. "I'm sorry you have to go through all this," he says. "It's not fair on you."

Desmond had already been frowning, but now the frown pushes down deeper, into an expression that is almost a scowl. "Nothing about this world is fair on anyone," he says.

"No it isn't," Haytham agrees.

"Was your world better than this?" he asks.

"The place I came from was certainly different," Haytham says, after considering the question. "It had its elements of unfairness, but nothing like Washington."

"Like Connor," Desmond reminds him. "Connor's King. Washington's nothing but a pawn."

"Then so is Connor," Haytham says. "I don't… I will not believe that the things that have happened in this country have happened because of Connor. He is simply not that kind of person. I may not have liked him much, when we were in our own world, living our own lives, but I… knew him. And I knew he would not have done this."

"Do you think it's too late to save him?" Desmond asks.

"He's been under the apple's control for a very long time," Haytham says. "But I hope… maybe it's not too late. Stranger things have happened in this world, certainly."

"And would you want that?" Desmond asks. "You always seemed to hate him so much, when I was with you in the animus."

"I did," Haytham assures Desmond. "But things change. And I have changed—I have been on my own in this world for a very long time. That's a lot of time to think, and a lot of time to… well, I've been with these two for nearly all of that time." Haytham's not sure he would ever admit it out loud, but there's something about the way Ratonhnhaké:ton and his other self stick so closely together. Watching them together makes something uncomfortable start burning inside him. It had taken him an uncomfortably long time to realize that it's loneliness. Because, yes. Even before everything in his life went wrong, before he knew it was possible for people to turn into animals, before he'd traveled to another world, even when his life was more or less normal, back then he'd been alone. And he hadn't minded.

But it's very different to be in a world where no one human can even see him (no one until Desmond, anyway). And Haytham… misses Connor. Part of it is just a longing for someone—anyone—from his own world. But that not—he just…

They have survived centuries in a world that is not their own. If they somehow make it through all this, Haytham would very much like to apologize.

"Haytham?" Desmond says. "You okay?"

He shakes himself out of his bleak thoughts, and back into the conversation. "Desmond," he says.

"Yea?"

"What do you intend to do with this apple, if you find it?"

"Uh—" He makes a face, half confusion, half plain unhappiness. "Stop Connor, somehow. Make sure there's no King after him."

"But you don't know exactly how another apple would be able to do all that," Haytham says. "Correct?"

"I guess so," Desmond says. "I'm kind of hoping it'll make more sense if—when we actually get the thing."

"If possible," Haytham says. "When you get the apple, and when you face Connor… do try not to kill him."

Desmond blinks. His face is all confusion now, but he nods anyway. "Sure," he says. "I'll do whatever I can."

"That's all I ask," Haytham says, and then Desmond is called back to the animus by Rebecca, and that's all the time they have for conversation.