A/N: I can say it as many times as I want, but I know that actions speak much louder than words. So instead of apologizing again, I can just say this: I have no loss of motivation nor intention of leaving this whole thing hanging. I feel a little upset considering that one of my friends on this site, deadlysorrow, has lost their motivation on their fanfic Frost Bitten. I personally love working on this, and don't see it as a chore or work. It's fun to make all the connections I can find between the two deep universes of Assassin's Creed and Once Upon a Time, and you can start to see some of them unfold as you read this next chapter. I'm already working on the next chapter, which features a POV change for the first time in a while. I'm not going to make any promises this time though, because that's not fair.

Replying to mfmxxx's review that I seem to be making everyone Templars, I can name several villains that aren't Templars. In fact, Asgeir's worst targets aren't Templars. Ingrid, Rumplestiltskin, and Zelena all have some connection to the Assassins or Templars in their pasts, but none of them are on either side. They're just evil.

Chapter 17: Past- Cassidy

I leaned back in the chair to Matthew's left. He only looked grim as the remaining Nomad Assassins from our branch took their seats. I could only sit by and listen as he spoke. It was our "official" last meeting of the Arendelle Nomads.

"It's confirmed now." He began. "Regina is ready to cast the Dark Curse and bring this war to either a close, or a new level of chaos."

Jason sat across from me, looking more afraid than hopeless. "There's nothing else we can do to prevent this? We could just try and kill her."

"It's too late for that, Jason." I said. "Regina has her army of loyalist Black Knights, and even if she wasn't protected by them, it would take too long for us to get to her before she unleashes the Curse."

"Asgeir is right." Matthew stated. "I've even considered us all using the beans that we still have to move onto the Land Without Magic, but it would still be running from what we should face. We can't allow that. Which is why we need to turn to our final contingency. We have to give up."

Giving up went against every code we stood for. I angrily turned my head and looked back at the older man that I had turned to for so long for leadership. My very own Mentor would rather give up instead of going out fighting.

"Have you lost your goddamn mind?!" I snarled. "We're Assassins! We don't ever give up, no matter the cost."

"You didn't let me finish, Asgeir." He shot back. "We need to give Regina the illusion that she's beaten us, and that means that most of us will just have to accept fate and take this Curse. Except one of us. We will send one of our own to go forward into the Land Without Magic and gather our forces to locate this town that will manifest under the Dark Curse."

"Matthew, it's too great a risk." Zar said. "Not enough Assassins in that world knows of the other realms, and even if they believed this story, who can we send forward? Too many of us have fought longer and harder than even the proudest of our ancestors can say. This may be the endgame."

I clenched my fist against the edge of the table. "I've fought the Templars since I was nine years old. It was my hesitation that had Anna and Elsa killed, and it's going to keep being the death of those I care about until I make sure that every last Templar is a maggot filled sack of rotting flesh, six feet under. If no one will volunteer to go forth and bring reinforcements to take down Regina from the other side, I'll go myself."

"Are you sure, Asgeir?" Matthew asked, wearingly. "If taking the hood didn't mean that there was no turning back, this is. The Dark Curse is as real as it gets. Are you sure that this is what you want?"

I looked over at the board on the other side of the room, portraits of our most fearsome enemies connecting the massive web of yarn all over it. King George was no longer a threat, but Regina's smug expression still lay right in the center of the board. I walked around the table, slowly and silently. I angrily slammed Pick right through the portrait, right in between Regina's eyes.

The Assassins now were in charge of the defense of the castle, as the Curse would be coming in. As soon as I was ready, I would take the portal to our safe house in the Black Hills of North Dakota, USA. They called it the Farm. I had the beans in the pouch on my belt, but I knew that there was still one loose end I had to tie up before leaving this world behind.

While most of the Assassins started going up the walls or climbing the stairs to prepare the defense against Regina, I started heading downwards through the dungeons. When I reached the right part of the dungeon, two guards stopped me in my tracks.

"Sorry, Master Asgeir, but you aren't allowed here. Snow White's orders."

"Fuck your Queen's orders." I snarled back at him. "Let me through or I'll make sure you don't even make it to this new land with your heart still in your goddamned chest."

The guard showed no visual signs of intimidation, but I could read his other parts easy enough. He was scared enough to be threatened so badly by the White Reaper. His friend didn't even try and stop me. He was already cowering in the shadows, against a wall as far as he could get from me.

I trudged down the dank dungeon, rats, years and hay littering the floor like fallout from an aging bomb. I heard that the first Templar king of the Enchanted Forest had built this dungeon with this castle during the Crusades in the Land Without Magic. It was that old, and now one of its smallest cells held the worst devil to ever climb out of the fiery pit.

He smiled his rotten grin up at me as he sat up in his cell.

"Oooh!" He giggled. "The White Rrreaper of Arendelle is now seeking for my help! It's taken him long enough! But I knew that one day he would come crawling to me to beg-"

"Shut up." I commanded, pulling my fist out of my hood.

Rumplestiltskin now cowered and backed down, silenced as he looked up at what my fist held. The Dagger.

"How did you-?" He thought that he had hidden it where no one could find it.

"Do I have to repeat myself?" I snarled, holding it closer to him. He backed away and into the wall at the back of his cell. He glowered at me, and shook his head.

"Excellent." I smirked. "Looks like we're at a crossroads, Rumplestiltskin. Regina's curse is rolling in, and here you sit, snickering and giggling. It's like you've won here."

"But I have won, dearie!"

"Say one more word and I cut your balls off with this thing." Rumplestiltskin once again whimpered as I said my commands. "You'll only speak when you answer my questions."

"It's taken me years to contemplate all this. You were around long before even my ancestor Asgeir the First was alive. I've heard stories from the Assassins that came before me that faced off against you at one point or another. All of them knew that you were the one working on this Dark Curse for centuries, and all of them knew that you had a reason for it. It's not just to condemn the good souls that fought for their freedom from tyrants like Regina and George. There's something bigger here than that. And now you're going to answer this question for me: Why would you do this? Why would you sacrifice so many people just to be sent to another realm where you won't even remember who you are?"

Rumplestiltskin glared up at me from the ground. He got up slowly and walked towards me to the bars of the cell. He grabbed them and leaned in closely towards me. We both looked dead on into each other's eyes.

"My son." He replied.

A son? I took a step back as I tried to contemplate this hard truth. The Imp had a son this whole time? How long ago? I held up the Dagger and demanded Rumplestiltskin tell me everything.

"I wasn't always this monster. And when I was still a man, I had a son. He wished to be free of the Dark One that I had become, and made a deal with the Blue Fairy to use a Magic Bean and travel to a World Without Magic. But it was the last one that the fairies had left, and when my son tried to take me with him, I was too afraid to go with him, and let him go. It's the Blue Fairy's fault he's gone!" He snarled. "This Curse will take me to the Land Without Magic and I will be reunited with my son!"

I had hated that fairy for ruining so many people's lives. People like Grumpy blamed me for things that she did, but it was clipping Tink's wings that became the first of many deeds that showed me that she was far from good as her title suggested. She was out for herself, and only herself.

"She took my son! She took my son and I will get him back."

"Quiet." I ordered.

Rumplestiltskin did as he was told.

"The Blue Fairy's ruined more lives than I can count. Where you screw people over with your deals and tricks, she hurts those who don't appeal to her rules. But I know that in this situation, she's right. She didn't take your son. You drove him away. I know what kind of monster you are Rumplestiltskin. Anna didn't, and look what it got her." I turned my back towards the cell as I said this. "What was his name?"

Rumplestiltskin almost laughed a genuine laugh as he said this, true happiness in his voice. "Bae." He murmured. "His name is Baelfire."

I smirked. The mention of that name seemed to spark the Piece in my hands, and suddenly the answers were flooding my shattered head. And the chips fell where they were meant to. Right where I wanted them. "I understand you now, Rumplestiltskin. It's taken me so long, but I see you differently. Not a freak trying to destroy an entire realm, but a father looking for his son. Life has taken so much from you. You might even say plenty enough, to break most men. I would know, since fate has been ruthless to me. I'm someone that has spent years on a bloody warpath on the hunt for the animal that slaughtered his sisters and two of his brothers. Fate has been cruel to you, Rumplestiltskin. Fate has taken much from you."

I turned "But unfortunately for you, it's still not enough." I continued. "You need to truly know what I know, which is complete loss of hope. You're about to see how pointless this Curse will be. It doesn't matter if this Savior comes to break the Curse. The whole point of you creating this Curse was to find your son, and I am about to make your efforts fruitless. And the best part is, you won't even remember it happening."

Rumplestiltskin flashed his teeth at me. "What can you do to me, Assassin? You can't kill me, because we both know that you don't have the guts to become the new Dark One."

I kept my smirk. "On the contrary. I can kill you, but I am choosing not to. You're immortal and invulnerable to most. But your son is just as mortal as the rest of us. And now I know who he is. Where he is. The Piece has shown me much," I glimpsed at the Dagger in my hand.

In one swift move I pulled a magic bean out of my satchel on my belt. Rumplestiltskin looked at me in horror, and thrashed against the cell bars, screaming his head off.

"BAE! PLEASE DON'T HURT MY BOY, REAPER!" He shrieked. "YOU WANT ME AND YOU CAN HAVE ME, BUT DON'T HURT HIM! HE HAS DONE NOTHING TO YOU! PLEASE PUNISH ME!"

"I'm about to." I replied. "Do you know what it's like to see your own sisters turn against each other at the hands of a freak like you? Sure. You didn't kill them, but you had a hand in it. Don't think I'm stupid enough to not know you and Ingrid were working together. Even if you weren't the one to freeze either one of them, you're just as responsible for Elsa and Anna's deaths as Ingrid."

"BUT SHE'S ALIVE!" Rumplestiltskin bellowed. "QUEEN ELSA IS ALIVE! IF YOU STOP NOW, I WILL TAKE YOU TO HER!"

For a moment there, I thought that I could believe him. But I knew that this was just a desperate attempt to save his kid. One that would prove unsuccessful. I held my fist up towards the ground as I felt the dungeon shake around us. The Curse was here.

"Goodbye, Rumplestiltskin. When this Curse breaks, know that your son died painfully and slowly." I dropped the Bean on the ground at my feet as I tossed the Dagger aside, now useless to me.

The deafening sounds of the rushing wind, and the shaking Earth from both the Curse and the portal were nothing compared to the other sounds. The sounds of the Dark One crying for his own son.

There are those who'd tell me I had broken my vows by this act alone if anyone ever found out about this. Threatening an innocent boy who I had heard of once before. One that had never raised a sword to me. But my actions afterwards proved otherwise. I saved that boy's life before trying to take it myself. The one that held him now would give him a fate far worse than death.

I was told by Matthew to head directly to the Farm as soon as I had left, but the answers I had been given had me take a detour.

I felt the spray of the ocean as I landed hard onto the sandy beach. The sky was dark, with the spittle of bright dots reflecting off the waves of the endless ocean. The dense jungles were right in front of me as I slashed my way through the foliage. My hood brushed against the leaves as I pushed hard through.

When I was certain that I was at the right place, I called for him.

"PAN!" I yelled. "Show yourself!"

"Hello Asgeir,"

I turned angrily to the smirking kid that sat in front of me. His arms were crossed in front of his chest and sat on a rotting log enveloped in moss and other filth. Pan.

"It has been a while, friend." He said.

"Enough talk, Pan. I've come here for what you owe us, and I will take it tonight."

"Yes, yes. The Assassins still believe that I am one of them and you've come here to make me pay the debt."

Pan sat there, smirking as I waited for him. The boy could practically read minds, and yet he wasn't budging.

"Well? Give me what you owe me."

"Oh, well I can't really do that, Asgeir." He responded.

"Yeah?" I asked. "Why the hell not?"

"Because I don't want to." Echoing that familiar sentence.

I started pulling my flintlock off my holster. "Like father, like son." I snarled.

Pan's smile faded slightly as I pulled the hammer back on my flintlock.

"And what would you know about that?" He sneered.

"I know the truth, Malcolm." I shot back. "I know everything that the Assassins either forgot, or refused to tell me. The Pieces of Eden truly give almost all the answers most wish. While I still have most unanswered, the Piece I held only an hour ago revealed to me the truth. About you. I know everything about you. And I know the real reason you hold Baelfire here is not because he's a Lost Boy estranged from his father, but because his father is of your rotten blood."

Pan started to stand up before I pulled the trigger back. He fell back and shouted in pain. As he lay on the ground in pain, blood started to spurt from between his hands, clutching his chest painfully. He looked at his wound, then in horror at me.

"How-?"

I opened my satchel and pulled another out. A flintlock shot made unlike any other. Glowing a deep blue in between my thumb and middle finger.

"Aren't they a beauty?" I asked. "The Precursors left behind blueprints for them that only some Assassins could iterate, embedded in very few Pieces of Eden. I spent years scouring the realms for these instructions and even longer laboring exhaustively to perfect them. The Bullets of Eden. No soul, living, dead, or otherwise is safe from them Anyone can be killed by these bullets. Not one is truly safe from them. And I'm saving several more for some special people." I knelt down beside Pan. "Your son is one of them, Pan. As well as Ingrid. Both of them should have known better than to cross me. When I get the chance, whether it takes twenty-eight years, or two hundred, I will fill both of them up with every Bullet I forged. Then they will know real despair as I rip everything from them."

I grabbed Pan's hands, and forced them off his chest. Then I held one of my thumbs up, and shoved it right into the hole in Pan's chest. Everyone shows fear at one point. Everyone shows pain at even more points. And Pan's bloody murder screams proved that he was knowing more pain than he had ever known.

He started glowing, and his form shifting to that of an older man with a beard. "What do you want?" He managed.

I pulled my thumb out of his wound as he shifted back to his younger self. I stood up. "I want your grandson. I want Baelfire. Killing him will show Rumplestiltskin when he remembers one day that no one escapes me. Everyone who dares to faces me will not survive. I want the kid, and I want him right now."

"Hands up, Assassin!"

I glimpsed sideways to three Lost Boys with their bows all pointed at me. I pulled out my other flintlock and aimed it at Pan.

"You want to save your condemned master then go ahead!" I snapped. "All you have to do is shoot me! But I don't think you want to do that. Because I don't even need two seconds to finish off Pan."

Pan held his hand up. "Bring Baelfire to him." He winced. "Now."

Two of the Lost Boys looked at each other, confused. Then they turned and went back into the foliage.

"It took me a long time to pry Baelfire out of my pathetic son's hands. It took you five minutes." Pan growled.

"Oh, please shut your trap. Otherwise I'll shoot you again. You do what I say now, Pan. Anything beyond that and you will regret it."

The two Lost Boys returned with the boy, his hands and feet bound with frayed rope. I could hear muffled whimpering coming from underneath the sack on his head.

I walked over and reached to pull the bag on his head. One of the boys tried to stop me from doing so.

"It's him." He insisted. "You don't need to check. What, you don't trust us?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You're just as treacherous as your master, kid. I don't trust anyone of you little shites any further than I can throw a horse."

I grabbed the bag over the bound boy's head, and pulled it over slowly. The boy had black hair and dark eyes moist with tears. He looked at first like he was crying with joy, but upon further examination of just who it was looking back at him, his hope snuffed out. He whimpered with silent fear as I lowered the bag back.

"It's him." I replied. "A pleasure doing business with you all."

I grabbed Baelfire and started backing away.

"Always a privilege to bargain with disgraced Assassins. We'll have to do this again sometime."

I dropped another bean to the ground, and felt the ground collapse beneath myself and Baelfire in the familiar swirling green.

I kicked the back of Baelfire's leg and sent him down into the dirt on his knees. I pulled the bag off his head and removed the gag.

"Who are you?" He asked.

"Who am I?" I replied. "Does it really matter when I'm about to reap your soul, kid?"

"At least give me a name. I've come too far to just die like this."

"Then I got some bad news for you, kid. You are going to die like this right here."

I gestured around, the dark woods all around us. We were nowhere near Vancouver, the closest major city from where we stood.

"Take a good look, Baelfire." I said. "This place has a lot of history."

Baelfire looked, but he did not see what I was trying to show him. "I don't get it." He said. "This forest is something special?"

"We're right in the middle of the untamed Interior of British Columbia, Canada." I said. "And this place is a place we Assassins call The Gates. You want to know why we call it that?"

"No."

I ignored him. "Contrary to what the name might suggest, there are no real gates for miles around here. It's more of a nod to the people who the Assassins bring here. Some of the worst criminals and Templar scumbags. This place is one of the easiest places to dump a body, or even leave someone to die out here. Anyone who is so much as left here is dead once the Assassins who took him here leave. There's nothing here for miles except untamed wilderness. You get dropped here in summer, and you'll die of dehydration. You get dropped here in the winter, and you'll die of hypothermia. Take a good long look at the landscape, Baelfire. The mountainous forests and rivers surrounding us. I don't know about you, but I'd like the last thing I ever see to be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. So take it all in before I send you through the gates of the afterlife."

Baelfire looked up at me. "And you think I've done something that makes me deserve death?"

"Oh, kid. Not in the slightest. I know you didn't do anything wrong. But your father is another story."

"Wait, what?"

"Your demon father has condemned countless lives for his own amusement. My own family is dead because of him, among other people responsible. So I think it's just about time that I get even with him, and show him what it feels like to lose someone he cares about. In fact, he thinks you're dead already."

Baelfire struggled to stand up, but still did it, even after I drew my flintlock on him.

"Back on the ground, kid. You really don't know how to follow instructions." I snarled, pulling the hammer back on my pistol.

"If you think killing me will make you get even with my father, then you are just as deluded as I once was. To think that he cares for me."

I stopped, then held my gun up as I forced Baelfire back down onto the ground. He did care about him. That's why he had Regina send thousands of lives to hell.

"You have two minutes to explain what you mean by that. Any second over that, and you're over too."

"My father doesn't care for me." He said. "All he really cared about was obtaining all the power he could with that Dagger. Whatever he did to you back in our land, it can't be made better by killing me. If he doesn't care for me, then he won't really be hurt by this."

The voice the boy used didn't even sound like a son talking about his father. It was more like a boy describing a monster that killed his father.

"So killing you won't really do me any good, will it?" I asked. "And I'm guessing that you too hate your father."

"I may not hate him as much as you do, sir. But please believe me: We're on the same side. Killing me will bring you nothing. "

I knelt down in front of Baelfire. "Turn around. Now."

He did.

I looked at the gun in my hands. I was so close to taking an innocent's live just for the sake of taking revenge on Rumplestiltskin. But maybe him believing that I killed his son would be enough. Then there was the matter of what to do with the boy. Baelfire was almost as old as his father, but had retained his age due to the magical powers of Neverland. Maybe he could prove to be a valuable asset to me in a different way. The Assassins just faced a devastating loss of troops. We'd need all the help we could get.

I flicked my wrist, my blade extending. I cut the bindings on both his hands and feet, and then helped him up.

"We aren't on the same side, Baelfire." I said. "Not yet, anyways. Name's Asgeir."

The truck hit another pothole as we followed the overgrown road. Baelfire sat in the shotgun seat keeping an eye on our supplies. The compond was just up the road from here. I counted roughly three camouflaged sentry guns as we drove up the road.

"A lot has changed in this world, hasn't it?" Baelfire asked. He was wearing an old Assassin hoodie I found at one of our older outposts on the Canadian border.

I glimpsed at him every five seconds as I spoke, keeping an eye on the dirt road. We had done all we could to avoid towns and cities, considering that the driver of our vehicle was an exiled Assassin and the passenger was a young boy with no id of any kind.

"What year was it when you were last here, Baelfire?" I asked.

"I was in London, 1868. Spent most of the year then."

1868. That was when the Frye twins rose up to become one of the most notorious British Assassins in history. Only a century before me.

While Baelfire had most likely heard of them or their street gang, the Rooks, I decided not to ask. Instead, I told him what I could easily summarize about the last hundred years.

"Most of what the engineers back then invented turned into amazing machines. The carriages became cars, then the telegraph became the telephone, and so on. You might want to start a list and try and catch up. Otherwise, you're never going to fit in this period of history."

"Do you really think it'll be that easy to just become an Assassin? You told me that every one of them start at a young age."

"No, I don't think I worded it like that. I said that most Assassins start where I did, at age 9. But even the legends among us started where you are. Ezio Auditore, and even Connor Kenway were older than you when they took the hood. If you are prepared to learn our ways, follow the Creed, and fight for the freedome that people like your father sought to take from humanity, then you will be an even better Assassin than I ever will."

We took a sharp turn onto an overgrown path off the dirt road. Branches and foliage covered the road so thickly; you wouldn't even know there was a road there unless you were told. Baelfire cranked up the window he had rolled down as one of the branches smacked him. He pulled the lever on the window with the same curiosity as anyone would if they could see such a modern convenience as that. Truth be told, I know Baelfire would have more than likely had some kind of brain meltdown if he had been taken to this world by now. I mean, it's quite a step to go from a carriage that had to be drawn by horse to now cars that have GPS and Wi-Fi connections.

Presently, we reached a small metal gate that stretched across the road. Sort of the kind of gate that barricades a road to prevent drivers from taking their cars onto hiking trails. I got out of the pickup, and walked slowly towards the gate. Knowing just how paranoid the Assassins stationed here were, I wouldn't be surprised that this was more than likely a trap. I reached down for the chain that kept the gate closed, and started pulling. As I pulled it out, I noticed small letter engraved on the links of the chain. The link in my hand right now had a "Q" on it. I examined each link an discovered that they spelled out the words if I lined it up correctly.

"Requiescat In Pace."

"Don't move, shithead."

I held my hands up slowly. I heard a click and that familiar metal circle get pushed into the back of my scalp.

"Stand up slowly, and no sudden movements."

Keeping my hands up, I did as I was told. I started turning my head to look at my attacker, but he grabbed my neck and forced me to look forwards.

"You have any weapons on you?" He asked.

"I got two flintlocks under my hoodie in my waistband, both my hidden blades under my sleeves, and the rest of my weapons are in the back of the truck."

"And where did you get the blades?" He asked. "Stole them right from your targets, Templar?"

I smirked. "You think that just because I know about this place, I'm a Templar? They deal in massive strike teams, not single men stealthly take on the whole of you lot."

The Assassin ignored me and started frisking me down to make sure I wasn't hiding any more weapons.

"Enjoying yourself, friend?" I asked as he patted me down on my lower half.

"Make one more joke and I forget asking questions and just shoot you. I got two more Assassins already searching the truck and your kid. I would be careful if I were you."

Once he finished taking my weapons, he held his gun up to my head.

"How do you know of this place, stranger?"

"I think it's plain obvious. I'm wearing the hoodie, I have the blades, and this." I held my right hand up with my ring finger out, the burn mark still there. "I'm just as much an Assassin as you are."

"This is the Farm. No one comes, and no ones goes. That's the rule. So it sounds to me more likely that you're a decoy or diversion for something that is coming ahead."

He stepped in front of me, now. White hoodie with a black leather jacket over, brown hair and beard. His gun was a revolver that looked quite worn out and grimy. He pushed it into my left eye socket.

"I'm giving you ten seconds to explain exactly what it is that you're doing here. Then you lose an eye."

Angrily, I started as best I could. "I told you that I'm an Assassin as well, you shite. Ask your Mentor, Steven Windsor. He knew I was coming!"

And apparently didn't tell his troops that there would be a visitor coming to the Farm. Idiot.

The Assassin wasn't listening to me. As soon as he counted to ten he point blank shot me right in the eye. I fell backwards onto my knees as the gunshot's bang rattled through my skull. I rubbed where the bullethole should have been then got up.

"Are you done?" I asked.

The Assassin looked horrified as he swung his gun arm around and tried hitting me with it. I grabbed his hand and pried the gun from it.

"Quit waving that thing around, friend. You're gonna hurt yourself.

"Bu-b-b-but I-"

I rolled my eyes and tossed the gun aside. "Bring me Steven Windsor, and this will go by much quicker and easier." I called over to the other Assassin at my truck. The younger one had Baelfire by bladepoint, and the other was searching the truck.

"Right now, pricks. I think your friend here just realized that I'm neither patient, nor one to mess with."

I had only heard whispers about Steven Windsor before. He was Mentor to the American Assassins and spent most of his time at the Farm. Apparently he was also quite secretive, because it was news to every Assassin we met on our way to the compound that there were two new people coming. He was also one of the very few Assassins that was aware of the other realms. This was why I was to meet with him.

Before we entered the main building of the Farm, I pulled Baelfire aside. "We got something we need to decide, Baelfire." I said.

"What is it?" He asked, nervously.

"Your name. No one in this world has been given such a name, so it'll sound like a half assed lie if we were to keep your name. You need a more valid alias when we work with these people."

"Do you have an idea for a name?"

"There was an American Assassin I met here in this world when I was very young. Barely 16, he was gunned down by Templars during an infiltration mission I accompanied him on. His name was Neil Cassidy. Steven will set you up with that name, but I promise you that the sound of that name won't perk up more ears than 'Baelfire'."

"Alright. I like that name."

Two months Neil and I spent training together. Steven brought the Assassin who shot me in the eye forward and made him apologize to me. His name was William Miles, and he was probably the most paranoid Assassin I had ever met. Neil and I must have tripped the sensors when we entered the compound, and he followed the signal with a few of lower ranking Assassins to take us down.

"Where did you find the kid, Asgeir?" Steven asked me after William had left.

Steven knew of Rumplestiltskin, and so I knew I needed to keep Neil's identity a secret to ensure that he could leave behind his past in the Enchanted Forest.

"He was a stable boy for a smaller Templar. He'd put up with enough of the man's abuse and was eager to join up with us if it meant taking down more like him. Can you keep an eye on him?"

"Surely. But what are you doing?"

"It's the Curse. The Evil Queen had banished everyone in the Enchanted Forest to this world. I have no idea where they are, but I heard that it's some kind of magical prison big enough to hold everyone from that realm, and erase all their memories of the other world. I was sent here by Matthew to find the prison and try and break them free of it before this 'Savior' arrives to break the Curse."

"You even have any ideas on where to start?"

"Forget needles in the haystack, Steve." I replied. "This whole world is a barn of haystacks, and there's only one needle. Time to find it."

Or in my mind, find her. Ingrid

"I've tracked birds that left no trails faster than I've found this place, Steven."

"What can you do, Asgeir?" He replied. "Something has to be blocking this town from being found by anything that we have. Maybe we need to look at this from a magical perspective."

"You'd think that after these last two years I would have found something. I don't need magic to find this place. I need a Piece."

Steven leaned forwards in his chair. "You know, I think I got something even better."

He opened one of the cabinets in his desk, and pulled out a pad and paper. He wrote down a series of numbers on it, tore the page off, and then handed it to me. Coordinates perhaps, from how they were written.

"Memorize the numbers here, then burn it." He said. "Can't risk them falling into the wrong hands."

"What are these?"

"Best I can say is that they lead to a possible answer, Asgeir. Only a possible answer."

Before leaving that day, I came to see Neil. He had settled greatly into his role on the Farm as a potential Assassin. He lived in a bunk unit with five other recruits his own age.

"It's not the best living situation I've ever had." He admitted. "But I'll take this any day over Neverland."

"Anything else I should be concerned with, Neil?" I asked.

"I wish you didn't have to keep leaving, Asgeir. What's keeping you from staying here with people you belong with?"

"I want to stay here too, Neil." Thinking "Anna" as I said this. "But my mission still isn't over. I have a lead on a group of Templars I've been tracking for a long time. I'll be back as soon as I can."

The coordinates gave me some hope when I followed up on them, but another dead end. For now. It became a pattern of following every lead, every whisper, anything that I thought could help me find Storybrooke or possibly Ingrid.

Then came the real missions. The people I found at the coordinates had seen what I could do. For a long time. They required my skills for the missions that not even the insane Assassins would dare do. Someone who could take as many bullets as I had and not even take a breath was clearly a valuable asset. Imagine having my curse, and the skills I processed as one of the most deadly Assassins still alive today. I could take down more Abstergo operations than I could even count. They started me small at first. Taking down engineers developing their new computer system, codenamed "Animus". Then it got bigger. I can't go into much details on how big they gotten, but I can say for certainty that Sickles and Hammers would be still flying in Russia without me.

Every year the real players in this war between Assassins and Templars kept sending me on their quests to take down the evil and the corrupt. Then suddenly, the missions stopped. Last I heard of these so-called "Masters", they had me jump to another realm to wipe out the Templar presence completely there. The people there are now as free as they wish to be, and I can be glad that it was my doing that ensured their freedom.

Neil and I met up some time afterwards. He had risen respectively in the Assassins there, and was now coaching the younger recruits.

Early one morning after my return, Neil and I went outside together to oversee the boys and their morning run.

"So is it really all that exciting out in the real world, Asgeir?" He asked as we sat on the picnic table, the boys running laps around the field.

"Soviet Union is now over thanks to me and the Russian brothers."

"Damn, I wish I could- Hey!" Neil interrupted himself and called over to one of the younger boys at the rear of the pack. "Hey! Desmond! Pick it up, man!" He continued. "I wish I could be out there with you."

"Well, you're welcome to go with me. The Farm is a dead end for some of us. We don't belong here off the grid. Abstergo will find and kill us all if we just bury our heads in the sand and hide. It's action that takes down these buggers."

"You think I really got a choice here, brother? You dumped me here because I agreed to take part in this war and now I'm stuck here coaching boys on how to run and hide. Some of them don't even believe Abstergo is hunting us down."

"Which is why I talked with Steven already. He's letting you and me go at it with each other at our backs. I'll show you the ropes of really living out there. We'll take them all down."

For a while, that's exactly what happened. Neil and I were forces to be reckoned with. Although a lot of what we did became petty crimes to what the Templars saw, Neil had to start somewhere. There were times where we split off to outrun the cops and Templars for a while. But we always met back up. Once 1999 rolled around, Neil had learned enough from me that he decided to strike out on his own for now.

"Are you sure you got this, Neil?" I asked that morning. We were down at a park called Ambleside in Vancouver, British Columbia.

"It's not a big deal, Asgeir. The skills you passed onto me are more than enough for anyone to survive on their own. In my hands, I know that Abstergo has no chance of tracking me down, and even if they do, they won't be taking me in alive."

"Nevertheless, we need to have some kind of plan ready to make sure we're both okay. Even when we're on our own, we gotta have each other's backs."

"You've been my Mentor this whole time, brother." Neil smirked. "What're your thoughts?"

"Every six months. We should at least meet back up with each other every six months. I think it seems reasonable."

"Six months is alright with me. You know how to find me, and I you."

I grabbed Neil's hand and threw my arms over his shoulder in a brotherly hug. "Farewell, Cassidy."

"And you, Swortssen."

Neil and I did our best to stay out of contact as much as we could to evade Abstergo as best we could There was a time where he and a girl he was with (while I sat there in the Bunker after blowing up Zelena's house, I realized all along that this woman that Neil was telling me about was Emma.) ended up having to separate because someone else knew his secret aside from me and Steven. After that, Neil and I didn't speak unless setting up our meets. Then, in 2004, I received the calling towards the storm I knew was coming.

The Masters. They had other plans for me. A mission that meant the life or death of an entire world. I was called upon to play my part and ensure that the Mad King of this world would see the justice he deserved for the horrors he inflicted on his subjects. I hadn't seen Neil since, and that war did more to me than any man should have taken. It was what finally killed me. But only on the inside.