Chapter Text
“Take me back,” Connor says, holding the artifact that no longer belongs to ‘King’ Washington. It’s... an apple, or maybe an Apple, and the absurdity of it being called that when it bears no resemblance to an actual apple strikes him then, but he has other problems.
With this... Apple, Washington had done so many terrible things. The least it can do, now, is to bring him back to his own world, his own home, where things... hadn’t gone terribly right, but they were improving! He was making them improve!
And so he glares at the sphere, cupped in his hands, and he demands of it, “You have the power to bring me back, to where I am meant to be.”
He might imagine it. Or perhaps the Apple tingles within his grasp.
“Take. Me. Back.” Nothing happens. His voice breaks. He closes his eyes, and he whispers, “Please...”
It’s then, when he’s all but given up, when he opens his eyes with that other sight, the sight of the eagle.
And something happens.
Connor’s head hurts. He’s still got the Apple tightly held in one hand and his first instinct is to draw it closer to him, because—if this didn’t work, if he isn’t back, he’s going to need it again.
His head hurts more when a child’s voice cuts in, “Who are you?”
Connor’s head snaps up, and that makes it hurt more. Both because of the sudden movement, and because there is, in fact, a child standing in front of him. Dark hair, blue eyes, and a concerned look. Also, there’s wood paneling behind him. And on the floor below him. And—oh, he’s in someone’s house, isn’t he? Just what he needed.
“Connor,” he says warily, because—this child looks familiar somehow, and he can’t quite place how. “Could you be—quieter?”
The child nods in understanding, putting a finger to his lips. “Sorry, I know—Father told me to be quiet, and I will be, I just thought—you’re one of his friends, aren’t you?”
Slowly, Connor nods. “I—”
“Good! Then you have to help him, Mister Connor, he’s... he told me to hide. I did hide, but I couldn’t... he was teaching me to use a sword, I—I can help!”
He can’t be more than... ten, at the absolute most. Connor pulls himself to his feet, ensuring that he’s tucked the Apple away somewhere safe, and tries for a reassuring smile. Children like that, except when they can tell that you’re lying about everything going to be okay. Connor would know. He used to be that child.
Fortunately, Connor is not lying when he says, “I can help. You can, too, but... stay behind me and out of sight. Understand?”
“I understand,” the child chirps, with an anxious look back the way he came from.
Connor starts that way himself. The child’s footsteps are surprisingly quiet behind him, too quiet for that to be accidental. He says, without looking back, “Your father never told me your name.”
“Oh! I-it’s Haytham,” says the child. “Haytham Kenway. But you knew that part.”
And Connor stops in his tracks. Now he looks back, and now that the boy’s said it—he knows exactly why this child looks so familiar.
He... doesn’t look all that different than Connor himself did, as a child. When he’d said take him back—
“How old are you?” Connor asks, because that is a question he can have answered.
Haytham blinks. “I-I’m nine years old, mister. Ten tomorrow.”
Connor stares, for a few moments. Instead of fully unpacking any of that, he nods without a word and starts walking again. Quicker, this time.
Haytham’s father—Connor’s grandfather—was a man named Edward Kenway. And in Haytham’s journal—the Haytham that Connor knew and laid to rest, not the child creeping along behind him now—he’d mentioned that his father had died the night before his tenth birthday.
He might not be able to do much. But the least he can do is try.
(Some days, many days, it feels like all he does is fail.)
Connor has never seen a picture of Edward Kenway. None existed—or at the very least, if any had existed, none had crossed Connor’s path.
He might have mistaken the light-haired man for one of Edward’s assailants if Edward himself hadn’t already had his hidden blade at the ready, or wasn’t cornered by three men significantly bigger than him, or if Haytham didn’t gasp and start to rush forward, only to be stopped by Connor holding up a hand.
Edward’s gaze flicks briefly to Haytham, to Connor—then back to his assailants. He taunts, “I’m flattered, I am! Truly, that you think so highly of me that you thought it would take five of you to take me on.”
Silently, Connor pats Haytham on the shoulder, hoping that the boy will take the hint and stay put. He circles behind the most dangerous-looking of the hired men, and he steps over the two bodies that Edward has created already, and he looks to the man that isn’t yet his grandfather without a word, as if to silently ask, Well?
“Truth is,” Edward says, grinning disarmingly, “you should have brought more men. Not less.”
He charges, burying his own hidden blade in one’s gut. Connor’s lodges into the throat of a second, and nearly beheads the third, and it’s... over.
It’s over... just like that?
“Father!” Haytham launches himself at Edward, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in his chest. “I—I thought—”
Edward wraps his arms around Haytham, too. He rests his chin on his son’s head, and he says, sternly but not unkindly, “I thought I told you to hide.”
(Connor wonders, watching this in silence, what it would have been like to have had a father that cared more about him than his Order.)
“I—I know, but I found your friend...”
Edward’s gaze slides, then, to Connor. His eyes seem to glimmer for a moment, before he says, “I don’t know you. But I seem to owe you my life, and I thank you for that...”
“Connor,” he says, because it’s easier than trying to teach a white man to pronounce Ratonhnhaké:ton. “I am an...”
He was going to say I am an Assassin, but his gaze slides to Haytham, and he has the sudden sinking feeling that Edward might not approve of him giving him away as a member of the Brotherhood. He opts for briefly unsheathing the hidden blade instead, and giving Edward a meaningful look, and instead saying, “I am a friend.”
The keen look in Edward’s eyes suggests that the only reason he’s letting Connor off the hook for now is because his son is present. Connor knows this because he has seen the exact same look in his own eyes on occasion.
“Very well,” Edward says after a moment. “My wife, my daughter—I don’t know where they are. Could you...?”
“I will look for them,” Connor agrees. “What will you do?”
“There is... I have a journal.” Edward looks at Connor. “I believe that is why my home has been... Haytham? Stay with Connor. It’ll be safer for you with him.”
“I—I—” Haytham’s lower lip quivers, and he hugs Edward tighter.
Edward looks back at his son, smiles gently, and ruffles his hair. “I’ll be safe. You will too, son. Now go with Connor!”
He isn’t able to find Edward’s daughter. His wife is fine, if a little shaken after having watched Haytham, apparently, stab someone in the eye earlier.
Personally, Connor does not see this as a problem. Should a nine-year-old boy not have been put in a situation where he had to stab someone in the eye? Yes. Was he, regardless, and would he probably have died if he didn’t? Also yes.
He’s still searching for Edward’s daughter, young Haytham practically acting as his shadow, when there is a scream from the other side of the house. A scream of agony. A scream of—
“No!” Haytham shrieks, darting past Connor. He has to sprint to keep up with the boy, as he navigates rooms that he’s lived all his life in and Connor has only set foot in today if ever. And by the time he’s caught up, he nearly runs headlong into the child who is significantly shorter than him.
Edward is on the ground, bleeding from a wound in his gut. Another man Connor has never seen before stands above him, sword in hand, before he shakes his head, tsking audibly, and plants a foot squarely in his grandfather’s chest, earning a pained grunt for his efforts.
“I didn’t want to have to do this,” says the other man, sword in hand. “It’s a shame you never could see the truth, Mister Kenway.”
“If it’s your truth or death, I would rather die,” Edward replies. “Go on then. Get it over with.”
“Gladly.”
The other man swings.
The other man never connects with anything when he swings, because Connor’s already moving but Haytham has moved first, grabbing the sword that he can’t possibly know how to use that well and impaled it directly in the final attacker’s arm.
Haytham catches the man by surprise. Consequently, Connor doesn’t, and he has the presence of mind to both yank Haytham’s sword out of his arm and to flee.
Evidently, he hadn’t been expecting another Assassin tonight.
(In Connor’s past, there must not have been another Assassin present tonight.)
At first glance, as Haytham drops to his knees beside his father and starts openly sobbing—it almost looks like Edward Kenway can be saved. And maybe he could have been, in Connor’s time, but if his reckoning is right this is over twenty years before Ratonhnhaké:ton will even be born.
As it is, there’s too much blood, and it’s gushing out too fast, and if the weary look in Edward’s eyes is any indication, he knows this just as well as Connor does.
“Well.” Edward coughs. He coughs up blood, which is just another in a long list of bad signs and indications that he’s not long for this world and Connor really could have done without failing, just this once. “Out of all the ways I expected to go, this... definitely wasn’t one of them.”
“No no no, you’re—you’re going to be fine, Father,” Haytham pleads desperately. He looks at Connor. “H-he’s going to be...”
There’s no point in lying to him. Slowly, Connor shakes his head.
“Right.” Edward pushes himself up a bit, with a grunt of pain. “I still don’t know... who you are. But you’re one... of us. Keep my son... keep him safe.”
“I will,” Connor promises, though he is in no position to promise that. “Do you know your attacker?”
Edward nods. “Birch. Reginald... Birch.”
Haytham’s eyes go wide. “Mister... Birch? But I don’t—I d-don’t understand, why would he...”
“I’ll tell him,” Connor promises. He can fulfill that little for certain.
“Thank you...” Edward lays back down, likely because he no longer has the strength to hold himself up. “And there’s... the journal... you cannot let them have it...”
“T-this journal?” Haytham asks, bending down to pick up a leather-bound book.
Edward nods. Weakly, he raises a hand, and cups his son’s face with it. “Son, I’m... so sorry. I love you. Never forget that.”
And with that, his eyes fall shut, and the Master Assassin Edward Kenway breathes his last.
Haytham lets out a desperate, wild yell the likes of which Connor could never picture his father making, and holds his father’s body desperately to his chest. Connor murmurs a blessing, kneeling to pick up the journal himself. He stashes it away, then draws out the Apple once more, and hisses at it, “I know you have the power to do so. Fix this.”
There is no response, yet again. Not until he blinks back into the other sight. Then, and only then—the world falls out from under him once more.
He can only hope that somehow—somehow—the Apple can fix his failure.