February 1758.

They had just killed Lady Odelia de Vachon in cold blood for her corruption. For her greed that triumphs above her own humanity which cost hundreds of innocent, young lives. To fulfill her endless need for wealth, and for something more. (And of course, to fulfil a minute section of her vengeance, her need for blood.)

Of course, due to her influence within the Order, especially situated in Europe, those who witnessed her death were now on a manhunt for those responsible. The Grandmaster Haytham Kenway would have feigned ignorance—but the thing is, the one who sits near him… he knew for certain that they were looking for her. And he has willingly followed in her trail, even though everything about this strange reunion was foolish. For his sake.

The terror that threatens Europe as if she were the black death reincarnated. With her ‘patients’, the fellow brethren of the Templars. The very ‘ghost’ that Birch himself had warned in his letter back in the Americas, unsurprisingly keeping her true identity anonymous. Which begs the question; were his fears true, or were they simply a means to drive him away, from seeking answers to the questions that haunted him for two decades?

A shuddering breath from behind snapped him out of his thoughts, as he turned away from the bonfire to check. Against a tree bark was Beth, bandaged and draped with his cloak to shield her from the cold, never minding about his own warmth.

“Don’t move,” he reminded her upon noticing the way she winced with the slightest bit of movement.

She merely scoffed in response, damn her and her lack of self-preservation. “I’ve dealt with worse injuries. This is nothing.”

He furrowed his brows in exasperation, shifting his entire body to face her. “De Vachon nearly gutted you,” he started, his tone laced with irritation. “It’s a miracle you even survived the journey here.”

One thing was for certain, though. There was this empty gaze that brought this feeling of uneasiness, even to him of all people. There was no light in her eyes. Not even her little quips could convince him she was anything but a husk of her former self.

It was unnerving. Even their little argument that recently transpired seemed dreadfully hollow on her end, as if he was speaking to nothing but a corpse that somehow regained the ability to retort. Something far worse than merely attempting to convince a brick wall.

This was wrong, he thought, when she finally relented and slumbered on her bedroll, leaving him to his thoughts. This isn’t the Beth I know.

Of course. They spent two decades apart, thinking the other was dead. Taken by the fires that claimed their loved ones in more ways than in death. To not mature from childhood and its growing pains was against human nature, but he couldn’t help but reminisce.

That silly pig-tailed girl he knew from next door. The first who came to him when he was a lonely child. It was all gone.

And, with the way things were looking, the way they exchanged words, he wondered if she remembered any of that at all.

He wondered if the terror of Europe had a heart, even if it was smaller than his.

A few months.

It has been a few months since he had felt the touch of death brush against his face, plunging into a fever he was surprised he managed to brave through. Who could blame that child, really, he thought, a hand skimming over the now-bandaged wound on his side, wincing upon contact. He was wrongfully imprisoned.

Thankfully, though. The blade somehow managed to slip past his vital organs, guaranteeing him at least this sliver of survival. It did give him a damning pain in the side, though. He’d have to learn to live through it, and for that, he grimaced.

The past few months he felt as if he was in a state of purgatory. Drifting in and out of consciousness, sweating, with laboured breaths, and absolutely burning up. When he managed to grasp onto a fleeting sentience, he found himself thrashing in sheets soaked with sweat and some of his blood. Only ever comforted by the presence of the man above him, replacing the cloth on his brow and tidying the linens below.

He managed to gain enough awareness to sit up on his bed, at least. He simply couldn’t move as well as he wanted to. He couldn’t even breathe properly, he realised, without the throbbing pain flaring once more.

Before he could do anything else, he heard the door swinging open and upon entry was Jenny, with a wide-eyed expression contorting her face. In her trail was a… man? Adorned in crimson, with a shade likened to blood as he wondered why his sister would bring in this brute stranger—

“You wouldn’t believe who I found at the market earlier,” she managed, catching her breath from rushing back as she gestured behind, it seemed—she was at the market?—and the poor, towering man looked just as confused as he was, tilting his head—

“I was—” Jenny inhaled, before regaining her composure (somewhat), “I was merely looking around, then I saw her…”

Her?

His eyes darted towards the man—woman—behind, squinting as he attempted to make sense of this whole predicament. It was only then that she turned her head, returning his gaze with her unnaturally bright blue eyes (and, he swore on his life, there was something he couldn’t shake, upon studying her gaze. That there was something unexplainably wrong with her. As if she was a walking corpse). She looked familiar, he thought. He simply couldn’t put a finger on why she did.

That is, until she drew back a little in surprise. Was there something on my face—

“...Haytham?”

The voice that croaked out of her was filled with bewilderment, her tone tipping up at the end in uncertainty. Who was she, and how does she know his name? Jenny wasn’t one to spill all about their lives, especially not after what they all had endured the months before. No, not unless she knew who he was, but he doesn’t know any woman who looked any at all like the one before him, except—

No. With the way she reacted… no, it couldn’t be. It just wasn’t possible.

No, if it was, then…

Reginald lied once more. This, he took to the grave with him. This lie, it passed over with him from the corporeal world to the next.

It wasn’t just his Father that Reginald withheld the truth of that night, was it? How he placed a hand on his shoulder when he was a child, uttering apologies about how they couldn’t save the poor girl and her widower Father from the fires that took his own, that put his Mother at a distance. That was all a lie, too?

How he could not even attend their funerals. How he was kept from doing so, how he was forced to internalise his own grief, and how he prayed, how he mourned in his heart, for years. How he couldn’t even visit her grave, how he wasn’t able to accept the gift she prepared for him the day before the incident, before his birthday.

It was all for nothing.

How long has it been?

Twenty-two years.

He should have been happy. Overjoyed, in fact, that she was still here after years of believing yet another one of Reginald’s deceptions that shaped his entire life, yet…

“...Beth?”

All he could ever feel was a pain thought long forgotten.

————————————————————

“Haytham!”

The pig-tailed girl waved a hand excitedly towards the approaching figure of a young boy, with his chest swelling in pride for his upcoming birthday which would mark the beginning of a journey from adolescence to adulthood.

A birthday that has been long anticipated. He couldn’t stop blabbering about it whenever he and the girl played, with wooden sticks poking at each other, or at the rocks beneath their feet.

“Beth,” he returned her wave, grinning as he sat next to her on a bench that was a little too high for either of them. “You look a little too happy. Am I to be worried?”

“Oh, no, it’s nothing,” she shook her head. He knew it was a fib. Beth wasn’t one to express her emotions quite well, unless it was to play a prank on either him or the poor neighbours that wanted nothing to do with either of them—the outcasts of the upper middle class. All because of what their parents have shared about these two.

He furrowed his brows. “I don’t like it when you get that glint in your eyes,” he pointed out. “It’s about my birthday, isn’t it?”

“Where on Earth did you get that idea?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps, on my sixth birthday, you presented an earthworm to my face, dangling the poor little thing before shoving it in your mouth…”

“I would never do such a thing now!”

“...On my last birthday, you woke me up by somehow getting the local corvid population to peck at my window.”

She laughed. “It did wake you, though. They served their purpose with honour.”

The boy rolled his eyes, folding his arms across his chest. “I just know whatever it is you’re planning for my tenth, it will be the worst one until I reach at least sixteen years.”

“Oh, actually…” her face faltered ever so slightly, replaced by a thoughtful expression. “It’s nothing tricky. I promise you.”

“Oh, you’re making promises now?”

“Yes I am!”

“I don’t believe you one bit!”

The young girl could only huff in exasperation, yet she couldn’t exactly blame him for his reluctance to accept her genuine gift. She did make him endure all her other ‘presents’ every other birthday. Yet, his tenth meant something deeply to him. She knew that. She had to, as he could not stop prattling about it for years.

So, with all the limited creativity a child such as her could muster, she fashioned him a little bracelet to surprise him on the morning of his most anticipated day.

It was lost in the fire.