Something is burning his face.

Blearily, he opens one eye, and winces. He's in his cell. He's cold; his shirt is missing, and at some point he had kicked the heavy blankets off. The arrow slit of a window has been stuffed with rags to help ward off winter's chill, but there is a slight gap at the top, and a spot of sunlight falls directly on his face. It's morning. He groans, flings a thin arm over his eyes, and rolls his head away.

There's a rustle below him and to the left. He freezes. He's not alone. His eyes snap back open.

The boy.

He'd made a nest of rags and blankets on the stone floor next to the pallet. He uncurls and props himself up on one elbow.

“Haytham? How are you feeling?” he asks. His voice is weary but full of genuine concern. He looks like hell. His eyes are red-rimmed and dark-circled, and there are mottled bruises on his face, faded to a blotchy yellow-green pallor. His lip had been split not long ago, and still looks swollen and tender.

Haytham. Yes. He's Haytham. His tongue darts out to wet cracked, dry lips. His voice is rough, and sounds like a stranger's to his ears.

“Connor.”

The man's eyes go wide and his mouth falls open briefly, and then he smiles wide, white teeth flashing, eyes glinting. He scrambles closer on hands and knees, his large hand gripping Haytham's shoulder, his face a mere foot away.

“Yes!” he exclaims, and then again, “Yes—Do you remember me?”

Yes. Oh, yes, he most assuredly does. He remembers everything.

The slap connects with the sharp report of a gunshot—Connor reels back, hand to his face, eyes wide, shocked, baffled. Haytham tries to get to his feet but his legs won't cooperate and they splay out as if he's a newborn calf. He collapses to his knees with a gasp of pain. Connor reaches out to grasp an arm but Haytham slaps that as well, scrabbling away from the man.

“Don't touch me!” he shouts.

“Haytham! Please, what—?”

“What in hell have you done to me?” His voice sounds high, almost hysterical to his own ears, almost a shriek, and the echo of it bounces off the brick walls and carries down the long hall. Connor's eyes are wide with alarm and shock.

“Quiet! Do you wish to bring the guards down on us?” He hisses, “I was trying to help you!”

“Why?” demands Haytham. Connor stares at his father, open-mouthed, aghast, as if Haytham is the crazy, unreasonable one.

“'Why?' Because you were being...” Connor blushes beneath the bruises and looks at the floor, clearly dismayed. Ah. Yes, that. Connor shakes his head. “Because there is a madman with an army of unthinking slaves who has styled himself a king! Because we need to rally support, we must find a way to defeat him! Because we need to get out of here!”

“And how will 'we' manage that?” is Haytham's terse demand.

Connor's brow beetles and he stammers, “I had thought that—you are by his side, almost every day—you must have some idea as to how—”

“Fool boy—he has a Piece of Eden.” He manages to stagger to his feet, though he still leans against the wall for support. The effort leaves him slightly breathless. “He's unstoppable. It's hopeless to even think—”

“It is not hopeless,” snaps Connor, “nothing is hopeless, not while you and I are still in control of ourselves.”

“In control? Look at me, boy!” He's a ruin of the man he used to be. Muscles that had rippled with a lifetime of training and hard work had been withered to practically nothing. He spreads his mangled hands, indicates the badly healed ribs that show through drum-taut skin, crisscrossed with scars. “What good am I to anyone like this?”

Well. Obviously Washington still finds a use for me, he thinks, and the violent shudder that racks his body has nothing to do with the chill of the cell.

Connor frowns deeper. Obviously, this was not the reunion he had been expecting. What had he wanted? An effusion of praise? That Haytham would fall into his arms and weep for joy? Thank the lord for his delivery and reveal a meticulous, carefully reasoned and dashing plan for escape?

“What would you have had me do, then?” he asks, a raw, frustrated edge to his voice. “Leave you insensate and enslaved?”

“And now I am cognizant and enslaved. Believe me, it's not an improvement. It would have been a far kinder mercy to have just killed me.”

Connor's face is solemn. “You cannot mean that.”

He throws up his hands. “It's over, boy. I lost. I have nothing left. May as well be by your hand, rather than... the inevitable.”

“I cannot kill you,” he says, dark eyes mournful and brimming with reproach.

Haytham's mouth twists into an unpleasant thing somewhere between a wry, mirthless smile and a pained grimace.

“No? You managed well enough once before!”

Connor's face contorts and he looks torn between agony and rage. “That was a different time—a different world! And you were trying to kill me!”

Had he tried to kill the boy? He wasn't sure. The incident had happened a lifetime ago, and the night had been a total chaos of bombs, fire and blood. He could remember being blinded by rage and pain, blinking blood out of his eyes from where his bastard son had cut open his brow with a broken bottle. Every labored breath had brought an agony of protest from his all-but-certainly broken ribs and his useless left hand had been slick with his own blood. He remembered wanting the boy to stop—to just stop. To stop struggling, to stop resisting fate, to stop being so willfully ignorant of human nature, to stop being so full of goddamned hope—

Still, Haytham denies, “Like hell I was, if I had wanted you dead—”

“So you were only pretending to kill me? You had your hands around my neck! I could not breathe!”

The boy has him there. Facts are facts. Regardless, Haytham glares at him. “Well. I suppose none of that really matters now, does it? As you say, it was different world.”

Connor's face contorts. “Does not matter—!” He stops himself, gives an irritated huff. “Fine. We should be planning our escape. I thought that you would be more thankful that you were no longer senseless,” says Connor darkly. Haytham's lip lifts in a snarl.

“'Thankful?' The things they've done, what I was forced to do—I was oblivious to it! Do you know what—” he hesitates, can't bring himself to say the man's name, damn him, “—what he'll do to me, once he finds out? Do you have even the slightest notion as to what you've done to me?”

“You. It has always been about you, has it not, father?” the word is hurled like a curse. He thumps his chest. “What about me? Do you even care about what they are making me do? Your son?”

His startled mind casts about for a moment. Notes the yellowing bruises on Connor's face, the fresh and tender scar tissue of the man's sharp knuckles. Vaguely, he recalls the fights, the impromptu ring in the middle of the throne room, the smell of stale sweat and fresh blood, screams and howls of the combatants echoing over the excited chatter and hoots of the gamblers and spectators. His Majesty's other special hobby.

“I'm so sorry. I forgot how violence makes you wilt like a lily in the sun.”

Connor's eyes narrow. “You are the most hateful, selfish prick I have ever known—”

“Oh, the pot calls the kettle black, boy! You tried to 'help' me? I can see right though your so-called concern. You're only trying to help yourself after you were foolish enough to be taken alive—if you had ever given a damn about me, you would have come before I'd been reduced to this!”

“I did not even know you were here! Kaniehtí:io said that you were dead!” Of course Ziio would say that. He can see her reasoning; better Connor to think his father rotting in the ground than alive and His Majesy's most exalted whore. It does not, however, make her omission any less painful. “Washington has misused you, yes, made you do unspeakable things, but your own suffering pales beside his other crimes. Do you even know what he has done—what he is still doing to people? Do you even care?”

“I cared enough to lead the goddamned Colonial resistance, you ignorant little shit,” he seethes.

Haytham can see that he's found the limit of boy's patience. Connor's hands pull into fists, jaw clenches, and for a moment Haytham thinks that perhaps the boy will do some throttling of his own, but instead he releases a long breath through flared nostrils, forces his fingers to straighten, palms flat against his thighs.

“Tell me what happened.” It's a command, not a request.

“Go to hell,” Haytham suggests.

“We are already in hell!” is Connor's outraged response.

Connor makes to continue his abuse but the sound of footfalls echoing down the hall gives him pause. Haytham's blood turns cold. If there was any color left in his pale face, it vanished. The cell faces a blank wall. Connor stalks up to the bars and presses the side of his face against them to sight down the long passage. He holds up three fingers to Haytham. Idiot. Haytham could have told him how many there were by ear alone. Two of the men are booted, judging by the heavy tread, the third has the sharper snap of shoes.

Haytham sits down heavily on the pallet, clamps his hands between his knees so no one can see how badly they tremble. He doesn't look up when he men come to stand outside. Connor stands near the bars, defiant, and does not even flinch when one of the men clangs the bars with the butt of a musket.

“Well. His Majesty's pet looks much improved.” Benjamin Church. The man who was twice a traitor. Rage sang through his veins, tempered with an equal amount of fear. He forces his eyes to the ground. If the king's physician even suspected something was off about Haytham's demeanor, that he had been restored to his cognitive faculties...

“No thanks to you,” says Connor. Church merely shrugs.

“He was either to improve, or he was not. I adjusted his medications and left you instructions, and it seems that that worked well enough. He's no longer sweating, at least.” He tilts his head slightly. “Though he looks pale yet. You've been feeding him?”

Connor's head jerks up in affirmation.

“He'll be fine, then. Or not. I suppose it matters little.”

“He is your patient,” snaps Connor. “I thought doctors swore oaths to help those in need.”

Church chuckles. “He's of little consequence; he ceased to be amusing long ago. Healthy or sick, fair or foul, I suspect I'll not need attend him much longer.” Haytham commands himself to keep breathing evenly, to not make any indication that he had heard anything of note. What was Church getting at?

“But he was your master!” Connor sounds shocked by Church's indifference.

“'Was' being the operative word. He ceased to be worthy of that title the day he lost his mind.” Church shakes his head. “Delusional fool. How he expected to keep this country from His Majesty's glorious influence, I can't even begin to imagine.”

“...So sorry, Kenway. But I always back the winning horse...”

“Well, I've other duties. Good day, savage. Master Kenway.” His voice drips with mockery. He turns and leaves. The two guards linger. One comes forward with a trays in either hand. He slides them though the gap beneath the bars.

“Best not get too comfortable,” the man advises, “His Majesty will be wanting the both of you soon enough.”

Haytham can barely hear their retreat over the throb of blood singing in his ears. He clenches his fists in the loose fabric of his trousers and resists the urge to scream. Goddamned traitorous, cowardly bastard... He barely notices when Connor takes both trays, sets one down on the floor, but he does note when the boy begins to remove the rags from the window.

“What are doing?” Haytham demands.

“Helping you by disposing of your poisons,” says Connor coldly, “whether you accept it or no.”

“What poisons?” he asks. “What are you talking about?”

“This,” says Connor, and points to the greens, “is what they've been using to control you. Achilles spoke of it. The Haitian witch-doctors use it to bend victims to their will, to make them their 'zombies.' And this tea is a... I do not know the word in English. Afra-something...”

“Aphrodisiac,” supplies Haytham, frowning. So, that's what had induced his apathetic state, reduced him to little more than an animal reacting to external stimuli.

“Yes, as you say. You should feel honored; this is very expensive. The kings of China use it on their slave-women, I hear.” He picks up the cup.

“Wait!” he commands sharply.

Connor looks at him. “What?”

“Give me the tea.”

Connor's eyes narrow. “No,” he says.

“I need it,” he says with rising urgency, and feels a surge of panic when he begins to tip the hollow gourd. “I'll scream, call the guards!” he warns him. Connor cocks a dark eyebrow.

“Then scream,” he suggests, sardonic, but there's a steel edge to his tone and his eyes glitter dangerously. “Let the guards know what I have done and that you are fully aware and wish to die. I'm sure they will oblige you. That is what you want, is it not?”

Yes. No... he's not sure. He crimps his lips together in a thin, bloodless line. Haytham has nothing to live for, sees the days stretch out before him, a series of tortures, trials and humiliations that will certainly end in death—or, worse, his submission, mind shattered—and despairs. But does he want to kill his son as well? That's what would surely happen, if they were to discover Connor's interference. Or worse, they might do to him what they had done to Haytham, a punishment he wouldn't have wished on even his most hated enemies.

“You heard the guard, boy. We'll be at court today, and I'm not a young man anymore. If I can't...” he shivers. “If I don't preform as expected... they'll know. And then we'll both be dead men.” Or worse, he could have said.

The boy frowns, taking his meaning, he sets the cup back on the tray. “You cannot have the other,” he says, and takes a fist full of the greens to shove under the bed, presumably because his actions would be noticed in the daylight. “It is too dangerous.”

“And what gives you the right to make that decision for me?” demands Haytham acidly.

“You are in no position to stop me,” says the boy coolly. Well, that's apparent. The two men had been of a similar size and build once, but Haytham is but a shadow of his former self, and his son is very clearly in the prime of his physical abilities.

“Very well. You'll have to sleep eventually,” Haytham reminds him darkly. For an instant, there is a flicker of doubt, of fear, but it's gone again, and the boy looks almost smug.

“Even if you had the strength to kill me, you would not,” he says in a matter-of-fact way that makes Haytham bristle further.

“Oh?”

“Because they would know it was you.” He slides Haytham's tray across the pallet. “Better eat. I suspect Washington has missed us. It will be a long day.”

He's hungry, but the thought of what's to come turns Haytham's stomach to knots.