Haytham can only sputter and jerk back, almost falling off the pallet, gasping for air that will not come. The boy had not hit him particularly hard, but it had caught him completely unaware and it feels like he can't draw enough air in his lungs. He almost panics, struggling with the impulse to curl in upon himself to protect himself from further attack and the desperate necessity for more air.

As Haytham struggles, his son maneuvers himself away, sitting up and leaning against the brick wall at his back. Connor surveys him as if he were some bit of trash or dog shit caked to the bottom of a boot after an arduous journey, something to be scraped off and discarded. Chest and diaphragm heaving like a broken-winded horse, Haytham manages to gasp, “Why?”

Connor's eyes are weary, cold and pitiless; he tilts his head, the corners of his mouth turn down and he squints at him as if to say, Do you really have to ask?

But what...? Oh. That. His cock is so ridiculously, stupidly hard that it feels like he could pound nails into wood with it, the offending extremity tenting out his trousers in a sickeningly lewd way.

“I didn't—It—I was dreaming!” He pants, red in the face, trying and failing to come up with a reasonable excuse for what's just happened.

“I had hoped,” Says Connor, voice sleep-rough and irritated, “That when you had been brought back to your senses I could get one—just one—decent night of rest without you humping my leg.”

Oh dear god. Haytham rubs his hands over his face. “This has happened before?” He can't help but ask, dreading the answer. His guts churn and he feels like throwing up.

“Almost every night,” Connor sneers. “You were like an animal when I found you. You threw yourself at me scarcely a minute after they put me in the cell with you.”

No. No, no, NO, He thinks, horrified, That wasn't me, “That was the bloody aphrodisiacs—” He begins.

“That you insist on drinking!” Connor snaps, interrupting him.

Right. The tea. Perhaps that was why he had been thinking of Ziio, and it certainly explains why his skin and extremities are so painfully sensitive. “I'm not attracted to men, Connor,” He insists.

“Obviously,” Connor says darkly with a pointed flick of the eye downwards. Haytham is still erect, the offending flesh oblivious to the mortification it had just caused, impervious to Connor's icy stare and Haytham's deep, desperate shame.

Haytham sees this for what it is. Connor can't think that his father is actually attracted to him... can he? Surely he can't think me that monstrous. No, He tells himself. The boy just is reacting the same way Haytham had to Connor's persistent entreaties hours before, fueling the fire of his anger and frustration with the most convenient offense available. Haytham had used the information about the upcoming siege of Philadelphia to beat Connor with, and Connor is using Haytham's treacherous body to do the same. Not that Haytham can really blame him; god knows how he would have reacted if he'd been woken by Connor in a similar fashion.

Haytham flushes even redder than before. “Have you convinced yourself that your conception was immaculate, you arrogant little imbecile?”

Connor, who is ‘little’ in no way, blushes and crosses his heavily muscled arms over his chest, the chords tense and rippling beneath his tanned skin. “Oh, so it's my mother you think of when you start to—”

“I am not a sodomite, boy,” Haytham snarls. “And if I was, what makes you think I'd want to bugger my own son? What makes you think you're such an irresistible catch?”

“Perhaps the raging erection pressed against my backside almost every night?” Connor sneers, eyes hard and malicious. “Perhaps because of my mother? You were always telling me aboard the Aquila that I so reminded you of her.”

And Haytham actually laughs. It's a hoarse croak and sounds almost pained, but it's a laugh just the same. This is, by leaps and bounds, the most absurd argument he's ever had. He even feels a smirk tug at the corners of his lips.

“Take my word for it, lad; you aren't even half the woman your mother was.”

Connor stares at him, mouth hanging open, obviously trying to work out just what the hell Haytham had meant by his words, and his befuddled expression elicits an involuntary chuckle. And then Connor realizes that it was meant to be a joke. A joke from his hateful, scarred and battered father who, before that, had hardly said a word to him that wasn't tinged with acid. Connor's brow softens, his eyes losing their accusatory glare. The boy gives him a small, sad smile.

"There will never be another woman like her,” Connor says quietly. Haytham realizes that he had said ‘was’ out of habit. Past tense. And Connor had not corrected him. Haytham's heart clenches in his chest. This is a pain he's all too familiar with. What's that French term for it? Déjà vu. Only it really has happened before, in his other life, and this time he knows he will not be surprised by Connor's words.

“She's gone, isn't she?” Haytham asks, although from the expression on Connor's face he knows the answer. The boy's mouth tightens and his chin dimples but his eyes do not mist. Connor gives a slight nod.

“It is my fault,” Connor says. Haytham frowns. Of course the boy would think that. Connor was accustomed to bearing huge and unreasonable burdens; of course he would assume another one and heave it onto his shoulders along with all the others.

“I'm sure that's not true,” Haytham says, and means it, because it's not true. He knows that for a fact. “How did it happen?”

“Washington.” Connor spits the name like a curse. Haytham sighs. This world was so damnably strange and yet so familiar at the same time. “I could not save her. I can never save anyone, it seems.” Connor gives him a strange look that he's unsure how to interpret.

“Did he burn down the village?” Haytham asks.

Connor gives him a strange look. “How did you know?”

“I prevented him from burning it before, years ago. In this—whatever the hell it is. This life.”

Connor frowns, brow beetling, “I can remember...” He struggles for a moment. “There was a house in the woods. You were there.”

“I was.”

“And then we left. Ista and I,” he elaborates. “But not you.”

Haytham shifts uncomfortably. “So you can remember both lives?”

“Not well,” Connor says, and then, “Almost not at all. It's indistinct, like parts of a dream. Can you?”

Like it was only minutes ago, Haytham thinks ruefully, but instead says, “Very clearly.”

It's the boy's turn to look uncomfortable. His eyes settle on the window where there is light beginning to seep into the fragment of visible sky. “What was it like, when I killed you?” He asks tentatively.

Haytham frowns. That was one hell of a question... What exactly was he asking? How had it felt when Connor had goaded and fought him to the point of near madness with childish notions of freedom and all too well-placed blows, enraged his father to the point where Haytham had honestly considered murder? How it was to have one's only child—more than that, his only family, his only hope of reconciliation between Templar and Assassin—stab him in the neck? How it was to gamble his life to protect the friend that had howled for the boy's blood?

He can't answer any of that. Doesn't have any answers to give, so Haytham tells him about the more physical effects.

“Honestly? I'm not sure. I remember your blade and then... And then I think I babbled something, I don't remember what, and then there was just...” How could he describe it? “And then there was nothing.”

He had never really expected anything to happen when he died. He knew what he was supposed to believe, what that charlatan Jesus and all the others that had possessed certain Pieces of Eden had wanted the world to think, but Haytham was armed with far more information than the average man. He didn't despise Christianity. Rather the opposite in fact; the religion had treated his Order well, the Roman Catholic Church being a particularly useful tool, but it had been Haytham's experience that Heaven and Hell were places on earth that men made themselves. He expected that after he was dead he would just cease to exist and that would be the end of it.

And then there really had been nothing. That was the only way he could describe it, really. Just... Nothing. A total absence of being. Terrifying, absolute in its non-existence, a void that had lasted for millennia or perhaps only fractions of a second, and then suddenly—

“And then I was at Fort George. Still there, like I'd never left, and Charles—”

There's a clang at the far end of the hall, followed by the stomp of several sets of boots. Haytham and Connor bear identical grimaces.

Connor is quickly on his feet. Haytham lies back down on the bed, facing the wall, praying that the men are just bringing food, hoping that they won't see what state he's in. There's five of them, though, far too many just be carrying breakfast. The guards might be coming to take one or perhaps both of them. Haytham quickly covers himself with a blanket.

“How's the whore and the dog this fine mornin?” One of them asks. He recognizes the voice. It's the same guard from last night, the one that had brought the means to dress Haytham's wounds. Connor doesn't immediately answer. Haytham can feel the tension thrumming in the air.

“Hungry,” Connor decides, his tone forced but carefully neutral. So, he was going to try the diplomatic route. Perhaps he thought that treating the guard with more civility and respect than he himself was afforded would curry some sort of favor.

“Good,” the guard says, “Maybe you'll actually be entertainin' to watch today.”

“Another fight.” It's not a question. Haytham can hear the tinge of despair in Connor's voice.

“That's right. You win, you eat.” There's the clang of the door being unlocked, a squeak of rusting hinges, the scrape of something across the stone floor. “This tray is for him. Get him up and fed. Then you're comin' with us.”

Haytham feels the boy step close to him. “Wake up, Haytham,” He says quietly.

And then the boy grasps the bare skin of his shoulder and, good lord, his skin—it feels suddenly hot, like a sunburn where Connor touches him, only that particular sensation never made his toes curl, his cock ache or wrung a half-strangled moan from his throat. Connor withdraws like he's been burnt but the touch still lingers.

Shit. Goddamned bloody-fuck aphrodisiac—

“Oh ho ho, looks like we interrupted something,” A second guard chuckles.

“That right?” The first guard comments as Haytham forces himself to sit upright, making his condition woefully apparent. “Ah, looks like the bitch is in heat this morning!” Several of them laugh. Haytham's face burns. He keeps his eyes to the floor.

“Hey, Whitney, weren’t you complainin' that little wife of yours won't polish your knob?” A third asks.

One of the guards towards the back of the corridor shifts uncomfortably. “Well—I—I don't—”

“Step right up; this one 'ere's a champion cocksucker—”

Connor cuts him off with a growl, “You are not to touch him!”

The collective group of them pauses for a moment, some of them apparently startled that the boy would dare presume to tell them what to do.

“No?” One of them inquires, smirking darkly at the boy's insolence, “How you gonna stop us, monkey?”

“He's still hurt,” Connor snarls at the man.

“Not a surprise. His Majesty was set on fuckin' the defiance out o' him.” Haytham hears Connor's sharp intake of breath through his nose, can feel the angry heat radiating off of him.

No, He silently screams at the boy, Calm yourself, I'll be alright, just stand down! Have a little goddamned self-preservation for once; it's nothing I haven't done before, apparently—

“He is—” Connor hesitates, stammers, tries to come up with a verbal defense. “He is the king's slave. Washington will be furious if—”

“He'll be right irritated if the slave dies,” The first guard interrupts, “But short of killin' him, I can do whatever I like. In this corridor, boyo, I'm the one who's king.”

It's the older one that had answered, the one that Haytham recognizes as the man from last night. His blue uniform is of a slightly better cut than the other guards, has more embellishment. The warden, maybe? Is that why he seems so familiar? No, it's more than that. There's something else... and then Haytham realizes that the man was once a Templar. Minor, low-ranking. One of Church's subordinates. In his previous life, the man had been the one to bust Haytham's lip out in the frontier, when father and son had briefly been allies in the cause of hunting down and eradicating that twice-over traitor. Here, he is apparently the mercurial despot of this sad little kingdom.

“I will not let you do that,” Connor says, his voice the low rumble of an approaching storm, and there's a finality to it that makes the hair rise on the backs of his father's arms.