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"Hello, Connor," says a soft voice from behind him. "It has been some time."
Connor turns. "You are lucky that I recognized you, Aveline." He pauses. "You look tired."
Aveline laughs as she shakes her head. It is not a happy laugh. "That is because I am. I bring news of the Louisiana Brotherhood, though I fear it isn't good news, and it is regrettably long overdue."
He raises a wordless eyebrow.
"The Mentor of the Louisiana Brotherhood is dead," Aveline tells him. "I have done my best to pick up where he left off, though it hasn't been easy."
Connor thinks of Achilles, buried there on the hill. "I understand."
"The Templar presence in Louisiana is near nonexistent now," she elaborates. "But not entirely. They are like... what is the word in your tongue... cockroaches."
"English is not my tongue," Connor says more strongly than he should have. "Otherwise, I agree."
His name is Ratonhnhaké:ton. Connor is merely an alias, granted to make dealing with colonists—Americans, now—and his fellow Assassins easier. Yet he occasionally thinks of himself as Connor even when alone. When it happens, that scares him far more than anything the Templars could ever conjure up.
"Oui," Aveline murmurs. "I understand."
"I didn't expect to see you here," Connor says. "Why are you here? Did no one accompany you?"
Aveline shrugs. "Not a soul did last time. Only one other Assassin yet lives in my Brotherhood, and he..." She considers this. "He doesn't travel well."
"I... see." He does not, but Aveline likely doesn't intend to or wish to elaborate.
"As for why I'm here, that would be because..." She sighs, and looks down. "It pains me to admit this, Connor, but I don't know what to do. The fight is endless, and I am only one woman."
"I am only one man. What would you have me do?"
For a moment, Aveline looks startled. "I would like you to introduce me to your mentor. Achilles, wasn't it? I have yet to meet him in person. There was no time to do so while pursuing the Company Man."
Connor hides a grimace. His voice barely stays even when he speaks. "That is impossible."
"Oh? Is he on a mission, then? I was under the impression he was—"
"He is dead."
Aveline's face falls. "I'm... sorry for your loss."
Connor nods. "I am sorry for yours."
"Did he go peacefully, at least?"
"Yes."
A pained look crosses Aveline's face, and she murmurs, "There is that. Agaté did not."
"I cannot offer you guidance when I know little myself," Connor says, after a long moment. "But you are welcome here. We could use an extra set of skilled hands."
"I may take you up on that," Aveline replies, after enough hesitation that Connor suspects she will turn him down. "It wouldn't do to return to New Orleans empty-handed."
In complete honesty, Aveline hasn't known what to do—with herself or with what little remains of Agaté's Brotherhood—for years. Not since discovering the true identity of the Company Man, not since watching her mentor die, not since letting her stepmother believe she would go along with the architect of her mother's life being ruined and her father's being cut short. She began by hunting down the remaining Templars of the Louisiana Rite, for not all of them had attended the induction that Aveline couldn't—wouldn't—go through with.
(Before she pieced together how her father had really died, there were moments when she considered going through with it. Moments when she wondered if perhaps her stepmother was the exception and not the rule. Or if, perhaps, she and Gérald would be better off cutting ties with the Templars and the Assassins, and removing themselves from their war by force, if necessary.)
Picking up where Agaté left off proved much easier said than done. Two Assassins, one significantly better-suited to logistics and intelligence-gathering than the other, simply isn't enough to truly rebuild. Perhaps it would have been enough for the truly great Assassins of ages long past. Ezio Auditore da Firenze revived the Italian Brotherhood from the ground up, in the midst of a city where the Templars were then at their strongest. Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad dealt with more than his fair share of internal struggles, certainly, but the Brotherhood of his time emerged stronger for it.
Both of them had help. More crucially, both of them had some way of knowing the next steps to take, even if Aveline suspects that—even for them—occasionally came in the form of what not to emulate. Aveline knows what not to do.
Unfortunately, what not to do rules out rather little. And so, after years of doing rather little, putting Templar agents to the blade until the Parisian Rite ceased sending them, and aiding escaped slaves whenever and wherever she could... something occurred to her, at last.
It might be more accurate to say that something occurred to Gérald. Who offhandedly mentioned, one day, that he wondered how those other Assassins were faring.
Only then did Aveline remember Connor, a man with his own mission that had nevertheless aided her significantly with her own. She had never spoken with his mentor during her time there. Gérald only had through written correspondence.
"Admittedly," Gérald said with a sheepish look, "I haven't kept in contact with Achilles or Connor myself, but I have heard that Connor assassinated the local Grand Master, so I suspect he is approximately as busy as we are."
"There is the war with the British," Aveline murmured to herself. "Though it came to an end recently, oui?"
Gérald nodded. "I can write to them again—"
"No need. I'll go."
Connor has always spoken highly of his mentor. Gérald did, too. This only worsened the revelation that she was years too late. Even if the primary reason she'd come here was dead and buried, she still considers Connor a friend. He seems to know what he is doing now that it's his turn to carry on.
When she writes to him, Gérald firstly expresses a disproportionate amount of relief at her safe arrival, secondly reassures her that the business is doing fine in her absence and that he has contingency plans should the Templars attempt to reclaim New Orleans with her away, and thirdly agrees with her decision to remain with the American Brotherhood for a time. He also notes that while Connor may seem like he is handling the death of his mentor better than Aveline is that of Agaté, Aveline herself is very skilled at masking her true feelings, and Connor could be doing the same.
He may be right. But Aveline would prefer to believe that at least one of them has figured out how to move on.
"He killed himself," Aveline says, one day, without any warning or preamble. They're on a rooftop near Boston Harbor, watching and waiting for a ship to come in that—according to information Connor believes reliable—will hold a number of Templar agents looking to test the strength of his Brotherhood.
Connor looks over at her. He finds that Aveline isn't looking at him, but at the edge of the roof and the sudden drop-off. They're high enough that a fall would be survivable, but only with effort and luck.
"Who?" Connor asks.
"Agaté," Aveline says in a lower voice.
"Your mentor," he realizes.
"Oui."
"He fell?" Connor asks, and receives a silent nod. Of the two of them, Connor is generally the quieter. It's most commonly Aveline who does the talking, when it's necessary, and occasionally when Connor wouldn't have thought it.
The silence between them now is uncomfortable. Aveline shifts her weight slightly, continuing to stare at the docked ship, before she speaks again.
"He thought I had betrayed him to the Templars," Aveline murmurs. "All I asked for was answers, and aid against them."
"I'm sorry," Connor says, because that seems appropriate right now.
"Merci." She glances over at him, frowning. "Was your mentor ever... did he ever hide things from you? Things he did not believe you ready to know, and perhaps he never would have?"
Connor's first instinct is to say no. Then he remembers the painting. And the garb of the first Assassin to have ever come to the colonies, someone whose name Connor was never told. Achilles never said that Assassin was him. He never said that Assassin wasn't him, either, and Connor thinks he would have unless it was a lie.
"Not often," Connor says.
"But he did." Strangely, Aveline sounds relieved. "It wasn't only Agaté."
"What he hid from me," Connor says, "he hid because it brought him great pain."
The only person still alive to know the full story of how the Colonial Brotherhood fell would be the man who nearly singlehandedly brought it about. Shay Cormac hasn't been sighted on this side of the ocean since before Connor began his training. A meeting with him would end with one of them dead. Connor has other problems.
"As did Agaté," Aveline says. Perhaps she would have said something else, except it's then that someone finally disembarks from the ship. Several someones, in fact. Four among the crowd shine red with the eagle's sight.
Connor looks back to Aveline. There's a similar golden gleam in her eyes, before she blinks it away.
"There they are," she says instead. "It seems they are splitting up. The better to evade a single pursuer... but there are two of us. What would you have me do, Connor?"
Her phrasing takes him by surprise. As far as Connor is concerned, they are equals. Yet Aveline, he realizes, has deferred to him since she arrived.
"Do what you think is best," Connor says, standing from his crouch. "I will take the east."
"And I, the west," Aveline agrees with a nod.
No more words are exchanged before they split off. Connor keeps to the rooftops, silent as the graves they will soon occupy. The Templars are too nervous for him to learn anything by eavesdropping. He gives them something to be nervous about before they die.
Aveline isn't there when he returns to the rooftop where they were waiting. She could be fine.
He's unwilling to take the chance that she isn't, and so he heads west. Connor catches up with the remaining duo of Templars just in time to watch Aveline leap from the roof just in front of him, landing loudly enough in the street that stealth is out of the question. He winces at the noise.
"Bollocks! Assassins so soon?" one of them shouts. Both Templars draw their swords. Connor reaches for his tomahawk, preparing to join her—
Yet Aveline doesn't go for her weaponry. Did she attract their attention deliberately?
Silently, Connor lets his empty hand fall without a weapon. He watches.
"No." Aveline says to the Templars, holding up her empty hands—though empty hands mean little, where Assassins are concerned. "The Company Man sent me."
The Templars exchange uneasy glances with each other. One partially lowers his sword.
"They're saying he's dead."
"Of course they are," Aveline replies. "That is precisely what she wants the Assassins to believe. The Father of Understanding guides me, as he guides us all. Now, what news of the Order?"
The Templars seem convinced by Aveline's act. More than they would be if Connor was the one putting it on. Still, he circles around to get a better angle on them, in case that changes.
"The Grand Master believes that the time to strike back at the Assassins is now, before they can regain their old strength," the other Templar says, sheathing his sword. "We're to lay low while we confirm this. But if the Company Man lives..."
"She lives," Aveline says, "despite the best efforts of the last Assassins in New Orleans. The American Brotherhood is at the weakest it has ever been under Connor. He was gravely injured in his pursuit of Grand Master Lee and has yet to fully recover. The few others he has recruited to his cause are scattered and demoralized."
That is entirely untrue.
...On second thought, it isn't entirely untrue, which makes Aveline's lie more believable. Connor spent longer than he would have liked recovering after his assassination of Charles Lee. The American Brotherhood has not existed under that name for long, and has had little time to grow. There are few Assassins in the American Brotherhood, but Connor recruited every one of them. He'd trust them all with his life.
(Aveline said herself that she isn't in a hurry to return to New Orleans. He'd trust her, too, even if she was.)
"Really?" The Templars exchange glances. The one that sheathed his sword steps forward to shake Aveline's hand. "That's the best news we've heard since leaving Britain! We'll be sure to pass that along, ah..."
"Aveline," she says, to Connor's immense surprise. "Aveline de Grandpré."
At her name, the Templar shaking Aveline's hand freezes. He gets out half of a shout for his companion to run before Aveline yanks him forward, burying her hidden blade in his throat. The other man doesn't get far before Connor intercepts him, surging forward without a word. He throws the body over one shoulder before doubling back, recalling a place to hide them both.
"Merci," Aveline says with a nod. "If I may ask, Connor... how much of that conversation did you hear?"
"All of it," Connor says.
"Ah." She pauses. "Then I should thank you, for not assuming the worst."
He returns the nod. "I trust your judgment."
"More than most would," Aveline notes.
Connor wonders if she's thinking of her late mentor as she cleans her blade.
"The Templars know who I am, but they aren't aware of what I look like, and they were willing to believe that the Company Man might have survived her assassination until they realized I was the Assassin responsible," she goes on. "They also believed that your Brotherhood is considerably weaker than it truly is. I don't doubt that they have other spies. Still, within reason, we should be able to feed them whatever false intelligence we like."
Though she has done it before, the American Brotherhood being described as his leaves a strange feeling in his chest.
"Good," he says at last. "Let's head back."
Personally, Aveline thinks that mission went rather well. But it doesn't escape her notice that Connor is quieter than even he is normally, as they depart Boston on horseback to return to his homestead. As a consequence of this, it's easy for Aveline's thoughts to drift into places they shouldn't. Agaté, her own mentor, certainly would have disapproved of her methods—if he hadn't assumed she had defected, as he did for much less than this before.
Even Gérald doesn't know exactly how Agaté died. There is not a soul alive who knows the full truth of that day save for Aveline herself; she doubts she could forget that terrible day if she desired it. She isn't certain whether she'd desire it, if she could.
She knows that Connor has had his own share of trials. Likely more than his fair share; such is the nature of being an Assassin. And yet...
"Aveline," he says, and she snaps to attention. "How long have you been an Assassin?"
That... is a very good question. Not one Aveline can answer easily, either, not without thinking about it for a few moments.
"I was twelve when I..." Aveline frowns, considering this, then shakes her head. "I was twelve when I and Agaté first met. He would not train me until I had pestered him for months, though I came to realize later that much of what he tasked me with instead was a form of training."
"Achilles would not, either," Connor says. "I was told, repeatedly, to go home."
"As was I," Aveline says.
"I could not go back." He says this like he regrets it. "I don't know if Achilles ever understood that. But he did train me."
"As did Agaté."
What Aveline doesn't say is this: she could have gone back. She could have continued to live the privileged-yet-not life she had, and forgotten about the man who would teach her how to fight the injustices she otherwise couldn't. But the thought had never once occurred to her as a child. It hadn't occurred to her at all, in fact, until now.
What she does say is this: "He would not formally induct me until I was of age. If we are to consider how long I have acted as one..."
Connor raises a silent eyebrow.
"...Twenty-four years," Aveline concludes. "The majority of my life."
"Fourteen years," Connor says after a long pause of his own. "I was... thirteen."
Older than Aveline when she began, though by little. It's an immense surprise when Aveline adds those numbers up in her head and realizes that Connor is younger than her by nearly a decade.
(It occurs to Aveline that of all those Connor has recruited, none are young or experienced enough to have been recruited as anything but an adult.)
"Were we too young, do you think?" Aveline asks. In her heart, she knows the answer.
"What would it change?" Connor leans forward in his saddle, gently patting the side of his horse's neck. "Had I not become an Assassin when I did, I couldn't have stopped my father."
"Nor I," Aveline murmurs, "my stepmother."
Madeleine desperately wanted to recruit her for the Templar Order. Aveline had been able to exploit that desperation. Had Agaté not trained her first, would she have been raised as a Templar instead?
"You are older and more experienced than I," Connor says after several minutes of silence only broken by the quiet nickers of their horses. "You would have me believe this was the opposite. Why?"
"My own mentor found me so untrustworthy that, when I went to inform him of the identity of their leader, he believed I'd turned against him and wouldn't listen to reason." The truth has never felt so bitter on her tongue. "You're the Assassin I wish I was. Perhaps, if I had been more like you... Agaté would have liked you."
She can't quite bring herself to voice her full suspicion: that, had they ever met, Agaté would have easily chosen Connor over her.
"I don't know what Achilles would have thought of you," Connor says evenly. "He and I often argued over what the right course of action would be."
"Ah." Aveline considers this. "I doubt he would have been fond of me, then."
"Yet he was always there when I needed him most," he continues. "I wasn't born with the name Connor. It was something from Achilles to help with the colonists. I only found out after his death that it was the name of his son."
Nothing Aveline could say to this seems remotely adequate for the task at hand.
She settles, eventually, on something that seems less fraught. "If Connor is not your name..."
"It is," Connor says, "and it isn't. It is who I am, just as the name my mother gave me."
He doesn't make eye contact—not that he needs to—when he turns toward her.
A little desperately, he says, "Ratonhnhaké:ton."
She attempts to repeat the name, then asks, "Is that correct?"
The slight grimace Connor—Ratonhnhaké:ton—makes suggests otherwise. "You're closer than some who have tried. Many would not."
"I will continue to try," Aveline says, resolute. "Until I do get it right."
He says nothing in response to that, but he does nod. When he speaks again, it's to change the subject to an earlier one.
"I am not Achilles Davenport. I am not Agaté." Ratonhnhaké:ton meets her eyes when she looks at him. "I am no more a Mentor of the Brotherhood than you are, Aveline de Grandpré. One day, one of us could be, but it is more likely to be you."
Aveline's first instinct is to think, unjustly, that this is some form of cruel joke. Ratonhnhaké:ton would not make light of something so very important to both of them. That said, the knowledge that he is entirely serious about this—that he must be entirely serious about this—almost feels worse.
"It is more likely to be me," Aveline says incredulously, "when you are the one who rebuilt your entire Brotherhood and routed the Templars so thoroughly that they fear to return to these shores? When you have recruited numerous others to our cause, and inspired many besides to seek better lives for themselves and those they love?"
Ratonhnhaké:ton raises an eyebrow. "You are better with words. You have been an Assassin for longer. And—"
"And I have not felt like an Assassin, not truly, since I watched Agaté die," Aveline interrupts. "I frequently lie awake at night wondering where I went wrong, and I have yet to find an answer. I would rather follow in Agaté's footsteps than join the Templar Order, regardless of circumstance, but... I don't know that I am much of an Assassin. Nor have I ever been."
"There are other ways to do good," he says quietly, "than as an Assassin."
"I know," Aveline says. It feels like a confession.
"I did not choose this life when I began," Ratonhnhaké:ton continues. "I choose it now. Just because you chose it once doesn't mean this path is all that's open to you. I have only recruited those I was certain would choose it then, and made it clear that they are free to leave it if they wish to."
"I don't," Aveline begins, then stops, considering her words further. "I didn't have that luxury."
"Nor did I." he says quietly. "We do now. What will you do with it?"
"I don't know," she murmurs. "I should return home. Perhaps I have been running away from... from this... for too long already. But I don't know if Gérald would follow me."
"If he is as you have said," Ratonhnhaké:ton says, "he would follow you to the ends of the earth. If he isn't, you can send him to me."
Aveline leaves the American Brotherhood within the week. Connor receives a single letter from her via a pair of smugglers, confirming that she arrived safely and nothing else. He doesn't hear much following that about Aveline the Assassin. He hears quite a lot, however, about Aveline de Grandpré, liberator of the enslaved, untouchable by the law or those who would strike without it.
She's building up quite the reputation for herself. He realizes, one day, months after she departed, that he is too. It's Dobby who first brings up the possibility of him becoming the Mentor, but according to her it's Stephane who first heard the term, and apparently everyone he has recruited is in agreement that there is no one better-suited for the task.
(He wonders what Achilles would have thought. There's no way of knowing now, but he spends hours at the old man's grave before he comes to a decision. He won't hold the position for long. He already knows who he'd like to take over for him. But he is ready.)
It's the following year when an escaped slave by the name of Patience Gibbs is brought to the attention of the new Mentor. She won't listen to a word Connor says when he tracks her down.
She might hear out Aveline.
"What do you make of this?" Aveline asks.
Gérald carefully considers this before folding the letter in his hands and setting it down on his desk. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but I don't... particularly think I'm cut out for most Assassin work."
"I have noticed," she says with a wry smile.
He holds up a finger, circling his desk until they stand nearly eye to eye. "However, I've grown to like the arrangement we have currently, and I know you prefer not mixing work with feelings, so I don't believe that would necessarily be a detriment."
"All he asked," Aveline says, "was that I aid him. As a friend, and as someone that Patience might speak with."
Gérald nods. "Still, he'll want to know what you have decided."
"Oui."
"If I may be so bold—"
"I insist," Aveline says pointedly.
He nods again, fiddling absently with the ring he's wearing. Aveline wears a matching one, though she rarely flaunts it.
"Have you decided?" he asks at last.
"The Templars have left us alone," Aveline murmurs, turning to look out the window. "But this will only last while they believe there's nothing of value here. Sooner or later, someone will have to fill the position Agaté left vacant."
"That someone does not have to be you," Gérald says, which is sweet of him.
"I would like it to be," Aveline decides, looking back, "and I'm willing to try. I have missed being an Assassin, and I am fond of the idea of doing better by others than Agaté did by us."
The smugglers, Élise especially, might be interested in an additional line of work. She can't believe the idea of recruiting them outright didn't occur to her sooner. Perhaps some time away from the Brotherhood was what she needed, to grant her perspective.
"Be careful," Gérald says. "Should I, ah... look into relocating what we can of the business to the United States?"
Aveline considers this. The idea no longer seems as attractive as it did mere moments ago, and yet...
"If you can without fully committing," she says at last. "This will either be my last mission as an Assassin, or my first."
Gérald is understandably puzzled by that specification. This doesn't stop him from doing what he does best by the time that Aveline departs in search of Patience Gibbs. Once she's found the girl, rescued her, and escorted her to Connor's homestead, Aveline has made her choice.
(Perhaps more importantly, she has been practicing how to pronounce Ratonhnhaké:ton.)