#THAT'S MORE TEMPLARS THAN CONNOR KILLED

[anli-rambles]

Hold up.

So I was looking something up for an upcoming AC project of mine and I just realised something. Benjamin Church and Nicholas Biddle died only 10 days apart; Church in Martinique on March 7th 1778 and Biddle in the Bahamas on March 17th 1778. It would've taken the Aquila between 4-6 weeks to make the trip from New York to Martinique so Connor must have taken the opportunity to also kill Biddle on his way back home. (It takes between 5 to 10 days to sail from Martinique to the Bahamas, so the math checks out for that one). And we know that Haytham made the trip with Connor on his ship, which means that canonically speaking, Haytham had to have been aboard the Aquila when Connor killed Nicholas Biddle AND THE IMPLICATION OF THAT IS SO FUNNY.

Nicholas Biddle's assassination is completely optional (for some reason) to the completion of the main story and you can do it whenever, even after Haytham's death, and I'm guessing that's Ubisoft's excuse for not putting him there but I want to call bs on that — if it's possible to relive a memory out of order in the first place then Haytham had no reason not to be there as well.

Let's be real, the true reason for this is that it was another HUGE oversight by Ubisoft, but since they won't fix their mess I will now take it as canon that after killing Ben Church, Haytham was somehow okay with Connor steering off course to go kill yet another Templar (and this time not a treacherous one) which makes him at the very least complicit in Biddle's death and I can't stop laughing bc at this point all Haytham does is kill other Templars, I—

[redlyriumidol]

things that would have been cool writing choices for dragon age imo, not necessarily better just interesting:

loghain doing the dark ritual on his own if the warden chooses not to. I'm not sure this is in character really it just would have been wild for a character to make a Decision like that without you. maybe only if you have low approval or something (even though its difficult to get approval either way bc you get him so late)

anders somehow using gaatlok to blow up the chantry. much as i enjoy digging through sewers for poo crystals this would have tied the various plots between acts together so nicely. this one i legitimately think would have been better.

I said this in a different post but not allowing you to go to the circle during the arl of redcliffe because it's a cheap copout and makes no sense. either give us consequences for running off and spending 300 hrs in the fade or force us to make a hard choice.

a fourth secret persuade option for mage wardens to let eamon be possessed instead of killing connor or isolde. I know i've said this a lot. But the deal would be Arl Deamon agrees to act the part until the blight is over and the dialogue is slightly different during the landsmeet etc and ur the only one who knows why. ;) epilogue slide where he's eventually discovered and killed but not before he Wreaks some Havoc

giving thrask and grace more protagonism in da2 and having them survive, and THEY become the mage/templar leaders in dai rather than randos samson and calpernia.

an acknowledgment in the anders romance that justice is ALSO in love with hawke. awakening anders was a fun flirty commitmentphobe whereas justice was an intense weirdo about kristoff and aura's relationship and even expressed jealousy towards them. which was soooo interesting. anders being so intense and lowkey possessive (love him tho) in the romance makes so much more sense if it's actually coming from justice. "justice doesn't approve of my obsession with you" bro justice IS the obsession be fr.

isabela not betraying you in the fade if she has 100% approval and is romanced. i always find this out of character especially since she betrays you JUST for a ship and not anything actually meaningful like the others. or if it was a ship but the demon's offer was more explicitly about freedom/escaping from castillon (which can be read btwn the lines but I think it should have been more obvious) that would have been much better.

[thepixelatedbunny]

Spoilers for AC3 and AC: forsaken i guess

I love how Haytham's big plan to sway his son to to the templars is to just reveal that the guy Connor's working for, George Washington, was the guy who ordered the attack on his village. That will def sway him instantly.

Like, Bro.

-Your father was an assassin

-Your templar mentor killed your father and sold your sister into slavery. (And *maybe* threatened your mother into giving you to him)

-You killed more templars than assassins (in-story)

-Your fellow tenplars are either greedy, idiots, or sadists. You even said it yourself.

-You are Probably one of the only Templar Grandmasters who doesn't want to deal with magic bs (smart choice.)

Yeah, sure, that'll def convince your equally stubborn son.

[blackflash9]

How AC3 Depicted the Minority Struggle

A common theme throughout AC3 comes from its iteration of the Templars - The Colonial Rite. The narrative was a lot more charitable and sympathetic to the Templar ideology - so much to the point that you'll often get some of those in the community who have become utterly convinced by their rhetoric to the extent that they've been deceived into believing that they were noble and righteous all along despite evidence to the contrary. Do you know who isn't convinced by them? Connor. The protagonist whom some still pretend was some bubbling deer-in-the-headlights who couldn't comprehend how "right" they were. In fact, Connor didn't think any target he killed was right. He even explicitly questions and poses counterarguments. And how do they respond? They just... call him naive instead of properly answering him. Johnson was killing the Natives who opposed him acquiring their land. His argument was that he could protect the Natives when the British or the Colonists came for them. But when Natives ask him if he is really concerned about their protection then he should give them muskets. To which he replies "War is not the answer". Easy for him to say, he wasn't getting driven off of his land. Not taking up for the Patriots, mind you, because they were honestly no different when it came to Native Americans, but Pitcairn's idea of peace was "better we hold the strings than another". When Connor questions that logic, he gets told he's being naive. Hickey? He brags about how Haytham and Connor are chasing lofty goals while his only goals were tits and gold.

Church was chased down by both Haytham and Connor for stealing supplies from the Continental Army. He was a just greedy hedonist who was trying to justify his actions. Connor counters every point Haytham makes while fighting him at Fort George. Sure, he thought if they helped the patriots they'll probably be on their side (but if Juno was right, the Templars were gonna seize his village's land anyway so there was no way he'd have been able to rescue his people), when Connor asks Haytham what makes Templars so special that they know how everything should be, all Haytham offers are excuses.

And he was in no delusion as to what the Patriots are. He points out Sam Adams' hypocrisy of fighting for freedom while owning a slave, he tells off the Sons of Liberty that they mistake him for one of their own before Achilles mentions Pitcairn. He thought Washington was a good guy before he learned he burnt his village, but in Forsaken Haytham lets go of the grudge he held against Washington because he came to see him as a great leader and better tempered than Charles Lee. So it's not like Connor was completely naive as everyone portrays him to be.

Everyone dismisses Connor as this naive kid who doesn't know "how the world works", but no one seems to give a convincing answer to the questions Connor asks. Whenever he asks the people in power (or who seek power, like the Templars) what makes them so special that everyone should obey them, they don't have an answer either. What Connor goes through in the game, is what every oppressed group has gone through. They're always told to wait, always told to liberate themselves at the convenience of their oppressors, their grievances are used as bait by those who seek power but they'll forget the same oppressed people who helped them the second they attain power. But their liberation never comes. The only people who can truly liberate are themselves. That's what the deleted monologue was about. His Creed.

[viamutationis]

OH GREY WARDEN, WE'RE REALLY IN IT NOW.

ID in alt text, notes and oc infodump under the cut! PLEASE ask me about them they're my new babygirl of the week

Yeah. Ben-Hassrath Cousland is wild, I know. This was one of those 3 am thoughts that became a beloved oc and now they're my canon protag. Basically: She was being trained to be House Cousland's left hand to spy within the noble courts and intercept threats to her family's rule, and a large part of that meant being covertly sent to Orlais to train as a bard. Buuuut the bardmaster she studied under was an undercover Hissrad, and she wound up being converted to the Qun by her. Teenage Laurentia was in a spot where, like every kid, she was questioning the Andrastian beliefs she was raised with and all the unfair things she noticed in her society, so she was very open to the Qun.

Her role once she was sent back home was basically just to send reports detailing the inner workings of the Ferelden nobility and to be aware of any Tal-Vashoth activity in the area. Pretty benign shit, and the former task is what she was doing for her family anyway. Still recruited by the Wardens the normal way, via Duncan doing his "come with me if you want to live" shtick after the fam dies. None of the Blight Crew find her out save for Leliana, because Leli knows everything. She only reveals it to Sten just as he's about to hop on a ship back home LMAOOO.

They're genuinely very compassionate and sweet. A lil whimsical. Highly loyal and protective. Very lawful good (emphasis on lawful). It's a weird sort of internal reconciling - they are genuinely kind to most people and love listening to others' issues and helping them out. It just so happens that this makes them an excellent spy, because they're exactly the sort of person people feel comfortable opening up to, and they see no issue with passing relevant information on to the powers they spy for. The kindness is genuine, but it's also a tool, if that makes sense. Their duty comes before any attachments. On that Master Coercion grindset.

No romance because they're aro, but they do have a little homoerotic espionage cat and mouse goin on with Leliana (singing campfire songs and trading stories and braiding each others' hair included). They get along with all their companions besides Morrigan and Oghren, and even Morrigan is more just.. cordial passive aggression.

They exist in the same worldstate as my Orlesian Warden-Commander Gavriel! He's a veteran warden who joins them on the road after Lothering because his ass snuck into Ferelden to help the Wardens solo, and then he'll later become the WC while they become Arlessa because they have more political experience and he has more military experience.

They generally make the nicey nice choices, albeit not where magic is concerned, and even then it's purely out of an abundance of caution. They do NOT annul the Circle, they do that secret third option where you tell Greagoir there could still be blood mages so he puts the mages into quarantine and Wynne still joins you but the game counts it as siding with the Templars. They let Isolde kill Connor, rip lil dude. (Not like they have a choice, they would rather that than the blood magic anyway, but they kill Jowan soooooo.) Besides that, all nicey choices. Bhelen on the throne, Anvil destroyed, Zathrian reconciles and everybody lives, Ashes are not tainted, Loghain recruited, Alistair and Anora rule jointly, Gavriel and Morrigan know they'd never agree to the Dark Ritual so they do it behind Laurentia's back and nobody dies lmao.

Small notes on their disabilities: Wynne was the healer that did their cleft lip surgeries as a kid!! Their last surgery was when they were 6, so they do remember her :D & their hearing aids are lyrium-infused lazurite, the runes are all enchantments that combine to make it collect and amplify sound like an actual HA does. I love bullshitting magic technology.

Their mabari is named Princess, because they got her when they were 10, okay.

[teecupangel]

Okay in what if ziio lived in pretty sure she promised haytham that if the templars attacked her village she would kill him so we cut to the burning of the village ziio lives and is on a warpath looking for haytham so she leaves Connor to be watched by Achilles and shenanigans happen but it results to Connor sneaking in to the wagon that Achilles and ziio are using to arrive to Boston ziio confronting haytham and let’s throw Shay by having him find a lost Connor and trying to help him find his mother while Achilles sis looking for him

Before we think of how this would work, we should clear up the timeline. Ratonhnhaké:ton’s village being attacked happens in 2 November 1760. Shay killing everyone but Achilles happens in March 1760.

(Let's be clear that Haytham did not order the burning of the village but they don't know that. They believe it's a Templar action which means Haytham approved of it)

This means that, if we are going for Kaniehtí:io bringing Ratonhnhaké:ton on her warpath to Achilles perhaps in 1761 then Achilles would be halfway between being his grumpy AC3 self and drowning in pain, guilt and grief. Maybe that’s why Kaniehtí:io let Ratonhnhaké:ton stay with Achilles, she believes Achilles needs a reason to keep living, to keep walking to the present each day.

Ratonhnhaké:ton knows this in some way. His mother tells him that he’s there to help Achilles. Not to move on but to never forget that he is still alive.

Kaniehtí:io would probably think that she’s being hypocritical herself. She’s the one dragging the past with her in this quest of vengeance.

She’s the reason why she and her son had been banished from the tribe. Her desire for vengeance finally being the final fight she would have with her mother who told her that, if she leaves the village to commit such violence, she would never be welcomed back.

Ratonhnhaké:ton had been collateral damage. She had been willing to leave him behind, knowing he would be much safer with the tribe than with her.

Or so she thought she had the will to do such a cruel thing to her son.

Until her son begged to come with her.

And her will crumbled.

She didn’t want to part with her son.

So she dragged him into danger.

Because of her personal vendetta against Haytham Kenway.

They stayed in the empty homestead for a year or so, Kaniehtí:io learning how to be an Assassin from a reluctant Achilles. Ratonhnhaké:ton watches and thinks he wants to be an Assassin as well.

It is a somber affair for Kaniehtí:io.

Was she pulling her son to a similar path that Haytham Kenway walks?

She can’t be sure anymore.

All she is sure is that this path of vengeance is hers alone.

That’s why she left Ratonhnhaké:ton to Achilles after receiving a clue to where Haytham Kenway was.

While she was gone, Achilles went to Boston to purchase a few supplies needed to repair the homestead. Rainy seasons were upon them and there was a new hole on the roof that needed to be fixed. It was meant to be a simply supply run.

He left Ratonhnhaké:ton back in the homestead because he was old enough and there was a kind family there that would check up on him every day.

He had just parked his wagon when he realized that Ratonhnhaké:ton had sneaked inside the wagon, covered by the cloth he had placed over it.

Achilles told Ratonhnhaké:ton to stay close but Ratonhnhaké:ton couldn’t help but look all around him, finding everything new and interesting.

Before he knew it, he was lost.

And that’s how Shay found him.

He had only been there to visit the local Templars under Haytham Kenway’s orders.

He saw the boy lost and tried to help.

Achilles found them in an empty alleyway while Shay was trying to get the boy to trust him enough to tell him if he knew where his parents were or where he last saw them.

Their eyes met.

And thy were back in the Arctic once more…

Achilles’ knee ached and threatened to burn him from the inside.

Shay looked like he had seen a ghost, had hoped that he would never see Achilles ever again.

And that’s when…

Achilles threw his cane at Shay, making Shay step back to evade it. Achilles took that time to order Ratonhnhaké:ton to run and never look back.

Ratonhnhaké:ton runs because he sensed the panic in Achilles’ voice and Achilles…

He remained.

He could never outrun Shay.

Not in his current state.

But he could…

Keep his busy enough for Ratonhnhaké:ton to escape.

He was a smart boy.

He will survive even without Achilles.

“Why does he need to run, Achilles?” Shay asked, eyes narrowing as he growled, “Is there a reason why I should chase after him?”

“That depends…” Achilles stared at him.

One of his pupils.

The last remaining child of the Brotherhood he had nurtured.

The traitor who killed everyone else.

The man who tried to do the right thing.

But at what cost?

Achilles wasn’t even sure who he was thinking about anymore.

Was he thinking about Shay Cormac?

Or of himself?

“If he was an Assassin…”

“… would you kill him too, Shay Cormac?”

[ramshackledtrickster]

What if Altair and Ezio time travelled to just after the events of AC3 and landed In the homestead?

Also, thoughts on what each assassin would be like as a babysitter?

I’ll try to combine the two prompts!

Ratonhnhaké:ton would be a bit surprised at first bc hey these are the guys he learned about while Achilles was teaching him about the history of the brotherhood. Then, he gets them acclimated and situated so they don’t have to sleep in the stables or anything, and when that’s sorted out he encourages them to help around the homestead since they’re part of that community and family now for the time being + Connor places emphasis on communal work and everyone helping each other.

Ezio isn’t as stoked about it at first but he actually quite likes helping with agriculture and farm work I think (especially considering after Revelations he’d rather retire and tend to a vineyard than do assassin stuff again.

Altaïr is not the most sociable so he’s a little cagey around the new characters, but I think he’d admire the way Ratonhnhaké:ton runs the homestead as both a functional community built on mutually aiding one another as well as doubling as a secure hideout for the assassins that would be hard to locate and infiltrate. Altaïr has had his own history with reforming the Masyaf brotherhood to emphasize freedom of choice and love for one another to build a healthier community, so he’d be proud of Ratonhnhaké:ton.

Also, one of these tasks in the homestead for sure involve babysitting/looking after Hunter or any other youngling on the homestead. I feel like the Homestead would have a “It takes a village to raise the next generation” type attitude (majorly encouraged by Ratonhnhaké:ton and influenced by his own upbringing) where everyone would look after each other’s kids and help the parents in raising em.

Ezio would be really good with kids I think, so looking after Hunter wouldn’t be an issue— growing up he’s had to look after both Claudia and Petruccio, and I feel he prides himself on that as being a good big brother, so he’d know the signs and basics of babysitting and he takes his responsibility very seriously. He’d also probably get on the other assassin’s asses on certain particulars like how to specifically hold a baby or what foods to use. He’s been around this bend the most out of the three, after all. That overconfidence can cost him though since every baby is different but he’s a bit too proud to admit that what Petruccio liked as baby food wouldn’t fly with another youngling.

Ratonhnhaké:ton is good with kids too, but he’s a little more cautious and wary and can come off as overprotective (baby proofing every square inch of wherever they’re at, worrying over every little sign, etc). He calms down though and becomes more comfortable with the rhythm of it, but generally he takes this job very seriously as well, especially since the parents trust him so much, and keeping that trust is incredibly important. He’d also be up for playing some games here or there playing with the kiddo, and humming/softly singing some lullabies he can recall in kanien’keha. Mothers trust him the most with their kids and that’s a big responsibility to shoulder, and he doesn’t want to let anyone down.

Altaïr is the one that probably feels the most awkward around kids and small babies, especially because he has to reprogram and unlearn from a lifetime of viewing himself as only useful as an assassin and a killer. Handling something so small and delicate seems so more daunting than tracking and killing a templar. So honestly, Altaïr would probably go stiff just. Holding the baby and hoping it stays asleep. Like a feinting goat with its legs locked. He knows the basics of babysitting and caring for a baby but he still feels cagey about it— to make up for it though, I feel like Altaïr would do a lot of research and reading on babies, their development, and how to best take care of them (or if he can’t find good books he’d go around and ask and make his own notes corroborated from what he has learned). He wants to do the best he can in the end, and it’d be really cute if one day Connor or Ezio (or both) accidentally walk in on Altaïr playing peekaboo or making silly noises to make the baby laugh because that’d honestly be the first time they’ve seen him so relaxed and more comfortable.

[cippicat]

What happened to Arno Victor Dorian after the events of Unity and Dead Kings ?

Following Elise's death at the end of Assassin's Creed Unity, Arno falls into a deep depression, finding little to live for.

He is also no longer part of the French Brotherhood.

In the DLC "Dead Kings", Arno is contacted by Marquis de Sade, who tasks him with finding a manuscript in the tomb of Louis IX.

Reluctantly, Arno agrees to this mission, and travels to Saint Denis to find the manuscript. During his search, Arno meets a young thief named Leon.

While the two work together, Leon's perspective on the world starts to break through Arno's grief, slowly showing him that there is more to live than the tragedies he's faced in his past.

What happened after Dead King is in the O.Bowden's novel.

I don't like his novels.

I will not summarise Oliver Bowden's novel.

But in the final chapters Arno found Elise's journal, and also Jennifer Scott Kenway's letters, where Elise requested him to seek unity for the two Orders.

It didn't go well obviously.

Arno rejoined the French assassins but we don't know when or how.

I have few theories:

Arno was extremely talented as an Assassin and his skills were too valuables

The Brotherhood forgive him after Germain's death and the rescue of the sword of Eden

The french assassins saw Napoleon's increasing influence over France and they need Arno to keep an eye on him. They became allies even though Napoleon's ideas were closer to those of the Templars.

Over the years, Arno earned the rank of Master Assassin and eventually the rank of Mentor (but he wasn't a bureaucrat as Mirabeau).

He took Leon under his wing and adopted him. At first Leon was wary of calling him "Father".

Arno presumably got married and had other children, as he is directly related to Callum Lynch, the protagonist of the Assassin's Creed movie*. Arno made a brief appearance in the movie.

He named one of his children Charles (or Charlotte) after his father and another François (or Françoise) after Monsieur de la Serre.

Did Arno and Ratonhnhaké:ton ever met ? (Reminder: Ratonhnhaké:ton is only twelve years older than Arno)

I think that Ratonhnhaké:ton became aware of Arno's actions during the French Revolution. They may have exchanged letters but they never met in person (and Connor had a big family to took care of and a very sweet daughter who was gifted by the spirits).

Did Arno find out who killed his father?

YES

He knew about Shay but he didn't hunt him down because revenge only leads to a bad path (and probably he thought that Shay was already dead which could be true).

Did Arno met Ethan Frye? Yes, it's possible due to the proximity of the French and english's brotherhood. Arno should be around 65/70 yo (if he was still alive).

We don't know when or how Arno died because Ubisoft never gave us answers (again)

I think that Arno passed away before the birth of the Frye twins, in 1847.

*I have a theory:

AC Unity should have been the gateway to a new present with Callum Lynch (and his ancestors like Aguilar de Nerha) as a new protagonist. But the movie has been a complete disaster so Ubisoft abandoned the idea.

[desmond69miles]

I am having such bad writers block but so many ideas it's physically affecting me?!? Even writing this made me ball my fists in frustration like that one arthur meme. AO3 is down and I have nothing better to do oh my god I'm going to KILL YMSELGFDKO

"Okay Lynn I understand you have writers block why don't you take a break?" SHUT HSIAFHSDOFJISDFNJKISDNJFS SHUP SHUT UP I have MANY ideas and have to put them out there so either another assassin's creed fanfic writer can borrow my ideas or I'll come back and write them later. So, please enjoy my wild rampage about assassin's creed characters.

(Also I HEAVILY doubt that someone will see these and be like "huh, I'm going to write something based on this." IF YOU DO DECIDE TO DO THAT, TAG ME!!! I want to see your work.)

Either Jacob or Evie falling in love with a templar reader, but the templar reader in question is none other than Starrick's only child and heir (A bit like Elise and Arno, to be honest). My mind has been stuck on this for so long it is actually driving me insane. I think Jacob would be more the type to have a forbidden love with a very important Templar, and bonus brownie points if the relationship is very angsty and full of conflict with Starrick and Jacob. Wait wait wait wait wait -- Jacob and Evie kill Starrick, we know this, but what if reader actually liked their father? What if after Starrick dies, reader hates Jacob????

Ratonhnhaké:ton (Connor) I feel would be a sweet lover. Like the type to bring you small trinkets from the places he visits and the type to teach you how to use a bow for hunting. I think it'd be fun to see a fic where Connor takes reader hunting for the first time (which is more just a tag-along visit) and either A) Reader doesn't have it in them to watch Connor skin/prepare the animal or B) Reader is fascinated with the skill of preparing an animal for consumption/skinning one and Connor is teaching them all the little tips and tricks to it.

I like the few fics I've seen where reader is Shay Cormac's child and either falls in love with Arno or doesn't agree with the templar ways, but what if somehow Shay's child is raised by the Templars and later reunites with their dad through Haytham, Gist, etc? A gold star if his child is absolutely chaotic and reeking havoc while Haytham and Shay try to fix the large messes made. (Shaytham agenda arise)

I NEED my girl Elise to be written for more. NEED. It'd be cute to see reader who's Elise's ladies maid and is absolutely crushing on the beautiful redhead, but readers a bit hesitant due to Arno and, of course, the air around same-sex couples back then. Come some holiday and Elise takes notice of readers crush on her, and just like casual comfort??

I had a dream a few nights ago where I looked like Rose from Titanic and was Jacob's wife (we were both older and had a son) and I came back from France and the nursemaid despised me because she was jealous of me and Jacob's marriage. I'm not sure how this could be written out but hey, if you want the nursemaid to destroy a marriage, go ahead.

Shit that's all I got in me I've been done for Bye bye It's time to go back into my cave

[recreationalfanfics]

Before I go on my little AC rant I just wanted to say how awesome it is to see another native woman whose an assassin’s creed fan! I rarely see other native people on this app period, but seeing someone else whose an AC fan is just amazing! You’re my favorite writer and I just love everything you write!

Anyway, man I really wish they would have showed or said something about Shay vs Ratonhnhaké:ton after Ratonhnhaké:ton basically destroyed the templars! Your posts have me thinking about Haytham and Shay sharing a platonic darling who is also Ratonhnhaké:ton’s romantic darling. You were probably already stuck with Haytham/Shay before Ratonhnhaké:ton found you during his hunt for the templars. He thinks constantly about how much he wants you away from the templars and safe with them while Haytham is forced to consider shipping you off with Shay somewhere to be kept safe. After Haytham’s death Ratonhnhaké:ton takes you in, but you know that Shay is still out there and will come back eventually. So you’re just stuck waiting around until he does and it probably pushes you a bit more into Ratonhnhaké:ton’s arms because of it. Idk i just really wanted to see a Shay/Ratonhnhaké:ton throw down 😫🥲

OMG. HIIIIII♡ I LITERALLY NEARLY CRIED WHEN I SAW THIS BUT YEAH, SAME, Shay isn't my absolute favorite character (his concept was interesting and the execution was not it) AND YEAH, NO, I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WOULD BE COOL IF WE GOT A SHAY AND CONNOR SHOWDOWN BUT WE NEVER DID.

But also, that is such a delicious idea omg. Maybe you were taken in by Haytham after he killed your assassin parents or maybe you just knew the things that the Templars were doing were wrong but either way, it wasn't like you could do much. Haytham saw something in you, felt a whole in his heart heal a little when he was around you, and then a fatherly love for you. Since Shay is obviously a Templar at this time, he absolutely adored you as well and he became something of an uncle, morally he wasn't any better than Haytham, but you eased the harshness of time within him and softened his hardened heart. He'd often write to you or when he went to visit Haytham, he'd bring back a gift from wherever he visited because absolutely loved your precious little smile. Then Haytham took you away to the colonies and it pained Shay not knowing how long it would be before you'd be back but he'd still write letters.

You meet Ratonhnhaké:ton when he was working with his dad, he feels embarassed for this but he genuinely does feel shy around you. You're just so mesmerizing and you smile a little when Haytham has to elbow him to introduce himself to you and you introduce yourself to him. Haytham isn't blind, when you must make camp for the night, he sees the way Ratonhnhaké:ton looks at you and the way you look at him. Maybe it was because he wasn't raised in a stuffy Templar upbringing like you or maybe it was the way he spoke, his ideals and his thoughts, Haytham watched bitterly and with confliction because on one hand, he cared for Ratonhnhaké:ton in his own way but you...he could see the wheels turning in your head as Ratonhnhaké:ton spoke, how his lessons and teachings were going out your ear as you listened to Ratonhnhaké:ton. He calls it an early night and makes sure you two get into your own separate tents and keeps watch. Haytham knew he needed the boy yet but he can't risk you getting any ideas and trying to leave him when he worked so hard to give you the best life you could possibly ask for. He writes a letter to Shay saying that he should come and take you back on his ship for a while until this whole war is over. In the morning when you all stop by town for supplies, he sends it.

While he's doing that, you and Ratonhnhaké:ton just wandering the streets, talking and cracking some funny jokes here and there. It's when you ask him if Connor is his real name that things get interesting.

"Connor is just easier to remember for most people. My birth name is hard to pronounce for some."

"Try me."

When he says his name, you struggle with the pronunciation only a little but after some practice tries, you finally get it right: "Ratonhnhaké:ton...I like it. Would you mind if I continued to call you that?"

"I would appreciate it deeply."

The way you say his name (his TRUE one) sends goosebumps down his spine, when Haytham comes back from a few errands and you once more ride horseback, you smile to yourself as Ratonhnhaké:ton rides behind you, his gaze that of a lovesick puppy. Then his eyes shift over to his father and they darken ever so slightly as the corners of his lips turn to a frown. He likes being with you, he can't deny it. You're so kind and sweet, so unfazed at the sight of blood and killing due being figuratively shackled to Haytham's side but so doting when he receives the smallest of cuts. You both knew that you were no Templar and there was no question that the only thing keeping you one was his father.

When he kills Haytham, you aren't sure what to feel, so you stand and feel nothing. Ratonhnhaké:ton knows he made a mistake but he can not take it back now. Two orphans walk out hand in hand as you agree in your head and heart to go with Ratonhnhaké:ton wherever he goes. Ratonhnhaké:ton also does end up taking Haytham's journal and learning more about his father, how many times you tried to escape or how many times you cried for your real parents, how you finally became the compliant and dearly beloved apprentice/child for Haytham eventually. Then he reads about the latest entry of how Haytham caught onto Ratonhnhaké:tons feelings-which Connor finds rather embarrassing and nearly puts the journal down to stop there because he thought he was doing well in hiding it-but then his eyes see a familiar name, "Shay".

He knows of him from Achilles, he knows of him because of the amount of blood he has on his hands, and when he tells you about how Haytham sent the letter, you smile sadly.

"I figured...I can leave if you wish me too."

"Why would I want you to do that?"

"Ratonhnhaké:ton"- he feels a certain giddiness in his heart when you say his name- "I am not worth the trouble."

He responds with a simple: "Yes, you are, and more..."

When Shay reaches the colonies again, he knows that something happened to Haytham when he didn't return a few other letters he sent. The one thing that is on his mind when Haytham is confirmed dead was you.

What happened to you?

Where are you?

Who took you?

Shay will look all over the colonies for you and bring you back "home", you know that much. Ratonhnhaké:ton would be daring him to try and take you from him. After getting to know Ratonhnhaké:ton and living life away from the Templars,when Shay DOES find you, you're quick to try and run to Ratonhnhaké:ton. Shay grabs your wrist and pulls you into a hug which you would've loved if it still didn't feel so suffocating now you had gotten a taste of freedom. When he tries to drag you away, Ratonhnhaké:ton defiantly emerges and grabs your other wrist, causing Shay to look him up and down but more importantly, it's the robes that he's wearing that cause him to scowl.

It would eventually lead to a duel, one where the future of your life will be determined and nothing will change it. Shay would kill without hesitation but Ratonhnhaké:ton is more than willing to do anything he can to keep you with him.

[kiatheinsomniac]

──── 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐖𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐒 ˊˎ -

☾ ⋆ ﾟ𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 / 𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒: a commission from @tired-lime who was absolutely lovely to work with! Thank you very much! 𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: Ratonhnhaké:ton | Connor Kenway x Reader 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓: 7.4k 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: none

You did your best to keep your eyes on the chemise you were darning. It wasn’t one you wore outside of bed as your outfits consisted more of trousers than long skirts, much more suitable to the life that your godfather had raised you into, the same life that your father had led. Achilles was the closest thing to a father that you had considering that yours was killed by a Templar back when the Colonial Brotherhood was wiped out a generation ago. You had a few fuzzy memories of your father: him reading fairy tales to you before you went to sleep, one summer afternoon where you showered him with a handful of daisies that you’d picked. That was all. You had been born outside of wedlock, your mother dying shortly after your birth but your father had stepped up right until the day he was murdered and it was for his kindness that you accepted Achilles’ invitation to join the Brotherhood. 

As much as you loved Achilles and you had been happy when it was just the two of you in Davenport Manor, Ratonhnhaké:ton’s arrival made you realise how much you craved having someone your own age around. He was a quiet but kind-hearted boy who wanted to right the wrong that had been committed against his home at the hands of the Templars. The two of you had that much in common. 

You’d been trying to get him to talk to you more but he was so distant and a part of you didn’t blame him after what he’d been through. The most you had actually seen him talk was in his persistence to get Achilles to train him (you had put in a few persuasive words on the boy’s behalf too, though he still didn’t know it). For the first few months, you had allowed him his space despite your excitement at having someone new around. He was mourning a great loss and it wouldn’t be fair for you to intrude on that space. You would often hear him wake from nightmares where he would shout, cry out or groan but you thought that it would be overstepping a line to enter his room in order to check up on him. Instead, you would offer him silent comforts in the morning when helping to prepare breakfast (something you had always done for Achilles as his knee would hassle him when walking around too much, so it was no extra effort to prepare food for Ratonhnhaké:ton on certain mornings). You would give him an extra dash of honey in his tea or you’d go out to the greenhouse for a handful of blueberries to put in his porridge with an extra pinch of cinnamon. Silent little treats to remind him that even though terrible things had happened to him, he still deserved comforts and nice things. 

Now, though, he was stripped down to just his undershirt as he chopped wood not too far from the porch where you were perched on the swing, darning your nightdress. Ratonhnhaké:ton was a tall young man, easily towering over both you and Achilles, and the contours of his body were only becoming more defined as the two of you trained together. His sleeves were pushed up over his forearms and your eyes quickly fell down to where you had pricked your finger with the needle in your distracted state. You could have cursed the little slither of metal but found that you could do no such thing when it very well could be what stopped you from being caught staring at your new ally and housemate. 

A bead of blood pooled at your fingertip and you smeared it between your finger and thumb before discarding it on the dark fabric of your trousers which would not be ruined by the small stain. When your eyes flickered back up to Ratonhnhaké:ton at the new silence, the pause of the axe coming down hard on the large blocks of wood, it was to see him tying back his dark hair that was becoming bothersome, getting in his way. Your gaze fell straight back down to the chemise in your lap when his dark eyes roved upwards to where you were on the porch. 

Enough time had passed for you to no longer be intruding on his mourning, surely? But he was so reserved that you had little idea how to get closer to him, how to glide through this wall of what seemed to be distrust which he had built around himself. You’d already cooked enough meals for him, eaten them together at the dining table, had trained with him, what more could you do without being too forward? You pondered your thoughts as you continued to pull at the needle and thread. Foraging or hunting together, perhaps? Though, hunting seemed to be quite a solitary activity for him so perhaps just foraging or maybe even gardening? You could relate it to the cooking so perhaps that was a smooth enough transition? Yes, you decided, this evening you would invite him to go foraging with you. 

It was early autumn, that time of year when the trees were just starting to turn and it was foggy and nippy in the mornings but warm by the time the sun was setting over the horizon and there were plenty of herbs and all sorts of mushrooms to be found. The two of you could spend the day foraging and chatting and hopefully the time spent together would help you to better understand him, to better figure out how to overcome these walls he had built around himself. 

You brought the chemise up to your mouth in order to break the thread off with your teeth and you held it up to inspect your work in the light. Deeming that you were finished, you stood up to head back inside. You lingered just outside the door for a moment as you watched Ratonhnhaké:ton continue to chop the firewood. He paused when he realised that he had an audience and you gave him a shy wave to which he responded with a gentle smile and soft dip of his head. 

The little interaction made each of your steps feel lighter when you made your way back indoors. 

‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊ ♡ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ♡ ‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊

That night, as you and Connor were washing the dishes in the tub, scrubbing the plates clean and drying them off to be put away, you approached him with your idea. 

“So…” You began as you took a handful of cleaned and dried cutlery to put away in the drawer, “I was thinking of going foraging tomorrow, maybe making a mushroom soup? You haven’t really seen the homestead at this time of year so I thought I could show you some of the best places to find things?” You suggested as you came to sit back down opposite him. You watched as he slowed right down from where he had been using a cloth to try up one of the bowls, considering your offer. It was in that tense moment of unsurety to his answer that you realised how much you would really be hurt should he turn you down. When you had planned this out, you figured that it would be a nothing-gained-nothing-lost sort of situation but now that you watched as he decided whether or not to spend the day with you, you realised how much rejection would hurt. 

“That sounds like a good idea. What time will we leave?” Your shoulders relaxed a little upon hearing his agreement and the warm water crept up your wrists as you searched around blindly for anything else that might have been forgotten about at the bottom of the tub. 

“Ten?” You suggested, “That way we can have breakfast and prepare a lunch before going too.” Slowly, he nodded his head once. 

“Maybe we could bring some herbs back to grow in the greenhouse too?” He added and you had to bite the inside of your cheek to quell what would have otherwise been a beaming smile. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? Not only did he want to forage with you but he wanted to garden with you too when the both of you returned. 

“Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.” You agreed. The two of you stood and you went to put away the rest of the dishes while he hefted up the tub to pour the water to the ground outside. 

“Thank you, Ratohnhaké:ton.” You said when he returned. You had always hated emptying out the water by yourself as it would often slosh around and splash onto your clothing. He seemed to have an easier time with it. 

“Thank you.” He returned. 

“Oh, I’ve always been used to doing the dishes anyway. Achilles would help me when I was really little but if I can spare him-”

“No, no, I meant for using my name.” You paused for a moment as you realised that you never really called him Connor the way that Achilles did. He had introduced himself as Ratonhnhaké:ton before your godfather and mentor gave him another name and you supposed that it just had the chance to stick before Connor did. 

You simply shrugged, was it really so much of a big deal to use his real name? 

“You introduced yourself like that so I suppose I’ve never really considered you to be Connor…” You didn’t miss the small smile on his lips and it made your heart leap for a moment. 

“Still, it means a lot…” You had more chores to do and so you made your way outside to feed the horses. When you made your way back inside, you found Achilles in the living room, resting in an armchair with a book in his hands. 

“Where did Ratonhnhaké:ton go?” You asked as you looked around a little before grabbing your book from the shelf and taking your own seat in order to continue where you had left off. 

“The basement, training.” He replied simply, only sparing you one glance from his book. That wasn’t unusual for Connor. He had a thirst for revenge and he knew that he had to prepare himself in order to realise it. “I fear that ambition will kill that boy…” 

“Is that why you didn’t want to take him in?” You asked and the older man let out a sigh and he closed his book, keeping his thumb between the pages to assure he didn’t lose his place. 

“The days of this brotherhood were cut short years ago when Shay tore up all my students like they were weeds in the ground.” He began, “I taught you what I did so that you could protect yourself if anyone ever came after us again but I never wanted you to become an Assassin, I owed that much to your father-” 

“But you know that I’m older now and that’s not your choice to make, don’t you?” You asked. Achilles let out a pensive hum and rubbed the fingers of his free hand together before propping his elbow up on the armrest so that he could lean his head on his palm. 

“I do. And I knew that when his boy came along with his plot of revenge against the Templars that you’d be roped into it too-”

“But isn’t it my revenge as much as it is his?” You countered and your godfather sighed. The two of you had skirted around this subject many times but it seemed that it had been coming up more and more often since Ratonhnhaké:ton arrived. 

“The man who killed your father…” Achilles let out a deep sigh, “Well you know this story, child: you know that he was an Assassin, that he turned on us, that he worked with the Templars to wipe us out and then vanished. I won’t see you get yourself killed chasing down his whole order just to get to him.” 

“But you’ll let Ratonhnhaké:ton do the same chasing down Charles Lee?” You contradicted. 

“Connor-” Achilles paused when he realised just how sharply his tone had come out, his voice softening from then on, “-isn’t my goddaughter.” 

“Achilles, I’m not going to be in this manor forever and I’m going to have to make my own decisions in life.” 

“And what decisions are you going to make when you’re dead, hm? Because you got killed for the sake of revenge but who’s going to be left to avenge you?” You went silent for a moment, knowing he’d say that and yet you were stumped for a moment. 

“If I pass up this opportunity while Ratonhnhaké:ton’s here to fight by my side, will I ever get this chance again? He’s going to kill Templars looking for Lee and what if, in that process, he kills everyone who might lead me to Cormac?” You countered. Achilles went silent and you hoped it was because he realised that he wouldn’t be able to change your mind. 

“You finish training first. I won’t allow you to leave a moment sooner.” You gave a slight nod of your head as your eyes turned back down to your book, huffing out a little sigh. 

“Seems fair enough to me…” 

‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊ ♡ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ♡ ‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊

The following morning, you had already had a quick wash, had dressed and braided your hair back and out of the way and you were preparing lunch for the day while Ratonhnhaké:ton was making breakfast for the two of you. You didn’t go out of your way to make anything too fancy: just some sandwiches each with some dried meat and an apple on the side, something lightweight for your bags. Meanwhile, Ratonhnhaké:ton was preparing your usual breakfast of porridge and honey with some tea. 

“Is there anything in particular that you’re hoping to find?” Connor asked as the two of you ate, sitting opposite each other at the dining table. Your thoughtful hum was silenced by the sip that you took from your sweetened tea. 

“Chicken of the woods? Hopefully some oyster mushrooms too, they tend to be quite plentiful and I know quite a few recipes that include them.” You replied as your spoon scraped around the bottom of your bowl, getting the last of your food out. It was nice to have a warm breakfast before heading out into the cold morning air. 

The two of you cleaned up after yourself as to not give Achilles anything to worry about and then threw on some coats to go outside with. You knew that you’d just end up carrying it back with how the day was bound to get warmer as it progressed but, still, you were not willing to freeze for a few hours just to spare yourself from having to carry the coat later on. 

The two of you were already past the line of trees and following a trodden-down trail when you finally decided to speak, the sound of your voice joining in with the wind and birds singing through the treetops around you. 

“So, uh, I suppose I never really asked but how do you find the homestead? Do you feel at home here or…?” Having this conversation so long after he had come to live with you and your godfather made it sink in a little more just how distant Ratonhnhaké:ton could be. 

“Originally, I think I just saw it as temporary, a means to an end…” Your heart fell a little at discovering he did not feel as at home in the manor as you did, “But Achillies has kept his word and you’ve been more than welcoming.” He replied and it immediately lifted your spirits. You had been putting in the effort to make him feel welcomed and you were glad that it had taken effect. “And I’ve come to realise that I’ll need a place to be able to come back to and I don’t think I’d want it to be anywhere but here.” 

“I’m glad to hear it.” You replied as you slowed your pace a little in order to walk beside him instead of a few paces ahead of him, “But we should get off the path now and get looking. I assume you know what sort of stuff to look out for in terms of the mushrooms: fallen logs or branches, rotting wood.” He gave a quick nod of his head, his braid swinging a little and the two of you split up to begin combing through the area, though not wandering too far from one another. 

Connor was the first to find something: some fennel. He took a portion of the plant from the ground, preserving the roots and wrapping the soil-covered base in a cloth before putting it into his bag. You found a few white mushrooms, hoping for them to be horse mushrooms but cutting into the cap quickly revealed them to be yellow stainers and so you dropped your sample and let the others be, not wishing to poison anyone in the manor with such a toxic fungus. 

Though, you didn’t give up hope and between light chit-chat with your companion, lifting rotting branches, scanning fallen logs and keeping an eye on tree trunks, you had quite a bit to show for half a day’s work by the time you and Connor had removed your coats to sit upon while you ate lunch in a little clearing. The first few autumn leaves fell around you while the sun filtered through the gap in the trees that you were seated on the edge of. 

You took out a little knife to begin slicing into your apple before Connor’s large palm reached out to rest upon your knee. Confused, your gaze flickered up to him to find that he was holding a single finger to his plump lips. He very slowly withdrew and reached for the bow that had been set beside him, knocking an arrow before – with such liquid and steady movement – he cautiously rose to his knees, pulling back the string. 

You followed where the arrow was pointed and noticed a rabbit grazing at the other end of the clearing, seemingly unaware of the presence of the two of you. Had you blinked, you would have missed when the arrow flew and Ratonhnhaké:ton quickly got to his feet to make sure he hadn’t missed his mark. Setting your apple and knife down on your coat, you followed him and found that his aim had been true. He took out a cord from his pocket and tied it around the creature’s feet, turning to you with a proud smile that you couldn’t help but share in. 

“I have a recipe I’d like to try if you don’t mind letting me cook tonight?” He asked and you grew even more enthusiastic. 

“Of course!” You replied as the two of you returned to where you had been sitting in order to finish your lunches. As you returned to your cross-legged position, you couldn’t help but reflect on how his hand had been so warm upon your knee, bronzen skin against your clothing, large palm splaying over you. It filled you with a sort of warmth and you stole a glance at him for a fraction of a second before you decided against looking at him with such thoughts in your head. You quelled the urge to bite on your lower lip by pushing a slice of apple past your teeth and chewing on that instead. Was this more than just a desire for friendship? You hadn’t had many friends to really know what it felt like to want to pursue someone platonically so badly but what if your feelings were more than that? 

You decided to not lose yourself in such a train of thought lest you accidentally slice your finger on the knife that you were using to cut up your apple. You still had most of the day to spend with Connor and you didn’t want it to be spent pondering such a big question, you’d much rather you be able to enjoy his company free of the burden of such possibilities. 

Once you’d both finished eating, you reviewed what you had already managed to find and you slung your coat over the top of your messenger bag so that you would have no need to carry it while you walked around. The two of you would now begin to loop back around to the manor, returning from a different direction than the one you had left in, seeing what you could find along the way. You eyed up the rabbit that Connor carried over his shoulder as you walked just a few paces behind him before you skipped forwards a little, just enough that you would be able to fall into sync with him. 

“Can you teach me how to hunt like that? I’ve been using a bow for a really long time but I don’t know the first thing about where to aim at an animal, how to not spook it, what to do with it after, all the technical stuff, you know?” You asked, “And you seem brilliant at it.” The request had genuinely been made out of a want to learn the skill, knowing it would prove to be beyond valuable as you walked through life, but you realised the other implication to your words the moment they left your mouth. Asking Ratonhnhaké:ton to teach you how to hunt would mean spending more time with him too. You supposed that his answer would reflect greatly on whether or not he was enjoying this day spent with you. 

“Of course.” He replied, “I do have one condition, though.”

“Whatever you want.” 

“You’ll teach me how to use the rope dart. I know Achillies has taught you but he refuses to teach me just yet, I’m not entirely sure why.” He replied. 

“He used to train lots of people a while back; my father was one of them.” You explained, “He’s just a very methodical man, he spent decades teaching people at a particular pace, in a particular way and if it worked for so long, I’m sure he just doesn’t see the need to change things or speed up the process.” You shrugged. 

“Achilles trained your father?” Connor highlighted and you nodded your head with a hum, “They were really close and he gave my father an opportunity to make something of himself, then later on the means to support me. It’s why he was made my godfather – the old man won’t ever admit it but he’s a really nurturing person and I think that my dad saw that in him too.” 

“What was your father like?” Your companion asked.

“I didn’t really know him, I can’t remember him all that well because he was killed by a Templar when I was young. I know that he read me stories and took me out to play though. I can just faintly remember his smile too.” You had come to terms with his death a long time ago but for some reason it filled you with that deep sadness that would rarely weigh heavily on your chest when you thought about him, about his injustice. “Yours?” You asked, wanting to change the subject. 

“I never knew him.” Connor replied and you bit the inside of your cheek for asking such a question at all. “My mother was a wonderful woman though. She was intelligent and her will was as strong as her body. So many of us looked up to her and I… She deserves to be here still. Lee deserves to pay for taking that from her, from me.” 

“She sounds incredible.” You replied, “I didn’t know my mother, she died when I was just a baby.” A very silence fell over the two of you, punctuated by wind and birdsong, as you reflected on your pasts, on each other’s pasts. You had both lacked one parent, had lost the other to an untimely death at the hands of another. And in the present, you both had a desire for revenge. “Oh wow, look!” You pointed through the trees with one hand as the other grabbed his arm to stop him from walking ahead, pointing to a thick growth of brambles that were covered in plump, ripe blackberries. 

��̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊ ♡ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ♡ ‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊

That evening, you were spared your typical duty of cooking dinner and you weren’t entirely sure whether Ratonhnhaké:ton’s rabbit stew really was that incredible or whether it just tasted better because it was cooking for you and not by you. It gave you time to draw yourself a bath while he cooked and as you towel-dried your hair, you gazed out of your window to the greenhouse that you and Connor had gone to after your day of foraging in order to plant the herbs you had found. You smiled fondly as you recalled the way his hands had cupped around yours once while helping you to pot the plant. He had been so tender with pruning different plants there and it filled you with a sort of warmth to see a young man as broad and looming as Ratonhnhaké:ton be so tender. You’d trained with him, had seen his strength, had listened to his story of injustice, fire and blood; and yet he was still so gentle. You snapped yourself out of your daydream to fold up the towel and brush your damp hair. You threw on a robe so as to not feel the chill that would often dance through the old manor at night and made your way downstairs to read with Achillies as you usually did, grabbing your book from the nightstand.  

However, on your way down there, you passed the secret entrance to the basement and, instead, followed the sound of a training dummy being beaten where you then found Connor in the middle of the room, wooden stick in his hand as he attacked the dummy from all sorts of directions. You sat down on a nearby seat silently and he acknowledged your presence with a nod of his head and a slight smile before continuing with what he was doing. You opened your book to the page where you had left off and began to read, the two of you sharing the basement while both of you did your own thing. 

“About hunting…” He began once he deemed he was done for the evening and you had already read through multiple chapters, “How about two days from now?” He suggested. You liked that he seemed eager to get out with you again, that he was the one to chase this up and not you. 

“Yeah, that sounds perfect.” You answered as you slid your bookmark back between the pages. 

“And you’ll teach me how to use the rope dart?” You set the book down on the table and picked up one of said weapons from where it had been wrapped around itself and hung on the wall. Pulling on the knot to loosen it, you took the dart in hand and swung it around once before thrusting it forward. It flew through the air and straight into the dummy’s chest, allowing you to yank it forwards and push it off your dart by kicking the dummy away as it threatened to crash into your body. 

“Of course.” You replied and couldn’t help but grin at the awed smile on Ratonhnhaké:ton’s face, the little glitter in his eyes at your surprise demonstration, “And I’ll teach you to do more than just that too.” You made your way upstairs to check on Achilles. 

‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊ ♡ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ♡ ‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊

Two days passed and it was early morning. You were checking over everything in your pack with a list and pencil in hand, making sure that you had everything for the journey. Achilles had assured you that he would be alright without the two of you for two days but you still made extra food for him just in case. Sure, he wasn’t quite the vulnerable old man that you made him out to be in your mind but, for a very long time, Achilles was the only person you had and so you supposed you had developed a habit of being a little too nurturing sometimes, wanting to do your part to make sure that nothing bad happened to him too. 

Either way, you would be spending the next two days out camping with Connor while he taught you how to hunt. He said that it would be best if you took more than just the day like when you had gone foraging together so that you were more likely to come back with a good haul. You were dressed warm, knowing the nights would be cold and you could just carry the extra layers in your bag during the day. Checking almost everything off your list, you threw on a coat and slung your bag over your back, making your way downstairs. 

You followed the route down to the basement to retrieve a bow and quiver full of arrows as well as a few rope darts which you stashed away in your bag and hoped your godfather wouldn’t realise were missing. You made your way to the porch where you found Achilles sitting in the swing-chair that you had been in around a week ago, darning your chemise and watching Ratonhnhaké:ton chop wood. 

“You’re sure you’ll be alright?” You asked. You’d never really been away from Achilles and the thought of any old person being lonely broke your heart a little. 

“Young lady, I was here a long time before you were and I can assure you I’ll be perfectly fine all by myself; especially with enough food to feed a family of four that you’ve left me with.” He added and you bit back a smile at his sassiness. And he had the nerve to ask where you got it from sometimes. 

“Alright then. We’ll be back in a few days.” You placed your hand on his shoulder and stooped down to press a kiss to his temple and he returned the gesture by taking your hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. 

“I’ll see you in a few days, child.” He said as you turned to go and meet Connor where he was waiting for you down the path. You jogged to catch up to him, unaware of the smile on your face. 

The two of you struck up conversation about what sort of game you were expecting to come across, how far you would travel before taking breaks or setting up camp, all little conversation pieces related to why you were out in the first place but what you really wanted was to talk about him. You still craved to get past the walls he put up around himself, to find out who he was at his core and you could only hope that you’d be able to do that on this trip. Since inviting him to forage with you, you’d both been spending more time together outside of training: cooking, cleaning, gardening, reading, sewing, carving, tending to the horses. Even if you weren’t talking to each other, you were spending time around one another and a part of you was optimistic that Ratonhnhaké:ton wanted to let you in as much as you wanted to be let in by him. Only time would tell, you supposed. 

Connor was a good teacher, you would come to find. Within the first few hours of your trip, he had already given you a great many tips on how to better aim your bow and how to draw your arrows stealthily enough as to not spook your prey. You were currently aiming at a pinecone on a low tree branch – Ratonhnhaké:ton having emphasised the importance of practising on small targets considering you would have to have very precise aim when shooting a live creature – and he was standing behind you, raising your elbow and bending your aiming arm enough for the string to not hit your arm upon release. 

You found yourself mildly trembling at how close he was, how the heat of his body was warming your back, his breath puffling out against your cheek as he pressed it to yours in order to get a better look at how you were aiming. His hand covered yours to silently coax you to draw the string right back to your other cheek and you did your utmost to stop your body from quivering. 

Did he see this as no different to the closeness when you would train and spar together? Because it felt so different to you somehow, so much more intimate. He was making it difficult to concentrate but was that really such a bad thing? If you missed all that would happen would be him sharing in this closeness once more as he corrected your posture or aim, unknowingly feeding into the well of delight that was bubbling in your chest. 

You let the arrow fly. 

It just barely missed the target and you pouted, knowing that you would have been able to hit it if not for your gorgeous distraction. 

“That’s ok.” He reassured you in that gentle honey-like tone of his as he handed you another arrow. “Try again.” He withdrew from you entirely and while you were disappointed at it, you also found that it became much easier to concentrate. 

The pinecone was knocked from the tree. 

‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊ ♡ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ♡ ‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊

You had stopped for lunch and you proudly had a rabbit hanging from your bag, its feet tied together in the way that Connor had taught you. You’d packed a little something for your first day in case you hadn’t caught anything that you could cook. Truthfully, you had spooked off two rabbits before managing to shoot this one and you hadn’t exactly aimed as perfectly as your tutor but Connor had been quick to put the poor creature down, assuring that he would also teach you how to do that for yourself. 

With your bag propped up against a nearby tree and some lunch in your belly, you had taken out two rope darts for you and Ratonhnhaké:ton to practise with. The moves almost seemed to come to him naturally and you wondered for a moment if this is the sort of life your father had led: the camaraderie of training with and teaching fellow Assassins, knowing that these skills would one day be used to act out justice, to defend the world from the tyranny of the ideologies in the Templar Order. You may well be fighting for your life side-by-side with this man in the not-so-distant future and you were sure that there is no one else in the world you could possibly want to have more than him in that situation. After a few more hours of training, you continued on to hunt some more before you would begin to set up camp for the night. 

These plans were ruined, however, when the wind picked up. Dark, threatening clouds rolled in from the horizon as the two of you followed a path by the lake where you had stopped after some fruitless hunting to teach Connor how to make fish hooks the way you did. He had decided that it was better to get moving than to fish upon seeing the clouds and he was right as you were now squinting against a downpour of rain, blinking your lashes to try and keep the water out of your eyes. 

The two of you had decided to head to higher ground and you trudged on a few paces behind him as he led the way to a spot he had found before when out hunting. You weren’t particularly happy about your wet clothes and sodden, muddy boots but you knew all would be well once Connor led you to shelter and you could get a fire going. 

As you tilted your head up just slightly in order to see if there was a single break in the clouds that had turned your nice day with Connor upside down, you lost your footing and your arms flung out in preparation to catch yourself only, you fell straight down. 

You were now up to your waist in mud, having fallen into a hole of sorts. 

“Wait!” You called out to Ratonhnhaké:ton, trying to get yourself out but beginning to panic when you realised that it only made you sink deeper. “Ratonhnhaké:ton!” Your voice now came out in a desperate cry and he turned around, eyes widening when he didn’t see you before his head tilted down to where you were only waist-above the ground. 

“Hey, hey,” He was quickly kneeling down by your side, grabbing your arm to try and calm you but you were still hurriedly trying to get out, “calm down, it’ll be worse if you panic.” He was right, you knew, but it didn’t dissolve the fear that was bubbling within you. “Y/n.” He spoke your name as his other hand cupped your face, making you meet his brown eyes. They seemed to reach straight into your soul and you continued to pant in ragged, shaky breaths but were no longer flailing about to get out. “I’m going to get you out, ok? Let me take off your bag.” You moved your arms to assist him but kept the rest of your body as still as possible as he set the extra weight aside and got to his feet, careful that he didn’t fall in with you as he bent down to grab you under your arms. “Grab on when I lift you. On three: one… two… three!” He pulled you from the mud and you were rather surprised that you didn’t lose either or both of your shoes in the process as he set you back upon steady ground. You were absolutely soaked and covered in mud, trembling from the cold as the rain beat down against your back. 

Without a word being said, Connor threw your bag onto his back and took your hand in his as he hurried up your pace, leading you up an up-hill path. You were glad for the security that he provided in holding your hand, reassuring you that he would not allow you to fall again as he led you into a sheltered and dry cave. You got to work on starting a fire while he set up the tent, thunder clapping in the distance as you were momentarily lit up by a crack of lightning. You were glad to be out of the storm, shivering in your ruined clothes as you huddled by the fire. Your hand felt warm though and somehow, something as simple as Ratonhnhaké:ton taking your hand managed to make this situation much less worse than it really was. When he was finished, he joined you by the fire and frowned at the state you were in. He wished he had taken your hand earlier as you walked through the downpour of rain, he could have stopped you from now being a mud-soaked, trembling mess. 

“I should… get these off…” You murmured, knowing you would only freeze and make a mess of your bedroll in your muddy clothes but also not wanting to make Ratonhnhaké:ton uncomfortable by being in such a state of undress around him. He was a very reserved young man, this you already knew, and you didn’t want to scare him away. 

“Right.” He replied, hesitating for a moment before turning around to give you some privacy. You wouldn’t be able to wash your clothes so you would just have to let the fire make the mud dry and you could redress in the morning. Unfortunately, your trip would have to be cut short as you didn’t take a change of clothes into account considering the two of you were supposed to be returning to the homestead the morning following tomorrow night. You didn’t have many clothes and dirtying both sets would only mean having to wash your clothing in summer attire outdoors or in your nightdress which certainly wasn’t going to happen. 

You removed your boots first, undressing everything from your waist down and then covering yourself in your blanket, laying down on your bedroll under the shelter of the tent as you basked in the warmth of the fire, your skin aching with the cold. 

“Ok, I’m decent.” You said to let Connor know he could look and he faced you once more. You passed the hours in idle chit-chat about how you would need to change your plans and return early, about the time he went out in a thunderstorm as a child and was pranked by a friend whose laughter he claimed to always hear in thunder. You reminisced about the autumn sun shining through the fiery-coloured leaves and the splash of colour from the evergreens of the forest. The two of you eventually ended up counting the time between lightning strikes as though you were both children. 

However, through all this, Ratonhnhaké:ton didn’t fail to miss the chatter of your teeth or how you were still shivering. He had added more wood to the fire but it had only had very little effect on you. 

“You’re still cold…” He spoke up after a while and you were silent for a while, not wanting to be a bother. You felt that he had already done so much for you and you  had silently been cursing yourself for falling into that hole in the first place. Perhaps your hunting trip wouldn’t have to be cut short if only you had looked where you were going, especially in such terrible weather. Moreover, the last thing you wanted was to make him uncomfortable or upset in any way and risk losing any progress you had made in trying to get closer to him. 

“Yeah…” You admitted quietly despite your tumult of thoughts. 

“Can I…?” His words died on his tongue, losing the courage to vocalise his intentions before he was getting closer to you, stepping over your body carefully to join you in the tent and laying on his own bedroll. Your breath caught in your throat for a moment when he shuffled closer to you and one strong arm wrapped over your body, pulling you back against him. Wanting to respect your modesty, he didn’t get under the blanket but he was warm enough that you could feel his warmth seep through the material and you couldn’t help but press your body to his. 

He seemed tense for a while and you contemplated telling him that he didn’t have to do this, even if a selfish part of you wished to never leave this little pocket of heaven that he had led you into with the warmth and gentleness of this embrace. However, he shifted enough to slide his other arm beneath your head and then set his chin atop your head as he watched the flames of the fire dance, relaxing at being in a more comfortable position in which he wasn’t crushing his own arm. The two of you laid there in silence for a while until you mustered up the courage to turn over, burying your face in his chest and slinging an arm over his side before wrapping the arm beneath you around your own waist, reaching for his hand and feeling him hesitantly lace his fingers with yours, then giving you a confident squeeze when your firmer hold confirmed that you did want to hold his hand. 

“I like this a lot…” You murmured against him and you felt him let out a content sigh as he buried his face in your hair, taking in your scent (which was mostly that of rain after the earlier ordeal).

“So do I…” He replied, his voice rumbling lowly in his chest and you wondered when your legs had tangled with his between the layers of blankets. 

“I like you a lot too…” Your sleepy murmur came out and if you were more awake, more aware, you would not have had the courage to admit such a thing. You just barely felt his lips brush your hairline when he spoke next: 

“So do I…” 

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[anli-rambles]

Idk if the writers intended it or not but the amount of cognitive dissonance between what Haytham says and what he does is so telling of the kind of person he was raised to be. Birch succeeded in making him talk like a Templar, but his actions contradict pretty much everything Haytham claims to stand for. It's as if the brainwashing ran deep enough to make Haytham lack self-awareness but not enough to completely destroy what Edward was able to teach him before he died. Connor points it out verbatim right before they meet up with Washington too. "You've talked a great deal but you've shown me nothing."

Haytham says he wants order but he's just about as chaotic as his father was when he was younger. He says Connor's talks of "freedom" and "free will" are nonsense but literally every time we see him aside from the opening sequences, he's going off on his own, doing God-knows-what without telling any of the other Templars, he drops everything on the spot to go camping with his girlfriend, hell he even murdered a Templar Grandmaster for personal revenge (when revenge has been the driving force between many of the protagonists we've had so far like Ezio, Connor, Arno, Bayek, heck even Kassandra to some degree, while the Templars claim to be above this kind of stuff). He went against Lee's plans to have Connor executed because he felt like it. (The line in his journal is literally "I won't let my son die today.") He says he wants purpose and direction and yet never has a plan for whatever he's doing. He's exactly like Edward on that front, essentially bullshitting his way through everything and hoping it all works out (and it often doesn't). That man has never had purpose or direction in his entire life, and the moment someone tries to tell him what to do, he actively chooses to do the opposite because he doesn't follow orders (and if he does, it's on his own terms).

When Haytham realized he didn't hold the key to the Precursor site, he chose to drop it altogether, because he knew too many would have to die for the cause and it wasn't worth it. Do you mean to tell me people like Vidic, the Borgias, Germain, heck even Torres (who's by far the most reasonable Grandmaster we've encountered in the series besides François de la Serre, maybe) went to impossible lengths to get to the Observatory — do you think any of these men would've just... stopped ? Because more people would have to die ? (The answer is no. William Johnson was willing to commit mass murder just to buy the land the site was on — which by the way Haytham had no idea about (the mass murder part, I mean) until after the fact and he was very angry about it.)

Which is also pretty telling about how involved he is in all of this. He didn't know about what Johnson was planning because he couldn't even be bothered to hold yearly meetings for like 15 years.

In his journal, you can see how he progressively starts to despise every Templar he's working with. He endorses Lee out loud but his thoughts about the guy are that he's "too British to be a good representative for the American people" and he's actually pretty pessimistic about his chances to supplant Washington. He doesn't even believe in what he says about Lee, like, ever (which is why I say it really looks like he's endorsing Lee as an act of sabotage because it really feels like it sometimes.) His Templar kill count is also higher than Connor's — Juan Vedomir, the unnamed mercenary with a West Country accent, Edward Braddock, John Harrison, Reginald Birch, Benjamin Church and Nicholas Biddle (although the game never showed it, the fact that Church and Biddle died only days apart while both in the Caribbean means that Haytham was with Connor on the Aquila when he killed Biddle, so he's at least complicit in his murder.)

Haytham says he's a man with Templar ideals and an Assassin background but to me it feels like the opposite. He's a man with a Templar background and Assassin ideals, but the grooming started so young that even killing Birch couldn't undo the damage that man had done. I think Haytham realized that by the end and that's why he let Connor kill him.

[anneapocalypse]

Anyway here's the Guerrin timeline as best I can piece it together, if it's useful to anyone!

Updated 7/14/23 with corrections & additions.

~8:84 Blessed - Eamon is born. (The Calling - He's 15 at the time of the Battle of West Hill, which occurred in 8:99 Blessed.)

8:99 Blessed - The Battle of West Hill. Arl Rendorn Guerrin, Eamon's father, is killed in action. Maric Theirin is presumed dead but reappears in Gwaren, which is then taken by the rebels. The Battle of River Dane deals a decisive defeat to the Orlesian forces, though the conflict is not completely over. It will take several more years to completely drive out the occupying lords. However, Emperor Florian officially withdraws support for King Meghren.

9:02 Dragon - Eamon, 18, returns to Redcliffe to claim his place as arl, but find it still under Orlesian control, and works with the rebel forces to reclaim it. Isolde, the daughter of one of the Orlesian governors, is sympathetic to the rebels and becomes infatuated with Eamon, who does not return her feelings; nevertheless, she feeds information to the rebels, and chooses to stay in Ferelden after her family is driven out. Isolde is four years younger than Eamon, making her 14 at the time. (WoT v.2 p. 102, 106)

9:02 Dragon - Maric kills the usurper King Meghren in a dual, officially ending the occupation and winning Ferelden's freedom. (There is a noted discrepancy in the dates between the epilogue of The Stolen Throne, and World of Thedas vol. 1, the latter of which puts the duel at 9:00 Dragon. Given other events, the later date seems more plausible.)

~9:08 Dragon - Six years after their initial meeting, Eamon (24) meets Isolde (20) again in Denerim. They quickly become involved and are married. (WoT v.2 p. 103)

9:10 - Alistair is born to Fiona and King Maric. His parents give him up to be raised at Redcliffe Castle, inventing a story about his mother being a human serving girl. (The Calling.)

~9:20 Dragon - Isolde becomes pregnant with Connor after difficulty conceiving. This causes rumors about Alistair (10) being Eamon's bastard to resurface, and Eamon sends him away to a monastery to spare his wife's feelings. Connor is born soon after.

~9:29 Dragon - Short of taking his vows as a templar, Alistair (19) is conscripted into the Grey Wardens. (WoT v.2 p.79)

~9:30 Dragon - Connor Guerrin (10) shows signs of magic. Isolde hires an apostate, Jowan, to tutor Connor in secret. Eamon (46) is poisoned by Jowan and falls ill. (Origins.)

~9:31 Dragon - Following the Blight, Eamon decides to stay in Denerim, serving as an advisor to the throne, eventually declaring his brother Teagan the new Arl of Redcliffe. (Origins, WoT v.2 p.104)

?:?? Dragon - (If Connor is dead) Rowan Guerrin is born to Isolde and Eamon. After a difficult birthing, Isolde dies. (Potential Origins Epilogue slide.)

?:?? Dragon - Rowan Guerrin shows signs of magic and is sent to the Circle, though her father continues to visit her. (Potential Origins Epilogue slide.)

[blackflash9]

Ratonhnhaké:ton: Growth and Autonomy

"Connor comes across to me as an incredibly naive character." "People will just tell him someone is a bad guy and he’ll go murder the person, no questions asked. He has almost no autonomy."

While I understand why people within the fandom believe this, these interpretations only overlook critical aspects of Connor’s character. His perceived naivety is not a flaw—it’s an intentional feature of his narrative. Connor begins the story as a young man thrust into a complex, unfamiliar world filled with conflicting beliefs and customs. His arc centers on navigating this chaos and growing into someone who balances idealism with hard-earned wisdom. Far from being a passive or blindly obedient character, Connor demonstrates remarkable autonomy and moral depth throughout his story. Take, for example, his approach to William Johnson. Connor doesn’t immediately kill him when faced with Johnson’s plans to purchase native land. Instead, he undermines Johnson’s efforts through the Boston Tea Party, attempting a peaceful resolution rather than resorting to violence.

Sequence 6: Hostile Negotiations (transcript)

Kanen'tó:kon: William Johnson has returned - with all the money required to buy our land. He meets with the elders as we speak. I have begged them to resist. But I fear he shall have his way unless you intervene. Connor: How is this possible? We destroyed the tea. Achilles: The Templars are nothing if not resourceful. You should have heeded my warning.

Even when circumstances force Connor to kill Johnson, it’s a reluctant act, filled with regret and a deeper understanding of the moral weight of his decision.

Sequence 7: The Midnight Ride (transcript)

Connor: I thought it might bring clarity. Or instill a sense of accomplishment. But all I feel is regret. Achilles: Hold fast to that. Such sacrifices must never come lightly. Connor: I had to do it. Not only for my people, but for all the others Johnson would have harmed.

This is not the behavior of someone who acts without thought or autonomy. Similarly, his handling of Thomas Hickey reflects his nuanced morality; rather than simply assassinating Hickey, Connor attempts to bring him to justice by exposing his counterfeit operation and putting him in jail. This demonstrates Connor’s preference for justice over killing whenever possible—an uncommon trait among Assassins.

Connor’s journey also includes grappling with the conflict between the Assassins and Templars. He openly considers the possibility of peace and collaboration between the two factions, particularly during his time with Haytham. This introspection and willingness to challenge the status quo are unprecedented for an Assassin. No other protagonist in the series has or since entertained the idea of reconciliation with such sincerity and depth.

Sequence 10: Alternate Methods (transcript)

Connor: But now their hold is weakened, which makes me believe there's a chance for peace. Imagine what might be accomplished if we were to unite. Achilles: Why the change of heart? Where is this coming from? You've met your father, haven't you? Connor: I do not claim to trust the man—or even like him. But I would be remiss to ignore this opportunity. Achilles: Haytham may listen. But will he understand? And even if he does, will he agree? Connor: Even he must admit that we achieve more together than we do alone.

His independence is further showcased in his relationship with Achilles. Connor often defies his mentor, such as when he reveals the truth about the Assassins and Templars to George Washington, acting on his convictions rather than blindly following orders.

Even in his most emotionally charged moments, Connor’s actions are driven by a thoughtful moral framework. After discovering Washington’s role in burning his village, Connor doesn’t abandon the Patriot cause out of bitterness. Instead, he chooses to support their fight one last time—not because they are perfect, but because he believes freedom, despite its flaws, is preferable to the Templars' control.

Sequence 10: Broken Trust (transcript)

Connor: You seem to think I favor him. But my enemy is a notion, not a nation. It is wrong to compel obedience—whether to the British Crown or the Templar Cross.

Connor’s story isn’t about blind loyalty or unchecked naivety. It’s about growth, introspection, and the struggle to uphold one’s values in an imperfect world. His choices reflect a level of autonomy and moral complexity that sets him apart, making him one of the most layered characters in the Assassin’s Creed series.

[thetapirsarehyperfixating]

hi! first time making an original post in like years. anyways

this is my canon timeline for dragon age, written out in prep for veilguard's release :> larger versions of the busts, plus assorted rambling, below the cut.

eventually, i am probably going to cave and post some stuff about these bastards on ao3 - if you are interested, this is where to look: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tapir_boy/works

SARRELAN TABRIS: as im writing this post my partner looked over, saw sarrelan, and went "thats my fuckign WIFE". so shes highly reviewed

Sarrelan is the Warden-Commander and Hero of Ferelden, the woman who killed the Archdemon, ended the Fifth Blight, Arlessa of Amaranthine, and winner of Vigil's Keep's Biggest Bitch award twenty-two years and counting. she is full to the brim with autism, which is part of the reason she looks so. mad. all of the time. she doesn't mean to, she just does not Emote well and so comes off as being more aggressive than she actually is. now don't get her wrong, she is also full of rage and kind of jumps to violence as a first resort, but she is capable of listening to people and generally does like people, like she thinks good people deserve things and wants to give them good things. she just never looks like she does.

she's got kind of an immediate bond with Alistair, something to be said about him being basically the first human man who's ever treated her with respect and actually listened to her when she takes control of a situation. ive seen interesting commentary out there about how alistair immediately turns control of the situation over to the HoF and how that can be really disorienting/frustrating/upsetting for some characters, but its kind of the opposite for sarrelan. shes had almost two decades of experience getting into shit with her cousins, shes used to taking charge and she likes having that control, and its a relief that alistair doesn't try to fight her on it.

zevran is a little more rough-going to start as they're both very different people - zevran is used to reading more into people's body language, and sarrelan's body language is very disassociated from her actual emotions, so he does spend a good while thinking he's in like Imminent Danger while sarrelan's in the corner trying to figure out if she actually Likes this guy flirting with her. (she does).

zevran semi-accidentially insinuates himself in alistair and sarrelan's relationship right after it starts, half-jokingly offering to have a threesome to help them both get over their nerves of losing their virginity, and then oops oh no they all caught feelings and no one knows how to deal with it. they only figure their shit out a few days before the battle of denerim and it's as sarrelan is On Top of the archdemon, getting ready to kill it, still unsure if Morrigan's ritual will work and if she'll even survive this, that she's able to tell them she loves them.

zevran's earring is the only piercing she has, and she treasures it greatly. she's a two handed warrior and has a sword bigger than herself. shes also gone 1v1 with an orge alpha and survived. canonically. id say i have video proof but i dont. just trust me bro

(TW FOR SA, NOT GRAPHICALLY DESCRIBED)

CONNOR HAWKE: local man made of 20 different types of trauma in a cool chestplate

connor is actually adopted into the hawke family! long story short, he was born in kirkwall and was taken to the circle there, and only left because his enchanters conspired to smuggle him out after one of the templars assaulted him. he fled to ferelden where he came across the hawke family, who took him and his daughter in and helped him fake a new identity with them. he's not happy to be back in kirkwall, but the city is a part of him whether he likes it or not - it's eating him alive but without it, he doesn't feel like himself. he's a very dedicated and loyal person, usually to his detriment, but he feels like he can't keep running from the threat of the templars anymore, he has to do something to fix this makerdamned city now.

(TW IS OVER)

he's got Something going on with the whole kirkwall crew, it just never really expands into anything for years because he's basically married to the job. but his life has been intertwined with these people's since he met them, and at a certain point all of those feelings mesh together and he's sitting there at wicked grace night and realizes he might be In Love with all of them, and then he has to make a hasty exit before he has a complete and total breakdown over it. during the timespan of DA2, anders is really the only person he has a romantic relationship with, because justice is getting tired of anders holding himself back from maybe the one other man in kirkwall who would support him no matter what, and kisses connor like the day before he has to leave on a longer quest to the sundermount. connor makes them discuss their feelings afterwards and they end up figuring it out, although the rest of the kirkcule are like. still fucking each other and are by no means exclusive at this point. the rest of them just never talk about it, because things go downhill in act 2 FAST. like, within a month he loses his mother, almost gets dragged back to the circle, has to fake his daughter's death, completely destroys his relationship with carver, and almost dies fighting the arishok.

the connor hawke of reality and the Champion of Kirkwall that gets immortalized by varric are two very different people - basically by the time that connor gets the name of Champion, he's already been working on maintaining a public persona that he just calls Hawke, and after everything with his daughter being sent away, he never lets that mask down again. he really considers Hawke to be a completely different person to Connor, and varric tries to help cement that difference in the Tale of the Champion. Hawke's story is that he was always Ferelden, his daughter was adopted and really did die, and he had no idea anders was getting so radical until the moment the chantry exploded - connor's story is that from the moment he sent Lila away, he was planning to find some way to take down Meredith.

he and anders spend a lot of time inbetween acts 2-3 trying to figure out more peaceful ways to address the chantry and bring some - any - oversight to the circles, but when all of that fails, they finally resort to plan dynamite. when all is said and done, they go to amaranthine to be reunited with lila, and then go on the run trying to help the mages break out of the circles and evade the templars. when he hears that varric was kidnapped by cassandra and that she's looking for him to speak at the conclave, he sees it as an opportunity to make a case for the rebel mages, and goes despite all the warnings not to. he survives in the fade up until the questline where the Herald goes into the fade, finds him alive, and drags him back home to see his daughter again. then he stays in skyhold to basically act as an advisor to her, and when the rest of the kirkcule get their hands on him, it kind of spurs him on to finally address his relationship to the rest of them.

connor is a force mage by default, but given how long he spent in Ferelden living on the run from the templars, he mastered both casting without a staff and fighting without magic. he's both tall and strong, but he manages to avoid scaring people off through sheer Dad energy.

LILA HAWKE: hey look theres that daughter we've been talking about

Lila is very much her father's daughter, but she doesn't have his same talent for acting calm or friendly, if she doesn't like you she Will tell you to your face and she will not work with you. (cullen.) after hawke's "death" at the conclave, she kind of becomes the defacto leader of the rebel mages, which is definitely a normal amount of responsibility for a twenty-one year old struggling with ongoing mental health issues and overwhelming grief to handle. shes doing great

(slight detour: to address some of the weirdness with DAI's timelines im having there be basically 3 factions of mages in the rebellion: the Circle mages, who want to remain under the circles with the exact same setup as before; the College mages, who like the idea of having their own spaces and want some oversight, but also some oversight of the oversight to address the rampant abuses of powers; and the Hawkes, the rebel mages who want no circles and no templars and the ability to live their lives in the same communities as non-mages. the Circle mages mostly look to Vivienne for leadership, the College mages are rallied behind Fiona, and the Hawkes were roaming the continent with Connor, now working loosely with the Inquisition with Lila.)

she's got some health issues - she's shorter than varric by a few inches despite being a human, she has moderate asthma, and semi-regular psychotic episodes, mostly auditory/visual hallucinations and paranoid episodes. bubba, the family mabari, acts as a service dog for her when he isn't doing the same for connor, and i imagine at some point between inquisition and veilguard, she has her own mabari who works full-time as her service dog.

she is one of the co-inquisitors for DAI, but she is not the herald of Andraste; she wasn't actually at the conclave when it exploded, she was down in haven with varric and anders, but she kind of gets roped into everything because cassandra says "youre a hawke, you're going to get involved anyways" and lila... can't really argue with that, she's just mad that cassandra was right. arisas is the diplomatic one, she's the more experienced one, and they honestly balance each other out really well. it frustrates her to no end that arisas is almost literally twice her height.

lila kind of regards her time in amaranthine as the best of a really, really shitty situation - she hates that she lost so much time with her father, that her teenage years were so tumultuous and that she had so many milestones of her life and she couldn't talk to her father about them, she never got to introduce her first girlfriend to him, she had to come out to him over letters, and while she has a lot of respect for the wardens in amaranthine and appreciates them for taking her in with no questions asked, she hates that she lives in a world where that had to happen in the first place. sarrelan is the person who made her realize she might be kind of butch, and zevran taught her how to actually fight instead of just using her magic for experimentation. connor never kept a grimoire after fleeing kirkwall (too obvious and too much evidence, especially if it got lost or stolen), but she does, and it's filled to the brim with notes and homebrewed spells.

ARISAS ADAAR: please help him he is too young for this

arisas is by far the youngest person to get involved in a major political conflict in my canon - he turns 16 during the events of DAI - and he is trying so hard to keep people from learning that information. he grew up in tevinter, taken there from par vollen as a very young child, and doesn't have the greatest grasp of southern mage/templar politics and is very confused by everything happening at the start of the game. he joined with a mercenary company as his first job, and was only with them for a few weeks before they got hired for the conclave, and he was Not getting paid enough to get a crash course in the differences between southern mages and tevinter mages.

ari is a lot more hesitant / cautious than lila is, partially because he has an anxiety disorder, and partially because he just knows a lot less about the south than she does. if it were up to him, he would not be in charge of this mess, but he's the one with the Anchor so he kind of has to be. he takes to the diplomacy pretty well, and he at least always finishes the paperwork that josephine sets in front of him (unlike liia, who will get distracted and go do something else halfway through). it does mean that he is constantly sleep deprived

inquisition is probably his first big exposure to a lot of queer people in very close proximity to him - between lila, leliana, dorian, and bull, it's the first time that he's really considered that people could be queer, much less trans, and it starts to make him question some things that he really doesn't have time to question. and, as the game continues, it doesnt really seem like questioning it will do him any good, as the inquisition continues to erase him and fill in the blanks with the Herald of Andraste, so he basically goes "even if i am queer, looking into it now will do me no good, because no one here is going to listen or respect that" and continues on like normal. (post canon he does figure some shit out, although he still uses he/him pronouns).

ari looks up to bull a lot, at first because he's a qunari who actually follows the qun, and ari is very curious and kind of wants bull to take him under his wing and become a father figure to him; but when bull becomes tal-vashoth and leaves the qun, ari tries to reassure him that he's the same man regardless of the identity he ties himself to, and that there's no shame in acting outside of the qun if it means protecting the people he cares about. bull in turn tries to help ari come out of his shell and maintain his sense of self in the midst of everything that comes with being the herald.

he struggles a LOT with having his identity erased by the inquisition, being both revered and reviled and rewritten with every step he takes. it makes him feel just thorougly inhuman and alone, and causes a mental breakdown after trespasser. he tries to stay in politics for a few years post canon, tries to help dorian with reforming tevinter with all this newfound influence he has, but being in the spotlight so much is detrimental to his heath, and he ends up having an early retirement in his mid-20s. he moves to kirkwall and raises nugs. this is the greatest his life has ever been.

[teecupangel]

Hello, me again! (I feel as if I'm bothering you..)

Now, this has been in my head for a bit;

But what if Ziio married Haytham and Ratonhnhaké:ton was raised as a Templar? (Feel free to give him another sibling or two, as well. ^^)

Sibling!Desmond as well, cause not. XD

Also, let's throw Mrs Davenport and Conner Davenport into this as well, say they survived typhoid fever. Would Conner Davenport be trained as an Assassin?

(I'm totally not asking because I lowkey wanna make Laura a Templar now XD)

(It’s no bother. I actually feel a bit bad since I’m like… 10ish days late on asks and 2ish months late on reblogs/replies XD)

Let’s go for the funny things first.

Charles Lee will become Ratonhnhaké:ton and his siblings’ reluctant emergency babysitter. There is no escape. This is his fate. Charles Lee is that annoying ‘uncle’ that sucks up to their father too much so they don’t like him.

Shay could be everyone’s favorite uncle but I doubt it since we’re keeping Abigail and Connor alive. One of the hints that Achilles wasn’t fit to be the mentor was the conversation Shay and Liam had about how the death of his family changed him. Also, I stand by my headcanon that Abigail acted like everyone’s mother and she helped kept Achilles grounded and reminded him to not be brash. So there’s a high possibility that Shay wouldn’t defect in this one but would probably become distant with the Brotherhood due to Lisbon, acting more like a Rogue Assassin that focuses on making sure any Isu-related devices wouldn’t be used by either faction. So Shay could be an uncle of sort but more like ‘that annoying man who keeps getting in everyone’s way’.

Connor Davenport would definitely be an Assassin and might even be trained by Shay himself (although it’s more possible that he’d be trained by his father, Hope and Liam). He would also inherit the Aquila and, if Shay doesn’t become a Templar, he’d see Adéwalé as his sailing instructor as well.

Now, Ratonhnhaké:ton and Laura would have no problem becoming Templars. Hell, they could have looked up to their father and wanted to follow his footsteps. Even if Kaniehtí:io had reservations about it, she wouldn’t stop them from following their desires, only stopping them long enough to remind them to always think about their actions and taking responsibility of the consequences of their actions. The Templars in this one would definitely side with the tribes because Haytham is not impartial anymore and none of the Templars would disagree with him.

And that’s where we will hammer in the angst. Because the youngest of the Kenway children is Desmond Kenway and he remembers his life as Desmond Miles. Becoming a Templar would feel like a betrayal not only to the memories of Altaïr and Ezio but of the Assassin Ratonhnhaké:ton. He loves his family, he truly does, but there are many times when he wondered if this life of theirs was better than the life Ratonhnhaké:ton had back in the original timeline. Sure, he had lost his mother and he was forced to kill his father but… would the world truly be better if he lets the Templar take over America?

Can he truly kill the Assassins trying to stop them? (Even if some of them were dealing with the morally dubious part of the cities?)

Honestly, this can go either way with Desmond. Either he followed the path of the Templar to change it form the inside, becoming a beacon to the moderate Templars like Monsieur de la Serre and his cohorts in Paris and pushing for peace with the Assassin (which will lead him to be in conflict with Haytham who doesn’t believe that the two faction would ever be at peace) or he leaves the family he loves and becomes an Assassin to stand against them (and maybe having some kind of “are we allies? Are we enemies? What are we???” relationship with Connor Davenport).

Either way, there’s gonna be Kenway drama and it’s definitely going to be because of Desmond Kenway.

(sidebar: even if Desmond becomes a Templar, he would definitely have a “are you my enemy or are you trying to help me???” relationship with Connor Davenport, mainly because he still remembers the sadness Ratonhnhaké:ton felt when he heard of how Achilles lost everything and because Connor Davenport is pretty much the most acceptable Assassin in America at the moment. Laura and Ratonhnhaké:ton would definitely mistake this to some kind of forbidden love, no matter what Desmond says. Haytham would stress that he isn’t mad that Desmond likes men, just disappointed that Desmond likes an Assassin. Kaniehtí:io believes Desmond doesn’t have any romantic feelings for Connor Davenport but also she enjoys seeing her family get overworked by something like this.)