This is the spiritual successor to JSE writer Hilden B. Lade's first AC fanfiction (back when we were still branded APNJ), Connor - Requiem although it does not share the same continuity as that tale. It was done at the request of a panda-obsessed tit-judging pothead (you know who you are) at the Ubisoft forums who requested that Hilden write more stuff like CR instead of infinitely superior tales like the Minstrel's Revenge.

OCs abound! Just a warning.

Update (2014): With AC stuff like Initiates updating faster than I can, or new games like AC Unity or Rogue perpetually on the horizon, there are eventually going to be some clashes made with the "canon" storyline. Sometimes I may do a little Uncle George style edit to spiffy things up, but overall any discrepancies with post-AC4 canon will probably not be fixed. If this happens, just view this storyline like a what-if "alternate Earth" elseworlds tale of how things could've ended up for the Kenway bloodline.

Any historical figures or events that may appear have all been falsified, dramatized, slandered, etc. for the purposes of storytelling. Any resemblance in fictional characters and events to real life happenings and existences is most likely coincidental and clearly have no malicious intent. Probably.

If you are reading for only Connor's part of the storyline, and have no interest in the overall storyline and the stories of my OCs, read up to Chapter 43 or Chapter 54, depending on how you'd prefer to see his story end. After that, you can stop reading.

San Francisco, California. It had started as life as one of the missions, Spanish settlements seeking to convert the Natives to Christianity. Many of these missions had become gears in a larger Templar clockwork scheme, but Mission San Francisco de Asis had not been one of them. The town had thrived underneath three flags: the Spanish Empire from its unwavering conquest till its dying throes, Mexico where the missions fell and the settlers from the East began to arrive, and finally the stars and stripes of the American Republic after the war with Mexico. With the arrival of America came Assassins from the East as well. Once upon a time, their order had been decimated to old men left disillusioned and bitter by their defeat by the machinations of Haytham Kenway. But like a phoenix, they had risen from the ashes. Rebuilt in the North by the half-breed named Connor and in the South by the woman named Aveline. Like the Union Pacific Railroad, these were two train tracks being built that eventually converged into one.

The Assassins that came to California were led by a man named John C. Fremont, who had been a military officer and explorer in his other life. An ambitious yet flawed man, The Great Pathfinder helped secure Californian independence and played the great game of politics. He was one of the first of his Brotherhood to infiltrate the American Congress, and he very well may have become the President had it not been for the nation's fear that his abolition beliefs would lead to war.

Like San Francisco itself, the Pacific Assassins started out small. They found few settlers or soldiers fit to envelop in their cause. If the Templar influence in the Pacific region hadn't eroded by their arrival, they very well would've easily been destroyed in one fell swoop. But then gold was found, and with the gold came many potential recruits to strengthen their organization. To further accentuate their luck, amongst the settlers who came were two members of the ailing Chinese Brotherhood who sought to make contact with any of their fellow Assassins in the West. Their names were Wei Ying and Li Long.

Wei Ying returned to his homeland when the gold dried up, where it had been weakened by two catastrophic Opium Wars and was currently overtaken by the Taiping Rebellion, where he would soon join Vali cel Tradat and Al Mualim in the ranks of the most infamous, most despised traitors to the Assassins.

Li Long stayed in America, where he spent the rest of his life relegated to the Chinatown area of San Francisco. There he established a haven, a base of operations, for the gold-seeking Orientals who had been inducted into the Brotherhood. They frequently communicated with the main base of the Pacific Assassins, established in San Francisco's vice-riddled red-light district known as the Barbary Coast, but collaboration between the two was infrequent. There was only so much the Chinese could do in a society dominated by exceptionalism and racism.

Like the Pacific Assassins who boldly spread their wings in flight towards the lakes of Oregon and the mountains of Washington, San Francisco itself grew from a miserable mission to an insignificant settler's town to one of the largest cities in America. It was a city that one could easily find themselves lost in, a welcoming new world with its own cultural identity birthed from those who had built and came, like the metropolises back east. The Pacific Assassins, although they had been sent by the American Brotherhood back east, formed their own identity and they carried out their own business.

The year was now 1890.

The two men met in a private room on the upper floor of a building in Chinatown. One was one of the Chinese settlers, the other one of the white men. The front of the building was a medicine and herb shop, it doubled as an opium den when ordnances had driven the public dens underground. A petite serving girl wearing a lily-embroidered pink dress poured tea into a cup for the stranger, who was dressed somewhat fancily in a black suit with a white vest and black tie underneath. He leaned back and removed his hat, wide-brimmed and expectedly black, setting it aside. He revealed a hair of dark brown hair, now fraying gray. There was weariness to his face, roughly shaven. He normally drank whisky from a flask, but for his host, he drank the tea. Never was too caring of the drink, like his mother. His uncle adored the stuff, like the English. He and his mother had been close, neither of them had been fond of his uncle. He felt like smoking, but there was already a nauseating scent of opium in the hazy interior.

"Am I everything you expected?" The man asked his host. His host, the Chinaman, had grown slightly pudgy and his jet-black hair of his youth had become gray. His hair, still tied in a queue, was rapidly balding. He was becoming a far cry from his days as a youthful Assassin, when he had first arrived in America with his comrade Wei Ying. His name was Li Long.

"I expected the 'Hanged Man' to look much rougher, more cuts and scars, perhaps even a full beard. But the toils of age happen, to even the best of us." He spoke English fluently, albeit with a Cantonese accent.

"The Hanged Man. Been a while since I've heard that name. Truth be told, I've lost track. Just how many nicknames they gave me. Hanged Man, the Devil, the Angel of Vengeance, Death on a Horse, they all blurred into one. They never mattered to me, although the reputation that they formed helped at times. I was always Jonathan, son of Helena and Daniel."

"Still, I find it quite an honor to meet one who has done so much for and against the Brotherhood in the east of this land. And I was quite hoping to meet the man behind the legend…"

"Is that so?"

"Yes… a man who has walked both paths. Assassin, Templar, and yet he chose to remain an independent force. Why is that so? What you've done… could've been greater had you picked a side. Yet you act like a solitary bear, reluctant to from allegiances with anyone. Even with my end approaching, I wish to learn just a little bit more about our curious species – mankind."

"You're asking for me to tell you things that I've told no one. Do you wish for me to burden you with my memories, my struggles, the feelings and thoughts that break me into a thousand little pieces on the inside? Sorry, Mr. Li, but these are cards that I play close to the vest." He finished his tea, retrieved his hat and put it back on. He left his chair, pushing it back in place.

"My apologies if I disappointed you, Li Long."

"I understand, but if you do change your mind, I'll be waiting here until the day I die. But before you depart, at least tell me one thing. Why did you do what you did? Walk in the path of justice as you did, albeit the questionable way that you did. I know enough about your past, what do you did in Texas. Crimes driven by blind rage and desire for vengeance. So why did you change, Jonathan? Was it guilt? A desire for glory? Revenge against the Assassin who killed your mother? What was it, that turned you from the lost boy into the legend you became?"

"I made a promise to my mother. One that I ashamedly always had trouble keeping."

And Jonathan exited the den. Pausing outside the doorway, he lit himself a smoke. The weather outside was unforgiving and rainy. He could hear thunder in the distance. What a pity. Perhaps he should've heeded the old Chinaman's request and told him his life story. But he wasn't going back in the den, not in the immediate moment, and he wasn't going to stick around here to catch pneumonia. He decided to retire to his hotel room, where he had pens and paper. Upon his return, at his bedside by candle-light, he would begin to write.

He remembered a rainy day, just like this one. But it had been a little less than two decades ago, in a nameless town in the Midwest lands which had long faded away like the silver and gold. His story hadn't really started with him, but rather the Assassin who had been his grandfather. He had never met the man, he had died before Jonathan was born but Helena had assured her son of the man's greatness, the tragic yet inspiring path he walked. He would write all of their stories in time, and perhaps one day someone would wander over these pages and ponder over what thoughts lay within. Or perhaps he would just burn the damn thing when it was over.

Jonathan lay crouched on top of the roof of the saloon, gazing down at the posse who were riding into town. The rain descended in a full crescendo, a symphony of pitter-patters. Drops hit and rolled off his hat, hitting the rim of his boots. His eyes blinked, his face expressionless as he witnessed about twenty-men or so wielding torches depart from their horses. For a minute, he thought a hopeful idea that perhaps a robber or a cow tipper was laying low in town, that this was a lynch mob after that unfortunate soul. But then he looked closer, and he saw the pendant hanging around one of the men's necks. It was a red cross. He had remembered encountering a man with a cross just like that on the train to Denver. He had rejected the man's preposition, he had been warned that he committed a great folly that he would regret.

The men barged into the buildings around town. Pouring into the saloon, smashing down the door to the general store, barging into the barn. He could see them harassing the populace, demanding to know if they had seen him. One burly man held the town doctor by the arms, while his smaller compatriot slit the man's nostril with a knife. He should intervene, he thought, but the Templars were scattered through the buildings. They had multiple vantage points. He had to wait for them all to gather in the center of town again, where they could all be ambushed at once.

"How many of you do we have to shoot before you give up this son of a bitch?"

"We don't know what in God's name you are talking about!" The doctor protested as the tiny man hit him in the ribs, likely breaking them into fine little fragments.

The leader, a mustachioed-man with a magnified presence, lanky and dressed in black demanded for a weapon. One of his men threw a shotgun to him. Without hesitation, he pointed the sights towards the nearest prostitute and blew her head clean off. As red mist settled around her crumpled body, the leader began to scan the huddling civilians once more. His men were fiddling out of the buildings, some of them throwing their torches into the interiors.

"We done here, boss? Me and the boys haven't found any sign of this vigilante in any of the buildings."

"Do you forget? He was trained by one of them. Bastards always were skilled at hiding right under your noses. Raze the town, we draw him out or burn him trying."

"The Mentor won't like that. He specifically requested that we bring him in battered, but alive."

"And do you remember what happened to our Colonial Order, when Haytham Kenway let his half-breed bastard walk instead of slitting his throat like a smart man would? We are eliminating a liability to our Order if he falls here."

Time to act.

The Templar Leader heard the sound of blades being unsheathed from hidden bracers. He looked up just in time for his mouth to open up for a scream. His men wheeled around in shock, seeing the form from above cut down their leader and his right hand man. They squinted their eyes through the rain, seeing the man in front of them.

He wore a beaked, wide-rimmed hat with a feather attached. He wore a dark duster coat, trapped in a shade between chocolate brown and night black. Strapped across his shoulder and belt were bandoleers with ammunition attached, a dark gray vest underneath his coat. Around his neck was a small red scarf. His pants were long, matching the color of his vest. Protruding from his sleeves were two blades, dripping with fresh blood.

"Gentlemen… sorry to pop in unannounced."

The men were screaming now, readying their guns but Jonathan drew quicker. Unholstering his revolvers, he fired off six shots killing twelve of the Templars instantly as he weaved in and out of a hail of bullet fire. One shot to the head each. Their bodies fell as their comrades reloaded their shells and readied their aims. No time to reload for the artifact he carried with him might not reflect it all. Jonathan kicked the Templar nearest to him, unbalancing the man. He hoisted the Templar in front of him, letting him absorb the bullets. He tossed the bullet-riddled body to the side, and leapt at the nearest batch of Templars. One of them wailed as his hidden blade punctured his throat, reducing the wail to a regurgitated bloody babble.

Fourteen down, six to go.

The burly man swung at him with the butt of his rifle, Jonathan barely rolling out of the way in time to avoid the blow. With his hidden blades, he repeatedly punctured the man's exposed chest, scarlet blood blossoming like falling petals from the holes he made in the giant. Pushing the dead weight to the wide, he reached into his overcoat to pullout the tomahawk shaped like the insignia of his mother's people. It had belonged to his grandfather, she told him. He remembered that Helena had told him many things about his grandfather, all of them positive. The cruel words, the disdain, were all reserved for his Uncle. Matthew, he remembered with a fury building up in him. He swung it into the tiny man, cutting deep into the stout man's neck until his head flopped like a dying fish.

One of his hidden blades slid from their bracers, into his palm as a small knife. The remaining three Templars dropped their weapons in surrender as he cut down a brave fool attempting to rush him. One of them scrambled to his feet, running like the devil was after him towards the horses as he executed two of the beggars. Jonathan considered letting him go, he seemed barely old enough to be past the age of a boy. Run home to his Mentor, tell him what happened and the mercilessness which it happened so they, like the secret brotherhood his mother had served, would leave him alone.

Then he reconsidered. Let the bastards find out for themselves. He reloaded one of his revolvers, and shot the boy's horse from under him. The boy cried as the horse collapsed, pinning him to the wet, muddy ground. He sputtered and begged for his life.

"Please, sir! Don't do it! I was just a scout, doing it for some cash to support my mama! I'm an innocent, not one of them." Tears flowed from his eyes, snot ran from his nose. His lips quivered to complete the pathetic image.

"You should've gotten a job then, boy. Instead of running with men of this caliber." He spun the tomahawk in the air.

"You can't kill me! I'm innocent! Your Creed says so!" The boy protested, crying harder and his words growing more incoherent.

"Perhaps so. But your boss should've strayed his bullets and blades from the flesh of these townsfolk. What's another bit of blood spilled in retribution going to make?"

"You can't break your Creed!" The boy screamed, still trying to save his life.

"You forgot the most important fact of all. Just because I wear this hat, carry these blades, carry this axe, doesn't make me an Assassin."

The boy closed his eyes as Jonathan lifted the tomahawk. But his anxiousness turned to warmth, wet relief as Jonathan put his blade away. He pushed the horse off the boy, beckoning the doctor to come examine the kid.

"T-t-thank you..." He stammered.

"It's not me you should be thanking."

He bent over the boy. He showed him the cross. "Ride with this symbol again..." And then he showed drew the symbol of the Assassins in the dirt. "...or this one, and I will return for you. No mercy in my intents."

Leaving the boy behind he walked away, thinking about Helena and what he had promised to her over the grave at New York.

The bewildered townsfolk clustered in the rain, looking at the dead bodies of their neighbors and the posse who had ridden into town. Bodies pierced with bullet marks, bodies punctured as blood made neat puddles muddled by the rain beneath them. One of the deputies raised his rifle at the man in the duster walking away. The bastard was some sort of goddamned crazy dangerous he had never seen before. Killing twenty men all by himself. Son of a bitch was dangerous. He had to die, for what would he do to them if the mood turned.

But his sheriff pushed the rifle away. He had seen a bullet fly towards the man during the firefight, only to be reflected by some outer factor. If it weren't God, it was very well the work of the Devil himself. And he didn't want to incur any supernatural religious goddamn wrath on his town.

Jonathan whistled for his horse, a beautiful pale white mane, and rode into the night. To the townsfolk, he seemed to disappear into the raining horizon like an emissary of the Lord.

Or perhaps a devil having acquired what dues he came to collect.