Haytham sighed in relief as the boy nodded and he loosened his grip now that there was less danger of Aiden bolting. There were people gathering and Haytham wanted to get back home and away from prying eyes as fast as he could. He had left his coat and cape back in the house, and hardly felt presentable out here in nothing but his shirt.

He held Aiden's hand as he led the boy back towards the house, eyeing the deep scrapes down the boy's arm covered in sand and dirt. He sighed inwardly as he added tending the boy's injuries to the growing list of things he had to do.

When they got back to the house Charles stood awkwardly at the entrance, not able to go in without permission but also not willing to leave. When he spotted Haytham returning with Aiden, the man's face darkened.

"Sir, may I ask who this-"

"Get inside," Haytham grumbled, pushing the door open and walked in past the other Templar. The two followed him in, though Aiden seemed to be trying to keep Haytham between himself and Charles.

"Charles, do you mind waiting for me in my study? I'll be right there." He told the other Templar as he locked the door. Charles did not seem very happy about this, but obliged. Haytham took Aiden to the kitchen, where he sat the boy down on a stool and began rummaging through his medicine cabinet.

"This might sting a bit but it will help," he told the boy as he came back with a bottle of ethanol and clean linen. Aiden eyed Haytham suspiciously as he dabbed some of the clear liquid onto the cloth, but did not move away when the man brought it up to clean the wounds on his arm. He flinched at the pain when contact was made, but gritted his teeth through it.

"Aiden, I need you to tell me what happened when you met Charles," Haytham asked, his voice quiet so that it wouldn't travel. He didn't think Charles would eavesdrop, but it was best to be safe. Aiden frowned, as he considered the question.

"I was in the forest with my friends," he finally began. "Men attacked me. One of them was Charles Lee. He asked for my village and wanted to hurt us. I did not tell them anything. They hit me and I…" the boy struggled for the right word in English, "…I fell asleep. "

"He knocked you out?" Haytham asked with a frown, sitting back as he finished cleaning the scrapes on the young boy's arm. Aiden nodded in response.

Haytham couldn't help but feel disappointment at the actions of his fellow Templars. There were better ways of gaining information from a child than threats.

"When I woke up there was smoke. Everything was burning." The boy closed his eyes, as if trying to hide from the images those words must have conjured. Haytham placed his hands on Aiden's shoulders and the boy tensed, but did not react otherwise.

"What he did was wrong; he should not have attacked you. But he had no intention of harming your people. They were there to ask your elders for advice-"

"He's lying to you." Aiden cut him off viciously, opening his eyes again. Haytham could see the fire, the purpose, in those eyes. He had a sudden unsettling feeling of looking at a mirror. "He said he hates us."

Aiden's tone made it very clear that he was frustrated with the limitations of his vocabulary. There was more he wanted to say- and didn't know how to say it. Haytham squeezed his shoulder, assuring the boy that he understood.

"I will go speak with him. Can you wait here?"

Aiden shook his head.

"No."

"Why?"

Something else came into the boy's eyes: uncertainty.

"Because you might believe him."

Haytham sighed. This was going to be harder than he thought.

"You're going to have to trust me on this one."

He got up and could feel Aiden's stare boring into his back as he left the room and headed for his study. Charles stood from where he was seated when Haytham walked in.

"Charles, I need to make sure this is clear. Were you involved in the attack on the village at all?" Haytham asked, putting a hand on the other Templar's shoulder to push him back down into his chair. There was a very different feeling between standing with a man eye-to-eye, and having him tower over you. Haytham needed to make sure Charles remembers who's in charge here.

"No sir. We had nothing to do with it, I swear it." Charles replied immediately, and Haytham didn't think it was a lie.

First day back after bringing his son home and he was already beginning to regret the choice. He hadn't expected this development.

"You certainly made the boy believe so. What were you thinking, attacking a child? That's hardly a way to endear yourself to the people you were supposed to be procuring information from," Haytham said with disapproval.

"We had no time. The army could have arrived at any minute and we didn't know where the village was. Maybe I was a bit rough with him-"

"Rough? You knocked out a five-year-old!" Haytham snapped.

"That wasn't my fault, Johnson did that," Charles replied evenly. "I thought we could hide and follow the child to his village, but Johnson obviously wasn't thinking."

"Why would Johnson…?" he prompted with confusion, allowing the sentence to trail unfinished into a question. Johnson seemed the least likely out of the group to attack a native child.

Charles shrugged.

"He said he wanted to save the boy, so that he wouldn't be at the village when the army arrives. Apparently it worked, seeing as he's still alive."

Haytham frowned at the logic. Noble intention perhaps, but it was not the right way to go about it.

"Would you mind apologizing to the boy?" Haytham asked. In the end, it seems to be Charles whom the boy was fixated upon after all. If Haytham was lucky, he might be able to settle this right now.

Charles bristled with indignation.

"I will not!"

"Charles, please. I wish to bring him into the Order one day. I need the boy to put this behind him."

Charles stared at Haytham suspiciously.

"Just who is this child?"

There was no point hiding it at this point. Charles has likely figured it out, and it was better to get the facts straight rather than letting the man spread vague rumours through the Order.

"His name is Aiden, and he is my son."

Charles rose to his feet.

"I see," he replied bitterly, "and so you have decided already to let him in the Order, without first testing his loyalty, his abilities?"

"I have decided nothing of the sort, but it is likely. I will be training him myself," Haytham responded defensively, unsure of what Charles was implying. It was not unusual to groom one's child in order to serve the Order one day, after all.

"Then I wish you luck in taming that little beast." Charles growled, and turned to leave. "When you are ready to return to your duties, you can pick up all the documents you missed during your little trip from the usual location. Good day."

The man stormed out of the room and down the hallway to the door.

"Charles!" Haytham resisted the urge to go after the man, but he did not want to be heard arguing with the Templar while within earshot of Aiden. The boy needed to know that Haytham trusted Charles and the others, or he would never come to accept them.

Charles slammed the door behind him as he left and Haytham sighed, following to lock the door before returning to the kitchen.

Aiden was exactly where he had left the boy, sitting on the stool with his legs drawn up, his chin resting on his knees.

"Aiden, Charles Lee didn't burn your village down. This I swear." Haytham told the boy, taking a seat in a chair next to him.

"But he was there."

"I know." Haytham sighed. "But he was not with the soldiers."

Aiden was refusing to meet his eye.

"Why did the soldiers come?"

"Because there is a war right now, and some of your people are fighting against the British."

"No we are not!" Aiden blurted out, looking up angrily. "We were never to leave the valley. Nobody ever left to fight."

"Your mother did." Haytham replied quietly and Aiden paused at that.

"Even if there were none from your tribe, there were other tribes who fought and still fight." Maybe this was getting a bit too complicated. How do you explain these concepts to a five year old? That to the Europeans, they could hardly tell one tribe apart from another?

"Aiden, do you trust me?"

"Can I?" The boy looked back to Haytham with a frown. It seems like this relationship will take some time. Whatever bond he had managed to forge with Aiden had been shaken by Charles' presence.

"Yes, you can. I promise you that I will find out exactly what happened, but it will take time. Can you be patient?"

A pause as the boy considered it.

"Yes,"

xXxXxXxXx

The rest of the day flew by in a busy blur. He ordered some food from the Green Dragon for dinner, got Aiden familiar with the house, and then left to take care of business. The run-in with Charles convinced Haytham that putting off Templar work was not the best way to keep everyone's confidence so he retrieved all the messages and reports that had built up over the last week and took on the task of sorting and reading through them all.

After sending out what orders were needed now that he was caught up, Haytham found himself investigating the disappearance of one of their important contacts with Thomas Hickey. By the time he found the body, the marks of an Assassin's blade on his throat and the documents he was supposed to be carrying missing, it was well past midnight.

So when he finally got home at some god-awful hour in the morning, wanting nothing more than to just collapse into bed and sleep through the next week, he realized something he had overlooked. He had never gotten around to clearing out the guest room, thinking that he'd be home to do so before it got dark. The room had never been inhabited since he bought the house and Haytham had been using it as a kind of storage room over the months. Without the kind of time he needed to regularly clean up, the room had begun to slowly turn into a mess of piles of books and loose paper. Including a mountain of documents on the bed.

Quietly making his way upstairs, Haytham checked the guest room –nope, it was empty, as he expected- before heading to his own bedroom. When it had gotten dark and the boy was tired, he had taken the only available bed in the house- Haytham's. Aiden was sprawled over his bed, the blanket half-covering him and half dragging on the floor.

Silently he disarmed himself in the darkness, knowing his room and his weapons well enough that he didn't need any light to do so. Too tired to put everything in their rightful places, Haytham left his sword, pistol, bracer, as well as their respective sheathes and straps on his table, and threw his coat over it all before going over to the bed.

He picked Aiden up gently, pulling the boy to the edge of the bed. Aiden grumbled sleepily in complaint, but showed no further signs of waking. Walking over to the other, now freed, side of the bed, Haytham collapsed onto it, kicked his boots off and stayed awake just long enough to pull his own half of the blankets up over himself.

Today was a really long day.

AN: Ok this story has very quickly gathered a higher following than I have ever had before or expected. I won't deny that it's getting me a bit nervous but I'll try not to think about it when I'm writing haha. Anyways, this is the end of the second arc. Midterms are coming up and I foresee the next arc being a long one, so the next update might take a bit, sorry!

I did some quick research on Charles Lee to figure out why he might have hated on the natives so much. Turns out that he was very friendly with the Mohawk, was adopted into one of the tribes, and took a chief's daughter as his wife. He was also up in Canada capturing Montreal during the time he was supposed to be at Connor's village. What the hell Ubisoft.

So, uh, I'm going to follow Ubisoft's lead and throw history out the window. Nobody can say I didn't try though.