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Things have changed.
Aguilar supposes that that shouldn’t be as surprising as it is, but it doesn’t make some of the things he’s seen any less shocking.
It’s jarring, because although he doesn’t, independently, know the names or functions of most of the things he’s seeing and feeling and hearing, he understands through the strange osmosis that he and Callum have what they are.
The key word being ‘most’.
“What is this?” Aguilar whispers. He doesn’t have to: He’s a ghost, and no one but Callum can hear what he’s saying.
Callum huffs a little, mildly irritated. Aguilar sadly likens it to the sound of frustration his sons used to make when they were little boys, and Aguilar was too slow to figure out that the drawing was of a fox, not a dog, or that the crudely assembled sticks on the ground were meant to be a raft, not a campfire.
“It’s a gas-line,” Callum whispers back, eyes constantly flicking up to watch the doorway to the… ‘Boiler room’. That’s another new thing for Aguilar to learn. “There’s natural gas in here. If I play my cards right, I can flood the place with gas, and any small spark will be enough to blow the place sky-high.”
Under different circumstances, Aguilar might have had so very many issues with that plan- the first and foremost being that Assassins were meant to be subtle, and a building being blown up so high that debris was landing at St. Peter’s feet was not a scenario that came to mind when one thought of ‘subtle’ plans.
But in this case, he sees the wisdom in it: If this gas is volatile enough than an explosion could destroy the building, then that means that any building using it as a source of power or energy is susceptible to ‘accidents’. There are no innocents in or around this building; it’s all Templars, and Aguilar is galled to see how much these bastards have advanced since his time.
Please blow it up, he finds himself thinking. Please destroy their creation, as they have destroyed so many of ours. Cenizas a las cenizas, polvo al polvo.
“Could you not breathe on my neck?” Callum mutters after a moment. “It’s distracting me.”
“Perdón.” Aguilar turns away, but then adds, “How strange, for a ghost to still be breathing.”
Callum makes a little noise like a groan. He’s not facing Aguilar, but the Spaniard knows his descendent is rolling his eyes.
Aguilar believes himself to be a ghost. No matter how Callum twists the wording, ‘ghost’ is inevitably the conclusion Aguilar comes back to. But his grandson is a practical, entirely un-superstitious man, and considering that Aguilar might be a ghost clashes too much with his modern sensibilities.
“A collection of ‘genetic memories’ cobbled together into an imitation of a person,” is what Callum has said. “That’s how Sophia put it.”
It agonizes Aguilar to no end to hear the pained note in Callum’s voice when he says that woman’s name.
Sophia Rikkin, a Templar and the daughter of a Grandmaster Templar, has some sort of deeply concerning hold over Callum’s mind. He remembers her with a sort of sad, wistful fondness, the sort a man has for a woman that he might have, in a different world, paid court to and maybe taken as a wife.
Aguilar, on the other hand, feels no fondness for Sophia Rikkin whatsoever. What little insight he has into Callum’s interactions with the woman leads him to believe that she had toyed with Callum’s emotions, was soft with him to get him to cooperate. Callum does not believe that; but Callum has had limited experience with Templars. It’s laughably common for Templar agents to make themselves the friends and lovers of Assassins just to kill them later.
“You were paralyzed from your second stint in the Animus,” Aguilar had argued a week or two back, following a hesitant defense of Sophia Rikkin from his besotted grandson. He had been more than a touch bemused that he even has to repeat these facts. “You were in a… A…” Aguilar had frowned; the English word for that object wasn’t coming to him. But the benefit of his connection with his grandson meant that sometimes if he thought about something hard enough, Callum could intuit the gist of what he was trying to say.
Callum had rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Wheelchair. I was in a wheelchair.”
“And you were in one because Sophia Rikkin allowed you to be put into that machine when she herself acknowledged the dangers of it,” Aguilar had said without missing a beat. “She told you that you weren’t a prisoner, but you were. She said she wanted to help you, knowing that she was entrapping you and bringing harm to you, mentally and physically. She manipulated you, Callum, for her gain, her father’s gain, and for the Templars gain.”
Callum had just sighed. “I’m done talking about this,” He’d said, without any venom or bitterness. He’d just sounded tired.
Aguilar has lived and died. There wasn’t much in this (as of yet) short afterlife of his that could bring him to boil, but his grandson’s apparently inability to recognize that Sophia Rikkin has done a very serious wrong to him, that she is a dangerous woman capable of bringing him to harm again if given the chance, infuriates him. It infuriates him because if Callum does not come to recognize this, he could very well be put into a situation with Sophia once again in the near future that might cause him to compromise himself.
Aguilar lost much of his religion after watching his family burn. But by God, he will not watch his grandson die by a Templar’s hand.
Especially not one who will likely break his heart before running it through.
“Do whatever it is you’re doing,” Aguilar insists. “I can watch the door.”
Callum looks uneasy at the proposition. They have established that Aguilar can sense things independent of his grandson- hence why he continues to insist that he is, in fact, a ghost and not some ‘faulty wiring’ in Callum’s brain- but Callum, who still regularly questions his own sanity, is hesitant to put trust in that Aguilar can do what needs to get done.
Namely, that it isn’t his own mad brain tricking him into doing something virtually suicidal.
But after a moment, Callum nods shortly and starts keeping his eyes focused on the gasline. Aguilar turns his gaze to the door, where two windows with dark glass might mask the shadows of any guards wandering outside. It occurs to him that he does not need to crouch behind Callum as he works; no one else can see him. Even if someone peeks in through those dark windows, or steps into the room, they won’t be able to see Aguilar.
So the Assassin creeps away from Callum, moving to stand closer to the door to better detect any movement. Callum says nothing, just keeps playing with the panel on the gasline, intermittently frowning and stopping his movements, dragging a hand through the hair on his currently un-hooded head.
Aguilar finds the hissing of steam and the banging and clanging of the machinery around him unsettling. There is far more metal in the 21st century than the 15th, and there has been so much innovation in the time since his death that it often feels as though Aguilar isn’t on Earth anymore. The parts for the machines, Callum says, are ‘mass produced’ in ‘factories’ where humans operate machines that make the individual parts that are then packed up and shipped out to the places and businesses that need them.
“There is a high demand for these machines, then,” Aguilar had concluded, and Callum had nodded.
“Very high demand.”
Aguilar feels the heat coming from the machines and, eyes still on the door, reaches out to touch one. The metal is even warmer to the touch, enough so that his hand might burn if he keeps it there for too long, ghost or not. Aguilar is almost tempted to try, if only to see if it could-
“Shit!” Callum gasps from behind.
There is a loud roar that is abruptly cut off with silence.
Aguilar sees darkness, and then he is gone.
[---]
He comes back later on, in a white room.
At first, Aguilar feels a seize of panic, because the room looks far too much like the one Callum was imprisoned in at the Templar facility. Judging from what he’s seen, in person and from security footage gathered by the Assassins, Templars like things so clean, so sterile and white. He doesn’t know whether it’s some attempt, subconscious or otherwise, at signifying their opposition to the Assassins (who work in the dark), or if it’s an indicator of their prosperity (what information he gleans from Callum indicates that, at least to his grandson, big, sterile, white facilities like the Templars’ indicate that they have a great deal of money).
But after a moment of examination, he realizes it’s not a Templar facility he’s standing in right now: It’s an infirmary, a place for patients to be treated for injury and illness. These places are white and clean and sterile by necessity, not necessarily out of a desire to maintain a certain aesthetic.
There’s a bed in the center of the room. Aguilar is standing behind it, and he can see the side of an arm that is unmistakably Callum’s. Even if it weren’t recognizable, it’s rare for Aguilar to be alone anywhere without Callum somewhere nearby.
“Callum!” Aguilar immediately moves to the bed.
Callum is alive, sleeping deeply on the medical bed in the center of the room. He has a strange little tube wrapped around his face, with a small piece that sticks up into his nose, and a needle connected to an IV drip (that one Aguilar knows clear as day) in his arm. He looks weak, but physically only appears to be banged up and burned a bit, not missing any limbs or sporting any serious gashes or gouges.
Aguilar sighs with relief, reaching out and carefully carding a hand through Callum’s hair, feeling a small lump near the crown of his head where he must have hit it. By the time he’d died, Aguilar had raised three sons (the youngest, Nicolás, was just barely short of manhood by the time Aguilar passed away in 1526, and Aguilar has no greater regret than that he was not there to see his boy come into his own), and he is finding that the same instincts he’d developed for dealing with them are coming out in his dealings with Callum as well.
Callum is confused by it, he knows; what memories of Aguilar’s he’s witnessed and experienced took place a while before Aguilar had become a father, when he was smoldering with bitterness and grief and anger; he’s only seen a small handful of memories beyond the fight for the Apple, and none of them from after Aguilar’s first son was born. And the hand on Callum’s head, the warm, tight hugs, the affectionate smiles- they do not fit the picture of the very somber Assassin who witnessed first his family, then his mentor, then his lover die. There is something else there, some deeper reason why Aguilar’s paternal behavior towards him troubles him, but Aguilar cannot see that deeply into Callum’s mind, and he doesn’t want to.
But again, this is why Aguilar thinks of himself as a ghost, even if when he looks down at himself he sees the man he was in 1492. The man who lurks beside Callum, unseen by everyone else, is the same man who died in his sleep in 1526 next to his wife of thirty years. He lived past the events Callum witnessed in the Animus, and every other memory up until his death is present in his mind, whether Callum knows of them or not.
Aguilar still has no idea what happened in the Templar facility, but he forces back his curiosity and sits carefully on the edge of the bed, his side touching Callum’s but being careful not to disturb the IV in his arm. Even when Callum wakes up, he probably doesn’t know exactly what happened either; they’re not dead (well, Callum isn’t), so obviously an explosion of the magnitude Callum had been expecting had not happened. Aguilar wonders if Moussa, who had been creeping through another part of the building, is injured as well- or worse.
He hopes not. If something did go wrong with whatever Callum was doing and Moussa came to injury or death as a result, he will almost certainly blame himself. Callum is fond of Moussa, who is the closest thing he has to a friend in the Assassins (other than Aguilar) and would grieve considerably if he were dead.
It’s not likely, if Aguilar is being honest, that Moussa is dead. The man’s like a cat: He has an uncanny ability to smell danger and slip and slide to avoid it. Moussa is clever, if not in a distinctly mad, erratic sort of way. Never mind the fact that Moussa has Baptiste, his turncoat, poison-loving ancestor whispering into his ear, so he has another source of wisdom and cunning to aid him in avoiding trouble. If Moussa is dead, Aguilar will pull his hood off and color his hair with one of those strange, unnatural dyes that young people use these days.
Still, until it’s been confirmed, he will worry.
And it’s only once he’s been worrying for a few minutes or so, for Moussa’s safety and the consequences for Callum if Moussa is not, in fact, safe, that Aguilar realizes he should stop. The bond he and Callum share is somewhat active while they’re awake, but it’s extremely active when one of them is asleep (for Aguilar, in the sense that he’s faded into nothing for a time, only to return when summoned, or randomly, or when Callum is distressed), and worrying after Moussa whilst Callum is unconscious will almost certainly…
Yes, there it is.
Callum is starting to stir. He twitches and frowns, moves his arms and legs in a restless way, grunts slightly. Aguilar gracefully hops off the bed and steps back- he’s made the mistake of sitting right next to Callum as he’s woken up before, and found out the hard way that his grandson doesn’t react well to being startled when he’s half-asleep.
As if on cue, the door to the room opens, and a nurse steps in. Aguilar wants to warn her to stay away, to keep her distance until Callum’s come to his senses completely, but she won’t hear it even if he tries; she steps up to the bed and gently puts a hand on Callum’s arm. “Mr. Lynch? Are you awake?”
Callum stirs a little more, eyes creaking open. He stares blankly up at her, uncomprehending. Aguilar is silent and still as he waits… But Callum is calm. Or at least, he is too drowsy to overreact to the nurse’s presence. Aguilar has learned that methods of medical sedation have improved considerably since his time, so it’s possible that there are drugs forcing his grandson into a state of calm.
“Not quite there yet? That’s alright, rest as long as you need.” The nurse smiles down at Callum, and then steps away to look at one of the nearby machines, scratching something down on the clipboard in her hand.
Aguilar thinks of stepping forward, but if Callum is drugged, he may forget himself and start speaking to Aguilar, and as Aguilar does not recognize the nurse or the room, he can’t assume just yet that they are back with the Assassins, where most everyone knows about him.
Everything that happens next seems to happen with frightening speed.
Callum seems to snap awake, eyes looking clearer and more focused. He looks at the nurse with confusion, but not fear or hostility. He looks around, but does not see Aguilar because Aguilar has retreated behind the bed. Aguilar steps forward, intending to step right into view and signal to his grandson that he is present.
And then Callum looks down at his arm.
His eyes lock on the IV, on the needle in his arm.
And every single bit of the color disappears from Callum’s face.
“NO!”
Callum rips the needle out of his arm far, far too roughly, and a spray of blood hits the bed, which he scrambles out of as quickly as possible. Aguilar is too surprised to stop him, watching as his grandson’s arm leaks blood onto the floor and his pants and everything he gets near because, evidently, taking the needle out has seriously damaged the vein.
Blood, he thinks. That’s a lot of blood.
And it’s the last thing he thinks before a striking pain hits his head.
It radiates from the top of his skull all the way down his spine, and the room grows dark and cold and strange and suddenly it’s not the same room anymore. It takes barely a few moments to figure out what has happened. This, Aguilar knows, must be what it feels like when Callum experiences the Bleeding Effect: The terrible sense that he was not himself, the sensation of doing things he hasn’t done and feeling things he hasn’t felt.
He’s strapped to a table, a tinted window is in front of him (what is a tinted window Aguilar thinks, even as Callum’s mind supplies the definition and he realizes there are people watching from the other side whose faces are unclear to him), and there are men (guards) and a woman in a strange green frock and a paper face-mask (doctor).
“Be it known that Callum Lynch has been found guilty of capital murder and is sentenced to die on this day, October 21st, 2016. Does the prisoner wish to make a final statement?”
Happy goddamned birthday, Aguilar-who-is-now-also-Callum thinks (thought) bitterly, even though there is a deep undercurrent of terror rolling in with the thought, the irony of being put to death on the day one was born.
“Tell my father I’ll see him in Hell.”
And the table rolling back to force him to look up at the ceiling suddenly made everything real and terrifying and oh God oh God oh God he was dying, they were about to poison him to death, and he breaks out into a sweat and starts breathing heavily as he watches the poison creep through the tube and into his flesh and everything becomes cold and he can’t move and he can barely make out the face of a pale woman in black on the other side of the glass (an angel, Callum had thought deliriously as the darkness closed in around him, Sophia Rikkin, Aguilar sneers to himself, and he suddenly realizes that he has a better sense of himself than he did-)
Just like that, the Bleed is over, and Aguilar finds himself in the infirmary again.
Aguilar has experienced pieces of Callum’s memories before- “Reverse Bleeds”, as Callum has termed them. But this is the first time he has experienced one so intense that it blocked out everything else.
Callum is crouching in the corner, breathing heavily and trembling uncontrollably, but he’s not incoherent with panic anymore. The nurse has crept forward from the corner she retreated to when the panic started and is carefully cleaning the wound on his arm where the needle was so wildly torn out. The connection between Callum and Aguilar is still open, and Aguilar feels a dull pulse of pain on his own arm where Callum’s is bleeding; the antiseptic hurts, the pressure of the nurse’s hand on the gauze hurts, his head and heart and lungs are pounding from the stress, he’s nauseous, but he doesn’t say anything to the nurse because he knows he’s invited this on himself, he completely freaked out and made a fool of himself over absolutely nothing, stupid, stupid, stupid-
Aguilar shakes his head sharply. Lingering on the connection for too long, focusing too deeply on Callum’s thoughts will initiate another Bleed, and even though he’s been dead for quite a long time and shouldn’t be getting headaches, he feels his head pounding from the pain of the Bleed.
In fairness, it’s clear that Callum is feeling something much worse than a headache.
In the short time that Aguilar has known his descendent, he’s become impressed with Callum’s stalwartness, his cleverness, his adaptability; less so has he been impressed with Callum’s flippant attitude, his hair-trigger temper, and his unwillingness to trust his fellow Assassins.
These are the things that have defined Callum Lynch to Aguilar. These are the things that make his grandson what he is.
To see him reduced to a state of terror, curled in a ball in a corner, is baffling: Even when he’d been dragged to the Animus Callum had put up a fight, refused to go quietly. He hadn’t cowered. But now, now he cowers, and the sheer force of what he feels is enough to seep across their bond, enough so that Aguilar knows Callum is trying with everything he has to calm down, but he can’t. He is physically, mentally incapable of bringing himself to a state of calm. It is beyond his power.
“Why don’t we get you back into bed?” The nurse gently helps Callum to his feet. Between the headache, the nausea, and the blood-loss, Callum sways unsteadily as he walks and the nurse is careful to keep her hand on his elbow.
“Don’t put it in again,” Callum croaks after he’s gingerly lowered himself onto the bed. “Please.”
The nurse hesitates. Aguilar does not know enough of modern medicine yet to know how necessary it is for that tube to be attached to Callum’s arm, but quietly hopes this woman is smart enough to pick her battles wisely.
“Mr. Lynch, you’re dehydrated. I have to get liquid into you somehow.”
“Then I’ll drink. Please,” Aguilar has never heard Callum sound so heartbreakingly plaintive. “Don’t put the IV back in. Please. I’m going to freak out again. I can’t help it. Please.” He’s not usually that honest, either; evidently it takes overwhelming fear for Aguilar’s descendent to admit to what he’s really feeling in a given moment.
“I’ll talk to the doctor,” The nurse concedes. “In the meantime, I’m getting you a glass of water, and I want you to drink it all- slowly- over the next ten minutes.” She fills a glass at a sink on the other side of the room as Callum uses a device to raise the back of the bed a little more, hands still shaking. He sits back, and silently accepts the water with a small nod to the nurse when she hands it to him. “I’ll be right back.”
The nurse leaves. Callum follows her directions, slowly sipping the water. He’s drawn his knees up- not to his chest like he had in the corner, but enough that Aguilar thinks he might spring off the bed at the first sign of danger or provocation.
“You saw all of that.”
Aguilar has been standing off to the side, out of Callum’s line of vision. Callum, Aguilar is learning, has a better sense of when his ancestor is nearby than either of them had previously realized.
“Yes,” Aguilar responds. After a moment, he steps forward and stands beside the bed. Callum does not look at him: His gaze is focused on the door. Aguilar has a feeling that if the nurse returns and insists on putting that needle into his arm again that things are going to get ugly.
Aguilar has faced execution before; the most memorable occasion, the one that came closest to being carried out, was the one Callum had witnessed, the day Benedicto had been murdered and Aguilar and Maria had made a narrow escape. And Aguilar felt fear that day, the fear any man feels when confronted with danger or death, especially in the face of such insurmountable odds; but he had also had hope, had had some possibility of escape, some method of fighting back.
For Callum, those things had simply not existed. In the time since Aguilar’s near brush with death, the world has become better at making sure their intended victims do not escape the death chambers. Untangling everything he’d seen and heard and felt in Callum’s memory reinforces that there truly was no way for Callum to escape that cell, at least not without assistance; there were so many guards, all with weapons that he did not have, and Callum had not been an Assassin.
He had been alone and terrified and without hope, and evidently it had left its mark.
The shaking has calmed down a little, though Callum appears no more soothed than he was before. He’s still terribly pale.
“You should go back to sleep,” Aguilar whispers, preparing for a fight. “You need to rest. You look like-” He almost says ‘death’, but catches himself. “-you look like you’re about to swoon.” He knows the term is somewhat dated, but it’s a sign of how disturbed Callum is at the moment that he doesn’t snort or otherwise mock Aguilar for it.
“Wake me up,” Callum whispers. “If they try to put the IV back in my arm, wake me up. I don’t want a fucking IV in my arm. I don’t care what it’s for.”
Aguilar nods, reaches out carefully and puts a hand on Callum’s shoulder. “Of course, Nieto. I’ll wake you. Go back to sleep.”
Callum slowly lowers himself onto his side, curling into himself. His eyes close for a moment- a shock of panic that Aguilar feels as well force them open again. It will take time for the sharp, stinging remnants of that memory to fade.
Aguilar is finding it difficult to force the images from his mind as well. Usually it’s Callum who’s reliving his memories, good and bad both, and while Aguilar re-experiences them as well, it’s not with the same intensity, or the unfamiliarity. Aguilar suspects he still hasn’t felt the same intensity of the Bleed as Callum’s felt; he no longer has a body or, more relevantly, a brain to feel the… ‘cognitive dissonance’, those were the words he’d heard used for it, that made the Bleeding Effect so jarring to the person experience it.
Still, the memory of the execution had been… Powerful. No mistaking it.
The execution chamber had had all of the same trappings of a Templar facility: Cold, sterile white and gray and metal. No wonder Callum had panicked when he’d woken up in Abstergo’s Madrid complex, with Sophia Rikkin sitting at his bedside, or when they’d dragged him to the Animus. Though in fairness, cold metal covered much of this new world Aguilar found himself in; the Templars merely had the means to completely surround themselves in it in their quest for cold, hard dominance.
Aguilar shivers to recall the bindings on his- on Callum’s chest and arms and legs, which had been unnerving enough, but what really sends a chill down his spine is the memory of the chamber itself: It was small, claustrophobic, filled with people dedicated to ending his (Callum’s) life as quickly and painlessly as possible. But what this new century has traded in physical pain, it has compensated with psychological pain: The isolated cell on death row, the final visit from the priest, the walk with several guards down to the chamber, and then being strapped down and forced to watch one’s self die slowly, quietly, undistracted by pain.
He sees the logic. He understands the logic: No death is a good death, but a quick, relatively painless death is as close as you’ll get.
“Stop thinking about it,” Callum snaps, startling Aguilar. “I know you’re thinking about it. Stop.”
“I’m sorry,” Aguilar says plainly. “I can’t help it. It was… Frightening.”
“No fucking shit,” Callum’s voice is brittle. “That’s why I want you to stop thinking about it. You’re making me think about it.”
“Perdón.”
Frankly, Aguilar doesn’t want to think of it anymore either, but trying one’s hardest not to think of something tends to backfire. He moves around the bed to sit down beside Callum, back-to-back, legs dangling off the side. His lower back presses gently against Callum’s- the only physical comfort Aguilar knows his grandson will tolerate in moments like these. Callum is a tactile-defensive man, and more overt, direct physical contact would make him uncomfortable.
More uncomfortable than he already is, anyway.
Callum is rarely so openly panicked or upset, and Aguilar knows enough to know that things have changed since he was alive: Such things were not supposed to be buried, not anymore, you were supposed to speak about them with doctors who might be able to use medicine or other ways to alleviate your inner pain somewhat. Although, he can’t even begin to think about how he might convince his stubborn grandson to let go of his pride and seek out-
“You’re right,” Callum says suddenly, from behind him, “I abso-fucking-lutely don’t want to talk about it. Not with you, not with a doctor, not with anyone. In fact, I never, ever want to talk about anything relating to that memory ever again. Drop it, and save your hand-wringing for when I can’t see almost everything you’re thinking.”
“You still know what I’m thinking?” Normally connections this open (which usually followed a major Bleed) only last a few minutes; a further testament to how disturbing the memory had been.
“Yes. I’m not fucking kidding, Aguilar, stop thinking about it, and leave me the fuck alone,” Callum’s voice cracks twice, on ‘fucking’ and ‘thinking’. Aguilar can’t help it- he turns, settles a hand on Callum’s shoulder, and his grandson gives a full-body flinch at the contact. “Don’t ever want to think about that prison or that bullshit execution ever again,” Callum whispers, squeezing his eyes shut.
Something flits across the channel between them, a fear that Callum’s trying desperately to repress:
If the cops ever catch me, I’m probably going right back to the execution chamber.
Aguilar wants to assure him that that won’t happen, that the Assassins are called a Brotherhood for a reason, they take care of their own, and that he will make himself solid again through sheer force of will if he has to in order to protect his grandson.
But then the door opens, and it’s not the nurse standing in the doorway.
“Pioneer! I didn’t kill you!” Moussa grins, and Aguilar grimaces at the sight of the violent bruise covering most of the man’s face. He’s not sure he’s ever seen such severe bruising on the face of a man who’s still alive before.
“The fuck are you talking about?” Callum asks, pushing himself up on his uninjured elbow and staring at Moussa oddly. “And why do you look like someone smacked you in the face with a steel pipe?”
“Better than getting smacked with the ugly-stick, like you were,” Moussa returns as he strolls up to the bed. “But, uh, yeah, I was kind of tampering with the gas-line and things went boom.”
Callum’s eyes roll shut. “You too? That explains it.”
Moussa cackles and pulls up a stool. “Oh, man, we need to convince these guys to upgrade our equipment for better communication, or we’re literally going to kill ourselves.”
Callum snorts. “I’ll let you handle that conversation.”
They keep talking, falling into an easy rhythm of conversation. As they speak, Callum becomes calmer, distracted, and Aguilar can feel the connection between them closing, like a swollen wound receding into normal skin again. And as Moussa sways slightly unsteadily on the stool, Aguilar begins to suspect that Moussa knows about the earlier incident, and would be in a bed himself if he weren’t concerned about Callum. Moussa is a good Assassin, a good friend- if there ever came a time where Callum might be facing execution again, Aguilar doesn’t doubt that Moussa would be one of the ones rushing to help him.
You are not alone, Callum, he thinks. You are still not alone.
And though he doesn’t speak, doesn’t distract him from whatever Moussa is saying, Aguilar presses back against his grandson.
Just in case he forgets.
-End