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nemo-in-wonderland · 4 months

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Dover, 26th December 1872

The house was quiet, as the middle of the night approached. The staff of the house was peacefully sleeping in their beds, all resting and dreaming of the past festive days as the snow outside danced away, shimmering crystal swirling in a waltzing tempo, twirling with the wind that blew from the sea, not so far away. It was a gentle snowfall, one that had enveloped the entire world in its protective cover. Dorothea had been sitting by the windowsill of her childhood bedroom in Dover for the greatest part of the evening, lost as she was in that dance that always entranced her like nothing else in the world. A book - Alice through the Looking Glass - was sitting just besides her elbow, still opened to the page where Dorothea had interrupted her reading.

She turned her eyes away from that spectacle of silent beauty, and glanced over her shoulder, finding the antique clock nestled on the mantlepiece. Almost midnight. Boxing day was almost over. Had it not it been that late, she would had taken her violin and played a merry tune. She felt her fingers tingling with impatience, her mind running as fast as wild horses in a prairie, as she chased melody after melody. She sighed in quiet resignation as she snuggled once more against the soft worn out hostelry of the old love seat that she had pushed against window, to better behold the spectacle that the wintery night was offering her. She reached out toward the window and opened it, uncaring about the cold, just so she could hear the far away crushing of the waves against the shore, a sound that always brought her peace of mind and spirit. Despite the difficulties in breathing that her swollen womb brought and the sharp pains in her legs each time she tried to rest in her bed, she was always careful in her movements, careful not to wake the little one she carried, the sweet love that was finally sleeping inside her belly. An elated smile widened on her face, her nose wrinkling with absolute mirth as her thoughts about her son started to chased one after the other . Somehow, she always saw a tiny dark haired baby, with joyous hazel eyes and beautiful freckles all over his tiny face, dimples on his chubby cheeks and a small mouth always smiling in mirth. She was never one to care about flight of fancy, but the closer she approached the estimated day of her little one’s birth, the more she found herself awake and wonder which one of her thoughts would turn out to be the truth. “You’ll catch a cold with that window opened, Goldilocks,” Dorothea turned and her smile transformed in an even sweeter one at the sight of the man standing at the door, his voice husky from sleep.

“I needed a breath of fresh air, dearest. It can be so stuffy in here,” She said, opening her arms in a silent invitation to reach her and sit with her. “What are you doing still awaken? You need to rest, love.” “ I wish. I could not find a way to be comfortable in bed, I am afraid. I have the moon in my blood tonight. What about you?” Jacob yawned, as he sat besides her and took her in his lap. “Couldn’t find a way to be comfortable either. The bed felt too empty.” he grinned, winking at her and tickling under her chin. “You were so tired after taking care of that situation in London, I did not have the heart to disturb you,” she murmured, giggling when she felt Jacob’s lips brushing against her collarbone, kissing her skin ever so gently. “You should have though, Dottie,” he whispered back not unkindly, wrapping both of them with the soft bearskin that Dorothea had been using earlier. “Wake me up, if you aren’t feeling well. I might not be able to do much, but I can at least be of company,” “Oh dearest, I was feeling perfectly fine. Just unable to enter Morpheus’ realm.” She giggled when she saw his brow raising, a skeptical light lighting up on his face. She cupped his cheeks with her hands, resting her forehead against his, allowing the warm fuzzy feeling of happiness blooming in her chest when she looked at those eyes that she loved more than anything in that world. Yes, she caught herself thinking again, she truly hoped their child would have his eyes. “I promise, I am completely fine, Jacob. Had something been wrong with me, I would have told you right away. Your son just decided that it would have been a tremendous idea trying to stretch his legs around,” Jacob’s face lit up again, sweet fondness transforming his face entirely. “Emmett’s being a little rascal?”

“No more nor less than his father usually is, I assure you,” She chuckled, as she pressed a long kiss against his temple. “He has been tumbling around all evening, poor sweetling. Not much space left in there,” Jacob’s warm hand brushed her swollen womb, resting a little longer when he could feel the soft outline of his child’s head. “It won’t be long now, little one,” he murmured, the tone of his voice sweeter than ever, despite the worried look in his eyes. Dorothea furrowed her eyebrows, her gaze turning inquisitive. “What’s wrong, Jacob?” He stood quiet for a moment, lips thinning as thoughts after thoughts mulled all over his face. “I just realized now…it really won’t be long now until Emmett’s here with us,” he started whispering, locking his gaze with his wife, trying to find some comfort in those sweet eyes that always looked at him as if he had put the Sun in the sky. “And…what if I end up being like Ethan? What if I end up making mistake after mistake, ruining our child's life because it will turn out I am not so different from…from him?“ She caressed his cheek, her knuckles following the outline of his face with delicate attention, trying as she might to give all the courage she carried in her heart through that small contact. “I know you are terrified. I know. I share your sentiment. I am petrified that I will not be able to fill my role as I should, that I will not give our child what he deserves and needs, just like my own father did to me.” She sighed, turning sad for a moment. “I cannot lie and say that we will not make mistakes, Jacob, because… we are humans. To err is in our nature. It is inevitable,” she scooted closer, now enveloping the man in her arms, bringing his head against her chest, gently kissing his dark hair. “But I also know something else, something that always gives me strength and bring me comforts when I lie in bed, and worriment takes over my senses: we are in this together. We know what our sires’ mistakes were, what they had caused us with their actions, so we already know what path not to follow. So long you hold my hand and I hold yours, so long we walk together side by side, we will not stray away. You will see.” Jacob’s lips thinned even more, his grip growing stronger around her body, as he felt his chest tightening as it always did when a particular thought squeezed his heart without mercy. “I don’t want to lose you,” he murmured, allowing her perfume of orange blossom to envelope his whole being and tear him away from his biggest fear. “My father lost my mother, and it broke him. I can’t lose you, Dorothea. I can’t. I just can’t. Not after we found each other again. It-It will break me. Completely.”

Dorothea sighed, her eyes turning sad: she knew those thoughts were always there, keeping him their prisoner with their invisible chains. She had seen it in the way he had been throughout her whole pregnancy, the way he would always pace around the house whenever she wasn’t feeling as energetic or as active, the way his own sleep had become so incredibly light he would wake up at sounds so faint, she could not hear at all. With a gentle hand, she raised his chin, and as he had done earlier, now she locked her eyes with him, pure determination blazing within her chest. “It will not happen, Jacob. I promise you, it will not happen. No force on this Earth or beyond this Life will pull me away from you. My time is not up yet, and I have every intention to grow old with you, so long you will have me by your side,” she caressed a wayward lock of dark hair away from his eyes, and smiled. She felt his shoulders relaxing a little, but the tension in grip was still palpable. “How about we go back to bed together and try to sleep some more? You truly need to rest,” she suggested as she tenderly kissed his closed eyelids with all the sweetness she was capable off. “I have the feeling that tomorrow will be an eventful day,” “Will you read me something first?” he asked, still feeling the tension in the way his jaw tightened. Her voice was one of the few things that always helped soothe his nerves. “Of course, my love. Anything for you.” Carefully leaning, she took the book still standing on the windowsill when suddenly, she felt a small nudge on the side of her belly and laughed. ”Apparently, your son is awake again,” Jacob placed one hand over the spot Dorothea was pointing, and was rewarded with another nudge. A smile widened on his face once more. His worries were all still there, still swimming just beneath the surface of his composure: but he knew that Dorothea’s words were true, and they brought some peace in his soul. She was right. They would make it. Together.

“ He decided that he wants to go back to Wonderland with us, eh? We have a Alice’s admirer at our hands,” he murmured, his smile growing wider. Dorothea laughed, as she combed through the book to find the piece she was looking for. “If he is anything like you, more like a Cheshire Cat in the making,” Jacob chuckled at the thought. He felt her snuggling even more comfortably against his solid frame, as he wrapped the bearskin tighter around them. Then, with clear silvery voice, she started narrating that poem that, by now, they both knew by heart.

“'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"

SOOOOO.

I AM SORRY FOR THE DELAY, BUT I ACTUALLY MANAGED TO FINISH THIS PIECE and OMG I AM SO HAPPY I WAS ABLE TO DO SO, AND TO ADD ALSO A SMALL DRABBLE TO IT AS WELL. (truth to be told, my husband nudged me to finish it, so, if you see this posted, it's thanks to him and his encouragement lol)

The festivities do bring miracles, don't they?😂😂

I don't have much to add to this, just that I loved working on it and that I was truly truly happy to write for Jacob and Dorothea again, especially in this particular setting! (I mean, if you remember the info I gave a long while ago, you know what's about to happen lolol).

I honestly love doing these kind of Festive Artworks with them, I wish the festivities actually last longer, so that I would be able to draw more of them lolol.

well, I hope you will like this just as much as I loved working on it!

--Nemo

#Assassin's Creed #Assassin's Creed Syndicate #Jacob Frye #Dorothea Starrick #Emmett Starrick-Frye #nemo sketches #my art #my oc #Winter #Christmas #character art

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nemo-of-house-hamartia · 1 year

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For your ask game: you got anything for the word, "hug"? 👀😊 -Crowie

Hello hello, dear Crowie!

Welcome to my inbox! :) Allow me to give you some cookies, while I comb through my WIP

So, I don't truly have any "hug" in my current WIP, but I have one still pertinent. Allow me to share it.

She dared to raise her gaze and look right into Emmett’s solemn face. When she saw tears in her firstborn’s eyes, she forgot about her own sorrow, and from fragile ivory, she felt herself transmuting turned into unbreakable steel. To keep them safe, to keep them alive, to preserve their innocence; for her children, she would face God himself and destroy him with her bare hands without a single moment of remorse, given the occasion. “Come into my arms, my darlings, come,” Dorothea murmured, as they all swarmed against her chest, all trying to hug her just as tight as she was hugging them. “Mama, please, come back safe to us. You and Papa have to come back to us,” she heard Emmett’s own whisper, as he buried his face in her shoulder. “If anything will happen to you both, we-“ But Dorothea stopped him before he could finish speaking. “We will be together again, duckling. It’s not a matter of “if”. It’s only a matter of “when”.” She smiled, patting his freckled cheeks, looking straight into those eyes that were mirrors of her own. “It’s not farewell,” she faltered for a moment when she felt all their scared gazes on her. “It’s just a goodbye."

thank you for sending this ask :)

#ask replied #friends #my writing #Dorothea Starrick #Emmett Starrick-Frye

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nemo-of-house-hamartia · 2 years

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Ok, blame this on me craving Winter and Snow like crazy, and blame this also on the soundtrack I am listening to while streaming.

but.

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe AU with the Starrick-Frye Children.

With Emmett as Peter, Gabriel as Edmund, Eva as Susan, and Lily as Lucy exploring ending up in Narnia, discovering that their parents Jacob and Dottie were the previous Sovereigns of Narnia when they were children themselves (yes, I kinda reconnecting myself to "The Magician's Nephew" and Dottie and Jacob basically being the equivalent of Digory and Polly and the reason why Jadis woke up- sorry, but you know how much I love interconnecting stuff and interweaving them with my own characters).

Like.

I crave this now. I need this now. I miss my Starrick-Frye babies so much, dear gods, I want this.

The Plot Bunnies are multiplying.

I need to think some more about this, but I love the general idea.

#The Chronicles of Narnia AU #Jottie AU #Starrick-Frye AU #all my bebes

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nemo-of-house-hamartia · 2 years

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In the Heat of The Moment

Chapter 3 - Confrontation

Ch.1, Ch.2

Words Count: 8736

Warning: None

23rd January 1909

The small room on the second floor of the hideout was veiled by a soft penumbra, giving the whole place a dreamlike appearance. Only a few rays of the rising winter sun were daring to peek through the drawn curtains of the old room, with its antiquated wallpapers and the worn-out leather upholstery of the armchair close by.

But neither of the two people hiding in that small alcove gave thoughts to their surroundings, their attention captured by each other's low voices and hushed moans, enveloped as they were in the deepest of embraces.

Fingers gripping tight, almost digging into her soft buttocks, the man held the young woman's hips against his own, guiding her as she rode the waves of her own pleasure.

At the sound of her breathy voice calling for his name - desperate, wanting, needy - the man felt his own release coming, bucking his hips and blocking hers against his own, burying himself so deep into her, all he wanted was to get lost in that moment of stolen ecstasy.

Both in a blissful daze, the young woman plopped on the man's strong chest, dark sensual eyes meeting steel grey ones in a gaze filled with languid satisfaction, their heartbeats synchronized and slowing to a peaceful rhythm.

For a second, they both stood still, the moment of the afterglow so surreal they thought even one breath might break that fragile reality.

Then, Emmett Frye spoke.

"I can't keep seeing you like this, Melanie," he murmured, his voice low, coated with a huskiness that came from pleasure, as he kissed the young woman's brows, soft pecks that left her wanting for more. "You know I can never make an honest woman out of you,"

He trailed down her nose and found her lips with his, brushing against them at first, then gently pressing so that she would open them for him.

The young woman whined a little as she wrapped her arms around the older man's shoulders.

"What if I don't want to be an honest woman? What if I want to be just your woman?”

Emmett chuckled against her lips, as he trailed down her neck, finding where her pulse was. He gave her a little nip and was rewarded with a low moan that brought a smile to his face.

"Your father would kill me, Miss Abberline,"

"My father would have a reason to kill you for what we already do. Besides, he did know your father, Mr. Frye."

"Precisely why we can't keep seeing each other like this. He would get a heart attack knowing that you are mingling with me,”

"Why are you so afraid of my father finding out? Or others, for that matter?"

Emmett looked at her for a moment; then, his lips twitched up, his smile never reaching his eyes.

"Fear has nothing to do with it, Mel.”

“Lies,” she smirked.

He raised an eyebrow, barely blinking.

“I am not afraid, Mel. I never am. Of anyone.”

"That’s a lie, Emmett Frye," she chuckled, leaning in to kiss him again.

"Maybe," He conceded once, knowing instead that now he was lying.

After what had happened to him, to his family, in 1888, fear had no business having a place in his soul.

He had been scared once, and his fear had cost him something so great, he still bore the consequences - the scars- of that moment of weakness of his heart.

Never again he would be afraid. Never again he would let terror rule him.

Was he happy about everything he had done to preserve his family, to help his father take back the gang after that demon Jack had devastated all that his parents had built together in twenty years… to everything that he had witnessed throughout the years, everything that had molded him to become the man he was today?

The truth was he couldn’t really say, and there wasn’t really anything that he could do to change what had been.

But if he were proud of himself, of who he had become, that was a totally different matter altogether.

“What’s this?” asked Melanie, taking him away from his thoughts, as she looked at the necklace around his neck.

It was a leather cord with a ring hanging from it.

“My wife’s wedding ring,” he said, grabbing a cigarette from the packet on the bedside table and lighting it up, taking a drag from it.

The young woman looked at the golden band, inspecting it carefully, her eyes gleaming with curiosity, an unspoken question on her lips.

“She’s dead,” Emmett murmured with his low, raspy voice, gently taking the wedding band from her hand and hiding it underneath his woolen shirt.

“What happened?” she asked,

The older man looked into her eyes, not speaking at first, his gaze so intense the young woman thought he could read right into her soul.

“Life happened, Mel,” he said, his voice final, hiding a warning to not thread any further in the murky waters where all that he pained about still dwelled.

Even if almost a decade had passed, reminiscing was still intolerable for him. There were certain memories he had sworn to keep barred from anyone, including himself. His wife belonged there, deep within his heart...the only place where he knew she would truly be safe and sound.

He sighed, keeping his hand on the now hidden golden band, an unconscious protective gesture that he had started to do ever since his wife had been taken away from him.

Melanie stood pensive for one moment. She was sure that there was much more behind that, but she dared not to ask any further.

She raised her big dark eyes, staring into his for a moment: she was so curious to know more about him, to know more about that man whose gaze saw everything that happened around him and yet never let anything transpire through them.

But she knew that with him, probing and insisting would do no good.

If anything, it would make him grow more distant.

She leaned in to take the cigarette from his lips and brought it to her own.

“Keep your secrets, Mr. Frye,” she chuckled with a tiny smile. “ One day, I will be able to discover them all,”

He looked at her, his face growing even more serious.

"Don't tread in places where you should not go, little dove," he murmured, caressing her cheek with his knuckles, each of his gestures always so delicate, as if she was a doll made of the most delicate material.

Melanie felt the coarse, calloused skin of his hand, looking at the grazed skin - a testimony to all the fight he had taken part in?

Or maybe, she pondered, a testimony of all the fight he had caused?

She knew so little of the man in front of her, whatever he decided to show her. Yet, she wanted to know more. She had seen glimpses of a fire burning in his cold eyes. And she wanted to find out what ignited those flames.

A loud knock on the door made them turn their heads.

"Em," called the rough voice of Uriel from outside the room. “We got a call from one of our strongholds in Lambeth. Trouble is brewing in the neighbourhood. The Carvers are at it again. We need to go now.”

Emmett kept his silence, his face a pool of still water, as he quickly considered all of his options.

“Duty calls?” inquired Melanie, beaming with excitement. “Can I come with you? I have never seen what you actually do! I could be of help!”

He looked straight into her eyes, his stare so cold it felt as if winter had found its home there.

“That’s out of the question, Melanie. This is not a game. You are not to go anywhere near where the Carvers operate.” He said, getting out of bed and starting to put his clothes on. “Now dress up. Jeremy will bring you back to your parents’ home,”

“I’m not a child, Emmett! I don’t need to be chaperoned!” she blurted out, jumping out of the bed to follow him. “You can’t order me around! I’m not one of your underlings!”

He turned and took her face in his hands, caressing her cheeks with his thumb.

When he spoke, his low voice was so soft, almost jarring to hear compared to the chilliness of his gaze. Yet, the younger woman was sure she had seen it softening as well.

“I am not ordering you, Mel,” he murmured, kissing her brow, lingering there, taking in her perfume of violets and roses. “God only knows that no force on Earth can actually make you do something you do not want to do. No, I am asking you not to follow me. It is not your place to do so, and I want you out of harm’s way,”

She relented, for just one moment, her eyes lowering to find where his golden band was still hidden.

“It’s because of what happened to your wife?” she blurted out, without thinking.

Emmett kept his silence, his face hardening at that.

“Em! Kiss that harlot goodbye and let’s go! We need to go!” knocked Uriel again, with more insistence this time.

Melanie’s face morphed in a mask of bewilderment, her mouth gaping.

“W-what did he just call me?” she bellowed, making way to the door to face the man herself. “Why, of all the things I have been calle-”

Emmett took her by the arm, and stopped her in her tracks, pulling her back against his chest.

He took her face in his hands and dove down to kiss her in that way that always sent chills of pure pleasure down her spine, taking her breath away.

Melanie could do nothing but mellow in that kiss, a soft moan drowning in her throat.

Damn the man for knowing how to make her melt in his arms!

“We do not have time for this,” Emmett murmured, breaking the kiss. “I need to sort things out in the borough,”

With one last peck, he put his coat on and kissed her lips one more time.

“When will we see each other again?” she asked, resisting the urge to throw herself in his arms.

He stopped and looked at her.

“Mel, I told you-”

“I know fairly well what you’ve told me, Mr. Frye. And I’m asking you: when will we see each other again?”

Emmett could only smile at her. Stubborn like no one else in the world. He knew she wouldn’t let go of him until she heard what she wanted to hear.

“Soon, I hope,” he conceded. “My men will see you are delivered back to your parents safe and sound,”

Then, for the spark of a moment, he hesitated, his eyes wandering on her determined expression. He gripped the knob of the door, willing himself to go.

“Go home, little dove, and be safe. Leave the danger of the world to this old rook,”

And without turning back, he left the room with a quick stride.

As Melanie accompanied him with her gaze, she noticed Uriel glancing at her, an amused look on his clean shaved face.

“Sorry to interrupt, Missy, but duty calls. You know how it is,” he snickered, smirking as he eyed the woman in front of him.

She narrowed her eyes, knowing that the young man wasn’t sorry at all.

Offended yet relentless, she held her gaze, defiant as ever: she knew Uriel, more than she cared to. Growing up, she had plenty of opportunities to get to meet the most boisterous of the Frye children whenever Mrs. Dorothea would come and visit her mother, Magnolia. Uriel was the exact copy of his twin Gabriel, from his curly dark hair down to his tall frame; but where Gabriel’s eyes always twinkled with a mischievous yet kind light, in Uriel’s there was always a hint of coldness that made them appear like two dark voids, where no warmth ever dwelled.

“You should learn how to properly talk to a lady, Uriel,”

His smile widened, turning into a crooked smirk.

“When I meet one, I’ll make sure to remember your advice, Mel,”

And before she had the chance to answer him, he tipped the brim of his hat and closed the door behind himself with an unceremonious bang.

*****

“About fuckin’ time, Em,” growled Uriel, his smile all but disappeared, as he followed his brother down the stairs, his dark coat flapping behind him. They crossed the street and a car passed so close to them, Uriel turned to shout at the driver, his curse drowned by the roaring of the engine as the vehicle sped up. Rolling his eyes, Emmett caught him by the arm, dragging him toward where their car was.

“We don’t have time for this. We need to hurry,”

“Yet you had all the time to kiss that harlot goodbye, it seems,”

“Uriel, you are my brother and I love you...but call Melanie a ‘harlot’ one more time, and we are going to have a problem, you and I,”

The younger man huffed as he started the engine up. “Not calling her that won’t make any difference about what she is. You know about her reputation,”

Emmett glared at him. “Uriel, enough. That is not one of your bloody business! I do not know what Mel has done to you-”

“She’s an Abberline, Emmett! You know I don’t have much love for coppers or any of their offspring, no matter how much Papa used to like her pa!”

“But she is also Eva’s friend! And Mrs.Abberline is one of Mother’s dearest friends! Couldn’t you show some respect at least for their sake?”

Uriel stared him square in the eyes, not relenting for one moment.

“You know that bringing up our sister and mother won’t make a difference, don’t you?

Emmett sighed. His younger brother had always been a piece of work, ever since he had started to talk coherently.

“Keep all that animosity for the Carvers, Uri. We will need it. Drive now, and inform me of the situation,”

"We have captured two of their men. Underlings, but they seem to know something. Still, Albert hasn’t managed to make them talk yet,”

"No torture on them, I hope?"

Uriel smiled for the first time, his lips thinning in a cruel smirk.

"No need for that. We just told them that The Executioner was on his way," he chuckled, turning to look at his brother, a light of admiration in his eyes. “Should’ve seen their faces, Emmett. I could swear one of’em pissed himself when he heard that.” Emmett heard Uriel snigger, almost unable to contain his excitement. “He ain’t going to have mercy on you,’ I said to those pissers,”

The Executioner, Emmett thought, his lips pursing in a thin line of disapproval. That moniker had been following him his entire adult life. He knew he had long earned that reputation ever since that name had been given to him, but funnily enough, the moniker hadn't belonged to him in the first place.

It was a misconception.

No, that name truly belonged to the one that had killed Jack The Ripper, after Jack had sent London in a frenzy during the Autumn of Terror; it was given by the press after Abberline had found Jack slashed to death, his face butchered beyond any possible recognition.

Emmett mused, for a moment, what the people would think if they knew that The Executioner had been, in truth, a woman.

My own mother, he thought, clenching his jaw.

Feeling something dreadful bubbling up in his chest, he grabbed another cigarette and lit it up, taking a long drag to fill up his lungs and soul with that poison fumes that always brought him relief.

He smoked too much, he knew that. His parents never ceased to tell him to reduce the number of cigarettes he smoked each day, and yet, he couldn’t help himself: since 1888, it was one of the few ways to calm his frazzled nerves.

He still remembered Inspector Abberline offering him one cigarette- his first - after the policeman found him, his aunt Evie and his mother Dorothea in one of Lambeth's underground cells, the three of them standing as a human wall around his half-dead father and his siblings Eva and Robin, maimed and beaten and scared to death.

Emmett closed his eyes, all memories flooding his mind, unwanted, unsought, yet unrelenting as they gripped his soul with those unforgiving talons.

He still recalled the foul stench of that cold dark cell, a gagging mixture of molding walls, human waste, and lingering sickness, so strong and pungent, it still made his stomach queasy at the mere thought.

Emmett had only been a boy of sixteen years of age, but seeing his father - his hero - curled up on the cold floor, barely moving, barely breathing, and yet, still holding his younger maimed children in his arms, still trying to protect them even when he had no strengths to spare for himself… that sight had filled him with such hopelessness, such fear, he remembered starting to shake like a leaf at the mercy of the chilling winter winds.

Emmett shuddered, as the memories shifted once more, to the cracking of a whip as it lashed against the soft tissues of a body, over and over and over again, each cracks followed by a scream of pure wrath and agony.

It was all still as clear as the day he had witnessed all of that.

Seeing his father and siblings like that had left him broken.

But seeing his gentle, placid mother - a woman unwilling to even raise her voice to reprimand her children - become possessed by a murderous blind rage at the sight of her husband's limp body and her abducted children wasting away… seeing her infer lashes after lashes to the miscreant -the demon- that had dared to try to destroy their family...it all had left a mark on Emmett that still came back to torment him, in sleep and wake alike.

And only smoking could help him calm down.

He reckoned that it was due to the fact that the cigarette offered by the kind Inspector had been the first gentle gesture after all the horrors he had witnessed, after all the despair he had felt, and that small gift had seemed like a blessing, at that moment. He only remembered being beyond grateful for it, and for the help the older man had offered when his hands had been shaking too much to allow him to light it up.

He closed his eyes, to chase away those nightmarish thoughts that were still haunting him, almost twenty years later.

"Let's move and get over this. I need to meet with Gabriel at the Pub, afterward. He said he has something of urgency he needs to discuss with me," he murmured, trying to hide the strain in his voice with a small cough.

"Goddamnit, Em, don't tell me Gabriel’s still looking into that stupid cross he has found during Christmas,"

Uriel’s exasperated reaction caught him by surprise. Turning his complete attention to the younger sibling, Emmett raised an eyebrow.

“How do you know about it? Did Gabriel inform you?”

Uriel snorted, shaking his head. “As if! He didn’t need to! He mutters about it even in his sleep, for Christ’s sake! I’ve thrown him so many pillows to make him shut up, I was this close to tossing him out of the room! Ever since he came back from London last week, he’s started to talk to himself! ‘Leviathan this, Starrick that!’ I swear, if I hear about these poppycocks one more time, I’ll become a Templar myself and give Briel a real reason to brood over!”

Emmett’s face hardened in a mask of complete stillness at the mention of those names, his blood running cold deep within his veins.

The Leviathan. The connection to Crawford Starrick.

Gabriel must have found his correspondence.

Emmett took another drag from his cigarette, feigning nonchalance, despite the immense maelstrom of emotions whirling in his gut.

“Did he tell you anything of relevance?”

“Nothing whatsoever. The last time I saw him, he had closed himself in the library in Dover working on some codes. He looked like a madman because he couldn’t manage to decipher them,”

The eldest of the Frye brothers let out a shaky sigh of relief, that he immediately tried to hide with a small cough.

“And what are your thoughts on it?” he then asked, interrupting his younger brother’s harangue. ”Do you think we have reason to worry about anything he might find?”

Uriel dared to take his eyes off from the road for a little moment, just to give his brother a look of incredulity.

“Not you as well, Emmett! Come on, we all know they are a whole load of bollocks right there! Our father was an Assassin, the one leading our branch of the Brotherhood for the last three decades! What’s so surprising in finding a Templar memento in our home?” he huffed, as he honked to catch the attention of a friend passing down the road. Then, he focused once again on the road ahead of him. “I would’ve tossed that cross into the sea as soon as I first saw it and never thought about it ever again! I’d have just moved on and focused on something more urgent, instead of bringing Lily and Eva into this! Good thing he hasn’t bothered Robin as well, otherwise I would have smacked Gabriel myself! Who cares about it? Who fuckin’ cares about it all!? But no: leave it to Briel to make a giant fuss about philosophy, conspiracies and Templars and all that footle!”

Emmett remained silent. On one hand, he was relieved to know that his younger brother -always more focused on fighting and dallying around- wouldn’t give much attention to what Gabriel had found; On the other hand, the fact that Briel had entangled both their sisters in his conjectures made him wary and more nervous than he cared to admit.

He needed to meet him, as soon as possible, and assess how much he already knew, before he would turn to their parents - because Emmett knew that it would be his brother’s next step.

"You know how he is, Uri: when he finds something that he deems important, he is a hound that never quits," the eldest Frye murmured, at last, swallowing his worry as he kept his eyes on the road ahead of him. He heard his younger brother snort.

"That's one big bag of bullshit right there, Em, and you know that as well as I do. He quits when he sees fit to quit. He just loves to poke his nose in businesses that don’t concern him,"

Emmett allowed himself a small, sad smile. He knew the youngest one of the family had the reputation of being nosy, especially among his siblings, but Emmett knew better than the rest of them.

"He is driven by his need for the truth, whatever that might be. That in itself is not necessarily wrong. The only problem with Briel is that he does not know when to stop. And that can be dangerous." “dangerous for him and all of us,” he thought, without letting those words pass beyond his lips.

He brushed a thumb against his brow, before taking another drag from his cigarettes. When he spoke again, his tone was final. "Now, drive. I want to be over with all of this as soon as possible,”

*****

The snug room of the pub was quiet, intimate, entirely different from the joyful sound of laughter and chit-chat of the patrons enjoying their beers after the end of their shifts. Gabriel was sitting as still as his own will allowed, but impatience was eating him alive, as he looked at the timepiece in his hand.

He knew his eldest brother was always on time, precise and punctual to the point of being irritating, and always ready to call out others on their lateness.

So why, why was he late? Today of all days?

He tapped his foot impatiently against the golden leg of the table, fidgeting with his timepiece, as he took in his surroundings to distract his racing mind. He looked at all the carvings that ran around the edge of the table and without thinking, he caressed the intricate details, relishing in the smooth sensation of the lacquered wood against his fingertips.

His eyes followed the engraved vines until they found a detail he hadn’t seen in a long while: carved in one of the four corners of the table stood a small rook, holding a star underneath its wing and six smaller stars circling it.

The Rook, ever vigil, and the Morning Star, as splendent as ever and protected beneath the bird’s powerful wing, both surrounded by the glimmering six results of their love.

The Symbol of their Family.

A sad smile appeared on his face as he caressed it with gentleness: his father had designed and carved that small exquisite marvel, a token of love for his beloved wife and his children.

Gabriel felt a clenching in his chest, his shoulders slumping down at the memory of all that he had found after visiting his childhood home. All the doors that had opened, one after the other, in an uncontrollable cascade of discoveries that he had started, and had left him with more questions - and more regrets - than answers.

He knew his family was not perfect. He knew his parents were not without their faults, and he knew that they had lived full lives before he had been brought into that world by their love…but after finding the cross, the torn pages from his father’s journal, and those blasted letters under his brother’s wooden floor, he couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that his family was not what he had believed it to be. He looked at the box - another one of his findings- snuggly placed beside him on the wooden bench and frowned, half in guilt, half in disquiet, but whole in confusion. After all his findings, he felt as if he had turned all his carpets in his house, and found them hiding blood and dirt and worms, and he couldn’t, for the life of him wrap his head around it.

He wanted so desperately to understand, to be comforted, to be told that it had been all a humongous jest and that it shall carry no consequences whatsoever.

And yet, he knew, there was no possible way to undo what his curiosity had brought him to do.

There was no possibility to unknow what he had learned.

The sudden creaking of the room’s door opening brought Gabriel away from his mulling, and when he turned toward the newcomer, he narrowed his dark eyes.

“About time, Emmett,” he grumbled, tapping his foot against the wooden floor. He looked at his eldest brother from above his thin glasses and glared, unable to contain his disapproval.

“Have you been waiting long, little brother?”

“More than I wanted to. For being the one recommending us to never be late, you are not very good at doing as you preach,” Gabriel snarked, pursing his lips in a displeased grimace as he looked at his brother closing the door behind him, a lit cigarette already hanging from his lips.

Emmett smirked, amused.“I got caught up in something along the way. Duty called.”

Gabriel looked at his brother, examining his appearance with keen eyes. Smudged against his neck was the faint trace of lip rouge.

“Duty called alright”, he thought, scoffing.

Melanie Abberline, his paramour.

He said nothing, keeping his silent observation to himself; instead, he leaned over and took one of the cigarettes from his brother’s pocket, ignoring the raised eyebrows on his brother’s face.

“Does Mother know that you have picked up smoking?”

Gabriel didn’t answer right away, letting his defiant gaze speak for him as he lit up the cigarette.

“Does she know that you have been the one influencing me?”

Emmett smiled his sphynx grin, the one that never truly reached his clear eyes, as he finally sat directly in front of his younger brother.

“Your memory is failing, Briel, because I don’t recall ever giving you a cigarette in all my life. You were the one sneaking them out of my secret stashes, even when I changed their hiding place,”

Gabriel puffed out the smoke, squinting with a reproachful look.

“So you knew?”

Emmett smiled again. “I did, little brother. I always know what’s going on around me,”

“And yet, our siblings have the galls to call me nosy, when they have you who have more experience than me at it,” grumbled the younger Frye.

“In my defense, it is my job to know everything,” he said, letting out a raspy chuckle, before turning toward the barmaid. “Miranda, bring a Scotch for me and a Bitter for the bitter,”

Gabriel scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“Miss Stratton, make it three glasses of Scotch and a cup of rose tea, if you do not mind,” he intervened, staring straight into his oldest brother’s eyes as he did so, defiance in his tone.

When the barmaid went to do as she was told, Emmett turned to look toward his youngest sibling, his brows now slightly furrowed in a silent question.

"I was under the impression it would have been only the two of us, Briel,"

"Wasn't your job to know everything, oh brother of mine?" Gabriel sneered at him, as he took out his timepiece and looked into it.

“Almost time,” he thought. He quickly put out his half-finished cigarette in his pocket ashtray and raised to open the window, to let out the smoke.

Emmett cocked an eyebrow, confused. He could see how hard his younger sibling was trying to rein in his anger, how tense his shoulders were as he let the chilling wind enter, the flashes of disappointment and wrath that came from his eyes each time their gazes met. What did he find, that had rendered him so furious?

“What did you do this time, Gabriel?” he asked with a calm murmur.

“How does it feel to be the one not knowing what’s going on around you, Emmett? How does it feel, for once, to be the one kept in the dark?”

Emmett furrowed his eyebrows, uneasy at the younger man’s words, unable to read into his brother’s intention, in a moment that seemed infinite.

He didn’t like to be taken by surprise. Not even by his baby brother.

“Let’s get over with this whole farce, Briel. Uriel told me that you have been blabbering about Starrick, about the Leviathan. He told me you got Lily into this as well and told me you went to our old house and made a whole fuss about it all. So, pray tell, why did you call upon me?" Emmett said, letting his annoyance seep through his words just enough to warn Gabriel not to try his patience.

Gabriel's smirk turned into a grimace: he felt his heart hesitating for one single moment before the fury of the betrayal came back to him.

"If you know about that, then you know precisely why I called upon you. I need you to be completely honest with me, Emmett. Because now-” Gabriel dropped what he had found -the letters, the torn journal page - on the table. But before Emmett could even dare to pick them up and examine them himself, Gabriel also dropped the small box that had been sitting beside him all that time, with a loud bang against the surface of the table. “ Now I have proof that you, Mother, and Father have been lying to me - to all of us - all these years!”

Emmett opened it, his raised eyebrows the only readable reaction on his face, as he scoured the content of it all. Several letters were neatly stuck together and tied by a bow, another small leather-bound journal, a marriage certificate, and yet another daguerreotype.

The picture took him by surprise.

‘Damn,’ he thought, ‘He is a bloody hound. His time as an apprentice under Magnolia had given him more than just writing skills,’

"Now tell me, brother of mine: is this also a memory from Mother's past? Or is it from your past in the arts? Because I didn't know that you as well were an actor! “ Gabriel sneered. “Or perhaps, you are such an exceptional thespian that you have managed to deceive all of us with your pantomime, hiding from all of us that you were a Templar!"

Emmett didn’t answer right away, taking a drag from his cigarette, his face completely unfazed, careful not to show the turmoil that was hiding just beneath the surface.

The tips of his fingers touched the papers of the letters, and a corner of his mouth raised ever so slightly in a small melancholic smile, as he recognized the different calligraphies of the letters: the Leviathan’s, spidery, almost incomprehensible due the vernacular chosen; his mother’s, elegant and meticulous; his father’s, bold and clear…his grandfather’s, angular and ornate, almost ostentatious against the parchment. His eyes ran over the marriage certificate - beautifully decorated, with lilies and robins painted on it- and his eyes fell on the names written on it, and the date.

As he looked upon all of that, he understood what had caused Gabriel’s turmoil.

"I… can see why you need answers," he said with a cautious voice, weighting each word as it if was a grenade.

“And that’s all you have to say to me? ‘I can see why you need answers’?” Gabriel scoffed unable to stop himself from mocking his brother’s words. "I found your exchange with this… this “Leviathan”, written in a code that I couldn’t decipher! I found his Cross hiding in one of Mother’s boxes, a whole journal of yours dating back to 1886, and this wedding license that doesn’t make ANY sense at all. Dorothea Marianne Starrick?” he hissed, taking the piece of paper and tapping at it with harshness. “Starrick! As in, Starrick, the Grand Master of the British Rite in 1868! Our own mother, a bloody Templar! What else am I going to discover? That father was a Templar as well?”

Emmett looked at him in the eyes, steel grey meeting ebony, and for the first time in his life, he found himself at the loss of words.

"That, I can assure you, has never been the case. Father is and has always been an Assassin. He has always belonged to the Brotherhood, much like Aunt Evie and Uncle Henry," was all he could say, in a low cautious voice.

Gabriel gave him a skeptical look, unconvinced. How could he know that he was telling him the truth? For all he knew, there could be a whole vault hidden away somewhere with pieces of evidence that even his father was not who he told them to be.

That thought made his heart clench in his chest.

“And what about Mother then? What about you?" He continued, tossing the daguerreotype toward him. " What's next that I am going to find? That Queen Victoria is our grandmother? That Father almost disrupted our economy?” he hissed, his voice steadily growing more and more distressed with each word that came out of his mouth, spitting out one theory more improbable than the other. “What more will I find? What, Emmett? WHAT?”

Emmett stood silent, aggrieved by the pain he felt coming from his brother. He took the faded daguerreotype, and stared at it for a long moment: he looked at his younger self with pity and almost sadness for that tall, wide-eyed boy who had so many dreams and so many hopes, still so untouched by life. Physically, he hadn’t changed that much, despite the photo being over two decades old: his features had become sharper, the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes and on his brow not fading away even when his face was relaxed; the same, however, couldn’t be said about his heart. His lips thinned in a grimace, as he looked now at the other man in the picture standing at his side, whose prideful, unforgiving gaze he still felt burning upon himself, after all those years.

The Leviathan himself.

He looked back at his brother, studying his face, yet keeping his silence.

Gabriel felt himself growing more and more miffed with each passing moment.

“Why, Emmett? Why have I been fed lies all my life?” he finally hissed through gritted teeth, unable to bear the silence any longer.

The oldest Frye sibling took a shot at the whiskey, before refilling the glass again and gulping it down.

“Have you considered that there might be a reason if all of these has been buried away because the people involved did not want to see them ever again? That maybe -just maybe - these “so-called lies”, these secrets, are not yours to know? “

“But they are yours, now, aren’t they, Emmett?” Gabriel bellowed, jumping on his feet and slamming his hands on the table, now more incensed than ever. “Why did Mother and Father choose you and not any of us? What makes you so special that you were to partake in their secrets, while leaving us in complete darkness, believing something that is not true?”

“Because Emmett did not have a choice, Briel,” said a soft voice behind them.

Both brothers turned their heads toward the newcomer and found the steel gray eyes of their mother Dorothea staring at them, her face a mask of concern as she leaned on the cane she had been using for walking for the past five years.

Beside the petite woman, with his strong arm firmly wrapped around her waist to support her, was their father Jacob, his brow furrowed as he gazed toward his sons, his eyepatch always covering his left eye.

Emmett’s jaw clenched, mortified as he looked into his parents’ faces. He turned to look at his brother, his eyes flashing with anger as his lips pursed in a thin line. “You didn’t-”

“I did,” Gabriel answered, his gaze not faltering despite his brother’s piercing gaze, despite his own guilt at the sight of their mother's worried face and their father's severe stance.

“You had no right, Gabriel. No right at all!” Emmett spoke with a sharp tone. He had to call upon all his considerable self-discipline to not let out the rage he felt for his youngest sibling. Instead, he stood up, greeting his parents with a soft voice and motioning toward the barmaid to bring some pillows for the elderly woman.

“What is the meaning of all this, Gabriel?” asked Jacob with a stern tone, as he gestured toward the chaos of mementos laid on the table. “Why were you screaming at your brother?”

Gabriel, fueled as he was by his anger and doubts, driven by his own disappointment, didn’t answer immediately, nostrils flaring as he looked at both his parents with defiance and anger on his otherwise gentle features.

He saw his father turn to look at Emmett, a quizzical look painted in his eye a look answered by his brother’s sigh and saddened expression.

“He knows,” Emmett murmured to both his parents.

Two simple words.

It was all it took for them both to understand.

Gabriel felt his heart sink in his chest when he saw his mother’s sweet face blanching at those words and his father’s features morph into a mask of pain.

“Was it necessary, Gabriel?” Emmett said through clenched teeth, as he sat next to their mother, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

““I-I believe it is,” he said through gritted teeth, before turning to look at his parents, wriggling his hands under the table, his heart beating so fast, he was sure he would burst through his chest. ”I want an answer, Father…Mother. I- want the truth,”

He was afraid beyond words, terrified that all he had ever known was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Facing his older brother was one thing; facing his mother and father was another one entirely.

When he saw that no one answered him, he felt his fury grow once more. He jumped on his feet, slamming his hands against the table.

“Now, young man-” Jacob started to reprimand his son for his behaviour, but Dorothea rested one hand on his shoulder stopping him.

“Let him speak, Jacob,” she murmured, her voice laced with guilt as her eyes never left her youngest son’s angered face.

“I cannot believe that all my life I have lived surrounded by liars! First, the letters, then the cross, then these pictures and the journal Emmett wrote in 1886? And this certificate of Marriage with this name?” he bellowed, turning to look at his mother, his frustration growing each passing moment. “You have always told us you were a Harrison by birth, Dorothea Marianne Harrison! Harrison! And now, instead, I have found proof that you are Dorothea Starrick, the only daughter of the Grand Master of the British Rite….our grandfather,” his voice turned low, as the reality of his words sank in. “Our own grandfather was a Templar. You were a Templar, the very same people that our father, Emmett, Lily, and Uriel have been hunting down all their lives! Or so I believed since it appears that even my own brother was inducted into the British Rite!” Gabriel looked at his mother, his piercing black eyes looking at her with barely contained disappointment.“ How can all of this be possible? How? Why?”

He felt his heart sitting on his stomach as he stared at her for a long moment, a desperate light in his eyes as he silently begged for all of this to be a misunderstanding. But his mother’s silence, her gentle face contrite in an expression of pure grief and heartbreak, was all he needed to know to confirm that all he had found - all the mementos - was the truth.

“I…I don’t even know who you are anymore,”

Emmett’s face hardened when he saw his mother lowering her gaze, shame painting on her face. He was about to reprimand his brother for his words, when he felt his mother’s gentle hand on his chest, stopping him before he had the chance to talk. He saw her looking at him, shaking her fair ringlets, her kind, understanding smile ruined by the tears that ran down her cheeks.

“No, my duckling. Briel is right. He-” she murmured with a heartbroken sigh. “He deserves to know the truth, if he wishes for it so ardently,”

She turned to look toward Gabriel, her gaze filled only with immense love for her youngest son: her bright, witty, splendid son, whose insatiable thirst for knowledge had always been his greatest virtue, one that she had always encouraged.

When she spoke again, Dorothea couldn’t stop the pride she felt for him from seeping into her voice, despite the pain laced in each word that left her lips.

“You know me, my love. I am still the same person you have known all your life. I am still the same person you always ran to when the storm outside scared you out of your wits; the same person you always ran to whenever you hurt yourself and needed a small kiss to steal the pain away; the same person you always came for counsel and help when writing those letters to brave Lancelot, to ask him when you could join the Knights of the Round Table-” she brought a small, trembling hand toward the pile of mementos in front of her, sighing. There was no way to run from her past. She closed her eyes for a moment, as a carousel of faces appeared in front of her: Byron, Phillip, Charles, Markus, Christopher, Ambrose, her mother Annette...her father Crawford, she thought with a pang of pain, seeing his loving gaze behind her closed eyelids. She took a deep breath, opening her eyes again.

“That cross you found-” she continued, “those pictures you found, my letters, my journal...they are just a part of who I am. They are a part of my life that I rather forget about, something that I have been. But They are not the only thing I am. They are not all that I am,”

Gabriel paused, a grimace appearing on his face, as he turned toward his father.

“I found a page of your journal too, Pa,” he murmured, taking it out of his pocket and passing it to his father, who took it carefully in his calloused hands, Without a word, Jacob opened it held it so that both he and his wife could read it together.

Gabriel stared intently, his keen eyes ready to catch any possible reaction from his parents’ faces. His father’s features were still, inscrutable, if not for the slight furrowing of his brow; but when his mother let out a choked “Oh, Jacob,” bringing a hand to her eyes, his father’s only reaction was to wrap his arm around his wife and bring her closer to him, kissing her on her brow and closing his eyes in a pained expression.

Gabriel’s heart clenched in his chest.

They didn’t need to speak any further.

The confirmation he needed was written all over their faces.

“Mother…how can I make my peace with this, if everything you are is all that Father has always warned us about? We have spent our entire lives hearing that the Templars are our enemies, that we are to protect this City of Light from them… from you!”

Dorothea was unable to contain a smile at those words; her grimace, however, was a sour one.

“Your grandsire used to refer to London as the City of Light. Your grandfather, my own father-”

“Crawford Starrick,” Gabriel finished her sentence for her, as he plopped on the chair behind himself.

He hoped he had been wrong. Hoped with all his heart.

But when he saw his mother nodding, he felt something inside himself break.

How big or small of a break, he didn’t know yet.

He took a few deep breaths, his eyes running all over the tables, unsure of what to do. When his mother wrapped her hand around his, gentle, soothing in her touch, he didn’t move his own away. He just paused, trying to find the courage that had abandoned him.

“Tell me-” he whispered in a small voice.“tell me this is all a misunderstanding. Please, mama,”

Dorothea saw his face turning pleading, with that same expression he always had as a child, whenever his insecurities would take over him and all he wanted, all he needed, was a word of comfort from his mother. Her heart clenched at that sight, feeling tears pooling in her eyes. She brought one hand to his cheek, caressing it with soothing tenderness as she drank from her youngest son’s sweet features, terrified as she was to lose the love he bore her.

“Briel, my child, my little angel…” she whispered with trembling voice.“ I wish I could do that. With all my heart, with all that I am, with all that I have, if I could tell you that nothing of this is true, I would do that, without even thinking about it twice. I wish- I wish I could say that all of this is just a lie, a mistake, a mystification…” she paused, her words choking in her throat. ” But I can’t. I am a Templar, my sweet child. I have been one since birth. My father and my mother were Templars too, and so they were their parents and their grandparents. It’s in our blood. It has been in our blood for generations, and that cannot be erased, no matter how much we try. But I swear to you, I only wanted the best for this city and for our family,”

“I-”

Gabriel turned to look at his father, and once more saw sadness in his hazel eye.

“Papa..you knew? You knew Mother was a Templar when you married her?”

Jacob turned to look at his wife, in a moment that seemed to last forever, his love for her so vivid in the way he looked at her, it was impossible not to notice. In a gesture of protection, he wrapped his big hand around hers and held it tight.

"I knew it," he said, his voice turning low but firm.

“And you knew who her father was?”

“Not immediately. But eventually.”

Gabriel let out a sigh, feeling himself deflecting like a hot air balloon. He didn’t know what he had hoped, asking his father that question. Maybe that only her mother was responsible for all that, that at least one of his parents hadn’t lied to him.

But now he knew that both of them had known.

“Then...why hide this from us? Why not tell us this from the very beginning?” He asked, in a feeble voice.

Dorothea lowered her head once more, closing her eyes as a traitor tear rolled down her cheek.

“Because what your grandsire had done, who I was, what I did-”

“ What we did, Goldilocks,” Jacob added, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. The woman took a deep breath, smiling at her husband for his support. Even after more than forty years spent together, she still thanked the heavens each night for putting him on her path.

“-What your father and I did,” she continued, trying to drown the pain that she felt bubbling just beneath the surface. “...our actions almost cost us our family. What we did almost cost us everything. And I couldn’t bear-” her voice choked in her throat. “I couldn’t bear to think that my mistakes, who I was, could hurt any of you in any way ever again,”

But before she could continue, she felt her own heart shatter once more at all the memories that still lived within her soul, as she saw them cornering her like wolves after their prey, growling, baring their teeth at her.

Gabriel pursed his lips, taking another deep breath, and offering his mother his own handkerchief to dab away her tears, before speaking once again.

“Then, if you love me, if you truly love me, Mama, please, tell me. Tell me everything. I want to know. I have the right to know who you are. I have the right to know if the woman I have loved all my life is someone else entirely,”

Dorothea sighed, looking into her husband’s eyes to find the courage she needed to dive once more into those dark, cold waters she thought she had long left behind herself, hoping, praying with all that she was she would not lose her child's love after he had heard their whole story.

“Very well, Briel. I shall give you all the truth. I shall spare you no detail, I swear it on my life and honour. Are you willing to listen to all of it, with an open heart?”

“I-” Gabriel faltered, swallowing hard. Pandora’s Box all over again. And his mother was offering it to him. He took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. “I am. I want to know everything. I am ready,”

Dorothea nodded, her expression turning solemn.

The waters were churning beneath her, calling her like syrens, reclaiming her, ready to swallow her whole. With one last deep breath, she closed her eyes, plunging into the ocean of memories head first.

“We need to go back to 1868, then. The year I came back to London to officially become a Templar. The year my whole life changed forever,” she turned to look at her husband, her Jacob, to find the courage in his comforting gaze. For a moment, she didn’t see his candid hair and beard, nor the eyepatch covering his eye, nor the wrinkles that graced his face; for a moment, she saw his twinkling eyes -both sane and as beautiful as they had always been- his dark, unruly hair and that mischievous grin that still sometimes appeared on his lips. She saw him as he was when he stole her heart.“We need to go back to the year I met your father,”

[PREVIOUS CHAPTER - Echoes of The Past]

[NEXT CHAPTER - "Homeward Bound" ]

and I am officially here, presenting you the third chapter of my story!! view, that was a JOURNEY right there!!!

Be ready to say your goodbye to sweet Emmett and Gabriel, for we are heading to 1868 in the next chapter! WOHOOO!! Lots of new characters arriving, and I cannot wait to dive into the next chapters!!

Not gonna lie, I will miss my Starrick-Frye babies, but this isn't going to be the last time you will hear from them!!

Once more, huge huge HUGE THANKS to all my friends for supporting me and for believing in me and in my story, for encouraging me to keep on writing. I love you all so much, THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU HAVE DONE FOR ME.

Melanie Abberline and Magnolia Benson belong to my dear buddy @thatcrazycrowgirl , who was so gracious as to lend them to me for my story (ngl, Melanie and Emmett are kinda my OTP when it comes to the Starrick-Frye children, so I was SUPER HAPPY when she allowed me to insert her in my story! thank you, girl!)

well, UNTIL NEXT TIME!!

--Nemo

#Assassin's Creed #Assassin's Creed Syndicate #ac syndicate #Jacob Frye #Dorothea Starrick #Jottie #my ocs #Emmett Starrick-Frye #Gabriel Starrick-Frye #my writings #In The Heat Of The Moment #Nemo Writes #ocfairygodmother #ocappreciation

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nemo-of-house-hamartia · 2 years

Text

||“In the Heat of the Moment”|| Characters Masterlist -The Starrick-Frye Children||

Name: Emmett Oliver Frye

Date and Place of Birth: Dover, 27th December 1872

Faceclaim: Cillian Murphy

Height: 1.72 m (5’7’’)

MBTI: INTJ-T

Ensemble: Melancholic

Main Colour: Dark Grey and Blue

Theme Song: "The Ballad of Jeremiah Peacekeeper" by "The Poets of the Fall"

Bio: Emmett Oliver Frye is the eldest child of Jacob Frye and Dorothea Starrick. Born in 1872, during a period of great turmoil for Assassins and Templars alike, Emmett was very much his mother’s son and it was evident to everyone who knew Dorothea from infancy. As a child, Emmett was of incredibly sweet and gentle disposition, generous with all the people in the household where he resided, and always looking at the world with the same dreamy eyes full of wonders all babies have. It was something that his mother had tried, with all of her might to preserve, despite the raging war that was going on at the time. He had always been a quiet child, and in fact, he was the quietest among all the Starrick-Frye children, spending his words with great economy and never over talking, if he could avoid to. Much like his youngest brother Gabriel, Emmett had always been interested in books -something that stems from the countless hours he had spent in his mother’s libraries in Dover, where he grew up-and had an artistic soul that he rarely disclose to anyone but his closest kins. These particularly sensitive traits come out when he is particularly pensive, and it's not unlikely to actually find him sketching wildlife or landscapes when he needs a moment of respite or when he needs time for himself. He is extremely calm and observant, preferring to study his surroundings and get to his own conclusions, rather than being forced to accept someone else’s opinion; he is highly intelligent and a man of extreme culture, having received his education from the best tutors his mother could provide him with. Reliable, level headed and self-assured, he was a natural leader, with a natural charisma that he had inherited from his father, and was never afraid to make his own decisions taking responsibility for each and everything he did, something that in the long run brought him to deem himself responsible for events that he couldn’t have prevented even if he wanted to. Because of his extremely quiet appearance, he had the tendency to appear cold and unfazed, buttoned up to the point that not even his siblings would know what he is up to, but in truth, he has a warm heart and a caring personality that he showed through his actions rather than his words. Being the eldest, and due to all that he had to go through in his early years, he is extremely protective of his parents and all of his younger siblings, and much like his mother before him, he would do anything in his power to keep them safe and sound. For what concerned his parents, Emmett got along more with his mother Dorothea, due to their personalities being extremely similar to one another, but he adored his father Jacob with all of his heart and held his sire in the greatest of regards. Growing up, due to their different approaches toward leadership and life in general, the two men would often butt heads together, but this would never diminish the love they had for one another.

Name: Lily Marion Frye

Date and Place of Birth: London, 21th March 1880

Faceclaim: Ana Taylor-Joy

Height: 1.75m (5'7'')

MBTI: ENTJ-T

Ensemble: Sanguigne

Main Colour: Black and Dark Grey

Theme Song: "The Phoenix" by Fall Out Boys

Bio: Lily Marion Frye is the second child of Jacob Frye and Dorothea Starrick. The first to be born in a period of peace, this young woman was, from the very beginning, diametrically opposite to her oldest brother Emmett in personality, taking almost entirely after her father, except for her appearance, which instead favored more her mother. Brash, headstrong, short-tempered, and with a flair for the dramatic, Lily was charismatic and rambunctious, pragmatic and no-nonsense, sometimes to a fault. This fiery spirit of steel, so resilient, so uncompromising, was both her biggest strength and her weakness, for it had the tendency to alienate others from her, even some of her siblings; her strong unwillingness to conform to the norms of the time also rendered her a “black sheep” in the eye of society, and while her parents didn’t dispute her choices and her siblings went along with them, trying to show her their support, the sniggering comments and gossip of people made her grow even more determined to not bow to what society wanted her to be; if anything, they made her even more convinced that she needed to be who she was, because the need to be true to herself was far greater than what others thought of her. Despite her tough as nail personality and appearance, Lily was capable of showing also great love and warmth, though she preferred to show it through gestures rather than through words, for she knew that words were fiddle and treacherous. This particular side of her personality would be the cause of butting heads with Gabriel, for he believed that words were the greatest mean of conveying one’s deepest emotions. Her lack of interest in anything academic (particularly the arts) would also be a cause of diatribe with her mother, who wanted her to have the same education Emmett had before her; but Lily's lack of interest in anything that concerned the literature or the arts made it clear from the beginning that the approach Jacob and Dorothea had with Emmett was not going to work, and the two parents decided to act consequently, following her interests and allowing her skills to fully blossom. These interests, they would soon find out, would be related to motors and engines. Intrigued by her father’s chattering about that time he stole the I.C.E. and how he had held "the future in his hands", she found herself restless and wanting to find about more about it all. After having been taken, along with Emmett, on the train hideout by her father, she would not stop asking questions to the machinist, for she wanted to know everything about how a machine like that could work. This intrigue would bring her to become an Engineer in her own right, but because she was a woman, anything she might have projected or designed would go under her a male pseudonym, Vincent Langton Frye, something that suited her. Uriel would often joke with her that their parents had five sons and only one daughter, something that Lily always found amusing and, deep within her heart, true, even though she would not dare to utter her thoughts out loud. She knew from a very early age that she wouldn’t marry and wouldn’t have any child, determined as she was to follow her own path, one that she would carve with her own hands. Differently from her oldest brother Emmett, who was closer to his mother, Lily was much closer to her father, who she felt truly understood her and her restlessness, and among her siblings, she was the closest to the twins in general, and to Uriel in particular; in fact, the two children, despite their age difference, would grow up to be partners in crime once they joined Emmett and their father in the gang business. While not as rational and or well-read as her eldest brother, Lily was extremely intelligent and intuitive, the reason why Emmett trusted her more than anyone when it came to the Rooks, and she is, de-facto, Co-Leader and the one more that will take over if anything would happen to Emmett. Thanks to her practical, mathematical brain, she was extremely good with sums, and among her tasks was that of being the treasurer

of the Gang. She was also the one responsible for all the equipment the Gang would use, and the one to provide them with the best she could find on the legitimate market and not so legitimate. Along with Uriel as her Enforcer, She was also the one responsible to oversee the street soldiers and make sure that no one was ever to desert or rebel as it had happened under Jack.

Name: Evangeline "Eva" Johanna Frye

Date and Place of Birth: London, 17th September 1882

Faceclaim: Mia Wasikowska

Height: 1.60m (5'2'')

MBTI: ENFP-A

Ensemble: Sanguigne

Main Colour: Pale Yellow and White

Theme Song: Fairytale by Secret Garden

Bio: Evangeline Johanna Frye is the third child of Jacob Frye and Dorothea Starrick, and the second and the last daughter. Born in a period of peace, she was a cheerful if shy baby, the apple in her father’s eyes, sweet as a child could be. Having inherited her mother’s quiet disposition, she could always be found playing with her mother’s old dolls, caring for them as if they were her own children, and often asking Emmett and Lily to play tea with her, for “she needed to practice for when she would meet the Queen”. Eva was always very fond of princesses and soldiers and dreamed to have a family as big as hers and having the same loving relationship Jacob and Dorothea had, for she regarded them as to how man and wife should be. This sweetness of temper was unique among her siblings, but beneath the gentleness of her personality, there was stubbornness and a resilience that could rival that of her father Jacob sometimes. Her parents could never deny her anything, and because her siblings knew that if she were to ask for something from them, they were more likely to give them all that they wanted, she was her siblings’ unofficial ambassador. However, due to their different personalities, she would often butt heads with Lily, especially in regards to how a lady should behave, because if Lily was her father's daughter, Eva was truly her mother's, proper and polite and willing to please those that represented her whole world. Much like her mother and her baby brother Gabriel, Eva too was very fashion-conscious, and would often ask Dorothea to play dress-up with her old gowns, something her mother found absolutely delightful, and that she would gladly indulge her with. When Eva wore Dorothea's 1850s children gown, Jacob would often joke that thanks to her, he had a good idea of how his wife looked when she was a baby, for Eva, with her blond hair and bright eyes, was indeed the copy of her mother. Due to this love she had for clothes and garments, Eva would grow to become a renowned seamstress, specializing in fashion for children. Her serene disposition and kind personality accompanied her for part of her childhood, until 1888, in the Autumn of Terror. The events of that period left her so scarred, both physically and emotionally, that they rendered her selectively mute for months afterward, it took a remarkably long time for Dorothea to succeed in making her daughter talk again, and even after she succeeded, Eva would still not be as bubbly or as cheerful as she had been prior of Jack’s actions. She would grow up to be a reserved woman, protective of her baby brothers Robin, Gabriel, and Uriel, especially Sweet Robin, the one she was the closest to and the other victim of Jack’s action and revenge.

Name: Robert "Robin" Andrew Frye

Date and Place of Birth: London, 24th July 1886

Faceclaim: Harrison Osterfield

Height: 1.65m (5'4'')

MBTI: ENFP-A

Ensemble: Phlegmatic

Main Colour: Pale Blue and Golden

Theme Song: "Cradled in Love" by The Poets of The Fall

Bio: Robin was the fourth child born to Jacob Frye and Dorothea Starrick. A sweet child, with an endearing personality and an immense imagination, he was born after Dorothea underwent a very difficult pregnancy, one that almost cost both his life and Dorothea's. His mother showed signs of suffering from what we know today to be preeclampsia and was the reason Robin was born earlier than he should have, resulting in him being a preemie, much like his mother before him. Thanks to the cares of the doctors and midwives and the use of the “Auvard incubator”, a modification of the couveuse, a prototype of the incubator invented by Obstetrician Tarnier in 1881, Robin managed to survive into childhood, but the early birth, along with his mother’s preeclampsia, resulted in him being born deaf. Neither Jacob nor Dottie realized it right away, but around his 4th-5th months of age, when children usually start babbling, they noticed that Robin, while being a smiley baby, wouldn't react to his parents’ cooing or any external sound. This put both Dorothea and Jacob in alarm and brought them to have the baby promptly checked: that's when they found out that Sweet Robin was deaf and would never gain his hearing. While already protective of the baby because of the means of his birth, this revelation brought Dorothea and Jacob to be even more protective of him, something that resonated with the other Starrick-Frye children as well. Needless to say, Dottie and Jacob immediately started to learn as much as they could in regards to the subject, and they did all in their power and their knowledge to learn how to communicate with Robin and eventually teach what they learned to all their other children as well, in order to give Robin the possibility to be understood by his siblings as well. Despite his infirmity and despite the events of the Autumn of Terror, Robin would grow up to be a happy young man, surrounded by the love his whole family had for him and, once an adult, surrounded by the love of Winifred Carlton, his wife, and his children. An artist in his own right, as a child Robin loved to watch his eldest brother Emmett as he sketched away the beautiful landscapes around Dover, and encouraged by his brother, Robin would pick up drawing and painting as well. He then started to spend his time producing the most beautiful watercolors, often portraying his siblings, but more often than not trying to express what he couldn't through words; he would eventually grow up to be a renowned painter and portraitist, traveling the world, a choice of a carrier that was supported by both his parents, but particularly his father Jacob, for Robin’s lovely watercolors was one of his greatest joys during his convalescence after the Autumn of Terror. One of Jacob’s most treasured possession, in fact, is a portrait of himself as a pirate that Robin did for him because of the eyepatch he always wore. Jacob always brought it with himself.

Name: James Uriel Frye

Date and Place of Birth: Dover, 29th March 1889

Faceclaim: Ezra Miller

Height: 1.80m (5'9'')

MBTI: ESTP

Ensemble: Choleric

Main Colour: Black and Dark Green

Theme Song: "Escape" and "This Is War" by 30StM

Bio: Uriel was the fifth child of Jacob Frye and Dorothea Starrick. Much like his twin, he was a surprise baby, because, after Robin’s birth, both Jacob and Dorothea were keen not to have any other child. But to their surprise, fate bestowed upon them not one but two children, two identical twins, and Uriel was the eldest among the two. His birth name was James, in honor of one of Jacob’s friends, but because Uriel didn’t like that name (nor he liked Jacob’s friend), he decided early on that he would go by his middle name instead. During his younger years, Uriel was a little pest, resembling his father way more than he did his mother: his soul burned with the continued desire for adventure, the feeling of adrenaline whenever he tried to copy his eldest siblings Emmett and Lily, as they parkoured around the neighborhood while busy with their job for the gang, and he ended up, more often not, in trouble, bringing Gabriel along with him. The constant want to be as agile and stealthy as this eldest siblings fueled his restless spirit and his passionate, carefree personality. Physically the strongest of all his siblings, Uriel was also extremely headstrong, loud, foul-mouthed, and with a hair-trigger temper, but also capable of extreme kindness and compassion, and once he gave his loyalty, he would go above and beyond to defend the people he loved, sometimes resuming to less-than-orthodox methods to do so. Extremely protective of Robin since he was a child, he often ended up in brawls during his teenhood with whoever bullied his brother, literally charging like a bull in the arena against the bullies, without any fear for the repercussion, and it wasn’t a surprise for Jacob and Dorothea whenever Detective Abberline would call them to come and pick up their son, nor it would be a surprise for them to find him with black eyes and bruises all over his face. Agreeing together that something needed to be done, Jacob and Dorothea decided that Uriel needed to find a way to channel all that aggressivity. Thus, they decided that Jacob and Emmett were to teach him how to properly fight in regular matches. Thanks to his father and brother’s teaching, Uriel grew to become a professional fighter, and after joining the Rooks at his own insistence, he would be considered one of the most dangerous enforcers of the gang, the one you didn’t want to have on your tail. An incredible marksman under his brother’s tutelage and thanks to his keen eyes, Uriel was one hell of a sniper.

Name: Gabriel WIlliam Frye

Date and Place of Birth: Dover, 29th March 1889

Faceclaim: Ezra Miller

Height: 1.78m (5'8'')

MBTI: ISFP

Ensemble: Melancholic

Main Colour: Black, White and Silver

Theme Song: "Nocturnal Waltz" by Johannes Bornlöf

Bio: Sixth and youngest child of Jacob Frye and Dorothea Starrick, and younger than his twin Uriel by fifteen minutes, Gabriel was born after the events of the Terror in 1888. His and Uriel’s birth was relatively easy, especially compared to Robin, and were met with a great celebration, for it was the first joyous moment Jacob and Dorothea experienced after everything that had happened with Jack. Spoiled rotten by all his siblings and by his parents, Gabriel never spent a moment alone, surrounded as he always was by his family, and this was, hilariously, something that he both loved and disliked at the same time because, due to his introverted personality, he often found the need to be by himself, in order to collect all his thoughts. Emotive and deeply introspective, with a sensitive and artistic soul that was often driven toward realms he couldn’t fully comprehend but that he yearned to understand, Gabriel was considered The Heart of the Starrick-Frye children. Due to his silent, observant nature, and his tendency of being peevish over small details, he would often be the target of good-natured jokes from Lily and Uriel, who would go to great lengths to just make him blush or embarrass him, often succeeding in their attempts. Nevertheless, Gabriel’s nature was as mischievous as that of his eldest siblings, and he wasn’t above planning small revenge on them, usually in the nature of pranks created ad hoc for them. Ever creative and appreciative of the smallest things, Gabriel was the happiest when he received new inks and notebooks where he could write whatever his heart desired, giving freedom to his emotions and feelings. He would find an outlet for his feelings in writing poems and gothic novels, where the dark atmosphere of the settings and the topics he explored would help him analyze much of his own self and that of the people surrounding him. It wasn’t unusual for him to coop himself up in his mother’s library for hours and spend the mornings and the afternoons with his nose in books that sometimes were bigger than he was. Introduced at a young age to music thanks to his mother and his sister-in-law Margareth, Gabriel pursued with great interest and diligence the art of playing the violin and the piano, reaching proficiency when he was 15 years old. One of the things he loved the most was to accompany his mother in duets while his father sang with them, mirroring what Dorothea used to do as a child with her own father and mother. One of his most treasured possession is a violin that his father built with his own hands with the help of a renowned luthier. A self-proclaimed hermit that despised venturing outside the house, he was a solitary child, often preferring his books and writings over chit-chatting with others; however, he was witty and clever, with a sharp tongue and quick response, and would always be up for a good debate, if the topic tickled his interest.

phew, that was a long one!! So, I am finally able to fully present to you my darling fictional children, the light in my writer's life: The Starrick Frye Bunch!!! When I came up with Dorothea in March 2020, I always envisioned that she and Jacob would have a big loving family together, and I had envisioned four children; then, I found myself wanting more (because I also come from a family of 6 children), and so Uriel and Gabriel were born. I cannot even begin to say the amount of hours, correction, writing, rewriting, retooling and whatnot that went into creating them all, how to shape them in a way that would make them all different from one another and yet, to make it clear that they all belong to the same family.

In my story, they will appear mostly in Ch. 1, Ch. 2. and Chapter 3 (that I have yet to post), before we switch to 1868! But, because I love them all so much (seriously, they are my brain babies, and I love them with all my little heart because of all the energies and time and love and care that I poured into each and every one of them) I will probably expand more on their adventures in the decades 1910s, 1920s. I have plenty of ideas for them all, and I want to explore them!! :D

--Nemo (in virtue of what has happened to me recently, I gently invite NOT to take any inspiration of any kind from my Original Characters. The Characters that belong to Ubisoft are fair game for everyone, but my Original Characters, even if belonging to a fanfic, are still Original, created by yours truly, and are therefore mine. I am so sorry for having to state the obvious, but I found myself in a situation where I need to make it clear. I appeal myself to your sense of honesty and integrity).

#Assassin's Creed Syndicate #Jacob Frye #Dorothea Starrick #The Starrick Frye Bunch #My ocs #all of them my babies #assassin's creed #Emmett Starrick-Frye #Lily Starrick-Frye #Eva Starrick-Frye #Robin Starrick-Frye #Uriel Starrick-Frye #Gabriel Starrick-Frye #Assassin's Creed #Nemo Writes #My Writing #long post #ocfairygodmother

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nemo-in-wonderland · 3 years

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Hello Hello! After drawing dear Gabriel yesterday night, I needed to draw the eldest of the Starrick-Frye bunch, aka Mr. Emmett Oliver Starrick-Frye, the joy and pride of Mama Dorothea and Papa Jacob. Along with Gabriel, he is my favourite among the children Jacob and Dottie had, and the one I worked the most upon, both in terms of researching for his appearance and for his personality (got a whole file jotted down with all his life, because I simply adore him).

As I wrote in the first chapter of my story, when he first appeared, he is very much a Starrick, because aside from his dark hair, he favours his mother Dorothea more than he does his father, even personality wise (although, especially during emotional situation, he does resemble Jacob).

In virtues of him being the eldest, he takes his role very seriously, and is extremely protective of all of his siblings, with particular regard toward dear Robin, for whom he would do anything, and the twins.

also, now I realized that I need to redo Gabriel and make him less sketchy and more definite, my poor grumpy baby bean

So, yeah! little by little I will draw the rest of the Starrick-Frye bunch, because they are my babies and I adore them all.

anyway, hope you will like this!

--Nemo

#Assassin's Creed Syndicate #Emmett Starrick-Frye #Jacob Frye #dorothea starrick #the Starrick-Frye Bunch #my oc #my art #nemo sketches

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nemo-of-house-hamartia · 3 years

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In the Heat of the Moment

Chapter 1 - Of Memories and Secrets

“The stars forever unchanging

They guide us on paths unseen

And you were written in my story

Destined to collide with me

They say you stole me in moonlight

But love, I was already yours

For we were written in the starlight

As the wolf belongs to the moon"

"Written in Starlight" - Karliene

Dover - Christmas Day,1908

“Damn my blood!!”

A single profanity muttered through gritted teeth broke the silence of the quiet bedroom, as the dark-haired man glared at the papers sitting chaotically in front of him.

He glanced toward the clock on the mantelpiece, and couldn’t stop the groan that parted from his lips.

It was already 10 in the morning.

Gabriel Frye had been poring over countless and countless piles of old newspapers and journals for what felt like hours, and the letters and manuscripts he was looking for were nowhere to be found.

All he had managed to put his hands on were boring articles, dating back to 1854, depicting the quick expansion of the Starrick’s financial empire, and its take over of the telegraph company, along with all the praises for Lord Crawford Starrick’s “exceptional sense of business and his unrelenting grip on becoming the financial King of all of London” .

“ A whole load of bollocks ,” he thought, rolling his eyes. " Who gives a dry fig about the financial deeds of a dead man?"

Economics always bored him to no ends: all those numbers, those cold facts.

As a poet, he couldn’t find any pleasure in that.

Rubbing his tired eyes, he raised his head from the messy pile of papers and looked outside the wide window.

The sun was playing hide-and-seek behind the dark curtain of clouds, and he was certain that, come eventide, they were bound to have another heavy snowfall that would most likely continue deep into the dead of the night.

Gabriel hoped that it would be a gentle one: there was nothing like watching the flakes falling in a soft enchanted dance to tickle his creative spirit.

All of sudden, he heard the shrill of a bout of laughter coming from outside the door of the room and the stomping of swift tiny feet against the wooden floor; the young man scoffed quietly, rolling his eyes to the sky.

So much for quietness and calm.

All the children of the manor - his nieces and nephews - were awake, ready to play together somewhere downstairs, their excited laughter the only melody that ringed into the hallways of his mother's ancestral home, while their parents were busy overseeing them and chatting together.

Not giving another thought about that - or about the fact that, being Christmas Day, he was supposed to be downstairs with the rest of the family - he resumed his search.

He opened another box, scoffing when he saw it was more newspaper articles, even older than the one he had just examined. With a huff, he kept skimming through all those yellowed pages, his patience growing steadily thinner by the minute; when he couldn’t find what he was looking for, he closed it back again.

“This is proving to be more arduous than I thought,” he hummed, tapping his finger against his lips as he looked toward all the remaining small chests piled against the wooden desk. His dark gaze was focused on them as if by will alone he would be able to discern their content and find what he was looking for, without having to actually go through them all one by one.

For once, he wished he had been born with the same heightened senses as his twin Uriel and his older siblings, Emmett and Lily, so that he could see behind the thick veil of reality in the blink of an eye.

Alas, no such luck had been bestowed upon him by fate.

Not relenting - his own father’s stubbornness invading him like a sacred fire - he opened another box, and another and then another one after that.

"AH-A! Found you, you little minx," he thought, as a satisfied smirk spread on his lips.

Finally.

A bundle of old photos, handwritten envelopes, and worn-out journals, all neatly stacked and kept together by silken ribbons, greeted his dark gaze.

Recognizing his mother’s meticulous touch in that arrangement and in the calligraphy of the letters, the young man pondered for a moment on what to do.

They weren’t his, and he didn’t want to be accused of snooping around memories that weren’t his.

But when he glanced again, he saw the smiling face of a child -Emmett, probably - looking at him from a time long past, as he was safely wrapped in the arms of their father.

His eldest brother's gaze, staring back at him, gave him the nudge he needed to dive into those mementos.

With careful hands, he unraveled the ribbon and started to skim through them, as a smile painted on his thin lips.

Pictures of himself and his siblings were staring back at him, some of them depicting toddlers and babies and young children, others portraying serious young men and women, along with the solemn faces of their parents, all dressed up in their fanciest clothes for a most momentous occasion.

He snickered when he remembered his own debut in high society, and all the fun he had that night, pranking Emmett and Eva in front of their intended.

As he his hand roamed into the box, looking for other pictures, his train of thoughts was abruptly stopped by a cold solid feeling of something metallic against the tips of his fingers.

He took out the object, and his eyes widened at the sight in front of him.

Hanging from a red ribbon of silk was a Templar Cross.

He brought it at the level of his dark eyes, studying the enamel, red and white and black, all exquisitely engraved.

It was small, almost insignificant in its size. And yet, Gabriel knew, it carried a meaning of incommensurable magnitude.

“What the bloody hell?” he cursed, under his breath.

Because of his father’s association with the Assassin’s Brotherhood, he had grown up hearing about the Templars and the brutal war against them. Uriel and Lily would always pester their father and their aunt about it, always asking for details. He, however, had never truly paid attention to any of that nonsense, busy as he was diving into whatever book he was reading at the time.

Now, he wished he had actually paid attention to what his father had told them.

On one thing he was certain about, though: theirs was an Assassins family, and no way in heaven or hell there was a reason for a Templar Cross to be hidden away among his mother’s belongings.

So what was it doing there?

He ran back to the box as he started to frantically look for more clues - anything, really, that might shed some light on the situation.

He kept roaming and skimming until his eyes stumbled upon a particular photo.

It was older than the others, and his eyes turned pensive as he scoured upon it to take in all the little details he could find.

His mother was portrayed sitting in an armchair, not unlike a queen sitting upon her throne, her face far too solemn and imperious for a woman who could have not been much older than he was now. At her side, standing tall and straight, were five distinguished gentlemen, guarding her like knights from the old Arthurian legends he used to read about whenever he didn’t want to listen to his father’s grumbling.

One of the men - the tallest and most imponent among them -was holding his hands on his mother's shoulders, a gesture of protection so strong Gabriel could feel it resonate even across the mist of time. Even through the black and white daguerreotype, Gabriel could see the gleaming of pride in that man's deep eyes.

He swallowed hard, as he registered a detail that sparkled his curiosity, but befuddled him at the same time: all the four of them had a Templar Cross hanging around their necks, the very same he had just found.

He was so immersed in looking at the picture, that he didn’t hear the opening of the door or the hushed voices of whoever was entering the room.

When a low chuckle filled the air, Gabriel turned toward the sound, a soft smile appearing on his lips at the sight of his older siblings Emmett and Eva.

"Good morning, darling brother!" said the woman, her voice as sweet as her fair face, as she carried a tray with a warm bowl of porridge, butter biscuits and fruit, a plate of bacon and eggs, and a warm, aromatic tea. "We didn't see you at breakfast, and we thought you might be peckish," she smiled.

"Aren't I always?" He grinned, taking the tray from her hands. “But this is not just a breakfast, this is a whole banquet. Let me guess: Mother has insisted on sending all of this my way?”

“You know how she is, sweetling,” giggled Eva, while she poured the fragrant tea in the cups for all of them. “Always worried that her ‘darling little angel’ might go hungry’. She knows that, if it was for you, you would forget about the entire world, when you are focused on something,”

He chuckled at his sister's words, and grateful, he took the bowl of porridge in his hand. He raised a thick eyebrow, as he glared at the inside of the bowl.

“So, the raisins in my porridge are her doing as well?” he asked, skeptical. He hated raisins with a passion. They were the Devil’s spawn.

“Oh no, that’s Uriel’s,” chuckled Emmett, from the small loveseat he was sitting upon.“He said that his dearest twin needed all the nourishment to keep on going on his ‘little literary quest’ ,”

Gabriel groaned. ”One of these days I will smack the grin away from that gigglemug he has,”

He reached for the window that faced the inner garden, and soon found his twin, busy in a snowball battle with Lily, their older sister, and some of the oldest among his nephews and nieces. When Uriel raised his head and met Gabriel’s eyes, he waved at him with an impish smile, calling him with a great voice and asking him if he had liked the raisins.

Gabriel answered him with an obscene gesture and a grimace of contempt, met by Emmett’s chuckles and Eva’s indignant reproach.

“Briel! “ admonished the young woman, her voice raising an octave above the normal.“Can’t you just let it go for today? It’s Christmas!”

“Which was exactly the reason why I was discreetly trying not to be found,” he muttered, looking outside the window once more. Giving Uriel one last obscene gesture, he drew the heavy curtains and taking place at the desk.

“Ah, little brother, always busy escaping the company of breathing, living people and preferring that of books,” said Emmett, not unkindly. His icy blue eyes twinkled in amusement.

“Can you blame me, Em? Everyone is so noisy around Christmas time,” Gabriel grumbled, taking off his thin glasses in a gesture that betrayed his stress.

“Oh, come now, sweetling,” said Eva, smiling that typical smile she always used when she wanted things to go her way. “Have a little chai and warm yourself up. Aunt Evie has sent this, specifically for you." She looked at her brother's grumpy face and giggled. " If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you were the very one that inspired Mr. Dickens’ novel,”

“Humbug,” he grumbled again. This time, however, he gave his older siblings a devilish grin - the one they all shared at that moment.

Gabriel didn’t like many people, but his older brother and sister were among the few he truly adored, and never minded to have them around him.

Distracted as he was by his conversation with Eva, Gabriel failed to see Emmett scouring the desk with attentive eyes.

The oldest of the Frye siblings had noticed the Templar cross sitting on the wooden surface, over the picture of his mother and the other five men. He furrowed his dark eyebrows, his face becoming a mask of complete stillness as he looked upon it with close attention.

It had been years since Emmett had last seen that cross and that silken bow, years since he had seen those severe faces. His gaze stopped upon the man resting his hands on his mother's shoulders, and he couldn’t help but notice how the black and white daguerreotype didn’t give any justice to his fearless face.

Byron Harrison.

The Leviathan himself.

The only reason Emmett was still alive to that day and able to draw breath.

“Do you know where Father is now?” asked Gabriel, blowing on the piping hot beverage before taking a small sip.

“He has been in the workshop since dawn,” said Emmett, raising his eyes from the photo. “He's been busy working on something for Mother….and also said that we were too much chaos to be around,”

Gabriel scoffed with sarcasm.

“I cannot truly blame him. Just with your children, Emmett, there is always a circus. This time around, Eva brought her own and Robin is here with his own brood. And if it wasn’t enough, I just saw Lydia climbing up a wall with Lily and Uriel. No wonder Father disappeared,” said Gabriel, grinning once more when Eva smacked his shoulder again.

“Papa was referring to his children bringing chaos. He said nothing about his grandchildren!” said Eva, indignant, wrinkling her nose as she spoke.

Both brothers let out a laugh at her outraged face, so similar to that of their sire.

“Any progress on your quest to find the letters Mother spoke about the other night?” enquired Emmett, taking a butter biscuit from the tray and nibbling on it.

“None whatsoever, for the time being,” the younger man sighed, sipping on his tea. “But I am getting close. I know I am. I only have other….” he turned to count the boxes still on. “...thirteen more boxes to check!”

“It appears that you are set to be busy for the entire day,”

“Either that or someone could actually help me with this scavenging,” he suggested with a devilish smile. But before he could add anything more, his attention was diverted by Eva's dulcet tone.

“Gabriel, what is this? A present for a lady genteel that you have forgotten to introduce to us?” she chirped, taking the cross that was lying on the desk.

But when she took a sense of what she was holding a light of repugnance lit up in her eyes.

“What is a Templar Cross doing in our house?” she stuttered with a petrified look on her face.

“Intriguing, isn’t it?” murmured Gabrel, taking back the jewel and staring at it in wonder. “And that is not even the biggest part of it! Look at this picture I found!”

Eva leaned toward the desk, where the old photo had been sitting, momentarily forgotten; but when she saw her mother, she brought a hand to her mouth, as confusion spread on her face.

“How? Why?” gasped the young woman, staring into Emmett’s clear eyes, hoping to find an explanation. “This cannot be possible! Em, you will convene with me that we need to tell Papa about this!”

“Oh my God, Eva, don’t be such a namby-pamby!” Gabriel scoffed, rolling his eyes.

He pocketed the cross, away from his sister’s attention.

Then, he said: “There is no need to bother Father for something like this! Besides, Em agrees with me that it’s better to keep all of this for ourselves until we discover more, right Em?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Gabriel!" she chided, before turning to look at her oldest brother. "Emmett, you surely think that reporting all this to Mama and Papa and demanding an explanation is the most sensible thing to do! A Templar Cross! Around our mother’s neck! I would have been less shocked if I saw a pig grow a pair of wings and fly away!”

But even when both of them looked at Emmett, waiting for his word on the matter, the oldest of the Frye siblings merely lit up a cigarette, his face a pool of still water, unscrutable in its quietude.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” he muttered, blowing out the smoke. “The cross is probably just a memento from Father’s past and that photo could very well be from Mother’s days when she was an actress and a singer,”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes, unconvinced: there was an edge in his brother’s voice, the same one he once had when he had lied to him about “not consorting with the Abberlines’s girl”, despite the young poet having found numerous evidence that actually suggested the contrary.

Emmett was aware of something. What, precisely, Gabriel couldn’t be too sure about.

But he did know something about the whole matter.

He was about to speak again when he heard a low, growly voice coming from the threshold of the room.

“Well? What are you all doin’ here instead of bein' downstairs with the rest of the family?”

Gabriel turned, only to find his father standing at the door, his grey hair styled back away from his face so as not to cover his only good eye; the other was, as covered by an eyepatch that was always present in all the memories he had of his father. Freshly shaven and with his whiskers neatly styled, Jacob Frye didn’t look like a man in his sixties. His broad frame was engulfed in a warm - if worn-out - wool coat, as he was still donning his workshop clothes, and despite his age, the once Master Assassin still retained a most formidable build.

The old man’s once playful gaze, now hardened by life, squared each and every one of his children inquisitively, as Gabriel exchanged an uncomfortable look with Eva.

“Cat got your tongues?” the old man asked, entering the room with a brisk pace and opening the window. “Emmett, you know you shouldn’t smoke in your mother’s room, especially with a window closed,” he added, turning to look toward his son.

The eldest Frye sibling merely nodded and went to sit on the windowsill, redirecting the smoke outside.

Gabriel cleared his voice, and Jacob turned to face his youngest son.

"Well, Briel?"

He looked into his father’s eye - the very copy of his own - and pondered his words for a few seconds: lying to him would be useless. His father always seemed to know everything that was going on around them.

Finally, Gabriel decided to speak the truth.

“I was here looking for the letters Mother mentioned yesterday, the one she had exchanged with Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Barrie?” he said, barely containing his excitement. “I needed to see with my own eyes how someone she knew had inspired Captain Flint in the ‘Treasure Island and Captain Hook in ' Peter and Wendy' !”

Jacob chuckled, looking at his youngest child with fond eyes.“Then you are lookin' in the wrong place, son,” he said, amused, as he bent over the desk to look at the open box. “Your mother would never keep her private correspondence in a box here in Dover. Especially the one she had with Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Barrie. I’m quite sure they’re all in our old house in London,”

Gabriel saw Eva tilting her head toward their father, in a silent request to tell him what they had indeed found, but the younger man shook his head, grimacing, mouthing a “not yet”.

But no words were needed when the older man’s gaze saw the black and white daguerreotype that had caused all the disquiet.

“Gabriel...what were you doin' with this?” Jacob asked, his heavy brow furrowing as he turned to face his youngest son.

Gabriel saw the flash of anger and pain in his father’s eye, coming just as quickly as it had disappeared. He would have normally answered with a witty remark, but his guts told him not to test his sire’s patience. Not that time.

“I stumbled upon it while I was looking for the letters. It was stashed away with the rest of the daguerreotypes Mother had. I..I didn’t mean to pry,” he hesitated for one moment when he saw the way his father was looking at the picture. It was as if he had just woken up from a long, forgotten nightmare.

“Papa,”Eva said, calling for their father's attention. " Perhaps you can shed some light on the situation for us?"

Gabriel took notice of the tone his sister's voice had, sweet and gentle, the one she always used, ever since she had been a child, to get whatever she wanted from their father.

But something told him that this time around it wouldn't work. And when he heard his father finally speak, his doubts found truth to them.

"There's nothin' to explain. This photo belongs to your mother, and it has nothin' that concerns any of you."

Eva didn’t give up just yet.“Maybe we can bring this to her and ask her direct-”

“No,” said Jacob, his tone peremptory. “Your mother's still recoverin' from that bloody fever, and she doesn’t need to be bothered over somethin' like this. This is just a silly picture from a time before any of you were even born, and it doesn’t deserve a second thought from any of you."

He turned to look at them, his voice low with disappointment when he spoke. “So, this is what you were doin' up here? Snoopin' around?” he asked. “Did I raise a bunch of nosey parkers?”

“No, father,” Gabriel grumbled, but his keen eyes saw the swift way his father had pocketed the picture, and it only added to the hunch that he already had. He was glad he had hidden the cross away before his father had actually had the chance to see it.

“No, I didn’t. Now, I want all of you to go back downstairs and be with the rest of the family - you included, Gabriel.” Jacob added when he saw his son trying to object.

“Yes, sir,” mumbled the younger man underneath his breath.

Gabriel dared to look into his father’s eye, before relenting and starting to put all the photos and the papers back into the box; but in the few seconds he looked at him, he had managed to catch the silent exchange between him and Emmett.

When he saw his older brother stand and follow their father out of the door, it only confirmed to him that Emmett knew what his father was trying to hide.

“Oh dear heavens,” Gabriel heard Eva say, as he turned to look at her. “Maybe we truly should have not insisted with him, Briel. He seemed rather upset, and I didn’t mean to do so, today of all days,”

Gabriel smirked. “I am glad we did, instead. Had we stayed quiet, as I suggested, we would have not been sure; now, instead, I know for a fact that there is something connected to that picture and the cross. I mean, don’t you think Emmett was acting peculiarly?”

"Peculiarly?” she asked, confused.

“He was even quieter than usual,” he said. An intrigued smile appeared on his face. “ And when I asked him about what we found, he shrugged it off too quickly. I am sure he knows the whole story,”

“Impossible.” She said. “Emmett would never hide something like that from us.”

“Mmmm…” he mused. Then, he took the cross from his pocket and looked at it once more. His eyes caught a detail that he had failed to notice before.

Engraved at the center of the Cross were the initials D.M.S.

“Eve! Look!” he exclaimed, bringing the jewel right in front of his sister’s face.

Her hazel eyes widened. “ ‘D.M.’? As in...Dorothea Marianne? Mama’s name?”

“Precisely!” Gabriel smirked.

”But..this ‘S’ doesn’t make any sense? Her maiden name was Harrison?”

The young poet’s eyes glimmered with excitement, as a shiver of pleasure ran down his spine.

”This,” he said to his sister. ”This is just a sliver of the full scope! Aren’t you curious to know more?”

Eva crossed her arms against her chest, with a pointed look on her face.

"For being a poet and an academic, I see you have failed to learn the lesson of Pandora and her box.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Or maybe this is a box worth opening if it will bring us to know more about this cross and why it’s connected to Mother! Seriously, Eva: how much do we really know about her and her past?”

“But this has never truly bothered you?”

“There never was a Templar Cross involved!”

Eva bit her lip, and Gabriel had to refrain from the smirk on his face. He could see she was as curious about the whole affair as he was.

“Very well.” she conceded. “ Let’s say -theoretically speaking - that I am intrigued enough by all of this to want to know more. What do you suggest we do?”

He pondered for a moment before a devilish smile appeared on his face.

“We need to go to London. I think I know where to look to find answers that will help us shed light on the whole situation.”

**************

After having left his youngest offsprings in his wife’s childhood bedroom, Jacob and his eldest son had found a quiet spot to enjoy their tobacco in peace.

He allowed himself to bask in the wintery beauty of the garden beneath him, his gaze embracing his granchildren running in the snow.

Some of them noticed him, their grandfather, and shouted his name at grand voice, waving with their little hands as they called for him to join them in the snowball fight they were preparing.

He gave them his biggest smile, as he returned the waving, reassuring that he would be down with them in a moment.

“You knew they'd find it out, sooner or later,” Emmett said, leaning against the balustrade of the balcony of the first floor on the west wing of the manor, his voice a low, gentle sound as he lit another cigarette.

“I did know,” Jacob grimaced, as he took his pipe and loaded the chamber with his favourite tobacco “But I had hoped that that particular detail of our past wouldn't resurface. I’ve never been happy with you knowing, Em,” said Jacob as he lit the pipe and puffed. "Had the Heavens granted me the power to keep you blissfully ignorant of all those horrors-"

“My situation was inevitable, Papa, I was born during the war,” Emmett murmured, taking another drag from the cigarette. He stood quiet for a moment, before looking at his father. “You do realize that Gabriel will not stop until he has uncovered the whole truth,”

Jacob nodded, a severe look on his face tempered only by the smallest of smirks that touched his lips: his youngest son had always been an inquisitive child, always ready to question everything and everyone, already ready to discover the world around him before he was even able to stand and walk by himself. He couldn’t contain a chuckle.

“Your brother’s too smart for his own good.”

Emmett smirked. “I’d have said he's too nosy, always poking his nose around in matters that don’t concern him,”

They stood silent for a moment, just taking in the cold winter air that prickled their cheeks.

“Are you worried about Mother?” he asked.

The older man nodded, his heart trembling in his chest. He was grateful Emmett couldn't see the disquiet he felt within.

“Your mother is one of the most resilient people I know. She was never afraid of the consequences that her choices would bring, always ready to face ‘em regardless of the toll they would take on her...But I know her heart would break if any of you were to look at her any differently than you’re doing now. ”

Before Jacob could stop himself, his memory brought him back forty years in the past.

The Templars.

The Assassins.

That ridiculous, futile war that nearly tore the city - and his own heart- apart.

The things he had been forced to do - no, he had chosen to do.

The thing his wife had done, to protect him and to keep the power in her hands in order to make the world a better place for their family and the people of London.

All the people they both had loved and lost in that conflict, their faces never to grace them with their smile ever again.

He shuddered, closing his good eye, as his whole body threatened to bring him back of fourty years, twenty years, in those nights where he had almost lost first his wife, then his children.

But Emmett’s reassuring hand against his arm gently brought him back to the present, as he felt his son caressing his shoulder in the kindest of gesture.

Even as a child, his eldest was always ready to bring him comfort.

Jacob turned to look at him and smiled wide, his eye twinkling with a soft loving light, as he patted his son's freckled cheek affectionately.

“It’s uncanny how much you resemble your mother and your grandfather,” he murmured, not unkindly. Emmett chuckled at that.

“Almost ironic, I have been told,”

“Almost.”

Trying to find the courage within himself, Jacob took out the daguerreotype from his pocket and take a look at it once more, pausing on the face of the man that stood imperious and just as solemn as the young woman sitting in front of him.

Crawford Starrick's eyes -immutable, inquisitive, unforgiving - were staring straight into his soul, his gaze that of a man who knew he had London in the palm of his hand; a man who knew that, soon enough, he would have the entire known world as well.

Those icy eyes had been rendered blind by death more than four decades ago.

Yet, Jacob thought, as he raised his eye to look into his son's, that same gaze of pure steel lived on in the beautiful face of his adored son, in an absurd twist of fate,

And more importantly, he saw it every day when he stared into the irises of the woman he loved more than life itself.

The eyes of his wife.

The eyes of Dorothea Marianne Starrick.

[NEXT CHAPTER - "Echoes of The Past"]

So, I have decided to upload the first chapter of my fan fiction, "In the Heat of the Moment", here on Tumblr as well. I uploaded on March on AO3, but I decided to upload it here too!

I hope you will like it! Please, do forgive any mistake you might find: i don't have any beta reader, and as much as I am proficient in English, I am not mothertongue, so I might make some mistakes!

Also, soon I will post Chapter 2 as well!

As always, a huge thanks to all my friends and mutuals who always support me in this, who have been with me for all this time and gave me the strength to actually post it!! I will be forever grateful for all the love and support shown to me and Dorothea and the Starrick-Frye children

--Nemo

#Assassin's Creed Syndicate #Jacob Frye #Dorothea Starrick #Crawford Starrick #Emmett Starrick-Frye #Gabriel Starrick-Frye #Eva Starrick-Frye #the starrick-frye bunch #my ocs #Jottie #Nemo Writes #my writing #In the Heat of the Moment

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