One | Altaïr Can't Swim (it's a trending tag on AO3)

[eaglesonofnone]

WHO: Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad
WHERE: South Village fountain
WHEN: Beginning October 28
OPEN TO: Anyone who wants to find a half-drowned and confused Assassin.
WARNINGS: Arabic cursing. (Both cursing in Arabic and an Arabic man cursing.)

---

Water.

It would permanently be his bane.

He had expected his afterlife to be anything but that, if he was to have one at all. After all he'd seen, he'd more suspected that after death came nothing. A lack of existence. An ending, and nothing more. If he ascribed to the Christian notions, he would surely be relegated to their hell for the lives he'd taken, and for a moment, it occurred to him that this was it. A form of eternal torment by the water filling his lungs, his hands finding no purchase. Was he to spend the rest of time dying over and over again in water?

But his body had panicked for him. Fighting against the water, struggling, flailing wildly and completely without skill. He could feel his lungs burning from what he'd inhaled before he'd begun to hold his breath, the ache of a cough wanting to break free but he knew that if he opened his mouth, only more water would rush in--

He coughed. His lungs filled further, and fear took hold of his heart. No. No, he could not spend eternity this way, dying again and again with what looked like sky past the water's surface. Again, he coughed. His lungs were getting heavier, his vision dimmer. No!

And then--

And then, even in the depths, he could breathe, except it... it wasn't breathing. Water was still passing into him, but his vision began to clear and his limbs felt less sluggish and his mind slowly climbed away from the base reactions of survival toward true and rational thought.

He was breathing water. How?

His mind sought reasons, but with his calm came buoyancy. He began to rise toward the surface, a hand reaching out toward the nearest wall, touching stone, able to use it to push upward, and when he broke free and took hold of the stone with his entire arms, he bent over it. He coughed once, twice, water pouring from his mouth and nose in a painful rush, but then he was breathing air. Clear, cool air.

Willpower pulled him over the edge, onto the ground, where he laid on his stomach and relished the simple act of breathing. He'd been short of breath for years, coughing with any exertion, but never had it felt so horrible as that. "Al'ama," he groaned, head turned sideways to rest on the ground before, with excruciating slowness, he pushed himself up to sit. "'Ana kabir fi alsini lihadha."

Comments

[ataashihunter]

"And we've had that. Big monster came in, killed someone in the village. I had just arrived here when it happened."

[eaglesonofnone]

His brows drew together, head giving a small shake. "Then we must begin with fortifications - or watchtowers at the least. Patrols. Masyaf had the benefit of having only the one canyon entrance. We don't have that here."

[ataashihunter]

"Patrols are easy enough, I try to do them at least once a night and in the morning. I am sure we can get more people together to do that. It should be a minimum of what we do."

[eaglesonofnone]

That got a nod. "Agreed. Though I wonder if these are things that I should even touch on. I am no leader here. This is not Masyaf." And he had no intention to take over where he wasn't welcome, especially as he was still newly arrived and on uncertain footing.

[ataashihunter]

"We don't really have a leader, we have people who have been here longer, but if you want to ask I'd ask Mark, he has been here forever from what I can tell."

[eaglesonofnone]

A name to remember. Another nod. Mark. Short for... Marcus, perhaps, he thought, thinking of both the Roman name and one of the so-called apostles from the Christian religion. "It amazes me to hear that some have been here so long - and yet, it makes a sort of sense. I arrived here believing it to be my afterlife. Even if I were to return to the place I call home, I would be returning moments before my death."