lynchthedove reblogged
Starter for @goldentemplariumcrow
It’s supposed to be an Abstergo base. Small, out of the way, but home to some very delicate information. At least, that’s what Cal was told during the mission briefing. When he works his way through a window, landing softer than his frame says he should, he isn’t sure anymore that their intel is up to date.
The place is smaller than their usual stakeouts and recon missions take place, but it isn’t the shed everyone made it out to be. “Small little spit of a building,” Moussa had said, holding his hands close together, and Cal had expected a run down little shack of sorts. On seeing the place, he’d laughed to himself. Now, he thinks this has to be a joke. There’s no fucking way this is the place he’s talking about. It’s smaller, but it isn’t small, and it’s lacking the extreme amount of personnel most facilities come equipped with.
He wants to swear, almost does, but the building is so quiet, he’s sure that, if anyone is here, they’ll absolutely hear him.
Cal flicks the thumb drive from his pocket and loops the keychain it’s on around his middle finger, curling his fist around it. He just needs to find a computer, preferably one that’s on (he doesn’t need to alert everyone he’s here just because Windows booted up with it’s disgustingly loud startup sound), and grab whatever information he can. It seems easy enough, but he’s seen enough of these missions go wrong to know that it could be the goddamn hardest mission he’s had in months.
He stalks his way through the hallways, glancing around corners, making sure no one is coming - and he feels unsettled that no one does. The place isn’t big, he should have met someone by now, right? One by one, he looks through rooms, some large, some seemingly only closets, but stops at one when the light catches on what can only be a mask sitting on a table, and Cal feels cold in his confusion. He remembers that mask, even if it had been a brief interaction.
Whoever wears this mask...saved him. A couple months back, when leaving an Anstergo facility. Without his help, Cal could very well have been caught again, and he highly doubts that whoever put him in the Animus next would be as gentle as Sofia.
But that man had been helping him. What’s it doing here, a proclaimed Abstergo base? Has he gotten the wrong building? Fuck.
A sound coming from down the hall catches his attention, and he turns in time to see a man enter the room. Cal has only a moment to decide: punch the man out and try to leave, take him hostage and negotiate his way out, or hide? He sees the man look at the mask on the table, then back to Cal, and fuck it, maybe he’s the guy who owns it. Without a word, Cal ducks beneath the table, fitting himself beside a couple of filing cabinets tucked down there, and he hopes that maybe that is the man in the mask, and maybe he’ll help him again.
Worst case? Cal has his fists, a gun, and a set of hidden blades. He’s fought his way out of worse.
I’m heading out for a bit, but when I get back I have a couple of starters to write, and I think I might redo Cal and Aguilar’s icons. Still debating on that last part though. I’ve already redone my icons in the last year, so maybe not. Maybe, though lol
@meurtriier gets this because I love them
Long away trips are the worst and nothing can convince Cal otherwise. It’s strange in a way, because Cal spent so much of his life on the move. Something like 37 years just wandering, never in one place for too long, never looking for a place to call home. Just a place to sleep, another drink, another hit. But fuck if Mats hasn’t changed all of that. They still move around quite a bit, one HQ to another, but Cal has a place - a person - to call home.
And then the new missions came, deadlier, longer, sending the fragments of their crew - those who escaped Abstergo - away in so many different directions, and it’s so fucking tiresome. Cal in his twenties would have loved it. Hell, Cal in his early thirties, too. He’d been ready to die, though, as long as it was on his own terms, and missions like these, though they wouldn’t be given to him at those times, would have been just what he’d been craving. Movement, travel, new sights, new sounds, new people to fight in bars. It wasn’t always glamorous (it really never was), but it was his life, and he liked it.
But now...fuck, now he has a reason to want to be home, a reason to not die at any given moment, a fucking reason to live. How infuriating. At least Mats knows he’s got a good looking face that keeps Cal coming back. (He breathes a single laugh through his nose at the thought, lips pulling up into a tired, small smile, and god damn, he’s missed Mats.)
It’s late when he gets in, Stevie is definitely asleep, but Cal knows Mats probably isn’t. Anxiety gets him on the best of nights, and the times when Cal’s away only make it worse, and he won’t let himself be drugged to sleep, even with something as simple as NyQuil. Too many painful memories of being drugged to allow that. It makes Cal worry, but he also knows he’ll never get Mats to change on that front. And honestly? He can’t blame him. Cal went through a week of what Mats went through over the course of years, of course he’s fucked up.
So when he gets inside their headquarters and makes his way to their designated room in the back, he’s surprised to see him lying on the bed, eyes closed, breathing evenly. He probably isn’t entirely asleep, maybe just dozed, but he looks peaceful. Almost too much to disturb, but he knows Mats would want to know the instant Cal got in. So he takes a moment, watches him breathe, then clears his throat. “Does Stevie know you’re actually sleeping? She might throw a party to celebrate.”
lynchthedove reblogged
Have you tried to read Heresy and Last Descendants? They give even more info in the modern day Brotherhood and Templar Order. In Heresy we even receive info of the Animus before the one presented in the movie, and in Last Descendants we have multiple people running one same simulation together and the effects it can have!!
I haven’t read them yet, but I own them! They’ve just been sitting on my shelf waiting for me (while I rewatch Road Warrior for the zillionth time lmao), but I’ll start them soon! I really love the information we got on Sofia’s animus in the movie novelization, I’d love to get more, it sounds so good *___*
#goldentemplariumcrow#(I'm honestly so happy to find people who enjoy the novel(s) too! I really gotta get caught up with them)#(I haven't logged into Cal for so long but I got the itch today and now I just miss him and Aguilar so much)#(I should get back to my reread of the novel and then get on the next books)#(I GOTTA DO IT)
goldentemplariumcrow replied to your photo: THIS IS SO IMPORTANT TO THE EVOLUTION OF THE...
Thank you for putting on words stuff I’ve been trying to explain for ages to my friends who didn’t read the novel!!
As much as I love the movie, I live and breathe the novel, it’s so good! And it has such wonderful information the movie can’t really give us (not enough time, not the right medium, etc; like the background information on Sofia, and Aguilar’s childhood, Cal growing up, etc. just couldn’t fit into the movie). I’ve been swearing by the novel since the movie came out because it’s just so well done.
lynchthedove reblogged
THIS IS SO IMPORTANT TO THE EVOLUTION OF THE ANIMUS, OKAY. It’s a little hard to tell, but in this scene, Aguilar is holding his blade to Cal’s throat. In the novel, it actually expands on this scene:
There was a flicker in the glass. Had another guard entered the room? No, not a guard, they did not move with such feline grace. He turned and his eyes widened. The figure’s face was hidden by a hood. The head lifted - and Cal gazed into a face that was both intimately familiar and unspeakably alien: his own. A killer’s blue eyes gazed at Cal, and then narrowed. He stepped forward, slowly, then quickening his pace as he snapped his arms down, releasing the twin blades, and sprang. The blade was pressed to his throat. Aguilar drew it back and the cold-hot, thrillingly painful slice opened Cal’s throat. He doubled over, coughing up blood, his hand to his gashed- -whole…?- -throat. Nothing. No blood. It wasn’t real. Just his mind, playing tricks.
This is literally after Cal’s been in the Animus once. He isn’t just hallucinating Aguilar, he’s actually feeling as if Aguilar is real enough that he can feel his blade cut his throat. Cal thinks he’s bleeding out because of how real it is, and it’s only the physical sensation of feeling that his neck is fine that reminds him he isn’t dying. No blood, no sliced open throat, nothing. Just the aftermath of his mind being fucked with.
It just proves how powerful Sofia’s Animus really is, and I think it lies in taking it from a chair to applying physical movement to it, as her theory about the whole thing postulates. She believes that physically living through the memories, going along with the motions, creates a stronger bond between the Subject and their ancestor, which will allow for clearer, sharper, and better synchronizations. And, considering her research and that she knows how to help heal the bleeding effect, I imagine she believes a smoother transition between the present and the memories will also help rehabilitate the Subject after it all.
(It is specifically stated, at least in the novel, that if Cal had been able to go into and come out of the Animus on her schedule and not her father’s, she could have helped him get rid of the bleeding effect before it became permanent; but with the way her father forces Cal into the Animus three times in less than three days, and Cal’s only breaks in-between are of him sleeping, being paralyzed, and then meeting his father again? The guy’s not really given much time to heal mentally or emotionally, and, in some cases, physically.)
The bleeding effect kicks in early, and it kicks in hard. This could also be attributed to a possibility of Cal being susceptible to things like this? I think a case could be made for anyone being susceptible, though, but as we see with Desmond, it takes quite some time in the Animus to develop his Eagle Vision, and even longer for the bleeding effect to kick in, and even then it’s more just hallucinations and images. (I could be wrong, but I don’t believe we ever see physical interaction between them beyond, like, training sequences? And that’s more like Desmond following behind visions of Ezio. Correct me, please, if I have this wrong.) Cal, however, hallucinates Aguilar this severely after one trip into the Animus, and I don’t believe it’s entirely just, ‘It’s a movie and we didn’t have the time.’ Or, even if it is, it’s still what we’re presented, and with all the information we have on the new Animus, I think it backs it up nicely.
lynchthedove reblogged
Diego luna!
Send me a face claim and I will use that face claim to make an NPC in my muse’s life, as well as talk about their relationship, connection, and feelings towards my muse - @diebythecreed
Diego Luna
Sebastián Astrada, born 1982, became one of the few people Cal would come to consider a friend. He was born and raised in San Diego, making frequent trips across the border into Mexico with his parents and younger sister (Flor), a monthly trip that he grew to look forward to. Family dinners were always done at least once a week, usually on the weekend when the children weren’t swarmed with homework and eating over a pile of math equations or historical dates, and it was always something traditional. He enjoyed his veggies, loves peppers, and secretly enjoys the bastardized tacos Jack In the Box carries - he can’t explain why, but there’s something about them he just can’t get enough of. He’s a pretty damn good singer, shamelessly loves singing loud to obnoxious pop songs (stop him from singing Carly Rae Jepsen, even as an adult, I dare you to try), and he’s got enough personality to have a stage presence, though he’s got stage fright and feels too shy to ever pursue it as a career.
His family became Cal’s third foster family, and possibly one of the only ones whose lives Cal didn’t want to make hell. They tried to teach him to cook (he wasn’t very good at spices, always made things too bland or too potent), helped him with his homework (which he never cared about), took him to the beach for the first time (and several more to follow), and generally tried to be very caring. It was more patience than Cal had been shown before, and he was with them for three years, until he was thirteen, before he made too much trouble in school, knocked a kid out for a stupid reason that he couldn’t quite explain later down the road, and ran away from home.
He and Sebastián had grown to be something akin to actual brothers. They shared a love of singing to overplayed songs, or those ones that just really pull at your gut (in his teenage years, Cal found a lot of his foundation in Guns N Roses, Skid Row, and Metallica, bands he holds onto even as an adult), but also cheesy, dumb love songs they’d jokingly sing at each other. They liked to climb out of the window (because the doors were always locked firmly, and their parents could hear the floorboards creak if they tried to go out the back door) and run out to the field down the street and just sort of exist. Kick around a soccer ball, talk, sing dumb songs, laze in the grass, until it was late enough that they should get home and attempt sleep before school in the morning.
Sebastián is one person Cal misses the most, and always considers the closest person he has to a brother (and he often thinks about Flor, thinks would be the kind of brother to have taken her boyfriends for a drink, but punch them if they hurt her). For years, he thought he’d never see him again, but they’d sporadically find each other’s numbers or addresses orSebastián would figure out which prison Cal was in this time, and send him letter. Shortly before going to prison, after Cal had worked the years of drug abuse out of system, they made contact again. Sebastián never came to see him in prison that time, but then again, Cal didn’t feel himself worth visiting anyway. Thought maybeSebastián was better off without him around. Still, even after talking again, they clicked so easily, it would’ve been natural to just pick up where they left off.
This could be a guy that could make an appearance in Cal’s life again at some point? Maybe figure out about the assassins if they ever meet up again? Who knows. But a Callum Lynch who’s alive rather than having been executed is a Callum Lynch probably with a storySebastián would enjoy hearing over a couple of drinks.
lynchthedove reblogged
Headcanon: Cal can speak pretty decent Spanish. His mother would speak to him in Spanish, and he was often surrounded by people who spoke it, so it was only natural for him to pick it up. His father used to say that Cal’s Spanish was a bastardized version of the language, influenced by modern slang and Cal’s need to substitute words he didn’t know with English words, but it’s what he knows. Besides, his dad barely spoke it, so Cal doesn’t take that opinion to heart.
Over the years, his Spanish has gotten rusty, and he’s developed a sort of mixture of dialects that even the bleeding effect didn’t really erase. In fact, in some ways, it made it worse. He’s understandable, though, and he tries to keep up on it, oftentimes thinking to himself in it, writing in it, translating things in his head from English.
I saw a post that made me think of Cal, and I went to reblog it, but realized it didn’t actually fit as well as I thought it did. So uh. Instead, I’ll just say that Cal has, does, and always will enjoy sex for pleasure, he’s super into one-night-stands, and he’s incredibly difficult to get into a romantic relationship with. (That doesn’t mean we’re not open to it happening, though! I have a couple of wonderful ships with him; it just takes patience.)
But sex isn’t a coping mechanism for him. It’s fun, it’s enjoyable, he’s good at it, and he never lets it make things awkward between him and people he knows/considers friends. It’s just a fun time. Also, when he’s on the move and not in one place for very long, it gives him a nice, warm bed to stay in, and a bit of company for the night.
Anyway, that’s all relevant to what I almost posted, but didn’t. So. Enjoy <3
lynchthedove reblogged
Reblog if you RP a character from Assassin's Creed.
From any of the games, books, short films, comics, anything Assassin’s Creed is welcome.
Genderbents and OCs also welcome.
Find your fandom here.
lynchthedove reblogged
Michael Fassbender Assassin’s Creed || 2016
lynchthedove reblogged
Not once had he denied his guilt in the murder. The blood was on his hands and he never intended to pretend it wasn’t.
He also hadn’t intended to be found, but when the police narrowed him down with fingerprints and blood samples and Cal really shouldn’t have spat on the body when he was done, he didn’t resist arrest. He didn’t regret what he had done. There was no sorrow in anyone’s eyes when that man’s body was left crumpled on the ground, eyes gouged and body broken, bent at odd angles that looked more painful than a dead body could feel. He had deserved to die, and slowly, painfully, for all the harm he’d caused. Unfortunately, Cal hadn’t perfected the art of a slow torture, and within the half hour, the man had gone from a living, breathing incarnation of greed, to as dead as Cal could get him without battering his face into the concrete.
No, he didn’t regret what he had done. He only regretted being caught.
The trial had dragged on even though he had openly admitted his guilt. He was a criminal, after all, living on the fringes of society, barely scraping by. Murder was his biggest crime, but once he’d been added to the database, suddenly he could be linked to several counts of petty theft, grand theft auto, breaking and entering, identity fraud, among other smaller crimes. No one asked his reasons, and he didn’t offer any up. No one would have listened, anyway, and he didn’t care. He’d denied a lawyer, though someone still showed up to try and use him as an example of how society’s treatment of misguided youth - he scoffed loudly at that, as if anyone here could understand his childhood - adds to violent behavior and drives people to become criminals to survive, but he wasn’t here to be a test subject for some social experiment.
In the end, he had killed a man, and whether or not that man deserved death or something worse, the fact remained that Cal had committed murder. And what would a justice system be if it didn’t punish those who broke the rules.
And though he had accepted it all - his guilt, the trial, going to prison - somehow he hadn’t anticipated the death sentence. He’d seen people who got away with less time for harsher crimes - multiple killings, rape, mutilation, desecration of the dead - but considering his social standing and all the many crimes to his name now, they drove in harder to get him the death sentence. He didn’t expect it, was actually caught off guard when they announced he would be killed via lethal injection; hell, he even wanted to fight it. If the pimp he’d killed had ended up in prison, Cal knew he wouldn’t have gotten this sentence. The legal system was corrupt and favored those with sway. Something Cal didn’t have. There was something that didn’t feel right, but as with every other part of this trial, he faced it without question.
He would be put to death for murdering a man who was no good to society. Then again, he wasn’t good to society, either. In late night moments of insomnia, his back aching on the poor excuse for a bed, he laughed. Maybe it was a fitting end for a life like his. What did he have to offer to anyone anyway?
#// writings#(man i wrote this way back when the movie first came out and before I'd read the book)#(and while I'd change a detail here or a sentence there - overall I still hold pretty close to how I wrote this)#(Cal didn't deny anything the entire time. He accepted it all almost with amusement)#(because he knows he's of no value to anyone. He wants to die on his own terms but he understands)#(that he killed a man and that carries some real repercussions)#(he didn't expect the death sentence or for it to be expedited - but we all learn later that Abstergo had a hand in all that)#(but he accepted all of this readily - up until the moment of lethal injection)#(because the novel goes into detail about how in that moment when the liquid is moving through the tube into his veins)#(he realizes he /doesn't want to die/. Not like this. he wants to die on his own terms)#(thankfully he lives and will get to live until he gets to make that decision)#(anyway long ramblings here but I just have A Lot of Feelings)
You Are Shockingly Violent
There's no getting around this: you desperately need to attend anger management. You're just as headstrong and opinionated, and your energy and enthusiasm can turn into explosive violence at the drop of a hat. You're a walking time bomb of seething rage, and the more you try to hide it, the more it escapes in unpredictable, volatile mood swings. Do yourself a favor and invest in a stress ball or a gym membership before you do something you'll really regret.
You Are An Emotionally Volatile Nightmare
Your heart guides you and sometimes that's not as dreamy or romantic as it might sound. It's true that your feelings often inspire you to heal and create, and as long as those feelings don't steer you wrong, you're capable of truly visionary accomplishments in the name of empathy and love.
Feelings, though, aren't always gentle and sweet. You know that better than anyone, because your own emotions - the same overwhelming forces that inspire you to make the world a better place - can take you to very dark places, especially if you believe that the subject of your ire has shown unwarranted cruelty toward you or something you hold dear. You know that your feelings aren't necessarily rational, but that doesn't stop you from dramatically blaming other people for causing you pain. Of course, you might not even stop at crying; that notoriously brilliant creativity might even spur you to express your wrath artistically - nothing says “emotional stability” like a morose, vengeful poem.
Tagged by: @digital-firefly
Tagging: Everyone who wants to do it.
lynchthedove reblogged
On Ubisoft’s black Friday sale, I bought Maria’s (and later, Cal’s mother’s) necklace :]
lynchthedove reblogged
Welcome to the Spanish Inquisition
lynchthedove reblogged
lynchthedove liked your post “Exams are over bitches!!! I’m sorry I haven’t been on to say anything….”
@lynchthedove
“I still do not understand how I, of all people, could help you. I only make remedies and help those that are in need of it despite money…” This man, foreign to her and dressed from head to toe in garments that clearly hid weapons, left her with unease. What was it that he was looking for? Was it something she could possibly make? For one of the few times in her life, she did not know whether to be cautious of this man before her or to know he will not harm her. But with him being much larger and taller than she, it, of course, was easy for such a possibility to occur within her thoughts.
“You have answered your own question,” Aguilar says to her, gently. He can see how he unnerves her, something he does not do intentionally. His intimidations are meant purely for those he calls his enemy, not an innocent with whom he is here to plead for assistance. He softens his shoulders in attempt to appear less threatening. “I come to you with a request. It is…” He hesitates, eyes turning down momentarily while he thinks. How much should he tell her? She needn’t be involved more than being paid for her help, no different than other customers.
Yet the association could be a risky one for her, and it is not fair for her not to know what having even this loose of a thread could entail.
“I come here on behalf of a group in need of one with skills such as you possess. We have doctors, but they are not always available, and not all of them have your...specialties.” His gaze shifts to the walls of her shop, the herbal remedies and teas intermixed with medical supplies. “I will not lie, la dama, it could be dangerous to knowingly assist us, but we will shield you from any danger should it come your way.” Is he saying too much? No matter; he has already said it, and, in his mind, it is better for her to know than to mislead her.