Chapter Text
Something is wrong. Evie first recognises this when she follows her brother into the lion's den to confront Crawford Starrick, and finds the man clad in the Shroud of Eden and nigh on invincible.
Every blow the twins deal to the Templar grandmaster is swiftly healed. At times, he uses their own life force to do it. She chokes when he grabs her by the throat, suddenly unable to move as the golden light of the Shroud saps her energy. Its power travels under her skin, making her blood boil, corrupting her very DNA -
Henry saves them at the last moment. Starrick has both Jacob and Evie by the throats and is prepared to drain them of all life to prolong his own. The knife in the back pains him, but it is a temporary ailment soon healed. He throws Evie across the room and she blacks out for just a moment.
In her head, her own thoughts are deafened by the screams of many voices. Those who the Shroud was used to heal - she can see through their eyes for a moment, witnessing the repair of their broken bodies. Witnessing the horrors that came afterwards.
Defective. A man warns her. Not a man - this being is far from human. The Shroud is defective.
Then she awakens and forgets all about it.
'Henry!' Her beloved lies unconscious on the stone. He could be dead for all she knows, and Starrick has her brother by the neck. Evie charges in.
Crawford Starrick wears a look of utter shock and contempt when he is defeated. It makes the Assassin's victory all the sweeter. Though not as sweet as the kiss she gives Henry, holding his hand gently and being mindful of his likely concussed state when she gives him a lingering peck on the lips.
Evie can't even remember what Starrick's dying words were. She'll have to ask Jacob about them later, and keep them in her notes. They might provide insight into the inner workings of the Templars.
All she does remember, as her brother returns the Shroud to its container with a thoughtful look on his face, exhausted by the events of the day, is the look on Henry's face when she all but professes her love for him.
'I think you belong in the field. With me.'
*
There's something different about them. Evie notes with less worry than she should, high on their victory and a lover's union, that the usual aches and pains that follow a battle have faded instantly. She is distracted, of course, by Henry and their knighting by Queen Victoria, and so does not pay the matter as much attention as she should.
'Race you to the train?'
'You're on!'
Her boots pound against the cobblestones and she chases Jacob. There is so much life in her bones - the thrill of survival and the fading throes of adrenaline, no doubt. With Her Majesty's help, they have sealed the vault and the Shroud of Eden below ground. Crawford Starrick will be buried in Whitechapel without a headstone. There is nothing left to worry about.
When they reach the train, Evie groans at Jacob winning the race, and allows him his pompously idiotic celebration. How odd. Her heart was pounding, but now it has already returned to a resting state and her breaths quickly even.
'You're getting slow, old girl.' Her brother drawls, and she rolls her eyes at him. He flops down onto his sofa - the one with a threadbare blanket and a cushion he is using as a pillow - right in front of the target board that they have no use for anymore. 'Did I mention those clothes look a bit tatty?'
'Once or twice.' Evie grumbles with a smile.
Henry will catch up to them soon at the train station. She can't keep the grin from her lips at the thought of him. But she must look a mess now, covered in dust and sweat and blood - the latter of which isn't all her own.
In her own carriage, Evie quickly washes her face and gets some rest.
She doesn't remember falling asleep on the bed. What she does remember is waking up to the sound of Jacob's screaming, and realising that they are mingled with her own frantic yelps.
Faces. There are so many faces. They swim in front of her eyes, every person the Shroud has ever touched. The terrible fates that awaited them. Defective, it is defective, that voice repeats in her ear, spoken loudly as if from a man sitting next to her.
They turned to ash. They burned from the inside out as their eyes melted and their skin and muscles followed. Sometimes it happened immediately upon touching the Shroud, other times it was in the days that followed. But always, always the Shroud malfunctioned, and always Hephaistos would try to repair it, struggling to figure out what was wrong -
'Evie!' Henry bursts into her carriage in a panic with Agnes MacBean right behind him.
The Frye twins give the pair a terrible fright that night. Both brother and sister come down with fever, their brows burning so hot that the damp rags pressed to their faces dry up in mere moments. They toss and turn where they lie, seized in equally terrifying dreams about dying men and the tall, humanoid figures who watch over them.
For the second time that day, Evie is convinced that she is going to die. It is the sickest she has ever felt, and all the strength that returned to her body is sapped once again, leaving her lying there helpless and listening to conversations in a language she does not understand, between grey silhouettes who float through the walls of her carriage.
Henry is there next to her, she thinks. Someone is holding her hand. But it would be vastly inappropriate for him to be here, wouldn't it? After all, they have only just began courting - damn you, Father. She hopes that it is Henry who watches her. To hell with her father's decorum.
After the fever there comes shivers and convulsions. The pain is immense, and swiftly unbearable. Evie knows already that she is going to die. She just hopes that death could hurry up and take her -
Then all at once, the sickness that traps her loosens its grip, and the fever breaks and the shivers stop, and she only has convulsions once a day. The hallucinations stop too, and for that she is the most glad, for they stole her sanity and pushed her sharp mind to the brink.
When she is lucid again, Evie finds herself propped up in bed with Florence Nightingale sitting in the chair by her desk. The nurse is perusing documents related to illness, muttering to herself about viruses and diseases.
'Miss... Nightingale...?' Evie winces at the croakiness of her voice. Her throat does not hurt, though it feels like it should.
The nurse looks up in surprise. 'Miss Frye,' She notes, quickly tidying the papers away to attend to her patient. 'How do you feel?'
'Like death.' It is the truth. Her limbs are heavy and her eyelids droop. Sluggishly, her mind struggles to cling on to the edges of reality.
'You look like death, if you don't mind my saying, miss.' Miss Nightingale agrees. Pressing the back of her hand to Evie's forehead, she begins to run a series of medical tests, starting with a thermometer. 'You and your brother have caught a mystery illness. I have never seen anything like this before, not even in the Crimea.'
'What happened?'
'You had fevers, both of you, and they broke at the exact same moment. Along with the sweating, the spasms, and the shaking.' Miss Nightingale purses her lips, studying the temperature on the thermometer. 'You amaze me. One minute you Frye twins are about to die, and there was nothing in the world that medicinal science could do for you - and then, just like that, you both make a miraculous recovery. I'm tempted to ascribe the credit to God.'
'We aim to please.' Evie quips, and the energy spent coming up with the rejoinder makes her vision darken as she tumbles into dreams again.
'So I see.'
They recover from the illness just fine. Whatever hallucinations terrified Evie before, she can scarcely remember them now, and is more perturbed by the sight of her gaunt face, pale skin, and sweaty body in the full length mirror that Agnes produces in her carriage when she gets out of bed for the first time.
From what she has been told, both she and Jacob have been on their deathbeds for more than a week.
'I cannae believe you're standing, miss!'
'No...' Evie examines herself, wide eyed, in the mirror. She cannot believe that she is standing either. By God, she looks horrible, but on the inside she feels as healthy as she normally does. There is no pounding in her head, no weakness in her muscles, nothing.
'It's incredible. I cannae believe you're alive either, truth be told. You and Mr. Frye haven't taken fluids in days. You shoulda died of thirst!'
Evie swallows, and finds that she is very thirsty, now that Agnes mentions it. 'I would like some water, if you...'
'Coming right up, miss.'
The Assassin frowns at herself in the mirror. Something is not right. She can feel it - every one of her instincts, honed by years of field work, is screaming at her about an unseen variable. Her eyes dart around the carriage, half expecting to find a Templar or Blighter. The face of Crawford Starrick flashes in her mind.
But he's dead. It must be the remnants of her illness playing tricks on her.
Cautiously, Evie takes a few steps and finds that her legs hold firm beneath her. They don't so much as shake, which is unexpected, and she dares to jump the gap into her sibling's carriage to check in on how Jacob is doing.
Her twin looks exactly the same as she does for a change - pale, sweaty, and looking to all the world like a man on his deathbed. Only, when he spies Evie sneaking into his room, he smiles up at her from the couch with a grin that is all life and mischief.
'Still alive, old girl?' Jacob teases. He is worried about her, about them both, but hiding it. She is used to discerning the various moods of her twin.
'Still alive.' She responds with a matching smile, equally as worried and unsettled as he is.
*
Life moves on. The mystery illness is soon forgotten, and the Frye twins continue with their job of eliminating the remaining Templar presence in London. There is more than just work to enjoy, of course. Henry proposes to Evie after they have finished their floral collection, and Evie's stomach jumbles itself up in knots as she beams and tells him yes.
Their wedding will have to wait however. Dealing with the Templars is a cumbersome business, and moving their fellow Assassins from Crawley to London takes up almost all of their time. The Council are amazed at Jacob and Evie's efforts, as is George. He waxes on about how proud their father would be.
The reminder of Ethan Frye leaves both of his children feeling awkward. The man died only three weeks before the twins came to London, and for months his death hung over them like a dark cloud. Now they are both changed by it - Jacob has started to grow up, finally, and Evie has learned not to hero worship the man.
She feels embarrassed now, looking back on her past behaviour. Of course one person can never be perfect. She doesn't know why she clung to her father's teachings so tightly; it was probably a way of keeping him close, when her grief threatened to overwhelm her. Or so she tells herself, ignoring the obvious fact that Ethan Frye had abandoned his children for the first five years of their lives, and maybe that had had some effect on them.
One rainy afternoon, both Evie and Henry are sent to free child workers from a factory in the East End when that nagging feeling of something is wrong explodes in her belly.
The Assassin is caught completely off guard when, having successfully snuck into the factory and freed all of the children, she stands and turns at a dark presence to find herself face to face with none other than Crawford Starrick.
'Hello, Miss Frye.'
Gasping, Evie has no time to react before the man crosses a knife at her throat and slices it. Blood pours down her skin and stains her white collar red. She chokes on it, unable to breathe or make a sound as her eyes bulge in shock.
He's dead! I saw him die!
Evie swings at him, hoping to at the very least take the Templar down with her, but Starrick easily moves out of the way. He catches her by the arm and pulls her gently into him, lowering her slowly to the floor as her legs give out and resting her head in his lap while she wheezes.
'I'm curious,' Crawford studies her as she dies, watching her like a lab specimen as she shudders and chokes. 'When you slit my throat, what did you see? Did my heart stop? Did I really die? I saw no heaven, and no God, so it must be that my soul remained tied to the earth...'
He's rambling. Evie stares at him, scratching his arms where they hold her still, choking. Her vision starts to go black. She is going to die here, being held by a Templar instead of her brother or Henry -
Henry. He's still outside. She can't let him die too, she can't - but there is nothing to be done. Her strength starts to fade, it will all be over soon.
Starrick's eyes widen slightly and fix themselves to the wound on her neck in wonder. 'Oh...'
Something is happening. Evie can just about see it if she lifts her chin, can watch them dance on the edge of her vision - the golden lights that shine from her throat. She can't see what they are doing, but certainly the elder Frye twin can feel it.
Little by little, the wound knits itself back together. Her stolen breath returns to her, and Evie drags in a big gasp and coughs as her shriveled lungs rapidly inflate, spluttering and coughing as the shock fades and her body lights up with pain from the fatal injury.
The pain fades too, eventually. It is a torturous existence while her body heals - trapped in the arms of Crawford Starrick who keeps her head and shoulders in his lap, the rest of her sprawled out on the floor. When she flails, he grabs her by the hair and tilts her head back so that he can watch the golden lights as they dance.
'Incredible.' Starrick breathes. There is hunger in his eyes - a hunger for power that the Templars all hold. Evie can't comprehend what is happening to her, nor his apparent obsession with it. Her mind is struggling to work at all. 'So it changed you too...'
What changed me? She has to force her brain to work as a sudden fire lights up beneath her skin. It is a sensation she knows well, having experienced it only recently. This is how it felt when she was sick - the sweats, the shivers.
'Let. Go.' It's a struggle to get the words out. It's an even greater struggle to unsheathe her hidden blade and drive it up through his chin - but she manages it.
Starrick releases her with a gasp, tasting the steel of her blade where it pierces his mouth and tongue. Evie rolls away from him, watching with no small amount of satisfaction as the man falls forward and catches himself with his hands where he kneels.
He'll be dead soon, just like her. At least she can take him with her...
If this is dying, then it isn't so bad. Evie thinks to herself as the colours of the world reassert themselves. Her vision comes back into focus, and the terrible pain in her muscles has all but abated. Golden light still pours from her throat. When she has the strength, she reaches up to staunch the bleeding, hoping to buy herself at least a little time to say goodbye to whoever finds her.
But she isn't bleeding. There is nothing on her skin but sweat and golden light, and that too is starting to fade. Her fingers trace the line where Starrick cut her throat open and find it closing. When her digits get in the way of it, the light pulses brighter and more dangerous than before to knock her hand away.
Her mind racing, Evie lies on her back and stares up at the ceiling, listening to the sound of Crawford Starrick dying beside her. Only she has heard hundreds of people die in her life as an Assassin, and they usually don't sound like him...
'Evie!'
It's Henry. Petrified, her husband-to-be sprints across the factory floor and falls to his knees at her side, gathering her up in his arms. She lets her eyes flutter shut peacefully. His hold is much more preferable to her than Starrick's.
'What is happening?' Henry tilts her head back, getting a good look at whatever is unfolding across her throat. 'Evie, your neck -'
The Templar moves at her side, but her warning comes too late. 'Starrick -!'
He sinks his blade into Henry's throat and rips it open. Evie is showered in her fiance's blood as it pours forth, and she shouts in horror. 'No!' The Indian Assassin tumbles over onto his side, hands caught between his need to hold onto her and his need to staunch the bleeding.
Starrick falls again to his hands and knees beside the couple, watching, waiting.
Evie drags herself upright and crawls over Henry, acting on pure instinct. She has nothing left to give, her energy all but spent. Her ears are filled with a dull ringing noise and her mind empties of all thoughts except for one - the sight of her future husband convulsing as he dies on the floor.
She doesn't even have the strength to scream.
'Henry -' Evie holds onto his shoulders and looks into those panicked brown eyes. The life is fading from them. He's dying. 'H-Henry!'
He's gone. Whatever it was that made this man Henry Green evaporates from the world. His soul leaves his body behind on the factory floor. And soon I will be joining him -
'A pity.' Starrick chokes out as the blood pools from his chin. The Templar grandmaster pushes himself upright and again grabs Evie by the hair, turning her forcefully to face him. Her eyes widen at what she sees.
Golden light is pouring from him too - specifically the wound that her blade left when it punctured the underside of his jaw. Yellow tendrils shine from the ruined flesh as it steadily knits itself back together, repairing the ruined bone and covering with fresh healthy tissue.
The Shroud. He looked like this when he was wearing the Shroud -!
'You're confused. You don't yet understand what is happening.' Starrick mocks her, painfully fisting her hair so hard that it comes free of its bun. 'Poor Assassin. I wonder if your brother is the same as we are?'
'You -!' Evie hisses in fury, but the words won't come. She is so tired. Henry, all she can think about is Henry...
'Don't worry. The process gets easier the more it happens. You will grow used to it. But for now -' The Templar's face swims in her eyes as her vision darkens. 'Rest, Evie. The first time is always the hardest.'
She wants to kill him. She needs to -
Evie passes out. Her head drops as Starrick releases her, falling onto the lifeless body of Henry Green.