Assassin's Creed: Phoenix

XI. legerdemain (part I)

Earlier that day

Four days had passed since the events of the crazy night Jennifer Hope had been through, yet the answer to the question whether anything had happened or not after remained the same, and simple. Nothing.

Of course, things had happened - life kept flowing like the sand in an hourglass, with its usual worries, scheduals, paperworks and lectures, perhaps the correct answer would be nothing chilling or delirious had happened after the events of Cirque Hypnosia. 

Jennifer knew she should've been relieved it was all over. After all, even the creepy hallucinations were just... gone. Nothing but silence for four days. Just like the good old days, if she could even remember what being normal felt like. Yet, all she felt was the huge weight of skepticism on her shoulders, getting heavier each day as no hallucinations showed up. Her head was completely empty - she kept writing the thesis, turning in her paperworks, and occasionally hanging out with Sophia during lunch breaks - no sign of fear or anxiety about the man who chased her in the dark, or the cruel tricks her mind had been playing on her. Perhaps it was all just a bizzare dream. Or a nightmare that finally had come to an end. Sometimes she couldn't tell the difference between.

Thinking about that chase and the horrifying shadow-like figure triggered a chain reaction which always ended up bringing William's jacket to her mind. The dark gray fabric with the slight scent of men's cologne. Maybe her mind wasn't entirely empty. It stayed in her wardrobe since that day, as a reminder of Jennifer's habit of delaying important things. She could never forget the moment it occured to her that she forgot it on her, all too late to tell the taxi driver to turn back. From time to time, the fact that she had to return it to him eventually would creep around her mind - and in order to do that, she had to go back to Cirque Hypnosia, where the worst night of her entire life took place.

She could still ask Sophia to return it to him. Yet she knew herself well enough to tell she would not do that. Sophia was a wonderful friend, but Jennifer was aware that Sophia would probably get the wrong idea if she popped up with a guy's jacket in her hand. There would be some explaining to do, which William had saved her from in the blink of an eye while she was still completely clueless about what to say to Sophia. It was bad enough already that Jennifer hadn't told her about the maniac who chased her in the street, and being the terrible liar herself, nothing would stop her from explaining the hallucinations once Sophia asked her the reason she didn't tell her that night in the first place. And somehow, a circus magician she just met had figured it out just in time to save her ass from the reckoning. No, she had to do this by herself. She had a lot to thank him for, now with the healthy state of mind. She found herself thinking about why Sophia hadn't noticed the fact that Jennifer was wearing someone else's jacket, but it was just an another question about that night she could never get the right answer to.

She tried her best to focus, but kept reading the same sentence over and over again in her book, Samarkand, which she did not understand a word of. When the time of upheavals arrived, no one could stop its course, no one could flee it but some managed to use it. Hasan Sabbah, more than anyone, knew how to tame the ferocity of the world. He sowed fear all around him in order to make a tiny piece of calm for himself in his redoubt of Alamut.

The dim light of the night lamp was hurting her eyes, and the silence made her ears ring as she closed the book's cover. She thought about her father, and felt the undeniable guilt growing around her chest, the poor man sleeping next room had no idea his beloved daughter was running for her life just a few days ago. What would he do if he found out? Somehow, Jennifer felt terrified as she imagined his reaction. Not because he was a strict parent, or a man to be feared, yet Jennifer couldn't figure out why she avoided talking about it with him. It was the oddest thing, that none of the people who she thought were the closest to her knew about what happened, but a stranger did - a stranger with a few cheesy card tricks.