Chapter Text
Desmond has been dead for eleven years.
That’s a fact, nothing to be debated or disproved. Desmond has been dead for eleven years with no chance of reprieve.
Desmond is dead.
Even Desmond himself knows this, as his eyes shoot open.
The first thing he thinks is, Of course. Because dying once to save the world clearly wasn’t enough, and fate wants him to live the worst life imaginable.
The second thing he thinks is, Where am I?
It’s dark and cold, and when he shifts he can hear the rustle of thick fabric. He brings his hands up to reach skywards, but his right does not move.
There’s a throbbing pain that surfaces the more he comes to his senses, the more he wakes up. His mind trudges through the thick mud of consciousness as he attempts to sit up, yet finds his body too sluggish and confined, forehead bumping against the thick fabric, denim-like, restricting, tight.
Desmond reaches up with his left hand, pushing at the fabric on top of him, and finds it almost melded to his body.
“Oh, God,” he mutters, bending his arm at the elbow and thrusting a weak fist into the fabric. He feels something plastic scrape his knuckles, so his fingers run over it. Teeth of a zip, he registers in his foggy mind, and grunts as he attempts to pry it open with no strength.
Alive again and trapped in something. A post-mortem bag, he pieces together belatedly.
His head spins as he drags his fingers up the inner length of the zip, stopping above his head, and finding the top stop of the zip.
Desmond wiggles his fingertip in the crack of empty space, then uses his nail to bring it down. It opens, just a hair’s width, and he does it again and again, opening it a tooth at a time, until he can stick his finger through the gap and pull it down.
It takes a moment of tugging and exhausted breaths, eyes threatening to slip closed, head pounding, until he manages to get the zip down to his navel. Desmond moves to sit up, panting to himself, and looks around.
His brain takes its time connecting to the rest of his limbs. Lifting his good arm feels like lifting twice his weight, his eyes blink slowly, and click with each one. Mindlessly, he scratches at his throat, parched.
With a deep breath, he pulls himself to his feet—bare—and slumps forward as he looks around. The sun is rising, barely, on a new dawn, and he muses to himself its significance to his rebirth, before tilting his head left and right, tired. He stumbles out of the post-mortem bag, holding his palm to his temple, before he looks down at his arm.
“Oh, my God.” He croaks, resisting the urge to tear his arm off. It looks foreign, invasive, like it’s been welded to his torso but isn’t his, like a mix and match, nothing in his foggy mind clicks with the familiar strings of realisation, recognition, because he’s never seen himself look so mauled, so different.
His fingertips and palm have been absolutely blackened, the colour travelling halfway up his forearm before giving way to his normal skin. It’s definitely dead, it pulses distantly, threatening to barrage him with pain should he fully return to his senses.
Desmond stares at it in utter disbelief. His stomach churns, violent and wild, clawing up his throat as he bends at the knees and retches over the soil at his feet. Nothing comes out, not even bile, nothing at all, and he retches again, saliva stringing from his lips and snapping off onto the ground. He groans, and retches again.
His hand clamps over his mouth, stopping the swirling sickness from inhibiting him any longer.
He’s in a field, his slow brain supplies, a field, with dead grass, dry dirt patches, under a bridge with faraway engine noises, with lampposts on either side of the bridge dimly casting an overhead light onto what he realises is a motorway, and cows grazing on the field at the distance his vision starts to blur, kissing the horizon.
He goes towards the road, legs dragging forwards as his good arm curls around his abdomen. He knows he looks like a zombie, hunched over and holding his stomach with a blackened arm limp at his side, stumbling towards the road. The grass is scratchy at his feet, prickling into the soles of his numb feet with every slow drag.
Desmond’s fingers flatten against the railing, cool metal beneath his cold hands, he taps it once, twice, hearing it resound with a shrill ring beneath his fingers, just to check if it’s all real, and swings a leg over. A grunt, and he swings the other leg over, too.
His good hand pats over his chest, and he looks down, startled, he didn’t even realise it now, but his body bag was missing. If he had it, maybe he could check his phone, the time, the date, find the nearest whatever, but no, he’d been stripped to his jeans, like whoever put him in that stupid post-mortem bag just wanted to see his arm, and thrown him pitifully to the side of a motorway.
An itching sadness in his heart begs that Rebecca or Shaun didn’t zip the bag, throw him to the dogs, leave him to rot. He slumps against the iron railing, no, it couldn’t have been them.
The sun rises as he waits for a car to take pity on him, the sun rises a little more with each disappointed sigh he lets out. The throbbing in his arm doesn’t hurt yet, and the adrenaline from breaking out of a literal post-mortem bag and lugging his way to a busy motorway has not subsided. He’s scared for when it does, because even in his hazy brain, he can make out the itching pain that doesn’t seem to dissipate, and he knows better than to claw at it in hopes of relieving it.
The sun makes its way past the horizon, slowly, and he frowns, such little time has passed since waking up, but it feels like forever, time feels slow.
Time does, actually, feel slow, when a grey car stops in front of him. A girl with pink hair and blue eyes leans out of the window, gum snapping at the forefront of her red lips, before she pushes it to the back of her mouth to say, “You homeless or you need a ride?”
“A ride,” he slurs, getting to his feet, “You don’t mind a half-naked man with a black arm getting in your car?”
The girl shakes her head, eyes pressed together, “You got 10 seconds to get in, you’re lucky we’re taking pity on you.”
“We?” he mumbles, sliding into the backseat. From here, he can see another girl in the passenger seat, looking at him with much kinder eyes, “Oh, hey.”
“Alright.” The pink-haired girl says conversationally, “Where you heading to?”
“Where are we, actually?” Desmond hisses, feeling his arm burning.
“Saint Remi,” her gum snaps against her crooked teeth. The girl beside her nods, eyes full of pity, “You okay to go to Montreal?”
“Like,” Desmond says dumbly, “Like Canada?” The two girls nod, confused, “Damn… I was in New York.”
The pink-haired one laughs, “We’re halfway between Saint Remi and Montreal, so we can get you there in like… 20 minutes?” She looks at him, “That cool?”
“Yes, yes,” he nods, “Thank you, but uh, I’ve no money,” he says as the car backs out of the hard shoulder and back to rumbling down the asphalt.
The other girl just says, “Yeah, we figured. We hitchhike kids anyways, so it’s all good.”
“Thanks.” Desmond manages a half-hearted smile, head pounding, “Um, do you guys have painkillers?”
“For that thing on your arm?” The pink-haired girl laughs, eyes flicking up to the rear-view mirror.
Desmond bares his teeth in a show of pain, “No, no, my head.”
“Probably,” the girl in the passenger seat starts digging through the console, “What happened to your arm?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Desmond jokes, accepting the bottle of painkillers and swallowing three dry, “Burnt, though.”
“Ouch, you wanna go to a hospital?”
Desmond considers it, before feeling a pit in the bottom of his stomach. He can’t. He’s dead to the world, and if he’s found alive, Abstergo would be on him in seconds, ready to tear him apart a second time. He’s hopeless, he realises with a creeping dread.
His arm flares with a pain that feels like his skin is melting off his body, as his brain starts to catch up, and he doubles over, groaning, “Definitely not.”
“I think you need it.” The pink-haired girl interrupts.
Desmond shakes his head, his good hand fists the material of his jeans as he bumps his forehead on the seat in front of him. His arm is throbbing now, like his veins are pumping venom, liquid pain, and threatening to explode onto the surface of his skin. “I don’t. I… I can’t.”
“You a criminal, immigrant, or what?”
He slumps forward, seething curses slipping through his teeth, “A dead man.”
The rest of the journey is silent.
The painkillers kick in as he stumbles out of the kind girls’ car, waving them goodbye, and they’re off.
A busy street, a lot of different shops, and he’s suddenly too aware of his bare feet as they skim against the cold stone pavement. Desmond’s feet dutifully carry him forward, through the winding streets, brushing past strangers that look at him, horrified, especially at his arm.
He can’t bring himself to care, his brain fog finally clearing, and feels relief at the fluidity that returns to his limbs.
He lugs forward until he reaches a clothes shop, two floors tall and smells fake. It’s too white inside, the walls and the floor and the counters, he walks in, and knows all eyes are on him, looking dishevelled as he is.
He’s stolen before, he’ll be fine. Hopefully.
He snags the first pair of trainers he sees, some socks and balls them up inside of a shirt he snatches from a rack, and holds them in the crook of his elbow as he moves past a man, hand grasping his wallet seamlessly and holding it under the shirt.
He slides into a changing room, pulling on the socks and shoes with his good arm. He comes out, shirt hanging over his forearm, and pays for the shirt only, using the stolen money. Decency be damned, he pulls the white shirt on as soon as the lady takes the money, and turns to leave. It’s not his money anyway, he doesn’t need the change.
He slides out, grabbing a black hoodie on the way and shrugging it on, fingers pulling apart the security tag deftly, and pulling the hood over his head as the doors slide closed behind him.
Desmond breaks into a jog, wallet in hand, and presses his good arm against the glass door of a grocery shop, budging it open and shuffling through.
The disassembled security tag falls to the floor as he stalks forward, hands stuffed in his pockets to hide his blackened hand, and head low.
He passes the fruits, snatching an apple and biting into it, and goes on. A man picking up a head of cabbage looks at him funny as he walks by, but Desmond needs more painkillers, water, and probably a gauze. If he’s lucky, he’ll find the gauze here.
Sharp teeth on fresh fruit, snapping at the red flesh and dribbling blood soaking down his strong chin. Golden droplets, ichor of the apple, spills down his angular face, ravenous as he feasts, starved, hunching through the aisles with the collar of his new shirt dampening. He hasn’t eaten in so long, he muses, that’s what’ll happen when you die and come back.
His hand settles on someone’s shoulder as he says, mouth occupied with chewed apple, “What’s the date?”
The woman looks over her shoulder, startled, and he gives her his best smile, with apple juice decorating his chin, “The… 21st of December.”
He wipes his chin, “What year?”
She looks at him oddly, “2023.”
His heart drops. Eleven years. He’s been dead for eleven years. His heart thumps in its place along his stomach, sinking further, trapped in an ocean of thick, viscous shock. Eleven years. He mumbles, “Thanks,” before hobbling towards the sign hanging from the ceiling where the medicine is.
Eleven years, his mind fills with fuzz as he stares blankly at the packets upon packets of painkillers. He kicks the mostly-eaten apple beneath the shelves, appetite vanishing, and pulls his good hand, shaking, to the packets.
The buzz of the shop fills his ears, as he just rocks on his heels, unsure. Eleven years.
He looks up at the top of the shelf, the little mirror strip on the shelf showing the pools of dread in his eyes. Does anyone even remember him? Are Rebecca and Shaun still alive? Are any Assassins still alive? His heart aches, swimming in the bottom of his stomach. His shaking hand flies up to his hood, pulling it down further, covering the bridge of his nose as he breathes out, unsteady.
Eleven whole years, and his body was thrown to the side.
The wallet in his back pocket lays dormant as he starts forward and grabs a pack of painkillers, and stuffs it into his hoodie pocket, and another, and a pack of half-heartedly snatched gauze.
Eleven years, his mouth dries up. He still needs to get water. He pulls another pack of painkillers down.
“Sir?” Someone calls from beside him, and he looks at them, harrowed, hand still raised with the packet in hand. “You have to pay for that.”
His eyes snap open, wide, and he stares at the man.
They’re in a blue uniform, a logo printed on their chest, and look at him unsurely. He fixes Desmond with a look, uncertain but determined. “Excuse me?”
His brown eyes flicker to the worker’s hand, slowly reaching for the radio on his belt.
Desmond curses, then starts running.
He hears shouts behind him, crackly voices filtering through walkie talkies, and heavy footsteps. He slams into the doors, forcing them open and grunting at the blooming ache in his shoulder as he sprints forward.
His heart resurfaces from the murky depths, banging into his bones as he looks over his shoulder to see the guards behind him.
The pain in his arm burns now, huffing to himself as he realises he used his bad arm, the one he’d been trying to avoid using the entire time, but he carries on, making a sharp turn to the right and hurrying down the street.
He struggles to keep the painkillers in his pockets, wrapping his arms around his pockets as he runs, and doing what he can to keep moving. He hears shouts behind him as the security bursts out the shop, yelling and screaming at him.
All he can focus on is the pain searing through his arm, spreading to the junction of his shoulders, creeping across his neck, infesting his head, twisting into his torso. His legs wobble as he makes another turn, sure the security no longer is behind him. He presses up against a wall, looking back, and seeing they’ve abandoned their pursuit fairly quickly, and refuse to give him further chase.
With a breath of relief, he holds onto his arm, and lets out a strangled cry. He dizzies as he looks around, and shuffles forwards, eyes zeroing in on a phone box on the other side of the street. His brain is slowly giving in to the agonising pain of his arm, he knows he’ll have to get there fast.
Desmond’s head is pounding. His heart thumps erratically against his ribcage, bursting through the tissue of his limbs and box of bones, threatening to break through the skin, and his brain follows suit, rattling around his skull, he can almost hear it sloshing around, melting. His ears ring, high pitched and inhibiting, as he stumbles across the road and slams into the phone box, gasping for air.
His arm, he holds down a scream, hurts like nothing before. A stranger looks at him oddly as they pass, and he stuffs his hand down their pocket to fish out some change from their heavy coat when they turn to continue.
The phone box’s door swings open, and clangs as it shuts when he stumbles in, slamming the change into the machine and punching in a familiar number.
His arm is screaming, like the bones are trying to separate from the muscle, his wrist trying to separate from his hand, his skin trying to peel off. He gnashes his teeth together, pulling the phone to his ear and hearing the trill match the noise in his head.
“Hello, who’s this?”
“Shaun. It’s Desmond.”
The call falls silent, as Desmond pants into the receiver, “Shaun, please?”
“Look.” Shaun says, pointedly and strained, “This isn’t funny. Desmond is dead. Go do something productive, instead.”
“I’m alive, Shaun!” Desmond shouts into the receiver, “I’m alive, I—I’m in Montreal? In Canada? Please, you have to believe me.”
Desmond hears a sigh over the phone. He can hear Shaun’s throat click as he swallows thickly. “You want me to believe Desmond’s back from the dead? You do know jokes are meant to be funny, right?”
“I literally did come back from the dead, Shaun!” Desmond yells, pain in his arm making his stomach churn, “Shaun, I am so serious right now. I am so serious.”
“What do you want? You can drop this whole… Desmond thing. It’s unnecessary. And disrespectful.”
“I’m alive!” He rasps into the phone. Then, quieter, he says, “I’m alive. I’m alive. I don’t know how this happened. I just need you and Becs to come get me. Please. Please, Shaun.”
There’s a heavy silence, and Desmond can feel his heart in his mouth. For the briefest of moments, he thinks Shaun has hung up, but then his voice comes out softer, exasperated, and asks “... Where are you?”
Desmond has already wrapped his arm in the stolen gauze and swallowed dry yet again the stolen painkillers by the time Shaun reaches him. He recognises the dingy little car, cracks open the door and slides in, revelling in the familiarity of the low roof, hood over his head pressed firmly against it and making him slouch involuntarily.
Shaun’s eyes lock onto his from the rearview mirror, blue and cold, as he tosses words around in his mouth. Desmond can see his lips twitch and hear him inhale sharply every time he’s about to speak, but it’s like his mouth can’t form the words properly, like his voice is foreign on his own tongue, like his throat has tightened up just upon seeing Desmond sitting in the back of his car, hood pulled over his face and body curled in on itself.
Shaun’s dry tongue clicks on the roof of his mouth as he opens it again, trying in vain to say something that would express eleven years of grief and regret, something that he imagined all those nights he stayed up with the image of the temple burned into his mind, Desmond’s body lit up and engulfed in flames, head thrown back in anguish. Those nights he stayed up imagining what he could’ve done differently, what he could have said, so that maybe he’d be able to sleep with a little less regret after his death.
“Do you forgive me?” Shaun finally says, voice uncharacteristically quiet. Desmond hasn’t looked at him yet.
Silent, Desmond sinks into the seat, “So it was you?”
Shaun visibly flinches as he hears Desmond’s voice behind him, and instead turns his head around to face him. “What was me?”
“My body; how I was left. That was you?”
Shaun’s hand shakes as he puts it on Desmond’s knee, body angled awkwardly, “When you told us to leave, that was the last time we saw you. Abstergo, they…”
Desmond puts his hand up, “If it was Abstergo, why are you apologising?”
Shaun turns back around, hands gripping the steering wheel as he shudders an exhale. His head dips, and he says, “... Forget about it. I’m glad you’re back.”
The car rumbles to a start, and Desmond thinks of the two girls who drove him to Montreal. Their car, while big and comfortable, didn’t bring him as much comfort as Shaun’s dingy little grey car with its low roof, cramped seats, little car charms clacking together from their suspension of the rear-view mirror. There’s one charm that looks like it’s Rebecca’s, a little robot, a skull embedded with purple gems, a plastic dragonfly, and a handmade golden ball with clumsy lines etched into it.
Desmond leans across the centre console, good hand reaching out to brush against the golden ball, shoulder pressing against Shaun’s. Shaun recoils at the touch, swearing as he sputters to refocus on the road, but Desmond presses forward, chin jutted out as he examines the ball. He turns it between his two fingers, and sees the letter D carved into it.
“Is this…?” He trails off, unsure.
“Yes, it’s a decorative, fake, little Piece of Eden.” Shaun says, “Rebecca and I made it.”
“Both of you?” He mumbles, tugging it closer and causing the chain to jingle against the others.
“... She made it, and I put the letter on.”
Desmond slowly lets it go, then moves to haul his legs over the centre console. He clambers into the front with a scolding call of his name in a hissed tone from Shaun.
He settles into the passenger seat, taking his bandaged arm out of his pocket so it doesn’t crush under the weight of his gangly limbs as he climbs over. He stares at the charm, and his throat dries up. He reaches up, rolling it between the pads of his fingers, and yanks it off the chain. Like plucking an apple from its tree, it snaps off, and rolls into the dip of Desmond’s palm.
Shaun watches him from the corner of his eye as he slips it into his pocket, and takes notice of his bandaged hand.
“What’s that?” Shaun’s voice breaks off awkwardly at the end, like his throat is tightening up. Desmond looks down at his bandaged hand and tries to flex his fingers, but it doesn’t work.
“What’s what?” Desmond mumbles, pointedly avoiding the topic of his hand. He feels like he’s failed everyone. All of that journey, just to die, and plunge the world into a maybe even worse state than before with Juno being released.
Shaun, obviously, presses on, “Your hand,” with his eyes on the road. “What’s that?”
Desmond moves his hand out of sight, letting it fall limp at his side rather than displayed on his lap. “Burned.”
Shaun purses his lips. He understands what it is, now, he knows it’s from The Eye. “How bad is it?”
Desmond shakes his head, “It’s fine.”
Shaun keeps driving in silence, muttering to himself when he flicks up the indicator or when he stops at a light. Desmond can’t make out what he’s saying, but he knows it sounds annoyed.
Then, the car lapses into a dead silence, until Shaun pulls onto a road that makes his shoulders loosen—and pulls into the drive of a house. Desmond leans forward to look past the windshield, but it doesn’t look like anything special.
Shaun shifts the gear, parking the car, and turns to face Desmond fully with an elbow on the console, threatening to breach his personal space. “How bad is it?”
Desmond is taken aback, “Not too bad.”
“That’s why your pockets are full of painkillers?” Shaun raises an eyebrow, and his hand snaps forward to snatch a handful of the packs from one of his pockets. “You’re not even allowed to buy them in bulk. Wagering you stole them.”
His throat moves as he swallows, before he says, “Fine. It does hurt.”
Shaun clicks his tongue, handing the painkillers back, and makes his way out of the car, “Come on, out. You’re lucky the Assassins are guarding the Shroud.”
Desmond opens his side’s car door with his good hand, and gets out awkwardly, “The what?”
“Another Piece of Eden,” Shaun explains, keys jingling as he pulls them out of the car, locks it, and heads up to the front door, “Altaïr made mention of it in his Codex.”
Desmond’s heart pangs with longing at the sound of that name, missing a life he never actually lived, “No, he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did.” Shaun walks in, pocketing his keys, “He called it the Golden Fleece.”
Desmond nods, “Oh,” he says quietly, “Yeah, he did. You don’t have it on hand, do you, Shaun?”
“You’re not that lucky,” Shaun shakes his head. “I’ll ask Rebecca to get it on her way back.”
Desmond’s heart pangs again at the mention of Rebecca. He nods solemnly, and takes his time shutting the door behind him before he looks around.
His hand rests on the top of it as he asks, “When did you buy this house?”
“When I got married,” Shaun stands beside him, and though he sounds uncaring, his hand gently rests on Desmond’s shoulder and pushes down until he takes a seat on the sofa. Desmond’s eyes flicker to his left hand, and he belatedly notices a ring.
“Married,” Desmond echoes, “And you didn’t invite me?” He tries to joke.
Shaun’s face changes, and his chin touches his torso as he dips his head low. Desmond rears his head in surprise, but under his hood, his lips hang heavy in a regretful frown.
“Shaun, I—” Desmond starts.
“I had a picture of you up with my best men,” Shaun wrings his wrists as he speaks, still looking down, and falls next to Desmond, sitting beside him. “I wished you were there so badly, I kept imagining that you were there. It was the worst and the best day of my life.”
Desmond swallows thickly, and puts his good hand out to touch his knee, “I’m here now,” Shaun’s ring glares at him, and he slowly realises, “You married Becs.”
Shaun nods, and tilts his head back up. Desmond almost freezes at the hurt Shaun so openly wears on his face. Then, the hand with the glinting ring reaches up, and pinches the hem of Desmond’s hood between his fingers, and pulls it down.
Desmond’s heart stops as the hood hits his back, he watches as recognition flashes over Shaun’s face, but then is overtaken by something heavier, something that makes his eyes widen and Desmond can almost hear the sound of Shaun’s heart falling to his feet.
Desmond thinks it’s a look of horror, before Shaun leans in closer, scrutinising all of Desmond’s features, before his hand drops to his mouth, almost like he’s holding in a retch.
“Des,” Shaun starts, voice weak, “You’re so young. They took you from the world when you were so young.”
Desmond bows his head, stomach swirling, “I lived enough.”
Shaun looks sick to his stomach, “I’m so sorry. I am so sorry. You gave so much, you lived so little. You…” Shaun reaches out to touch his eyebrow, thumb rubbing across it gently, “You’re so young.”
Shaun is older than Desmond remembers, wisps of grey in his hair and stubbly beard, glistening in the afternoon light. Desmond wants to reach forward and stretch the skin back out from where it folds in a faint wrinkle, because his Shaun didn’t have any, aside from the crease between his eyebrows when he got angry.
With a heavy heart, Desmond knows Shaun must be approaching his forties now.
Desmond should be too, if he had not cheated death, and is sitting in a 25 year old’s body.
Yet, Desmond licks his lips, quelling the nausea, “Don’t apologise. You didn’t kill me.”
Shaun’s wrinkled forehead deepens with his present sorrow, “Des,” he mumbles, because his throat feels like it’s dried up, “Des, I’m so sorry.”
He tries changing the topic, “I should’ve seen it coming,” he says with a wry smile, “You and Becs. I mean,” his voice is unsteady, “When we were in Monteriggioni—“
“Not Monteriggioni anymore,” Shaun interjects wetly, a callback to a distant past.
Not distant enough, Desmond thinks, as he remembers Ezio’s voice. “In the villa,” Desmond continues, “Her MP3 player was in your room.”
Shaun pauses, and then lets out a small laugh, not quite as full as it used to be. “Yeah.” He inhales, and says, “Look, as much as I’d like to talk about my marriage, there’s obviously… much more important things at hand. You’re not going to avoid it. We’re not going to avoid it. So… tell me.”
Desmond puffs out a breath, “Can we wait for Becs?”
The evening’s low light beats down onto the deck, turning the sky a sickly blue as the clouds get thinner.
The motion-sensing lights die out as Desmond stills on the sofa set outside, feeling the wind bite at his knuckles. The cold air doesn’t bite him the way it used to, his body feels too far away and his mind feels foggy, like he has to drag his mind out of sludge to realise that he’s actually cold.
Distantly, from inside the house, he hears the front door open. His heart, feeling foreign and faraway, pounds in his chest. The motion lights flicker to life as he shuffles in his seat, straightening his back and sitting up properly.
Rebecca is home.
He hears the front door shut faintly, and then the hum of Shaun’s tone, talking casually, maybe in a lower voice.
“Did you bring the shroud?” He can make out Shaun’s low voice.
“Where is he?” Is Rebecca’s immediate reply. Her voice sounds higher, rushed, desperate, even.
“Rebecca,” Shaun says, and then murmurs something Desmond’s ears can’t pick up on.
Their voices get louder as they advance through the house, until they’re in the kitchen, right behind the garden. Clearly now, he hears Rebecca say, “Can I see him?
“He’s outside,” Shaun says, standing at the sink.
Rebecca quietly steps outside, and Desmond’s eyes land on the golden glow of a cloth in her hands. Her head is downcast as she crosses the threshold between the inside and outside of the house.
There’s a moment of silence, before Shaun joins her side with a soothing hand on her shoulder, and looks pensively at Desmond.
Almost speaking, Desmond’s lips part to say something, but before he can, Rebecca braces herself with a deep breath and tilts her chin up, looking right at him.
The dread that sets in Rebecca’s eyes upon walking through the garden door is enough to make Desmond snap back into his own body for a split second. He can feel his heart in his chest, banging against his ribs, threatening to spill out his mouth, threatening to beat so erratically he cannot discern one beat from another. His hands actually tremble, he can actually feel the tremors in his hands, how his body seems to freeze but still, it shakes uncontrollably. He can feel a sickening, foul fear that he hasn’t ever managed to feel, but on top of it all—he feels alive. Even if only for a moment, he feels as if he never died, he feels as if the world only spins if he is on it, he feels undoubtedly alive.
For a moment, he feels like the stars have stopped with his breath, like the entire universe falls still as Shaun and Rebecca face him with equally different expressions. Shaun looks pensive, and doubtful, and solemn, but Rebecca is looking at Desmond with an emotion he hasn’t seen, something so sickeningly severe, something so disgustingly terrified, something that makes Desmond know and at the same time know nothing about everything. He’s plummeting into the depths of an emotion he doesn’t ever recall feeling, an emotion that is so new , so raw, that it suddenly feels like he didn’t die at all, like he still has so much life to live and he is the centre of the universe and his blood sings in time with the waves of the sea and the pull of the moon, his body burns with the fiery, foreign, filling sense of the unknown.
And then she steps forward, and then her eyebrows furrow, and then her eyes fill with tears, and then she takes another step forward.
Shaun watches quietly from the door, as Rebecca takes tentative steps forward, and Rebecca watches as Desmond trembles, and Desmond watches the emotions all melt together in Rebecca’s eyes into an ugly amalgamation that makes Desmond’s heartbeat build like a crescendo.
She wraps her arms around his head, settling a knee into the sofa as she leans forward to pull his head against her collarbone, and his head snaps right back out of his body.
Her arms wrap around him, and Shaun watches them with solemn eyes, and the singing of his blood stops, it falls out of sync with the waves and the pull of the moon. His heart stops fighting its way out of his chest, it retreats and falls back quietly as he feels her warmth envelop him.
He hears a quiet and broken whisper, “Desmond,” come from Rebecca’s lips as takes a deep breath to recover from the barrage of vitality that was searing through his veins.
“Becs,” he returns, even quieter, and lets her hold him.
“Shaun—” she tries speaking, but her voice breaks, and she buries her face in his hair, “Shaun said…” She calms her breathing against his scalp, trying not to shake, and says, slower, “Your arm, I…”
Desmond knows what she means to say, so he wordlessly shrugs off his hoodie, and presents his blackened arm to her. Immediately, she winces, bringing two hands to her mouth, and Shaun gets closer, until he is looking over Rebecca’s shoulder.
“From the temple,” Desmond explains, “When I activated the Eye, it…”
“We figured.” Shaun offers.
Desmond nods.
Rebecca sits down next to him, hands shaking as she reaches up with the Shroud, and ties it around his bicep. “It… Might take a while,” she says, making a point to not look him in his eyes, “Usually, the shroud heals wounds fast… But, supposedly, because the Eye is a piece of Isu tech,” she breathes in sharply, and Shaun gently strokes her hair as she gathers her thoughts. “It’ll take longer to heal. Isu tech fighting to undo the damage of another piece of Isu tech.”
“Like an Isu-ception,” Shaun says dryly, voice lilting up at the end as he waits for any laughter.
“That was so lame,” Desmond replies after a moment of silence.
Shaun clicks his tongue, pulling his hand off of Rebecca’s hair to cross his arms idly.
The shroud hums quietly, glowing softly, and casts the underside of Desmond’s jaw in a glow. He’s almost mesmerised, fingers of his good hand coming up to brush against the fabric. It feels like silk.
Rebecca reaches forward, but pulls her hand away before it gets too close. She looks over her shoulder at Shaun, before turning back and saying, “We… Have your old stuff in the attic. Um, Shaun, if you could…”
“Yeah,” Shaun says and takes a step back, looking between them before heading inside. “I’ll set up the spare room for you, Des.”
“... Thanks,” Desmond says, nodding to himself.
Rebecca takes a deep breath, shutting her eyes, and flowing with the movement. A tear slides down her cheek, and she wipes it away, before opening her glassy eyes and saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I, just, it’s not fair on you. Nothing has ever been fair to you. Nothing good stays, you died for us and we—” she chokes on her words, palms cupping her mouth, “We failed you. The Assassins are… they’re…”
Desmond swallows thickly, “Gone?”
Rebecca wipes her eyes, “For five years, now, we’ve lost contact with all Assassins. And, since, since your…” she can’t bring herself to talk about his death, even as he sits in front of her, very much alive, “Since then, the Assassins have been dropping like flies. Abstergo is picking us off like we’re nothing. Shaun and I… We’ve been meaning to move to Italy.”
“Italy?” Desmond echoes, voice quiet. He thinks about Ezio, and his heart aches. Ezio, a distant past, a warm echo in his mind.
“How did you even get to Canada, Des?” Rebecca asks wetly, through a mirthless laugh, “You…”
“I know. I died in New York,” Desmond says the words for her, his voice not without a whispering crack of sadness at the sight of her wet eyes, “I think Abstergo tried harvesting what they could from my body, and just dumped me.”
“Dumped?” Rebecca repeats, with her eyes wide, and dry lips parted, “What do you mean?”
Desmond waves his hand, and pulls the little Apple keychain from his pocket, “Was this in memory of me?”
Rebecca looks at him plainly at the subject change, and tucks a strand of her dark hair behind her ears, it’s longer, now, and the thin layers she once had have now grown out, thicker and less dramatic, reaching down her shoulders. She says, softly, “Desmond, what did Abstergo do to you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Desmond rolls the little golden ball between his forefinger and thumb, holding it up to Rebecca in the moonlight, “Why did you make this?”
Rebecca purses her lips, still holding out despite Desmond won’t speak on the subject further, and gets comfortable beside him. She looks at him plainly, narrowing her eyes as they shine in the moonlight, “Desmond.”
He just rolls it between his finger and thumb, waiting for her to answer.
She relents.
“We missed you, and I don’t know. It just felt fitting. We had nothing much to remember you by,” She says, slowly, reaching over to put her hand around his shoulders, careful of his injured arm, “Nothing other than leftover Animus data, your old clothes, and our memories.”
“And the Apple we retrieved from Rome?” He muses quietly, looking at the charm.
“No. We lost it,” Rebecca sighs, heavy hearted.
“What?” Desmond asks, eyes narrowed, “What do you mean you lost it?” His heart pangs. Ezio left that there for him , left clues for Desmond to find it, it was the closest thing Desmond had to meeting Ezio, and they lost it?
Rebecca doesn’t seem saddened too badly by the information she hands out, “William has it.”
“Are you kidding me, Becs?” Desmond says, voice hard.
Rebecca shakes her head, “Honest to God, William’s got it. We’re guessing it’s with him for safekeeping.”
Shaun emerges from the kitchen to pad onto the deck, “Des, I’ve set up the spare room for you,” but upon seeing Desmond eyeing Rebecca, he says cautiously, “What happened here?”
“You gave Will the Apple?” Desmond says, breathing out a little too forcefully.
“More like he just took it,” Shaun says, voice matching Desmond’s, “He didn’t go back to the Farm, based on what he told us. All we know is that we can’t track him, so the Templars shouldn’t be able to, either. Des, it’s best to leave it with him. When you died in the Grand Temple, he retrieved the Apple, and made off. Probably to grieve.”
Desmond grows frustrated, “He went to the place I died, and got the Apple instead of my body? Do you know what Abstergo did to me once they found me? How they left me? And you let him have it?”
“He’s the Mentor,” Rebecca says quietly, “We tried disagreeing, knowing how much you hate his guts, to try to honour any last wishes you had, but he… just made off with it. Before any of us knew what was happening. We couldn’t even track him down, either. He’s totally off the grid now.”
“You left it with him ?” Desmond clenches his jaw, “Can’t we get it back? God knows what he’s using it for. I bet he’s using it to indoctrinate even more children into the Order, huh?”
“Desmond,” Shaun says, softer, knowing now that they’ve hit a sore spot, “None of us know where he is.”
“The Black Hills—the Farm, maybe,” Desmond’s eyebrows slant inwards, “We can’t leave something like that with a guy like him. Can’t we send for it, or something?”
Shaun licks his lips, “I don’t think he’ll give it unless we explain the situation we’re in. Do you want… him knowing you’re back?”
“No,” Desmond says immediately, “No way.”
Desmond holds his hands up in resignation, worrying the corner of his top lip between his canines and smooths the point of his tongue in the divot of his scar. Rebecca eases her arm around his shoulder, pulling back as he raises his hands.
Shaun looks up at the moon, “We’ll argue tomorrow, now that I think about it. Living a relatively normal life—well, until now—gets me tired at midnight. I, for one, can’t be bothered to argue right now.”
“We aren’t arguing,” Desmond says, top lip sliding back as his teeth let up their chew, “But there’s no way we’re telling him I’m alive. What will he do? Berate me for not dying properly? Train me into a weapon a second time?”
Rebecca interjects, “Alright, alright. You’re both right, it’s late for a conversation like this, and telling William isn’t something we should decide so fast. Des, get comfortable, and sleep. No doubt your body is trying to adjust after eleven years. We had all your old stuff in a box, so if Shaun…”
“Yeah,” Shaun says, tersely, and just breathes out, letting go of the tender topic, “I put it in the guest room, too.”
Desmond nods, “I am tired, yeah,” he pauses, rotating his good wrist, before saying in a half-bitter voice, “You two head up, I’ll… I’ll join you in a bit.”
Shaun turns on his heel without another word, disappearing into the kitchen as Rebecca stays just a moment longer.
In a soft, gentle voice, she says, “We’re glad to have you back, Desmond. We’ve missed you more than you could ever know, and, even though Shaun’s still got a temper, he missed you a lot,” she says, mediatingly, and tries a small smile on her thin lips, “Always talked about how he wanted to be like you, how you inspired him, how he didn’t appreciate you until too late. He holds you close to his heart, no matter how he acts.”
Desmond nods, numbly, thinking still about William, the Apple, the time that’s gone by, “I know, Becs,” he says, and then looks her in her saddened eyes, “Go to bed, it’s alright. I just need time to think.”
“About William?” She asks quietly, rising from the sofa.
Desmond shrugs, “About everything,” but she’s already gone.
It takes a deep breath and a tug at the knotted silk of the Shroud on his bicep before he stands, looking up at the midnight sky. The stars aren’t visible anymore. He remembers the night sky being murky and swamp-like, yet stars still managed to pierce through, still managed to dot the backs of his eyelids every time he’d look up. Now, only the strongest stars pierce the sky’s blanket. Yet, now, he can only count three.
He locks the door behind him as he heads inside.
Shaun and Rebecca are fast asleep by the time he’s changed back into his old clothes, found in the box of his things.
He feels more at home, even if the woven threads still carry mingling scents.
One’s of sanitary wipes, or bleach, even, the trademark Abstergo smell, so uniform and so devoid of personality, a smell the old facility carried as he tucked himself into grey sheets every night, looking up at faded blood. Another smell, akin to cold wind, a crisp sort of smell with an earthy undertone from a patch of dirt he’d slammed into in Monteriggioni, that never quite washed out, and lingered longer than even the smell of mediaeval sewage. And a faint charcoal smell from the singed threads at the wrist of his right hand.
The Shroud glows brightly in his dark room, tied in a thick knot against his bicep, on his bare arm. He’d always wanted to complete his tattoo sleeve, and maybe get one on his other arm, but now he has one tattooed arm and one, blackened and burnt arm instead.
Though, his veins burn a molten gold beneath the blackened skin, and he can almost see the blood beneath his burnt skin shine through, giving him a tattoo of its own. His dark eyes narrow, staring down at his golden blood. Ichor, he thinks quietly, but banishes the thought as quickly as it came, for fear of sacrilege, because he knows he’s only human, and it would be foolish to even consider himself anything else.
But, he also knows that humans don’t come back to life, that once they’re dead—they’re not coming back.
Desmond tugs his sleeve down, concealing the golden silk, and most of his arm, and then quietly tap-tap-taps his feet down the stairs.
Nearly silent as he slinks up to the front door, pulling his shoes on, tying the laces tighter than he needs to, and casts a cloudy look over his shoulder at the quiet, sleeping house, before shutting the front door behind him as he walks out.
The rain is light as he heads outside, the skies dark, with a crescent moon strung above head. The night air is cold, raising the hair of his arms from underneath his hoodie, but it gets pushed to the back of his mind as he stuffs his hands in his back pockets and slides his feet along the pavement.
The shoes smack and click on the stone, that new shoe sound, and it’s so horribly mundane, going for a walk at night in some new shoes, regretting he didn’t dress in more layers by the time it’s too late to turn back. It feels so normal, it feels like he's returning to the life he missed. Almost.
And, tucked away in his waistband, is his old knife.
It’s blunt now, he knows this. After he’d pulled it from the box of his old things, sneezed five times in a row from the years accumulated-collected dust, and utterly useless.
So he takes it to get sharpened. Google Maps tells him there’s a sharpening service not too long away, so he goes.
The shop is tacky and reminds him more of a shed than a shop, but it smells like metal and wood, the man at the front is sporting a grin as wide as his reddening cheeks can handle, and waves him in from the door.
Desmond steps inside, a small smile on his lips as his fingers creep past his belt and retrieve his blade, but before he can speak, the man at the front sticks his hand out and slaps Desmond on the back.
“Good to see you again!” The man grins, old eyes creasing at the corners.
I know this guy? Desmond thinks to himself, I’ve seen him before?
“You know me?” Desmond asks, still smiling, but confused.
“Of course!” The man chuckles, “You’re always popping in and out of my shop, asking me to sharpen those little knives you carry in your belt, those two blades you keep on your wrists.”
“The…” Desmond’s words fall short, “I do?”
The man’s smile drops a little, “Wait, what’s your name?”
“Desmond.”
The man makes a face, “Oh.” Then the smile comes back, but more in an embarrassed way as his red cheeks get even redder, “Seems like I’m thinking of someone else.”
The words fly around the air before they reach Desmond’s ears. Someone else? Who looks like him with a hidden blade? Nobody would willingly dress up like a man who was on every country’s wanted list, being hunted by Abstergo.
Then his face pales, because he’d grown out of the habit of using a fake name, and just said his name to the shop owner.
“So, Desmond,” the man says, cheerfully, “What can I do for you?”
“Yeah, just,” Desmond takes out his shortblade, “This, if I could get it sharpened.”
The man nods, “Alright, then, I’ll have that done for you in a blink.”
Desmond pays a fair amount, and leans against the front counter, mulling it all over as the sharp grind of the whetstone grates on. It’s not until halfway through does the owner ask casually, “Desmond, you got any family around here?”
He pauses, neck bending forward, eyes picking up from the lines between floorboards to look back at the red-faced man, and he shakes his head slowly, “No,” but his voice sounds harsh, like the whetstone, and his eyes squint, “Why do you keep asking?”
The man holds a bashful, yet not intimidated, weariness on his face, “No, I apologise, honestly, you just have an uncanny resemblance to another customer of mine. I thought the two of you might have been related, or even the same, but I guess doppelgangers are more common than I thought.”
“Yeah, probably,” Desmond says, trying not to grit his teeth, confused and annoyed and a little scared, “Could I buy one of those?”
The man looks down, and then up, “The whetstone?”
A nod, as he thinks coming here was possibly the biggest mistake he’s made since being miraculously pulled from his death. Not even 24 hours, and he’s already hating everything again. The owner provides him with a surprisingly cheap slab, and he almost snatches his short blade up when the grating noises cease.
The whetstone sits heavy in his pocket as he pulls the door open, and walks out, growing increasingly sickened.
What he misses is the owner pulling out his phone, and the quiet ringing from a sliver of speaker, holed in the glass of his phone, the way the owner taps his foot as he waits for an answer, the way the floorboards creak as he shifts his weight behind the counter.
“Ciao, Donovan,” comes through the speaker, not crackly, but not clean.
“Do you have a twin?” Donovan, the owner, asks.
The line fills with a puff of laughter, “No, why?”
“Someone came in today, he looked just like you. I thought it was you at first,” Donovan says, quietly, and scratches his white beard.
“Really?” sounds through the speaker, clearly amused, “Very peculiar.”
“I know,” Donovan smooths a hand over his round cheeks, “Is the name Desmond familiar to you?”
The laughter that was softly spilling from the speaker comes to an abrupt halt.
Donovan’s teeth make a strange sort of noise as he grinds them together, and he waits for anything else to be said, but nothing comes out, not until he starts with his own, tentative, “Hello?”
“Donovan,” is said firmly, “When was this?”
“Just now, I think he’s heading up the road by the post office,” Donovan’s round jaw flexes.
There’s a hushed rustling of clothes from the line, and then a crackle as the phone is put down, then another crackle as it’s picked up, “Goodbye, Donovan.”
“What the hell do you mean, ‘goodbye, Donovan’?”
“Speak to you soon.”
“Ezio?” Donovan asks, but the line has gone dead.
He pulls the phone away from his ear with furrowed eyebrows and parted lips. He sighs at the reflection of himself in his screen, and just sighs, jaw relaxing as he leans his elbows on the counter, and stares out the window into the stagnant night.
“... What the fuck.”
Desmond stumbles across a pier as he walks aimlessly into the night.
It stretches across a wide river, and has couples sparse along the bank, with none at the lip of the pier other than a woman sitting with her ankles submerged and sleeves rolled up.
Idle chatter rolls across the water, rippling akin to skipping stones and dying out before reaching the soggy planks of the stretching pier, boughs of laughter stomped out between the soles of Desmond’s shoes.
The lady at the lip of the pier tilts her head back to look at the sky, curls falling behind her shoulders, and her eyes still glisten in the dark moonlight of a waning crescent. Desmond’s jaw follows suit, tipping skywards, and locking on the moon, but sans the backdrop of stars he was used to. He can make out two or three twinkles, again, and the corner of the back of his lip finds its way between his teeth.
The lady stands, rolling her sleeves down, bare feet slapping wet shapes into the already wet planks, shoes pinched between her hands, and joins the couples on the bank, yet sits alone.
Desmond walks to the lip of the pier, just before the sopping edge, and lowers himself until his legs cross and fold under him, the smell of salt and dirt washing up on the back of his tongue.
The sky is so far away, the moon so bright and so far away, and Desmond feels like if he tries hard enough, he can hear it hum in the empty sky. Almost can he make out the thrum of its pull, the song of its love for the earth’s pitiful tides, its guard over the pitiful little humans, scattered across the riverbank, laughing and talking and sulking and thinking, the pitiful humans who tuck everyone but themselves in, the pitiful humans who love and lose, the pitiful human sitting on the pier, the pitiful Desmond.
So, at once, he becomes the lady who was at the pier’s lip, head tilted to the sky, eyes glistening under the light of a carved moon and three pinprick, pathetic excuses for stars, and he breathes in the smell of salt water, the smell of his old clothes, the smell of the December air, and he stares at the moon like he can unveil the darkness that curves against the waning crescent.
And he stares, like his eyes will lift the darkness, will clear the sky, will show him all the stars and Andromeda, will show him the hidden side of the moon, and he stares, and he thinks that darkness is greedy, that the dark stole away the sphere of the moon, that the dark stole him away for eleven years.
His finger lifts to his lips, and his fingernail catches the edge of his scar. The blood on his father’s fist, the blood that did not belong to his father but him, but nine-year-old Desmond, who cowered away in the darkness of his room once his father left and cradled his lip, and carried the taste of blood in his mouth until he turned sickly-sweet-sixteen, and packed his bags, and tasted freedom for the first time.
He thinks he can taste blood again, as he looks up at the broken surface of the moon.
Two light brown eyes meet his, peering over him as his view of the moon obscures, as the glistening reflection in his eyes die.
“Desmond?” Is all that’s said, in a heavy Italian accent, before blood turns into nothing, and his mouth dries up.
Desmond’s eyes widen to the point his eyelids threaten to crack, and his jaw parts itself like the bank and the river.
“Ezio?” Comes out meekly, before the light eyes above him soften, and a smile graces the lips that mirror the scar on his own, and Ezio sits beside him, “Am I bleeding?”
“No lesions as far as I can see,” Ezio says, and then, quieter, “I’ve been meaning to find you for a long time, as you can imagine.”
Desmond reaches out, and touches Ezio’s arm. Ezio doesn’t look any older than forty, he looks just as he did when fighting the Borgia, which makes no sense because he saw Ezio grow old, he saw Sofia, he saw Ezio throw his weapons down and renounce it all to die peacefully.
And Ezio’s arm, for the first time ever, is tangible, is corporeal, and he can feel the wrinkles in Ezio’s sleeves between his fingers, and the warmth of his forearm, and his dry mouth opens, “How is this possible? You’re meant to be dead.”
Ezio smiles, in a way that Desmond recognises, in a way that’s painstakingly familiar, in a way that reminds him of the cool metal of the animus pressing against his temples, “From what I can guess, I suppose you are too.”
Desmond can only stare.
“Yeah, I am.”
Ezio stares back.
