Chapter Text
The thing-- which shouldn’t need to be stated, because it’s a well known fact-- is that people don’t usually remember their birth.
That’s just the way things were. The only reason that Desmond remembered being born at all was because the memories didn’t belong to him. They belonged to Ezio, and Desmond was forced to relive them, all thanks to the morally ambiguous machine that made ancestral memories into Netflix for evil scientists.
Desmond also remembered dying. He didn’t want to think about that.
(He didn’t want to think about the moment of not-pain when his hand was dropping, then the untold time after where it was just pain and heat and the desire to rip his hand away, to move at all, and the inability to do so.)
That time, the time after the bones in his arm melted, it took him a while to figure out he was alive again.
Things were muddled, sounds coming and going before he could really grasp onto them. He was so, so fucking tired, and trying to stay awake was like trying to get nutrients from eating fucking rocks, so for a while, he didn’t try very hard. He didn’t have the energy to worry about what the hell was happening to him, much less deal with it, so he didn't.
(Things were always happening to him, all the time, constantly, and he just couldn’t fucking take it anymore, it was never his choice, he couldn’t, he couldn’t fucking do it anymore he just couldn’t--)
Slowly, Desmond noticed things.
He was aware of being wrapped in something soft. Of being held close by someone, the vibrations of their chest soothing him when he cried.
(Being held didn’t stop the nightmares he had about Precursor ghosts, or of his family-- no, of Ezio’s family dying, or of his father’s-- no, of Haytham’s warm blood on his hands, and the people he was with, did they know this? Did they know that was why he frequently woke, inconsolable and screaming?)
His eyesight sucked, which had never been a problem before. Now, Desmond had to squint more, and everything was too bright, constantly. He couldn’t figure out where he was or who he was with. He also had difficulty figuring out what anyone was talking about. Sometimes, Desmond swore he caught a familiar word of Italian, but nothing he could hold onto for very long.
Time slipped away from him a lot.
Something was definitely wrong with his mental state, or whatever it was called, but that wasn’t exactly anything new. He’d been labeled a difficult kid on the Farm, and even after he ran away he was always “Desmond, the guy who grew up in a cult.” With the Animus thrown into the mix, any chance of being normal blew up in his face.
So of course, of course, the Bleeding Effect was still there.
One moment Desmond was being held to someone’s chest, then in another he was Ezio, and looking up as his big brother held him for the first time, their mother’s voice telling Federico to be gentle, don’t let him fall.
Other times, when Desmond couldn’t sleep, he could swear someone was there who wasn’t supposed to be. A scruffy looking blonde man with a sunburn, standing nearby and gently rocking Desmond’s cradle (because it was a cradle, which had implications, but he wasn’t thinking about that then, he didn’t want to think about it). The man sang sea shanties until Desmond finally drifted into unconsciousness.
Where was he? How had he even gotten there?
It was harder to figure out what was real and what wasn’t, especially because Desmond didn’t have context for literally anything. There was the stone and plaster wall of the building he was in (it became wood sometimes without warning, but Desmond was pretty sure the wood was a hallucination). The people who took care of him tended to be the same people, smelling of sweat and wool, the musk of burning kindling clinging to their clothes.
(He wasn’t sure if the smell of the sea was really there. They didn’t let him go outside.)
Some of the people were kind. Those ones spent more time with Desmond, and delighted when he pointed at things in an attempt to communicate. There was one woman in particular, Eleni, who took the time to help him sound out words, even when he struggled to get his mouth to make the correct ones.
He was little again. Like, tiny toddler with a tiny body again. Except he remembered being an adult, so what the hell happened?
Did he get sent back in time to the beginning of his life? Was he back on the Farm, doomed to repeat his whole shitty life again? If so, should he make different choices? Would he even be able to?
But-- his dad wasn’t there, and neither was his mom. Actually, he wasn’t sure he had parents in this life (wait, did that mean he reincarnated? fuck). If he did, they were long gone.
He wasn’t on the Farm. There was a nauseating mixture of relief and disappointment at the realization.
(He didn’t have to do all that again.)
No, wherever he was now might have been worse.
Nothing blatantly awful happened to him (which was good, because he was a baby, so he wouldn’t have been able to defend himself if it did), but there was something just, like, off about where he was.
Occasionally, his caretakers would wake him up early, scrub him clean and comb his hair and parade him into another room to be observed for a while by vaguely off putting men in expensive fabrics. In Italian, they would be told how much Desmond had grown recently, how well he could walk, how many words he could say and how often he said them.
It made Desmond feel like a horse being inspected at the county fair. Or maybe a frog right before dissection.
Nobody ever took the time to explain to Desmond what all the fuss was about. There was one man that was always, always there, at every inspection, one who seemed to demand respect even from the other rich men. He had pale eyes, and long fingers that wrapped around wine glasses like spiders.
All of the rich men showed up a bright, bright red in Desmond’s Eagle Vision.
(That was another thing-- no matter that Desmond was a kid again, his Eagle Vision still worked.)
The guards stationed around the house shone a murky red, the rest of the staff neutral greys. Eleni, thankfully, had remained a comforting light blue the entire time Desmond had known her. He always preferred when it was Eleni who held him after nightmares, and he tucked his face into her neck to fill his vision with blue, blue, blue.
One afternoon, Eleni was teaching Desmond words in her native language (which he still didn’t know the name of, even if he knew words like drink, ball, and cat1) when she suddenly had to stop and take a moment to clear her throat. That moment turned into a coughing fit that made her eyes water and left her breathless.
One of the guards overheard and escorted Eleni out of the room. Desmond didn’t see her the rest of the day. She probably went home (he hoped they gave her paid sick days, but figured that would probably have been too good to be true).
He felt fine for a few days after that. At least, he thought it was a few days. It could have been longer but he had no way of knowing.
Then one morning Desmond woke up and felt fucking awful.
His caretakers promptly noticed and looked horrified, like Desmond was dying or something, but weren’t they kind of overreacting? Kids got sick all the time, don't they? Fuck, he didn’t know. He didn’t care. He just wanted to sleep through whatever illness it was. He’d probably be fine? Not like it mattered.
People kept pulling back the covers to poke at him and feel his temperature. Unbidden, tears of frustration leaked out of Desmond’s eyes and made his pillowcase slightly damp.
A bleed of Ratonhnhaké:ton showed up at one point, crouched at the side of his bed to card steady fingers through Desmond’s hair. When he was able to sleep, he dreamed of snow covered cliffs and white ghosts.
The man with the long fingers was in the room when he next woke, accompanied by an old man that Desmond figured was a doctor. The doctor, looking at him with grim understanding, asked what Desmond’s name was.
“You do not need to know his name in order to treat him,” the man with the long fingers said, and the tone of voice reminded Desmond of Vidic for a few horrible, drawn out seconds.
…But then he was coughing again and the moment had passed.
One of the guards grabbed Desmond tightly under his armpits to hold him up, and wouldn’t let go no matter how much he squirmed.
(Please can they just leave him alone leave him to sleep to rot in bed please he was tired he was so fucking tired please--)
They poked at and prodded him and Desmond wanted to cry. A small part of him considered biting the doctor, but that required moving, and he didn’t have the energy.
Desmond wasn’t sure how long the doctor was there. He didn’t listen to what was said. When they let him go, he crumpled and hid under the covers.
(When he pulled the sheets over his head, he could almost pretend he was somewhere kinder.)
He was almost blissfully asleep, fully drifting off, when Ratonhnhaké:ton said, not with fear or urgency but insistent all the same, “Desmond.”
Desmond cracked open an eye and flinched backward when he saw someone leaning over him; the move made his head swim.
A moment passed. No one touched him or ripped the blanket away.
How did they get there so quietly? He thought, before his brain sorted itself out and he realized it was Altaïr, quietly murmuring words meant to soothe.
But he wasn’t…. Something wasn’t right.
Altaïr wasn’t wearing his master assassin’s uniform. That was what Desmond always saw him wearing. No, these new clothes were still white, worn from use and slightly dusty, but with different details and darker armor, along with two hidden blades. The sharp cut of the white hood was the same, and Desmond squinted at it, and at the faded red sash.
The Bleed had Altaïr’s face, but… just to make sure it wasn’t someone else he was somehow mistaking for his ancestor (weirder things had happened), Desmond flicked on his Eagle Vision. Just for a few seconds.
Blue, blue, blue, blue.
“My name is Altaïr,” Altaïr quietly introduced himself, as if Desmond somehow didn’t know. “What’s your name?”
Why was he asking? His hallucinations had never needed to ask before.
“...Desmond,” he said, followed by a tiny, “Why?”
“I want to take you somewhere safe, Desmond,” Altaïr replied, voice still incredibly balanced and soft. “Is that alright? Will you come with me?”
But why was he asking? Even if he wasn’t a hallucination, people rarely asked for Desmond’s permission before doing something to him.
Desmond frowned. The first rule (one of the first rules? Fuck it, he couldn’t remember) Lucy had told him about Dealing (with a capital D) with the Bleeding Effect was that Desmond couldn’t willingly give into it. Agreeing to go with Altaïr would definitely go against that rule.
But also, Lucy probably hadn’t told him the rule under the conditions that he would save the world (burning and burning and burning) and die (don’t think about that part) and then wake up in a different location, a lot smaller and more vulnerable than before.
Also, since when did Altaïr speak Italian?
“You can trust him,” Ratonhnhaké:ton said from where he lingered behind Altaïr. Oh, great. Now his hallucinations were ganging up on him.
But… Yeah, something about him just trusted Altaïr. It might have been his memories of Maria or Sef talking. It also probably wasn’t actually Altaïr, standing before him. His mind was most likely just filling in those blanks. But his Eagle Vision didn’t lie (don’t think about Lucy, Desmond), and it said Desmond was safe with whoever this was.
Right, okay. Fine.
“Okay,” Desmond said, and it came out sounding more fragile than he thought possible, which might have been embarrassing, except--
Altaïr gently scooped him up, blanket and all, and it was the safest Desmond had felt in a long, long time, securely held against the Assassin’s chest like that. On instinct, Desmond fisted his hand in the excess fabric of Altaïr’s cloak, and promptly fell into a deep sleep.
Footnotes
1. Eleni was teaching Desmond Cypriot Greek. Return to Text