The truck bumps and jostles everyone inside it as Lucy drives down an unpaved road in the dead of night, the path old and forgotten, generally riddled with potholes and long ago overgrown by the local flora. It is an unpleasant but necessary route - surprisingly, Assassins and their ex-Abstergo prisoners on the run don't exactly have their choice of modern easy-access highways.
In the cab, Shaun utters a curse as his laptop goes skittering off his lap and onto the floor, its descent halting with an ominous crash as it disappears underneath the seat. Rebecca screeches like a hysterical, over-protective mother hen and hovers around Baby, somehow managing the Herculean feat of keeping her balance in the back of the erratically moving vehicle. The only one who remains completely unaffected is Desmond - his place has always been to lay immobile in the Animus 2.0, so he's left blissfully unaware of the real-time world outside his ancestor's memories.
The current sequence is of the attack on Monteriggioni, where Ezio is skillfully taking down guards with such a single-minded efficiency that every strike of his sword is flawless and deadly, leaving him standing unscathed even though he'd been vastly outnumbered just moments before.
But there is no time to linger on this small victory in the midst of the war. The Borgias are nothing but ruthless.
Desmond feels the pang of terror and dread when Cesare points the gun at Mario, feels the blinding pain as a bullet pierces through Ezio's shoulder, feels when his ancestor tries to leave Monteriggioni but soon slips off the back of his horse, unconscious before he even hits the ground.
There is still the dull memory of an ache lingering in Desmond's shoulder when Rebecca pulls him out of the Animus, and after a bit of confusion over the abbreviation "P.O.E.", Lucy comes around to open the back of the truck, letting Desmond step out, eager to see their new safehouse.
He's not sure what he did expect, but it certainly wasn't this. No, no, not this; it's impossible. He (wait, not Desmond, Ezio-) was here just moments ago, looking one last time before he rode away from his destroyed home. It's dark out, but the moon shines just bright enough to outline the large Auditore mansion, its silhouette against the star-filled sky eerie and unnervingly familiar and wrong.
The world seems to come to a full stop and Desmond's mind reels, buzzing through a million thoughts in rapid succession. This can't be real, can it? Is he still in the Animus? Or is he hallucinating again? If he's lost touch so badly that he can't tell what is reality and what isn't, or if he's somehow stuck in the Animus and can't get out-
A noise comes from somewhere just to the left, and Desmond almost jumps out of his skin, abruptly snapping out of his reverie. But it's only Lucy stepping next to him, her pink lips quirked up in a smile.
"Amazing, isn't it?" she asks with a tilt of her head, and while Desmond thanks whatever gods are in existence that she didn't notice his little lapse, he realizes Lucy's just referring to the large building that nearly sent him into a fit. She glances over toward it with something like fondness, at the same time crossing her arms over her chest in an effort to stave off the midnight chill. The heater in the cab of the truck is defunct at best, something made obvious by the light blush dusting her cheeks and the tip of her nose.
"We're at the Auditore Villa?" Desmond asks stupidly, trying his best to collect his composure in a few short seconds. Unsurprisingly, he hears a snort that must be from Shaun, but Lucy just smiles at him in that kind way of hers.
"It's the only safehouse we have left in Italy," she explains, which doesn't even begin to make sense to Desmond, because wouldn't this be one of the first places the Templars would search for them?
Of course, Desmond isn't the leader of the group, so he's not in the place to be making any comments along those lines. Instead he looks at the villa, taking it in and knowing that yes, it is real, he is here now in the real world. "I'm surprised it's still around after all this time," he says after a moment, recalling that the last he'd seen of it, the entire city was in ruins, overridden with Borgia soldiers.
"Well, in the daylight, you'll see that it's not in very good condition," Lucy replies with a shrug, leather jacket squeaking slightly in protest at the movement. "The village itself has been rebuilt, but the Auditore mansion was left the same after Cesare's attack."
Rebuilt or not, it feels uncannily like a ghost town, Desmond thinks to himself, but doesn't respond with anything more than a simple, disappointed "Oh." Thankfully, Lucy doesn't seem to mind so much, choosing to keep quiet as well. In the brief, companionable silence, Desmond finds himself scrutinizing what little he can see of the dark village, and it's hard to believe that all those houses he's long since memorized are still around them, but empty and abandoned. If he tries hard enough, he fancies he can see them like they used to be, filled with life of centuries past, familiar voices calling out friendly greetings and warm welcomes.
The silence is broken as Rebecca calls them over then, and Lucy and Desmond go to help find shelter before dawn.
:i:
As it turns out, finding shelter is more difficult than anticipated, since Desmond's ancestors were apparently all paranoid bastards - the lengths they'd gone to in order to protect the Sanctuary are both impressive and baffling. In a way it even rivals all the tombs Ezio had explored with great difficulty, because at least they were obstacle courses designed for a single person.
Here, though, Desmond needs Lucy to assist him, and he feels grateful for the companionship until their light, friendly conversation begins to die out. Spectres brush by him and in hindsight, he thinks he shouldn't have reacted so obviously, but even if he tried he knows Lucy would see right through the act regardless of his efforts.
When she looks at him with concern in those gorgeous baby-blues of hers, rosy lips pulled down into a worried frown, Desmond knows before she even opens her mouth that she'll try to help, in the only way she can, by offering him well-meaning advice, consoling words. He isn't surprised when she tells him to compartmentalize, to focus on the present, not get lost in the memories of ghosts that have been dead for hundreds of years.
He wishes, more than anything, that he could tell her exactly how impossible it is to 'compartmentalize', how his mind isn't simply a disorganized shelf she can put back in order with a bit of pep talk and a flick of her magic wand, whoop-de-doo.
It is far, far more complicated than that, but at the same time the idea of even beginning to explain it in a way that anyone could possibly understand strikes Desmond as simply absurd.
Rather than going there, he decides to bring it up later, when they aren't on the run in the middle of the night. He's able to subtly change the subject, and Desmond could not be more grateful for this confusing maze leading to the Sanctuary, because it ensures through the simple means of distraction that the conversation won't lead back to the inevitable downsides of the bleeding effect, at least not for a little while.
:i:
This is where it ultimately starts to spiral uncontrollably downward.
Contrary to what is expected, it isn't sudden or shocking, or world-changing and devastating.
It is a slow trickle, easily overlooked, not the large crashing wave they're all predicting. Such a thing could have been foreseen, easily avoided.
But while everyone is so distracted, looking for the wrong signs, the trickle continues to drip steadily, building up and pooling deep enough to drown in, and when Desmond finally realizes he's sinking it is far too late to pull himself out.
a/n: Sooo I wrote this for the kinkmeme about... two months ago? Almost three. Unfortunately a lot of shit hit the fan in my life after I posted this part, so in the midst of everything I literally forgot to write the rest. I can't apologize enough for just dropping it without any warning. D: Hopefully uploading it here will help remind me to finish it.
This'll most likely have a few more chapters to it, and I've got them all planned out, I just need to actually sit on my ass and write.