This is my first fic – please be gentle with it. It's pretty much het fanservice for all those who think Desmond is hot.
Desmond is UbiSoft property, not mine, blah blah blah. Onwards to the fic.
"Only she remains to be found. Awaken the sixth. Go. ALONE!"
He was alone now. Desmond Miles, utterly and terribly alone. Lucy, the one constant in his life after this all began, wasn't there. She was alive – comatose, but alive. Others in the Brotherhood were taking care of her for the time being. Her absence still left an empty seat in the Sanctuary, and an empty feeling in him. He stirred the yogurt sitting in front of him – her yogurt. Might as well eat it before it goes bad, or before Shaun or Rebecca got to it.
Shaun and Rebecca were at their respective desks. After the initial shock of the events beneath the Coliseum wore off, the remaining three Assassins in their little unit immediately began to try and find meaning in Juno's words. They thought that perhaps this "sixth" might have been another one of the Ones Who Came Before, perhaps a helpful one, one who would aid their cause. Desmond and Rebecca were the first to find the meaning, sealed away within some of the hacked files left behind in the Animus memory core by Subject Sixteen.
There had been six "meetings," so to speak, of the Ones Who Came Before and humanity, in a different age, that had resulted in children. Their hybrid bloodlines gradually met and intertwined, five of the six combining – producing Altair Ibn La-Ahad and his descendants. The blood of the ancient ones ran strong in the family, somehow never diluting. Yet, there was still a sixth bloodline which had never intertwined with the others.
Shaun persisted in his historical research, despite Rebecca's insistence that it would be of no help in finding "the sixth." He studied the other five bloodlines, reading how they were inexplicably attracted to one another in love. Perhaps it was the pull of their alien genetics that brought them back together, or perhaps it was just happenstance and stereotypical love at first sight. Then, he began to notice a pattern of love and loss with the men of Altair's line – Adha, the first beloved of Altair, who had died before he could find her again. Cristina Vespucci, longtime beloved of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, married off to another at the insistence of her father, only to die in Ezio's arms wishing for a second chance. The sad theme seemed to repeat itself over again every few generations – incredible, lasting love at first sight, destroyed by unfortunate circumstances. The men, of course, always found another to love and wed. But what of these women?
He started to connect the dots. The women were all related – distant, yes, but all blood relatives. At Shaun's insistence, Rebecca and Desmond began trawling for genealogy information, hoping to find a woman in this bloodline about Desmond's age. They had all been becoming more and more frustrated lately, as branch after branch seemed to dead-end in a dull series of cat-owning spinsters in the 20th century.
Rebecca looked back towards the small kitchen area, if you could call it that, where Desmond was idly licking some yogurt off a pink plastic soon. Heh, of course that bastard would eat Lucy's yogurt before she could. She turned back to her monitor, to see if the search on the Dalya branch of the Ones' other descendants was proving fruitful. No, that pair had died in 2004 … wait … "leaving behind their daughter, Fiorella." A quick search of a nearby newspaper indicated that this Fiorella Dalya was at least eighteen at the time. "Shaun! Come look at this!"
Shaun walked over, and Desmond too, out of curiosity. Shaun edged very close to Rebecca, his fingers flying over the keyboard as he revealed all the information on Fiorella Dalya he could find. She was 26, just a bit older than Desmond, living in rural Louisiana, working as a secretary at a small oil and gas firm. "Start printing that. I'm going to find her," said Desmond as he began to roll up his sleeping bag. He gathered the documents as they rolled off the printer.
"Wait. You might want to take a good look at some of this." Shaun was back at his own computer, digging even deeper. "She attended a Catholic high school near New Orleans."
"So? Are you saying she's a nun in disguise? Or a Templar?"
"No, Desmond, it shows that she lived in or near New Orleans around 2005. Yes – here's her name on a registry of evacuees in Shreveport that August. I wonder ..."
"Wonder what?"
"Mmm, yes. You'll have to be very careful with her, Desmond. There are prescription records for three different kinds of antidepressants. Medical records indicate depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder ..."
"So? I just have to be careful not to set her off, right?"
Shaun sighed. "I don't know. She's not crazy like Sixteen, clearly not even crazy enough to be institutionalized. But she's not a trained assassin like we are. I don't know how she's going to handle you showing up at her door and sweeping her off to Italy. I'm not even sure she'll be able to handle it."
Desmond was frustrated. They'd finally found this thing, this girl, that he was supposed to chase after, maybe even knock up if the higher-ups of the Brotherhood deemed it so – and she was crazy? Great. "Hey Des!" Rebecca's cheery voice interrupted his thoughts. "Wanna see what she looks like?" He wandered back over to her terminal, where a picture of several people in caps and gowns was prominently displayed. "That's her, on the left of the Dean. She just finished college. Pretty, isn't she?" He had to agree – she looked like a flower in full bloom. Fiorella, such a fitting name.
He turned to gather his things again. "Can you crop that and print it out on photo paper for me? Wallet size?"