They kept the children in safety, on The Farm. There would be time enough when they grew older and more mature to train them. So Desmond and the other children grew up in the middle of nowhere, happy as can be. What the heck did they know but what they were told?
They were free to roam within the large range of land that was theirs, when they weren't having lessons or doing chores. There were trees to climb and ponds to swim. They grew most of their own vegetables and tended to livestock for meat, and traded for whatever else was needed - fabric for making clothes, sugar, flour, books. They were taught about peace and free will and how the enemy would take both from them if they could. Secrecy was safety.
Desmond never saw a cell phone, let alone a computer or television, until he was twelve. Nothing with a computer chip was allowed at The Farm. Nothing that might be used to attract attention from the outside world. He knew all about the secret war against the Templars. The children of the Assassins did not fear bogeymen, but Templars lurked in the dark, just waiting for them to disobey the elders or run away from the safety of The Farm.
But one of the men that would come with supplies once a week - the children were supposed to stay away from the gate when somebody came, but Desmond was curious and never very good at blindly obeying - one of the men had a cell phone. It rang in his pocket like the old land line in his father's office, but there were no wires at all! It was obvious, the way he spoke into it, what it was, though. Amazing.
Desmond began to wonder what else existed in the outside world.
They heard stories about the world, of course. How everywhere there was danger, how they needed to constantly be on guard. Desmond read history books for his lessons that spoke of wars and battles, and learned the stories behind the books, that only assassins knew. Almost every terrible war or dictator was related to the Templars somehow.
Asking too many questions about the outside world *now* though, only ever receive the same answers in different words. Pushing the topic would lead to lectures and punishments. It was for his own good, for his own safety, they said. It was better to stay safe.
Nobody attacked. Everything stayed the same. The same place that had felt so large when he was younger began to feel smaller every year, every month, every week... every day. They learned to move silently, to take things from each other without the other noticing.
It was something of a game among the older children. There was one red ribbon that got taken and passed around amongst them continuously. There were choices. Take it in a fight and brag over it when you had it and let everyone know... and lose it shortly in another fight, or from having it stolen. Take it stealthily and without notice, and it would take longer. They would need to figure out who had it, first, which was just as difficult as actually getting it, sometimes. Once, Desmond had it a full week. He never knew who took it from him, never said a word about it, but he earned a small nod of approval that night from his father, though it was accompanied with a small smirk. At the same time he felt pride and disappointment. Fooling everybody and pretending to keep looking with the others, debating who might have it this time, had been fun.
A secret that had been his and his alone. Learning his father had likely been aware of him the entire time was disappointing, and Desmond suspected that he may have even tipped off one of the others.
They really shouldn't have been surprised when one of the kids started stealing newspapers. These, they all shared and swore themselves to secrecy. Everyone was curious about the outside world and swore not to tell. It took them a few weeks to figure out who it had been. The adults finally found the stash and though nobody would say who had started it, they were all equally guilty.
That was the first night Desmond ever yelled back at his father. He couldn't understand why they were not allowed to know about the outside world, why they couldn't leave. His father's position was that they were told what they needed to know, and there would be time enough for them to start worrying about the evils of the 'real world'.
But there wasn't just stories of terrible things in the newspapers. They also talked about festivals and people doing great things for one another, and books, and movies, and music... Desmond found he wanted to see these things for himself. He'd never quite realized how much world there *was*, out there.
The adult Assassins kept such things under a more strict watch, from then on, but the damage was done. They even agreed to let them read the newspaper sometimes. It did not escape Desmond's notice that it was combed through by the adults, first, and one of them was always nearby when it was given to them.
The other children seemed to shrug and move on, accept the explanations, and lose interest. Even the ringleader of the initial operation lost interest once they were *allowed* to read the newspaper. To them it had been more about seeing how long they could get one up on the adults.
Desmond, though, had painted himself a picture of the outside world that was different from the danger-frought place he was told about. Other children walked the streets of cities, and went to movies, and saw the ocean. Other children left their parents for weeks and months at a time in the summer to go to camps. Other children were at least allowed off their parent's property. Desmond had never left the compound.
Desmond could feel himself choking. He began to spend less and less time with the others, and roamed their grounds or sat in a tree and brooded.
He didn't see why he couldn't go with his father some time, when the man left The Farm to trade goods or whatever. Challenging the status quo was stupid and although Desmond knew that the more he pushed the harder his father was against it, he couldn't stop himself. There was a whole world out there that he wasn't allowed to see. He could run from one end of the Farm to another, and it wasn't enough anymore.
It was after yet another yelling match that Desmond found himself at the border, at the fence that marked the perimeter, that marked safety. He couldn't see much difference between the inside and the outside of the fence. Desmond stuck an arm over the rail. Nobody swooped down on him from above. No Templars appeared.
That day he did not cross the fence.
The next day, he did. He didn't know where he was going, he just went. Every step that first time seemed fraught with danger. From Templars, from getting caught by his father, from the thousand dangers he knew lurked behind every tree, every stone. He went a small ways out into the forest, to prove he could, because taking two steps and going back, even though there was nobody to see, was too little to satisfy his pride. When he returned, out of breath, flushed, and half panicked, nobody had even noticed him missing.
Another year passed, and still nothing happened at the Farm. He talked to the same people and ate the same food and recited the same lessons. Desmond ran and jumped and did chores as he was expected.
But he had a secret.
He never stopped his peeking at the newspapers when he had a chance, but that was minor compared to what came after. Gradually, he roamed further and further. Nobody had attacked him. He found the road, and followed it.
There was another farm.
Desmond would watch the people on the other farm whenever he could get away. They didn't look like Templars. They looked a lot like the people he knew. But they would leave and return and nothing would happen. He listened to their conversations, sometimes, from underneath the window. Nobody talked about unseen dangers or mysterious enemies. They talked about homework and crops and the neighbours.
He would sneak back into his bed... get caught half the time, but only being out after curfew, never caught Outside.
And he was never caught, never attacked by Templars. Life went on at the Farm as it always did, and Desmond roamed even further. He hitchhiked his way into town after watching a man on the side of the road do the same. There were so many people around. Flocks of teenagers his own age moved through the streets or stood in a huddle on corners. Desmond didn't know what to say to them, and just wandered, watching and listening.
He must have watched one group of boys a bit too closely, though. One of the boys asked what the fuck he wanted, and Desmond, caught, had spluttered out the truth. He wanted to know why they were smoking, wasn't it supposed to be unhealthy? They'd burst out laughing, and one had pointed out his home made clothes. They realized he'd escaped from the 'hippy farm' up the way. Desmond's reaction - whipping around looking for anybody listening or behind him to grab him, seemed to answer that question.
To his surprise, again, nothing happened. He laughed nervously. They gave him a cigarette and showed him how to smoke it. His coughing and spluttering sent them cracking up again, and he realized they were just messing with him. Desmond stomped the end of the cigarette on the ground as he'd seen them do, and made to leave. The mood changed, but the one of them who'd grabbed his arm to stop him leaving certainly regretted it.
Desmond ran the whole way home. He barely made it back before morning call, and coudn't make it back into the house. He found a tree and climbed up it and took a nap. When they found him asleep midmorning, he made it through the lecture knowing it would be far, far worse if they ever suspected what he'd really done that night.
When he was older, he would be trained, and allowed out, he had been told, again and again. This restriction was to protect them. When Desmond was young, he would be so jealous of the teenagers, who, at seventeen, we allowed to leave for training. He never really worried that nobody ever came back. The Farm was for children.
Now, Desmond was sixteen, almost there, and wondered if it wouldn't just be more of the same. They would trade The Farm for a different cage, but a cage it would still be. And if 'allowed' to move about in their training, wouldn't they be monitored much more closely? He doubted he would get away with his evening wandering.
Over the next few months he made it to the town a few more times. Desmond learned how to fit in a bit better, had 'acquired' a hoodie from a department store to wear over his homemade shirt. He kept it in a tree halfway to the road from the place he always crossed The Farm's border. Nobody tended to notice the pants or shoes.
He snuck into movies and ate his first Big Mac. He flirted with girls. There was another town down the way he claimed to be from, so when he appeared every few weeks claiming to have caught the bus because he was 'bored' nobody questioned him. He avoided the boys from before, though they didn't seem to recognize him.
So Desmond lived two lives. But he knew it wouldn't last. When he turned seventeen he'd be sent to be trained as an Assassin, and that would be the end of watching the people on the other farm, or sneaking out and bumming a ride to town.
His seventeenth birthday was practically upon him. He had spent weeks debating it. He had a plan ready and waiting for the decision. Did he stay and become an Assassin and never know the freedom they would want him to fight for, or did he leave, and have a whole imperfect world to discover?
In the end, the choice was almost made for him.
It was the week before his birthday, and he knew it would be his last chance to escape. He tried to act excited. It wasn't hard. His nervousness that his plan would be discovered, even if he didn't go through with it, manifested in nervous energy, which was attributed to the prospect of leaving for training only. He was so proud, his father told him when the formal announcement was made, and he was told that he would make a fine Assassin.
The approval from his father should have filled him with pride. He almost never heard a kind word from the man. Desmond had fought a bit less with the man once he'd started sneaking out, but they still seemed to do nothing but yell at each other, when they spoke at all. The Farm raised children as a community, especially since the parents of many were busy with the business or just gone, and though Desmond strived for approval even as he flaunted the authority, he rarely received it from the man. Mostly he received glares and lectures.
But Desmond felt only an emptiness in his gut at the words, and he realized something, once and for all: he did not want to be an Assassin, and he never really had.
He wanted what the people at the other farm had, what the kids in the town had. Desmond didn't want to fight a war against an unseen enemy for freedom, he wanted to be free.
So he smiled, and made a joke, and speculated with the other older kids what it would be like, and that night double checked the small bundle of belongings he planned to take with him. The next day he accepted congratulations and advice from the others, and when one of the younger girls passed by and he caught a glimpse of a red ribbon in her pocket he smiled to himself.
That night was a Tuesday, and the man from the other farm would load his truck, ready to drive into town the next morning. The Assassins got supplies on Mondays, so nobody should be in the town when he got there. Desmond waited, pretending to sleep, until the second bed check had passed, and slipped out. His hiding place under the tarp of the truck was a bit uncomfortable and warm, once the sun came out, and it seemed like forever before the truck stopped moving.
The farmer found a red ribbon tied around a sack of potatoes, and wondered where it had come from.
Shortly later, half a dozen patrons of the bus terminal lost their tickets at around about the same time. They were all going different directions.
They had been drilled in what to do if the compound was attacked, and they had to run and survive in the outside world. How move without being detected. Safety and secrecy would be in anonymity, and that was found in groups of people. Mimic the group. The loner draws attention. Learn to appear as but one of the many.
'Blending' was what Paola had called it, centuries before when teaching Ezio, and would call it again, in several years, through memory and technology. There was at least one lesson Desmond had learned well before ever hearing of an Animus.
He survived. He had been taught how to reestablish contact with the Assassins, just in case, and how to stay undetected in the meantime. Desmond knew exactly what to avoid, in other words, to keep from being found by either his father's enemies OR the Assassins themselves.
Almost everything was left behind. His name, his clothes as soon as he found replacements, his lessons. The face of a boy who looked similar to him circulated the news stories and he took to wearing his hood up where he noticed cameras. Other boys his age wore baggy clothes, and baseball hats and hoodies. He fit right in. Ask to bum a smoke, make a joke here and there, and listen to their conversation. Ask if they've seen whatever movie if the conversation hits a lull. He lost his Farm accent quickly.
Desmond continued the education he'd barely started. He learned about video games and movies and the ocean. He learned about television shows and the internet. He learned about gangs the hard way, overconfident he could handle himself, and was left with a permanent reminder on his face and the knowledge he'd been lucky to get away with just that. He moved to another town, and got a job waiting tables. Tips earned him more money than pickpocketing, and turned out to be far less dangerous.
When he was eighteen he could pass well enough as twenty one, especially since he now had a plastic card with his face but another name on it that said he was. Bartending was even better. Small bars were more easily convinced to pay him in cash and less interested in where he came from, and he would still get good tips. He was good at listening, and he was good at blending into a crowd. Whether it was a busy weekend night or a slow evening, he was approachable but forgettable.
He would go with coworkers when they invited him to hang out, enjoyed some flings with girls he let pick him up at the bar. These were things to be enjoyed as they came. He gave vague but truthful answers about his past when pressed, but volunteered nothing that hadn't happened after arriving in whatever town he was in at the moment.
The longer the time passed, the less Desmond believed his own story. There were stories about hippy communes in the middle of nowhere that matched up disturbingly similar to his own. He could never completely relax, kept using cash and avoiding anything that would put him on the grid, but he convinced himself it was more out of habit than anything else.
He hitched a ride with a girl on a motorcycle one summer and ended up going cross country with her. He loved the speed of the bike, the feel of the wind in his face, the absolute sense of freedom it gave him.
When they finally parted ways, he couldn't forget the experience. The next few months were spent scrimping and saving. Desmond had never really owned anything before, had always spent his money as it came, keeping just enough for rent or a week or so into the future. They needed a fingerprint. He'd never given one before, so there would be nothing to compare it to. The DMV had a fake name, and no record on the prints to disprove it. Desmond had the wind on wheels.
From then on he didn't need to hitch or steal bus passes anymore. He didn't like to pay for transportation, even in cash. The ticket handler might remember him, where he went. It was better to make a clean break. He used different name for his motorcycle than the one he went by, which changed from town to town. Identity is a flexible thing. Desmond saw new places and met new people, and found a new place whenever he got bored or felt confined. Nobody told him what to do or how to think. The Assassins were almost forgotten.
Until he went to sleep in his own bed one night, had the most fucked up dream ever, and then woke up strapped to a machine looking up at people who knew his name. It hadn't been a dream, and his past had finally caught up to him.