A/N: Another AC fic, post-Brotherhood and a bit scary and gory, so be warned. Apparently, it is impossible for me to write a happy Assassin's Creed fanfic. |D

Inspired by the song "American Dream" by Silverstein. Fffff, can't you tell what my writing music is? xD

Enjoy and review! KTHNXBAI.

Duck. Parry. Dive. Block. Swing. Miss. Lunge. Feint. Stab.

The blade slipped in between his opponent's - victim's - ribs so easily it was almost poetic. It tore through arteries, released floodgates, and the man was doomed by the time he hit the floor. Desmond's shoes squeaked in the pool of blood as he turned on the next one. Within seconds, his blue Abstergo uniform was splattered with the blood gushing from what had been his eye.

Desmond merely twisted his lips into a grin and ran at the man running away in fear.

They had a right to fear. They had to pay for all the fear he had had. All the fear she had caused him. No choice. Not after everything. Not after he had been a slave to that machine for so long, never sleeping, never eating, seeing these things and living them but never doing. No action. And her, always getting in the way, always saying:

We're keeping you safe. Nothing's going to happen to you.

"Too late, Lucy," he spat as the blade cracked through skull and ripped through brain tissue. Whipping it out, he let the guard crumple to the ground.

He faintly remembered her, frozen, and slipping the blade through her with Juno's words still echoing in his ears, but the echoes no longer made him sad. Anger. Rage. After everything she had put him through, and everything she was going to put him through. He felt shattered and wrecked. Her tool. That was all he had been, something to use to stop the end of the world. And he didn't. Regret. Anything.

Two more barged in through the door, and his blade had soon pushed aside the top vertebrae of the first man's spine. The other he disarmed and pinned to the ground, slowly peeling thick layers of skin off him as he struggled.

Poetry.

He knew that in a former life, he would have seen the blood painting his hands, staining them, and tried to wash it off. He wouldn't have stopped until it was gone. But now? Now, with his dreams in the ground and his heart ash on the wind, with the cuts that wouldn't close and the wounds that wouldn't heal adorning his skin, he embraced it, let it seep into his skin, far beyond that.

Heh, Bleeding Effect? They had no idea.

"Desmond!"

The shout broke the bloodlust, and he looked up to see their horrified faces staring at him. They were armed, Rebecca and Shaun, their guns out and ready to shoot. Their guns trained on him.

He stood up, staring at them with that twisted smile. He stomped on the guard's face mercilessly, and the smile cracked further. "Well, hello there. Long time no see, eh? What have you been up to?" Their faces remained stony, brows furrowed in a cocktail of hatred and fear, so he took a step towards them.

He continued to speak with the cracks across his face and the apron of blood down his front. "Come on, now, surely you've had time to-"

"Not another step further!" Shaun. The whiny little Brit. His head snapped in his direction, the muddy irises sparking into furious amber.

"You can't tell me what to do! NOT ANYMORE!" he screamed, advancing towards him.

"Shaun!" Rebecca's voice was followed by a resounding bang and the splatter of flesh and blood and bone on the floor. And Desmond stood and staggered, wide eyes soft and brown as the hole in his back seeped onto the floor. Gasping, he fell in the sea, the red bleeding onto white as he stared up at the ceiling in shock. The hollow-point lay next to him.

And as the room and his thoughts began to blur and his breathing slowed, Desmond could almost hear her beckoning him down, and someone whispering:

This was not a test, this was all for real.