He's in an overwhelmingly familiar room he's never been in before, sitting at a grand golden table full of strangers that he knows very well. Melodic, alien music plays from somewhere he can't see, soft enough to not be distracting, loud enough to add a certain ambiance to the setting.

"I'm concerned about the humans," one of the men says.

"Humans?" a woman echoes. "Why would you be concerned for them?"

"Not for them," the man answers. "I'm worried about them. Have you noticed? There have been more and more incidents lately of humans acting out."

"They'll stop soon enough," a second man says. "A few adjustments to the network should be enough to get them under control again."

"Some of them have become violent," says the first man. "And—"

"And those particular humans have been put down," says the woman.

"There will be more," the second man snaps, and for a long moment the two of them glare across the table at each other. The second man, visibly exasperated, looks up across the table.

"What do you think, Aita?" he asks.

And before he can figure out how he's supposed to answer—

Elijah wakes up, panting for breath, feeling sick to his stomach and oddly displaced. He hauls himself out of bed and staggers, bent over at the waist, to the garbage can on the other side of the room. Once there, he can't hold it back any longer and vomits until nothing else comes up.

Then he eases himself to the ground, staring blankly at nothing, into the darkness of his room.

It's happening again. The dreams. They've been bothering him off and on for the last six months or so, but he hasn't had one in the last two weeks, and he'd started to hope (stupidly) that they were gone for good. And it's not just the dreams. It's the vomiting (not just when he wakes up, but for hours after), it's the feeling of not quite belonging in his own body.

When half an hour or so of thinking this over doesn't bring Elijah any new insight into how to stop it, he sighs and stands on slightly shaky legs before going about the business of cleaning out the garbage can, dragging the vomit filled garbage back out of his room, down the hall, and through the side door into the garage where the big trash can is waiting to be brought out on garbage day. His dad has no idea that this is happening. He doesn't know that Elijah's been sick, and he doesn't know that Elijah's been having vivid, recurring nightmares of becoming Juno's dead husband, Aita.

He knows Aita is the reason Sages like him exist at all. Juno's insane quest to preserve him in some form was the reason that shreds of his DNA had ended up in the human genome, ready to pop up in random people from time to time in people like Elijah. And he knows this because he is a Sage, and so there are things that he just… knows.

If only he knew why this was happening now.

He gives the garbage can a petulant kick before heading back to his room. The time on his alarm clock is a little past 5:30, way before he needs to be up for school, but he knows he won't be able to get back to sleep now. Instead, he pulls out his laptop and waits for google to load.

It's useless and Elijah already knows it's useless. The kind of information he's looking for isn't going to be something he can find on google. He's never going to be able to figure out why this is happening from the internet, but he's just… he's desperate. He's scared. He has no idea what's happening to him or why, but he knows it's bad.

Elijah slumps back in bed, back pressed against the wall, squinting into the unfriendly light of his laptop.

What's wrong with me? he types into the search bar, but of course there's no answer there, so he slams his laptop shut and stares through the darkness at the ceiling until his alarm goes off an hour later.

-/-

Layla never used to be a morning person. She used to be an avowed night owl, and slept in late almost every day to make up for the late night hours she spent in front of her computer or messing with something she should have known to leave alone. These days, however, she's practically up with the sun.

She's not sure exactly where the change came from. Maybe it's just a sign that she's maturing, learning to enjoy the early morning quiet. Her life is definitely a lot more peaceful now than it ever used to be, and Layla's a lot more at peace with herself, too.

"Khemu!" Bayek shouts, loudly enough that Layla can hear him through the wall. They don't actually share a place, mostly because Layla wants to give him and Khemu their space. Just… not so much space that she doesn't live anywhere near them. They're in the apartment next door, as a matter of fact. Layla sits in her tiny kitchen, listening to Bayek calling for Khemu to get up and get ready for school, and Khemu shouting back as he drags himself out of bed. Apart from the snatches of two thousand year old Egyptian, and the occasional noises from Senu, they sound just like any other family getting ready for just another ordinary day.

It won't be ordinary, of course. After Khemu catches the bus to school, Layla will meet up with Bayek and they'll talk over what century they want to visit today.

Ever since defeating Juno, just about five years ago now, she and Bayek had spent a good chunk of their time carefully combing through every time period they either knew or suspected that Juno had been in, making sure she hadn't left any nasty surprises behind. More often than not, she had, and so the past five years had been… well, an adventure.

It's a good life, and Layla wouldn't have wanted it any other way. She's still reflecting on this, scrolling through her phone just to see if anything interesting has happened on the internet overnight (it hasn't), when someone rings her doorbell.

"Yea?" Layla calls. She keeps her voice casual because honestly she's not that worried about someone knocking on her door, but she checks her hidden blade just to be sure. She's not taking any chances.

The knocker petulantly kicks at her door so Layla gets up, frowning, and goes to see who it is. She opens the door, and stares in total shock at the person on the other side. It's her, a slightly younger her, looking tired and worn and travel stained, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.

"What," the younger Layla says, raising her eyebrows at Layla's surprise. "You paid me a surprise visit once, remember? Just returning the favor. Are you going to invite me in?"

Sheer stubbornness keeps Layla from agreeing too quickly. "How did you find me?" she asks.

"You've been using all my backdoors into Abstergo's systems," the younger Layla points out, which is true. "I just traced them back to you."

Alright, so that had been sloppy of her. Layla doesn't admit that, though. "What are you here for?" she asks instead, crossing her arms as well. Then she realizes how similar they look, standing face to face, in almost the exact same position. She uncrosses her arms and makes an effort to look more casual.

"We need to talk," the younger Layla says. "About Aya of Alexandria."

Oh. Well, shit. Layla keeps her eyes carefully focused on her own face looking back at her, if only to keep from glancing over at the apartment next door, where she can still vaguely hear Bayek and Khemu. She's not exactly sure why she's getting a vaguely antagonistic vibe off this other Layla, but she is. Maybe it's just the sheer surprise of being surprised by herself in her own home. "Fine," she says, stepping back. "Come in then."

She shuts the door behind the younger Layla, and watches her studying the apartment. "Nice place," she says.

"Thanks," Layla says. They sit, by some unspoken agreement, across from each other at the table in Layla's kitchen. "So what exactly did you want to talk about?"

"I just got back from Egypt," the younger Layla says. "And… the animus. The Hidden Ones." She hunches over the table and looks suddenly vulnerable. "I really needed to talk to someone about it, and from what you said that one time we met—you made me think that you'd been through it too."

There's a pause, a long one, as Layla connects the dots. The date hits her first—somehow she's completely missed the fact that it's 2017. They've caught up to the year she left from to come to the past, and she's not really from the future anymore. She's just from another version of the present. Weird.

And then she thinks—well, things would have been very different for this other Layla. She only would have seen Aya's memories, because Bayek is walking around next door, alive. He's not a mummy.

"Okay," she says, because she's been sitting in silence for long enough. "What do you want to talk about?"

"What do I do now?" her younger self asks quietly. "How do I go back to my normal life like nothing ever happened? I want to… I don't know." She reaches with her hands, grasping at nothing. "I want to be there, I want to just… get in a plane, or something, and get out in Ancient Egypt. I care about things that happened there two thousand years ago. I want to help."

There's an agonized look in her eyes, something raw and hurt and oddly personal that doesn't quite fit. It doesn't match how Layla had ever felt about her own time in the animus, but it looks like it feels familiar, somehow. Layla frowns and leans forward, studying that expression, trying to match it to a time in her life when she would have worn it herself, and after a while, it clicks.

"Shit," she says, sitting back in her chair. "You're in love with her."

-/-

Her younger self didn't stick around long. She stayed for a little while, stumbling and stuttering half formed denials before lapsing into silence. Eventually, embarrassed, she'd given Layla the address of the motel where she's staying, and left.

Which means Layla's stuck trying to figure out what to do about all this. About the fact that her alternate past self is in love with the two thousand year dead wife of her best friend. The biggest problem is that it's going to hurt Bayek if—when, because Layla won't be able to keep this a secret for long—he finds out about this. Layla still knows he loves his wife, even after everything that happened between them, even after she finally cut ties between them completely and he left her to live in another century.

And it's not just anyone that's fallen in love with Bayek's dead wife, it's Layla. Ish. Sort of. Another Layla, but not one that's all that different from her, so that means she's capable of falling for Aya, doesn't it? The way things had worked out for her, she'd spent most of her time in the animus living Bayek's memories, and only one or two with Aya, and of course she's never had much interest in men, but what if things had been different, what if…

And Layla works with Bayek. He's her friend, they live next door and travel through time scraping traces of Juno off the bottom of history's metaphorical shoe. And she isn't in love with Aya at all but it doesn't matter now because apparently she could have been. If things had been different, if they'd worked out the way they did for the younger Layla…

And what about Khemu? Layla can't imagine how he's going to feel about all this. She knows Bayek and Khemu don't talk much about Aya, and Khemu doesn't have all the details about what had happened between his parents. It's not fair to him, either…

"Layla?" Bayek calls before letting himself into her apartment. "Are you ready yet?"

Layla looks up, startled out of her thoughts, and for a second she tries to see him as the younger Layla would have—he barely looks out of place at all in this time and this place anymore. Sure, there are still things that catch him off guard, there's still the odd turn of phrase that he can't quite wrap his tongue around, but no one looking at him would have guessed that he's lived most of his life in ancient Egypt. And Khemu, who after all had only lived eight years there, has acclimatized so well sometimes even he seems to forget where he's come from.

"Just thinking," Layla says. "Sorry."

"What about?" Bayek asks.

"Change," Layla says. She sighs and stands up.

"You're getting a little philosophical for a Tuesday, aren't you?" Bayek asks, and Layla shrugs in answer.

"When are we going today?" she asks, just to change the subject. "The usual?" There are two or three eras where Juno seems to have concentrated most of her efforts before she was resealed in the Temple, and that's where the two of them spend most of their days now.

"No, actually," Bayek says, and Layla's almost relieved when his expression turns serious. Seeing him like that, it's a little easier to connect him to the man she first met through the animus. "You haven't been checking your phone?"

"No." She reaches way over to the ledge where she'd left her phone, and sees a missed text from Berg. He'd sent it to her, Bayek, and Desmond, and that's unusual as it is. While the rest of them have mostly stayed together during the last five years, Berg's been off doing his own thing, popping up to help occasionally but never staying for long. The text itself is only two lines long—the word Emergency, and then an address nearby.

"If he's reaching out to us, it must be serious," Bayek says, and honestly that's hard to argue with. "Desmond's already on his way over."

"Great," Layla says, and means it. She takes thirty seconds to shove her feet into her boots and grab her bag. "Perfect. Let's go."

He stops her just outside, in the hallway on their way to the stairs. "Are you sure you're okay? You seem distracted."

"Let's just find out what Berg wants," Layla says. "Then I'll be fine."

He doesn't believe her. She knows he won't even before she gets the lie out. But he doesn't push, and really that's all she can ask for. They walk the rest of the way to the address Berg had sent them in silence.

-/-

"It's normal, Desmond."

He has to literally bite his tongue to keep from sighing out loud, because he knows his dad's going to have something to say about that if he does. After mentally counting backward from ten, he says, "Dad, no offense, but I ran away from home when I was sixteen and didn't talk to you or Mom for about ten years. When you say it's normal for Elijah to be skulking around and hiding things from me, it isn't 100% reassuring."

Nothing but static over Desmond's phone for a long minute. He's a little nervous that he's gone too far. He's gotten a lot closer to his dad lately, but there are still arguments and disagreements and he just really doesn't have the time for that right now. He's only a block or two away from where Berg's waiting with some mysterious emergency, and he'd just rather not have an argument at the moment.

"He's fourteen," his dad says at last. "Of course he's going to start to want to have more of his own space and his own secrets."

"Yea," Desmond says. "Sure. But with most fourteen year olds, their secrets aren't… other people's secrets too." Because most people didn't have a Sage for a son. Most people didn't have to live with the fact that their kids just knew things they weren't supposed to. Desmond doesn't usually mind, because Elijah's never given him a reason to mind up until now. It's just… the way he's been acting…

"Talk to him," his dad says. "I think that would have done a lot of good when you were growing up, if I'd done more of that with you."

Yea. It probably would have, actually. "I'll talk to him," Desmond says. "After school today, as long as Berg's emergency isn't too horrible."

"Right," his dad says, switching gears immediately. "And tell me how that goes, will you? It can't be good, Berg showing up again after all this time."

"I'll let you know if it's anything important," Desmond says. "But I'm almost there, so I'll talk to you later." He hangs up and shoves his phone into his back pocket, trying to stop worrying about his dad and Elijah for a few minutes as he arrives at the address Berg had sent him. The door is locked but when Desmond knocks, Berg opens it almost immediately.

"You're the first one here," Berg says, instead of starting with a hello.

"Bayek texted me earlier," Desmond says. "He has to round up Layla first. They should be here soon."

Berg nods and gestures for him to follow him into what turns out to be a rented storefront. One of the advantages of being with the Templars seemed to be always having an excessive amount of cash to throw around on missions. If Desmond or some other Assassin had killed this meeting, they'd be having it at the corner table of a Starbucks somewhere.

"So what's the emergency?" Desmond asks, settling into a folding chair that's been set up near the back of the shop. It looks like it might have been an office supply store up until recently—now it's just dusty and vaguely creepy.

"I'd rather hold off on explaining until Bayek and Layla get here," Berg says, and refuses to explain anything else until (finally) the other two arrive.

"Oh good," Desmond says. "We can stop sitting around in awkward silence now."

"Awkward?" Layla echoes.

"He wouldn't tell me anything until you guys got here," Desmond says, getting up to set out a couple more chairs from a stack leaning against the wall. "But I guess now we can find out what the emergency was." He turns to Berg, who is standing with his arms behind his back, not quite looking at them.

"Well," he says slowly, when they're all sitting and looking up at him. "There has been… a development."

"Something pretty bad, it sounds like," Layla says.

Berg gives a jerky nod. "Yes," he says. "Or at least, it's something that's going to make our lives fairly complicated." He takes a breath, and then pauses.

"Well?" Layla asks.

"There's one of Juno's people here," Berg says flatly. "One of the isu."

"Oh, God," Desmond mutters, burying his face in his hands. "Why? How? Did one of them get hold of an apple or something?"

"I don't know," Berg says. "The Templars have him. I don't know anything except that this is the real deal—I haven't been directly involved yet, but from the crosstalk I've overheard, this has everyone important shaken up pretty badly. There's no doubt whatsoever in my mind that there's another isu here."

Desmond leans back in his chair, face tipped up to the ceiling. "Well," he says. Because apparently their five year stretch of quiet is officially over. "Crap."

-/-

Phoooooo. (Deep breath) I tried so hard to plan this fic out before starting, and it just wasn't working at all? I have a few ideas for where this is going to go, but honestly I might just run around in circles for a while before writing myself into a hole. I apologize if that happens! I'll try not to let it get that far.

(Also, I acknowledge that I am the ACTUAL WORST at titles and summaries)