Instead of having a DLC, we should've just had the crap explained to us in the game.
Disclaimer: Why state the obvious?
SPOILERS FOR THE DLC.
The feeling of his mind being thrown back into his head felt like the persistent migraines Desmond found himself getting too use to, it was a disorientating, sharp, kind of pain. The still unfamiliar surroundings and the uncomfortably dry and crumbly patch of dirt he always seemed to wake up on didn't make it much better, either.
Desmond blinked a few times as his senses slowly left Ezio's time and came back to him. The color seemed dull, smell was non-existent, and the dirt under his hands felt abnormally dry.
"Do you regret anything, Desmond?" Subject 16 implored (without so much is a 'Hey Desmond! How's it goin'?' he noticed) as he walked in circles around were he knew Desmond's body would materialize at.
The question, much like everything these days, took a minute to register with Desmond. After a small shake of his head, he replied, "We all regret some things, right?"
Desmond didn't meet his eyes; instead he leaned his head on the ground to look up at the sky that wasn't really a sky. He picked himself up on the non-ground ground as Sixteen- Clay, he reminded himself; the man's name is Clay- chided him, "Yes, yes, yes- but that's not what I'm looking for. What's your biggest regret?" he paused, "Running away? Leaving your parents behind? Finding some crappy job to give you the illusion of productiveness?" He counted off each one with his fingers.
Subject Sixteen's- Clay, he told himself again- voice seemed to get more and more passionate, or if you wanted the slightly more accurate word, annoyed. To Desmond, it didn't seem terribly unlike a pot of tea that slowly whines loader and loader, however inane that comparison would be.
Desmond opened his mouth to muster up a reply, but Clay beat him to it.
"Being caught by Abstergo in the first place, maybe? How about calling your mom a crazy conspirator? Or-" he gave one short, airy, non-humorous laugh, "Or maybe you regret stabbing poor, poor Lucy," Desmond winced," the most. After all it is your latest fuck-up, so it'd make scene, anyway," his words made Desmond think of the way Vidic had talked to him while he was abducted, except with a tone more fit for a madman, and, quite frankly, it pissed Desmond off.
Desmond, in what he hoped to be a daunting voice, tried to growl, "You don't know anything." His voice cracked though.
He turned around to face the artificial ocean, in favor of his only company that seemed to make it his goal to piss him off, and pinched his nose while taking a few deep, unstable breaths. A lonely tear escaped his eye.
"Okay, maybe that went a little too fare," his voice said otherwise as he more so glared than looked at the artificial water.
It was Desmond's tern to give a bleak laugh, "You think?"
"Actually, not at all," Clay said with a casual shrug.
"So you don't think. I knew it, thanks for the confirmation. I knew somethin' about you seemed a little off in Italy," Desmond tried to joke, unsuccessfully.
The two of them looked out into the fake water, Clay with no emotion, or maybe just passiveness. It'd be easy to understand him having no interest in anything on that damned island after so long, no one found anything of any interest to look at on the back of their hand, and the same applied to Clay and the island. Desmond looked on with too much seriousness, his most potent feeling at the moment, right alongside self-pity. The latest fuck-up, Desmond couldn't have said it better himself. He should've given his parents more time to explain. What the hell was he thinking, running away-!
He couldn't help compare the fake water to the real ocean. The sea he remembered was a calming, lively, and shimmering shade of blue that made him feel slightly rejuvenated, unlike the palling affect this view was having on him, but maybe it was just him.
He, sadly, could clearly remember another blue that had a calming effect on him. Of course that was lost to him forever now; his hand destroyed that forever.
He heaved a sigh, "Lucy…" Desmond plopped himself down on the dry dirt so he could rest his head in his hands.
He felt alone, like a man lost in a desert, where the only thing he could see is sand in every direction, and the nearest sound coming from what might as well be a million miles away.
"She's not who you think she is." He stiffened. Those words rang a somewhat distant bell in the back of Desmond's mind.
He looked up at Clay more than slightly dazed, "You said something like that in your message to me," he nodded, "Well… care to explain?"
"There's not much to say, really. She, being Lucy, is- well was- not who you think she was. Plain and simple. Whether her warm personality was the perfect cover for her mission or her actual really her, well… I've got my own opinions on that, but something's telling me you're impression probably is slightly more… accurate. Think of it, the escape from Abstergo was too easy, right? And you'd work a lot better under less pressure… I talked to Juno through Ezio. Lucy was the cross darkening the horizon. It's why you were forced to kill her."
Desmond didn't say anything. If the two puzzle pieces that he refused to let click in his mind where confirming Clay's words-
He quit thinking. "No," he protested softly and repeatedly, his head gave a small shake for each time it left his mouth.
"Yes, Desmond. She told me it herself. But who knows what she would've done after you secured the apple… Would she have remained fateful to you because of the little crush two had on each other, or would she have went back to the Temp-"
By this point Desmond was back on his feet and headed toward the gate that facilitated his entrance into Ezio's memories. Clay's words had done nothing more than to piss him. Sixteen should've been able to guess the kind of tenuous state he was in after the last month of his life. He should've known better than to push too many buttons.
"Where do you think you're going Desmond?" he heard Clay wail behind him after he got a few yards away.
Subject Sixteen was faced away from him, and as he rose his arms overtop his head to the non-existent heavens, he yelled, "It's time for the big Revelation!"
He became considerably less animated and made his way over to Desmond. "We wouldn't want you falling into another coma when the truth eventually found its way to you after all the shit you had to do to get out of this one, no would we? Assuming you manage to get out at all. Ya know, if Lucy would've gotten me out of there instead of betraying the Order, you might not have been kidnapped at all, I might not only be alive in a computer program, and you wouldn't be in a coma. Looks like Lucy had he fair share of fuck-up's too, but at-"
As soon as Clay was in arm's length, Desmond snatched him by the collar and bent his arm back to hit the man, but as soon as he put actin to thought, Clay was gone.
"Missed me, missed me," Desmond did a three-sixty to find the smart ass sitting on a rock feet away from him, "Now you gotta-"
"Shut the hell up."
He ignored Sixteen's devilish grin and went toward the gate once again, but even as he passed the threshold he still heard the sordid words leave Clay's mouth, mocking him like the bully of the school would to with the kid with glasses.
"She was a Templar. You'll have to come to terms with it eventually."
(-)
Desmond appreciated the orange hue that fell over Constantinople at sunset. He had the perfect view from the top of the watch tower. It had the calming effect that the island's view lacked. He wasn't sure how long he'd spent there, or how much longer he planned to stay.
He could recall with remarkable clarity the day he ran away, the raw anger and determination that pulsed through his veins instead of blood. He should've known his meager attempt at resolving his problems wouldn't have solved anything. Sometimes you can't run away from the big decisions. He was begging to accept that idea.
He remembered each moment with Lucy with too much vividness. The memory of the very distinct moment when the light went out in her beautiful eye's as her warm blood gushed out on to his hand from the wound the he created- That memory almost caused physical pain. For the first time in his life, Desmond hoped there was an afterlife and whoever ruled over it took pity on Lucy's kind heart and bright soul.
He stretched a body and cracked joint's that weren't his own, they were too old to belong to him.
In a voice that wasn't his own either and very much Italian, he murmured, "I've made mistakes, my parent's mistreatment being the first," the Italian voice hesitated for a beat, "And picking up that damned apple being the latest."
He positioned himself to jump into a barrel of hay over a hundred feet below.
In Ezio's voice Desmond breathed, "I've messed up and I probably will again." He lined himself up with the small barrel below one last time. "But the easy part of my life is over. I'm an Assassin and there's nothing I can do about it."
With deadly accuracy, he leaped of the edge of the tower and, as always, landed right on target.
Meh.