Part 1: Desmond

Through me you enter into the city of woes
Through me you enter into eternal pain,
Through me you enter the population of loss.
Abandon all hope, you who enter here.

(Inferno, Canto III)

Desmond heard screaming; loud and piercing, almost like a shriek, as if someone was being tortured, or was forced to see their beloved being torn apart right before their flooded eyes. He tried to move, but he felt like a dead weight, as if his limbs were chained together or cut off. He tried to see, but there was only darkness, insidious and leering, like an open, infectious wound, that greeted his eyes. And his voice…where had it gone?

He felt a pressure on his cheek, or what he thought to be his cheek. It was firm, but not cruel. He recognized fingertips, calloused and wide, Desmond guessed they probably belonged to a man; Shaun. Desmond was relieved that it was Shaun's name that came to his mind, rather than Malik or Leonardo. He failed to realize why he would be worried about that fact, though. Something felt terribly wrong, and Desmond's memories were oddly lacking.

"Desmond. Desmond, wake up."

The British accent, firm and authoritative, was almost soothing to his ears. His mind was slow to process the command, though. What did Shaun mean, 'wake up'? He was not sleeping, was he? This darkness that stretched out before him, did it mean…should he just…

Tentatively, Desmond's eyes fluttered open, only to be assaulted by the light from a projector Shaun had turned on. His head throbbed painfully, and he squeezed his eyes shut, the darkness behind his lids now seemed more comforting than it did moments ago. Shaun shook him by his shoulder, almost impatiently, and Desmond let out an involuntary groan of protest.

"Come on, Miles. Don't go back to sleep, now. Wake up."

There was a force behind Shaun's words that made Desmond's fragmented mind obey. This time, he was prepared for the assaulting light, and it hurt his eyes less. He focused his sight on Shaun, who looked like he had just gotten out of the bed, his hair unkempt and the white, long-sleeved shirt he was wearing was rumpled and had two buttons undone.

"What's wrong, Shaun?" his voice was rough, alien to his ears, and it hurt speaking, as if something big had been shoved down his throat. He grimaced at the picture his mind provided him with, and shook his head. Now was not the time for idle thoughts.

"What's wrong? You bloody wanker woke me up with your screaming. Now get up."

Shaun sounded irritated, but Desmond liked to think he also heard a tone of worry in his voice. Slowly, he disentangled himself from the sheets, and sat up. The room swam before his eyes for a few seconds, the walls turned into liquid and threatened to swallow him whole. He grabbed his head into his hands, applying pressure and willing the dizziness away. There was a ticking pain at the back of his skull, as if his conscious was trying so hard to grasp something deep inside his unconscious and drag it up to the surface, and the effort was excruciating. What was so important that he could not remember? What had he been dreaming of? Why had he been screaming?

"Shaun, what happened?"

Shaun adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and looked down at him with a frown that like a permanent signature was still inking his features.

"Well, how should I know, Miles? I'm not in your bloody head, now am I?"

Desmond shook his head, somehow still disappointed by Shaun's typical indifferent attitude towards anything that was related to him, and yet knowing he should not really care because Shaun did not matter.

But then, Shaun did something unexpected. He touched him. He willingly touched him, and Desmond looked up in surprise. The hand was resting heavily on his shoulder, in a rare demonstration of support, (or was he reading too much into it?) and Desmond wondered if it would be wise to trust it.

"It was most probably some weird dream caused by Mulholland Drive you watched last night. Now get up and clear your head before going back to bed. We have a long day today, and I can't have you moping about the place because you were too scared to go back to sleep."

Desmond felt indignation crawl up his groggy conscious at the suggestion of those words. He swept Shaun's hand away, and couldn't help but notice how Shaun clenched it as if regretting ever giving him a supporting hand, ambiguous, trivial, and unasked for as it was.

"I don't even remember what I was dreaming about." He whined, and earned himself a smirk from the historian, as the hand unclenched, and the tension dissolved into the air for the moment.

"Good. Now get up and do something about your throat. You sound funny."

Desmond nodded, and tried for the last time to recollect his dream. He remembered darkness, paralysis, and screaming, but those might as well have been what he was experiencing while half-awake.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he watched Shaun leave. Suddenly, he was engulfed with a kind of tender sadness that reeked of loneliness and despair. Desmond cradled his head in his hands, and took several deep breaths. He had been always living a lonely life, breaking ties with his family when he was barely sixteen, and unable to form new relationships out of the fear of getting discovered. Always on the run, always on his own, he was not a man to feel the need to rely on others. Then why that spot on his shoulder, where Shaun's hand had been resting a moment ago, still tingled and buzzed as if a new pulse had been revived in there? Why was Desmond missing the warmth as intensely as one missed a dead beloved? Why had he suddenly felt the urge to shout after Shaun, to make him halt and turn around, to ask him to stay? Why had he thought that Shaun, out of all the people he could have chosen to ask for emotional support, would be able or even willing to cure his solitary heart?

Why had he even thought that he needed to be cured?

Desmond was fine, and nothing in the world could prove him otherwise. He would not turn out like Subject 16 simply because he was not Subject 16; he would not take himself out of the picture, because the picture was nothing but him, a blown-up photograph of all his responsibilities and duties, all his strengths and weaknesses, and if he were to fall apart, so would the whole picture, the whole assassin's community, the whole world.

You had to be fine long enough for the picture to hold together until it was completed, and Desmond was fine. Period.