There are nights when Arno doesn't sleep well.

He has reason enough. It's been nearly a year since he witnessed the death of the man that raised him, and the father of the woman he loves. That would be enough to give anyone nightmares, and there are certainly days when Arno's nightmares are bloody and angry and full of memories he can't live with and can't get rid of. But those nights are still better than the ones with the true nightmares, the ones that leave him terrified and sitting up in bed, gasping for breath as the reality of the world comes crashing in around him.

Because there are times… between the nightmares and the waking world, when nothing seems exactly true. Reality itself becomes a paper thin façade, a lie he could reach out and tear if he tries. And that terrifies him, almost (but not quite) as much as the nightmares themselves.

He sees things, in his nightmares. Places, people… times that shouldn't exist yet, or have already passed. And while Arno knows there are people that would pay or do anything to see these places, he himself wants nothing to do with them. This is an unnecessary complication, and Arno needs no more of those in his life.

But he can't stop himself from having nightmares, and so Arno continues to see things in his dreams. Wars over and done, or yet to come. The first time it happens, Arno finds himself on a street he knows (but doesn't know), because this is a Paris like none he's ever seen before. It's brightly lit, untroubled by the revolution Arno is being trained to fight. But there's something, a darkness below the city that some part of Arno knows is for running trains through, even while he wonders what a train is.

(He finds that out soon enough, because he's almost run over by one and that's the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to him)

That's the first nightmare. For a while he just keeps having it, over and over again, until he's sick and tired of the way that same journey can scare him so much, even when he knows exactly how it will play out ahead of time. After all, it's not really the content that scares him. It's the way it makes him feel out of control and out of place in his own skin. And that part… it never changes.

The second nightmare is worse. Arno recognizes the atmosphere of war as soon as he slips into the nightmare, but it's like no war he's ever known. There are planes (terrifying and violent enough to make him miss the trains, and particularly their lack of guns), and a tower so tall he has to wonder what the point of building it had been. But he climbs it, again and again, every time he has this nightmare, straining to reach the very top.

It's like some part of him believes that reaching the top will let him escape, like there's something there that he desperately needs. Arno always wakes up before he gets to… whatever it is, but the intense feeling of need stays with him, even when he's awake. Those are the days he roams Paris (his Paris, not the strange Paris from his dreams), climbing everything in sight, as high as he can go. But it's never high enough, and when he reaches the top, he catches himself scanning the horizon for the familiar, hated silhouette of the tower he climbs in his dreams.

(It's not there, of course, it won't be built for years and years and years)

The third nightmare is different, and refreshing because at least it takes place in the past instead of the future. He recognizes where and when he is, as he charges through battlefields and dodges cannonballs fired centuries before his birth. It's a poor compensation, of course, for the ghostly whispers of half visible people in the city around him, or the pain and terror of waking up after, safe (?) in his own bed. But it's something, at least.

And then…

When Arno has gotten used to these three dreams cycling over and over again, a new one comes along and throws him for a loop. And he can tell immediately that this place is different. It feels as real as his own time, and when he looks out the window of the tiny room he's woken up in (and that's another strange thing, because he's never woken up in his nightmares before), the people on the street below are real. Solid. Strangely dressed, but people. There's no feeling that this is a dream, anymore, and Arno realizes with a start that it's not. He pinches himself, hard, and nothing happens.

He's awake. And in the future.

The first thing he does is look around. Orient himself. He's in a tiny bedroom, just big enough for a bed and a desk, the latter crammed with papers, so full they're falling onto the floor like carpet. A few books lie on a hastily constructed wooden shelf over the desk, and Arno absentmindedly reaches up and straightens one or two before they can fall. He reads their titles, but they are unfamiliar and mean nothing to him.

The bed behind him is raised off the floor, and Arno crouches down to see a haphazard system of boxes and bins holding clothes in a style he doesn't recognize. He straightens again, and frowns around at the room. The simple fact of the matter is that he has no idea how he'd come to be in this room, when this should be nothing but a dream. "This shouldn't-" and then he stops, taken aback by the sound of his own voice in his ears. Technically, it's not his own voice, and not recognizing it now is what shocks Arno more than anything else he's seen so far.

There are no mirrors in the small room, so Arno holds his hand up to his face, studying it carefully and not liking what's there. He feels a nose that's too large and a little more off center than it should be, a scar below one ear, a sudden lack of stubble- an unfamiliar face to match the unfamiliar voice. And there's more. His weapons are gone, along with his robes. Instead, Arno finds himself in a stiff pair of pants and a shirt that covers half his arms and hangs off a frame that's skinnier than he's used to, almost scrawny.

"This is… different," he says aloud. He doesn't usually talk to himself, but these are unusual circumstances and he wants to hear himself again, to double check that he hadn't imagined the change. But no- it's still there, and still just as unnerving to hear as it had been the first time. Arno shivers, wraps his arms around his chest, and walks again to the window in the wall.

He assumes he's still in Paris, but only because of the dreams he's had before. Those had all taken place in the city as well, although the passage of years has made the city almost unrecognizable in his dreams, and a completely foreign view now. Arno pulls the window open and rests his forearms on the sill. The sounds of the city wash over him, artificial noises that he can't name and doesn't like, voices that sound too fast and too busy, and a quiet, incessant beeping that Arno eventually realizes is coming from the room behind him.

It takes him a while to find the source of the beeping but eventually, once he's cleared most of the papers off the desk, Arno discovers a thin black box with the word 'HELIX' stamped across the top. A green light blinks near the bottom, and after a lengthy hesitation Arno jabs his finger over the light.

"Installation Complete" a feminine voice chirps behind him, and Arno jumps and swears- the voice is muffled, and there aren't that many places left to look. After only a few seconds he lifts up the bed's single pillow and finds something black and metallic underneath. It looks like it's about the size of his head, so Arno sits down, cross legged, on the bed. And he pulls it over his head.

This is how he learns about the Helix project, about Abstergo, about the hundreds (thousands? more?) of people reliving history through the eyes of the dead. It's how he meets Bishop and Deacon, and how he finally gets connected to his own memories. For most of the first day, he can't do anything but go along with it. There's no point in doing anything else, not when these memories are more familiar than anything else he's seen since waking up (or falling asleep, if somehow this is still just a nightmare).

Except that at some point, he starts seeing memories that he doesn't have yet, and pulls out so fast his head starts spinning. "Shit," he says, tossing the headset away like it's physically burned him. "Shit!" and he stands, shaking, to stand with (not his) fingers pressed against (not his) face, so hard he can feel the skin bruising. Because that's not just the future, it's his future, and if it's anything like his past then he wants nothing to do with it now. Not until he sees it in his own time.

-/-

So... this started out as me going 'I'm gonna write about time travel!' because the time anomaly missions are pretty much the coolest parts of AC:U. But then somehow this turned into a like... 8000 word rambling monstrosity/exercise in learning to write Arno. So hopefully it's enjoyable anyway and if not... too bad.