My name is Desmond Miles.

I'm a bartender; aged 25 years. I was an Assassin in-training, but I ran from my life when I was a kid. Now I've been caught. Kidnapped. The life I thought I left behind has caught up to me.
And it won't let me go.

My name is Desmond Miles.
And this is my story.

Desmond wasn't afraid.

He was slowly going mental, seeing the long dead images of his ancestors wafting tightly around him like a putrid, suffocating smell. But he wasn't afraid.
He was constantly slipping in and out of reality like a fish skittering through the ocean, losing his mind in one reality after another. But he wasn't afraid.
His world was literally crumbling around him in a heap of hypothetical rubble. But he wasn't afraid.
His thoughts were no longer his own, echoing the voices of those years buried. But he wasn't afraid.

Phantom visions swarmed the man's eyes like a pressing mask, filling his mind with voices, screams, cries… Forcing down his throat as his lungs closed in on themselves, his airways clogging with their desperate pleas for help. Ghostly hands reaching out with pallid fingers, clawing at his neck and slowly, slowly snaking their faded fingers around his throat; strangling the life out of him.

Desmond wasn't afraid.
Really, he wasn't.

The Assassin's nights were rough and humid. His dreams startled him to the waking world or simply pulled him deeper into the blood-soaked world within the walls of his mind. When he woke, his skin would be covered in a thick sheen of cold sweat, his eyes wide, his heart pounding wildly in his chest as he tried to remember who he was. Running rough, tired hands over his body, searching desperately for an identity with a frantic heart. And when he was pulled back into the unconscious state of sleep, he only found memories and death hiding behind every twist and turn. Memories that weren't his own.

Desmond wasn't afraid.
Really, he wasn't.

Shaun frowned deeply at the man writhing within his sleeping bag, dreams plagued with muffled shrieks and haunting wraiths. Desmond, the once strong Assassin of whom was their window to history, had been reduced to a mentally unstable specimen of pity. The poor man was slowly sinking in a downward spiral of insanity, plunging headfirst into the iron grasp of the Bleeding Effect. Imprisoned in chains of a red mist, holding him down as the shades of Altaïr and Ezio fed lies and slander into his steadily warping mind.

And the Historian felt horrible.

It wasn't a sudden gushing wave of hallucinations as they had all expected, but a slow, steady trickle that pooled in the base of the man's mind. It had snuck up on him, slowly gathering until it was a raging sea of mindless insanity. And by the time they noticed the scarlet waves lapping at their ankles, Desmond had already been sucked into the middle of the storm. And now? Well, now he was rapidly drowning in his own essence.

Shaun sighed and took a quick sip of his lukewarm tea, the Assassin behind shrieking muffled cries into his pillow. The drink had never tasted so bitter, seasoned with the salt of watching a man suffer. The historian was simply unable to keep his mind focused on the pages of data that was his work, laying in haphazard piles strewn across his desk, flashing in black and white past his computer.
And it had been like this for hours. Every time Shaun felt ready to tear his mind from the spell of worry Desmond had put him under, the sleeping soul would do something to force him right back into a steel-cold fear.

It had been days since any of them had even looked at the Animus, simply unable to stomach what the demonic machine had done to the strong-willed American. They had thought they were being careful, they thought they could protect him. But no, the Bleeding Effect was but an inevitable outcome of peering into the past. And no matter what the bedraggled team of Assassins tried to believe, there was no way around it. Desmond was wandering blindly down the same path as Subject 16, being driven insane by swirling phantoms and shrieking cries that only he was witness too. Seeing nothing but mirages of Jerusalem. Hearing nothing but the market chatter of Florence.

Desmond wasn't afraid.
But blimey, he sure was.

The walls of Venice built around him in a motion blur of memories, the high walls scaling miles above his head in arching bricks. Dwarfed against the massive structures did he stand, eyes shrouded beneath a shadow cast by the merciless sun overhead. An air of confidence swirled around him like a sea of pooling water, dousing the brunette with the brutal cockiness he was renowned for. A smile crossed scarred lips as he walked with pride down the Venetian alleys and bends, his identity hidden within slender robes of ashen white.

Desmond could hear the midday chatter; vendors advertising their wares, courtesans calling into the crowds with cooing cries, overhead thieves laughing as they sailed through the air. Naught but a normal day for Venezia, the Assassin cackled inwardly, pushing gently through a gathering of wayward citizens. His head bowed low, piercing eyes watched like a shrieking eagle from beneath a low-cut hood, his cloak billowing like a mighty flag behind him. A small gander of guards did stand some distance away, guffawing with loud, arrogant remarks as they conversed between each other idly. It was commonplace for such men to do anything but their job.

A poster crossed his eyes, a warning flyer with the face of a killer scrawled in sooty-toned detail across it. The smirk of a murderer stared so cruelly at him, a shadow cast over half of his face.
Desmond was a wanted man.
But he was not afraid.

The man scowled as he ripped the parchment down with a fluid motion, his thin white robes rustling in the Damascus sun above him. Tearing it into pieces and tossing it to the wind, the Arab spun on his heel and stalked down the dusty, sun-kissed path. The heavy sun overhead beat like the drums of war upon the wilting people beneath it, crying desperate pleas for food, for water. His own throat ached with a desperate longing for cool water, parched and dehydrated. Be that as it may, he had work to do. No such time to ask for such a trivial necessity.

Scarred lips contorted into a nasty grimace, the pale parchment fluttering chaotically in the wind, fading to frightened pigeons taking flight with a rush of wings. Guards conversed with loud, guffawing voices beside him as he walked, sulking silently past. His mind was long gone, retreated into the depths of his grey-toned cowl. Yet still did cautious eyes watch with the grace of a flying eagle.

Nearly did the Assassin miss the blistering hand that clapped roughly down upon his shoulder.

"Hey, rat," The guard growled, taking a firmer grip of the Arab and spinning him carelessly around. "Where do you think you're go-" A splatter of scarlet red. A sardonic sneer from the Assassin- barked orders as the guards drew their swords.

Desmond was a wanted man.
But he wasn't afraid.

The next day was rocky for the Assassins with Desmond in his current vegetable-like state, whimpering softly as he slipped in and out of reality. He barely moved, barely blinked. All he did was stare off into the distance, completely ignoring anyone who even so much as tried to start a civil conversation with him. His eyes were a glazed brown, impersonating the stare of death. And even if in the midst of his uncertain state of mind he happened to glance at you, the man's blank gaze pierced right through. Getting through to him was of no use. He was too far gone at this current moment in time. And no matter how many times Shaun repeated this to Lucy and Rebecca, they did not once cease their motherly concern over the decaying male.

Night and day, day and night did Shaun look for something, anything to fix Desmond. There was hope for the man; surely buried somewhere within the labyrinth of notes and facts he had acquired over the past few weeks was the answer. It had to be hiding somewhere; the historian just had to keep looking.
As Shaun sat at his desk, clacking through piles and rows of information, he could hear the man's midnight whispers. The names, words, voices that passed his mindless lips, eyes unblinking, were not of his own will. Barely were they even of his own language. Dialect that the young Assassin shouldn't even know floated from his direction as he begged for Malik's forgiveness, praised Leonardo for his tender work, took the life of another without a strand of remorse.

And as Shaun worked tirelessly, hand in hand with Lucy and Rebecca, he couldn't fight down the fear building in his chest. The looming fear that Desmond was too far gone to save, that there was no way to redeem the strong-willed bartender that had been reduced to a quivering heap. That the shackles that had clasped around his wrists, the chains winding around his neck were tightening. That he would be dead in a pool of phantom blood.

Shaun couldn't even fight it down.
He was fucking terrified.

And as Jerusalem, Tuscany whirled past his eyes, voices that played only deep inside his own brain, Desmond sobbed. His hands clutching at his face, nails raking down in unforgiving red gashes, his cries soft and strangled beneath his ancestors' powerful words. He wasn't afraid.
Feeling the sheen of sweat, the path of tears as they slipped like snakes down his cheeks, the man had to remind himself of who he was. He was human, he was Desmond Miles, and he lived in America, 2012. He wasn't afraid.
The pain of his ancestors' ricocheting throughout his own body as their wounds grew and blood flowed, as their presence pushed forward in his mind and sent his own subconscious flying back years and years. He wasn't afraid...
The cruel smirk that followed after a kill, the satisfaction of seeing yet another man fall to the Assassins' shining blade of silver. The blood of Altaïr's targets, of Ezio's foes wasn't even on their hands anymore; it was on his. It was his...

Desmond told himself he wasn't afraid.
But really, he was.

My name was Desmond Miles.
I was a bartender; aged 25 years. My memories… Everything about me was mixing with each other like a bad cocktail, and now I don't even know who I am anymore… The life I thought I left behind had caught up to me.
And it didn't let me go.

My name was Desmond Miles.
Now, I'm not so sure…