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Chapter 2; Humanity
Suddenly he could feel the right side of his body. It was a light feeling, and he could barely twitch his hand, but he could move a little bit…
And the first thing he tried to do was launch himself off the bed and run for the door. He wasn't a clone. He couldn't be. He remembered at that moment, in perfect clarity, his childhood, the Farm, his parents. Remembered the first time he'd gotten drunk, the first time he'd had sex. He had scars from training and fights—He looked down at his hands, intent on proving it to her. He had a scar on the fleshy part of his thumb from slicing lemons at the bar. He remembered how much it had stung—
But when he forced his hand over and stared at the spot, there was no mark.
He pressed his fingers to his lips, feeling the ridge of scar tissue there, mouth opening to tell Lucy how he'd gotten it, but his voice just came out in urgent little wheezes.
It couldn't be true. He could not be a clone! He wasn't!
But then something frightening came to the surface of his mind and his stomach heaved.
How could Subject Sixteen have corrupted his files? The Animus read genetic material. The only way he could have corrupted those files was if they'd had the same DNA. The only way he could have done it was following the linear progression of genetics from parent to child… Or in this case, original to clone.
Three little words rang in his head and Desmond felt himself slipping back into the darkness of his mind, felt this strange controlling entity trying to lock him away in a closet in his mind.
He fought, willed himself to stay on the surface, willed himself not to fall backward into the dark where whoever was in control of his body may never let him out again. He didn't want to go back there, not with that wild flurry of anger, fear and sadness writhing about so near to him.
His mind felt too full, crushed, and he tried, putting as much energy as he had access to into pushing the two strangers back and taking control of himself again. He wanted to push them out, open his veins and watch them flow away.
His voice shook, almost in tears, slurred from his lack of strength; "Lucy…"
The blonde grabbed at him, pulling him close, one hand on either side of his face; "Des, please, just relax, it'll be OK. I promise, it'll be OK! We just have to find out how they were planning on doing it and we'll fix it!"
"I don't want to disappear… Don't let me disappear."
And the darkness swallowed him up.
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It wasn't as hard to live with as he'd thought it was. Of course, he supposed he was still in a good bit of shock. And the whole being a clone thing? Well he just flatly refused to accept that and had pushed the thought from his mind.
The only bad thing about it though was that when he woke up, someone else had already been awake, someone who was sitting on his bed eating strawberry flavored instant oatmeal and talking calmly with Rebecca.
The person, whoever it was, went very tense and the instant Desmond recoiled from the foreign, unwanted presence in his head and body, They recoiled a little as well.
The overall effect was somewhat painful, like he'd just been clubbed atop the head with a crowbar. His hands tightened on the spoon and bowl and his body rocked backward, head thudding sharply against the headboard.
Rebecca made a shocked, startled noise and grabbed at him, hands lacing at the back of his head thinking he was about to start seizing. The resulting little fight for dominance must have looked like a seizure, Desmond decided. When The Other recoiled he tried to push to the front, only to have The Other push forward at the same time.
The pressure was exquisite. Desmond had had intense bleeds before, sudden lightening strikes of moments where he was simply no longer Desmond, but was someone else, somewhen else and his body acted accordingly, walking—or trying to walk around people and places that had long sense fallen to ruin and dust.
But what happened the moment the two of them tried to push forward at the same time was something else entirely.
Desmond was aware of himself, his own memories… and he was also suddenly aware of Ezio's memories. As if they overlapped, and his consciousness screamed that he couldn't have been two people at once… and began forcing the memories together at spectacular speed. Stronger memories snuffing out weaker ones, everything latticing together into something indistinguishable from either his own, or Ezio's experience.
He was sure, in that moment, that his head had been cleaved neatly in two and his brain was exposed to the air. The plop of oatmeal into his lap only solidified that, as well as Rebecca screaming over her shoulder for help.
The chaos could only have lasted a few seconds, but it was long enough to be hellish, and the next second a third entity was there in his head, had grabbed the two of them, like the two sides of a towel—and ripped them apart.
Everything went gray for a few moments, hot and cold all at once, and when Desmond opened his eyes he was laying in the floor on his back and his three teammates were bending over him, Rebecca holding a magazine of some kind fanning his face with it, Lucy had both hands firmly on his shoulders and Shaun was taking his pulse.
"That's it… That's it, calm down." Lucy was saying in a shaky, worn voice.
He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn't move, his tongue felt loose and swollen and a little numb.
He was shivering, violently, and felt utterly and completely raped in some way. Used and abused and not really alive.
He hated it, and as he was helped by Shaun and Lucy to the bathroom, instead of sitting on the edge of the tub and letting the blonde drape a cool wet hand towel over the back of his neck, he dropped to his knees and barely had time to shove the toilet seat up before he was retching.
Lucy didn't try to lock him away in his room for the rest of the day, and he sat on the couch hugging his knees without saying a word, staring at the far wall. He couldn't get that feeling out of his head, out of his skin. That feeling of being made of something viscous and sticky. Of becoming so intimately entwined with Ezio, being able to see and feel everything the other felt, the revulsion and horror and fear because Ezio had been able to feel and see him as well. Ezio KNEW, and hated him for it.
Two or three times Desmond became aware of that third presence, the silent one, creeping up in his mind, calm and open feeling, melting his emotions a little to offer some strange form of comfort, but Desmond physically flinched and bared his teeth, glancing to his right where he associated this third person to be, and they retreated again into the depths of his mind, like brushing up against the bell shaped top of a jellyfish while swimming and not getting stung.
Shaun came into the room a while later, it could have been minutes, it could have been hours. He was dressed in slacks and thick socks and a dark green hooded sweatshirt Desmond had never seen before. His face was pale but the circles under his eyes were diminished and though his voice was rough, it had regained some of its strength.
"Feeling alright, Des?"
He only flinched in response and leaned fractionally to the side away from the Brit.
Shaun nodded, he hadn't expected an answer anyway. "Right, well… 'thought I'd give you a bit of company is all." He rubbed his hands on his knees and was quiet for a while, staring at his feet, focus in his peripheral vision on Desmond's hands. "I…" He paused, wetted his lips, swallowed and tried again; "I wasn't able to thank you for getting that medicine… So—" He cleared his throat; "Consider yourself thanked I guess."
Desmond just watched him, confusion like a sour taste in the back of his throat.
"It really was a stupid thing though… You shouldn't have left like that. You could have been killed, then where would we be." It wasn't a question.
After a minute of silence, maybe it was longer, Desmond couldn't really tell truthfully, Shaun's left arm lifted and found the tense knot of muscles between the younger man's shoulders, rubbing gently.
For a few seconds Desmond remained stiff, just staring at him, nose wrinkled because he wanted to shout that he wasn't weak, wasn't some woman that needed to be saved or coddled and what did Shaun care anyway what he was feeling? What did anybody care? All they wanted was the same thing the Templars wanted and they didn't give a DAMN about him! They were willing to put him, mentally, physically and spiritually on the chopping block for just a chance at getting what they wanted out of him! They'd killed him once over it, why couldn't they have just... just— but even while he was preparing himself to say it his eyes began to burn and his throat constricted.
If all his memories were just copies from someone else, if everything he'd experienced had happened to another, did that mean he'd never felt sadness before? Did it mean that, aside from the times he'd taken it for granted when Lucy hugged him when he was tired, he'd never been comforted by another human being before? Did that mean he was even real? Or just a pale reflection? Just a copy of someone who once was...
He felt cold, alone and inhuman. He wanted to scratch at his inner arms until he bled, wanted to peel back this too solid flesh and let himself evaporate, because nothingness couldn't hurt as badly as this bullshit...
If he really was a clone did that mean he'd never been born? Never been a child? That he'd never really been hugged by his mother, or patted on his head by his father? That everything he clung to and prayed his memories of weren't hallucinations, was in fact all a lie?
Did that mean he wasn't human?
He knew for a fact that if he really were a clone that he'd never cried before, because when he choked, turning his head away so he didn't have to look at Shaun, lifting his hands to push weakly at the other man trying to get away, a preverbal tidal wave crashed over him and he was sobbing. Something soundless and heartbroken and hopeless because in that moment he wasn't anybody, wasn't Altair, or Ezio or Desmond, he was just someone who was hurting and lost and alone in the world.
Shaun's hand tangled in his hood and pulled and the Brit's little beard scratched at his forehead, his pulse steady where Desmond's fingers tangled in his shirtfront, knuckles pressed uncomfortably into his throat in his desperation to get closer, to feel some kind of warmth something that he knew wasn't a lie and could truly call his own. "I hate you..." He choked, coughed, sobbed, choked again and managed to find his voice; "A-all of you... I h-hate all of you."
Shaun didn't say anything, he supposed it was because all he could think of was just a defense mechanism, something sarcastic and almost rude because he didn't know how to handle this, didn't know how to deal with the fact Desmond was curled into a ball between his arms and was nothing but a wreck of confusion and grief. So, he just ground his teeth and stayed quiet.
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Desmond didn't sleep. He refused the drugged milk Lucy brought to him, just continued to cling with inhuman strength to Shaun's sweatshirt, eyes open but unseeing.
Lucy was afraid, worried that they'd done the wrong thing in telling him, that they'd really broken him and now they were all doomed. The Bleeding Effect had almost killed him to begin with, now it was killing him in a completely new and horrifying way.
Shaun managed to somehow get him to his feet and lead him to bed, then with a put upon sigh peeled his sweatshirt off because he couldn't pry the other's fingers from it and sat on the edge of the bed with him, hand rubbing firm, but gentle circles on his back. He stayed until his eyes wouldn't stay open any longer and Rebecca came and forced him to leave.
Desmond didn't speak or eat or really move for three days.
Shaun supposed that he'd had to have gotten up a few times to go to the bathroom because the bedroom didn't smell and his usual white hoodie was gone, replaced by Shaun's green one and the younger man looked lost in it. But nobody saw him move so much as an inch.
The forth day Shaun brought in a mug of tea and a sandwich, sat both on the bedside table and yanked the blankets back, feeling a little mean inside because Desmond flinched, bare feet looking somehow small and helpless where they curled and his knees tucked closer to his chin.
He didn't have to say anything to Desmond, just stood there with his hands on hips staring, and as if the brunette was able to able to read the Brit's mind he sighed weightily and sat up, legs crossed, limbs creaking and popping and stiff looking, arms wound around him.
He ate slowly, his expression blank as if he tasted nothing, as if he were merely going through the motions and there was nothing but cotton between his ears.
The tea though, the tea did something different.
Desmond took the cup between both hands as Shaun held it out to him and took a small sip of it— His brows twitched and half a breath later he was gulping it down.
Shaun wanted to scowl and tell him to slow it up, that the tea had been hot and the last thing he needed was a scalded throat, but there was something different about his expression. Something that was Desmond, but at the same time… not.
Shaun was reminded of an internet viral video he'd seen once of a cat licking at a saucer of cream. Another cat had come up to it, mewed questioningly, and the first cat, though wary, had allowed it to share.
And that's when it hit him… Shaun wasn't looking at just Desmond anymore, and it was somehow frightening in the same instant it was exciting beyond compare. He cleared his throat quietly and spoke in a hushed voice as he might do to a wild animal that was slowly becoming acclimated to his presence. "W-who else am I speaking to at the moment?"
Two gold eyes flicked up to his face, the left was a little wary, and the right was calm, tired. It was like there was a division right down the center of Desmond's body, one half for each of them.
The cup lowered a fraction, and the voice that answered was just a whisper, heavily accented and familiar and excitement shot up from Shaun's toes into his chest;
"Altair."
The cup lifted again and both eyes glazed over slightly in relieved contentment at the taste.
Shaun had a million questions, a billion maybe. But he held them back because the left side of Desmond's body, the Desmond half of it was still a little tense, his hand shaking and unsteady, eye leery but tolerant… for the moment.
Shaun knew the expression on that half of his face. Desmond was waiting, ready to spring and fight, but from what Shaun could decipher from the right side of his face, the Altair half, there was no contest, no threat. Altair was being calm, respectful it seemed, almost submissive to Desmond's authority over the body they shared.
Shaun knew instantly that it was a protective kind of submission. Altair was keeping himself small and unthreatening so Desmond didn't become upset, didn't lash out and cause harm to himself. Altair was doing it to keep Desmond calm, safe and healthy, unlike Ezio had. Ezio had thrust his dominance forward and tried to crush Desmond out, tried to stamp him out like a cigarette butt and take complete control because he was frightened and felt violated by not being alone in 'his' body.
It seemed to be working, because the longer Altair was calm, letting Desmond feel in control of the situation the calmer Desmond became, the more at ease he was with the other's presence at the forefront of his mind. The less terrified he was of being crushed out of existence.
It was somehow ballet like, how carefully the two halves moved. How the Altair half was just a bare fraction of a second behind the Desmond half, mirroring his actions so the cup didn't spill.
"This is so weird," Desmond's voice was a little louder, his eyes almost crossing as he tried to peer over the bridge of his nose as if he could look into his other eye and see Altair.
The Altair half of him grinned and when his mouth opened a second time Altair's voice came out; "It is not difficult though, is it?"
He seemed to think a moment and his words came out as a whisper; "No… J-just weird."
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It became evident quickly to Desmond why he'd been so fucking tired for so long. The two other men in his head hadn't been letting his body sleep, and that blank dreamlessness was not restful at all, it was nerve wracking, hellish. His body got no sleep between the constant rotation of three men at its helm, even if he did give in and drink that disgusting drugged milk Lucy presented to him. And none of them slept because there was nothing soothing, or calm about being trapped in your head, especially for them. Assassins training and lifestyle, alertness was the center of everything. Even when asleep an assassin was alert. But that blackness… The rear closets of Desmond's mind, was like being sealed in a coffin hundreds of miles beneath the earth's surface. There was only you and the crushingly small space you were confined to.
Being without sleep was slowly, and inexorably killing Desmond. He knew Altair and Ezio noticed it, knew Lucy, Rebecca and probably even Shaun most likely knew as well, but he tried to hide it anyway, because common decency dictated that you just didn't talk about such things if you wanted to retain your macho exterior.
Certain foods, Desmond also started to notice, made him sick. He tried to hide that particularly because it was kind of embarrassing to realize he'd used an entire role of toilet paper in one day. His muscles, joints, his very bones ached savagely. His face was puffy and swollen, his eyes bloodshot and unable to focus. He was cranky, irritable, nauseous, angry… He'd lost weight, there were uncomfortable dry itchy places on his skin… and his hair had begun to fall out from the stress. He could scrape his hands through it and pull out fistfuls it seemed.
"I've seen a thousand years worth of my ancestry and I'm gonna be the first one to go bald…" He growled at his reflection in the mirror, pulling more and more hair out because his very nerves sang that sooner or later it would all be gone and no more would fall out and cling to his shirts.
Days passed, he didn't know how many. Time meant nothing to him anymore because it was no longer constant. It stopped and started as sporadically and strangely as if he'd just cut whole days out of existence.
Oddly enough, it reminded him of having a really bad hangover. Waking up only to find you had absolutely no memories of the night before, what you'd done or what you'd had done to you.
Shaun made him eat. Sometimes going so far as to threaten to make airplane noises if he had to bloody well sit down and feed him.
Desmond found that if he ignored it long enough on most occassions, his mind would skip ahead and he wouldn't be hungry anymore. On others... He had to hold his breath and choke it down, praying he didn't throw it up again later.
Lucy and Rebecca always seemed to be in motion when he was awake. Bent over computer screens or standing at the far end of the room talking on cell phones. They kept referring to 'The Blanks', that they needed information on where to find them. What kind of things they had to expect when they did find them. He tried to avoid them at all costs. Staying sequestered in the room he shared with Shaun, huddled under the blankets with just his face showing, watching the Brit while he typed or rested, or drank tea while he read.
And then, when Desmond had been shuffling silently past the room, hoping not to be noticed on his way to the storage closet to pilfer another roll of two-ply, he'd overheard Lucy ask the someone she'd been talking to about The Rose, and suddenly Desmond became acutely aware of the duel presences of his uninvited guests. They were pressed close to the forefront of his mind, listening through his ears.
He was reminded of a Three Stooges film, peeking around the door jamb with their heads stacked one on top of the other. He felt his lips moving, whispering back and forth in Latin, and he was stuck in the middle of it, shocked because he himself didn't really speak that much Latin, which was odd because he could remember a time, before this had all become so dire, that he'd been able to understand it quite well.
Maybe, he thought, Maybe the Bleeding Effect can go both ways… It can bleed into you, but it can bleed out again too.
He laughed to himself, a little relieved, a little hopeful, and didn't realize anything was amiss until he heard Altair using his voice to call to him and he had the mental sensation of the blip that was Altair shaking the blip that was him like a dog would do a towel.
"Desmond… Your lack of focus is appalling. Move or she will see!"
He cleared his throat, his senses muted and sluggish, and he could feel the sensation of amusement coming from the left side of his mind, where Ezio was floating around.
Lucy was moving, having ended her call, and her shoes were clicking against the floor, approaching him quickly.
Desmond remembered seeing movies and television shows where characters would huddle together to eavesdrop and when the person they'd been covertly listening to started toward them there was a brief scuffle and a parting of ways. He'd always thought seeing people do it was hilarious… The mental sensation of it though, was something different because Altair took control of the right side of his body without preamble, sensing that Desmond's reflexes had been muddled and slow… Right at the same time Ezio had decided to take control all together.
It was almost, as if he could picture himself, and his two guests as those large rubber balls you see in the supermarket, all three hurdling toward the same point at fantastic speed, just to collide and bounce off into the ether.
He felt his eyes part, tilting outward in opposite directions, his arms spread and his knees bent… To an outsider it appeared he was preparing to do a perfect swan dive nose first into the hallway floor, what Lucy saw reminded her of antique images of samurai, their eyes wild and dark, like marbles protruding from their frowning fierce faces. She herself thought Desmond looked like he was in the middle of some complex yoga pose, so when he froze, his eyes going very dim and just tipped backward onto the floor she was stunned for all of two seconds, then terrified… Then amused when Desmond started groaning and rubbing his face muttering and slurring and cursing.
"Oooooh, ooooowwww… fuckfuckfuck… Don't do that again guys… owowow." He lifted his left foot and stomped three times, ala Mr. Ed, and writhed a little in misery.
Lucy crouched beside him and tilted her head. "Are you OK?"
He kept rubbing his eyes but nodded. "Felt like a mental kick to the nuts… hnnnnnng."
She winced in sympathy and said the last thing he expected her to. "Well, good news is, you only have to put up with them for a few more days."
He went still, and lifted his hands away from watering bloodshot eyes; "Huh?"
"We know how to separate you."
"Separate how?"
She glanced down at the phone in her hands, then back into his face, slightly unnerved, because she knew, simply from the glazed, overtaxed expression on his face that Altair and Ezio were listening as well. "As in separate them into their own bodies."
Ezio pushed forward frantically, thrashing and clawing and fighting, but Altair had hold of him, pulling him back a little where he wouldn't be able to interfere.
Desmond levered himself up, getting close to Lucy so his strained eyes could focus on her. "Their own bodies… How."
She swallowed and shifted backward a little. "I told you already that the Templars tried more than once to clone D—Clone Him… They succeeded in that all three times, but there was no brain function. They—"
He looked pained so she cleared her throat and skipped ahead a little.
"There are two more still… The Blanks. If we can successfully separate the three of you, they'll each have their own body."
"And I can go home?" He bit his tongue the moment the words left his mouth… How stupid. He was a clone, he didn't have a home. He looked pointedly away, ashamed and disappointed.
Lucy let her breath out slowly, eyes tender.
He lifted his face again; "What has to be done? What do I— what do we do?"
She took a deep breath and let it out carefully, her nose wrinkled as she thought how best to word it. "We… We have to get all three of you into the loading screen of the Animus at once."
He swallowed thickly. "That sounds easy."
"Becca and I are afraid that all three of you might have to be completely aware at one time to do it… But it's extremely dangerous. Do you—" She paused, and started again. "The other day when you woke up while Ezio was talking to Becca—"
He remembered that alright. Remembered it had been agonizing, as if someone had hold of his very soul and were smashing in against—INTO some hateful stranger's. As if someone were just completely erasing him… As if he were disappearing.
He understood without another word being spoken. To have all three of them fully awake at once he risked everything. Not just his life, but everything he was. This wasn't something frightening, wasn't becoming someone else over time by the power of shared memories, it wasn't pale and dim shapes waltzing back and forth across his field of vision, wasn't suddenly desiring to grow a beard despite the fact that just a few weeks ago he'd not liked them. It wasn't craving food he'd never tasted. If he did this he risked everything in one fell swoop. Risked his very soul, everything that made him who he—who he hoped he was.
"And if it doesn't work? If we're all…" He curled his fingers like claws and made a circular motion in front of his face. "W-what then?"
She was quiet for a few seconds, but when she spoke she answered honestly. He would always remember that… She answered him honestly.
"I don't know."
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