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Tuesday morning, Desmond comes across the memory that tells him that the time he's been living on is over.
Ezio had been proud of his extensive planning in this assassination. He'd planned on being caught and led to the leader, and knows exactly how to break free and complete his assassination, know his plan down to the last step and dodge.
He hadn't known he would find himself almost incapable of moving at all.
"I knew we would catch you in the end," the man is saying, sneering down at Ezio. The assassin was tied up and shoved to his knees, and his gaze is downcast to the floor as he calculates when to cut the ropes binding his wrists together and plunge his dagger through the neck of the man ranting before him. "I knew we would. Do you want to know how I knew?" Ezio bites back a response, waits as the man stops his stroll about the room and stands before him. "You weakness, assassino."
"My weakness?" Ezio spits out when the man waits for an answer.
"Sì, sì. Do you know what this is?"
Ezio can't honestly think of anything; he's been thorough in his training and excruciatingly careful in everything he does. He has left nothing unguarded; it would jeopardize everything.
"No? How curious, for this gives us such control over you." He has taken a few steps away, and Ezio knows he will come back, and every muscle is tensed for when he does. "We know who you use for weaponry and medicine. We could, very easily, take out these people, one by one." Ezio says nothing; this does not surprise him, nor worry him. He has taken care in this aspect as well; he only associates with people who can protect themselves. "Or," the man goes on, takes a few steps closer, "we could torture your lover, Leonardo." Ezio chokes involuntarily, all the breath ripped from his body. The man smirks. "Ah, you remember this weakness now, do you?" Ezio could barely hear him through a haze of angry terror, and it was with only a second to spare that Ezio slashed through the ropes and drove the dagger through the man's neck.
They know, Ezio thought, numb with staggering fear as he sprinted away from the building, scrambling across rooftops, they know about Leo, they'll hurt him, what if they hurt him? He spots Leonardo's workshop, but stops. I can't, he thinks, pain in every breath now, every heartbeat, I can't go near him, they'll find him, they'll hurt him. He forces himself to turn away, even as every nerve screams in protest, every instinct craving to run to Leonardo, pull him close and hold him tight and promise him, promise him he'll be safe. Going to him, though, Ezio knows, would only endanger Leonardo more. Protecting Leonardo has never hurt more, never felt more like he's broken his own heart.
When Desmond is finally pulled out of the memory, he knows exactly what he has experienced.
"Anything particularly important?" Rebecca asks as she shuts off the Animus.
"No," Desmond lies, because he can't tell her, this is what will break them, he can't. He feels it with a certainty he could never express; this is why, years from when this memory took place, this is why Leonardo and Ezio will die apart.
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Sometimes Desmond wonders how long he can survive under the weight of guilt. He blamed himself for what happened with Shaun- it was destruction, it ruined him and he would give anything for it to have left Shaun untouched. He left not knowing, left hoping he didn't completely devastate Shaun after spending so long coaxing him into letting down his guard. Desmond left to escape, to let Shaun find someone who could own up to being with him, to flee the pressure that he'd been drowning under. He fled guilt, only to stumble back three years later, having only succeeded in causing more pain to others.
Desmond can't sleep well anymore; when he's not reliving his fight with Shaun, he's seeing his last team. It's when he has nightmares about their screaming, about blood staining Belle's blonde hair and blood smeared across Felicity's tan face, that he feels as if he's breathing guilt, choking on it. He always wakes up gasping and coughing, breathing hard and leaden with panic. He never tries to go back to sleep; it's cowardice, of course it is, but he's terrified of what he'd see if he dared reenter. Tonight, he suffers through Ezio's memory again, the decision to leave Leonardo to protect him, the decision that will destroy them, and then he hears the screaming and can feel the fire that threatens to devour them all. This time it does, destroys everything until all that is left is blackness, an empty void, and all there is in the world is the screaming.
It's five-thirty when Lucy finds him awake, and from her lack of surprise, Desmond only wonders how long she's known. She sits at the kitchen table across from him, pushes closed the lid of the laptop, shutting off the database entries he's been skimming for the past hour and a half.
"I'm worried," she says, and he looks away. Her light blue eyes are piercing, so pale they almost don't have a color, not like Shaun's at all, which are so dark it's like all the depth of the ocean. Both seem to be able to see through him; only Shaun ever could, but not enough, never enough.
"You don't have to be," Desmond says, hears the lie this is. It's getting harder to recognize them, it's all he can say now.
"Sure, I don't have to be. But can you really blame me?" He almost flinches at the mention of blame, almost. The inquisitive look on Lucy's face softens. "We've been sort of waiting for you to explain why you came back. And – we don't know why you left, either." Desmond hates conversations like this, where the cold stillness of the early morning could deceive him into believing he's safe, into thinking that, somehow, he's somewhere else now, that he can move on.
"They found my team," he says, tries to block out all the memories that threaten to attack at even these words. "We were doing what you guys do here, basically. They'd stolen an Animus, improved it, and were trying to find more of the technology."
"Did they get caught at the labs?"
"No." The irony of it had been like the final blow. "Tracked the signal of their stolen computer systems." For three years, everything had been a race. They'd been tripping over themselves to stay ahead of the Templars, keeping ahead of their technology, their tracking, their securities, but somehow, in all the franticness and direness, the team of assassins had fallen behind all at once.
"Did they-"
"They killed Belle and Felicity," Desmond says, and anything else he was going to say falls into silence. Just their names have conjured up so much- Belle's boundless sense of humor and emerald eyes, (Desmond, you're just too strict with holidays- sure, Cinco de Mayo was yesterday, but we celebrated today because it's Cinco de Sixo!), Felicity's auburn curls and play with languages, (Amore mio, of course I know you don't like girls, gracias, for all the credit you're giving me here. Tu vois? I'm not so unobservant, but, ich liebe dich, schatz, it's okay)- and he doesn't want to allow any more loose. He spent almost more time with them than Lucy and Rebecca and Shaun, they were like sisters to him, giggling and startling him with their brilliance at every turn. Belle was like his baby sister, bright-eyed and overflowing with enthusiasm, Felicity like his older sister, with wise eyes and a calm smile. Losing them was losing his whole family; it feels like he found them only to have something more to lose after he destroyed his whole world.
"I'm sorry," Lucy murmurs, but she doesn't ask anything else. Desmond doesn't know how he could have asked her for this, and he's grateful she's realized on her own that he doesn't want to talk about the two assassins the world lost. "Why did you leave?" she asks instead, and he almost wishes she would have continued along their last track instead, however painful it was. Nothing hurts Desmond more than how he hurt Shaun. This is the danger with having his heart apart from him- it's so easy to lash out, to destroy and destroy, and never realized until later that he's hurting himself, so badly, suffering through a death he has to live through.
"It doesn't matter." He stands, walks away, and he's at the doorway of the kitchen before Lucy speaks.
"Shaun said you left to get away from him," she says softly, "I have a hard time believing that, Desmond. I saw you with him, before. I can't believe that." Her voice is almost pleading, but Desmond can offer her nothing.
"You should," he snaps back, can't look at her because he knows there'll be sympathy on her face, one of many things he doesn't deserve, "that's exactly why I left."
Of course, he thinks, when he sees Shaun in the hallway, deliberately avoiding Desmond's eyes, doesn't this just figure? It feels so much like fate's hurting him every day, in this horribly twisted way. All it has to do is wait for Desmond to hurt Shaun, and Desmond will break himself down, little by little, until he has nothing left.
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Two days later, Desmond lets guilt rear its head within him, and he asks Rebecca to let him revisit a memory.
Ezio is sprinting away across the rooftops, dangerously unbalanced as his fear continues to run rampant through him. They know, they know about Leo, they'll hurt him, what if they hurt him? He finally reaches Leonardo's workshop, stops and just looks at the door. I can't, I can't go near him, they'll find him, they'll hurt him.
And then, against every instinct and will, Ezio enters the workshop.
Desmond sees [desyncrhonization imminent] flash across his vision, and then, as Ezio envelopes Leonardo in his arms, the flashing words disappear.
"Caro mio, what is it?" Leonardo lets Ezio cling to him tightly, kiss the top of his head and hold him tight.
"They know about you," Ezio says, sounds so broken, "they're going to use you to get at me." Leonardo says nothing, but his blue eyes show only an understanding that fills Ezio with a calmness he can't remember feeling in a long time, so long. "I won't let them, I won't," Ezio whispers, running his thumb down Leonardo's jaw gently, "I promise you."
"Ezio… are you sure you even want such a vulnerability?" Leonardo asks, and it's the honesty in his question that makes Ezio certain.
"All this- you are worth all this, Leo, you are worth anything the world can throw at me." Ezio dips his head to kiss Leonardo softly, as if to breathe life into his promise. "I'll protect you. I will."
"I never doubted it," Leonardo whispers.
Desmond leaves the memory, and when he returns to the present, it becomes obvious why he was instructed never to change memories. It doesn't matter that what happened originally was wrong; the world settled onto that wrong axis and continued on from there.
The present time Desmond returns to is not the one he left behind.
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