December 2, 2012

-/-

Desmond's breathing hard and bleeding slightly when he makes it onto the train, but no one's following him, not even Cross. So that's good. Of course, the train's not going to take any unexpected turns, so unless Desmond is very lucky, they're going to be waiting at the next station. He should be trying to think of a way out, but he's always been more reactive than proactive, and his mind keeps going back to Cross.

That man is terrifying. Not because of anything he does or anything he says, but because of his eyes. They're empty, broken and pitted by whatever he's seen and done. He barely seems human anymore, just a man shaped vessel for the things he's been forced to become in the animus.

Desmond thinks about Cross, crazy and rattling around inside his own head. Then he thinks about Clay, writing messages in his own blood on the walls and storing his brain inside the same machine that made him nuts. Then he thinks about himself, and what will be left of him when his mind inevitably goes to shit as well.

Because it is inevitable. There had been sixteen subjects before him, and all of them are nuts or dead or both. Oh for sixteen. Oh for seventeen, soon.

The train doors slide open at the next station, and Desmond tenses in case someone with a gun is waiting for him there. Only nothing happens, nothing violent or unexpected. People get on the train, people get off, and at the last possible second, Desmond slips out between the doors. No one follows him, and Desmond makes it back to the meet up point without any more violence. But when he gets there, only Shaun and Rebecca are waiting.

"What happened?" he asks. "What went wrong?"

"Abstergo came," Shaun says. His voice is forcibly cheerful, and that tells Desmond exactly how bad the situation must be. "They must have spotted the two of them, and now they're-"

"Dead?" Desmond interrupts.

"Taken," Rebecca corrects.

"Well that's not much better, is it?" Desmond demands, shouting the words so loudly that Rebecca flinches away from him. "We all know what they do to people they take!" Because they took him, and they put him in an animus, and now he's going crazy. Not oh for seventeen after all. Oh for eighteen. Oh for nineteen.

"Come on," Rebecca says, and very gently takes Desmond's arm. "We're only going to be captured ourselves if we stay here."

"We can't leave," Desmond says.

"We can't stay," Rebecca says. "We won't be any good to them here."

"Fine," Desmond says. "So what do we do?"

"Go back to New York," Rebecca says. "All our resources are there. We have sources, files, data. Everything we need to find them, and get them back."

Desmond nods, but he's not thinking about resources or files or data. He's thinking about numbers. Oh for seventeen. Oh for eighteen. Oh for nineteen. He wonders if all this would have been easier if it had been one for sixteen when Abstergo kidnapped him. If someone had been able to tell him, 'yea, okay, the bleeding effect gets pretty much everyone in the end but there is this one guy, totally find, living a normal life in Florida.' It might have given him some encouragement, some reason to hope for his own sanity.

He thinks about one for seventeen. Maybe that can help William or Altair if he's right about what Abstergo plans to do to them. He has to stay sane.

Later, much later, back in New York, Shaun suggests that maybe they're not going to be put in an animus at all. "They could have taken them to get to you."

"Why would they do that?" Desmond asks. Rebecca and Shun exchange a look that he doesn't understand. "What?"

"Do you know how long Abstergo spent looking for you?" Rebecca asks.

"No," Desmond says. "I kind of assumed it was sort of a crime of opportunity. I was easy to get to, so they took me."

"Not at all," Shaun says. "They were looking for you. I don't know how they knew you had the DNA they wanted, but they spent years on you, specifically. Now they've lost you again. I'd bet you anything they're going to ask you to trade yourself for William and Altair."

"I hope you're right," Desmond mutters. Because that means they're alive and sane. It means they can be rescued. But not traded for, no matter what they say. Desmond's not going back in there, no matter what they say.

Not unless he has no other choice, anyway. Not unless it comes down to his life or theirs.

"Hoping," Rebecca repeats. "That means you're not convinced."

"Call it a gut feeling," Desmond says. "They can stick either or both of them in an animus, get some good information, and still use them as leverage over me. And I mean, my dad's got half my ancestors, they'll love that. They might not mess with Altair, but if they find out he's been pretending to be my son, and if they're really as interested in me as you say-"

"Then finding him would be like Christmas," Rebecca says.

"He'd have all my ancestors," Desmond goes on. "But he's five. They'd think he was easier to manipulate."

"Hang on," Shaun says, loudly. "I think you're both forgetting that Altair is your ancestor, Desmond, not your son."

"I know," Desmond says. "But if they do put him in an animus, and find out they have the Altair, do you really think that's going to go well for him?"

"…no," Shaun admits. They all think about this in silence for a few seconds, then Shaun shakes his head. "We have to get them back."

-/-

December 14, 2012

-/-

Altair rolls over in bed and throws up onto the floor. He can't remember ever feeling this sick before. His stomach is trying to claw its way out of his mouth, every limb feels limp and shaky, and his head is pounding like someone is pounding a hammer against his brain. He doesn't even feel like a person right now, just a bunch of connected pains.

There's a noise in the room, someone whimpering like an animal in pain. As soon as Altair notices it, the noise stops, and that's when he realizes he's the one making it. "No," he whispers. "Please…" but he doesn't know what he's begging for, or who he's begging it from. He just wants the pain to stop.

A while later (although it is difficult to tell if it's minutes or hours), strong hands lift him off the bed and carry him away. It's enough to wake him up a little, just enough to lash out against his kidnapper. It's weak though, and useless. Just like it's useless every day when they come to put him back in the animus…

"Hey," someone says quietly. "Hey, Altair, calm down. It's me."

Desmond's voice. Altair freezes and struggles to open his eyes. Most of his mind is telling him to keep them closed, because this is just another hallucination, and the disappointment when he sees someone else there is going to suck. He's been disappointed before.

"Come on, don't do this to me now."

With a monumental effort, Altair manages to open his eyes. And he sees- he sees a room with bodies, he sees blood on the floor, he sees Desmond-

"Dad!" Altair sits up, too quickly. His vision swims, and then goes black.

When he wakes up again, he's somewhere else. Back in the cave in Turin, New York, siting on his own bedroll, with Rebecca sitting next to him. He tries to move, and to his surprise it doesn't even hurt. There's some lingering soreness from lying still too long, but the sickness and pain is gone.

"You haven't been in the animus in a couple days," Rebecca says, noticing the surprised look on his face. "The pain's all in your head, one of it's physical, so it fades quickly."

"But the rest of it doesn't," Altair says. He can already see the hallucinations in the corner of his eye, half memories and half nightmares. Leftovers from ancestors he never wanted to know about. "The visions, the crazy…" he thinks about that day in the woods, when Desmond had looked at him without seeing him. "No one comes back after that. It's gonna get me, too."

The bleeding effect. Someday he'll wake up and not know who he is… someday soon, maybe. He doesn't want to think about it, but it's all he can think about, so he tries to distract himself. "What happened to William?" he asks. He hadn't seen the man since the day they were both taken by Abstergo. They'd been separated, and after that Altair's life had been one confusing blur of bad memories.

"Dead," Rebecca says. "We… didn't get to him in time. He tried to fight them, but I mean… well, he was getting older. It didn't go well."

"How did you get in?" Altair asks. "There were guards." Every day. All the time. Everywhere.

"That would be Desmond," Rebecca says. "I think he would have fought through an army to get to you. And of course Vidic is dead and we have the last battery for the temple, so that helps, but those were just accidents. We went for you."

"Why?" Altair whispers, and Rebecca pulls him into a tight hug before pulling away.

"You really do have abandonment issues, don't you?" she asks.

"What?"

"Never mind," Rebecca says, backing away. "I'm going to wake Desmond up now- he asked to be pulled out of the animus if you woke up."

"He's still using it?" Altair asks.

"It's December fifteenth," Rebecca says. "Less than a week until the end of the world. We still have to find where the key is."

"Oh," Altair frowns. "That's important. I can wait."

Rebecca doesn't even bother with an answer, just disappears out of Altair's sight. As much as he knows it's important to the fate of the world that Desmond find the key in Connor's memories, he can't deny that he wants really badly to see Desmond again.

But it takes a while for Rebecca to get to the main room, pull Desmond out of the animus, tell him what happened, and walk back with him. By that time, Altair's already seeing things again. It gets so bad that when Desmond walks in, Altair's mind keeps projecting other peoples' faces over his. Friends, enemies, family, strangers he barely knows. Memories of people he's never met writing over his own, and suddenly it's all too much.

Altair has cried a lot lately, more than he likes to think about, more than he has in years. Decades, even. Usually he can tell himself that it's only because he's suddenly so small and young, but this time the sobs that wrack his body are so much deeper. They go all the way to the core of his being, and when he tries to speak the words come out mangled and breathless.

"Slow down," Desmond says. "Take a deep breath-"

"I can't-" Altair is panicking, struggling to breathe, hyperventilating maybe. "I can't even see you, I don't know who you are."

Desmond doesn't get angry at that, just stays amazingly, reassuringly calm. "Close your eyes," he says, and Altair follows the direction, still struggling to breathe normally. "Don't look at me, don't look at anything. Alright?" Altair nods, and a moment later he feels Desmond's hand on his back, rubbing circles into it. He doesn't say anything for a long time, until Altair manages to stop crying.

"What are you seeing?" Desmond asks. "I know they put you in the animus, but I don't know what ancestors you saw."

"I don't know either," Altair whispers. "A lot. Dozens. They weren't after anything, I don't think."

"Then why-"

"The first day I was there…" Altair's been trying not to think about that day. "Vidic came to talk to me. He didn't know who I was. He didn't care, didn't even want to know my name. He just knew that I was with you, and he said I was…"

"What?" Desmond asks.

"I was just a way of punishing you," Altair says, and he feels Desmond's hand suddenly stop moving. "He put me through a dozen ancestors a day, trying to break my mind." He laughs even though it's not funny. "It worked."

"It didn't work," Desmond says.

"I can't even see you," Altair says again. "When I look at you I see other faces. But none of them are yours. I don't think, I can't- I can't remember-"

"I know," Desmond says. "That's why your eyes are closed. Just focus on my voice, alright?"

Altair nods. "Is this what you see when you bleed?"

"No," Desmond says quietly. "Rebecca said it might affect you differently. I mean, she wasn't sure, because no one's ever been… stupid enough to put a kid into an animus. But… well, there's some good news and some bad news. What do you want first?"

"Good news." He needs some.

"Well, they were cycling through memories pretty fast. Can you even name one of the ancestors you saw?"

"No."

"Then you probably won't have the same problems I had," Desmond says. "No waking up wondering who you are, no speaking in other languages, nothing like that."

"Bad news?"

"You're a twenty six year old man in a five year body with dozens or hundreds of your ancestors' memories rattling around in your head. You're kind of screwed up."

That forces a genuine laugh out of Altair, because he is so far past screwed up right now. "Nobody stays sane after they've been through the animus," he says. "You told me that."

"I was wrong," Desmond says. "I haven't seen any hallucinations since the day you were taken. No visions, no voices, no anything."

"Really?" Something like hope surges up in Altair's stomach, sweet and tempting. "How?"

"I can't fall apart," Desmond says. "I need to stay sane for you."

Altair opens his eyes and stares up into Desmond's face. For a second, Altair's mind throws up someone else's face over Desmond's, but this time it's someone he recognizes. Then Umar's face melts away, and Altair presses himself as close as he can get to Desmond.

"One out of seventeen," Desmond says quietly.

"What?"

"Seventeen people used the animus before you," Desmond says. "Sixteen of them went crazy. One didn't."

Altair understands right away- it's a slim chance, but of Desmond can claw himself back from the edge of insanity, there's no reason he won't be able to do the same. "I don't like those kinds of odds," he says. "One for seventeen."

"No?"

"I like two for eighteen," Altair says.

"I like two for eighteen too," Desmond says. "Let's try for that instead."

-/-

December 21, 2012

-/-

"Hey, Desmond, do you think you could hurry it up a little?" Shaun calls, and Desmond stops digging to lean on his shovel and glare up at him.

"It would go faster if you helped."

"I don't dig," Shaun says. "I supervise."

Desmond swears under his breath, then slightly louder to make sure Shaun can hear him.

"Friendly reminder that there is a kid here," Shaun says. "Let's try and keep the language age appropriate, yes?"

Desmond adds a few curses in Arabic, this time for Altair's benefit, and is rewarded with a burst of genuine laughter from somewhere out of sight.

"Quit making excuses, Shaun," Rebecca says, and jumps into the hole next to Desmond. "I'll help."

"Well now you're making me look bad," Shaun says.

"Go back to supervising," Rebecca says. "And toss me a shovel."

"Thanks," Desmond says, and after that the two of them work in silence for several minutes. He can hear Shaun and Altair bickering from somewhere overhead, but it doesn't sound aggressive so Desmond ignores it. If they start really arguing he can step in to rescue Shaun, and in the meantime at least it's keeping the kid busy. Busy means not thinking about the hallucinations that Desmond knows he still sees, or answering the voices only he can hear. Busy means one more step away from crazy.

"Why did Connor bury the key in a grave?" Rebecca asks.

"I don't know," Desmond says. "But I'm glad he did. Where else would he have put it that we could still find it hundreds of years later?"

"I guess," Rebecca says. "It's just… creepy, you know? Sort of morbid."

"We're assassins," Desmond says. "What we do is usually morbid."

"I guess," Rebecca says, and goes back to her digging without looking at Desmond.

"What's wrong?" Desmond asks.

"Nothing."

"No, seriously," Rebecca says. "Nothing-" she sighs and seems to droop a little. "Fine. It bothers me that you lied to Altair."

"I didn't lie," Desmond says.

"You can hide the symptoms as much as you want," Rebecca says. "But I monitor your brain patterns every time you get in the animus. I know you're still bleeding."

"Fine," Desmond says. "I lied, because he needed some hope that he could get better. He needed to see that it was possible to beat it. And anyway, it really is getting better." For given values of better- less forgetting who he is, fewer hallucinations- not most peoples' ideas of better, maybe. But enough for him.

"If he finds out you lied, it's going to backfire horribly," Rebecca says.

"I know," Desmond says. "Please don't tell him?"

"I wouldn't do that," Rebecca says. "Not ever. But-" she hesitates. "You know, there is one subject that managed to beat the bleeding effect."

"Yea?" Desmond asks. "You guys always made it seem so inevitable."

"Subject number two," Rebecca says. "Warren Vidic."

"Vidic went in the animus?"

"It's not the most inspirational example," Rebecca says. "That's why no one mentioned him to you."

"But he still did it," Desmond says. "That means it's possible. So if I beat it, and Altair beats it too that's- what, three for eighteen?"

"Not bad odds," Rebecca says.

"Better than a minute ago." Desmond goes back to digging, a smile on his face. So it is possible. The bleeding effect can be beaten, and he's going to do it.

"Oh, hey." Rebecca bends over and picks something up. "Things are looking up."

"You found the key?" Desmond asks, dropping his shovel and bending over to examine the dirty metal disk in Rebecca's hand.

"Yep," she says. "Now let's get out of here and go save the world."

"Sounds like a plan," Desmond says, and for just one perfect, shining moment, everything looks like it might just work out okay.

It's a good long while before that optimism fades, but when it finally does, there's a good reason for it. They're back in the cave by this point, past the door that the key unlocks, listening to Juno and Minerva argue. The optimism vanishes, because there's no point in fighting anymore. There are no more good options after this. Just… death.

Rebecca and Shaun leave when Desmond asks, reluctantly but willing to listen to what is essentially his last request. Altair is more stubborn. "You promised you wouldn't leave," he says when they're alone. Relatively alone, anyway, because the two precursor women are still watching from only a few feet away.

"I know," Desmond says. "But-"

"You don't get to break your promise just because you'll be dead after you do," Altair interrupts. "I'll still be here."

"I only have two choices here," Desmond says, and he doesn't even bother to hide the anger in his voice. "Die, or let the world burn."

"There are infinite choices," Minerva says. "Infinite."

The word means nothing to him, but Altair gasps and goes running off before Desmond can say another word. He watches him go, feeling strangely empty despite knowing that this is exactly what he wants. Then he turns, but hesitates before he does anything else. It's still December 20, not quite midnight. He has a few minutes before he has to die, and if nothing else, waiting will give the others time to get farther away. So he waits.

-/-

December 21, 2012

-/-

Altair only stops running when he gets to the room that holds the Infinity Machine. It's exactly the way he remembers it from his first visit, but this time he doesn't stop to marvel at the impossibility of it all. He doesn't need to know how it was made or what it's here for to understand that it's Desmond's last chance to get out of this cave alive.

So he points his thoughts at the choice that Desmond is about to make, and asks to see the third option. The machine gives him an infinite number of third options. Some of them are bad. Altair sees worlds covered in blood, crushed under oppressive tyrants, or overrun with horrors that make him want to run. And he sees worlds whose circumstances are so different from his own that he can't hope to replicate them. But then he sees one that's different.

In that world, someone made the mistake of carrying the apple into the room with them, and of using it inside, just as Desmond put his hand over the orb. The two technologies interacted in a way that Altair sees but doesn't understand. He hesitates for exactly a second, because maybe messing with the apple isn't a good idea. Then he goes running out of the room, because this is his last chance.

The apple that he brought with him from Masyaf is still in the main room, lying abandoned on a table like a piece of junk. Altair doesn't spare more than a second to think how ironic it is that a piece of metal that has caused so much trouble has turned out to be so useless.

No. Not useless- not if it does what he needs it to.

He goes running back into the room where Desmond is (to his huge relief) still alive, waiting or trying to convince himself to actually do it, maybe. It doesn't matter. He's still alive, and he's going to stay that way.

"Altair!" Desmond says when he comes back in. "What are you going here? You were supposed to leave."

"I didn't," Altair says.

"Obviously," Desmond says. "So go, now."

"No," Altair says.

"Altair-"

"I said no!"

And he turns his mind inward, to focus on the apple, telling it what he wants, what he needs. Only he doesn't know exactly what that is, and the only thing he knows for certain is that he doesn't want this-

The world blinks for just a second, and Altair can almost feel the universe straining as it tries to compensate, and then something gives, and time starts ticking on again, along a new track. He can feel it all around him, and knows deep inside himself that his crazy plan has worked.

Then he passes out.

When he wakes again, his body feels heavy and strange, and it takes him a minute to figure out that this is actually his body, returned suddenly to adulthood. More than that, when he opens his eyes again, he's back in Masyaf, no more than a minute or two after he left. It's like none of it ever happened.

Only it did happen. The memories are still there in his head, proof that he traveled to the twenty first century, that he lived there for months, and that he saved Desmond's life. He doesn't know how it worked, exactly, but he's certain that the apple did what he asked it to. That it created a third option for Desmond to take. Just because Altair doesn't know what that third option is doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And for that reason, if for no other, he can keep going. Live his life, whatever that might mean after this point. Nothing is ever going to be the same, but… maybe that's not a bad thing. He gets to his feet and drops the apple into a pouch at his waist. The metal ball is cold and lifeless in his hands, and Altair has no reason to hope that will change anytime soon. For now, at least, he could do with a few months of normal.

-/-

Yet another chapter that didn't get edited before being published (sorry sorry sorry), mostly because I have a bunch of writing I want to get done before I have to take a fanfic break in July for a novel writing binge.

On that note, if any of you are interested in writing a novel in a month, I can't recommend campnanowrimo . org (or nanowrimo . org) highly enough- it's a great atmosphere, really fun, and honestly finding out you can write 50,000 words in a month is the best feeling. I wouldn't mention it at all, except I found out about it from someone else on this site six years ago, so here's me passing it forward.

/end ramble

6/29/14- Resubmited with dates