"Des?"

He looks at her, and he can feel Clay leave.

"I figured it out."

And it all makes sense, too, because of course the best way to kill a pest is to let it kill itself. Ignore a crying child and walk away, and the kid will stop because he's not getting attention.

"What did you figure out?"

He can feel a grin splitting his lips. "How to get rid of Clay."

"So you've got a plan," he hears Altair say.

"Wait, what about Clay?" he hears Rebecca say, and he watches her roll over, her eyebrows scrunched together and her body language saying she's wide awake now.

He nods. "Yeah. I can do this."

He explains to her about Clay, and then again when Lucy and Shaun wake up, and all of them look remarkably concerned, more so than he was hoping for and perhaps one of the reasons he was unconsciously trying to hide as much as he could from them. He tells them that he'll have to learn to ignore Clay, but it's going to be hard because the other three—Altair, Ezio, and Ratohnhaké:ton—are blocked when Clay comes to the forefront.

"Then… perhaps imagine that they are there," Shaun murmurs, looking at him.

Desmond purses his lips. "Easier said than done. Clay can be really hard to ignore."

"Well then," Rebecca says, grinning like a devil, "looks like we'll just have to pester you."

"Why didn't you tell us earlier that you were having problems with Cl—Sixteen," he heard Lucy catch and correct herself.

Perhaps he should stop acknowledging Clay as Clay, and as Sixteen instead. Nevertheless, he shrugs.

"I don't know. Same reason I didn't tell you about how bad the bleeding was getting before?"

There's a heavy silence between them for just a moment, and when he notices how upset Lucy looks, he smiles gently and takes her hand.

"Hey, everything's gonna be okay."

"Says the man who's fought and lost," Shaun hisses.

He grins like a shit. "I've got more motivation to win this time."

"Of course you do," Rebecca says, leaning back on her hands and smirking at the fact that his eyes are drawn to her stomach. "There's no losing now, Des!"

He looks back up to her eyes and smiles. "No. Absolutely not."

"So does this give me permission to bark orders at you and make you do errands in the dead of night for me?"

He laughs. "Yeah. I guess."

"Does that mean that I get to laugh at you if you get sympathy pains?"

He grins. "I suppose so."

She gives him a victorious smirk, and he just rolls his eyes.

"Desmond."

He turns to see Altair waiting by the door. His lips twitch, and he jerks when he points to the door. Oh, yeah, he has to get to the kids. Of course, if he could just stay here a while longer, he'd be happy. With a soft grunt, he swings his legs over the edge of their bed and pops up.

"Wait… where are you going?" Lucy asks as he strips.

He doesn't miss the regret in her eyes as she sees the nasty scars on his arms and legs from before with his brief hospitalization.

"I gotta get to the first class."

He changes into his training outfit and stretches briefly.

"My kids'll never let it down if I miss it—no matter how inviting our bed looks."

"Have you ever though perhaps you're doing too much, Desmond?" Shaun asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, well, the kids are a good distraction."

"I'll be an even better one," Rebecca says, a sultry tone to her voice, and Desmond can't help but grin.

He's bids farewell after brushing his teeth and washing his face, almost lured back onto the bed with the other three when Rebecca pulls him in for a kiss, and when his first thirty-minute break is there, he notices that Rebecca is standing at the edge of the mats, arms crossed and grinning as she waits for him. He paces over, resisting the urge to flick on his Eagle Vision. This is going to be much harder than he thought.

"Hey. You know, I got to thinking."

"Yeah?"

"You know how much energy I have?"

"Yeah?"

"And you know how much energy you have?"

"Yeah?"

"Imagine how hyperactive our kid's gonna be."

He blinks, and he can see Clay waiting by the door to the gym but focuses solely on Rebecca. He laughs.

"You mean, I'll have finally met my match?"

She grins. "Yeah."

"So, have you been put down for time off yet?"

"Naw, we've already hit a slow period now that Abstergo's down, and we're taking it over. I mean, it's not like coding is particularly stressing."

He chuckles, inviting her onto the mats. "So, are you planning on staying in shape at all?"

"I don't know if I could," she responds, sitting in front of him when he plops on the mats. She grins and scratches her chin, shrugging nonchalantly as she looks to the ceiling. "Of course, I heard we have the world's greatest instructor here, so I'm sure it won't take too long to get me back on par."

He laughs, leaning back on his hands. "Oh, really? The world's greatest instructor?"

"Or, at least, according to the herd of thundering kids that came running off the mats."

"Ah, well, those kids are pretty reliable, you know."

"So I've heard," she says, giving him a doubtful look just barely hiding a teasing smirk.

He grins, and he tries to bring out Ezio, because Ezio is the strongest, and if he can do that, then he's on his way to victory.

"Why do you have such long training sessions, anyway? Wouldn't two hours be enough?"

He blinks.

"Are you going to keep the three-hour sessions once the baby is born? I mean: I know you get Saturday and Sunday off from training, even if you spend them working, but…"

He blinks again, and he watches as she frowns.

"'Cause I—"

"I can put in the order now, if you want, to decrease the hours."

She looks surprised in just the slightest, but shakes her head, laughing. "Not now. Not when you need distraction the most, yeah? I meant: once all this shit is over, and we've got a pink bundle of joy keeping us up all night."

He laughs. "I'm not so sure I could physically keep those hours once the baby gets here."

She grins. "Cool. Just checking."

"Nah, don't worry about it. I'll start taking time off."

He's relieved when he sees Ezio behind her, smiling softly as he watches them. He sees Rebecca look over her shoulder.

"Whozzit?"

"Ezio," he murmurs, looking back at her. "Just a good reassurance everything is okay for now."

She nods slowly, pursing her lips. "Are you sure?"

"I'm positive."

He smiles at her, and a silence falls over them. He manages to remain still and quiet for a moment, then he can feel his fingers twitch. He realizes he probably has a lot of paperwork left to finish, and he doesn't quite know how long it will take, since he doesn't know how much of William's work he's going to have to do. He sighs and looks at her. She gives him a questioning look.

"I think I'm gonna head to my office. With William out of commission for a while, there's even more that needs to get done."

She nods. "Want me to come with?"

"I'm not going to say no to the company."

And as it turns out, Rebecca is a better distraction than he thought. He finds himself beginning to crave her company as the days pass, and Clay begins to figure out that he's being ignored. What started out as the man just waiting to be acknowledged, resisting the urge to turn on Eagle Vision, becomes much worse, and soon, he's trying to learn to "see" through Clay when he appears standing in front of him. Rebecca teases Desmond and talks with him while he's doing paperwork, while the man he's trying to ignore paces back and forth, thinking of ways to get attention, and even, occasionally, she decides to talk to one of the other three men, and when Desmond comes back, the other man is always chuckling quietly. He finds her staying up with him until his inhuman hours of the morning, snacking from a bag of potato chips or munching on an apple, smacking her lips until he has to stop and glare at her because she's being so damn loud. And that helps, too, as Clay begins to get more annoying. Of course, it helps that every time the crazy man slams his hands on his desk, he hears Rebecca's chewing getting unbearably loud, and he has to sigh, frustrated, and look in her direction, glaring at her. She just gives him a shit-eating grin, and he briefly wonders how she knows what's going on, but he doesn't question it, unwilling to give any acknowledgement to him.

Occasionally, she brings in a laptop, working on some project as she kicks her feet up on his desk regardless of what he's doing. She has the courtesy to at least keep her feet clean, and what really surprises him is that as Clay begins talking to get his attention, she begins playing music. Not necessarily music he enjoys, but music that drowns out whatever Clay is saying. Sometimes, it's heavy metal; other times, it's classic rock, and it ranges everywhere from Disturbed to Enya to Lady Gaga or whatever she decides to listen to at that moment. There's this heavy sense of needing to thank her, for everything she's done for him—and will do for him—and it gets worse as he begins to realize just how much he missed company his own age, and he begins to find himself valuing her as her instead of the baby carrier.

It turns out the work he had taken from his father before was just the tip of the iceberg. The man was in charge of scheduling all the missions from here to China, checking in and filing all the mission reports, with the compiling done at each individual base. And damn, there's a lot of shit in China, and they're still fighting to take it back, even with Russia and most of Europe assassin-aligned. And Rebecca knows better than to even think of Africa. He wonders how his father gets it all done, then realizes he's for the most part balancing three jobs, and still getting an hour or two of sleep every night, including weekends, and he'll just have to bunker down and do it because it was his fault that his father is in the hospital now.

After a few weeks, on Sunday, when all the kids are still in their beds and reveling in the lack of training for the weekend, he finds himself donning make-up, colored contacts even though he doesn't need them, and a suit, slipping out of the building and into the streets of Manhattan before the sun has risen. As the streets begin to fill, he knows that his trainee is out there, finding him. The boy successfully hid from him on Saturday, and he has been the only one who's thoroughly stumped him so far. At eight pm, he's in his favorite bar, the one he used to work at, snacking on some sort of salad as he knocks back a drink—

Which lands him in the bathroom, vomiting his guts out as he curses the cook for spoiled food. When he hears a laugh behind him, he turns to see a boy leaning against the stall door, which he doesn't remember opening. The boy has his hands on his hips, dressed in a cap with blonde hair and sportsy clothes. He remembers noticing him in the corner of his eye, getting that gut feeling that had developed since he couldn't flick on the Eagle Vision just in case, and deciding he needs to keep an eye on him.

"I win, Master."

He blinks, hurls, then realizes that it's his student, RichardManchez, the Spanish kid he had placed his whole faith in in becoming an assassin. He laughs, despite his upset stomach, and shakes his head.

"Way to go, Richard. What the hell did you get me with?"

"Some sort of mushroom. I've been watching you for months, and I started researching you when I realized you weren't leaving the compound with all your paperwork. I tried to find something I could make you sick with that could be slipped into your food. Then I changed the way I looked and just… waited here for you all day. I knew I couldn't find you while you were on the move, so I waited you out, thanks to some people here who remembered you from when you worked here."

He shakes his head. This child is the only one who's used a poison to get him in his three years of teaching, and he knows there's more to come, but he can't help but grin.

"And what happens if you had guessed wrong with the poison and killed me?"

Richard looks a little guilty before laughing nervously. "Uh… I guess I really did win?"

He can't help but laugh and congratulate him, and he knows he's got an assassin on his hands that's ready to take the leap.

It's somewhere near the end of the second month of Rebecca's proclaimed pregnancy, a week after Richard's victory, and it's eleven at night as he finishes up his paperwork. She's still wired, and he's distracted, watching her jive in her seat as she works on some coding project. He remembers her telling him that she's always more productive in the early morning hours, and he has seen her doze off once or twice before jerking awake and working furiously for a few minutes before she slows and starts jiving again. Come to think of it, she had done that a few times back at Monteriggioni.

"Why?"

She pauses, turns down the music, and looks at him. "Huh?"

"Why did you volunteer to have the baby?"

"Cause I wanted one. That so bad? I mean," she grins, "having a kid would be a cool new adventure, you know? Like, now that we can 'settle down,' I wanna have a kid."

"But surely that's not the only reason. I mean, you could have bagged any guy you wanted."

She blinks for a moment before she leans back. "I dunno—you're loyal; you're hot; you'll help me with the baby. Why shouldn't I have gone after you? I mean… I guess Lucy would have eventually wanted a child, but I just… I don't really know, Des. I just got this feeling, you know? Not a 'My biological clock is ticking, and I want babies now' feeling, but a 'shit's gonna hit the ceiling fan soon, and there's gotta be something to keep us together' feeling."

He's watching her closely as she says that, and he can't help but wonder if it's the same feeling she gets that clues her into when things are getting hard. Then he can't help but wonder why she feels it, if Lucy was the one who knew crazyman better.

"What do you mean?"

"Like, I don't think you notice it, and I don't think I really ever acknowledged it before… but you sometimes… I don't know. Your aura changes? I mean, I guess that would be the best way to put it."

Color him lost.

"So I try to do something to help you out. Like… playing music, because music always helps me relax, and it's been working with you. So, like, I got this super strong… feeling, I guess, and sure, it took a while for me to be like, 'Oh, hai! Let's have babies!', but I knew that something was wrong, you know? I just got this feeling that things were going to get a lot worse. And it was right."

He blinks, then stares at her for a moment. Just when she begins to frown, he grins like a shit. "You're crazy."

She pauses, then laughs, and he's dodging a pen from her hand as he starts laughing. It's eleven at night—he's tired of working since his last class, and everything seems to be much funnier now. Part of him is glad it's Friday, and he's thinking that he's going to stop working on everything for the day since classes are done and he has no testing today for graduates. He grins.

"Let's go get something to eat, and then I'll crash."

She gives him a skeptical look. "You sure you up to it?"

He nods. "I could stand to get out of this place. I haven't done much outside since I passed Richard Manchez last week for graduation."

She laughs. "You need to get out, then. Maybe that's why he found you. You're slacking on your game 'cause you're stuck in here all the time."

He snorts, and he can hear Ezio laugh.

"Of course you aren't slacking," the man murmurs as he starts shutting down the computer and getting ready to leave. "As a matter of fact, your student even conceded defeat while you were out and about. He still had to wait for you."

He chuckles, thanking Ezio for the reassurance as he rises and stretches, groaning softly. His muscles are sore, and he feels stiff.

"So, where should we go to eat?" Rebecca chirps.

"Anything you feel like?"

"How about… barbeque?"

He purses his lips, frowning as he thinks.

"There was some Korean place called 'Don Bogam BBQ and Wine Bar' between 5th and Madison. I remember someone recommending it."

"Are you sure? That food will probably be spicy."

She grins. "Of course I'm sure."

"And the baby?"

"He'll love it too."

He blinks, then laughs as he locks his office door, ignoring as a hand slams onto the door to keep him from closing it. He pulls it shut, locks it, and wraps his arm around Rebecca, smiling.

"All right, then. Korean barbeque it is. Should we invite Lucy and Shaun?"

"They'd probably like it. I'll give them a call."

He waits as she does, shifting feet. "Should I call Shaun?"

"Naw," she says, closing her cell phone. "They'll meet us there."

He grins, loving that it only took a few seconds for her to complete her call with Lucy, and even less time to get him out on the streets in the still-bustling city. He could feel himself relax as the people surrounded him, and by the time they arrived at the restaurant, he was eager to try this food. Rebecca had been chattering excitedly about how she had friends who had been here and recommended it, and how she had had a hankering for it, and how her mother had loved to eat spicy foods before she had been born, and how spicy foods had been a part of her childhood. When he meets Lucy and Shaun at the door to the restaurant, he can't help but pause. They both looks apprehensive, perhaps a bit worried, and he frowns when he notices the person standing with them.

His father was with them, still looking rather haggard, but significantly better. He's still got a cast on his arm, and there's a scar peeking out from under the cast, looking ugly and wicked, but that's okay by his standards because it was well-earned. He's leaning relatively heavily on a cane with his other hand. Desmond's pretty sure that the cane will be there permanently, but that's okay because he was getting old anyway. He looks as if he's been through hell in the past weeks, and he probably has.

"You're out."

His father blinks first, then nods slowly. Desmond's pleased to see the uncomfortable shift backward and the cautious look directed toward him. He thinks his father has finally gotten the hint he's no longer just some kid on the Farm, and that he should be respected, if not feared, because he's become the monster his father wanted.

"Yes. Lucy was in the process of checking me out when Rebecca called."

"Bloody hell, it was horrid checking him out," Shaun hisses. "I'd forgotten just how ridiculous the medical system was here."

"Hey, it's not that bad," Desmond says, grinning.

"This is still a good country to live in," Lucy says, sighing.

Desmond smiles at her, and then he looks back at his father. He can see the tense muscles as he leans on the cane, the "Am-I-Safe-This-Close?" look as he shifts back again, and he can't help but get a sort of unbridled pleasure. Even if it's just fear, or mistrust, he's glad to know that he's finally driven the point home to his father that, yes, he's better than he ever imagined him to be, and no, there was nothing to get in his way now.

"You've been in there for almost a month and a half now."

His father shakes his head. "I had severe internal bleeding. It's not as easy for an old man to heal as a younger man."

He snorts, looking at the skies and determined not to let it bother him. Not while he's enjoying a night out with Rebecca after working his brains and eyeballs until they felt about ready to melt out of his skull. He ignores his father's discomfort, ignores the sound of that laughter he knows so well as a chilling feeling spreads across his skin, and he chooses to close his eyes.

"Yeah, I know how hard it can be to heal when you're old."

There's silence, and he can feel Ezio clamping a hand on his shoulder, Altair materializing behind him, and he inhales deeply. He can't tell him how many times it's taken him weeks to heal from something in the Animus.

"Let's go in, yeah? I'm starving!" Rebecca says, suddenly dissolving the atmosphere and leading them in, and he can't help but grin as he's pulled in.

"I was about to suggest that," Shaun responds. "I imagined we came here to eat, not talk like gossiping women."

Desmond snorts, and as they enter the restaurant, he can't help but be slightly in awe. It looks like an upscale Japanese place of sorts meant to relax at, with the low tables that you sit on the floor in front of. There's regular chairs and tables just off to the side, and he feels as if he could relax here. When he sees the other people walking about, he can only hope that his clothes don't look to casual, the pants tucked into his boots with his white hooded robe that he forgot to take off because it's so comfortable.

They go for the strange sort of seat, with a hole for his legs and the table at floor level, and he can't help but end up sitting cross-legged so that he doesn't have to deal with it. He looks over the menu with Rebecca, completely content to ignore his father with his newfound ignoring skills. Lucy and Shaun are in good moods, though, and even though they check on William occasionally to see how he's doing, they're more than happy just to talk. Desmond realizes he's missed their company. He'll have to start hunting them down more, or at least spending more time with them. They eventually order several dishes and several kinds of alcohol, and by the time midnight rolls around, he's got a pleasant buzz in his system as he grins like a fool, and his father is even more inebriated than he is.

"You know, I'm glad you're back, William. I was getting sick of doing your work for you," he says, holding another cup of sake in his hand. "Christ. Between the paperwork I had already adopted from you and the other leaders just to get this place moving, the last thing I needed was to deal with the missions coming in themselves. That takes forever!"

His father snorts, amused. "They do. Getting those missions in for all over the work takes a ton of time."

"It's hard—and that doesn't even include the tedious parts of it!"

William shook his head. "You should have seen it before Abstergo fell. It was ridiculous."

"You should consider yourselves lucky enough that we're organized enough now we can have that paperwork," Shaun says, jumping right into the conversation.

"Lucky? You do it, then," Desmond retorts.

"I would. It's nice to be able to track our expenses and where our assassins are. I would be grateful we have the capabilities to run efficiently, instead of like a bunch of chickens with our heads cut off."

"Still," William murmurs, "the paperwork is hell."

"I'd toast to that. Christ, I've had to ask Rebecca to give up her seat and take mine sometimes just so I'd have another place to set things! I'm surprised you just haven't given the orders to have us systematically wipe out the people in Africa with all its turmoil!"

William finishes his glass of sake. "It's not that simple, son. We can't—"

"I was kidding," Desmond deadpans, rubbing a hand over his face.

"And in thinking of which, how are you doing, Rebecca?"

Rebecca turns from her conversation with Lucy, grinning. "I'm doing just fine. Can't wait until the mood swings really kick in, and I start bossing Desmond around like a dog."

Desmond sticks his tongue out at her, and she laughs, snatching the bottle of sake away from him.

"I don't think you need any more if you have to keep your mental defenses up, Des."

He frowns, resting his chin in his hand but realizing she's right.

"Course, it took a lot for you to get drunk in the first place."

William snorts again. "'M not surprised, to be honest. We've always had a high tolerance for alcohol."

Desmond hears Altair agree to that somewhere behind him, and Ezio chuckle, murmuring his tolerance was self-made. He nods, his eyes flicking back to his father before back to Rebecca.

"Have you two gotten married yet?"

There's a pause, and then Desmond and Rebecca laugh.

"We haven't even thought about it, William," she says.

"You know: it's not going to look good if your child's birth certificate has two different last names on it."

"Then how about we just buy the marriage license and have a ceremony another day?" he suggests.

"Fair enough, but I figured I'd at least ask. Do you think you're ready to marry?"

"You certainly weren't, and here I am! I can't do any worse than you," Desmond says with a smile, and as if karma was looking out for him in his inebriated state, the second round of food gets there.

His father gets distracted by the food, and he and Rebecca touch chopsticks together in imitation of a toast, and they're all digging in. There's not much talking now, save the occasional request for something or someone protesting having their food stolen. By the time one am rolls around, he's leaning back, full and merry and in an extremely forgiving mood. They pay their bill, and he walks out, chatting away with his father about what to do in Africa and reaching no real conclusion as they part to go to bed. Rebecca plops on the bed and spends a bit complaining about bloating, and Desmond can see her stomach is bigger because of it, as Shaun changes into bedclothes and he strips to his boxers. Lucy is sitting by her side, joking with her about the pregnancy and how they'll have to go shopping for better clothes. Rebecca hisses, talking about how she wouldn't be caught dead in maternity crap. It's with a hesitant smile he walks over, crouching in front of Rebecca as she whines, and kisses her briefly, thanking her again for having the baby for him. It seems to be enough to placate her for now, especially when he offers to get her something to help, and even come with to carry the shopping bags. As he curls up, sandwiched between Rebecca and Lucy, he decides that tonight was good.