"Hey! Look who's up!"
"Ah-" Desmond sits up on his bed and winces. He's alone in his head today- he glances up and there's Altair perched on the end of his bed, looking completely collected and calm- but it's throbbing like it's about to burst. "Rebecca, can you just keep it down a little?" he asks. "My head's killing me."
"Sorry."
"How did I get into bed?" he asks.
"Well, after the animus chewed you up and spat you back out, Shaun brought you over."
"Great," says Desmond. "He's never going to let me forget that."
"Probably not," Rebecca agrees. "Well, I'm glad you're awake, but I need to get back to work on the animus. It's rejected you twice now. Next time, who knows? There could be brain damage."
"Wait, Rebecca-"
"Yea?"
He feels bad, knowing that the reason the animus stopped working is sitting on the end of his bed, not six inches from where Rebecca stands. But he doesn't know what to say. "It's probably not the animus. I mean, there could be lots of reasons. Like, ah-" he draws a blank.
"Low synchronization during the last session," Altair provides.
"Like a bad sync rate," Desmond repeats. "Yea, I mean- I bet that before the animus kicked me out, I had the lowest sync rate you've ever seen."
"Well I wasn't going to mention it," Rebecca says, and smiles. "I didn't want to rub it in or hurt your feelings or anything."
"My feelings aren't hurt at all," says Desmond, and when she turns away, he makes a face at Altair.
"He's not even my ancestor," Altair complains.
'Lowest ever?' Desmond mouths at him.
"I'll give everything a quick look anyway," Rebecca says. She leaves, but before she's been gone thirty seconds, Lucy takes her place.
"I heard you were up?" she asks.
"Yea."
"Good," says Lucy. "Right, good..."
She seems distracted, so he asks, "Are you feeling okay?"
"Just tired," says Lucy. "I'm not really used to being on the run after all the time I spent undercover at Abstergo. It's a different kind of stress from before." She tries a tired smile.
"Well if you ever want to talk, or anything-" Desmond offers, and then stops, because he's not really sure what to say. She has a nice smile.
"I know where to find you," Lucy says. "Anyway, I hate to ask, but we're on a short schedule- I heard Lucy say she was only going to do a quick check on the animus. Do you think you'll be up to another session when she's done?"
"Yea," says Desmond. "Sure." He's got some issues to work out with Ezio, after all. He feels bad, in a weird sort of way, for making him wait.
And he does make him wait, or rather Rebecca makes him wait, and then they have a quick dinner, and an hour and forty minutes later he's climbing into the animus, syncing up with Ezio. When the memory loads, he's in the sanctuary, sitting next to Ezio (not sharing a brain, for once- it used to be that he spent about as much time in Ezio's body as outside it. But slowly the balance has been shifting, and he has no idea why; it's like playing a video game where the balance between cutscenes and action keeps changing).
Desmond watches as Ezio opens and closes his mouth several times, then finally shakes his head. "I'll wait, spirit," he says at last. "Maybe I'm just going crazy. But maybe I'm not. And you'll tell me someday."
"Someday," Desmond agrees. Right now, in his own body (ish), he's safe. He knows Ezio won't hear him. "Someday, when nobody's watching." He figures he owes him that much, at least.