Just so you're all ready, this chapter is even worse than the last one because... well... aftermath. Also no death threats, I was rather surprised after I killed such an important character. Oh well, I'm sure they'll start popping up after you see what a mess this chapter is.
Desmond wasn't actually sure where they finally stopped. It was a small city though, deep inland where there was nothing but sand for hundreds of miles in all directions. Desmond didn't even look as they pull up to a squat building, his face has practically been glued to Ezio's back for the past several hours. Behind them he could hear people, chattering quietly, interested in the strange people on motorcycles. The abrupt quiet of the motorcycle as Ezio turned the engine off made Desmond's ears ring.
"Desmond," his name on Hawk's tongue was enough to get him to look up from Ezio's back. Hawk never used his real name, not once, Hawk always called him Little Bird. He stared at Hawk in surprise and a little shock as the other American smiled at him, not a happy smile though, more a 'everything will be okay', smile. "C'mon," and he helped Desmond off the bike. His legs felt a bit numb, but be could walk.
"Where are we?" Jacob asked. Desmond looked around but he wasn't seeing anything, not really, he was having trouble processing what was going on.
"Not sure," Hawk admitted looking around, squinting in the bright light. Then Ezio appeared again and said he had them a room. Desmond barely saw where they were, it looked sort of like a hostel. Ezio grabbed him by the shoulder and steered him into the room, Desmond sat on the bed without a word, staring at the wall and at nothing. There were small cracks in the paint like spider webs.
"So what now?" he heard Hawk ask.
"We have to keep moving," Ezio said sounding like he was frowning.
"And Big Eagle?"
"Shot, three times, at least."
Hawk sighed, "Well that sucks. Well we have to-
Desmond stopped listening, "Hey Des," Jacob crouched in front of him. Desmond stared at him with slightly wide eyes. "You okay?" he asked and put his hand on Desmond's knee.
Desmond blinked at him and then suddenly something he'd never felt before rushed over him. It was a feeling he'd only ever experienced second hand through the Animus. A brutal, all encompassing, violent, rage. This was all Jacob's fault. He'd seen Altair's reaction when he found them behind the guard station seeming to come to a decision involving Jacob. Jacob wasn't an innocent anymore, not since he'd started training. He wasn't just any guy from Queens either, not anymore, not with what Hawk had pulled out of him. And Desmond knew Altair couldn't let go. He'd done it already and he knew after his first failure he couldn't just let things pass anymore.
He felt his face change, though didn't even know what it looked like. He didn't think he wanted to know if the way Jacob's face twisted was any indication in the instant before Desmond tackled him with a scream. Jacob yelled, sounding like for help, and Desmond felt his fist connect with Jacob's face, abruptly cutting off the sound with a crunch. His left hand was sort of half wrapped around Jacob's throat while his right just hit him again and again and again. Distantly he was aware of someone yelling, cursing and swearing and spewing hate. He was vaguely aware that the voice was him, but it felt far away, the three tongued voice voice disconnected to the him that was trying to beat Jacob's face in.
Then there were several powerful hands on him, pulling and grappling and yanking him off Jacob. Someone else was yelling but he didn't know who and even as a strong set of arms held him back he fought against them aware he was just screaming "THIS IS YOUR FAULT!" at the bloody mess that had once been the New Yorker that Hawk was crouched over.
He was literally thrown into the corner of the room. Hastily he tried to get to his feet but someone shoved him down again. He stumbled back a little, his back collided with the wall and he Ezio practically on top of him, pushing him down. The immortal's body became a cage, his arms and legs bars, unmoving as they closed around Desmond who thrashed and tried to get away, still yelling. Ezio was speaking but Desmond couldn't hear or understand. He was just so angry that they'd just left Altair to die he couldn't think, couldn't feel, couldn't even process his grief in a constructive manner. On the road the roar of the wind and the thrum of the engine under him had numbed him to the grief, to the pain, but now he couldn't ignore it. Now it was like an ice pick to the chest.
There had been times in his life where he'd felt his entire life slip out from under him and he stood on a thin bridge made of invisible glass and didn't know which way to go to avoid falling. Those were the times he didn't know where to turn, which way to go and couldn't deal with the world and what it considered just.
The day his brother, Duncan, had died was one of those times. His older brother got beaten to within an inch of death by another boy in his class for being seen as weak. After that he'd never been the same. Duncan had healed, but he had a bad eye, left partially blind, and thus forever weak and useless in their parents' eyes. Desmond, eight years old, had been told by his parents he wasn't to end up like his screw up brother, while his brother told him not to let these people destroy him, that the world wasn't as scary as their teachers said and that it was so much bigger than the few miles around the Farm they were allowed to explore. He'd said that with a bright smile from the hospital bed, looking clean and perfect even covered in bandages, invincible. Duncan had barely gotten out of the hospital before he'd killed himself. Then his parents had turned to him and said to not end up like his brother. His brother had been fifteen when he'd cut his own throat open, much the same way Assassins killed their targets. It had left him without direction and not knowing what to do, not knowing who to listen to; a brother who loved him, or parents who were worried about enemies who didn't exist.
Another time was the day he ran away. He'd never been outside the Farm before, never known the world. There the glass bridge had been more clear, though no less easy to transverse. Forward, into the world and forget everything and everyone he'd ever met, or back to the Farm, and complete the life his brother had been too weak to run away from, but not escape. Desmond had chosen the former path, and the road from the Farm to Rapid City had been a long one. After that his life had never been the same, he had to look out for himself, because no one else would.
He'd made a life for himself, sort of. Had a motorcycle, had bartending school and almost ten years of experience at it under his belt. Sure he moved around a lot, but when someone in Omaha had recognized him once he knew they were looking for him. Then everything had become so fucked up with Abstergo. He'd tried to leave that life behind him, move forward. But the past always caught up with you. And he was faced with more questions, no answers, and no way to know which way to go that didn't lead down into the darkness over your thin bridge of existence. All he could do was feel his way out along the precarious structure and hope he didn't fall because if he did there was no one coming to save him from what was down there.
The water below the bridge took on new meaning when he'd started to see things, phantom figures and reliving events he'd never even played through in the Animus. Here if he misstepped, if he made one wrong move there really was no way back out, especially as the visions became longer, more intense and it grew hard to tell who he was and who he wasn't. He'd walked through life carefully and then had misstepped and fallen, down, down, down into a dark place, the Black Room, and the things he never wanted to see. He'd made it through that though, barely, but come out the same as before, things sometimes didn't make sense, he'd convinced himself that the first time he met Ezio hadn't been real.
He'd gotten better though. It had gotten better. His ancestors had helped him, Altair had helped him. He'd fixed it. Desmond didn't know how, but he's fixed whatever it was that made Desmond suffer from phantoms that everyone had said couldn't be prevented, only slowed. In the time since he'd left the Order (for the second time) he'd made another life, something stable. The bridge over that darkness was sturdy and he knew exactly which way to go and followed after the glowing figures who offered safety, protection, and family from a life that had been so alone and distant.
But now…
Now all he could see was the darkness yawning open beneath him again as an important support was left to disintegrate into nothing in a blink of an eyes. He'd always let people important to him go, watching them slip right through his fingers. Duncan who reminded him his parents weren't always right, Abrianna from Cincinnati who taught him how to ride a motorcycle, Jerry from Newark who could mix the driest, dirtiest, martini Desmond ever drank, and a few others from that life. Then in this life, a newer life where all the hurts were just as painful, and sharp without the blurred edges of memory to soften their pain, the ones suffered in the Animus no less painful than ones he himself suffered. He led Kadar to his death, let Malik lose an arm and then killed a man who was like a father. He watched most of Ezio's family get hanged and then almost destroy himself as he sought revenge, throwing away everything good in his life in his single minded, blind, drive for vengeance. Then he'd been controlled by something bigger than him and killed one of the few people who meant something to him, who believed in him.
Now it was happening all over again. It was all slipping away and behind him lay his perfect, sturdy, bridge, and before him was nothing but invisible glass.
He yelled at Ezio, but the man didn't move, he kicked and punched and thrashed and cursed and screamed and tried to get away, but Ezio just pressed him into the corner and took it, silent now. He didn't hold Desmond into stillness, he just kept him in place and let Desmond beat his hands against his chest in fury. His hands became sore and his throat hoarse from yelling before finally he had no anger left and he just slumped forward and into Ezio's chest, feeling his entire body heaving. The older man just wrapped his arms around him, face against his shoulder and finally Desmond could feel his tears. They were hot, like they boiled on his skin, and his face was swollen and mucus dripped down from his nose. He didn't care though and Ezio didn't seem to mind. Great, heaving, sobs wracked his entire body, a sorrow he'd never known, a grief he couldn't even articulate as he struggled to breathe, sob, and hold back the sobs all at once and wish to never breathe again.
Desmond couldn't remember the last time he'd cried, the last time he'd known this sort of grief. Duncan maybe. He hadn't really understood what had happened then though, he knew he hadn't cried though. He hadn't cried when he found out Lucy had died, he'd just woken up from a coma and was too weak to feel the complicated feelings required to grieve and he'd never been close enough to someone after Duncan to feel the pain of their deaths to this extent.
The sobs stopped before the tears in which Desmond just clung to Ezio sniffling, unable to stop the waterworks and not wanting to even if he could and trying to remember how to make his lungs work since somewhere between the sobbing and screaming he seemed to have forgotten. Now that he wasn't so wired he could feel Ezio rubbing his back gently. "It's okay Desmond," he heard Ezio say and repeat just over and over, or a variation like it, like a soothing mantra. Desmond just buried his face in Ezio's chest, unwilling to deal with anything beyond the safe embrace of his ancestor's arms, where, for just a moment, the unstable, glass, mess his life had been suddenly become seemed more manageable here.
Desmond sniffed and glanced up at Ezio who looked a bit worried, but also probably relieved he wasn't beating Jacob in the face anymore. "He's gone," Desmond said, his voice rough and unused from the crying and the way it closed around his words as though they were pain to even speak.
Ezio frowned and leaned down a bit so he spoke almost directly into Desmond's ear, "Not forever," it was barely a whisper. "Not forever."
"He got shot," Desmond sniffled, not believing Ezio.
"Shot doesn't mean dead," Ezio said gently, and Desmond imagined it was what a father would sound like when comforting their child. Desmond wouldn't know since his own had been on the side of psychopathic and had never worried about Desmond except that he went to school and training and didn't grow up like Duncan. To their father nothing had mattered but to be strong. To him nothing had mattered but that, not even his own family. "He'll be back."
"You sound so sure," Desmond swallowed a sob that threatened to break his voice, he thought he'd run out if sobs.
"I've known him a long time. He's yet to actually die on me no matter how many times he's threatened it," and Desmond was amazed when he felt himself smile a little.
"When?"
"I don't know. But trust me bambino, he'll be back. You're too important to him for him to just leave you," and Desmond's heart short of soared even though he knew Ezio was just saying that to make him feel better. He'd seen Altair get shot, three times, there was no way the Assassins would have let him live. Ezio used his own sleeve to wipe up Desmond's face, drying his eyes and cheeks and wiping his nose.
Desmond felt like he was six and needed someone to look after him, just a child, a helpless one at that. He sort of imagined that to the others he he was just that, a kid who they needed to look after and protect. At the moment that's all Desmond wanted. Someone who would take care of him instead of always having to take care of himself. Just once he wanted to be able to be weak, to let someone else care for him and not have to worry about always doing it himself.
"Where's Jacob?" Desmond asked in a soft voice, still holding onto Ezio.
"Hawk took him to the doctor, you dislocated his jaw and probably broke his arm," Ezio said.
Desmond just blinked but didn't feel guilty, he was still high on other emotions. He wouldn't have even if he wasn't though. He also didn't remember breaking Jacob's arm. "He'll live," Desmond said shortly.
Ezio chuckled, "Yes, he will bambino, no thanks to you," and he gently stroked Desmond's hair. Desmond slumped back against the wall and looked at Ezio, but said nothing, and Ezio didn't offer any words either, they just sat opposite each other and Desmond tried to sort out everything in his head before just giving up, it wasn't worth the head trauma right now. Instead he felt himself crashing, hard, worn out by the violent flux of emotions he'd just suffered through in the past hour. His head dropped down to his shoulder and his eyes slid shut, he slept. He woke for a few seconds when he felt Ezio lift him fully off the ground and put him on the bed, cot really, and sit next to him with a sigh. After that there was just blackness and the glass bridge beneath his feet.