When Desmond gets the email from Layla, about the kid in his ancestor's memories that needs help, his first gut reaction is that there's nothing he can do. She gives him the dates, and they just don't line up—Haytham would have already helped to conceive Connor by the time he apparently met Shay. Desmond won't have access to those memories.
You might, Altair says, when he realizes why Desmond is reluctant. I'm… working on something.
He won't say anything else, but by now Desmond knows better than to doubt him. So he does what he can to accelerate things. He goes straight to Ezio's memory of hiding the apple, then only a few hours later they're all on their way to the coliseum. He's half expecting Juno to be there waiting for them but she's not, and after that he's able to get them on their way to the Temple. It's probably not completely necessary to go through Haytham's memories in the same place where he'd done it last time, but it just feels right. And anyway, he's still going to have to be there on December 21, because hopefully by then he'll have a way to save the world without releasing Juno.
Yea. He's not feeling too optimistic right now. Mostly he's just tired.
At least he's not in a coma this time around. And Lucy's not dead. And he has support on the outside, and ancestors in his head. So things aren't quite as bad as they could be, not yet anyway.
"Desmond."
They're flying commercial, which normally would have had Desmond worried about being tracked, but Abstergo still knows exactly where they are, and so do the Assassins. And—he grins a little, as he remembers a detail of the last email Layla had sent him—so do the Hidden Ones.
It's not a bad name, really.
"Hey, Lucy," Desmond says. Because there are other people all around them, he keeps his voice down.
"You're acting differently," she says. "What's wrong?"
"I'm fine."
"You're not."
He sighs. "Lucy, listen. I know you've been really frustrated with me lately."
"That's one way of putting it."
"But it's almost over, okay?" One way or another, this is going to end on December the 21st. "And—look, I promise that before all this is over, I'll tell you everything."
"See," Lucy says. "I want to believe you, Desmond, but so far…"
"I've been more honest with you than I have been with Rebecca or Shaun," Desmond says, which is an admission that stings a little bit. After all, Lucy's a Templar and the other two are Assassins—they're supposed to be on his side.
"I just…"
Desmond's tired. He's just… he's tired, and he's ready to be done with lying already. He turns away from Lucy, and she lets him go quiet. She mostly just shoots him annoyed looks and huffs occasionally when she thinks he's not looking. The flight seems to last forever, and Lucy doesn't speak up again until the fasten seatbelts light comes on for their landing.
"You're not an easy person to understand, Desmond."
His arm itches, and Desmond rubs absently at it. Yea, well, that's difficult to argue, the way things are right now.
Luckily the plane lands not long after that, and there's enough to worry about with getting out of the airport, finding their stuff, getting a van, and finding their way to the Temple. Especially because Desmond insists on approaching carefully. He can't quite shake the thought out of his head that Juno had used the place as a trap once before, with his dad and Berg's daughter. She could have picked anywhere or anywhen in the world to hold them hostage, and she'd picked the Temple. What's to say she won't have another trap waiting for them here?
"This is ridiculous," Shaun grumbles, when they eventually make it close to the Temple. They're not actually there yet, because Desmond keeps insisting they move as slowly as possible, and it's obviously driving Shaun crazy. "Desmond, as far as anyone else knows, it's just some old cave."
"No," Rebecca says, her voice much quieter than usual. "Shaun—"
"What, Rebecca?"
"Just shut up for a second and listen."
"Listen to what?"
Rebecca reaches up and back to slap her hand over his face, and the effect is almost funny. It's not, though, because once everyone's still and quiet, Desmond can hear it too.
Voices, Altair says, unnecessarily.
Someone's already here, Desmond agrees. Juno? Although the voices here sound friendlier somehow than he'd expect Juno's people to be. "I want to go ahead first and check it out," he says quietly, and slips away before anyone can stop him.
He's maybe halfway there when he hears someone say, "Desmond," and when he turns around he sees Bayek standing nearby, smile twitching on his face as he tries and fails to look serious.
"Bayek," Desmond says, straightening up and laughing in sheer relief. "I figured Juno would have moved in there, if anyone."
Bayek calls out something loud in Egyptian, which makes Desmond wince—a few hours of creeping around has conditioned him to be wary of loud noises. Still, at least if Bayek's comfortable enough to raise his voice, that's probably a pretty good sign that there's no threat around here.
Desmond is still trying to force himself to relax when he hears footsteps heading toward them from the direction of the Temple, and he grins when he sees Layla weaving her way through the trees toward them.
"You made it," she says.
"Thank you," Desmond blurts, before he says anything else. "Layla, I seriously don't know if I'd have made it without your help."
She waves him off, but Desmond thinks she looks tired. Or is that just his imagination? "No big deal," she says. "Except for flying down to Egypt to talk to myself, that was pretty weird."
"Right," Desmond laughs. "Listen, if you ever run into a past version of me that you need to get rid of, let me know. I think I owe you."
"You definitely owe me," Layla says, a familiar smirk creeping onto her face. "But listen, Desmond, we've been pushing all night to get set up out here, the least you can do is come help us finish unpacking."
"Yea," Desmond says. "Sure, only—I think this is going to take a little bit of explanation." He glances over his shoulder, to where he'd left Lucy and the others. He'd promised her an explanation, but he hadn't been planning on giving it to her so soon.
"Right," Layla says. "You still have that Templar with you."
"And Rebecca and Shaun," Desmond says.
"Good thing we left the other one back at the warehouse," Layla says. "We only have a few people out here."
"Why come at all?" Desmond asks, as the three of them start walking back. "Why not just keep emailing?"
"It was kind of a last minute decision," Layla says. "But basically, we're worried about how much good Javier's going to do by himself."
Bayek says something, and Desmond suddenly misses his translator intensely. He'll have to see about getting that back.
"Bayek's sticking up for him," Layla translates. "I think he feels protective." She makes a face at Bayek, then laughs. Then she turns back to Desmond. "But yea. You need to be here for December 21, to stop Juno, and I think we're all hoping it'll help Javier if the two of you are physically in the same place. I don't know. We'll take any advantage we can get, at this point."
She stops as the three of them reach the place where Lucy, Shaun, and Rebecca are still waiting, and looks to Desmond to take point.
How is he supposed to explain this?
"Hey," Desmond starts, more than a little awkward.
"Desmond," Lucy says. "What—" She stares at Layla, seems to waver for a second on whether or not this is the same Layla she'd recruited to help hack Desmond's email, then realizes it's obviously not. "What is she doing here?"
"You know her?" Shaun asks. "Lucy?" He frowns. "Desmond?"
"Uh—" He shoves his fists into the pockets of his hoodie, and decides to just grit his teeth and dive in at the deep end. "Well, is now a bad time to start explaining that I'm part of a group of people that travelled here from the future to stop an insane precursor from mind controlling the world?"
"Oh my God, Desmond," Layla mutters. She raises her voice so the others can hear her. "Listen," she says. "Everything he said is… he's technically right, but that's a terrible way to explain."
"He's generally pretty terrible at explanations, I've noticed," Lucy says. She's still looking at Layla like she's the part of all this that makes the least sense. Of course, the Layla she's familiar with is several years younger and generally a lot more confused, so Desmond can't completely blame her.
"Yea," Layla says, shooting a grin at Desmond. He rolls his eyes, and then follows her as she starts to head back toward the Temple. "Well, to be fair it is pretty hard to explain."
But Desmond can't help noticing that she does a decent job of explaining the basics as they head back. None of them looks entirely convinced, but they're getting there, and when they step into the Temple and see everyone—
"This isn't exactly what I was expecting to see," Shaun says, with the air of someone choosing their words extremely carefully.
"I know," Desmond admits, although he's beaming as he looks around the open space. "Me neither." The first time around, this place had been nothing but a big open space with a few odd computers and sleeping bags set up—they'd been camping out, more than anything else, and constantly under pressure from their time limit and from Juno and just—everything else.
This time, they've made it here earlier. And the place is full of people, of friends and allies that are here to help them. And they already know where the amulet is, so he won't have to worry about spending weeks in Connor's memories to track it down. All they have to worry about is Juno.
"Desmond?"
And… maybe there's one other thing to worry about. As Layla leads Shaun, Rebecca, and Lucy deeper into the Temple, still busy explaining what they've just stumbled into, and Bayek melts away into the rest of the group, Desmond turns to his dad's voice. It is his dad, the one from 2017—older and grayer than the one that's from here and now in 2012. "Dad," he says. "I didn't—I wasn't expecting you here."
"I wanted to come see you," his dad says, and to Desmond's surprise he grips him by the shoulder, and pulls him away from the group. "I think there are some things we need to talk about."
"Like what?" It's hard to know exactly how to act around his dad right now, and Desmond finds himself fidgeting nervously. They've never been exactly close, now that Desmond has actually died, or almost died, depending how he looks at it, he really wants to give them a chance to do better. He's just not sure how.
"Your son," his dad says, and Desmond (who is still not used to the idea of that) feels his stomach flip.
"Elijah," he says.
His dad nods, and looks directly at him. "What you have to realize," he says. "Is that he's very special."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Desmond asks. "Is he—Layla says he's a Sage. Is that what you mean?"
"No," his dad says. "Well, yes, he is that. But he's also—he's impressed me, Desmond." He at least looks apologetic as he says, "You of all people know that I can be… I'm a hard person to impress."
They share a moment of awkwardness. Desmond remembers failing to live up to his father's expectations when he was a kid, and he knows exactly what it means when his dad says he can be hard to impress.
"Don't screw this up," his dad says, voice almost shaking.
"Why?" Desmond asks quietly. "Because I always did when I was a kid?"
"No," his dad says. "Because I screwed it up when you were a kid."
The sentence falls like a bomb into the space between them, but instead of exploding into an argument—the way Desmond half expects it to—it only brings silence. Desmond opens his mouth and closes it several times, trying to think of where to start. They don't talk about this, they just don't and they never have. But there's a reason Desmond had run away from home when he was sixteen, and it hadn't been because he was too friendly with his parents. In the weeks he'd been in the Temple with his dad last time around, they'd more or less settled into a way of working together without ever really talking to each other, or about why Desmond had left. It feels weird to do it now.
"I never set a good example for you," his dad says, when it gets to be obvious for both of them that Desmond doesn't know what to do with this. "Which I should have."
"Yea," Desmond says. There's sort of a lot his dad should have done when Desmond was a kid, back at the Farm. But…
He scrubs at his face with his hand and half turns away, thinking hard. "Listen," he says at last. "I think that… this is a conversation we need to have. Eventually. But right now, honestly—I just want to know about Elijah." He and his dad have had his chance, and he's not sure if they're ever really going to be able to mend all their broken bridges, and even if they do, it's going to take a good long time. But Elijah… There's a chance there, isn't there? He's missed years of his son's life, he has no idea how to be a dad, and it sounds like Elijah is going to be bringing just as much baggage to this relationship as Desmond is.
But right now, he just cares a lot more about meeting Elijah than he cares about trying to fix all the things that have been broken for too long with his dad.
"Can I meet him?" Desmond asks, and then feels stupid for asking. It's not like his dad is some kind of gatekeeper, Desmond can meet his kid if he wants to.
"He's back at the warehouse," his dad says. "We weren't sure if Juno or any of her people were going to be here, and it seemed safer to leave the kids." He reaches into a pocket of his jacket, and pulls out a phone. "I wanted him to have a cell phone for when he left for school," he explains. "The number's already programmed in there."
"Thanks," Desmond says quietly.
"Of course," his dad says, and then heads off, presumably to leave Desmond alone to make his call. He's still turning the phone over in his hands, trying to work up the courage to actually call, when Lucy walks over and plants herself in front of him.
"So I guess you had your reasons for keeping secrets," she says.
"Lucy—I'm sorry, but this just really isn't a good—"
"I mean, I never would have believed you if you'd explained any of this," she goes on, not giving him a chance to interrupt. "I probably would have reported it back to Abstergo and dragged you back to Vidic."
"Well thanks for not doing that," Desmond says, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
"I mean, I never would have thought—"
"Lucy, I'd love to talk pretty much any other time, but while I was at Abstergo I found out I had a son." She doesn't look like she's going to interrupt (for once), but he hurries on anyway before she changes her mind. "And this is the first chance I've had to talk to him so would you mind picking this back up later?"
"Oh my God," she says. "I didn't know."
"Yea," Desmond mutters. "I have a lot of secrets. But please, Lucy, can you just give me a chance to call in private?"
"Of course," Lucy says. She looks sad and a little small as she turns to leave, then pauses and glances back. "What I guess I was trying to say though is that I'm not going to tell the Templars about this. And…" She gestures at his phone. "Good luck."
When she's gone, Desmond gives the phone a little nervous squeeze, then dials Elijah's number before anyone else can interrupt. It rings three times, four, and then there's a hiss of static as someone picks up.
"Hello?"
The voice is, of course, completely unfamiliar. But Desmond tightens his hold on the phone and almost stops breathing for a second, because there's no doubt at all in his mind that this is his son.
"Hi," he says, and then pauses to clear his throat. "I—you don't know me, but my names Desmond. And I… I'm…"
"Dad," Elijah breathes.
-/-
I have been waaaaiting for this :)
