Minerva wakes up in a cot that smells like mold and is barely wider than she is. It still qualifies as the best bed she can remember ever having, and her first instinct is to close her eyes and burrow deeper into the pile of blankets covering the cot. She doesn't care where she is or what else is going on. Right now, she just wants to be okay for a few more minutes. The voices in her head are quiet, not gone but quiet, and she can actually think.

About what happened yesterday, most importantly. She can remember a man on the street, someone with a face she almost knows but can't put a name to. Seeing him had scared her, not because of anything he'd done but because he's bigger than her and stronger, and he could have done literally anything and she wouldn't have been able to stop him at all. She'd been scared because she knew she couldn't trust him. She couldn't trust anyone.

And then there had been another man, and something in Minerva knows him. And it has nothing to do with his face or his name, it's something deep and magnetic that practically propels her into his arms. Because he can- and he will- keep her safe, she knows this with a certainty she has never felt before. When he holds her, even the voices seem a little quieter.

Later, there is a second man. He has the same feeling of protection and safety as the first man, and Minerva is- is happy. She's happy for the first time in her own memory, and then gets to fall asleep without worrying about what might happen during the night. It's very nearly too much to believe, and in the end that's what drives her out of bed. She wraps one of the blankets around her shoulders and slips through the door into a room she dimly remembers from yesterday.

There are no windows in this room- there hadn't been any in the room where she'd woken up, either- but the room has a middle of the night stillness that makes Minerva move through it on silent, wary feet. There's no sign of either of the men she'd come to see, and their absence feels like a hand around her throat. It makes breathing a struggle and the whole world seem to shatter. She stumbles backward until her back hits a wall with a soft thud, and she slides down it to the floor, burying her face in her blanket and trying not to cry.

Time slips away, and she doesn't know how long it is before she hears a door open and close, and footsteps cross the room to stop just in front of her. She peeks over the edge of her blanket and there are no words for her relief when she sees one of the men from yesterday. This is the skinny one with the glasses and the funny accent.

"I thought you left," she says, in a voice that's equal parts whiny and scared.

"What?" he frowns. "No. Just in the other room."

She nods but doesn't look at him.

"Do you want to…" he hesitates, an uncertain look on his face. "Do you want to go back to bed?"

Alone? "No," Minerva mumbles.

"Well that's- that's fine too," the man wedges himself between Minerva and the corner of the wall. "Do you want to talk, then?"

"Sure."

"Okay then. I guess we'll start with introductions, since we didn't get a chance to talk last night." She hadn't said a single word, too overwhelmed with the sudden changes to speak. "I'm Shaun."

"…Minerva."

"Good," Shaun says. "This is good, yea."

"Who are you?" Minerva asks. "How do I know you?" And then- "Why don't I know me?"

"It's complicated," Shaun says. "You kind of had an accident. Um… what do you remember?"

"Nothing," Minerva says. "I can't remember because the voices, there's just…" She rubs at her tired eyes with one hand, and jumps a little as Shaun wraps his arm around her shoulders. "It's like I can feel everyone around me," she mumbles. The voices are better now she's off the streets, a dull, easy to ignore whisper instead of a roar. "Like their thoughts are in my head and I can't remember anything and I can't even think and I just want to be better. I don't know what's going on."

She risks a glance up at Shaun. The man's face is like an open book, and even upset and scared like she is now, Minerva can read the emotions chasing each other across his face. "Minerva…"

"Please don't lie to me," she says. "Please. I don't care how bad the truth is, I just want to know."

"Okay," Shaun says. "Well, I don't know everything that's going on, but it definitely stated a very long time ago. I mean like, thousands and thousands of years."

"What happened then?"

"You were born," Shaun says, and Minerva actually feels her mouth drop open in surprise.

"I'm not that old," she protests.

Shaun shrugs. "It's complicated. A lot of stuff happened, the world almost ended twice, and you were kind of dead for a lot of it."

"Dead-"

"We- me and Ezio- we tried to bring you back, but something went wrong. You didn't come back all the way, and you didn't come back right, and that's our fault. I'm sorry."

"What?" Minerva shakes her head. "How- what about the voices? Did you do that to me too?"

"No," Shaun says. "I mean, I don't think so. I could be wrong but… listen, I may have glossed over some details."

"Like?"

"Like before we brought you back, you… weren't exactly human. What you were was something different. We call them- you- precursors. No one knows what you called yourselves. But we do know that they were on a completely different level than us. There are some people around today that have bits and pieces of precursor DNA and just that is enough to give them what we call eagle vision. It's… sort of a way of knowing things about people you shouldn't be able to know. Who your enemies are, who your friends are, things like that. I don't think it's a stretch to assume precursors had even more insight into humanity. Probably enough to explain the voices you're hearing. You're literally hearing the thoughts of every person you happen to pass, and you're human now. Your brain just can't deal with that much information at once."

Shaun's voice gets more confident the longer he goes on, taking on the tone of a lecturing professor. But Minerva only gets more scared the longer he goes on. "I don't know what that means," she says, voice breaking. Because she can understand what he's saying, but she can't make herself believe he's talking about her. "I don't want that to be me!" she says. "I just want to be normal."

Shaun hesitates, then pulls away a little and takes off his shirt. "Trust me," he says. "No one here is normal. And it's not all bad."

"What are you doing?" Minerva asks, momentarily distracted from her earlier concern.

"Watch," Shaun says, and suddenly his back breaks open and there's blood and pus all over his skin, and there are wings there, so close to Minerva that she can feel the air in front of her stirring as they move. She reaches hesitantly toward them, then checks herself and glances at Shaun. "It's okay," he says, and Minerva leans forward to feel the softness of his feathers beneath her fingers.

"Where did you get these?" she breathes, awestruck. "Shaun?"

"Also a long story," Shaun says. "But I think it would be fair to say you gave them to me."

-/-

There are four people staying in the little building- safe house, they call it- where Minerva unexpectedly finds herself. Or five, now that Minerva has joined them. For the first couple days she sticks close to Shaun, and then to Ezio (the other man she finds herself inexplicably but inarguably trusting). But they can't always be around, and so when they are out in the city doing she doesn't know what, Minerva is left with the other two.

Desmond is okay. He's obviously a little uncomfortable with her, and Minerva isn't entirely sure why. Still, after their first meeting on the street he's gone out of his way to be as nice as possible. A little stiff, sometimes, but he wasn't bad. He'd taught her a card game called poker that made Shaun yell at him for like an hour straight about teaching children to gamble.

But the other one, Connor, worried her. It wasn't like he ever said or did anything mean. Actually, he rarely spoke to her at all. After the first few days, when he is surly and angry enough to worry not only Minerva but the others as well, he goes quiet and sort of… withdraws. He's still there, but he's not really engaged, and Minerva can tell he doesn't want to be there anymore.

One day, when Connor is out, Minerva takes advantage of his absence to ask Ezio about it. He's working on something at the folding table on the edge of the main room, wearing a face like he'd rather be doing anything that's not paperwork, but Minerva hesitates to interrupt anyway. She's still not exactly sure where she fits with this half insane group, and she doesn't want to risk getting anyone mad at her.

But Ezio sees her standing there and beckons her closer, a summons that Minerva obeys gratefully, climbing onto a chair across the table from him and fidgeting a little. "What's wrong with Connor?" she blurts.

"Whoa," Ezio says, raising his eyebrows. "Okay, I wasn't expecting that."

"Why not?" Minerva asks. "Come on, what's wrong?"

"It's complicated."

"Ezio!" Minerva whines, and to her frustration he chuckles. "Please? Tell me?"

"There's nothing wrong with Connor," Ezio says.

"But he's all… I don't know. Sad."

Ezio considers this for a few seconds, and Minerva does her best to look pitiful while he thinks. "Fine," he says. "But listen, there really isn't anything wrong with Connor. He's just tired."

"So he should take a nap."

"Not that kind of tired," Ezio corrects gently. "He's a… deeper kind of tired, because he's spent a lot of time living a very strange life, and he just doesn't want to keep going like that anymore. Connor's the kind of guy that would be happier in the middle of some forest somewhere than in a city surrounded by complicated stuff like this."

"Why?" Minerva asks.

"Because that's just how he is," Ezio says.

"Oh. Is he going to leave?"

"Of course not," Ezio says, but he suddenly isn't looking at her. "We're still family, no matter what else happens. That's important."

Minerva nods and drops out of her chair, retreating to the other side of the room to think this over in silence. She likes the way Ezio talks about family, and she wants very much to be part of that. To have a family would be… it just sounds good. Safe. And even though Minerva is here now, even though they've been nice enough to take her in (despite the apparently complicated past between them all that she still doesn't completely understand), she doesn't think she can count herself as part of their family.

It doesn't make sense to her that Connor would want to leave all that, but he clearly does. He's restless, unhappy in the city, and obviously eager to get moving again. But there's nowhere to go and nothing to do. Every time she sees him, he looks a little sadder, a little emptier inside. When he disappears in the middle of the night a couple weeks after Minerva's conversation with Ezio, she's not surprised at all.

-/-

I wish I knew why Connor is causing so many problems here. Sometimes characters just decide to do things and then suddenly they're running off in the middle of the night and I don't know why.

...hashtag writer problems.