Why do I do this to myself? I just want to point out that, though I am a terrible person for putting my readers through this, I did have to put myself though this first.
End of AC3 compliant, PTSD, Depression, Anxiety Attacks.
Word count: 1,931
When Lucy drags him in to the hideout, he's little more than skin and bones encasing memories and information that is far more precious. He's too thin, bones protruding sharply under too pale skin. His hair is a mess, and there are bags under his eyes. The clothes that fall off his frame do nothing to hide these facts.
When Lucy drags Desmond into the hideout, he's already a broken shell of a man.
At first, you don't bother. You ignore the fact that he's tethered to the edge of madness, ignore the pieces of him scattered across the floor like so many shards of glass. You can't put a glass vase back together, after all. Not after it's been broken so thoroughly. "When it happens," he tells you, "don't try to save me."
You tell him you don't plan on being the hero.
Time passes, however, and he begins to grow on you. Like a cancer, you like to think, ot a duckling with very poor imprinting issues. Regardless, he clings to you like a barnacle, looking to you for comfort and guidance. He's like a lost puppy, shaking and scared, and (though you'll kill anyone who would dare suggest such a thing) there's some soft part of you that wants to wrap him in his arms and tell him everything will be fine.
"Don't try to save me," Desmond pleads, knuckles white in the fabric of your sweater as he sobs into it. He's shaking, scared, Altair and Ezio and Desmond all at the same time.
You don't say anything; you just rest a hand in his hair and rub small circles into his back and pray it never comes to that.
You like to think that what came next was inevitable. You like to think that The Ones That Came Before have some kind of plan, that there's some kind of purpose to the suffering they inflict on him. But it's two in the morning and you find Desmond hiding in the corner of the bathroom and you hope they have a damn good explanation for this.
He's been skipping meals again; you know partially because, though he's put on a bit of weight, he's still far too thin and partially because you've been keeping an eye on him. There are scratches up and down his arms, on his collarbone and neck, on his chest beneath a jacket and shirt. There's a fine tremble in his hands where he holds himself; beyond that, however, Desmond wasn't moving.
You sit across from him, hand's palm-down on the tiles. Desmond flinches and jumps at invisible shadows, eyes darting about the room in what you can only describe as terror. It's almost as though he doesn't see you, as though he's not here, and you wait for him to come back to himself.
And he comes back to himself in a rush. Arms lock around your waist, a face tucks itself into the juncture of your neck and shoulder: you can feel his heart beating against your chest, feather-light and rabbit-quick. You hug him back gently, and Desmond trembles in your grip. He is so frightened, so scared, and you don't know what to do.
So you tuck his head against your chest and whisper prayers into his hair. You've never been a particularly religious man, despite growing up in a heavily Catholic, Scots-English family, but…
But if it could save him, at least help him a little bit, you're willing to try.
It was only after Lucy that the screaming started. They echo off the old stone, harrowed and terrified. It makes everyone pause when it starts, cringe when it really starts to get going. William does little to help; you start seeing why he ran from this man in the first place. There's a tenseness that permeates the air, a fear that Desmond might not be able to handle this, might not be able to take any more. "Don't save me," he begs. You're finding it hard to say you won't.
When the tension finally breaks, it's explosive. There are names William calls Desmond that even you wouldn't say in the throes of your anger (anger inherited from a long line of passionate Scottish women). There's something feral about the way Desmond snaps back at his father, and the whole scene has Rebecca cowering where she's buried herself in parts of the Animus.
You, on the other hand, watch it all with a calm kind of indifference that hides a brewing storm. When Desmond finally decides he's had enough of this abuse and walks away, you make note of where he goes. You close your work. You put your papers in order on your desk. You gesture for William Miles to follow you into one of the side rooms.
The hell you unleash on him in there would make your mother and grandmother very proud women.
It takes you a while to find Desmond. The cave has side passage after side passage, at least a hundred individual rooms and alcoves. You get lucky, you suppose, when you find him curled up on what might have been a bed to the people who lived here before. He sits calmly, firmly, and it's the most stable you've seen him in a long time. There's a kind of warmth in the way he greets you that you recognize as his own twisted form of self-defense.
You take a seat across the small room from him. You can feel his eyes track your every movement, and you endeavor to hide nothing; your hands are always kept where he can see them, your movements are exaggerated and easily predictable. He is an animal, jumpy and anxious, and God save you should you startle him.
You manage not to. As you settle with your back to the wall, you see him twitch forward before stopping himself. He does it again, then again, until you place your hands palm-down on the floor beside either of your hips. It's only then that he surges forward, crashing into you in a trembling mass of fear and despair and desperation.
This time, he doesn't cry; at the very least, he doesn't visibly cry. There are no tears staining the front of your shirt, no words sobbed against your skin. His body shakes, but there is no quaver in his voice when he says, "God damnit, Shaun, stop trying to save me."
You let out a huff of a laugh. It's entirely out of place, you realize, but you think back to when you first met him, when you told yourself that you wouldn't try to save him, and you can't help it. You told yourself he was a broken vase, all useless fragments of a whole.
You forgot that the most beautiful mosaics can be made from those same shards.
Desmond squirms in your arms, either trying to figure out what you're laughing about or trying to get away, and you don't let him do either. You press your face into his hair and laugh at the stupidity of all of this. Eventually, Desmond starts laughing too, and the hysterical cheer bounces off the stone as the two of you dissolve into giggles and chortles.
You have the passing thought that the two of you either sound happier than loons, or out of you minds.
When the two of you finally come down from your highs, Desmond slumps against your chest, still shaking in his laughter. You realize it's the first time you've seen him laugh- really laugh- since… well, it's the first time you've seen him like this, really. You notice a lot of things about him in that moment. He's squishy under your hands (been raiding the ice-cream at night, no doubt), less sharp edges of bone and more… squish. Soft. He's easy, relaxed, and you realize just how far he's come. The worst has yet to pass, you understand, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that he's come a long way from the skeleton that Lucy had dragged into the hideout. You're… proud of him, of his recovery, and the thought hits you abruptly and out of nowhere:
You could spend the rest of your life like this. Like this, with this man in your arms, with this light feeling in your chest. You understand that neither of you are the most stable people in the world (though you are far more so than Desmond), and that neither of you would ever be perfect, but that hardly means that you can't try.
A hand falls from your stomach to cover your own, and you grab it and hold it like you have no intention of ever letting go. "Stop trying to save me," Desmond says, tired and resigned and you swear there is the tiniest- tiniest- hint of hope in his voice.
You promise that you'll never give up on him.
The end hits like a tsunami, with blatant warning signs that you blissfully ignore, and you don't realize it's upon you until you're already waist-deep. There's a rumble in the floor that grows louder and stronger with every passing moment, but the last power source is in place and everything is set. All that's left is to wait. It feels as though you're sitting on the edge of your seat, anticipation mounting, and it's killing you. It's Desmond's hand on the small of your back that calms you. Standing next to him, you can see flickers of white and grey in your peripheral, figures of the past that linger in the present, and it unsettles you. You wonder if this is what Desmond experiences all the time.
No wonder he wakes up screaming.
Everything happens at once, and you don't even have time to react properly. The power sources surge with light, forcing you back a few steps from Desmond's side and throwing Rebecca and William back even further. The light seems to form an orb that separates you and Desmond from the others, but you can't find Desmond either. In the light, shadows flick about, and voices echo as though the space is far more cavernous than it seems. They are not all in English, the voices; you catch snippets of Arabic, of Italian, of what must be a Native American language but you cannot be certain. They whisper apologies and praises and thanks, words running over each other as if they were trying to say everything with no time remaining ("There's never enough time to do everything we want to," Desmond had said once, on the roof of Monteriggioni, his head pillowed in your lap as he watched the stars. "We can only be content with doing what we can.").
For a moment, you can see three figures at the top of a staircase, robed in white and armed to the teeth. For a moment, Desmond is at your side, a wry grin pulling at the scar over his mouth. For a moment, you feel his lips brush yours, rough and chapped and exactly like you'd always imagined. For a moment, a word hangs between you, and it's what you've always wanted to hear but not like this, never like this. It was never meant to be a goodbye.
And then it's all gone, and you're left standing shocked and alone in an empty, quiet temple housed in an empty, quiet cave, Desmond is laying at the top of the staircase, dressed in white and armed to the teeth.
You don't have to be at his side to know that he's already gone.