November 22nd 2012

Consciousness returned by degrees, though it was not so much consciousness as it was a simple return to his body from some other place. With a great exertion of effort, Desmond lifted his eyelids, and rolled his dry eyeballs around in his skull. It seemed to be night, pale moonlight filtering into the van through the front windshield with the crooked bars of tree branch shadows splayed across the seats. Desmond was lying on his side in the back of the van, a sleeping bag beneath him and blankets over him; a chill in the air but a warmth at his back.

He tried to move his arm, and found that he couldn't. He expended a huge effort and managed to twitch his fingers, barely able to feel the brush of the blanket against them. His legs were like dead weights attached to his torso and nothing worked, nothing would move. Panicking, Desmond managed to open his mouth a little and forced out a weak, animalistic grunt. He did his best to drop his tongue down out of the way and made another attempt, this one a low wail.

The warmth at his back mumbled and stirred and shifted. Desmond made his desperate, wordless sound again and there was a scuffing of movement, then a hand on his shoulder.

'You awake, Desmond? Try to take it easy.' Desmond couldn't turn his head, but he recognised Clay's voice.

Clay.

The bastard. He'd demanded Desmond's trust and then immediately betrayed it! Oh God, what had he done? What was he planning to do next? Desmond tried to struggle, to send messages to his body to start moving, to fight back against the figure looming over him, but the only results he managed were a few feeble spasmodic twitches.

His eyes must have been snapping from one side to the other in distress, because Clay made a shushing sound, patting Desmond on the shoulder before crawling away and fiddling with something at the other end of the van. He returned a moment later and, realising that Desmond couldn't move his head, reached down to show a small, thin metal rod that was held between two fingertips.

'Remember this?' he asked playfully.

Desmond stared at the little piece of metal in confusion for a moment, and then realised what it was and groaned - half in relief, half in humiliation. Of course, it was the implant. That explained why Clay had been keeping such a close eye on the time and their mileage, and why he had insisted on taking the wheel. He must have known that they were about to get out of range, and that the implant would automatically be triggered, and he hadn't...

'Sorry I didn't tell you,' Clay said, as though reading Desmond's mind. 'I knew it was going to have to come out, now that the Templars have control of the Assassins, and I also knew that we forgot to bring any anaesthetic. I had to fiddle around with a sharp blade pretty close to your spinal cord to remove the implant, and I had a choice between waiting until it temporarily paralysed you, or trying to get it out without any kind of painkillers and risk paralysing you permanently. Figured you'd prefer it this way.'

The paralysis was still firmly present, but Desmond tried twitching his fingers again and now found that he could just about curl them into a fist. Improving, then. He gave what he hoped sounded like a grunt of gratitude.

'You're welcome,' Clay said, grinning audibly. 'I've deactivated the tracker but we'll dump it before we move on anyway. Can't be too careful, right?' He checked his watch. 'You should have most of your motor functions back within a few hours. I'd recommend trying to get some more sleep until then. That's what I'm going to do.'

With that, he disappeared from Desmond's line of vision and there was the soft rustling sound of him settling back down on the floor of the van. His breathing deepened into slower patterns after only a few minutes, but Desmond was wide awake and therefore simply waited - time drifting by immeasurably - as he gradually regained feeling and movement. The first sensation he felt was an ache on the back of his neck, where Clay had sliced into his skin and removed the implant. Then Desmond found that he could loosely roll his body around, and flopped onto his back, groaning gently as the pressure on his shoulder was relieved and taking note of the numerous aches and pains around his body.

As he recollected the sensations of being shocked by the implant, he felt his temper building. His own father had stuck a device in him that had more or less induced a seizure. The "discomfort" mentioned by his doctor had been agonising, and before passing out Desmond had felt every muscle in his body cramping up in hideous contractions. If he'd been driving the van then he would most probably have been killed when he lost control of his body. Had Bill known how severe the shock would be?

It wasn't as though Desmond could ask him now. It wasn't as though Bill could be held accountable.

Desmond's facial muscles began responding again a short while later, but a long time passed before he next used them to smile.

December 4th 2012

Clay was missing.

He's not missing, Desmond scolded himself, trying and failing to choke down his fear and anxiety as he stood on the roof of the van, using it as a vantage point. He's just ... not here.

Desmond had gone newspaper-scrounging, and Clay had been gone when he got back. They were in Iowa now, always moving, stopping briefly only to steal clues from nearby settlements whilst avoiding direct contact with other people. The news in the paper had been ... troubling, though not in the way he had expected, and now there was this further worry piled on top of his confusion as to what the news might mean.

When he finally figured out the easiest way to find Clay, Desmond was embarrassed by his own slowness. He jumped down to the ground and closed his eyes, carefully prodding around in his own brain until he found the switch that triggered Eagle Vision, feeling the shift in his consciousness before he even opened his eyes again.

Eagle Vision was much weirder out in the open like this; the clouds overhead seemed to speed up and were dark and vaguely threatening. The tall, yellow grass in the field on one side of the highway appeared to sway slower in the breeze, each blade suddenly more distinct. The horizon, however, darkened to near-invisibility. Desmond shook off the unpleasant feelings associated with Eagle Vision and walked around to the back of the van.

He found Clay there, or at least a shade of Clay. His face was a little blurred, meaning that the imprint must be at least half an hour old, but he was standing bolt upright and staring ahead with tension evident in his body language. Without warning, the shade of Clay suddenly started walking briskly off the road and into the trees that lined the other side of it, his ghostly feet leaving a distinct blue trail as he walked.

Desmond followed Ghost-Clay through the trees, watching in fascination as wisps of him trailed behind on branches where his clothes caught on them. At one point he bounced off a tree trunk as though he had not seen it, and left behind a blue smear on the bark even as he regained his balance and continued his journey. His partially-transparent head whipped from side to side as he reached the bank of a small stream, and suddenly he ducked violently to avoid some invisible object. Desmond's heart began thudding sharply in this chest as he watched the ethereal figure cowering, wondering if Clay had merely been hallucinating, or whether someone had really attacked him. But there were no tell-tale traces of blood on the ground, and Ghost-Clay soon recovered and started running. His feet hit the water of the stream without disturbing it, and Desmond followed him.

As he tracked the spectre, his head starting to ache from keeping Eagle Vision open for so long, Desmond cursed himself for leaving Clay on his own. He had begun to take it for granted that his travelling companion (friend, Desmond mentally corrected himself, admit it - you think of him as a friend now) was holding things together so much better than he had when they'd first rescued him from the hospital. He was maybe even holding things together better than Desmond himself; it was Clay who generally decided which direction they would head in next, and who had found the scant few clues that they'd managed to piece together from the Assassins' journals. When in his element, it quickly became apparent that Clay was fiercely intelligent and a voracious researcher with an uncanny eye for patterns. Just having him around gave Desmond hope that maybe, just maybe, they could recover from this disaster.

Desmond had been stupidly complacent. He should have kept his eyes open for warning signs. He shouldn't have taken Clay's terse reply of "fine" at face value when he'd asked how Clay was dealing with the bleeding effect and the heavy medication regime. But Desmond had needed Clay to be fine, and this had blinded him to the possibility that he might not be.

The trees ended at a low fence marking the edge of farmland, and Desmond's heart sank as he saw the buildings in the distance. Ghost-Clay, still running, planted one hand on the uppermost panel of the fence and vaulted cleanly over it, leaving behind a single blue handprint. Desmond mimicked the move perfectly and continued to race after the echo that his friend had left behind.

The cows in the field looked up warily as Desmond raced past them, jaws pausing the churn of cud in their mouths, but he ignored them and focused only on following Clay's trail. The nearest building was an old, red barn in the south-west corner of the farm's main yard, and Desmond watched with an uneasy feeling as Clay's shade hit the wall running and carried right on up, smoothly grabbing hand- and footholds to haul himself up the wooden panelling, trailing ghostly blue scuff-marks.

Desmond paused only for a short beat before following the path up the side of the barn, his head now pounding with the continued pressure of so much sensory input. He finally reached the roof of the barn and climbed up, balancing on the ridge flashing and staring ahead in relief as he saw Clay - the real Clay - crouched at the other end of the barn and glowing solidly. The running ghost crossed the roof and crouched down also, merging seamlessly with the present, and Desmond dropped the Eagle Vision with a sigh.

The relief only lasted for a moment, however, for Clay stood up sharply with intent written all over him. His left arm flexed, despite the fact that he wasn't wearing a wrist-blade, and he tensed his muscles ready for a deadly leap on some poor victim below. Desmond swore under his breath and raced across the ridge, an arm outstretched, grabbing hold of the back of Clay's shirt just in time and dragging the delusional Assassin backwards just before he launched himself off the roof.

Clay staggered and flailed and thrashed, and Desmond tried vainly to keep his balance for a few seconds before the inevitable happened and they both landed on the slope of the roof, rolling over and over down until they hit the edge and tumbled to the ground in an arc, landing with great fortune in tall, soft grass.

'Hey!' someone yelled from the front of the barn. 'What was that? Somebody messin' around up there?'

Desmond rolled over in the grass and grabbed Clay before he had a chance to escape, noting as he did so that there were incredibly fine lines glowing in gold at the writhing man's temple. Remembering the technique which had worked at the Winter Palace, he clamped one hand over Clay's mouth and the other over his eyes, tangling their legs together to keep Clay pinned. After a couple more convulsions, the trapped Assassin fell still.

The person who had called out could be heard pacing around in front of the barn, and Desmond tensed fearfully as he heard them walk a little way towards them, praising the grass for offering them cover. Finally, the farmhand grumbled and gave up, his footsteps fading as the walked back across the yard.

When he was a good distance away, Desmond loosened his hold on Clay and whispered, 'Anyone home?'

Clay paused for a few seconds, apparently collecting himself, before replying in a despondent tone, 'I landed on my ass.'

'My heart bleeds for you. What year is it?'

Another pause, then: '2012.'

'Good boy. Let's get out of here.'

They journeyed back to the van in near-silence, Desmond watching Clay cautiously out of the corner of his eye for any signs of the bleeding effect. More than anything, Clay simply looked stunned and a little unnerved by the fact that he'd been able to travel so far whilst under its influence.

When they got back, Clay opened the back doors of the van and sat down with his feet hanging off the edge, toes scraping a little against the asphalt. Desmond sat down beside him.

'Thanks,' Clay said. His eyes were downcast and his fingers were trembling a little as he twisted them in his lap.

'So. You stopped taking your pills.'

'I thought...' Clay sighed miserably. 'I hoped I wouldn't need them any more. It's been so long since I last used the Animus. I hoped that the bleeding effect might have worn off by now.'

'Well clearly you were right,' Desmond quipped sarcastically.

Clay shrugged. 'It's not as bad as it was back at the hospital but it's ... it's still pretty bad.'

'Now really isn't a good time to be experimenting like this, Clay.'

'I'm going to have to sooner or later.' Clay looked up and met Desmond's eye. 'I'm running out of pills,' he stated bluntly.

Desmond's heart sank. 'How many...?'

'I've got enough to last me another few weeks if I only take one dose every day. But every time I take a pill it means that there's one less pill left to take, and you know who produces these pills.'

Desmond hadn't checked the labels, but he could hazard a guess. 'Abstergo.'

'Exactly. I'm worried that I'm becoming dependent on the anti-psychotics to keep the visions suppressed. What if they're stopping me from becoming strong enough to fight off the bleeding effect by myself?'

There was an odd disconnect between the sentiment of the words and the tone used to express them. Clay was describing a very basic and powerful fear, something that had obviously been bothering him for a while now, but he was talking about it in a calm, even offhand manner. Desmond frowned and looked closer: at the muscle standing out in Clay's jaw and the vein in his temple, and with a sinking feeling began to realise that this air of indifference was simply an act being put on for this benefit.

'Why didn't you tell me any of this?' he asked softly.

Clay flinched almost imperceptibly and looked ahead at the ground. 'We've got enough problems right now. My little Dateline crisis isn't important in the grand scheme of things.'

'It is important,' Desmond insisted, more fiercely than he had intended. 'For God's sake, Clay, we've had plenty of time. Why didn't you just tell me...?'

'I didn't want you to know!' Clay yelled, abruptly and furiously. It was the first time that Desmond had heard Clay really shouting outside of the bleeding effect, and he could do little more than stare as Clay sucked in a huge, ragged breath that shook his entire body. He covered his eyes with one hand, an echo of what Desmond had done to him, and sat like that for a moment, his body wracked with aborted sobs. When he finally took his hand away and glared at Desmond, the skin around his eyes was flushed and damp.

'I used to fucking hate you,' he revealed, his voice trembling. 'Before I even met you, I fucking despised you and everything that you stood for. I ... I threw my entire life away on this vague promise that it would end up meaning something important, and then at the end of it all I was just this total wreck of a person with nothing left, and that's when I found out that I wasn't important at all. I was just like this scrap of paper with a message written on it, to be handed to the real saviour of the world. And I found out your name and I found out that you were Bill's son and I fucking hated you and I thought about how much I hated you as I cut myself open, and I died hating you. Only I couldn't even do that right because they brought me back, not all of me, just enough of me that I could still feel pain and torment and misery.'

Clay paused to gasp for breath, but he wasn't finished telling his story yet.

'Then you rescued me. You came to the hospital and you rescued me and I guess I'd wasted so much energy on hating you that to actually meet you at last ... it grounded me. I felt real again, like a real person. Only I didn't hate you. I couldn't force myself to hate you once I'd met you, because I realised that you were nothing like what I'd built you up to be. You were a real person too, with feelings and failings and frustrations, and you'd been used just like I had but you hadn't let it break you and I was so ... so fucking ashamed and angry at myself. And ever since then I've been trying to redeem myself by being there for you, and supporting you, and helping you, and making out like I was so cool with everything and ... and...'

He sniffed and wiped a hand over his eyes, and then looked back at Desmond with a watery grin. 'But this is the truth, what you see right here. I'm not brave and I'm not smart and I'm not a hero. I'm a complete and utter mess and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, that you got stuck with me at the end of all this. You deserved better.'

While Desmond was still too stunned to respond, Clay jumped down from the back of the van and swiped a hand over his eyes again. 'OK,' he said, in an unconvincing attempt at his normal sarcastic drawl. 'Now that I'm done acting like a complete girl...'

Desmond stood up as well, and put a hand on Clay's shoulder before the other man had a chance to walk away. 'Come here,' he murmured, pulling Clay close, wrapping his arms around him in a way that felt far more natural than when he had done this to his father. Clay stayed tensed for a moment, his arms stiff at his sides, and then his body seemed to sag and he reached up to hold onto Desmond's shoulders, burying his face gratefully into the side of Desmond's neck, his tears hot on Desmond's skin.

'I'm sorry,' Clay whispered. 'It's ... You shouldn't listen to me. It's just because I'm coming down from the drugs. I'll be fine in a bit...'

'Don't,' Desmond interrupted gently, fighting down the urge to start crying himself. 'I'm glad you told me. Jesus, Clay, I'm your friend, you don't have to hide all this from me.' He pulled away a little and planted his palms on either side of Clay's head to hold him still, gazing at him agitatedly. 'You should have told me sooner, so that I could have told you that none of that crap is true. You are brave, and smart, and strong. You are a hero, Clay. I don't know what I would have done without you...'

But Clay was squirming away, embarrassed. 'Look, don't remind me. All that self-pity crap was just ... ugh. I wasn't fishing for compliments, Des, I was just upset because of what happened today and ... can we forget it? Please?' he begged.

In response, Desmond let one hand drop to his side, but ran the other down over Clay's neck and shoulder and arm before finally gripping the back of his hand gently and lifting the arm. Clay winced as Desmond rolled up the long sleeve of his shirt, but didn't pull away.

The scar tissue on the inside of Clay's forearm had paled from the pink it had been back at the mental hospital to a very pale, almost translucent shade of white. The skin visibly dipped where entire chunks of flesh had been removed, but the scar was raised at the edges. Desmond ran his thumb over it, feeling the texture of it, feeling Clay tremble a little at the raw intimacy of the action.

'No,' Desmond replied firmly. 'I'm not going to forget it. Because this is what happens when you feel like you don't have a way out, and you should never have to feel like that. You're the one who deserves better than what you got. So the next time you get frustrated or angry or sad, I want you to tell me about it. Hell, you can even punch me if it makes you feel better, but don't just bottle it all away because you think I can't handle it.'

'I won't,' Clay promised, his eyes still downcast. 'But I really need to ... I just need to take my pills, OK?'

Desmond released him. 'Yeah, alright.' He felt a little embarrassed at his own outburst now, and he tried to think of something practical that they could do to move past the moment. 'Look, we shouldn't stay here much longer. We seriously need to find somewhere safe where we can hide out for a while, maybe restock our supplies and do some research without having to worry about being caught by traffic cops. Can you think of anywhere we can go?'

Clay swallowed hard, taking a moment to collect himself before he looked Desmond in the eye. 'Yeah,' he breathed, his expression open and honest weary. 'I know where I want us to go next.'

'Great. Where?'

'I want to go home.'