December 10th 2012

'Get up.'

Desmond stirred and groaned, blinking his way into consciousness, trying to figure out where he was. 'Clay?' he mumbled, his brain too slow to think properly.

'No. Get out of the van.'

As he sat up, memories rushed back into his head, and in a sick swirl Desmond experienced once again the horror and pain of Clay's death, the panic of fleeing from all human contact, the numbness of anger and the depression of being forced to carry on - all within a nauseating handful of seconds. He clutched at his head, which was aching from dehydration.

'Move it.' The back of the van was open and Daniel was standing with his arms folded, looking distinctly unamused. He leaned away fractionally as Desmond passed him, jumping down onto the grass and taking a deep breath of crisp winter air. They had driven a little way off the road to settle down for the night, parking the vehicle by a river which had chunks of ice forming at its banks.

'What time is it?' Desmond slurred sleepily, squinting in the early morning sunlight.

Daniel ignored the question. 'Take your clothes off,' he instructed coldly.

'What?' Desmond asked, utterly confused. He'd taken to sleeping fully-clothed, partly in order to stave off the cold, and partly so that he would always be ready to run if necessary.

'Clothes. Off. Now.'

Desmond considered objecting, but his brain was still operating too slowly to put up much of a fight, and so he reluctantly stripped off his shoes, shirt and jeans.

'Did I tell you to stop?' Daniel asked, when Desmond straightened up again. 'Boxers too.'

'Oh God, please tell me this isn't some weird sex thing, it's way too fucking early,' Desmond groaned, but complied with the instruction anyway, dropping his underwear and kicking it away. For a second he felt his body curl in on itself automatically in an attempt to cover his groin, but then he remembered that this was only Daniel Cross, after all, and Desmond honestly couldn't give a shit what the Templar thought of him. He put his shoulders back and chin up, folding his arms across his chest to try and stay warm, and asked, 'What-?'

He got no further. Daniel darted forward suddenly, grabbing Desmond around the waist before he had a chance to struggle and throwing him into the freezing river.

The water hit him like knives piercing every inch of his body, and Desmond opened his mouth to scream, only to find his vocal chords paralyzed by the cold. He spluttered to the surface, his bare feet finding purchase on the stony riverbed, and straightened up until the water was splashing around his chest.

Something thudded onto the bank, and Desmond managed to focus for long enough to realise that it was a bar of soap. Crouching down on the grass and huffing hot breath into his hands to keep them warm, Daniel looked at him sternly and spoke again.

'Don't even think about coming out of there until you're scrubbed within an inch of your life. I might have to share that van with you but I don't have to put up with you smelling like a farmyard.'

He stood up and returned to the van without so much as a backwards glance. Desmond stared after him, mouth hanging open in disbelief. For a moment he considered climbing out of the river immediately, the better to catch up with Daniel and pound him into the dust. But there was something almost cathartic in the agony of the freezing water on his skin, and so Desmond picked up the bar of soap and dipped it into the river, rubbing it over his palm and watching the lather rise and days of dirt begin to sluice away.

Daniel was tuning the radio when Desmond returned, almost fifteen minutes later. The kid climbed slowly and stiffly into the passenger seat, wearing a fresh set of clothes and a towel around his shoulders. He didn't speak, but simply sat hunched into himself, shivering violently. He smelled very faintly of flowers and his hair, which had lain limp and greasy on his head, was damp and dark and forming into natural curls. His lips were almost blue with cold and his skin was about as pale as it could get, but - most importantly of all - he was no longer stinking up the van. As a small act of mercy, Daniel turned the engine over and the heater burst into life, prompting Desmond to reach out gratefully and stretch his shaking fingers over it. He looked so utterly wretched that Daniel had to fight down an impulse to laugh.

'You know,' he said conversationally, speaking up to be heard over the sound of Desmond's chattering teeth. 'When my grandfather was six years old, his father made him lie on the bottom of a woodland river for over four minutes. It was supposed to be training, you know, in case he ever needed to hide from enemies. This was in Russia, in the winter, and they had to break the ice with an axe just so he'd be able to reach the water.'

He paused in the story and glanced over at Desmond, who was slumped back in his seat with his eyes closed, head lolling limply to one side, the only sign of wakefulness in the fingers that were still stretched out over the heater. Satisfied that he still had an audience, Daniel continued.

'During his combat training - again, this was when he was just a child - his father used to punish him by making him sleep outside in all weathers, even when the snow was six inches deep on the ground. You'd think he would have died, a little kid like that. He didn't die, though. The cold thickened his skin and the anger sharpened his senses, and when he was ten years old he shot his father in the back with a rifle, and took his hidden blade, and raised himself to adulthood with the skills he'd learnt. I guess you could say the training paid off.'

It seemed that Desmond had finally thawed out enough to speak. He opened one eye and looked over at Daniel balefully. 'So did you throw me in that river because you're hoping one day I'll be tough enough to shoot you in the back?'

'No. I threw you in the river because you smelled so bad it made me want to puke. The story was just to warm you up.'

Desmond opened his other eye and used it to glare. 'Thanks,' he said flatly.

'You're welcome. Let's move.'

'You really think we're going to make it to New Mexico?'

'One problem at a time. We have a stop to make first.'

December 11th 2012

Daniel returned with blood on his shirt.

'So,' he said calmly, slamming the van door and tossing a rattling brown paper bag into the passenger seat. 'Looks like Rikkin noticed I was missing. Put me on the Most Wanted list. I'm surprised it took him this long.'

They were parked on the outskirts of a small town on the border between Missouri and Oklahoma. Daniel had gone on what he termed "a supply run", and had instructed Desmond to stay hidden in the back of the van. Now he was grabbing a rag from the glove box and pressing it to a deep cut on his arm.

'Jesus!' Desmond exclaimed, sitting forward and speaking without thinking. 'Are you alright?'

For the first time since they'd met, Daniel looked surprised. He blinked, momentarily silenced, and then rearranged his face into an expression of derision. 'Just a scratch. Can't say the same for the pharmacist, though.'

'Did you kill him?'

Daniel shrugged, and then winced at the pull in his arm. 'Didn't check. The paramedics might get to him in time. Who cares?'

'I care.'

'No you don't,' Daniel snapped irritably. His arm was clearly causing him a greater deal of pain than he was willing to let on.

Desmond clenched his jaw, and then cast around for a slightly cleaner scrap of material than Daniel was currently pressing against his open wound, finally settling on an old T-shirt. 'Here,' Desmond said, leaning forward. 'Hold out your arm...'

'Get off me,' Daniel sneered, snatching the T-shirt away and applying it to the wound himself. 'You've got a real problem, you know that?'

His tone of voice caused Desmond to bristle angrily. 'Oh yeah? What's that?'

'You can't function unless there's someone looking after you, or unless you're looking after someone else. The only thing you can't handle is looking after yourself. God forbid you should ever have to be self-sufficient.'

'You don't know me at all,' Desmond retorted, his temper rising. 'I ran away from home because I was sick of being controlled by other people. I looked after myself for years...'

'Oh yeah, in your high-pressure job as a ... waiter, was it?'

'Bartender.'

'Wow. I can't imagine how you ever coped with so much responsibility.'

Without waiting for a reply, Daniel noisily tore Desmond's T-shirt into shreds and wrapped a length of material around the cut on his arm, holding it in his teeth to tie it off and grimacing at the taste. This accomplished, he reached into the brown paper bag and pulled out two familiar-looking bottles: anti-psychotics and anti-cholinergics. He tipped two of each into the palm of his hand and downed the lot with a single swig of water, releasing a satisfied gasp when it was done.

'That's more like it,' he commented, replacing the lids on the bottles. 'Been seeing ghosts since we hit Indiana.'

Desmond gaped at him, the former argument dissipating from his mind. 'You were driving!' he exclaimed. 'Why didn't you say something?'

'Even hallucinating, I'm still a better driver than you.' Daniel delved back into the bag again and withdrew a third bottle. 'Here, I didn't forget you. Have a present,' he continued, tossing the pill bottle over to Desmond, who caught it deftly and frowned at the label.

'Prozac?'

'Favourite of miserable housewives all over the country. Happy Christmas.'

'I'm not depressed!' Desmond protested.

'You're not happy,' Daniel countered.

Desmond opened his mouth, and then closed it again, and broke eye contact to stare down at the little container once more. 'Why did you get me these?' he asked, quietly.

Daniel rolled his eyes. 'Two ways to treat depression - fine, unhappiness,' he corrected impatiently as Desmond opened his mouth once more. 'Talk about it, or throw chemicals at it. I sure as hell don't want to play therapist to an Assassin brat, so pills it is. Take them and start fucking participating, because I'm sick of dragging your sorry-for-yourself ass across the country.' He shoved the rest of the pills into the glovebox and climbed over into the passenger seat. 'You can start by driving. I want to get some shut-eye.'

But Desmond had not moved from where he was seated in the back of the van, contemplating the drugs that Daniel had just handed him. 'These won't work.'

'What do you mean, they won't work?'

Desmond laughed wearily. 'Can the pills bring Lucy back, or Clay? Can they stop the Templars from taking control of everything in the world? Can they stop the solar flares? If I'm unhappy, it's for a lot of good reasons.'

'You think you're special?' Daniel scoffed. 'You think that all the other unhappy people in the world are just indulging themselves? Everyone has something that's causing their damage, but the pills will patch it up all the same. Now take one, and start driving.'

With a sigh, Desmond tipped a dose of Prozac into his hand and swallowed it dry, wincing as the pill scraped his throat on the way down. He'd never been much into drugs before. Oh, he'd smoked pot occasionally, and even experimented with ecstasy and speed and acid at parties, but he'd never been into the New York "scene" of pill-popping, and the most he'd ever had in the way of prescription drugs was a round of antibiotics he'd been given for a chest infection. Still, an extra dose of seretonin might actually help to drag him up out of the funk of self-perpetuating sorrow that he'd found himself in after watching Clay die.

He tucked the bottle away into his shirt pocket and climbed into the driver's seat, pausing only to glance over at where Daniel was nursing his wounded arm.

'OK,' Desmond said with a sigh, starting the engine. 'Let's move.'

December 12th 2012

It was midday, and they were now a mere twenty miles away from the safe location that Daniel was guiding them to, which was just outside of La Cruces. The man in question was dozing in the passenger seat as Desmond drove, looking only a little worse for wear. That morning, Desmond had found Daniel using his hidden blade to carefully shave his face, maintaining only the scruff of yellow beard on his chin, but by this point the former Templar had run out of the few spare items of clothing that he had brought along, and had stopped complaining about Desmond's hygiene. They were probably both starting to smell pretty ripe by this point.

Desmond flicked a fly away from his ear, irritably, rolling down the window to let it out as he checked the map again.

Travelling with Daniel was different to travelling with Clay. Though he hated to admit it, Desmond actually found it somewhat liberating to be partnered with someone that he neither liked nor cared about. He did not watch what he said around Daniel, and did not feel the need to apologise after insulting him. The man had proven on more than one occasion that he was far more capable of taking care of himself in a fight than Desmond himself, and so there was no need to look out for him if danger was near. Travelling with Daniel was not all that different to travelling alone, aside from the barbed insults and the additional warmth in the van at night.

They were now surrounded on all sides by desert scrubland, and Desmond jabbed Daniel in the arm to wake him up. 'The turn's not on the map,' he said. 'Where is this place?'

Daniel opened one eye blearily, then the other, before seating up straight and squinting out of the window. 'Comin' up on the right,' he mumbled.

Desmond peered ahead and then gave a groan of disbelief when he saw the turn that Daniel was referring to. 'That's barely a road at all,' he complained.

'The van can handle it.'

Somewhat dubiously, Desmond turned the van into the expanse of the desert, and glanced over at his companion again. 'So,' he said. 'How do you know this guy is a hybrid?'

Daniel took a draught of water from his bottle before answering. 'I was assigned to track him down and recruit him through Lineage and Acquisitions a few years ago.'

'Recruit him the same way you recruited me?' Desmond asked, a little sharply.

'Not exactly.' Daniel smirked. 'I had more time with him than I had with you. Abstergo wanted me to convince him to join the Templars, since we already knew that his family had lapsed from the Assassins. So I rolled up with a small team and went to talk to him.'

'I take it the talks didn't go too well.'

'They went fine. Probably better than I deserved. According to our records, Vicente was just a cattle farmer living a quiet life out in the sticks with his family. As it turned out, he ran the biggest drug and gun cartel in New Mexico, and when I showed up I realised that his 'farmhands' were all armed to the teeth with Uzis.' Daniel sniffed and scratched at the corner of his eyebrow, at a tiny set of dual circular scars where he'd once had a piercing. 'He invited me in and he poured me a glass of whisky, and he listened to me talk about Abstergo and our ... opportunities.'

'Let me guess,' Desmond said. 'Really good dental plan?'

Daniel gave a short laugh. 'It did seem a little futile. The annual salary that I offered him barely covered what he made in a month doing what he did then. So I tried to sell it to him based on the Animus technology. I told him that he could relive the lives of his ancestors, see everything that they had seen.' He smiled a little at the memory. 'He said to me, "I'm enjoying the life I lead right now, amigo. Why would I waste any of the minutes I have left living someone else's life?"'

A silence followed as both men contemplated this perspective. Finally, Desmond asked, 'So I take it when he didn't come voluntarily, you tried to bring him in by force.'

'Sort of.' Daniel frowned at the memory. 'I didn't want to start a war with his cartel, so I went away and then came back again with our Piece of Eden - our Apple. Vicente's men all responded to it and fell to their knees, but he just pointed a shotgun at me and told me to get off his land. I...' Daniel bared his teeth in a grimace. 'I was arrogant. I'd gone there alone, and if I had gotten into a gunfight with him then there was a risk of killing him, or damaging his brain. Besides I was ... curious. I found him interesting. I guess you could even say I respected him, in a way. So we sort of agreed to a stalemate, and I let his men go, and I left.'

Desmond considered this story, and the implications of it, and swore loudly. 'So does this mean that Rikkin knows about Vicente?'

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Daniel's mouth tighten bitterly. 'No. On the way back, with the Piece of Eden, I was ambushed at Denver International Airport. The ... the Piece of Eden was destroyed, and the Eye Abstergo project was thrown right back to square one. Before I had time to debrief Rikkin on the situation with Vicente, I had already been assigned a new target. Someone that they needed urgently.'

Glancing over at Daniel's pointedly raised eyebrows, Desmond quickly realised with an unpleasant chill who the "target" was that he was referring to. 'Me.'

Daniel smiled with one corner of his mouth. 'You.'

An awkward lapse in conversation fell over them as they both realised that they'd just managed to speak at length with a noticeable lack of any uncivility; if not like friends, then at least like acquaintances. They had lost any interest in maintaining real animosity, now that they were both severed from their respective organisations.

'There,' Daniel said at last, pointing at a small collection of prefabricated buildings ahead of them. As they drew close, they passed a small herd of skinny, morose-looking cows, that were presumably kept around to maintain Vicente's cover story of being a cattle farmer. Desmond stared in puzzlement at their surroundings as he slowed the van to a halt just outside of the collection of dusty, one-storey constructions.

'How rich did you say this guy is?' he asked.

'I don't think building a huge mansion and drinking champagne out of diamond-filled glasses would be all that conducive to staying undercover,' Daniel drawled sarcastically, opening his door and stepping out of the van. Desmond scowled after him before doing the same.

'Vicente!' Daniel called, walking into the small yard that formed naturally at the centre of the surrounding buildings. Desmond saw him pull the hem of his shirt down over the pistol that was tucked into the back of his jeans.

An honest-to-god tumbleweed tumbled through the compound as silence met Daniel's call. Desmond watched his companion turn slowly on the spot, brow furrowed in frustration as he called out again: 'Vicente! It's Daniel Cross. From Abstergo. Let's talk.'

For a long moment, Desmond was sure that their journey had been wasted, and that Vicente's home was abandoned. Then the door of the furthest building burst open, rattling in its frame, and a tall, lithe Hispanic man with a full moustache and goatee stepped out. He was holding a shotgun at his hip, aimed at Daniel, and was grinning around the cigarette in his mouth.

'Cross,' he called out in greeting. 'I told you to stay off my land.'

The sound of the shotgun being cocked echoed across the yard.