Trigger warnings: Clay being crazy and talk about suicides. idk if it's detailed enough to actually need a warning, but better safe than sorry.

For the second time in one day, Desmond finds himself waking up flat on his back at animus island. Again, Clay is nearby, ready with a hand up and a piece of crazy and not so useful advice.

"What happened?" Desmond asks.

"I don't know," Clay says. "I wasn't watching."

"Yes you were."

Clay doesn't bother to deny it again. "I told you," he says. "You're weak right now. You couldn't last longer than one memory."

"Not that," Desmond says. He knows he's weak, he could feel it through the entire memory as he watched Ezio and Altair escape Masyaf together. "I meant, why couldn't they see me?"

"Welcome to the way normal people use the animus," Clay says.

"You're not helping, Clay," Desmond says. "And I'm not in the mood."

"Geeze." Clay rolls his eyes. "Touchy."

Desmond lets out a deep breath, mostly to keep himself from strangling Clay. "Not. Helping." The whole memory left a bad taste in his mouth, and it's all he can do not to take it out on the other man. Seeing Masyaf fallen to time is bad enough, but hearing Altair tell Ezio that he was dead was worse than he wants to admit.

"Alright," Clay says. "Let me explain this again, because apparently you're not getting it. You're pretty much a vegetable right now. Your body in the real world is basically empty, with just a tiny little bit of you left inside. Your two ancestors, on the other hand, are not brain dead, and you need to resync with the two of them before either one can notice you. It's just like when you first started with the animus. You didn't know Altair, and he didn't know you. Except it's worse, because back then you were just a little voice in the back of his head, and now you're not even that."

"Great," Desmond snorts. "Do you have any good news?"

"No."

"Oh," Desmond says. "Well, thanks for nothing, then. I guess."

"Quit complaining," Clay says. "At least you have a shot at getting out of here."

"Well maybe if you didn't want to spend the rest of your life in the animus, you shouldn't have ripped yourself open with a pen," Desmond says.

Clay laughs. "How can you possibly be this thick?" he asks. "I was bleeding."

"Yea," Desmond agrees. "All over the walls, and the floor, and most of the furniture-"

"Not literally bleeding," Clay says. "Falling apart. I told you before, you're never going to have to deal with that. You don't know what it's like to have a dozen people in your head and not know which one is you. You're never going to wake up and wonder what century you were born in. And then one day you wake up, and there's so many people in your head, and it just feels like they're all going to burst out whether you want them to or not..." he stops, visibly trying to calm himself.

Desmond, a little worried, watches but says nothing. He knows he should say something, but he has no idea what that something should be.

"I'm going to send you into the next memory now," says Clay. "Here's hoping you get everything worked out in your messed up brain soon, because I'm starting to not want you here."

"Clay-"

It's too late. Animus island dissolves around him, and Desmond finds himself at the start of another one of Ezio's memories, Clay nowhere in sight.