=Desmond=
In the time since he was first kidnapped by Abstergo, the amount of people Desmond has actually talked to has been small. Altair, Ezio, Rebecca, Shaun, Lucy, Vidic, and, just recently, Clay. Seven people. Altair and Ezio mostly live inside his own head (when he's not hanging out in theirs). Vidic wants him dead, and Lucy might have too. He tries not to think about what Lucy wanted too much. He's been lying to Rebecca and Shaun from the beginning. And Clay is either insane or basically a computer. Possibly both.
And now he can add Malik to that list, which is nice. What's better is that Malik isn't in his head, trying to kill him, a computer, or someone Desmond has to lie to. And it's good to be back in the real world, out of the animus as well. There's something about the air in the animus that doesn't ever quite manage to feel quite right. It's sort of feels stale and second hand, which doesn't make sense when Desmond remembers that his body is actually lying somewhere in the real world, breathing perfectly normal air.
This is better.
After he and Malik are able to relax enough that neither of them seems likely to kill the other, they sit down, and Desmond does his best to try and answer the questions Malik starts throwing at him. It's not easy, because he actually doesn't know what's been going on in his time, or where Altair's gone while Desmond borrows his body, or how they're both going to get back to where they're supposed to be.
"I had heard you were dead," Malik says, after Desmond's gone through every variation of 'I don't know' he can think of.
"I'm not," Desmond says.
"Obviously," Malik says, and goes back to studying him.
"You keep doing that," Desmond says.
"Doing what?"
"Staring at me."
Malik lets out a long breath and shakes his head. "Sorry," he says. "It's just that you could be him."
"Who?" Desmond asks, and then right away feels stupid for asking. "You mean Altair?"
"Yes," Malik says. "You look and sound like him. You make the same gestures and use the same expressions. Why?"
Desmond shrugs, a little uncomfortable. After the first shock, he's found it easy to slip into being Altair. Maybe it's thanks to the animus, or spending so much time with Altair in his head, or both. He speaks carefully, trying to put it into words that would make sense to someone else. "I think there's a connection between every person's mind and their body. It's like a set of clothes that you wear until they start to mold themselves around you. Like shoes that don't fit right when you put them on, but after some time they feel like they were made for you. Everyone has things only they do. A specific way of walking, a different way of speaking, a thousand little things that lets you pick out one person in a crowd. After a while, I think those things your brain do start to bleed into their body. Most people don't have the exact same walk, but nobody ever thinks about it because the body does it on it's own. So when I'm in Altair's body, my mind sort of naturally falls into the habits of his body." He shrugs, and offers Malik a grin that feels not at all at home on Altair's stoic face. "I could act more like myself, but it feels... wrong." Like swimming upstream against a current.
He doesn't mention Clay's theory that he and Altair and Ezio have in some way become the same, thanks to exposure to the apple. He doesn't know if that has anything to do with it, or if it's even right. It kind of just sounds like Clay being crazy.
Unfortunately, from what he knows of Clay so far, Clay being crazy is usually the same as Clay being right.
"It's still strange," Malik says. "And you're glowing."
"What?" Desmond looks down at his arms, which have actually started to glow. "That's... different." He wonders how he hasn't noticed it before.
"I've never seen it that bright," says Malik.
"Something's going to happen," Desmond says. He can feel the apple inside him. It feels- excited, if a word like that can be used on a metal ball.
"What?"
"I don't know," Desmond says, and vanishes. Physically vanishes, body and all, leaving Malik alone in the room.
=Ezio=
Ezio's actually in the bathroom when it happens, which is lucky. Three seconds later and he would have been on his way out, and someone would have seen what happens next. It's a little funny, actually, because he would have more trouble staying unnoticed in this airport than anywhere else he's ever seen. And since he spent a solid two years of his life finding creative ways in and out of the Vatican, that's an impressive accomplishment.
On the way into the airport, Rebecca and Shaun give him a running commentary on all the reasons assassins wait in line for security and go through customs just like everybody else. He doesn't understand all of it (new words for today include security camera, TSA, and metal detector), but he gets enough of the meaning to understand that basically it's less risky to just get a fake passport and a cover story and pretend to be normal for a few hours.
He's actually not sure that he's safe from prying eyes here, but at least there's less people around to notice when the apple suddenly wakes up and bursts into light, much brighter than the dim glow Ezio is used to seeing. An old man at the sinks gives him an open mouthed stare, but there's nothing Ezio can do about that as he abruptly vanishes from the world.
-/-
So, this chapter and the next one were supposed to be just one chapter, but I decided to split them up. There's a reason for that, and the reason is that chapter 42 is BIG. It's not the longest in terms of word count (although it's probably in the top five or so), but it's definitely big in terms of actual plot. It's also pretty confusing, and I didn't want to tack a whole confusing section onto the end of this one. SO. I guess the point is to be ready for some confusion when the next chapter hits.