When he wakes, there's chaos all around him. The noises of a dozen men fighting reaches him, but distantly, like they have to travel a long way to get to him. His ears feel like they're filled with mud, and when he opens his eyes, his vision swims. He tries to throw up, but there's nothing in his stomach.
Everything- everything hurts, but it's so much better than the darkness he left behind. This is only a physical pain, and after only a few seconds, it's already started to fade. He looks around, trying to figure out where he is and how he got there and what's going on.
There are fifteen- no, closer to twenty- people in the room with him, and the only one he recognizes is Ezio, lying on the ground next to him. For a second he panics, because the other man is lying in an unnatural position, barely moving. Then Ezio abruptly coughs and sits up.
He turns his attention to the others in the room, and frowns. There's a large group of men fighting against two opponents less than a dozen yards away. The two are winning, somehow, but he can tell it wouldn't take much for the tide to shift. One lucky hit, and then the two will go down and maybe their attackers will turn on him and Ezio.
Almost like he can hear the thought, one of the men abruptly turns toward them, grins, and raises a weapon. Time seems to slow, and suddenly he realizes he's raising a hand in response to the weapon, not in defense, but to fight back. He doesn't have weapons, but he does have something better. Instinctively, he sends a bolt of golden energy flying out of him, hitting the man with the weapon and spreading from him to the others like a chain.
"Desmond!" Ezio yells (why does he keep thinking that word will mean something to him?), but he's not going to stop now. He's confused, and scared, and this is all he can do to fight back. Nothing he sees makes any sense to him, and he just wants it to go away, so he can hear himself think.
So he lets the light go. He closes his eyes, and pictures himself pushing the light away, pictures it carrying the crowd along with it as it goes. When he opens his eyes again, breathing heavily, there's no one in the room except himself and Ezio, and he lets himself feel a little bit of pride for figuring it out himself.
Then he looks over at Ezio, and the expression on his face makes the pride goes away. "I shouldn't have done that," he guesses.
"No," Ezio says. "You- how did you do that?"
"I don't know." He shrugs. "I just thought about it. It wasn't hard."
He can tell this isn't the right answer, but Ezio doesn't push it any farther. Instead, he asks, "Are they dead?"
"Dead?"
"Where did they go?" Ezio rephrases the question.
"I just…" he crosses his arms over his chest and doesn't meet Ezio's eyes. "I didn't want them here anymore. So they're somewhere else."
"Alright," Ezio says. "Fine, Desmond, we'll figure it out later. But we need to get out of here before they send anyone else."
He starts to follow as Ezio moves to leave the room, then suddenly stops. "Wait," he says. "You keep saying that."
"Saying what?"
"Desmond," he says. "What's it mean?"
Ezio's expression changes again, and this time he thinks he can read something like pity, or maybe sadness, on his face. "You don't remember anything, do you?"
Only the darkness. "No," he says. "Nothing."
Ezio shakes his head. "It's your name."
"Oh."
"Now come on," Ezio says, and turns his back on hi- on Desmond. "We need to leave."