Hey, long time no see... (I suck, haha). I doubt anyone's still interested in reading this after the excessive hiatus I took, but on the off chance you are, you should know that Chapter 17 has been completely rewritten, and you might want to head back there and check it out if you're planning to keep reading. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for reading!

-/-

Connor dreams of home nearly every night. And it's amazing that those dreams should be as bright and vivid as they are, because it's been… so long, since he was last there. But the memories are strong, and his dreams are clear, and every morning, when Connor wakes to the bare stone walls of the cell he shares with William Miles, it's like those dreams are melting away.

His only way home lies through the killing of another man, and Connor isn't sure he can do that.

(And yet there are times… in his darkest, most desperate moments, when Connor catches himself half considering it. The apple is still in his head, still egging him on, and Connor has spent the past two hundred years doing everything the apple tells him to, and he is terribly afraid that it's only a matter of time until he breaks)

"Tell me about yourself," William says one day. Or one night, maybe. It's impossible to gauge the passage of time from in here.

Connor stirs guiltily, edging backwards a little on the filthy floor. He'd been contemplating how he would even go about killing William, if it came to that. There aren't a lot of options in the cell, and William is part bear. He offers a wan smile, and tries not to look like the piece of utter scum that he's starting to believe that he is. "What do you want to know?" he asks.

"Anything," William says. He gives a long, heartfelt sigh. "Something to distract from this place for a little while."

"Not much to say," Connor says.

"There must be something about yourself that you're willing to share," William says.

Connor considers this for a moment. "I'm very unlucky," he says after a moment, and William actually laughs in response. There's no humor in it, but it's technically a laugh.

"You and me both," he says. "We wouldn't be in here otherwise."

"What about you?" Connor asks, hoping William will allow the change of subject. "What did you leave behind in the real world?"

"Oh," William says, turning as evasive as Connor had been a minute ago. "Work. Some family."

"Family," Connor echoes. Suddenly he's itching to ask about Desmond, but he's not sure how to bring it up without sounding like he knows too much.

Luckily, William brings the conversation that way on his own.

"It's funny," William says (but his voice is utterly devoid of humor). "I hadn't thought of him in years, but now that I'm here I can't stop thinking about my son."

That would be Desmond, the apple reminds Connor, unnecessarily. He wanted to kill you.

"He wanted to kill you," Connor hisses under his breath.

"What?" William asks.

Connor shakes his head.

"You're the same age as him," William says. "Assuming he's alive. He's probably dead. I haven't seen him since he was sixteen, and he's not…" William is silent for a long time, but Connor doesn't push. They have nothing but time, locked away down here. Eventually, William goes on. "He's not a survivor. Too soft for this world."

And yet he's still alive. He's out there, somewhere, maybe trying to think of a way to fix all this. He knows everything that's happened, knows about the apple, about Connor. After him, there's no one left that knows the truth of everything that's happened. He's stronger than his father thinks, and Connor wants to tell William that. Only if he did, he'd have to explain how he knows Desmond, how he knows Desmond is William's son, all kinds of awful things he doesn't much want to talk about.

"You never know," he says instead. "He might be alright."

"And maybe one day the King will die," William says bleakly. "I don't hold out much hope for miracles anymore."

A deep, gloomy darkness settles between the two of them, heavy enough to weigh them down.

Are you ready to kill him yet? The apple asks. Are you ready to go home?

Home. Home. To go home, and forget everything. To have all these horrors wiped away. Connor has not cried since he was a child watching his mother die, but he very nearly cries now from the sheer force of wanting to go home again.

But he shakes his head no. Not yet. Not today. He can hold off a little bit longer.

-/-

Desmond is spending eighteen hours a day in the animus now, tearing through Ezio Auditore's life at a speed that leaves him spinning and shaking and confused. But they have to find an apple. They have to.

In his sparse time out of the animus, Desmond finds himself taking an odd kind of comfort from the parts of himself that are wolf. He'll curl up in bed, fighting off nightmares and trying to sleep, and he'll close his eyes and focus on everything he can smell. In the animus, when he's Ezio, Desmond can see in more colors than he knows how to name, but he can barely smell anything at all. It helps him to feel like himself again to just lie in bed and focus on everything he can smell, one at a time.

Food—not meat, there's never enough meat these days, but it must be Cross's turn to cook because he's shockingly good with cooking, and the smell is making Desmond hungry. Then the people, all of them. Cross, Vidic, Rebecca, Shaun. Haytham, as strong as anyone else, despite being only half there. A pair of eagles, roosting in the wooden beams near the ceiling—Ratonhnhaké:ton and the other Haytham. The very faint smell of… mouse? One of the eagles must have been hunting, but the smell is faint so they must have eaten a while ago.

And then there's Lucy. There's so much more wolf than human in her scent these days—it worries Desmond, in a distant, exhausted way. For a while, he just concentrates on breathing, in and out, in and out, tracking Lucy's smell as she moves around the room. When she passes close to him, Desmond slides his eyes open and says, "Are you okay, Lucy?"

She doesn't look at him. Just fidgets with something in her hands, a quick and nervous gesture. Her shoulders are bowed, and she looks like she's thinking hard. "Are you worried about me?" she asks. Her voice is hoarse, and Desmond thinks that either she hasn't been talking much lately, or she's been crying.

"Yea," Desmond says. "You didn't ask for the tea. You didn't want to be…" Like him. "Less than human."

"I can tell," Lucy says faintly. "You're worried, and I can tell, it's just something about the way you smell right now—I shouldn't be able to smell that. I shouldn't know what it means."

"Lucy—"

"It's a full moon tonight," Lucy says.

"I know," Desmond answers.

"There's a part of me that just wants to go outside and howl at the moon and that's not who I want to be it's just not but the wolf inside me is just taking over and I don't know how to stop it."

"You'll get used to it," Desmond offers, without much conviction.

"I drank the tea," Lucy says. "I won't get used to it. Sooner or later, it's going to drive me crazy."

Desmond has nothing reassuring to say. It's true. That's what happens—they've all heard the stories of the men that the King had forced to drink the tea. Desmond had witnessed it himself, reliving Ratonhnhaké:ton's memories. Even in the brief time he'd had between drinking the tea and being forced permanently into animal form, Ratonhnhaké:ton had seemed like he was starting to slip.

"I'm going to miss you," Desmond says quietly.

"When I'm… when whatever's going to happen to me actually happens… when there's no human left in me…"

"Lucy?"

"Will you look after me?" Lucy whispers.

Desmond takes a moment or two to blink back tears. This isn't fair. Lucy is one of the good ones, and she doesn't deserve to lose herself like this.

Before he gets his voice under control, the two of them are interrupted by a low whining sound. They both look over, and Desmond realizes Ratonhnhaké:ton has left his eagle's perch. He's standing in front of them, a wolf again, and although Desmond doubts he really knows what's going on he seems sad and sorry. He pushes his face into Lucy's hand, and licks at her fingers.

"You're part of the pack," Desmond says. "I know it's not what you want, but I've been a lone wolf for a long time now. It's not that much fun, and I'm just… look, everything that's happened lately sucks, but I'm not alone anymore. And I'm not giving that up. I'm not giving any of you up. You're never going to be alone, Lucy."

-/-

Ratonhnhaké:ton has never really liked humans. They're too big, too loud, too dangerous. Ratonhnhaké:ton had been shot by a hunter once, and it hadn't killed him because nothing ever does but the bullet had torn into him, buried itself in his leg, and stayed there for what felt like an eternity. Ratonhnhaké:ton had spent a full winter in a little den, wasting away to skin and bone, suffering. It didn't matter what form he took, the pain never went away. Finally, when it was nearly spring, Father and other-Father had found him, and other-Father had taken the pain away. He'd dug the bullet out and bandaged the wound and brought Ratonhnhaké:ton food.

Other-Father is human but Ratonhnhaké:ton trusts him, because of that day and because of a hundred other days like it. But he's never trusted any other human like he trusts other-Father. So this… all this, living in a human building, surrounded by humans, depending on humans for food and water and everything, it's wrong. Wrong, wrong, all wrong.

But Desmond doesn't count. He's never really been human, he's always been a wolf in human shape. And he is a part of Ratonhnhaké:ton's pack, he is Ratonhnhaké:ton's, he is the son of the son of the pup Ratonhnhaké:ton had had so long ago, the one that had turned human, the one…

The one Ratonhnhaké:ton hadn't been able to take care of.

He isn't going to let Desmond down. There's enough wolf in him that Ratonhnhaké:ton thinks… maybe he'll know what to do this time.

So that's why he stays. For other-Father, and for Desmond, and also sort of for Lucy. Lucy, who is human but more wolf every day and watching her change wakes something up inside him. Memories. Long gone, or buried, or forgotten, but suddenly stirring deep inside his head. That had happened to him once. Ratonhnhaké:ton had been human. And then he had not been.

Ratonhnhaké:ton doesn't remember what it was like to be human. He doesn't remember what it was like to change. But Lucy smells of fear and worry and misery, all the time, and the more wolf she gets, the more scared she gets as well. So Ratonhnhaké:ton isn't going to abandon her, either.

His life has been nothing but cold and pain and fear for a very long time now. All the humans are afraid, but Ratonhnhaké:ton has no head for human concerns. He has a pack now, strange and sad and broken but his. Father and other-Father and Desmond and Lucy. Ratonhnhaké:ton has a purpose again.

Lucy needs him the most right now, so Ratonhnhaké:ton starts to shadow her. Everywhere she goes, everything she does, he tries to be right there for her. He can't tell if it's helping, because people are strange and complicated and they have so many feelings.

And then one day, instead of half falling off the animus thing late-late at night, Desmond hops off in the middle of the afternoon and says, "I'm done. I know where it is."

And everyone—Desmond, Lucy, other-Father—they're all so happy when they hear that. Ratonhnhaké:ton feels like he can stop worrying for a little while. It sounds like all the bad things are going to go away now.

-/-

They stay up late that night, and for once it's because they're celebrating instead of working. They know where to find another apple now, and from everything the others have said, it shouldn't even be difficult to get to.

"It's in Rome," Desmond tells Haytham (again—he must have gone over this half a dozen times already). "Rome! In Italy."

"So I've heard," Haytham says.

"I'm going to help get it back," Desmond says.

"No," Vidic says at once. He's been hovering at the edge of the crowd, awkwardly hovering over the others, as always, but now he interrupts. "You're not."

"You had me kidnapped," Desmond says, and although his voice is casual, his posture is tense. "You don't get a say."

"We only get one chance at this," Vidic says. "Bringing you out of the country will ruin everything."

"I know exactly where it is," Desmond says. "I know how Ezio hid the apple—and he's my ancestor, what if we need his DNA or something?"

"You're part wolf," Vidic says flatly. "The second anyone sees your ears, you're a dead man."

"I'm going," Desmond insists.

By now, Haytham realizes, the others have gone silent and they're all staring at Desmond and Vidic, waiting to see how the conflict will play out.

"I can take care of myself," Desmond says. "I know what I'm doing, where I'm going, I can help. And I think you need me."

"What do you think about airport security?" Vidic asks. "Washington—the King, whoever the King really is, he has troops that have taken the tea. They'll be able to tell you're not human as soon as you get close enough for them to smell you."

"No," Shaun says abruptly. "He's right. He's done as much as any of us to figure this all out. More. Look, I got into the country from the UK without the King's men knowing about it. I think I can figure out a way to get all of us out."

Silence. Utter silence for a moment. Then Vidic nods.

"How quickly can you get us out?" Cross asks from behind Vidic.

"End of the week," Shaun says.

"Then that's when we'll leave," Desmond says. He looks almost numb from excitement. "I'm going to get to see the world."