Traveling through time with Desmond is nothing like traveling with Layla. As soon as they're out of the temple and back in that gray in between space, Bayek realizes there's something wrong. Desmond is… he's not solid somehow, he's like smoke slipping away from Bayek.
He's dying.
Bayek had known it before, of course, but now it's really coming home to him—there's almost nothing left of Desmond. He pulls at the dying man's spirit, trying to tie him close. He can feel a kind of creeping panic edging over him. Ever since he lost Khemu, he's had a thing about saving people. He's always tried to help people, of course. He was trained as a Medjay, to help people, but it wasn't until he lost his son that it really came home to him how much it hurts when someone can't be saved.
And the upshot of it all is that he's not going to just let Desmond die.
"Senu!" His eagle spirals down toward him, to where Bayek is struggling just to keep Desmond with him. "Senu, we need somewhere safe to land, right? We need a time that can get some help for him." And maybe Layla had a point, about how hard it's going to be for him to find that help when he can't even talk to people. He could always try taking Desmond all the way back to his time, to Egypt, but Bayek isn't honestly sure Desmond's going to last through a trip that's technically two thousand years long. They need something closer, so Bayek puts his trust in Senu. She's always been able to find whoever or whatever he's looking for, no matter how hard they try to hide themselves.
Sure enough, no sooner has Bayek asked for her help, than Senu is diving straight down, toward a point on the timeline that's not very far at all from where they'd picked Desmond up in the first place. Bayek follows, without hesitation, and in a moment they're landing back in the real world.
The first thing Bayek notices is that Desmond… hasn't come through correctly. He's still that same, insubstantial half-spirit, and for a second that's all Bayek can take in. He's not going to be able to save him, and he'd left Layla behind in that cave with Juno for no good reason.
No. No. Bayek takes a breath and looks around. He's seen so many impossible things today already that he's not ready to write anything off as impossible. There has to be something he can do—if nothing else, he trusts that Senu brought him here for a reason.
He's in a small room, crammed full of stuff, most of it unrecognizable to Bayek. There are boxes and piles of things in every corner, and only a small and dirty window to let in light. And on the far end, a bed—Bayek walks closer, and sees that there's someone lying in it, fast asleep. It's not until Bayek is practically on top of the bed that he sees there's someone lying in it, and he starts to understand why Senu has led him here.
Its Desmond lying in the bed. A slightly younger Desmond, one who doesn't look quite so worn as the one Bayek had seen in the Temple. Bayek looks between the Desmond lying on the bed, and the dying spirit he's brought from the temple. It's a guess, really. He doesn't know if it will work. He doesn't know if it's possible. But Desmond is fading fast, and there's really no other choice but to try.
Bayek takes a step forward, sort of trying to guide Desmond's spirit back toward his body. He watches, holding his breath, as the smoky half-form of Desmond's spirit comes close to his body. It seems to hover there for a moment before sinking down and vanishing. For a second there's just silence, and then Desmond's eyes fly open.
-/-
Desmond is only vaguely aware of what's been happening to him since he touched the Eye in the Temple. He remembers falling, and a horrible, necrotic sort of weakness crawling over him, making it harder and harder to just keep breathing, much less keeping track of anything else going on around him.
Then there had been people there. Juno for one, and then a couple of strangers speaking a language Desmond doesn't recognize at all. And then… he has no words for the odd sensation of being disembodied, of traveling, until finally he opens his eyes, and he just feels… fine.
He sits up, slowly, aware that someone else is in the room with him, and realizes with a shock that he's back in his shoebox of an apartment, in New York. Like nothing had ever happened. Like the Assassins, the pieces of Eden, all of it, had just been a dream. Desmond reaches over to the crate he'd brought up months ago to use as a kind of bedside table, and grabs at his phone, checking the date.
February 4, 2012. Before Abstergo. He's gone back in time.
Finally, Desmond looks back over at the man standing over at his bed. He's dressed in loose clothing that looks completely out of place in midwinter New York City, and Desmond notices the white fabric pulled up over his forehead like a hood, and the Assassin's symbol at his waist. Bizarrely, there's an eagle resting on the man's shoulder. Desmond stares for a second, then shakes that off.
"Did you do this for me?" he asks, standing on shaky legs. His head is spinning, and he has no idea how he could be here, back before it all started. "Did you… how?"
The man answers, but in a language Desmond doesn't understand. So he tries again, cycling through a few languages he's picked up from the bleeding effect in the animus, as the stranger struggles through a few languages of his own. Desmond finally settles on Ezio's Italian when he realizes the stranger knows a little bit of what sounds like Latin. It's not enough to have a conversation, but with a little bit of struggle, and some enthusiastic gesturing, they can get the gist of what they're trying to say to each other.
Still, it takes Desmond a little while to wrap his head around what the man—he's pretty sure his name is Bayek, but the language barrier makes everything harder than it needs to be—is telling him. He gets something about time, and after kind of coming at it from a couple different angles to try and make sure they're on the same page, he's almost positive they're talking about time travel. Bayek's traveled through time to save his life.
And, judging from his grin, he's pretty happy to see Desmond's still alive.
Desmond makes a couple more stabs at conversation, trying to figure out how exactly the time travel had worked, but their shared vocabulary just doesn't stretch that far. Bayek pulls out an apple and seems to indicate that he'd somehow used that, which is kind of weird. Desmond has never heard of them doing anything like that, but then again he's never heard of anything letting people travel through time. An apple probably makes more sense than anything else. He thinks about the apple he'd left back in the temple, the one they'd used to unlock it and get inside in the first place, and wonders if that could do the same kind of thing.
"Desmond," Bayek says, pulling him back out of his thoughts. "Bene?"
In Italian that's something like good, ok, well, fine—and Desmond is more than ok, he's better than fine. He'd gotten caught in the crossfire between two precursors and almost died because of it. Then this total stranger had come travelling through time to save him, and now Desmond is back at the beginning, with a chance to do… well, to do anything. His head is still sort of spinning, and it hasn't completely sunk in that he can change things now, he can do it over but better this time.
"I—yea, bene, molto bene, you… " He doesn't want to risk Bayek misunderstanding him, and this language thing is driving him crazy already. So he kind of leans forward, intending to just kind of put his hand on Bayek's shoulder, to sort of try and show him the overwhelming wash of emotions going through him at the moment. But then it just kind of hits him all over again that he could be dead right now, and he sort of instinctively just hugs Bayek. "Grazie."
Bayek claps him on the back, and Desmond's pretty sure he understands him. So that's good. He steps back, wiping at his suddenly wet eyes, feeling grateful just to be alive.
-/-
Layla watches as Bayek vanishes with the apple, frowning. There's… something of Desmond that seems to go with him, a kind of vapor or smoke (she's trying really hard not to think ghost, because that seems like just one weird thing too much to cope with today). But then… when Bayek is gone, Layla watches Desmond's actual body go limp, and she thinks nope that is definitely a dead man, and Bayek is going to be so upset when he realizes he couldn't save him.
Unless... she shifts uncomfortably, thinking about ghosts. Is that Desmond's spirit that Bayek had taken with him? And then that would just be his body here, left to die without Desmond's... soul, or whatever. Layla feels goosebumps break out all along her arms, and rubs at them nervously. Still, if there's anyone that could find a way to save Desmond based on that, she completely believes that it would be Bayek.
Layla forces herself to stop thinking about spirits and ghosts. After all, she's not supposed to be the one worrying about Desmond—that's Bayek's job. Her job is to track down Juno, and figure out what is going on with that creep. So—trying not to look at Desmond's body—she starts to explore. It's a little weird, honestly. It's pretty clear that whoever had been here with Desmond has left in a hurry. There are still computers set up wherever there's room for them, still sleeping bags set up in a corner, still odds and ends scattered everywhere.
It really reminds her of Bayek's tomb, where she'd set up her own animus. It has the same kind of feeling to it, of squatting temporarily in something much more old. Because this place? Yea, definitely ancient. Older than Bayek's tomb for sure, and probably as old as Juno and her people. And speaking of Juno…
Layla stops close to one of the computers, lingering over what looks like an apple just like Bayek's. There's this, there's the inhuman architecture all over the place, there's signs of Juno's people everywhere, there's just no sign of Juno herself. Layla frowns, and thinks about shouting out for her. She's not sure if that'll actually do anything, but she's starting to feel impatient. And at least an argument with Juno would give her something to do while she waits for Bayek to get back.
The thought has only just crossed her mind, when she suddenly hears voices—a lot of voices, and hurrying footsteps. Layla glances around, looking for a hiding place, and dashes off to a side of the cave. The walls are a little cracked and broken here, and Layla just manages to tuck herself into a crevice before a crowd of about half a dozen people descends on the abandoned work area. Abstergo, if the logos stitched on their clothes and plastered on their equipment is anything to go by. Layla scans their faces anxiously, craning her head out of her hiding place a little bit to get a better look, and she's relieved when she doesn't recognize any of them. That would have been awkward to explain.
The Abstergo workers spread out, methodically working their way across the open space. Two of them spot Desmond's body and make a beeline for it—judging by the snatches of conversation Layla manages to overhear, they're doing an autopsy on him, right here and now. Bayek is really not going to be happy about that.
Time passes. No one notices Layla in her hiding spot, but they're sort of edging in her general direction, and Layla realizes they're going to get to her eventually. She's going to have to find a way out of here before then, and worry about making sure Bayek can find her after that. She leans out again, looking for a way out, and her breath catches when she spots something else.
Juno.
She's standing in front of the apple Layla had been looking at earlier, and none of the Abstergo agents are looking in the right direction to see her. So Layla's the only one that sees her as she reaches out to the apple, and rests her hand on it. The apple seems to pulse, flaring briefly before fading, light and energy pouring out of it and apparently into Juno. The process is quick, only ten or fifteen seconds, but when it's done the apple looks dull and drained, and Juno looks—not quite solid, but somehow more present than she had a moment ago, and there's a triumphant smile on her face that sends a chill down Layla's spine.
Bayek, a human, had been able to pick up an apple and use it to travel two thousand years into the future. Layla has no idea what Juno—one of the people that had apparently made the apples—can do with it, but she has a sick feeling she's about to find out.
And she really doesn't think she's going to like it.
-/-
I'm never 100% sure what to do with Juno, because I feel like Ubi hasn't 100% decided what to do with her in the games. But I feel like Bayek and friends need a really good villain to go against as they travel around in time, so I decided to go ahead and make Juno a little more of a threat. Next chapter, we find out why Juno+apple=bad, bad news.
In the meantime, enjoy Desmond and Bayek hugs. :)