It starts with a normal night in the club, in Bad Weather—or maybe it's not normal, Desmond isn't sure because he can't remember what normal is supposed to be like anymore. Last time around, when he was living through this day for the first time, he remembers thinking it had been normal. It's just… this isn't really his life any more. He's not the same person anymore, and the life of a twenty five year old bartender just isn't normal to him.

The walk back to his apartment, the walk through the back alley shortcut, the walk he knows he'll never finish, feels more normal somehow. There's a dark van waiting for him on the corner, and when Desmond checks in eagle vision, he can see four Templars inside, ready to pounce. This is going to go just like last time, it has to because he needs to be kidnapped all over again.

But last time, it had hurt.

An eagle screeches overhead, and Desmond jerks his head up to look at it. He's feeling a little on edge. He relaxes a little when he sees that it's Senu. He knows her by now, even from this far away—she's definitely been around enough over the past few weeks for Desmond to learn how to recognize her. And if she's here, it means that she's watching him, and that means Bayek is probably watching too. That thought gives Desmond the courage he needs to walk forward, into Abstergo's ambush.

It does hurt, of course. Being grabbed and beaten and finally drugged into unconsciousness is pretty much always going to hurt, but this time Desmond knows he could make it stop, he knows how to fight and he can fight better than the men waiting for him. Desmond bites his tongue so hard it bleeds, just to stop himself from defending himself.

Finally his consciousness starts to fade, and Desmond is almost relieved. His muscles relax as the drugs hit his system and fighting back just stops being an option. His face hits the ground and luckily he's so numb he barely feels it. With a little bit of effort, Desmond manages to turn his head so that his last sight before total blackness is Senu, still circling.

He doesn't know how long he's out, and it doesn't help that he's put in an animus before he's completely awake. Desmond has been through enough of Altair's life that normally it wouldn't be hard at all to slip into his ancestor's memories and synch—but he's groggy enough from the drugs and from not remembering getting into the animus that he just can't make himself synch. There's a painful, wrenching, desynching sensation, and then Desmond is back in the real world, lying on Abstergo's uncomfortable animus (he thinks briefly of all their time traveling recruits in their hidden headquarters, with their more advanced and comfortable animi, and he's jealous).

"Welcome back to the land of the living," says a sarcastic voice, and Desmond sits up as quickly as he can to frown at Vidic.

He's all ready with a sarcastic response, because he remembers from his first time doing this that sarcasm really pisses Vidic off, and a pissed off Vidic makes more mistakes, but then he stops. He knows that he's done all this before, but to Vidic and—he glances off to the right out of the corner of his eye, and sure enough she's there—Lucy will be expecting him to know nothing.

He needs to pretend to be as scared and confused as he had been before, or they're going to suspect… well, they're not going to suspect the truth, because who in their right mind would jump to the conclusion of a time traveling ancient Egyptian rescued me from being killed by a 70,000 year old woman from another species, and now we're trying to stop her from taking over the planet? But they might think something's up. Last time, Vidic had threatened him several times with a medically induced coma, and although that would have been bad then, it's infinitely worse now. Desmond needs to be able to get in contact with Layla if he finds Juno in his ancestor's memories, he can't be put in a coma—

"A little bit stupid, isn't he?" Vidic says dismissively to Lucy, when Desmond doesn't say a word.

Lucy doesn't answer. Instead, she looks up from her computer and gives Desmond a sheepish, almost apologetic look. If Desmond hadn't been a time traveler, he would have believed her. Instead, he takes a deep breath and looks at Vidic. "Where am I?" he asks, voice cracking as he struggles to sound scared.

Vidic manages to work two insults into his short answer, and then three into his answer to the next question after that, and somehow the conversation just goes downhill after that. Desmond tries to be as thorough as he possibly can with his questions despite the insults, because at least the more they tell him, the less he has to worry about accidentally saying something he shouldn't know about yet.

Eventually he can tell they're getting to a point where Vidic is getting genuinely irritated with him, and Desmond lets himself be steered back into the animus. There's a longer than usual wait as the memory loads—Desmond has forgotten how shitty this animus is—but then, all at once, he does, and at least this part is as familiar and… to be totally honest, amazing as he remembers.

For Desmond, when he first loads into a memory in the animus, it's like being in free fall, like taking a leap of faith. When he first started out, when he didn't know what he was doing, that had been terrifying. Over time, as the leap of faith became more and more comfortable, this free fall had started to feel better too.

He falls and falls, he almost flies, and when he lands it's not in a pile of hay, but in his ancestor's mind. There's a brief stutter as Desmond meets Altair, and then their minds meet, merge, and Desmond feels the familiar warmth of his ancestor welcoming him in.

Desmond spares a brief moment, as he adjusts to Altair's mind, to feel sorry for Layla. For him, with his ancestors, there's always a vague feeling of family when he's reliving their memories. He feels protected, the way he had with his parents when he was very small. Bayek isn't family to her, and Desmond wonders if it feels the same for her when she's in his memories.

And then, for quite a while after that, he stops being Desmond, and is Altair.

-/-

"He's synching well," Lucy says after about an hour. Desmond is making good progress through Altair's memories, far better than she had expected. There's only been one desynchronization so far, and that had been because of a glitch in the memory—he'd gotten too close to a cliff edge that wasn't fully loaded.

"Poor choice of words," Vidic murmurs, as Desmond navigates Altair carefully around the Acre docks.

"Sorry?" Lucy says, looking up from her computer.

"Synching," Vidic repeats. Then, with more emphasis. "Sinking. We still don't have the fucking water programmed right."

Lucy can't tell if he's joking or pissed off, so she just smiles and nods.

A passing man bumps into Altair, sending him off the dock and into the water—the second he touches the water, Desmond desynchs.

"Damn," Vidic mutters. "Pull him out, Miss Stillman. He's made enough progress for today, and it's getting late."

Lucy checks her watch. It's after six, and since they're well on their way to reaching their deadline, she's pretty sure Vidic wants to get home and have a decent night's sleep. She wouldn't mind some sleep herself, to be honest, and she's sure Desmond will be grateful to get…

To get out of the animus…

"He's gone back in," she says.

"What?" Vidic demands, striding over to look at Lucy's screen. Sure enough, it's already loaded Acre back up, and Desmond-as-Altair is striding through it confidently, with purpose. "He went back in himself? You didn't—"

"No," Lucy says. "I didn't." Normally, especially on someone's first day in the animus, she has to force the initiation of each new memory. Of course it's possible for someone to choose to go back into their ancestor's memories after desynching, but no one ever does.

"Force a desynch and pull him out," Vidic says, after considering this for a moment. "I don't know why he's so eager for this—" His expression and his tone are genuinely puzzled. "But it's possible that it's an early manifestation of the bleeding effect. Associating too strongly with his ancestor."

"That, or you really scared him when you were threatening to induce a coma." Lucy sighs, and starts the process to pull him out. When Desmond blinks and opens his eyes, Lucy imagines she sees an expression of frustration race across his face. He wipes it away quickly, but in that moment, Lucy realizes something. For some reason, Desmond wants to be in the animus.

And then he gets up, of course, he complains about his situation and the animus and everything else and that just makes Lucy more confused and suspicious. She doesn't say anything to Vidic, because right now it's nothing but a feeling, and Vidic has never had much patience for feelings when facts were available.

But she resolves to watch him, and to figure out exactly what's so alluring to him about the animus.

-/-

From: censored

To: censored

Date: September 3, 12:22 AM

Subject: Day 1

Hey Layla, how's it going? Hope your day's been better than mine? Any breakthroughs? Anyone see Juno yet?

I haven't seen her here, and I think Lucy might be getting a little suspicious. She stayed tonight after Vidic left, and she kept asking all these questions about how I felt about the animus—I don't know what she suspects, but she definitely suspects something. I'll play stupid tomorrow, and hopefully she'll back off.

I'll write again tomorrow night, but you know how exhausting the animus is. I'm going to try and get a couple hours of sleep.

Tell Bayek and Senu and everyone I said hey.

- Desmond

-/-

From: censored

To: censored

Date: September 2, 12:45 AM

Subject: Re: Day 1

Oh my god, Desmond, go to bed. How long were you in the animus today? And not even a good animus, I've seen the specs for that monster and I can't believe your brain isn't leaking out through your ears yet. Bayek says go to bed too, and we decided we're going to show him he's family, right? And he was first, right? So I guess that makes a little like all the Assassins' spiritual great-great-great-great-etc-grandfather. If Gramps says go to bed, then you go to bed.

No Juno yet here either, but we're only just starting to get everyone into the animi. It's like herding cats, I swear. But then when you get them all in, it's like… okay, so we kind of had to huddle the animi up wherever they would fit, so they're just in this kind of chaotic mash and half of them are right up by the table where we have the food set out because everyone wants to be by the food, why wouldn't they, but the techs… so we got them set up in pretty much straight news—Berg insisted, I think he likes being able to walk up and down the rows and look at what everyone's up to. I was making fun of him at first, which really pissed him off, but then I tried it myself, and you know what? Just… walking past all those screens, watching Assassins and Templars all across history and all over the world, it's kind of amazing, even if I wish we were here for a nicer reason than stopping Juno. And I wish you could be here to see it too.

Soon enough. Stick with it, Desmond. She'll show up sooner or later, and then we'll sic Gramps on here and she'll wish she never messed with us.

…And I just reread this rambling mess of an email and now I think I need more sleep too. But it's... what, almost 1 AM out in Rome? It's still evening here, and there's a lot left to do. Anyway, send me another email tomorrow. Check in, let us know you're still alive.

- Layla

-/-

To be honest, I think I could write an entire fic of Desmond and Layla snarking with each other through emails.