"Is that the last of them?"
Layla looks up from the computer where she's been typing out her email to Desmond, and quickly hits send when she recognizes Berg. He doesn't need to see her nonsense ramblings, even if she is hoping they'll cheer Desmond up a little. "I think so," she says, glancing around at the room. As far as she can tell, the animi have all emptied out, and most of them have already been put into rest or maintenance modes for the night. She should probably have been helping out with that, actually.
Well, maybe she can help set up the bunks for tonight, there's still a little work left to do upstairs. They'd thought about just getting sleeping bags and having everyone camp out on the floor next to the animi, but in the end they'd decided to clear out the two rooms directly over the animi room, and just cover the floors with mattresses and as many comfortable blankets and pillows as they can afford with one of the Assassins' hidden bank accounts (the same one, incidentally, that had paid for this place).
"I need the computer when you're done with it," Berg says gruffly, not meeting Layla's eye.
"There's plenty of other—"
"That's the only one with an outside line," Berg says. "I need an email hookup."
Layla is instantly suspicious. There's a reason most of the computers don't have access to the internet—either side could gain a huge advantage if someone here sends out an email to either the Templars or the Assassins, and everyone here has agreed not to risk it. "Why?" she asks. "Going to report back to your Templar friends?"
He raises his eyebrows. "No," he says. "My daughter."
Alright, that was not what Layla had been expecting. "Your…?"
"You heard me the first time."
He's so calm it's almost infuriating, and Layla almost walks away without asking more questions, just to deprive him of the apparent I know something you don't know pleasure of answering them. But she actually does want answers—why is it so important to him to be able to email his daughter, and what exactly is he going to say? Why hadn't Layla ever even known he had a daughter?
"You know we're five years in the past, right?" she asks.
"Yes. I understand the concept of time travel. I understand that we were all brought to 2012 by your ancient friend and his bird, and I know that it's important to you that we all meet in this year, so you can stay in the same time as Miles. And I do understand that this is five years in the past for Elina, but that doesn't matter."
"It does matter," Layla says. Elina? That's her name? "Because you'd be changing—"
"Nothing," Berg interrupts smoothly. "She's three years old this year, Layla. She's not exactly reading her emails."
"Then why do you want to send one to her so badly?"
She can tell, once she asks the question, that Berg is having second thoughts on whether or not to answer. But she waits, arms crossed over her chest, standing pointedly in front of the computer. And eventually, Berg gives in.
"I know I might not be here when she's older," he tells her. "I know every mission I go on might be my last. So I set up an email account for her. If I die, the count information go into a trust for her, along with everything else I hope to leave her. She'll get the password when she's eighteen, and she can do what she wants with it. She'll at least have a chance to know me a little."
Layla still doesn't budge. It sounds sweet, yea, but the problem is that Berg's never struck her as a particularly sweet guy. How does she know this is really going to his daughter, anyway? It could be anyone on the other end of the message.
"You can read it when I'm done, if you're that worried," Berg snaps. "Let me use the computer now."
"It'd be safer not to."
"Let him use it, Layla."
She turns, flushing a little because she hasn't realized there was someone listening in. It's Bayek, of course. Really shouldn't have been a surprise by now—no one else would have spoken in Egyptian. "There's a risk to letting him send messages out," she says carefully, but Bayek doesn't seem concerned and Berg actually smiles, clearly pleased that Bayek's taken his side.
"It's his daughter," Bayek tells Layla, as he draws her away from the computer.
"So he says," Layla says, but when she looks at Bayek, he's watching Berg bend over the keyboard.
"I believe him," he says.
"Why?" Layla asks, dropping her voice so she can be absolutely sure Berg won't hear. Then, even though Bayek is using his earpiece, she switches to Egyptian as well. Just for privacy. "I don't believe him, and I've known him longer."
"The look in his eyes," Bayek explains. "I know it. I feel it, every time I think… Layla, when you become a parent, you'll understand the panic of realizing your child is out of reach. Berg's daughter is still alive but he can't talk to her without ruining the timeline. If he has this, I'm not going to take it away from him."
She's not going to argue with that because she can't, not without insulting Bayek and Khemu. So instead, Layla glances down and asks, "When I'm a parent, Bayek?"
"Sorry," he says. "If. But you would make a good parent, Layla. Any child would adore you."
Layla is… so not ready for motherhood. Maybe someday. Probably not. But either way, Bayek is so earnest in his compliment that it's hard not to appreciate it, and it even drives away a little of the sting of letting Berg have what he wants. Only… she keeps thinking. "Bayek?"
"Yes?"
"Do you ever think about… going back for Khemu?"
For a moment, Bayek doesn't answer. Then he leans back against the nearest workstation and lets out a sigh. "No," he says. "I'm not letting myself think about it."
"I think… you should think about it," Layla says. "Because you could do it. You wouldn't even have to change history that much, you could just go back to… to that day and take him, instead of letting him be killed. The past you would still think he was dead, he'd still do all the things you did—" And she knew that was true because she'd been Bayek, and she knew how he would react. "But Khemu is safe. You really haven't…?"
"It's not going to work," Bayek says, determinedly not looking at her. "It's not, Layla, because the universe is cruel and it took my son from me." His voice is thick with grief and anger, and people are starting to stare at them. Bayek clearly doesn't notice. "And it's never going to let me have him back."
"You have to at least try," Layla insists.
"It will only make things worse."
"Worse than letting him die?" Layla cries, and Bayek gives her such a withering glare that she steps back—even with her privileged view of how he thinks, she can't tell if he's angry in that moment, or scared. Maybe both.
"Here," Bayek says, striding toward her. There's a sudden sharp weight in Layla's hands, and she realizes with a shock that he's forced the apple on her. "You do it, if you think you can." By now, as he strides out of the room, looking almost foreign to Layla with his anger and his fear, every eye in the room is on them.
Well, every eye but Berg's, still fixated on his email to his daughter.
Khemu is never going to read another message from his father, the way Elina will always have those emails from hers. Layla hears a soft noise—feathers—from behind her, and then a heavy and slightly painful weight on her shoulder. It hits her that technically, she has everything she needs to travel through time the way Bayek does. The apple and Senu. She just doesn't know if she can.
Everyone is still staring.
"Well keep doing whatever you were doing," Layla says, trying to sound casual. She doesn't want to scare them all of now, especially when she knows a lot of them are relying on Bayek-the-first-Assassin, Bayek-the-time-traveler, to lead them. "Just a little fight, and I need to, ah—just run out on an errand."
She doesn't want to stand there, the center of everyone's attention, and try to travel back in time. So Layla hurries with Senu just outside the room, where she immediately leans against a wall and stares at the apple. Come on, come on, come on, come on—
A flash of light, and she's falling, or flying, Senu at her side. Layla shrieks in sheer surprise and almost drops the last apple. At the last second she squeezes her hands tight over it and then wraps her whole body in a fetal position around it. "Senu!" she screams, as they just keep falling. She really hasn't thought this through (typical, Layla, just absolutely typical, she can hear Dee scolding her in the back of her mind) and now she's not sure how Bayek navigates from year to year. "Senu, take us home!"
Senu doesn't seem to hear her for a second, but then…
She starts flying, reassuringly calm as she soars forward. Layla grits her teeth and sort of wills herself after the eagle. She's focusing so hard that her head pounds, and then after what seems like forever (but is really only two thousand years), she lands, hard, flat on her back.
"Ow," she mumbles, as Senu lands on her knee and preens. "Yea, yea. Good job, Senu. Good girl."
Suitably acknowledged, Senu pecks at Layla and then when Layla sits up, flies up to her shoulder. The weight, so familiar from her time in the animus, focuses Layla. This is it. This is the place and the moment when Bayek's son is supposed to die. She's just outside the… what is it, technically, another Temple like the one in New York? She's right outside the place where Khemu had died, so Layla gathers her wits, ignores her throbbing back, and creeps down.
Bayek doesn't have very clear memories of this day. Just nightmare images and the sounds of screams. The smell of blood. Layla can't exactly blame him, but it does make her job harder. She can't quite picture the timing of how everything goes down, and her mind just keeps flashing back to Bayek's chaotic nightmare. Will there really be time? She should have gotten here earlier, she could have set something up—
There's a heart tearing bellow, and Layla jumps. That's Bayek, in pain, and oh fuck it's too late. Layla charges down, barely thinking about hiding. It doesn't matter. She passes members of the Order on their way out (they look so much taller and more… solid, somehow, seeing them with her own eyes instead of Bayek's. The masks, even with Layla so focused on Khemu, are a little frightening). One seems to catch a glimpse of her, but Layla keeps moving and stays in the shadows, and he shakes his head and keeps walking.
They've abandoned Bayek and Khemu on the ground of the maybe-a-Temple. They're both on the floor, Bayek passed out from his injuries, but Khemu just barely awake. He looks like he's in shock, and his face is pale. Fading fast.
"Senu?" Khemu asks, almost choking on blood, and Layla can hear the fear in his voice. Poor Bayek. Maybe this is the reason he didn't want to come back—how could he watch his son die?
Senu lands next to Khemu, rubbing up against his little boy cheek and fixing a glare on Layla. It seems to say hurry up already.
"Senu…" Khemu whimpers again. He turns his head, and Layla can see he's trying to cry and he just doesn't have the breath…
So she hurries up already. One hand shoots out to hold (careful, gentle) Khemu's shoulder, and the other grips the apple tightly. This time, it's a little easier. She knows what feeling to look for, and she's needs to do this quickly. Layla's no doctor, but she's pretty sure that a trauma team at a children's hospital in 2012 is going to help Khemu more than whatever they have here.
This time, she barely notices the journey across the centuries. Senu leads her on, just like before, and Layla trusts her completely to get them back home.
"Oh my God!"
Layla opens her eyes, and looks around at the base she'd left just a few minutes ago, from her point of view. It's maybe an hour later here, evening, and the room is dark and almost empty. A couple of techs are still working at the computers, including Rebecca, and she's the one that had noticed her and Khemu arrive, and had screamed.
"I need an ambulance," Layla snaps, then remembers they're supposed to be hiding. "Or I need someone to take him to a hospital."
And in the end, it's Berg. He comes running down when he hears Rebecca's scream, takes in the sight of the child bleeding on the floor, and whisks Khemu off immediately to get help. Layla goes with them, to translate, and leaves Rebecca with Desmond's translator earbud to tell Bayek what happened when he gets back.
-/-
Khemu is in surgery the entire night, and Bayek joins Layla and Berg in the waiting room almost as soon as his son is handed over to the doctors. It's a long, mostly quiet night, without much conversation. Layla spends most of it terrified that she's made a wrong choice, that she's just forcing Khemu to suffer longer before he dies, or that Bayek will never forgive her.
But by the time dawn breaks over the city, Layla has learned three things. First, that Bayek was right about Berg. The Templar doesn't say a word to them the whole night, but he's there, and he'd brought Khemu to a doctor without pausing for a moment. Second, she's learned that Bayek isn't mad at her. Somewhere around 2:30 in the morning, he leans over and thanks her, sheepishly, for trying what he couldn't. She nods, and reaches for his hand to let him squeeze it hard.
And third, right as the sun rises, a surgeon comes out to find them, and Layla learns that Khemu is going to live.
-/-
This was going to be a nice, quiet chapter about Bayek and Layla arguing about Berg and parents and I don't know what. But then Layla decided I WANT TO SAVE KHEMU and it didn't matter that I wanted until way later before bringing Khemu in, so... this chapter got out of control very quickly.Which unfortunately means the 'hey Layla, can you time travel on your own?' conversation is going to have to wait for next chapter, but it will come up I promise.
(Also how is this eleven chapters in, and Bayek is still the only ancestor to show up in the story so far? Next chapter I promise, they're going to time travel to somewhere other than Ancient Egypt)
And now it's 1 in the morning again and if I stay up to proofread I will fall asleep at work tomorrow, so please excuse any typos. :)