Desmond is uncomfortable with the fact that Lucy had decided to get rid of all of them for the afternoon. She hadn't been obvious about it, just dropped hints that maybe they should take the day off and as long as they were careful, Abstergo won't find them. She's probably right, they do need a day off, and since she's telling Abstergo everything that happens they're not in danger of being found.

But she hadn't done this last time, which means she's doing it because of something that Desmond's changed since he's been here. That bothers him.

So he tells Lucy he's okay with spending the day in Monteriggioni, and then after Rebecca and Shaun have gone off to do their errands, he circles back around to the sanctuary. He stays quiet and still, with Altair and Ezio in the forefront of his mind, all three of them hyper alert as Desmond creeps in through the hidden tunnel that leads to the sanctuary. There are voices ahead of him, echoing so much in the tunnels that Desmond can't make out the words. He inches forward until he's close enough for the echoes to resolve themselves into being intelligible, then stops in the shadows behind Altair's statue, just out of sight of whoever's inside the sanctuary.

"…who is this guy, then?" someone asks, and Desmond feels a shock of confusion run through him because he knows that voice. That's Layla, but what is she doing here, working with Lucy?

"Just a guy," Lucy says, voice cool.

"Are you going to explain any of what this is?" Layla asks. "Like, this whole place that you guys are just camping out in?"

"No." Lucy's voice is sweetly innocent.

"This place is weird," Layla says. "Is it like some secret society stuff?"

"Maybe," Lucy says, and her tone is exactly the same as her last answer had been. Desmond, on the other hand, feels… relieved? Layla sounds so completely clueless about what's going on here that he figures it out. This isn't the same Layla he knows, it's not the same one that's been through an animus and gone back in time with him to be here. This is the Layla from 2012, who hasn't been through any of that yet.

So the good news is, at least there's some kind of an explanation. Layla hasn't just arbitrarily decided to betray them. The bad news is that if anyone can figure out what's going on here, Desmond's pretty sure it'd be her.

"Can you get at his emails or not?" Lucy asks, interrupting Desmond's train of thought.

"Done," Layla says. "Piece of cake. It's encrypted, but it's like… honestly, if I was going to hide a bunch of emails, I'd do it exactly the same way. So getting in was pretty easy."

"Good," Lucy says. "Great." Desmond hears footsteps echoing across the sanctuary, and imagines her hurrying across the room to read all his secrets over Layla's shoulder. "So what kind of emails has he been sending?"

"Let's see," Layla says, and Desmond panics. There are all kinds of secrets in those emails that neither of them can be allowed to see. For one thing, if Layla sees that Desmond's been writing to her… there's really no good way to explain it away. And then the contents of the emails…"

He panics.

There's no way they don't hear him as he comes stumbling through the entrance, making enough noise that he's sure they're going to hear him, and have enough time to pretend that they're not doing anything they shouldn't.

Desmond doesn't have time to think of a good plan, and all he wants to do is get the two of them away from those emails. He's not sure what to do once they're gone—maybe just smash the whole damn computer, at this rate—but he knows that letting Layla or Lucy get a look at his emails is not going to end well. There's a reason they encrypted it so heavily, after all.

By the time he gets back into the sanctuary, Layla and Lucy have backed off from the computer, they're just sitting around like they're the two most innocent people in the world. "Uh…" He fakes confusion, which at least gives him an excuse to stare at Layla, pretending he's never seen her before when really he's just taken aback by how young she looks. Five years really made a difference, for her.

"Desmond," Lucy says, frowning at him like he's the intruder. "What are you doing back so early?"

"I got tired," he lies. "And I came back. Who's she?"

"I'm Layla," Layla says, and Desmond sort of wants to smile at how (relatively) honest she's being. He's pretty sure that if it someone had asked him or Lucy that question, their first instinct at this point would have been to lie.

"Well what are you doing here?" he asks.

"Listen," Layla says with a little snort. "I wish I knew. I just…"

But she trails off then, and when Desmond follows her gaze he realizes he's staring at the animus.

Right. Desmond remembers Layla telling him that before she'd actually gone in an animus herself, all she'd wanted was to be allowed to work on Abstergo's animus project. Is that how she got dragged into this?

"That's an animus," she says. "Isn't it?"

"Yes," Lucy says, when Desmond stays quiet.

"Are you guys supposed to have one of those?" Layla asks.

Desmond and Lucy glance at each other, and for a second share a look that makes them seem almost like they're on the same side. Lucy looks away first, and says, "Yes," without any elaboration.

"Do you think I could get a look at it?" Layla asks.

"I think Rebecca would probably kill all of us if any of us started taking her baby apart," Lucy says, in what might be the first truly honest thing she's said all day. But Layla keeps glancing at the animus anyway, and Desmond takes the opportunity to step closer to Lucy.

"Lucy," Desmond says quietly. "She can't be here."

"She's not a Templar," Lucy whispers back. "You don't have to worry about that."

"Listen," Desmond says. "You and I have an understanding. We're both keeping secrets from each other." Not that he didn't already know what her secrets were, of course. "Dragging someone else into it isn't going to help anything."

"Well maybe if you'd be a little bit more honest with me," Lucy hisses. "I wouldn't have had to bring in outside help."

"Lucy!" Desmond accidentally lets his voice rise, loud enough for Layla to look over at him and arch her eyebrows. "She can't be here."

"Who do you think you are?" Lucy snaps, and she's so angry she actually takes a step forward, toward him. Her hands are clenched into fists at her side, and Desmond realizes he might have accidentally pushed her too far, with all his secret keeping. But that makes him angry too, because how dare she be pissed at him when she's keeping secrets from him, too?

"She leaves," Desmond says, pointing at Layla.

"Excuse me," Layla says, raising her voice. "Who even are you?"

"Look," Desmond says. Crap. He doesn't really want to hurt Layla, because he genuinely likes her, and it's not her fault that she got dragged into this shit. "Please don't take this personally, I just—you can't be here."

Her face turns an interesting mix of colors, expression shifting between anger and hurt and finally settling on a kind of stubborn determination that Desmond likes a lot more when she's on his side. "Fine," she says, very cool and calm. "Fine. But for the record—you, whoever you are, you're a dick."

She turns and storms out, so pissed that Desmond knows he's going to have to deal with it somehow, make it better somehow. He just doesn't know how—he'll have to ask (his) Layla later, how to smooth things over with (this) Layla.

"You're keeping secrets from me," Lucy says, when Layla is gone. "Desmond, why in the actual fuck did you think I wouldn't be trying to figure out what they are?"

Desmond closes his eyes for several seconds, trying to calm himself down. When he feels capable of speaking rationally, he opens his eyes again. "First of all," Desmond says. "I never doubted for a second that you'd be prying into my business. Just don't use her to do it. And second—this has gone far enough. My secrets aren't going to hurt you, so just… let it go."

She laughs at him. "You think I trust you?" she demands. "Because—"

"I haven't done anything to hurt you."

"But you still might," Lucy says. "You know things you shouldn't possibly be able to know, and I can't figure out how. Sometimes I think I should just—"

"Tell Vidic?" Desmond asks. "Drag me back to Abstergo and force me into a coma?"

"Desmond!" she hisses. "You see? This is exactly why I can't trust you. You shouldn't know that."

Desmond has no idea what to do with Lucy. She's too smart, too sharp (and God, those are exactly the reasons he'd liked her so much the first time around), and things are moving too fast. "I'm not going to deal with this right now," he says, ducking around her and heading for the computer. He needs to know if Layla did anything to mess with it.

"You can't just blow me off," Lucy says, trailing after him. "This isn't how this works, Desmond."

Fuck. He can't tell if she did anything or not. Probably she did. Unless maybe she didn't have enough time before he walked in on them? Fuck. "Then how is it supposed to work, Lucy?" He's going to have to email Layla—his Layla—and see if she can tell something. Or actually… maybe there's a better way Layla can help him out? He leans over the keyboard and starts typing.

"God!" Desmond hears Lucy kick something—there's a dull thud of metal, and whatever it is goes spinning out across the floor. "I don't know, Desmond! You're making up a new set of rules as you go along and it's completely in your favor, I—"

He stands up, and there's something… strange and at the same time overwhelmingly familiar surging up inside him. Desmond is so—he's so done with this and so completely lost. They planned for a lot of things, but they didn't plan for Lucy getting so close and figuring out that there's something wrong with him. They should have, because if she decides to tell Abstergo…

But right now, Desmond isn't so much concerned with the planning that they should have but didn't do. He's focused on the feeling of his ancestors rising up in him, joining with him, mingling—

"Not now," he says, and he hears—although he's not entirely sure if Lucy does—his ancestor's voices in chorus with his own. "This will all be over soon, and then I'll tell you."

Lucy backs up a step or two, and he wonders if maybe she can hear them, or if she can hear something, at least, because she looks a little bit worried. "Alright," she says. "Fine." She crosses her arms, in a way that lets Desmond see how she's squeezing her elbows, nervous… "But then you tell me everything, Desmond, do you understand me?"

They stare at her, all three of them. Desmond and Altair and Ezio. There's a thin possibility that if he handles things just right, maybe he can get Lucy on her side. But it's so much more likely that he'll just do it wrong, and she'll run straight to Vidic, and things are going to get much more difficult.

"Yes," they say, and it's a lie. "Everything."

He's not sure if Layla agrees with him, but at least she backs down, retreating to her corner of the sanctuary to lick her wounds or maybe call Vidic, or who even knows. Desmond's ancestor's recede into the back of his mind—he blinks, shakes his head, and sits down to email Layla, feeling vaguely unhappy.

From: Desmond Miles

To: Test Account

Date: September 19, 2012 3:39 PM

Subject: [High Priority] Emergency

Lucy brought some help back to get into my emails, and I don't know what else. So of course, she got the one person in the world that could possibly crack all the security you put into my account. Don't take this the wrong way, but I think you're vain enough to know who that is. And why you're the only one that can talk some sense into her. Probably. I don't know. Sorry for how cryptic this is, but I don't want to use names or anything, in case she's watching the account. But she's out there somewhere, I have no idea where, and I have no idea where she would have gone. But you'd have an idea, right? I hope? Sorry to dump this on you, but please stop her from doing anything drastic.

-/-

As soon as Layla reads the email, she knows what Desmond's getting at. And more importantly, she knows where her past self is most likely to go.

When she'd taken her leave of absence from Abstergo, she'd gone back to Egypt to visit family—from what she's heard, she hadn't been that far from William Miles when he'd been captured in a museum there.

She finds Bayek, explains what's going on, and leaves. It's—she always forgets how long the flight is—plenty of time to worry about what she's going to say when she meets up with her past self. No one else has really done that yet, and she's just… worried about what that's going to do to her timeline.

On the other hand, at least she knows what had gotten her feeling so weirdly disconnected from herself over the past few days. Lucy Stillman had decided to meddle with Layla's past, changing things. That's just… that's just plain creepy. It makes her skin crawl, and at the same time, it makes her feel… sad. She's not the real Layla anymore, in a way. The past belongs to that other Layla now, because Lucy had walked into her life and changed her.

By the time she finally gets off the plane and is heading for her past self, Layla is feeling very calm, and very sad, and she knows what she's going to say. She heads for the house where she'd stayed when she was here, sulking about being passed over for promotion to the animus project (again and again), and stops on the street a block or so away. She shades her eyes, peering up, and—yes. There she is. Up on the balcony, prodding ill naturedly at a laptop screen and ignoring the rest of her surroundings.

Had she really been that completely unaware of what was going on around her? Ever since the animus, awareness of her surroundings has just been ingrained in Layla. She can't help looking around whenever she enters a room, checking for exits, for threats, for anything she might need to use.

Anything she can climb.

She pulls her hood up before scaling the side of the building next to her, not to help her blend in—there's no one out on the streets in this neighborhood, not at this time of day—but because it just feels right. She hasn't gotten to practice her climbing much since they got to the warehouse, and it feels nice to stretch her muscles now. Once she's gotten up the side of the building, it's a simple matter to climb from one building to the next, and then to drop down in front of the other Layla.

It takes the younger her an embarrassing fifteen seconds to realize she's not alone anymore, and then the look on her face when she looks up at Layla is pretty satisfying.

Layla pushes her hood down as the other Layla curses and scrambles backward, gradually lapsing into half formed sounds instead of words as her brain short circuits in the face of this clear impossibility.

She should probably feel bad about scaring herself like this.

"Hey," she says. "Calm down, okay? I'm not going to hurt you."

The other Layla makes a face, but seems momentarily distracted from her panic. "Is that seriously what my voice sounds like?" she demands, and Layla has to admit she has a point because that sounds weird, hearing her own voice from the outside.

"Yea," she says, gathering herself, trying to regain control of the conversation. "But that's not the point. I'm here with a message."

"A message?" her younger self asks. She pauses, thinking the situation over, looking at who she's going to be in another five years. "From the future?"

"Yea," Layla says.

"So I'm going to be you in like another ten years?"

Layla bristles. "Five years," she says. "And not exactly. It's—look, it's a long story. Do you want to hear my message or not?" She doesn't wait for an answer, because she knows herself, and she knows she'll argue for hours just on principal, no matter what the circumstances are. So she just takes a few steps closer, until the two versions of her are less than a foot apart.

"You need to stay away from what's going on in Italy," she says gently. "Trust me, I completely understand how you're feeling right now."

"Yea," says the younger Layla. "I can kind of see how you would."

"I know you want to dive right in and get your fingers in everything and figure out what's going on but you can't."

There's a long silence, in which she can see the face of her younger self twist, first in distaste, and then in a poor attempt at hiding it. Then at last she says, "I can't… yet?"

"Exactly," Layla says. She's not entirely sure if time has been changed badly enough that this Layla won't get her chance to eventually go into the animus and meet Bayek, but she's going to do everything she can to make sure that part of the timeline stays intact. It's important. "So promise me you won't go running back into this, alright? Promise."

And after a long promise, the other Layla says, "I promise."

So at least that's one problem taken care of.

-/-

Big thank you to anyone that was willing to be patient with me until I could update this again. I was struggling a little big with how this chapter should go (and to be honest I'm still not 100% happy with it, but I think I've reached the point where further messing around is only going to make it worse). So I took some time out to not only plan this chapter, but also the rest of the fic. So a few things to note, based on that:

- There will (probably) be 34 chapters, although I can't guarantee that I won't get sidetracked on a tangent or two at some point and draw it out

- Up until now, I've been trying to write ~500 words a day, and post each chapter when it's about 1500 to 2000 words, meaning I was updating about every 3 to 4 days. Now that I have things plotted out, I may end up with slightly longer but also slightly slower chapters, I don't know, we'll see

- There might possibly be a sequel? I don't know, I could see it going either way. As we get closer to the end, I'd love to hear feedback from you guys about whether you'd want to read more

Sorry that got so long, but I guess I had a lot to say today! Anyway, it's lovely to be back, thanks for reading. :)