Elijah's three blocks away when something makes him turn around, just in time to see Senu come flying down to land on his shoulder. Elijah winces, and tries to shrug her off—he likes Senu just fine, but she's Bayek's eagle, and she's usually with him or Khemu or sometimes Layla. Elijah's rarely spent time with her.
"Get off," he whispered at the bird. "You're heavy…"
Senu chirps quietly, and although it's hard to read an eagle's expression, Elijah thinks she looks disappointed.
"I'm not running away," Elijah whispers at her. "I'm going to help my dad, okay? It's really important."
Senu chirps again.
"Please?" Elijah asks. "Let me do this. Please don't tell anyone…"
He almost feels silly, bargaining with a bird, but this isn't just any bird, this is Senu. He's always had the sense that Senu knows a lot more than she lets on. He kind of has this private theory that while Bayek can look through Senu's eyes, maybe that connection has made her much more intelligent than any other eagle could get to be naturally.
She waits just long enough to make sure Elijah is absolutely sure that she's disappointed in him. Then she pushes off his shoulder and flies back toward the warehouse. Elijah feels a little pang of guilt, watching her go, but he knows he can't stay.
He turns his back on Senu, and starts walking again.
It's less than half an hour before he hears footsteps behind him, and turns around again to see Khemu and Elina running after him, Senu flying overhead like she's watching over them.
"What are you guys doing here?" Elijah demands.
"What are you doing?" Elina asks. She catches up to him and grabs his arm. "Where are you going?"
"My dad," Elijah mutters. "He's in trouble and I need to go help him."
"Senu came and woke us up," Khemu says. "We're going to help you."
"It's probably going to be dangerous," Elijah says, although of course he has no idea what he's walking into.
"Do you want help or not?" Khemu says.
"I—"
"Well we're going to help whether you want us to or not," Khemu says. "Come on." And he slings his arm across Elijah's shoulder, and Elina lets her hand slip down Elijah's arm until she's holding his hand, and the three of them start walking again, with Senu circling them overhead.
It's odd. He's never imagined that he'd be setting off like this—on an adventure that's also a rescue mission that's also terrifying because the stakes are so high, with friends on either side of him. A few months ago, this would have been impossible.
"Can I just say something?" Elijah asks, a little while after the sun starts to come up. They've been walking for a long time now, and they're all tired. The light around them is pink tinged, and everything around them has a kind of rosy, surreal glow. "You guys… I don't know what we're going to run into when we get there. I don't know why Dad's in danger, I just know that he is. But, uh… if anything happens to us?" His voice rises up, like a question, but it's just nerves. He doesn't want to think about anything happening to them. "I just want to say that I love you guys. I really do, you guys… changed my life."
He says it in English, so Elina gets it right. She says oh and turns to give Elijah a hug. "You guys are the best," she says. "I never had anybody like you either."
Then Khemu manages to puzzle through the English, and at least get the gist of it. His smile is crooked in a way that makes it look like his excitement is just leaking out of him. He doesn't say anything, but for Khemu, who will gladly talk anyone's ear off, the fact that he's been made speechless is worth at least a thousand words.
So on they go, together, toward the unknown.
-/-
The first Desmond knows about anything happening is when the sound of shouting comes echoing down from the front of the cave. It's late morning, almost noon, and he's enjoying the break from the animus now that they have Haytham's time warded against Juno.
He's with Layla in the little makeshift kitchen (an overly charitable term for the mini fridge and microwave setup), sitting over a late breakfast of ramen, talking about where they think Juno is going to go next. She has the apple today, and he sees her flinch toward it in an almost defensive instinct.
"Sounds like Berg," she says, hand pausing just shy of the apple. She relaxes. "What's he so upset about?"
He and Bayek had come out with her late yesterday to spend the night, and to work on planning. The last Desmond had seen of them, they'd been looking at some animus readouts and speculating whether there are any signs of Juno.
"Does he usually get this angry about things?" Desmond asks.
"No," Layla says. "I mean, he's not a smiling beam of sunshine, but…" She trails off, and gets to her feet. Apparently she feels comfortable enough now that she knows it's Berg to just leave the apple where it is, because she doesn't make another move to grab it. "We should get over there and find out what's going on."
"Absolutely unbelievable," Berg is snarling by the time Desmond and Layla have jogged to the front of the Temple, close enough to make out exactly what he's saying. "Elina, you need to be better than this—you always have been better than this. It's that boy that's—"
"No it's not, it's not!"
"That's teaching you not to respect anyone."
"Dad!"
"How did you think this was going to go? What was going on inside your mind when you decided it would be a good idea to come here?"
"We couldn't wait."
The first voice Desmond had heard arguing with Berg had been a girl, one he doesn't know, but this second one is unmistakably Elijah. Even if they've only met once, Desmond doesn't think he could ever mistake his son's voice with anyone else's—he just sounds different, almost aloof. And that's him, now.
Desmond takes that as his cue to cue to step up and insert himself into the conversation. "What's going on here?" he asks, raising his voice a little so Berg will be able to hear him over his own shouting.
Berg spins around, anger burned into his face like fissures in a rock, and for a second doesn't seem to know what to say. That at least gives Desmond a couple seconds to take in what's going on. There's Berg, obviously, standing between Desmond and the others like a wall. Then past him, Elijah standing slightly in front of two other kids that don't look that much older than him. The girl, he's guessing, must be Berg's daughter. She doesn't look much like him, but there's definitely something in her face that mirrors his. The other boy is obviously Bayek's son. The resemblance there is too obvious to overlook.
"What's going on is that your son decided to take his friends on a middle of the night wander, all the way from the warehouse to here," Berg says. "And for absolutely no good reason."
"There's a good reason," Elijah says, and his voice is a measured, almost flat contrast to Berg's spitting anger.
"You could have been hurt," Berg says, and although his words almost seem to be an answer to Elijah, he's only looking at his daughter. "You could have been hit by a car, or kidnapped, or lost somewhere. What made you decide to just walk off without telling anyone?"
"Dad's in danger," Elijah says.
Wait, what?
"And I suppose you just know that," Berg says scathingly. There's no doubt at all from his tone what he thinks of Elijah's unexplained knowledge, or of Elijah himself, really.
"Yes."
"That's bullshit," Berg says, and Elijah flinches. He tries to hide it, but Desmond sees. "You're creating a problem where there is no problem, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised—you've done nothing but cause trouble since the day you forced yourself into our lives—"
"Stop."
Desmond's as surprised as anyone else when he speaks up, but once he does, he's committed himself. There's no going back. He steps forward, looking right at Berg.
"Good," Berg says. "Maybe you can do something about this—"
"Don't finish that sentence," Desmond says, and his voice is almost as flat as Elijah's. Almost, but not quite, because he's genuinely angry, angry enough that he's forgotten Elijah's proclamation that he's supposed to be in danger. "There's nothing wrong with him, and I need you to stop shouting."
"You barely know him," Berg says. "I know him better than you do."
"If you knew him," Desmond says. "Then you wouldn't be saying all that shit about him. You're wrong, and you're taking your bad mood out on a bunch of kids."
"Fine," Berg says. "Then forget that he's a Sage, and he's never going to be normal. How about the fact that he had some crazy vision and dragged his friends out of the safehouse in the middle of the night, and walked them all the way here?"
"We wanted to come," Elina tries to insist, but her dad doesn't even look at her.
Desmond takes a deep breath, looks away from Berg, and toward Elijah. "Come here," he says. He makes sure to keep his voice quiet, so he won't sound angry, so he won't sound like Berg. Elijah hesitates, then ducks past Berg to get to Desmond. Once he's inside the temple, it's like a spell has broken. Layla steps up to take Khemu back to Bayek, which just leaves Elina with Berg. Both boys keep looking back at her almost like they're apologizing, and Desmond does feel bad, leaving her alone with her dad. But what's he supposed to do? Berg is her dad, and he has to do what he thinks is right for her—but Desmond is Elijah's dad, and this is his first chance to protect his son from what he must have seen too much of already in his life.
He puts his arm around Elijah, and leads him off somewhere quieter. They don't go too far, because Elijah's getting noticeably more twitchy the farther into the temple they go, but just far enough to have their privacy.
Elijah sits on a jut of rock and Desmond sits down across from him. "You really are in danger," Elijah says.
Oh right. That. "What kind of danger?" he asks.
Elijah, all of a sudden, won't meet his gaze. "I… don't know. I think I thought I'd know when I got here, but now there's too much other stuff going on, too much…" He buries his head in his hands. "There's so much of her here, I can't hear anything else."
"Who?" Desmond asks. "Juno?"
Elijah nods, and wraps his skinny arms around his chest. "Yea. She was here for ages and ages and she's just like… all over the place."
"Wait a second," Desmond says. "Was? You said she was here? She should still be here though, right? Because there's one version of Juno, the one we've been fighting, but she's from the same timeline as when I died. There should still be a Juno here that hasn't been freed yet, like—like how Layla had to go scare her past self off."
"No," Elijah says. "I mean… yea, that makes sense, but—"
Desmond can actually see when the knowledge comes to Elijah. He's pale to start with, but his face goes suddenly white and his whole body stiffens.
"She killed herself," he whispers. "I mean—not like… the Juno you're fighting killed the one that was here. Because she thought no one could really be a threat to her except herself, so she came here, and…" He flinches. "That's awful."
Desmond has no idea how to help. He barely knows Elijah, and even if he did he wouldn't know how to handle this. This extra knowledge that Elijah shouldn't have and doesn't deserve to be cursed with. He sighs and drops his head into his hands.
"And Dad—"
Desmond looks back up when Elijah speaks up again, tentatively. "Yea?" he asks.
"I know something else," Elijah says. He fidgets, then asks, "Do you know someone called Lucy?"
"Yea," Desmond says. "She's here. Why?"
"Because," Elijah says, very slowly and quietly. "She's the danger."
"Oh," Desmond says. He gives Elijah a little smile. "That's what you came all the way out here for? I know she's a Templar, it's no big deal. We're making it work."
"No," Elijah says. "Not that, there's plenty of Templars back home. Dad, Juno got her."
It takes maybe five seconds for the implications of that to sink in. For Desmond to remember how weird Lucy's been acting lately, and to realize that Elijah's right. He curses, quick but heartfelt, and jumps to his feet. As he takes off running, eyes scanning the cave until he spots her. He can feel his ancestors flooding into his mind in some kind of supernatural response to the danger, but he doesn't have time to explain. He's halfway across the open space in the middle of the cave when he spots her, close to where he'd been talking to Layla before the kids showed up.
Then he remembers something else—Layla had left the apple there when they got up and went to see what was going on.
Desmond puts on another burst of speed, and manages to get up close to her, to see the perfectly blank expression on her face, to see the apple in her left hand. Unfortunately, he's so focused on the apple that he doesn't even see the knife in her right hand. Not until it's too late.
When she lunges forward, stabbing her blade into his side, time almost seems to freeze. The last, bitter thought that Desmond has before the shock of pain takes thought away, is the horrible irony of it all. He remembers standing in her place, once, under the coliseum. With an apple in his right hand and his hidden blade on the left, Juno's voice whispering in his ear to kill her, kill her, kill her.
And now, apparently, it's her turn to kill him.
"Dad!" Elijah screams, and if Desmond could have forced the stab wound to close out of sheer force of will, then the pain in Elijah's voice would have been enough to make him do it. But because he's only human, because he can't do anything, Desmond falls to the ground instead, and starts to bleed out.
-/-
Is it weird that I feel worse for Elijah right now than Desmond?