"She said, 'People are like stars, but it's stories that turn us into constellations. If we don't tell our stories, we burn alone in the dark."
― Jessica Khoury, Kalahari
To keep a long story short, I uploaded the wrong doc in a haste that day, sorry.
That said, enjoy
Desmond through the eyes of his ancestors.
For all of Ezio's life, he has had these dreams. They are unlike any other dream he has had within his life. Within them, he is a different man, living in a world utterly unlike his own existence. He's familiar, though Ezio can not say why. Its almost as if he grew up knowing him.
The day Ratonhnhaké:ton 's village is attacked, he dreams of a Man's kidnapping. The building is strange, made of material he has never seen before. Even when he is older, and knows the building to be a pub, he never finds a pub like he sees in the dream. It must mean something, the strange building and the man who feels familiar.
It takes him other dreams to give it context.
Altaïr has a strange dream the day everything goes wrong. He dreams of an assassin cell in a land so far away that even the air smells different. The one thing he shares in common is that both the dream and his life take place in assassin cells.
The young man in the dream who Altaïr knows is an assassin, a talented one ( in the way one can only know when dreaming ) fights with the mentor.
Although he does not understand the language, the tone of the fight indicates this argument is not a new one.
Something seems to break in the young assassin, and that night he leaves.
Altaïr can not and will not be that assassin from his dream.
He will stay. He will prove better.
Growing up Ezio finds things he learns from the strange dreams useful. His reading and comprehension of English improves overall, although his attempts to speak it have other English speakers stare at him in horror. Something about the dialect just does not jive with them.
Ezio can not adequately explain the term jive, although he is certain his use of it is correctly spot on.
Another skill he learns from the dreams, that he appreciates when he is older, is the art of mixing drinks. Substitutions are needed here and there, but the outcome makes him a very popular drinking companion.
And flaring makes him very popular with the ladies.
Ratonhnhaké:ton stews with desire to change.
The world is turbulent, the future uncertain, the past fading.
So he leaves. He can do nothing where he is now. So he will go and become someone who can do something.
The dreams of the younger foreign assassin do not stop at one. As Altaïr strives to prove himself again, he dreams of the other man in reverse, from the man disillusioned with the system, back into the younger days where the boy was excited to be an assassin.
Ezio and the man of his dreams have drastically different family lives, and through that, professional.
Ezio became an assassin willingly and with purpose. His dream man was grown into the roll. His father a mentor who never expressed that he was satisfied, who always pushed for better, for more from his legacy.
Ezio's family loved him. He knows they love him, he became an assassin for them. He was never pressured in spite of having the gift in eagle vision. His childhood was full of love.
His dream man's childhood was full of training.
It is only when he himself decides to become an assassin that Ratonhnhaké:ton dreams of the childhood of the kidnapped man.
When he asks Achilles about his dreams he ventures that might be some form of Calculations, and so dreams of another future.
That doesn't quite feel right. Another future would be the dream where the man left early, or never left the farm. He doesn't say anything.
The dreams help with training. He tries ideas he never would have come up with on his own. His fluency with the English language improves through the dreams, and he can understand the people around him better.
But the world of the man feels small.
Something about it bothers him.
As Altaïr continues his quest, he questions things. Assumptions he has made all of his life are turned over and re-examined.
His actions. His beliefs. Who is the man in his dreams?
The more answers he seeks, the more questions he finds in their wake.
He will always be questioning.
When Haythem finds out Zilo had a child he has a dream that does not feel like a dream.
He knows in the way one knows in dreams that they are father and son. He also knows that the machine hurts the son, but may also be his salvation. The woman's body is ignored.
The father and son have a complicated relationship.
Haytham knows his relationship with his son will be complicated too, but perhaps it will be easier since they are not in the order. There is not the tension of mentor-father, and son-legacy.
It doesn't seem to have done this pair any good.
Maybe they can do better.
For the longest time Ezio never learns his name.
Then he hears it.
Desmond.
He learns and forgets many thing over the chorus of his lifetime, but the name lingers in his mind, tangled up in his dreams.
"I know you." he wants to tell him. "I know you better then my brother, and we will never meet face to face. All we have are dreams and memories. You look into the past, and as you do, I witness your life. Time is but a window we are both looking through."
As he gets older, he wonders why Desmond never seems to.
He suspects he doesn't want to know.
He wonders if he will find out, despite his wishes.
Desmond
Is
The
Prophet
When Altaïr fights his mentor, he has moments where his reality changes to being strapped down upon a table. There is a high pitched buzzing in his ears that he can't place, and a smell that burns his does not last long, but each time he has to fight the panic that rises up in his chest.
Reality blurs between his fight and the table.
He wold be hard pressed to tell what is true and what is illusion. For a time the table beneath his back feels more real then the sword in his hand, which is worrying. Just before the fight ends, he is suddenly beside the table and looking down.
He knows that face.
He sees it in the mirror of those dreams.
He traces his scar, and wonders how the other man got his scar in the same place.
"I will free us." He swears to Desmond, returning to the fight.
With purpose, all is clear.
There are three things in common between Ratonhnhaké:ton and Desmond They are mixed race, they are assassins, and they have a complicated relationship with their fathers.
The first two happen in reverse of one another. The other is an assassin until he leaves his people and encounters discrimination for his skin.
Ratonhnhaké:ton lives among his people until he left his people to become an assassin.
He even uses some of the training methods the Desmond learned as a child, even as he dreams of the other mans efforts to suppress his hard trained instincts.
The other man's relationship with his father has love, even tangled and bloodied by duty as it is.
Ratonhnhaké:ton is not sure what he feels for his father. It is not love ,not like he felt for his mother. What love should he feel for a stranger?
Perhaps there shouldn't be. After all, what does he know of his father beyond what he learned as a child. He is a man now, and this is a relationship of blood only.
Perhaps, with their divided sides, it will be easier without the love.
Desmond is not the only man Ezio dreams of. Some nights he dreams of another. A man named Clay, who dreams of the stars and beyond. A caring mother, a cold father, the relationship of which leads to disappointment on both ends. Belonging, and purpose joining the assassins. A betrayal, a trap, other realities blurred in the madness that consumes him like a candle to flame.
When he dies, he bleeds out with purpose, leaving messages in his wake, all the little details about who Clay was gone with it.
Ezio remembers Clay. One day he will ask Leonardo to paint him.
Altaïr can not bring himself to destroy the apple. It is hard to give up its Knowledge, the opportunities it offers to make things better. So he does his best for the benefit of those who will come after, his children, and their children, and all those who come after.
Its workings are not always so straightforward.
One day when he uses it, he finds himself seeing through the eyes of the man who shares his scar.
He looks around the room with all senses open to Knowledge, and finds the secrets that were written in blood not long ago.
Loneliness is a hole in your chest, a fist in your heart, an ache in your throat that can not be spoken, only screamed.
Ratonhnhaké:ton does not scream.
His time away from his people has made it harder to feel a part of them. He does not belong among the colonizers, and he belongs with but is not a part of his people. He is both one of them and neither.
He is the only apprentice of the last assassin. It is a lonely time.
But loneliness does not have to last. To break it, one must build a connection with people. Talking to new people is strange and hard and scary.
But Desmond did it. And Ratonhnhaké:ton is not as alone as Desmond was, who left everything.
It will be hard. But he has to believe that one day it will be worth it.
Haytham watches the son rescue the father. In spite of everything complicated about their relationship, Desmond came for his father. Killed many to see him safe.
He thinks he has a better rapport with his son then Desmond had with his father.
He wonders what his son will do when the time comes
Altaïr dreams of Desmond again, when he is old. Desmond is young and the world is white.
If he uses all his senses, he sees both a Desmond upon a table, and running in the world of the white. Neither one is more real or less real than the other. A strange and terrifying sensation. If his senses are lying to him about this, then what else are they fooling him in?
With him is a man who is not a man, and a look in his eyes of one who is about to die.
The not man bursts into fragments as the Desmond(?) continues to run.
He wakes up to a reality that feels unreal.
Ratonhnhaké:ton Dreams of Desmond, and Desmond dreams of him. All at one, rather then over time, which is not how memory is meant to be experienced. Desmond is a man of many memories, and few experiences of his own, Ratonhnhaké:ton realizes as he gets older and Desmond does not.
Ratonhnhaké:ton does what he can to make things better, to try to have things worth sharing. Life is full of disappointments,betrayal, and hardships, but also moments of joy, love, accomplishment. Life is about people. About stories.
He hopes that Desmond saw the good among the bad. There were many good stories. and he still has many more to come.
He talks to Desmond for but a moment. The barrier of time collapses between them, and while Ezio has a million questions, he asks none of them. It is over now. The connection between them collapses.
He is tired.
The night before Haytham dies by his sons hand, he watches Desmond prepare to die alone.
He spends the day in a strange mood.
As he dies by his sons hand, he reflects that it is a terrible thing to die by the hand of his son, but it would have been a worse thing for his son to die by his.
His son does not leave him alone to die.
How very like an assassin, to watch the targets life drain from their eyes.
And yet-
Ratonhnhaké:ton goes many years without dreaming of adult-Desmond. He still catches the occasional flash of childhood, or his time on the run.
When he is an old man with a great granddaughter, he dreams of adult-Desmond hands shaking, giving up his life to save humanity.
Maybe he did get the message. That life was beautiful when you let it be, and love was worth it even with its complications of thorns and joy is worth preserving.
Ratonhnhaké:ton hopes so.
Desmond did not get to live a lot of experiences. Ratonhnhaké:ton hopes that his made up for the ones Desmond lacked.
And that even if it was just through Dreaming, Desmond was not as alone in the end as he seemed.