"A sacrifice for the greater good."

"Des!? But Rebecca said you were—"

"Dead?" Desmond cocked an eyebrow. "Yeah, not so much."

"But… the autopsy… the file!" Lucy stammered, her own brows furrowed in confusion and frustration. "You faked that just to convince me you were? Why?"

"Who said it was fake?" His voice hardened as the slight smirk turned into a scowl.

"Wh…what?" She shook her head. "I can't believe… when I thought you were gone…" Her brows relaxed as she let out a breathy laugh and stepped forward, arms outstretched towards him.

He took a step back out of reach, his face now expressionless and cold.

Lucy's smile faded. "Look, I don't know what's going on or why but you have to trust me. I think… I think I'm being set up."

Desmond crossed his arms and tilted his head to the side, his eyes narrowing. "What do you mean?"

"Rebecca said something about the Templars and the Apple of Eden, like she thought that I wanted to give it to them. I don't know where she got that idea from or why she believes that but please, you have to help me figure out who's behind this."

There was once a time where he would've believed anything she said or did unquestioningly, but knowing the full truth, he could only stare—cold and unmoving—as she continued to spout lie after lie.

"Look, we need to get out of here before we're found," Lucy continued, her voice desperate, "either by the Assassins or Abstergo. I have a feeling neither are going to be willing to ask questions first. Did you get the Apple from the Temple? Do you still have it?"

Ah, there it was. Of course all she wanted to know was the Apple's location. The corner of his mouth turned back up into a knowing smirk.

"Have…have you caught her?" Shaun's breathless voice huffed through the earpiece.

"Yeah, I've got her. We're at the northwest corner of the Pantheon right now but we can head your way."

"We're not that far now," Rebecca said. "We'll meet you at the opposite corner."

"Shaun and Rebecca?" Lucy asked, putting her hands on her hips.

He nodded then grabbed her arm and walked her along the sidewalk across from the Pantheon.

"Des, what's going on?" she demanded, wrenching her arm from his grasp and rubbing where his hand had been, though she kept up with his pace all the same. "What's wrong with you and Rebecca? You don't really believe I'd take the Apple to Abstergo, do you? And why the hell did she tell me that you died?"

He glanced sidelong and cocked an eyebrow. "You really have no idea what happened, do you?"

"No, I really don't, Desmond. Just tell me the truth."

He let out a hollow laugh. "The truth? That's rich, coming from you."

"What the fuck does that mean?" she scoffed, crossing her arms. "Desmond, answer me!" It was her turn to grab his arm and pull him to a stop.

"Don't play dumb. We know you were working with the Templars behind our backs."

She paused, then breathed a nervous laugh. "I…I was just playing that angle to give myself some breathing room at Abstergo."

He rolled his eyes.

"You know that, Des. You know I had to play along or else I wouldn't have gotten the intel we needed."

"Cut your bullshit. We know, Lucy. We know everything. Clay, his death, Vidic's plan, Project Siren…"

What color had returned to her face since first seeing him slowly faded away again and her eyes went wide as her carefully constructed tower came crumbling down around her. "How do you know—"

After her death, he'd replayed this conversation so many times in his head, anticipating how a meeting like this would go. Not that he ever thought it would happen, but as a mental exercise, a way to process everything that had transpired between them. And now, after reliving it over and over again to the point it was practically rehearsed, he could finally let it all out.

"Everything that happened that week at Abstergo was orchestrated by you and Vidic, just so I'd trust you! All so that you'd pretend to help me escape so I'd go on your little treasure hunt." He spun on his heels and continued hurrying along the sidewalk.

Lucy hurried along beside him. "I did that to protect you—" she muttered quietly, as though she herself was having a hard time believing her own lies.

"I didn't need protecting!" he whisper-shouted, now garnering the attention of nearby people who began to stare. "Not before you and the Templars came along!"

"I saved your ass, Desmond!" Lucy hissed back. "You wouldn't even be an Assassin without my help, even if you had escaped Abstergo on your own."

"Saved me!? You threw me in a trunk! And it was your fault I was in that situation in the first place!"

"You know what, you're right. I did do it all for myself, and you want to know why? Because the Assassins left me behind. Your father sent me out into the field, completely alone, at seventeen. I had no backup, no team, no help, and Abstergo took me in when I needed someone the most. Treated me like I was actually worth something and helped me make something of myself. If I remember correctly, you also ran away from the Assassins and your father."

"Because my dad was an asshole and I was sixteen and thought he was insane. That doesn't mean what I did was the right thing. But I sure as hell wasn't going to go running to Abstergo for a job. Besides, I never realized that attacking your coworker in the middle of the night was treating them like they were worth something. Or was that story also complete bullshit just to gain my sympathy?"

Lucy recoiled. "That story wasn't a lie. I never lied to you—"

Desmond stopped walking, rage barely contained beneath a simmering surface and ready to boil over at any moment. "You lied to me from the start! Pretending you knew nothing about the Assassins, despite being trained by my father! Maybe I should've known then that you were a master liar and manipulator."

"So then why didn't you?" she countered, putting her hands on her hips.

"Because I was naive and stupid and thought that you gave a shit about me."

There was a pause while Lucy thought of a response and Desmond continued onward.

"Believe it or not, I did give a shit about you," she said quietly, more to the ground than to him.

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. They rounded the southwest corner of the Pantheon, Lucy shuffling close behind as Desmond stomped closer to their meeting spot.

"Vidic had to warn me not to get too close and he worried things were getting too personal," she admitted.

"Oh, so you're so good at manipulating people that even he believed you cared. Congratulations. Is that why you were so keen to send updates on my progress to Vidic?"

"How—"

"We know everything, Lucy," he sighed. "The emails, the voicemails, our progress on finding the Apple. I'm guessing you had a hand in letting slip the locations of other Assassin cells and that's why they kept disappearing."

She put up her hands. "All I did was update Vidic on the status of the search for the Apple, that's it. Just enough so that he wouldn't send the cavalry crashing down on us and we could keep working. And I can't believe you think I'd purposely get people killed."

Lucy nearly ran headlong into him as he came to a sudden stop in an open plaza just south of the Pantheon. He whirled around, his hands swinging wildly. "Are you fucking serious?" he snapped. "What do you call what happened to Clay?"

"What about him? The Animus made him unstable. I told Vidic—"

"He trusted you, Lucy!" Desmond was shouting now, ignoring the rest of the people in the plaza staring at them. "He went in there trusting that you would help him get back out again!"

"There was nothing—"

"He bled to death, alone, because you didn't help him!" He shoved his pointed finger in her face. "You were the reason he spent so much time in the Animus! You were the reason he started to go insane in the first place! You knew what would happen and you did it anyway. And if you'd had the chance, you would've done the same to me!" He shook his head and stormed off again.

"That's not true—"

"Oh why, because you cared?" Desmond sneered over his shoulder.

"Yes. I told you, Vidic had to tell me not to let things get too friendly."

"Right, because friends always plan to stab each other in the back. You used me, Lucy. You used all of us," he said, gesturing to Shaun and Rebecca who'd just appeared in the plaza, out of breath from lugging all their gear halfway across the city.

"They used you just as much as I did!" Lucy countered, pointing angrily. "And you didn't always make it easy! Rebecca could barely sleep and Shaun bitched constantly about the breaks you took from the Animus."

"Woah! Nice to see you too, Lucy!" he snapped at her, dropping one of the bags he was carrying heavily to the ground at the base of an obelisk in the center of the square.

"They've done more for me this past year than you ever did," Desmond cut back in, pointing his finger at her chest. "You were using me, using us, so you could steal the Apple for yourself and take it back to the Templars so they could launch their stupid mind-controlling satellite," he said, throwing his hand up towards the sky before crossing his arms. His mouth twisted into a scornful grin. "Which by the way, did you really think they were going to let you keep your free will when it launched? You'd be a pawn just as much as the rest of us."

"I did what I thought was right! And if I was a casualty, well… it'd be a sacrifice for the greater good, I guess." She shrugged and crossed her arms dismissively.

Desmond's smirk slid into a grimace, his lips curled with disgust. "A sacrifice for the greater good?" he snarled.

Rebecca's eyes went wide while Shaun mouthed a silent "oh shit," both of them casting nervous glances between themselves and Lucy, then back to Desmond.

For the briefest of moments he contemplated keeping his thoughts to himself, that he didn't owe Lucy an explanation, not after everything she put him through, but all the pent up rage spilled over before he could contain it and all the fury and anguish that he'd kept bottled up since his return burst out without restraint.

"You don't know the first fucking thing about sacrifice! You didn't have to make the choice to live or die. You didn't have to choose between yourself and everyone else in the fucking world. You weren't lied to about it, being told that it'd be instantaneous and painless when it was anything but." Each sentence was punctuated by a finger being thrust into her chest and, realizing the floodgates she'd just opened, took a few steps back.

"Do you know what it's like to smell your own flesh as you're cooked from the inside out, unable to stop it, or make the end come sooner? Because I do." He lifted his sleeve and held out his arm, showing her the ridges of scar tissue criss-crossing all the way up to his elbow.

Her eyes widened almost as much as Rebecca's had and she struggled to look away as Desmond continued, his mouth twisting into a sick, sinister grin as he chuckled with all the humor of a man at the gallows.

"Juno said it'd be painless. That I wouldn't feel a thing. But for what seemed like hours, I felt everything. You're lucky you don't remember your death, because I remember every goddamn second of mine. Every agonizing moment and I couldn't even scream. I wanted to, but all I could do was stand there, my whole body just seizing while my hand stuck to this fucking orb like I'd just grabbed a live wire. All without knowing if what I'd been told—that doing this would save everyone else—was actually true or not. I just had to hope that that lying bitch was actually telling the truth for once.

"And then I come back to find out not only is Juno still around, she has a body now, and is starting to do whatever the fuck she planned to do. Shit we know absolutely nothing about. And she wouldn't be able to do this if I'd made the decision to let the world burn. If I'd let humanity as we know it die out instead. I gave my life, my sanity, for the world and for what? To somehow be brought back into this fucking mess with absolutely nothing to show for it? So spare me the talk about sacrificing for the greater good. You don't even know what that is."

Lucy reached towards him, her voice hoarse as she whispered, "Desmond, I—"

"Don't," he growled, swatting her hand away. "I don't want to hear your excuses or fake apologies. The Templars you were so keen to throw in with didn't even let my body get cold before they cut me open." He lifted his shirt, showing her the Y-shaped scar across his chest. "They dissected me like an animal and hung my corpse in a display case like a fucking trophy. That's who you sided with." He lowered his shirt again.

"I didn't…I wasn't—"

"Stop lying to me, Lucy. I know you betrayed us. I know you were going to take the Apple back to Abstergo and I know you were helping them keep tabs on us. I couldn't let you take the Apple back to them so I did what needed to be done."

"What are you—" Her brows knit together and her hand ran along the front of her stomach as it slowly dawned on her. "You…I…?"

"I saw what would've happened if I didn't. Or rather, Juno showed me. So I did what I had to do."

Desmond hunched over and perched himself on the stairs of the statue's pedestal, ignoring the shiver that ran up his spine as a small spark of electricity seemingly jolted through him when he touched the stone. He ran his hands through his hair and cradled his head for a moment as he struggled to bring his heart rate under control.

When he looked up again, Lucy had taken a few steps back, with her hands clasped together in front of her mouth and her wide eyes staring at a fixed point on the ground. Her shoulders shook with each ragged breath as she stood there, unmoving and lost in her own thoughts. To his left, Shaun and Rebecca both had their arms crossed and shoulders slouched, refusing to meet his gaze for longer than a second.

A second shiver coursed through Desmond as a chilly breeze blew through the plaza, sending a few scattered leaves skittering across the cobblestones. He looked up in time to see the sun disappear behind dark, fast-moving clouds that threatened to pour down rain at any moment and sighed deeply. He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet.

"Where are you going?" Rebecca asked as he started walking away.

"I'm done being everyone else's pawn: my dad's…Lucy's…Juno's…I'm done being manipulated. I'm going to kill that conniving bitch once and for all."

"Des, wait!"

Shaun ran up behind him and grabbed his arm. "You can't just go in and kill her without a plan. That's a suicide mission!"

Desmond spun around, wrenching himself from Shaun's grasp. "Then it's not like anything's really changed!" He turned to continue walking again when the world around him started to spin. He grabbed the sides of his head, his vision blurring as his legs went weak and nearly gave out under him.

"Des!?" Rebecca's panicked voice sounded so far away, even as she called his name right next to him as she placed her hand on his shoulder to steady him.

He breathed heavily, trying desperately to ignore the mounting pain flaring in his scarred arm. It didn't feel quite as hot as when he touched the Eye, but it was close. And even as the rest of the pain and dizziness subsided, his arm still felt hot to the touch while the rest of him felt cold and clammy. The shivering was uncontrollable now and he felt increasingly uncomfortable as he looked on to see passersby staring at him.

"Des? You okay?" Rebecca's voice still sounded distant despite her closeness.

He nodded and swallowed hard. "I…I think so."

She helped him to his feet as Shaun's phone began to ring. He gave her a quick, empathetic nod, then stepped away to take the call.

"Do you…do you really remember? Dying, I mean?" she whispered, her voice shaking.

He gave her an apologetic look. "Yes."

"And hello to you too, Bill," Shaun answered his phone pointedly, loud enough that Desmond and Rebecca both heard. "Don't worry, all three, well, four of us now are doing just fine after the earthquakes, thank you for asking."

A few moments passed by where Shaun was silent as Bill chided him, his eyes rolling.

"I could tell you, but I think there's someone with us who can explain it better. Here…" Shaun handed Desmond the phone.

He cleared his throat as he put the phone to his ear, unsure what to say.

"Hello?" Bill asked gruffly.

"Hey, Dad."

Silence.

"Dad, you there?"

"Desmond?" His voice cracked as he said it.

"Yeah, it's… it's me," he replied, struggling to keep his own voice even. Desmond nodded to the others, smiling at them reassuringly as he walked a few steps away for some privacy.

"What? When? How?"

"I don't know. I…the earthquake, the one in Montreal. It must've, I don't know, done something. Shaun and Rebecca and I have been trying to figure that out. Dad… Juno… she's back."

"What do you mean 'she's back?'"

"She has a body now. And I think her resurrection somehow triggered mine."

"Okay well we'll figure it out together. Where are you? I'll come find you."

"Rome."

"Alright, I'm on my way. There will be plenty of time for us to talk when I get—"

"Dad?" There was no response. Desmond pulled the phone away from his face and looked at the screen then put it back up to his ear. "Dad?" he repeated. He looked back at the screen again. The call had dropped.

He was about to call his father back when a heavy gust of wind whipped through the plaza again. He hadn't noticed how dark the sky had gotten during the few moments he was on the phone, but in less than a minute, it was as dark as night, despite only being midday. The clouds that had started to form high above them seemed to descend, and thunder and lightning cracked along the sky. Others in the plaza began shouting and running for cover as the storm gathered intensity with supernatural speed.

A streak of lightning nearly blinded Desmond as it shot down through the clouds and connected with the top of the obelisk he'd been sitting beneath only a minute before. He glanced up in time to see the clouds swirling now, creating a vortex of wind and lightning centered right above him.

"DES!" He barely heard Rebecca's voice through the gusts of wind whipping past his ears as it descended lower. He sprinted towards her, Shaun, and Lucy, all of whom had raised their hands to protect their faces from the debris the spontaneous storm continued to pick up. The first two grasped one of his arms while Lucy—much to his surprise—grasped the other. As if waiting for this exact moment, the vortex surged with energy, sweeping them all off their feet and drawing them up into the sky. Louder and louder it became as they spun faster and faster, tumbling uncontrollably and only barely able to hold onto one another. The tighter Desmond's grip became, the more they seemed to slip through his grasp. He tried to scream as they went higher and higher—approaching what looked to be a pitch black hole in the sky leading to nothingness—but it was lost before it could escape his chest. He clenched his eyes shut, held his breath, and just waited for the end to take him yet again.

As the vortex subsided, a man came rushing out to the middle of the plaza from a nearby alleyway, his face set in a snarl as he realized he'd arrived too late; his target had slipped from his grasp yet again.

He took a deep breath and pushed his hair back. No worries, he'd just have to figure out where she went. But it was as though she'd vanished into thin air. They all had. Other than a small scorch mark at the top of the obelisk, nothing seemed any different than it had before the others had arrived. Except, of course, the two bags and abandoned cellphone now sitting unattended a few feet away from the statue.

The man smirked, pocketing the cellphone and slinging the bags over his shoulders before disappearing down the nearest alley. Perhaps he'd find something useful as he waited patiently for new information on his target.

He chuckled darkly to himself. If there was one thing he was very good at, it was waiting…

Heheheh ;)