Chapter Text
The room is cold, and his shoes have been taken away. His toes are black with dirt from the hallways they’d brought him through, hooded and cuffed with his elbows drawn all the way behind his back and legs locked together with something that felt like death-row cuffs.
He’d also lost privilege of his jacket and all of his weapons, leaving him chilled in the cold air conditioned interview room, and feeling strangely vulnerable, even without the added cuffs and chains.
It’s a typical interrogation room; Metal desk and chairs all bolted to the floor, gray concrete and steel, with one long mirror on the wall to Desmond’s right. The hall they’d brought him through after flying in had felt echoing, and he though he’d heard filing cabinets being opened, the hum of conversation and the occasional heavy and clattering sound of heavy combat equipment. Military, it sounded like.
They’d taken his hood off, but it didn’t tell him much he couldn’t already know with it on.
In the glow of his Eagle-vision, Desmond could see some red shapes on the other side of the one-way glass, washed out to slightly purple with the distance as well as the indigo blankness of the reflective surface, and he tracked their faces with narrowed eyes, hoping desperately to read what they’re saying. He could at least find out where they’ve taken him.
From the gentle vibrations passing into his bare feet, he figured they were on a boat of some sort.
When this doesn’t yield any results besides a piercing headache, he looked closer at his cuffs, rattling them experimentally.
They were wide, made of a stiff type of leather, and padded on the inside to prevent chafing, as well as extending with bands to cross over and keep his palms pressed together, limiting the motion of his fingers and wrists.
They had, however, given him a cup of the worst coffee he’d ever drunk in his life.
‘Ah, how the authorities grow wiser.’ Said a fond voice in his head. Desmond bit back a snort. Ezio. ‘Back in my day they would have thrown you in a dungeon with a window not ten feet above your head. And given you a hot meal before the shifts changed and you climbed out.’ The memory is a nostalgic one, and a warm feeling completely at odds with Desmond’s own tightly clenched fear spreads in his chest. Phantom wistfulness.
‘Thanks for the history lesson. But if you’re not going to offer a way out, then pipe down and stop distracting me.’ Desmond grit back, ribs twinging, as he pulled experimentally on the chain bolted under the table. It rattled, but didn’t give.
There hadn’t been anyone in for hours. Thankfully, he didn’t particularly have to go to the bathroom, or he would’ve been in trouble after hour four. He was thirsty, ninety percent sure that Hawk guy cracked a rib, and nursing a headache and a loose tooth.
Which is why he’s not expecting it when the door opens.
Desmond started, glaring slightly and squaring his shoulders.
The government spook that sidles in is average height, has slightly thinning hair, and a tightly pressed mouth with lines around it that spoke of a stressful job. His suit was average, carefully cultivated plain-ness that just screams government issue. The difference between this man and the sleek, anaerobic appearance of Abstergo goons is so profound that he almost sighs in relief.
But Desmond could see the bulge of a gun holster, and at least two knives in the gentle blue glow of his eagle vision. Still not out of the woods, even if the likelihood of his brains getting scrambled again just dropped by- Well. Hopefully by a lot.
A small device on the man’s belt beeped, but the suit ignored it as he sat down, putting a file down on the table in front of him.
They sat in silence a few moments, him reading through the file and letting Desmond stew, and Desmond shivering miserably and sullenly with bare feet. (‘Amateur tactics.’ Altair sniffed disapprovingly, and Desmond mentally rolled his eyes.)
The hum in his feet continued, unabated. Either they were parked right under the generator, or there was something he didn’t know about.
“So, Desmond Miles.” The suit started out suddenly, shutting the file and putting his hands on the table. They spread out easily, comfortably. Like they were sitting down at a board meeting and Desmond was being particularly disappointing this last quarter.
Desmond stared back blankly.
“And you are?” Desmond was getting the surreal feeling he was stuck in a Jason Bourne movie. But with more superheroes. And a slightly more competent secret agency.
“Phil Coulson. I’m with-“
Black Briar?
“- the Strategic Homeland Intervention and Logistics Division.”
Desmond stared at him incredulously. Something clicked. He played dumb. “Aren’t you the guys that handled that alien thing?”
Coulson’s mouth twitched briefly. “We have a very broad sense of ‘homeland.”
Desmond gave him a strange look, but didn’t push it. “Am I under arrest?” He asked, rattling the cuffs pointedly. Coulson didn’t seem in a rush, opening the file he had on the desk to peer at it, like Desmond had seen Shaun look at Entertainment Weekly. Avidly, and with no real concern about whom may be talking to him at the moment.
“Let’s not use such ugly words quite so soon.” Coulson admonished, licking, actually licking his thumb, and flipping through Desmond’s file.
‘I can’t look- I’m going to keep watch from your sense of self-preservation, call me if you need me- Since I know you sure as shit won’t find me.’ Clay offered in his head, sounding tense, but also darkly resigned. Desmond brushed the voice away irritably with a twitch of his head, frowning.
“If I’m not under arrest, then can I at least know why you’re interested in me? And why I’m cuffed to this table?”
“I don’t know Mister Miles, why would we be interested in you?”
“I’m a bartender, and I’ve been backpacking for the past three years.” Desmond stubbornly stuck to his story, trying to project a stubborn-hippie puzzlement. If he knew his friends at all, there would at least be some form of rescue attempt, and the shallower the hole he dug himself, the better. “I climbed that building on a dare from my friend Shaun, just call him-“
“Please cut the bullshit Mister Miles.” Coulson cut him off, not looking particularly upset, and Desmond trailed off sullenly, sinking lower in his chair.
He waited, and when it was apparent that Desmond wasn’t going to cut him off, tosses a picture from the file in front of Desmond. it almost slides off, until he stops it with a stained and dirty fingernail, leaving a smudge on the glossy white edge.
Blown up and slightly pixelated, it’s of an Apple, silver and dimly glowing in a background of dust and rubble. There are fingers clenched around it, blood snaking from under one nail, but the features aren’t very distinguishable in the low resolution.
Desmond has the sinking suspicion he’d find it familiar though.
“What we, Mister Miles, would like to know, is how you worked this device, and how you managed to evade the efforts of our elite Avengers unit for over a year.”
#####
Desmond hadn’t died.
It surprised him probably more than it surprised the Abstergo scientists he opened his eyes to.
They reared back from where they were leaning over him, one fumbling for his radio, and the other putting out what looked like a tazer. For a moment he wanted to cry- he was dead, and si afterlife was going to be an eternity of-
But he hurt too much to be dead.
His head was splitting, but he had the presence of mind to lift one arm-
oh god the pain holy shit is my arm still there
-and knife one scientist right in the neck.
There was a sound like someone trying to speak through a tube made of punctured meat, as the heavy and suddenly much wetter weight of a scientist in a hazmat suit pinned him to the ground. He might have blacked out again from the pain.
When he woke up again, the second scientist was dead, and he was standing.
His run from the caves was a blur. There were trucks parked around the clearing, engines rumbling, and Templars crawling everywhere. He remembered the sun seeming unusually bright, his eyes stinging and head pounding so much he threw up twice on his way out of the cave, hands spasming against dirt as he made his slow, fumbling way up the same incline he’d slid down effortlessly so many times before.
Ok, He spat into the dust when his stomach finished ejecting a mix of bile and blood, interspersed with probably the five ibuprofen and three shots of cheap liquor he’d had for dinner last night. He wiped his mouth with a shaking and bloody hand, before staggering back to his feet to climb the last stretch between him and daylight. That’s disgusting. And probably not a good sign.
Someone yelled at him to stop as he broke out into open air- It sounded like Italian, and for some reason he remembered blood running warm over his hands by the side of a canal, candlelight obscuring him and his victim into just another pair of shadows in the dark- But instead of renaissance Italy, he finds himself standing in the clearing with more blood pooling under his feet, leaking from a guard in kevlar. He’d done it without making the conscious decision to defend himself.
A voice in his head whispered a litany of run run run get out of here and he does, staggering slightly as he heard alarmed shouts, and a couple of guns go off, all shooting wide, thankfully.
He barely made it to the tree line.
And it was that easy.
The woods are dark, the trees casting it into night time far before the rest of the world has even put the pot-roast in the oven, so he had no problem losing Abstergo in the trees, even in the confused, painful condition he was in.
Especially with the expertise of three assassins behind him, still freshly seated in his brain and seeming unnervingly easy to pin point and pluck out. The skills seem to come easier to him than they did before, but he contributed it to probably getting his brain fried.
He must have been out for hours, because it used to be afternoon when he went into the temple. Plenty of time for Shaun and Rebecca and… Everyone else, to get away.
He lost motor function twice, in the hours he spends trying to follow the trees north, to where he knows a highway runs just off the edge of the nature preserve the caves were recessed into. Turin is a wide, green county, and he threw up in two bushes on his way; nothing but painful acid coming up, combined with a loss of vision and a shaking in his hands that refuses to stop even when he shoves them in his arm pits.
A bird sung in the distance while the shaking winds to a halt, and he reached a shaky hand up to wipe blood off of his lip. It left a metallic taste in his mouth. Is this what a seizure is? He blinked, and shuts his eyes briefly against the splitting ache in his head. Sure fucking feels like it.
Okay. I’m alive. He pushed himself to his feet, the sense of danger behind him pushing him on even if he just wants to lay down. He’s so tired.
He’s probably going to drop dead in a couple of miles, but he decided to ignore the reality. Pushed the thought back. Even if he’ll probably never be free of this goddamn rat race of a war, he can at least make it harder for Abstergo to recover his body.
‘Haha, that’s the spirit. Make them trip over your dead corpse, really show the bastards.’
Desmond put a hand to his head, the increase in pain from both his horribly burnt hand, and his splitting head freezing him on the spot. That was a very detailed sentence. That came from nowhere near his own thought process.
What the fuck happened to his head.
’Who’s… this?’ He asks the- Voice in his head? There’s no small amount of hysteria in the question. Oh god. They fried his brain. He figured this was coming, but maybe not for a while, I mean, no doubt he’s stuffed full of tumors from whatever the fuck they were putting him through in that Animus-
‘Calm down hotshot. It’s me.’
Desmond was incredulous for a good thirty seconds.
Clay?
‘That’s right. Guess there was still a little bit of me left in the Animus.’ The now-familiar voice answered ruefully, and Desmond felt something similar to a mental shrug.
His hands started shaking again, and he’s about 70 percent sure wasn’t to do with brain damage this time.
Christ. I’m going to drop dead from cancer, aren’t I?
‘Hey, hey, hey! Let’s keep it positive here!’ Clay pushed, and Desmond groaned out loud, cradling his injured hand against his chest, and gripping his hair tight with the other. ‘At least I’m not alone in here, right?’
Desmond grew suspicious.
Also nauseous. But mostly suspicious.
“What do you mean?” He says this out loud, barely a crack of a whisper passing through his throat. It was completely ravaged, and clicked when he swallowed. not that he was swallowing much, with his throat so dry,
There was a mental shuffling of feet.
’Well…. I mean, I wasn’t the only one in the Animus, now was I?’
And that’s how Desmond finds out he now has three master assassins and an asshole in his head.
#####
He reached the road the next day, but there was nobody at the meet up spot.
Just an oil stain on the pavement, and a few bootprints, size six.
Rebecca and Shaun must have taken off when they assumed (rightfully) that Desmond was dead.
‘Can’t blame them, right? I mean, phew. Take a look at that arm.’
Desmond had been avoiding looking at his hand, but he winced in agreement.
It could be worse. He still had a range of movement in his fingers, although the pain it had caused him to test mobility had left him sweating and panting, trying not to scream. The skin was raw and red, with black, zig-zagging lines running all the way up to almost his elbow, like circuitry, or lightning.
The brace had come off messily, taking some skin with it, but he hadn’t made too much noise with a stick clamped in his teeth. His shirt had been sacrificed for bandages, and it was wrapped tightly and dryly, using expertise from four different generations of wound tending.
Altair sneered, and claimed to ’only need one anyway.’ Otherwise, where would you hold the sword?
There was a stirring of interest in the part of his brain he’d started to designate as ‘foreign’, but he squashed it down before Ezio could speak. He was saving the freak out for later. Altair was squashed into silence as well, and the effort made him dizzy.
It was odd, Desmond thought, as he surveyed the road through the trees. When he explored the new space in his brain, he found things he never remembered learning.
Like different languages, or astronomy, or even how to put someone in a sleeper hold. But his brain was so full, it was like other things were being pushed out. His head hadn’t eased it’s throbbing, and he was still getting fine tremors in his hands that made it hard for him to grasp anything, even given his bum hand.
Hopefully it would get better, but that still wasn’t the most pressing problem.
He couldn’t remember his tenth birthday, and it scared him shitless.
‘Who needs a tenth birthday, when you have me to chat with?’ Came the smug reply.
Stop trying to make me feel better.
‘Only when it starts working.’
Just… Just shut up, and let me think! And keep the others quiet too.
‘Alright. But I’m just going to tell you, they’re getting chatty.’
It was weird having conversations in your head that you’re not privy to.
Desmond moved for the road, injured arm in his jacket pocket, and stuck his thumb out.
The birds sang over the roar of tires on the interstate, and he wondered in a very familiar way that made him feel nothing more than sixteen again, what he was going to do next.