Day 1

Desmond was sitting on the Animus, running his fingers softly along the leather of the armrest, when his father entered the room. He didn't look up, and eventually it was William who spoke first.

"I'd like to..."

"Go ahead." The leather creaked in protest under the sudden pressure of fingernails. "Thank me so that you can fool yourself into thinking I came back because of you."

Bill laughed despite himself. "Three words into a conversation and you're already trying to turn it into an argument?"

"Fine." Desmond slid from his sitting position into a standing one. "I guess Lucy already passed on my terms. You'll accept them, no arguments?"

They had been few, but firm. Desmond was at liberty to leave whenever he wished, with an unspoken understanding that he never would. He would write his own Animus session schedule, with an unspoken understanding that the hours would be long and punishing. He would share a room with Clay Kaczmarek - there was no misunderstanding that. And his mother would be informed of what was going on.

Desmond was right, of course; Bill wouldn't argue with these terms. Elizabeth had been told (he winced internally when he remembered the conversation), but Bill could see her already: her defiance in Desmond's eyes and her determination in the set of his shoulders, the left one of which Bill reached out to lay a placating hand upon. Desmond shrugged him away irritably and Bill felt a tightness in his chest. He let the rejected hand drop back to his side.

Day 3

Save for the shift in hue from brown to grey that had occurred in his hair, William Miles seemed almost to not have aged at all in the decade since Desmond's escape. When Elizabeth Miles entered the Altanta Den, she looked as though she had taken Bill's extra years upon her own frame. She looked so tired. Surely she had never looked this tired when he was young?

"Mom," he said, stepping forward and pulling her into his arms, afraid to squeeze too hard lest he hurt her. He was taller than her now.

"Oh, Desmond." Her voice was as he remembered it: warm and affectionate, without angr or remonstration. Such a contrast to his father's distance. She pushed at him gently until he was held only in the embrace of her slender hands at the end of unbent arms. "Let me look at you."

She did so, hungrily, eyes flicking over his face as if she couldn't take in the details fast enough. Desmond suddenly felt self-conscious about the scar on his mouth - acquired in one of his less proud moments - and the undeniably matured line of his jaw and cheekbones; he had more or less robbed her of the chance to watch her son grow from a boy into a man. He considered apologising and begging forgiveness, or at least showing her a little emotion, but his old stubbornness held him back.

"I got a haircut," he joked.

"You're so handsome." She smiled even wider, before adding with a slightly stern tone. "And brave, which is more important."

Same old Mom, always sticking to her principles. They sat down and talked, Desmond giving her a sketch of the ten years of his life she had missed whilst leaving out the slightly more unsavory details, inserting more shelter and warm meals than he head, in reality, experienced in the early days and overstating his financial standing with the instinct of liberated sons everywhere.

Day 5

The HUD slid over his eyes.

He hoped that they would attribute the small smile that crossed his face to something other than pleasure.

When he opened his eyes again, he was home.

He wouldn't remember thinking this later on.

Day 24

Desmond spend his hours outside of the Animus learning how to be in love.

It was at once an active and a passive endeavour; he made no conscious effort to do it, but nonetheless found himself dedicating most of his waking hours to the task with boundless energy. Waking hours, of course, not including the hours spent in the machine.

Much of it was physical. He developed a hunger for Clay: a desire to touch, taste and know every inch of him. Desmond came to know the geometry of Clay's shoulderblades, the contours of his knees, the hard shields of his pectoral muscles. He observed with fascination, analysing with scientific application, the different ways in which Clay responded to contact: a tongue laving softly over one patch of skin producing a different effect to the soft pad of a thumb pressing in the same spot. For once, the hypersensitivity that the Animus induced in him began to work in his favour and as the hours he spent in the machine racked up, the greater and more intense were his encounters with Clay.

"Holy cow," Clay laughed one night as the two of them lay still lazily entwined and bathed in sweat, and Desmond stirred once more and began pressing his mouth to various pulse points, impatiently trying to get them both ready for another round. "You're fucking insatiable."

"Easy to feel hungry at a feast," was Desmond's mumbled, half-drunken retort. He gently plucked at the skin of Clay's throat, taking it between his teeth.

A half-exhausted, half-aroused, all-intrigued huff of breath escaped Clay's mouth. "I'm serious. You fuck me like there's no tomorrow."

Desmond didn't comment on that.

They had sex almost daily. Desmond sought, through sex, to get closer to Clay, finally understanding what the man had meant when he spoke about wanting to climb inside his skin if only to be closer to him. Failing that, Desmond took Clay inside himself and shed his inhibitions as Clay filled him and fucked him and gasped against his skin, both of them articulating their pleasure in words and phrases so filthy that they would laugh at them the next day. Desmond stroked, teased, tasted and frotted every inch of Clay: never tiring of the sounds he would make as he came or the slide of foreign semen over his own skin, down his stomach, in his mouth. The walls of the Den were thick, but after the first three days of their return Shaun Hastings had curtly requested that either their room or his be switched to one less adjacent.

It still wasn't enough. Desmond wanted to know Clay, to learn him body and mind. They talked endlessly and he learned that Clay was damaged, often cold, cynical, quick to anger but slow to reveal it. He had a general dislike for people and a skill for antagonism that he exercised liberally. He cradled his pain, sadness, and regret into a tight ball and protected with hard arms with the same ferocity that he defended Desmond.

Desmond learned all this and realised that he wanted more time: more hours in the day, more days in the week, even as the Animus stole half of them away from him.

On the other hand, he didn't have to afraid of losing Clay, because he knew that Clay would lose him first.

Day 25

Even through the Animus, even with the veil of time between Altaïr and himself, Desmond felt the power of the Apple of Eden radiating through his palm.

Rebecca dragged her gaze away from the monitor and shared a tense glance with Bill as a soft 'oh' escaped Desmond's lips and the right hand flexed a little on the armrest of the Animus.

Unaware of this, Desmond stared at the object in his ancestor's hand and felt the first signs of a sensation that would later become as familiar as breathing: a giving and a taking away of energy; the opening of a conduit to unlimited resources of power that would drain him each time he used it.

Desmond exited the Animus early and staggered to his room without stopping for an evening meal. He collapsed onto the bed and was asleep in minutes. A few hours later he was aware, without waking, of the mattress next to him dipping, and then an arm encircling him and soft puffs of breath on his neck.

It was the last Animus session he spent in Altaïr's memories, moving on the next day to an Italian called Ezio Auditore. It was a welcome break, to spend time in an ancestor who so closely resembled Desmond's own reckless, youthful self, but he surprised himself by feeling small pangs of sadness at leaving behind the stoic, serious Altaïr.

Day 48

Desmond shivered as Clay drew a hand down his spine, the canyon of flesh that dipped down when he lay on his stomach. Fingers ghosted over the scar that marked the removal of his kidney, and Desmond thought about disappearing. He pictured fragments of Desmond falling away: pieces of his body, pieces of his mind, pieces of his time. By now he was spending more than half of each day inside the Animus, and the effects were hitting him hard.

Before this moment of stillness, Desmond and Clay had been caught fiercely in the throes of desire, scooping each other out of their clothes even as they pawed frantically at whatever skin they could find, and Desmond had tipped his head back and felt teeth and tongue on his throat and he had cried out...

Clay had hit him.

Not hard, or vicious, but a smart slap to the cheek. Desmond's mind and body were still reeling when Clay grabbed him by the shoulders and began shaking him, his eyes wide and terrified.

"Hey! Look at me, come on!"

Desmond managed to obey the command, staring at Clay with a mix of confusion and indignation. "Chill out, I'm looking! What-?"

"Do you know what you were doing? Do you?"

"Having a damn good time, which you've interrupted for..."

Clay cursed and shook his head, looking down and taking a few deep breaths. "You were speaking Italian, Desmond."

Oh. Shit. Desmond attempted a cocky grin. "It's a very sexy language, I thought you might..."

"You didn't know you were doing it."

Clay had let go of Desmond's shoulders. There was distance between them now.

"I've been here too. I know that this is how it starts."

There was no point in denying it now. Perhaps there had been no point in hiding any of the lapses that had occurred in the past few weeks: episodes where Desmond would jerk himself away from Ezio Auditore only to find that he was not in the Animus at all. It had started, alright. It had started quite a while ago. He looked at Clay helplessly.

"You knew that this was..."

"Yeah. Yeah, I did."

"I told you it would be better if..."

"You did. Well done, you were right."

Clay's walls were up and his pain and wretchedness were held tight in a cocoon of hard, cold anger. Desmond knew it was pointless to try and talk to him like this, and a sudden wave of fatigue crashed over him. He sighed and stripped off the last of his clothes before getting into bed, laying on his stomach and hoping that when he woke up, he would still be himself.

Day 100

It was the CCTV footage that absolved him - at least in the eyes of Bill Miles and the other leaders. Not one of them liked Clay Kaczmarek, but they hadn't risen so high in the Assassin ranks by allowing their emotions to rule their better judgment. He was brought in to give his own account, then once more to be notified of his acquittal. He stalked from the room without a response.

Other Assassins were not so forgiving. In recognition of the Assassins' policy of openness, the tape had been made available to any who wished to see it, and not all who watched were satisfied with what they saw. Alright, the actions were clear and appeared damning, but since the camera had not been recording sound, only two people remained alive who had heard the dialogue first hand. One of those people had long since ceased to be a reliable witness.

Here is the conversation that the CCTV camera missed.

"I should have known. I should have fucking known."

"Clay ... Thank God you're here, you have to help me, I found Desmond..."

"Save it, I heard what you were saying to him."

"Cosa sta succedendo?"

"Let him go."

A pause.

"You should come with us. I know you don't have any loyalty to the Assassins, and you shouldn't, Clay."

Clay Kaczmarek laughed. It was an unpleasant sound.

"The Assassins don't understand the Animus! They don't have the resources that the Templars have. Here they've got Desmond cooped up in that dirty basement at all hours of the day, and look at him!"

"Lasciami andare! Federido! Padre!"

"And Abstergo are going to ... what? Help him? Reverse the effects?"

"Yes, they..."

"Like they did with me?"

Silence. A click.

"Put that down, Clay."

"Fuck you, Lucy."

"There's no point waving it around when we both know you're not going t-"

The conversation ended.

Day 114

It took a long time to find Clay, but eventually a young Assassin told Desmond - with downcast eyes - that he had seen the man up on the roof. Desmond nodded and headed up there, unwilling to prolong the conversation. Most of the Assassins in the Den had known and liked the McMurphy brothers and their feelings towards having their killer not only admitted back into the order but treated with privilege were pretty much to be expected. Desmond was happy to bear their hatred in Clay's place, for Clay did not possess the shield of protection that Desmond's DNA ensured.

The skylight was already open, sunshine pouring in, and Desmond leaped up nimbly, catching the edge of it by his fingertips and pulling himself up and out onto the roof. Sure enough, Clay was sitting on the tiles and reading a book on the Italian Renaissance. Desmond looked at the cover, grinning when he realised it had obviously been stolen from Shaun, and nudged Clay with his foot before sitting down next to him.

"Researching me?"

Clay looked over at him and Desmond tensed a little as he bore the quizzical look that he'd been habitually getting of late, as people tried to ascertain whether it was Desmond speaking, or one of his ancestors.

At last, he saw the lines of Clay's back relax a little. "You finished your session early. It's only lunchtime."

"I know. You hungry?"

Clay persisted. "Did something happen? You've never taken an afternoon off before."

"Which means I've earned a break by now. It's beautiful weather, how about we eat outside?"

He stood up and held out a hand, which Clay looked at warily before taking it and allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. Desmond grinned wickedly at him and, instead of dropping through the skylight, swung delicately over the edge of the roof and began to descend the building by using window ledges and guttering as handholds, knowing that Clay would follow.

They drank beer on the grass outside the Den, other Assassins dissipating from the area one by one until they were alone. Desmond could feel that Clay was not quite relaxed, always on the lookout for signs of the Bleeding Effect which tended to eclipse a great deal of Desmond's time outside the Animus. He could feel it the threat of it nudging at him even now, but he fought it down.

After lunch they did something unusual: they left the compound.

Clay's eyes widened mockingly when Desmond clambered onto the fence and sat atop it with one eyebrow cocked challengingly. "Desmond Miles, I hope you're not thinking of going outside."

"Gonna rat on me?"

The fence rocked a little as Clay ran up and vaulted over it easily, dragging Desmond down the other side by his shirttails. They landed together in a heap on the sidewalk and spent a good minute or so disentangling themselves slowly and leisurely.

They didn't do much with their freedom, beyond running and jumping over the rooftops of the city and terrifying the smugly roosting pigeons. Desmond was swift and the movements came to him like second nature; this, after all, was how he was accustomed to travelling inside the Animus. In the evening they went into a bar and watched a hockey match, wisely choosing to cheer for the Atlanta Thrashers, and ate cheeseburgers and fries as a welcome alternatives to the health food usually available in the Den.

As they walked back, Desmond slipped his hand gently into Clay's and enjoyed the warmth of his fingers. It was such an odd gesture for them, and should have felt self-conscious. Instead it just felt right.

Perfect.

It was dark by the time they reached their shared room. Desmond saw a wrinkle of trouble on Clay's forehead and tried to kiss it away, reaching up to unbutton his own shirt. When it was hanging open, he took that pale hand in his and laid on his throat so that Clay could feel the pulse of his heartbeat in the warm vein there.

"I love you," he murmured, and Clay surely felt the thrum of vibration in his throat as well. It was the first time he had actually said the words, instead of simply implying them. "Remember that. Remember this."

He felt his mistake in the stiffening of Clay's fingers and in the sudden recoil of his body. Clay had been leaning in for a kiss but pulled back and stared into Desmond's face with a ruthless, unstoppable suspicion, before stepping backwards with an expression of horror.

"Oh my God."

"What is it?" Desmond asked, affecting an unconvincing expression of puzzlement.

"I don't believe it. You absolute ... You conniving motherfucker!"

"Can you fill me in? Because I have no idea what you're-"

"You, you..." Clay obviously couldn't stand the taste of the words in his mouth. "Taking a half-day ... The run ... The beer ... The bar..."

He had seen. He had realised. Desmond mentally cursed Clay's intelligence. He looked back helplessly, not able to deny it any more.

Clay's lip curled. "You were saying goodbye."

Desmond stood for a moment, tensed, and then sighed in defeat and sat down on the edge of the bed, his shoulders slumped. "I hate goodbyes. There's no such thing as a good goodbye; they're never happy memories. I just wanted to give you one really good memory of me ... In case."

"Don't say it."

"I don't need to say it, you know what I mean. But you can't guess how close I am to losing myself, Clay. I can barely remember who I am any more. When I'm in the Animus, it doesn't even register that I'm a third party. I become Ezio, there's no divide, no awareness, no..." He took a deep shuddering breath and, feeling the tears of panic creeping into his eyes, hastily buried his face in his hands.

"I'm fucking terrified," he admitted at last. "I think I'm dying, Clay. I only get a few hours a day at most when I'm really myself, and every day it's a few minutes less. Up here..." He tapped his temple. "... I'm dying. Any day now I could stop waking up as Desmond, and I wanted..."

He couldn't continue. He'd fucked up. Clay's arms were around him, strong now, not shaking, but he knew that this night would always be painful to look back on.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled into the material of Clay's T-shirt. "Some good memory this is turning out to be."

"Moron. All my memories of you are good memories."

Day 168

When he was a very small boy, and when she was still alive, Ratonhnhaké:ton's mother had told him to always pay attention to his dreams.

"But I don't always remember them!" he had protested.

"You should make more effort to remember them. Some spirits can only speak to you in your dreams, and they are usually the ones with the most important lessons to teach."

He had followed her advice and always made an effort, in the tense moments after waking, to recall what he had dreamt and wrap it in a ball of memory that it might not be forgotten.

The spirits that visited him in his sleep had the most important lessons to teach. If only he knew what this spirit was trying to teach him.

Ratonhnhaké:ton - now no longer a child, and calling himself by the English name Connor Kenway - looked warily at the spirit as the two of them sat cross-legged in a dream land that was somewhere between a strange, humble, interior dwelling and the wilds of the forests in which he hunted in waking hours. The spirit was fair-haired and blue-eyed, but certainly not in an angelic way, and spoke in riddles.

The dream had begun with waking in a strange room: ethereal lights and thin, brightly coloured ropes connected to metal boxes. Clouded figures had guided him gently by the arm and brought him up stairs and along corridors. The dream felt lucid, but he had complied with their guidance in the hopes that they might lead him to some understanding.

"Is there something you need to tell me?" he asked the spirit. They always conversed in English, one of the many things that puzzled Connor in these dreams.

The spirit simply looked at him for a moment or two. Then he said a name, the name he always said.

"Why do you call me that?"

The spirit told Connor that he loved him. This had happened before.

"I don't understand."

Lines around the spirit's mouth tightened. "Some days, that used to be enough to bring you back."

"Back from where?"

"Jesus Christ."

Connor's head spun. Christianity? Perhaps this wasn't a spirit. These dreams were too random to mean anything. Why did they bother him so much?

The spirit looked angry now. He said, "You are not Connor Kenway."

Was this a message about needing to return to his roots, a warning about becoming too anglicised?

"You are not Ratonhnhaké:ton."

He pronounced the name perfectly.

"Your name is Desmond Miles."

Connor's head hurt. He closed his eyes and lay down in the soft grass. After a few moments, he felt the spirit lie down beside him. Though Connor was not aware of it, it had been three weeks since he last remembered his true identity.

He slept, and the journey continued.

Day 169

Shaun Hastings stood in the doorway, opening and closing his mouth mutely as he tried to find the right words and wondered why he, of all people, had been given this job.

Clay was sitting on the bed. It was 8pm. According to the tattered schedule on the wall, he and Desmond should have been eating dinner together.

"Tell me," he commanded huskily.

Shaun clenched the muscles in his jaw before speaking. "He's in a coma."

When he was alone, Clay put his fist through the window and fell asleep with glass shards still stuck in his hand.

Now

"There!"

Bill Miles' fists are clenched in anticipation as he leans over the monitor, Rebecca and Shaun at his side as they watch Connor Kenway finally facing Those Who Came Before. It has taken months for Desmond's mind to unlock this memory - though of course, things sped up quite a bit once he started spending 24 hours a day inside the Animus.

This should be a triumphant moment for the Assassins. They are about the save the world, after all, or at least find the key to doing so. But Rebecca isn't giving her customary catcalls of celebration, and Shaun simply looks exhausted, dark circles under his eyes testament to all the hours he hasn't spend sleeping. Only Bill looks thoroughly excited by the moment, but even so there is an edge to his joy: he bares too many teeth with his smile, and his eyes are a little too wide.

They all look at the monitor these days, because it's easier than looking at Desmond. He's lying not too far away, connected to the Animus with tubes snaking into him and delivering everything he needs to keep his heart beating and his brain working.

Someone is not looking at the monitor, though. Fingers gently turn Desmond's hand over so that it rests palm-upwards on the leather, then trail up his arm and over the tribal tattoo on his forearm, over the dark blue veins beneath his skin.

If Bill, or the others, were to look up from their monitor they would see Clay's turned back, the hard frame of his shoulders, the blond hair that just barely grazes the collar of his shirt - perhaps a small slice of his face as he lifts his head slowly. They would not be able to see his eyes, which he hides from them, not interested in having them even in his peripheral vision. Clay does not care what is on the monitor. He doesn't care about sleeping, or eating, or anything that is not in this room, in front of him, so still but still breathing and fighting.

Clay will be there when Desmond wakes up. Or he will die waiting.

END