Surrounded But Alone

A Word: Bit more overtly shippy here.

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Malik can't move by the time they're done with him. His entire body aches with the beating he could not fight off and the rough stone of the cell he's thrown in makes the pain flare to a blinding level. He can't speak from the wounds left on him, but he is Malik Al-Sayf and he has born greater pain than this before. He manages to roll over enough to spit defiantly at Abbas. A dark red glob of spit that's more blood than anything else.

Abbas shakes his head as his loyal men file out behind him. His smile is cruel and every shadow and rumor that he's been fighting these past few years given flesh. "Be thankful, you still are of use to me yet, Brother."

The heavy door closes behind him and Malik's left in the dark with his wounds, the drying blood of a young he raised like his own mixing with his, and the scurrying of rats. Anger fills him but it's not enough to overcome the pain that grabs him by the throat and pulls him into unconsciousness.

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Malik wakes in darkness. The rough scratch of the dungeon floor beneath him is familiar after all this time, as is the scent of the cell around him. Stale air, rotting food, and urine. It hurts to wake here again, beyond what he thought possible.

He'd dreamt of it again. Rescue. Such a sweet dream with the most vivid details. He swore he had felt Maria's capable hands against his face, the sweet taste of untainted water, and Altair's face had been lined with the years he knows has past. The bed he'd rested in had felt so real, and their talk of taking back what Abbas has destroyed even better.

He must be coming down with fever again to have dreamt it so vividly. Malik smiles into the dark and wonders if this will be the time the sickness manages to kill him despite Abbas' best efforts to keep him weak enough not to fight, but strong enough to live for whatever reason he has for keeping Malik imprisoned.

Not for the first time he contemplates his own death, and the benefits of hastening it to deny Abbas what it is he seeks. There's an appeal in it, in spiting the traitor, but the thought clashes with the tiny scrap of pride that stubbornly clings to him still. Bright and fierce even after all this time. Years, Malik thinks, though there is no way to tell for sure.

He's lost count of days, of guard shifts, and the irregular schedule of food and care that keeps him clinging to life. He only has guesses and the few scraps of rumors the increasingly lax guards -they are not Assassins, no one with so little discipline could be part of the Order- to go by.

Seasons have passed. Three years, maybe four going from the crude conversations he has heard. Perhaps that is why he had such a bittersweet dream. Three years is time enough for a return trip from so far out in the East. News of the warlord's death had traveled far faster than a small family could after all.

Malik is only human, and the bit of hope from that thought -from that dream- is enough to keep him sustained for a good while longer.

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Maria's eyes shine with tears and fury but her fingers are cold as she wipes what feels like an entire lifetime's worth of grime from his face. Altair's voice is rough and his hand warm as he clasps Malik's weakening grip, "It was not your fault, Brother."

"It would not have happened to you," Malik insists because it is true. Altair would never have spent so much time playing games that the shadows would have ambushed him. He would have gone straight for them the moment he knew they were about. Torn them out of the Order and cleansed it before the infection could spread as far as Malik had allowed it.

"Are we not one, Malik?" Grief is a foreign emotion on Altair's face to Malik, for all that they have shared it has always been an emotion the man kept to himself before. "We have shared in the glory of our victories, so too must we share the pain of our defeat. It is how we grow closer, grow stronger. A wise man once told me this, Brother, and his words still hold true even now."

Malik sighs as his words, so old now, are parroted back nearly perfectly to him. He would laugh but there is a heaviness in his chest that would turn it only into pain. "Thank you, Brother."

Altair's lips twitch and Maria smiles down at him before gently pushing the other man away and climbing to her feet. "Rest, Malik. We must prepare, and you must regain your strength."

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Thirst grows slowly in him, and Malik lets it. Waiting for it to reach an unbearable level before even thinking about turning to the bucket of tainted water that occasionally gets filled. It's not just water in there, but it's better for him to not think on it too closely. Better for him to be nearly dehydrated before taking from it. It is only when he can't stand the thirst anymore that Malik moves to roll over and begin his slow crawl to the corner the bucket is in.

Shock drives the thirst out of his mind almost immediately when his tired body moves easily and without a hint of pain or protest.

Pain has been his constant companion since Abbas and his loyal traitors had ripped him from Sef's lifeless side. The beating he'd received while still too shocked to fight -against those he had called Brother!- severe enough to keep him from protesting the accusations hurled his way. The lies he was forced to take as his own with not one single person standing up for him. It had kept him delirious for weeks, and formed a pit of helplessness he could not escape alone though he had tired. Oh, how he had tried.

That pain is gone now. Not one hint of it left in him, not from the kicks he had received just days ago or the broken bones that were never allowed to be set before healing wrongly.

Malik pushes, cautiously, and easily lifts himself up to his knees. From there he makes his feet. There's no pain, no discomfort at all aside from his thirst. Malik stumbles forward, and his steps are only uneven from the stones and utter darkness. It takes him a mere moment to reach the corner with the water bucket. A journey that usually takes him much longer to crawl.

He falls to his knees and catches himself against the wall with his right arm. It doesn't shake or give under his weight. The shoulder doesn't scream from its numerous dislocations, and his fingers dig into the gritty stone without a hint of pain from how often they have been broken.

Breathing is suddenly hard, and Malik makes a sound. A sharp sound that's equal parts mirth and a sob, because when he can get a breath in it's the foul odor of the tainted water he breathes in. Malik's gripping the splintered wood of the bucket to drink before a thought stops him.

He gets back up and feels along the wall. Fingers sliding over stones and filth as he makes his way around the room. Three strides before the first corner, and one more before the stone turns to wood under his hand. The cell door is shut.

Malik stops breathing as he reaches for the iron latch that locks from the outside and twists. The door opens under the slightest push.

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There's a sigh, a breath of living air that Malik dreads even before his eyes snap open. In the still air of the cell moving air only came from the opening of the door, and the door only opened to allow his captors in. The softness of the bed beneath him does little to detract from the fact that he is still captured for all that Altair and Maria have planned.

Malik does not have the strength to sit up. Cannot flee, cannot shout, cannot even raise his one arm to block the blade glittering in Swami's hand. Abbas' most faithful dog sneering down at him as he stalks the only prey he will ever be able to capture. A defenseless cripple already on the brink of death.

He has not the strength for any of it, but he does have the strength to laugh in his face. The strength to watch his arm falter and eyes go wide in shocked fear at the reaction. Malik laughs at the whore's son standing above him, he laughs at the traitor Abbas, and every man who has let themselves fall far enough to follow him.

Altair has returned, and this mockery of an Order's days are numbered.

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Malik has spent more than his fair share of time in the company of scholars. Before and after the loss of his arm. The knowledge they have and shared freely with him had been fascinating. Were it not for his temper, Malik might have forgone the path of an Assassin and gone straight for the rank of Rafiq instead.

His skill with a sword, and the thrill of a mission had been too great for him to willingly give up though.

Religion had been one of the things that fascinated Malik. All religion, because there were almost as many different ones as there were people in the world. Malik had drunk it all in as a young boy. Finding many interesting things in the texts and scrolls he'd been allowed to see.

There were many things he agreed with, and many things he did not agree with. Many of the religions intersected, and many more couldn't be any further apart in their beliefs. Comparing and contrasting two or three had been an exercise some of the Dai had run him through as he got older.

Almost all of the religions he'd studied had agreed there was some kind of place after death. Some reward or punishment or wayside that the dead would go to after they left their bodies.

Malik doesn't know which one of those places he is in now.

The citadel is empty and exactly as he remembers it last. The study is clearly his own, with reports he remembers reading shortly before Sef's murder. Masyaf is the same. The market is filled with stalls, baskets laid out for perusal, and not a single person in sight. The homes are empty. No sign of any owner or habitation.

The water from the fountain is sweet, and the bread he picks up is fresh. Better food and drink than he has had in far too long.

Malik sits on a stone bench and looks down into the calmer parts of the fountain. His own face stares back up at him, but it's a much younger face that greets him. His face hasn't been so unlined in years, and his hair is a solid black once again. Free from the gray that had stolen almost all of his color.

He laughs and strikes out at the water. Dashing the image of himself away with his single arm. He is younger but still not whole. He is free from the dungeon but alone. He is healed and healthy but he is dead.

Malik is dead.

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Death does not hurt. Malik feels nothing of his death despite the fury that set Swami's inexpert swings even wider than they normally were. The blade of his sword too dull to cut cleanly in one slice from lack of care.

Malik falls back onto an old trick that has kept him sane through his tortures. He steps back from his frail body and watches, detached and amused, as Swami stabs and slices until sweat beads up on his forehead. That wild look of confused fear not leaving his eyes even when he stops, and nothing is left of Malik's body but blood and flesh.

Swami breathes hard, his middle is growing thick from excess, and this small bit of exercise has him winded. Malik would laugh if he could, but his body seems done for. So he only grins as the traitor quickly wraps Malik's head in a sack. Leaving with one last wary glance at the bed, and Malik -weightless and finally free- follows to see his end.

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The land stretches out and no matter how far Malik goes he finds no sign of life. Not human or animal. He finds food easily enough. Freshly cooked, and perfect. Even the meat is still warm when he wants it to be.

The library offers him few clues as to where he is. The Christian Limbo is the closest he can manage. He is in no paradise and he is in no hell. He simply is. He is still alone though and that makes it less likely perhaps. Malik eventually leaves the religious and philosophical books behind because none of them offer any insight into where he is now.

Malik grows hungry, thirsty, and tired. The limits of his body are the same here as they were in life before his betrayal. Wounds heal the same and his body still performs the functions he expects of it. Weapons feel strange in his hand for only a moment before his muscles remember the weight and motion of them. The sun sets and rises at predicable times, the stars and moon the same. Food does not rot no matter how long he leaves it out.

Things appear when he wants them enough. Passing thoughts do not produce the same response though. Malik spends a week thinking of different things, and finds the limit of it appears to be his own mind's ability to believe such a thing possible before losing interest in it.

The stables still have the smell of horses in them, and beds that of their owners. Malik leaves Masyaf and travels by foot through roads he has not traveled in too long. Every city he sees is the same. Acre still has signs and flags of the Crusader's occupation, Templar symbols discretely littered through the city that has been free of both for years now. Books and letters in the sharp lines of the Crusaders' own language fascinate Malik for a day before he moves on.

Jerusalem is exactly as he remembers it. From before he had given up his position as Bureau leader and returned to Masyaf. The building still holds all of his possessions. Mirror images, in some cases, of the things he had found in his rooms in Masyaf. There's no sign of the man who replaced him, nothing of the changes Malik knows he made. The change Malik himself had seen on a few occasions.

Malik turns away from the room he used to be so familiar with and wanders out into the courtyard to sleep.

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The Apple is terrifying in all its power, and Malik wants to scream at Altair as he holds it out to Swami's greedy hands. Wants to cry out and berate because this is what Abbas has sought. This is what he has wanted this whole time, and Altair is foolishly giving in to it.

Malik can't though. His voice is gone and his time over. He can only watch for a brief second before Swami gets too close and the Apple flares blindingly with a golden light. Malik flinches back and nearly closes his eyes as a roar fills his ears.

There's a feeling. A tug deep in his chest and Malik can hear Swami's voice over the roar. Reverent but unintelligible as anger slams into him from all sides. Like the fingers of a giant hand closing tight around him, and Malik is powerless to resist as he's swept closer to the blinding glow where Swami stands.

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Malik stays in Jerusalem. Masyaf pains him too much now that he no longer has the strangeness of his situation distracting him as much. The sight of it unchanged is too much to bear so soon. The home Sef shared with his wife and just born child a silent condemnation. The room near his own that Tazim claimed still holding his son's gray robes, and not one single clue as to his fate after Malik was thrown into the dungeons.

He knows where he is now, or he suspects he knows.

The Apple had shone so brightly and viciously that Malik had not even noticed what was left of him -soul? spirit? did it even matter?- had been pulled in by whatever fevered words Swami had said.

Another prison. He wonders if the traitor had even realized what he was doing, of if he had simply been flailing about with the artifact with the same skill he gave his blades. Clumsily and inexpertly. Not even knowing what it is he was doing.

It's unsurprisingly easy to believe.

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Malik dreams of Masyaf, and he climbs a tower that had been gone even before Kadar had joined the ranks as a Novice. He is unsurprised to find Altair waiting for him at the top. Small and scrawny in entirely gray robes, face free of the scar Malik knows will come to him in a few years.

There's grief in his eyes as he looks up at Malik, unchanged from how he is by this dream. "Forgive me, Malik."

"Again?" Malik walks over to one of the wooden boards left jutting out for a Leap of Faith. There is no hay below, there is nothing. Just an endless darkness that swirls with fog. "I am a patient man, Altair, but even I cannot stand having to repeat myself so many times. There is nothing to forgive."

"I could not save you," Altair is older when Malik turns back. Scar in place and the full robes and gear of a Master Assassin on him. He still looks grieved. "I failed-"

"We failed," Malik walks back to Altair and they're not standing on the tower anymore, but are on a hill below the citadel. He reaches out and clasps his friend's shoulder, marveling that it should feel so solid in this dream. "A wise man once told me the words of an even wiser man. We fail and succeed together, and fault does not come into the matter at all."

Altair is aged and cups the Apple in one hand. Malik's touch is not solid anymore and passes through him as the man steps forward. Eyes no longer seeing Malik and grief still radiating off of him. "Those were not my words, but you never failed to improve on your teachings my friend."

Malik's voice is gone when he opens his mouth. No words spill out and he feels insubstantial in the dark room Altair is in. The glow from the Apple dies as he places it in a pouch at his belt. There's a tug deep in Malik's chest and he's gone a mere second after realizing he is not dreaming.

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It happens again, infrequently, and it takes far too long for Malik to figure out what is happening.

He floats in dreams. Free to talk, to move, to interact. He watches in life. Unable to talk, limited in his movement, and incapable of any interaction at all.

The summons come randomly, and from more than just Altair. Tazim is who he sees most often in dreams. His son younger than he remembers him last and smiling at him with lips that remind Malik painfully of Kadar. His dreams are chaotic, and Malik wanders them freely. Trying to ease what he finds in the short time his summons last. All too brief moments where he holds a boy so happy to see him, so unwilling to remember he is a man that all of Malik's words fall on deaf ears. His explanations forgotten until all Malik can do is hold him and whisper, "I love you."

Altair is less frequent and mostly Malik finds himself wandering after the man for the moments when the Apple is powering down. His use of it is concerning, as much as the fact that in all the times Malik finds his friend like that he fails to find Maria there to stop his hand from going back to it.

Darim dreams once or twice, and they are the same as Tazim's dreams. The boy Malik remembers watching a time or two following him across a shifting landscape that Malik has never seen before. His eyes wide and warm, but no real indication that he ever understands the significance of Malik's presence.

No indication that any of them will wake and realize it is not a dream.

Nothing Malik does allows him out of his prison. He is brought out by others. Their thoughts, he thinks, the key to summoning him. Neither Altair nor Tazim are surprised to see him when he appears in their dreams, and when he finds himself in the living world it is only to find Altair holding the Apple. Eyes far away and a little wistful in a way that is easy to interpret.

Malik begins to feel it when he's being summoned. There's no warning or tug that brings him out, just a slight pressure that doesn't always result in him being summoned. He can, if he presses hard, force it to be enough. Force himself into a dream or the living world, but the intention must be there first. Someone else must think of him to allow it.

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Abbas still lives.

That becomes apparent when Malik finds himself back in the cell with the man staring at him from the door. A curious look of contempt on his face. "Do you haunt this place then?"

Malik says nothing as he walks up to the man, watches the contempt fade into apathy. Watches it slide into nothingness as his punch rips the dream apart and sends Malik straight back to the Apple. It's abrupt and uncomfortable, but Malik will be damned if he spends any time in the traitor's presence without attacking him.

He hopes the man felt some of the pain in the living world.

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Malik goes back to Acre and searches the city. He finds out more than he ever wanted to know about farming in the North, and tracks down the identities of a few Templar spies they had always suspected but never confirmed. It takes him a long time to turn the city over completely, and in that space of time he stops counting.

Stops counting the rise and fall of the sun, of the days that pass. He has found he can manipulate that as well after all, and that makes time meaningless. Counting it is a swift road to madness.

He wanders afterwards. Further from the cities and roads he knows so well. Out into the areas he only knows off of a map. Cities appear here too. Filled with things he does not expect, and perhaps a bit more true to the current time for it.

There is no life still, and Malik's efforts to will something into being are fruitless. The Apple can provide everything else except this one thing it seems.

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"This is to be my new prison then," Malik states grimly, and Altair's eyes flicker around the courtyard of the Bureau. Different from the one he now lives in, but identical to how it was when Altair was first seeking redemption.

"Death should be the ultimate freedom," Altair replies as he lounges on a few cushions. His face unlined, and far from the old man that Malik had followed through the streets of a changed Masyaf not too long ago. Following his slow footsteps as he walked until the Apple pulled him back again.

"Not for me," Malik still presses though Altair is as ignorant of what these dreams mean as anyone else. "The Apple has me, Altair. This is as much a prison as the cells under Masyaf."

Altair either does not hear him or dismisses his words entirely. He watches Malik shift and says nothing. A look of peace settling over his face before this dream goes the way of them all. Malik hates the solid tug in his chest that brings him back to his prison.

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He does not see Altair again, and Malik does not realize it until Tazim begins to age in his dreams. Only then does he realize he has not seen any dreams or followed the other man in life for a good amount of time.

It was inevitable, Altair's steps had been slow and labored while the world had continued on every bit as fast and brutal as ever. His death has always been an assured event.

Malik grieves still. For the loss of a good man, and the loss of his friend whom he knows he will not see again.

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The silence that surrounds him is horrible. Malik takes to making noise to try and fill it, but the efforts are pathetic and only serve to emphasize what is not there. He is only one man, and one man cannot fill the silence of an entire world. No matter how hard he tries.

It echoes in his ears. Ringing in it's terrible endlessness until Malik shouts. A harsh cry that rips it apart for a bare moment that is not enough! Never enough!

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After Altair's death there is only Tazim, and Malik knows -though he doesn't acknowledge it- that is limited as well.

Tazim is old. His hair more white than black and face lined with fine lines. The skin when Malik reaches out to touch his son is thin and fragile. He smiles at the touch and the lines in his face turn into deep crags, "I have missed you father."

"I've always been right here," Malik protests, but this is only a dream for his son and Malik has stopped hoping for understanding. There's a tiredness surrounding Tazim, a sense of finality that makes words twist and stick in his throat. "Do not go."

Tazim smiles and his eyes slide shut. Malik feels the fragile skin under his fingers slide away and the Apple tug him from the darkness rushing into the dream.

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Malik starts counting time again.

He doesn't influence the days, and counts them. Marks them down as they pass on a scroll. One black mark for each day. Mark after mark after mark until the scroll is more ink than blank paper. Until it's filled completely.

He's not summoned again.

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Malik destroys the Bureau, shatters pots and cracks the spines of books as he turns his fury outward. All the anger and rage that's been building for so long. Years and years, but he doesn't really know how much time has passed. Not anymore. Shards grind to dust under his boots and there's nothing left to destroy. Nothing left at all that isn't broken, and it's not enough.

Malik burns the building and walks away from Jerusalem.

It's still not enough.

He doesn't plan where to go, he simply walks and doesn't care. Doesn't try to track his route. Cities appear and the land changes around him. He doesn't push for anything to appear, but the Apple still provides for him. Grief and anger blind him to it, and Malik ignores it all as he puts distance between himself and all that he knows. Pushes himself to the limits that he had only toyed with before. Losing himself in an empty world.

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He's lost.

Malik climbs and his hands leave behind bloody prints that blend in with the red dirt and stone.

Malik screams at a broken down cart, laughs at the shards of a silvered mirror, talks to nothing in a room too dark to see anything.

Malik looses count of days and one step is the same as the first and the last and it doesn't matter to remember them all. Does not matter enough to remember anything, and so he doesn't.

Malik lays down under a table and foreign scents assault his nose.

Malik rips every page out of a book and does not know what is written on the pages as they burn to ash.

Malik looks at food he's never seen before and his stomach turns.

Malik looks around him and is lost. So completely lost.

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Awareness seeps back into him slowly, as does a cold rationality that stings as it cuts him to the core. Malik wakes up in Jerusalem's Bureau. He does not know if he came back under his own power or under something else. He does not know how far he traveled, or for how long. He feels as a man waking up from a long fever should. Distant and confused at what has happened.

He feels remarkably rested and in good shape as he sits up to lean against the wall of the courtyard. Still a little tired and confused by a nightmarish jumble of memories that fly away from his grasping fingers. His eyes take in the undamaged building he finds himself back in. The books he burned whole, the pots he broke undamaged.

Malik's body is a whole as it ever gets as well. The hunger and thirst that had gnawed at him is gone, the ache in his limbs from pushing himself as hard as he could no more than a memory, the scrapes and bruises he had inevitably gathered gone. His last clear memory is of fields of some crop he doesn't think he ever got close enough to identify.

It's not enough, but Malik knows now that he never will get what he had unconsciously been seeking with his fleeing and his pride refuses to allow him to try a more direct path to the true death he now knows is denied him.

He continues to keep track of time as he recovers himself, though his accuracy is suspect. He marks days, weeks, months, years. Decades pass and Malik is still alone. There are no summons and his anger is spent, burnt down and leaving nothing but bitter ashes behind.

When he feels well enough, Malik leaves the land he knows so well, and the Apple shows him what has changed in the world. It doesn't change the fact that he's alone, that it looks like he might always be that way, but it fills his time. Keeps him busy and distracted.

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Centuries.

Malik feels shaken as he takes in how very far the world seems to have progressed in his fit of madness. He has no other word to call the black morass of disjointed memories he tries to ignore. The shards bright and wickedly sharp.

He hates himself for having allowed it to happen. Years of betrayal and time spent in the slim mercies of Abbas had not done what his time in this prison did by leaving him alone. Malik had broken, completely and utterly. It shames him to think of it, and the fact that there is no one to have seen his failure is a bitter salve on his pride.

Malik throws himself into his travels, and picks up the trail of the world as he works to catch up to it. He finds the Templars trail all too easily, and it dismays him to find their enemy not as beaten as he and Altair had thought. Through them he finds the changed trails of the Brotherhood, and Malik begins to study. Looking at names and dates and wars and battles. Religions, cities, and kingdoms rise and topple almost too quickly for him to catch their significance before going to the next era.

His travels are slow and take him from country to country. The entire world open for him until it no longer is. Malik learns of another land -and he remembers now the maps that Altair had made, the impossible lines Malik had once scoffed at- but their secrets are denied to him by the vast ocean. His own two feet all he has to transport himself, and Malik knows enough to not even dare to think he could take the ocean on his own.

There is enough still to learn to keep Malik busy though, and he thinks nothing of the lands he cannot see.

There is coal and steam and gas. There are machines and industrialization. There is electricity. It jumps forward at a rate of speed he can barely keep up with. Inventions and articles explaining the mechanics of it all abound. There are philosphies and rulers. Templar plots and Assassin expansions.

It is almost enough.

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The first human voice he hears stuns Malik enough to nearly bring him to his knees. The recording skips from his sudden jerk back and he almost strains himself steadying the table to bring the voice back. It's a woman's voice, singing words he would not understand even if he were able to concentrate on anything but another person's voice.

It's been too long since Malik heard any voice but his own, and even that has been silent too long. Malik laughs and pulls up a low stool to the machine he's spent days studying and learning to operate. He rests his head on the table and closes his eyes as the woman sings. He starts the recording over again when it ends. Again and again as he remembers what people sound like.

Malik knows a dozen languages, and three times as many dialects. He can read it, he can write it, but speech is a new avenue that he slowly learns. Books are unhelpful, even the ones that try to explain pronunciation are of little help. The recordings are better. More so as they become more widely used around the world. The machines to operate them change, and Malik makes a point to keep up with it. To always have one near and playing, to fill up the silence.

The recordings are mostly music still, with singers becoming more popular, but he finds ones that are nothing but spoken words. Poets and philosophers that he slowly translates. That he plays over and over again to absorb the words, absorb the voices, and learn the languages he already knows.

It distracts him far more than anything else has in far too long, and Malik hears the rust fall from his own voice as he speaks to himself. Foreign words falling into the void he does not acknowledge.

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As ever, humanity takes these new inventions and runs with them. Malik drifts along and watches as machines become steadily more complex and involved. Until the rate of his reading is outstripped by them, and he has to pick and choose which ones to keep up with.

Radios do not work here, so he follows the records across lands. Finding himself in a cold, hard land for a good long time. Listening and watching the landscape change under a revolution he barely knows about. He can only see the effects it leaves behind.

Movies throw him again when he leaves that land and finds out how rapidly other countries have leapt forward. History is as violent as ever, and Malik notes the large wars that have happened -seeing the Brotherhood and the Order woven in between the lines- as he studies one of the most involved machines he's seen yet.

The buildings to house them are already set up for their use, but threading a reel of the near transparent film through the machine with one hand is not an easy task. Managing the controls are easier but no less complicated.

It's worth it to see the image of people flicker across a bare wall. Their mouths moving out of synch with the sound, telling him he has done something wrong, but Malik lets it play on. Uncaring of anything except for how these images move and seem so very real. More and more so as the years go by and humanity improves.

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He keeps close track of the Templars and the Assassins. Keeps up with the plots and the war. He watches as both sides change. A little for the better and a little for the worse. Panic is starting to edge into both though, and Malik is aware enough of the date to know why.

Altair had ever been insistent on that part when he left the Apple. Pale and so very shaken from what he had seen but would not fully share with anyone.

The Animus project is something that Malik can barely comprehend when he first finds allusions to it. The plans are not laid out anywhere Malik can access and, while his skills with computers are reasonable, without the proper intelligence from the living world he is essentially stumbling around blindly.

What he can find on the project is disturbing. Mining the past by use of this new machine doesn't seem like it should work to him, or if it does, it seems like it should come with horrific consequences.

He is right, in that last regard. Time passes and Malik finds reports detailing the effects of the machine on people. The degeneration that is quick and deadly when not managed, but slow and painful when managed. He reads files and notes filled with details of people who are almost never named.

Their too long existence a study of pain and madness the likes of which he can barely imagine. Some are Assassins, either through birth or choice. Some are innocents caught in the Templar's monstrous sights. A few are even Templars themselves with the bad luck to have the right lineage. Side does not seem to matter to them.

Nor, does it seem to matter to the Assassins. Malik sees the same reports in their hands, and sees their own notes. Their own investigations and wonderings on how this Animus can be used to their benefit. He watches through his removed station as they arrange things. Playing the same game as the Templars. Arranging marriages and placing their own people in positions he would not have thought of even in the most desperate of times.

They play the same game as the Templars, until Malik has a hard time distinguishing one side from another.

.

.

Malik has forgotten what it was like to be summoned, and the feeling of it leaves him stunned for a moment until he realizes where he is. Until he recognizes the room.

The Templar's prison for those they experiment on with their newest machine. Malik hasn't been here in a while. The things happening to people he will never really know except as a number, and occasionally as a name, far too much for him to handle following for very long. Not when there is nothing he can do to stop it.

There's a man on the decadently large bed of the room and Malik realizes that it's happening again. He's gone utterly mad once more. The man looks like no one that Malik has ever seen before, but every part of him is made up of pieces from those he has known. He has Maria's light brown eyes, the light skin of Sef, Darim's angular face, and Altair's scar bisecting his mouth.

The feeling of being summoned is right, but this dream he finds himself in is too real for it. The man too familiar to not be made up by his mind. All that is familiar brought in from his past and injected into the events he's been following so closely in the present.

Malik sits next to the man regardless and stares right back. Hand reaching out to touch an arm that feels solid and real, and he grips it tightly. Feeling life and skin under his fingers, and Malik finds he doesn't care anymore. Does not care that this is madness, that this is him breaking again as the man's lips curl up in a warm smile.

He's not alone.

.

.

The hallucination is named Desmond, and Malik laughs at the subtle threads his mind is pulling together for this illusion. Malik watches the man in the brief moments that his bouts of madness last.

When Desmond speaks it's with a familiar accent despite the fact that the country they are in being so very far removed in both distance and time from Masyaf. He's a tired man being dragged though a war that he wants no part of. Desmond freely admits he had run from the Assassins to escape it all, and had fallen into Templar hands eventually. It bothers Malik. The insinuation that choice is being taken away in the Brotherhood. He has seen it though in the texts -physical and electronic- over the years as the Templars solidify their upper hand on the world and the number of Assassins dwindles, but it has never sat well with him.

People are being pushed to become that which they should not be, and this Desmond is one of them. The man is unsuited for the life of an Assassin, and not only because he doesn't want to be one. There's a hesitation in him when he talks about killing. A buried regret that haunts his eyes as he shies away from it. Malik knows it, has seen it in many Novices he had to pull away from the path of an Assassin and push onto the path of a Rafiq. Not everyone is capable of killing, or are able to deal with the consequences of it.

Malik does not begrudge Desmond that, nor does he think less of him for it. The world would be an even darker place than it is now if everyone were capable of killing.

"I don't know why I keep coming here," Desmond says as he wanders the bare room. His fingers tracing patterns on the wall. The same patterns in the same place every time, and Malik wonders if there's something there he cannot see. "We escaped about three months ago."

"Where else would you be?" Malik asks, curious because this is the only area he knows Desmond to interact in.

"Well," Desmond stops wandering and frowns before he turns back to Malik. He smiles suddenly, and the ease of it is nothing that Malik has ever seen before in anyone else. "I always liked Jerusalem. Maybe there next time?"

It has been a while since Malik spent time in the city. The city as it exists now, or the city as he knew it best. He wonders if Desmond will change in the new setting or if his mind will keep the man the same. "That sounds acceptable."

.

.

Malik is stunned again when Desmond appears, because he does not come alone. The empty streets Malik has been wandering look the same but between one moment and the next they are filled with people.

Civilians, merchants, guards, beggars, and lepers deafen him and Malik stumbles to a bench. Sitting down hard as he watches the life that swells up around him. He's so caught up in it that he barely notices when Desmond sits next to him. "I liked it here better than anywhere else. Even Masyaf."

His voice is wistful and Malik blinks hard before swallowing. "I can't say the same."

He had grown up in Masyaf, and even when it had been hostile he had loved his home the most. He misses it still, but his trips there are brief when he can't avoid it. He reaches out to his right, Desmond always sits there when given the choice, and fits his fingers around Desmond's forearm. Gripping tight as ever. Fingers sliding down to feel the pulse of life in his veins that Malik thinks about sometimes in between these fits. Remembering how it felt to feel someone again, the buzzing thrill of it. Like the shocks he has experienced when fumbling with machines that use electricity.

"You were always here though," Desmond says in surprise, and Malik still can't quite pin down the time frame of his life Desmond claims to know. He fears asking outright, and lets it go.

"Not by choice," the emptiness at his left is familiar now. Malik has now lived without his arm far longer than he has lived with it. It still aches at times, less so than it did while he was alive. "My time here was an exile. A useful one, but still an exile."

"Very useful," Desmond agrees and ducks his head when Malik manages to tear his eyes away from the living streets. The sound of a hundred voices muting to something more comfortable and familiar to him. He holds his arm very still under Malik's hand and his eyes stick to the point almost as if he is as hungry for the touch as Malik.

It takes his breath away again. His encounters with Desmond always remind him of things he hasn't thought about in so long. The touch of another, the desire of touching a lover is another new remembrance for him. It would be easy, so very easy to go further. Desmond is a reflection of Malik's wants, everything he has craved for far too long. He would not pull away if Malik were to try.

It does not change the fact that it would not be real though. Malik enjoys this, enjoys these moments, but he is too much himself still to allow it to go to that level.

"Yes, my ultimate goal in life, to be useful to bumbling Novices and disgraced Assassins," Malik lets go of Desmond but can't quite manage to look away from him or the smile that twists his lips up as he laughs.

There's an almost unnoticeable shift and Desmond stops laughing fast, regret in his eyes when he looks up and Malik has a moment to brace himself before the man leaves. The crowd leaves with him, and Malik is left alone on the bench in a ringing silence that seems greater now than ever before.

.

.

He cannot stop touching though no matter how often he tells himself he will not allow himself to fall that far. His fits are regular, they occur far more often than any of the summons had so long ago. Malik has plenty of chances to remind himself, and just as many chances to break his resolve.

And it does break. Every time when Desmond is in touching distance.

"No, no," Desmond mimes an action that Malik doesn't really follow. "A mortar grinds things up so it can be dissolved. A muddler breaks it up just enough to get the essence out without dissolving everything."

"If you say so," alcohol has evolved into an art form. Malik has seen enough to know that, but the intricacies of it don't really interest him as much as the obvious enthusiasm Desmond has for it.

The man is animated as he explains different drinks and how to make them. The city sings around them with shouts and cries that Malik hardly pays attention to anymore. He's far more interested in watching Desmond and tracing the black lines that have appeared on his left arm.

"Yeah, not sure if I really want to get this," Desmond stops talking about layers to hold his arm up more. He twists it and admires the marks. A tattoo, Malik had never been very interested in the growing fashion before. "Rebecca messed with the Animus so I can try it out first. What do you think?"

The lines are neat and sinuous. Overly dramatic with symbolism perhaps but it fits his skin well. "It suits you."

"Yeah?" Desmond's grin is self-conscious and Malik has long stopped comparing him to those he once knew. "Shaun says it's my drunk frat side showing."

"Hm," Malik doesn't stop touching and Desmond doesn't pull away. "And if I knew what that meant I am sure I might agree. It suits you Desmond, but that does not mean it is not a stupid idea."

Desmond throws his head back and laughs. Malik memorizes the sound, because these brief moments remind him what enough feels like.

.

.

Malik finds himself dreaming about Desmond. Hazy dreams where neither of them talk but are every bit as comforting as the hallucinations that come along more frequently as time passes. Dreams that spill out into his waking existence. Malik looking up from something meant to keep him busy and finding himself not alone. A ghostly vision of Desmond watching him but saying nothing. It's a comfort that he takes and damns himself for more and more.

.

.

"I've gone completely mad," Malik says as he walks the edge of sandy ground and water. It's the longest he's ever been in one of his episodes, and for the first time it is not Desmond who greets him when it starts. Malik finds himself on an island, and faced with a new face that he does and does not know.

Clay is nothing like the man he expected from the few things he learned from the reports. The man speaks rapid English, but does not mock the words Malik mispronounces as he talks back to this new figure. He seems unsurprised that Malik knows him though he's visibly suspicious.

"You're not crazy, you know that right? This is all actually happening," the man waves at the impossible island they're on. "I know crazy, man, and you're not it. Not sure exactly what you are though."

"Where is Desmond?" Malik asks after studying the man beside him. He's not sure that man is the correct word though. There's something off about him that Malik cannot place. More than the fact that parts of him seem to wink in and out of existence when he moves too quickly.

"In the past," Clay points his thumb at a shimmering wall of dark light. "Watching the last of Ezio and Altair's lives. Getting to the point where he can tear their memories out from his own and not have his brains leak out of his ears. Maybe even start going sane again."

"He is sane," Malik says. His certainty in a lot of things has been tested lately, and this new person, being, is pushing him further than he likes.

"No, he's really not. Neither am I," Clay says with a laugh that's sharp. "The Animus does a number on us all. Are you a program?"

"What?" Malik looks around at the vividly blue sky and the water that seems more real than any of the sea or oceans he's seen lately.

"A program, it's a-"

"I am aware what a program is," Malik finds little of interest in what he can see and turns back to Clay. "I existed before computers, and have watched them be created. I'm well aware of many things."

"Hey," Clay holds both hands up peaceably, but there's a sly hint of a grin on his face. "I've got some vague ideas on who you are, and very little on what you're doing here. Which is kind of off putting to think about. I'm supposed to know a lot more."

Clay blinks in and out of existence and Malik eyes him as he solidifies again. "Are you even real?"

"Maybe, maybe not. I'm not really sure," Clay tucks his hands into the openings of his clothing. Shrugging carelessly as he quotes something that sounds rehearsed, "Cogito ergo sum."

.

.

Malik wonders if he should have shared more of what he knew with Desmond. The things he has learned. The details of the people who had gone before him, the betrayal of Lucy that had been inevitable from the time Malik had seen her communication with Clay. A man who had been a number until then, and was very quickly dead after that. He wonders if it would have changed things, he wonders if maybe he would have started questioning things sooner had he tried.

Clay flits in and out of existence, Desmond pushes hard to relive the past, and Malik wanders alone. Thinking about the pointed words Clay makes sure to drop when he's here, and the way Desmond seems to be uncovering things that should be beyond Malik's mind to invent. How this is the most benign form of madness possible, and how that in and of itself should have been a sign he was not going mad.

"It's all real you know," Clay says as he makes a reckless move on their chess board. Either a gambit to cover some other plan, or him growing impatient with the game. Either is very likely. "And let me tell you how funny it is that the crazy man is telling you what's real and what's not."

It's brief moments that make Malik wonder. Clay's certainty, Desmond's increasingly desperate hold on Malik when he pauses long enough to rest. Does Malik even know what real is anymore?

.

.

After the island, finding himself back in Jerusalem is a shock. The world he has known for so long unreal when compared to the shifting landscape he has just left, and the sporadic appearance of Clay. Desmond's exhaustion and knowing looks as he'd lived to the sorry end of both of his ancestor's lives. His forehead pressing hard against Malik's back the one time he'd hesitantly brought up how Malik died. It seems more real than anything Malik has experienced in a good long while, and he realizes that he's starting to do more than question. He start to believe the things that Clay had said.

The apparition of a woman floating just off the the ground seems to seal it in his mind. Malik looks up at her and feels small under her haughty gaze. He does not like the feeling.

"You have a taste of what my prison has been like," the woman is nothing like anyone Malik has ever seen before, and her gaze freezes something inside of him. Her voice echoes and bounces off the silent walls. Seems to echo in his very mind itself as she judges him for some purpose only she knows. "You are useful, I will allow you to continue," the woman smiles in the brief seconds before she disappears, and it's filled with malice and is not something he ever wants to see again.

.

.

Malik is not going mad. He is not hallucinating when he is summoned, because Desmond is real. The things he speaks of in passing are happening. Time, nebulous and faulty in the world Malik lives in, is very real and counting down in Desmond's. Malik can see it in the lines that begin to crease Desmond's face, the bruises that begin to darken the skin under his eyes. He sees him more and more now. In the moments before a memory loads in the Animus, something close enough to a dream that Malik can reach out and touch him. Can feel the heat and life he had taken as fake under his hand, and know that its time is limited.

"Isolation is a terrible thing," Malik remarks as Desmond finishes speaking about the ghost of Juno and her venomous messages. His mind not on the woman at all, but fixed on the way he can reach out to Desmond now without losing anymore of his mind. "It can break anyone so very easily."

"She's dangerous, I," Desmond sighs and wanders around a broken pillar, but not far enough to break the hold Malik has on his wrist, "I don't think I'm going to survive this."

The words are soft and reluctant. A soft spoken truth that he does not want to face and Malik feels himself go cold. He is going to be alone again very soon.

.

.

I can be kind and merciful for those who serve me so well. You need not be alone in this.

The words seem to fill the world, and etch themselves on his mind. The voice he knows from the one time he had seen the woman known as Juno. Hearing her voice again fills him with dread and he sits. His back sliding down the wall of the courtyard until he's resting on a few cushions. The words echoing in his mind ominously.

He does not know everything, but he knows enough. He's not stupid enough not have picked up on the seriousness of the matter. The desperation from both sides to stop this coming devastation has ramped up to levels he's never seen before. The disaster is powerful and nigh unstoppable. It takes no special intelligence to know that the price to stop it would be high. That it would take a sacrifice.

It is why Malik has been denying the summons. Something he has never done before, but has been very easy to do.

Denying what he now knows is real. He once watched his own son pass into death before him, he once waited in vain for his closest friend to summon him again. Malik has not wanted to be subjected to that again. Not so soon after allowing himself to think that Desmond actually exists.

Existed.

Juno's voice does not come again, but her triumph and sadistic glee had bled through in those few words. Malik sits and waits for the shock to wear off. For the grief he knows so well to come back. The grief the regret the anger the insanity he thought he had succumbed to again. It waits on the edges of his consciousness for him to only acknowledge it before it takes him.

He's stopped from making a decision by a figure falling through the grate.

Desmond looks fine, looks a little better than he had seen him last. There's a tightness around his eyes and mouth. A lingering pain, but otherwise he looks fine for a dead man. Desmond stands up and his eyes are locked on Malik. The brown showing almost all the way around from how wide they are. There's a muted disbelief as he walks forward.

"How long have you been here?" Desmond demands as he crouches and Malik watches his hand come up. The touch of solid fingers against his face is startling and Malik sucks in a deep breath as Desmond pushes forward. Not allowing him to jerk away. "Like this?" Desmond's eyes flick over his face and his voice is pleading, "Malik, answer me."

Malik reaches up and runs his hand up Desmond's. Turning his eyes to trace the stark black lines he knows so very well, because this is real. Desmond is real, has always been real. The shock wears off slowly, but the grief that comes is insignificant under the fierce and selfish joy he feels as he curls his hand around Desmond to anchor him here. To keep him with Malik.

"I thought I was finally going mad," Malik offers his explanation for want of anything else to say. Desmond listens intently. Drinking in his words like he always has, and Malik wonders how a man who had been alive in the world could have been so lonely as to reach out for him. "To imagine not being alone any longer. I welcomed it, Desmond," more and more with each episode of his madness. With each word Desmond said, and each smile he gave. Every single time he allowed Malik to reach out and touch him. Even now, his fingers curl against Malik's cheek and he leans into it more. "Even knowing it was my own mind failing me I welcomed the respite. I relished the company, even if it was so utterly foreign. Anything was preferable to being so alone."

"Malik, how?" Desmond shifts forward and grasps his face with both hands, pulling his head up to look at him even though Malik can no longer look away.

"I don't know. It was," Malik has had too long to go over his memories, to think and wonder, "it was that damned Apple."

That thing had never done anyone any good, and Malik loathes it. He skims his hand up Desmond's arm. Feeling the way warm skin gives to soft cloth before he has hold of Desmond's nape. It takes so very little force to pull him in even closer. Until Malik can rest their heads close, cheek to cheek, and feel Desmond's weight settle over him. Real and solid and here.

"Abbas couldn't use it," Desmond's voice is distant as he speaks. "It was too much for him."

"Swami," Malik spits out before laughing, because Desmond was there. Desmond has seen some of the best, some of the worst years of Malik's life. He should know this better than Malik. "The whore son kissed the shit Abbas walked on, he'd do anything for his master's approval! Though I know not what he did, or why I ended up like this."

"No one else?" Desmond asks and there's a stunned shock in his voice as his hands tighten, pulling until Malik is nearly buried in his body.

"I used to be able to reach out. To those I knew, to those who thought my name," the summons flit across his mind but Malik does not think he will experience them again. Desmond might though, and will need to know a bit more. Later. "In dreams or thought, I could touch them. For only a fraction of a moment."

Desmond shudders, and Malik feels the movement shake through him.

"I am not mad," Malik repeats the words that Clay had felt the need to say to him so often in their short acquaintance. His assurances more than empty words now and then.

"No, just dead," Desmond confirms and Malik can feel the way his cheek twitches under a smile.

Malik pulls back and laughs, because they're both dead. Desmond doesn't let go as Malik tries to put distance between them and they both go down in a tangle of limbs that Malik cannot find in him to mind. Desmond is smiling, wide and bright and Malik wants -suddenly and desperately- to know everything. To know all the details of everything. Desmond, his life, the world he's so removed from, the past that he has lived, and the future he has saved. "Tell me."

Desmond goes quiet and his eyes are solemn, but he doesn't ask questions and begins to talk. "I was born on a compound."

.

.

"I'm sorry," Desmond says much later, his hands are light as they trace something against the palm of his hand. The touch is still electric and Malik's tongue is weighed down with it. Desmond is lying again. There isn't a trace of sorrow in his face at all, and Malik will have to ask him now why he apologizes so often. "But I'm glad it happened. I wouldn't have made it without you."

Desmond has been brittle for a while. Malik remembers when he would see the ghost of the man staring at him from the courtyard at times. Eyes large and filled with a strange madness that only seemed to ebb when Malik would silently allow him to just exist. He remembers Clay's words, the experiences of a man whose mind was torn apart slowly. Piece by piece until there was nothing but lunatic ravings left.

Even on the island that kept both men sane, that madness had been apparent.

"I am glad too," Malik says eventually, and isn't even lying when he says it. He smirks up at Desmond who is staring at him with wide eyes. "Given the chance, I would not do it again, but I am glad that I was able to help you. That my suffering has not been entirely in vain."

He curls his hand and catches Desmond's fingers. There is still more to say, so much more to learn, but they have time for that and Malik isn't nearly so desperate now. Sleep allowing him enough time to process much of his shock. He brings his hand up and hesitates on habit -his reasons for not doing this are shot down fast because this is real- before smirking. He presses a kiss to the fingers in his hand and watches as Desmond's fair cheeks fill slowly with a flush. His eyes fixing on him with no small amount of wonder. He knows Desmond better now at least, and the lack of names in his recital of life is very telling. Desmond has been alone for a long time.

"It will be easier now, for both of us I think," Malik allows Desmond to pull his hand away but only because the man is leaning forward.

His lips are soft and the sweetest thing Malik has tasted in a long while. Especially when he opens up so easily for his tongue. Malik takes Desmond's mouth slowly, paying attention to every detail as the man settles in against his side. A long line of heat and solidity that Malik will never take for granted. He parts reluctantly but the two hands in his hair do not allow him to get very far.

Desmond is grinning, and his voice is breathless as he pushes closer, "Yeah? I think I can live with that."

It is not perfect, it is not remotely the best outcome for either of them, but this is enough for Malik. Finally.

.

.