Altair, he can hear Altair’s voice. He can hear it because he is speaking Altair’s thoughts with no control over his own tongue, as he has so many times. His lips move again.
You must leave this place.
There is something urging in Ezio’s voice, kind but stern.
You shouldn’t be here.
Connor sounds slightly surprised.
He struggles against the blinding light.
The next time he is forced to speak again, he can’t. There are too many voices trying to gain control. It starts out as a slight buzzing and swells too an uproar. Female, male. A hundred different tongues. These voices, these memories are all that’s left of them in the world. They’re all him, each a tiny part of him.
They’re all Desmond. They all want to get away from the light.
When Desmond opened his eyes, there was darkness.
-
It took him a while to turn around on his stomach and even longer to persuade his body to move. He was underground, he guessed. The few noises he heard were hollow and the darkness above him too uniform to be the sky. Desmond had no idea how long he’d been lying in this cave or where this cave was or why he was here or, beyond the names, Altair, Ezio, Connor, Desmond, that successive line of names that had to go in this order and no other, who he was.
He knew nothing but he could feel his throat dry as sandpaper. The far away trickling sound of water eventually drove him on, forcing himself along the flat surface of a walkway, shaking fingers searching for tiny cracks to hold on to, to pull himself forward.
Desmond could see. By the time he fully realised why, he had already crawled between two huge towering shadows, like pillars of a door. Onwards, there was light coming from somewhere in the ceiling, yes, very faint and far above. But the stones in front of Desmond were illuminated by the faint glow of his own hands. Each finger was adorned with a straight turquoise line and they ran together like rivulets into a greater current at the back of his hand and then trailed up his wrist. The light vanished behind his sleeve.
Desmond reached a small stream running down the cracked rocks by following the guiding light of his own grip. Greedily pressing his lips against the stone, he drank and drank, until his parched throat hurt.
His right hand laid in the stream. The water shimmered as it passed, leaping over his fingers, the spray catching the green-blue light. A spark.
After drinking, it was a bit easier to move, but his body was still as uncooperative as it got. He could recall doing this before, fleeing wounded from a town being reduced to rubble behind him, stumbling more dead than alive after a man that he needed to kill more than he himself needed to live, but he was neither fleeing nor pursuing now. His head was empty, he existed in a void. As far as he could say, he had spent centuries in this dark hollow room.
Eventually the empty hole in him reminded him that he should get something to eat. That took another long while. As he stumbled through the ruins, he eventually found a rectangular block that was a bit different from most other rectangular blocks here. The flat crystal panel in its side must have glowed orange at some point. He just knew that somehow. There were other memories gnawing at the back of his mind, but they vanished when he tried to focus on them, like some simple word you knew for sure, but that somehow, temporarily, dropped out of your brain just as you needed it.
There was something grey and mushy on top of the rectangle, spilling out of a tube. He touched it. The texture was somewhere between pudding and glue.
Desmond picked it up and stuffed it in his mouth.
It tasted like...
“It really does taste like cardboard,” Desmond said after he’d swallowed.
To the sound of his own voice, Desmond’s life came rushing back to him.
Shaun/Desmond: Come again (1/?)
Altair, he can hear Altair’s voice. He can hear it because he is speaking Altair’s thoughts with no control over his own tongue, as he has so many times. His lips move again.
You must leave this place.
There is something urging in Ezio’s voice, kind but stern.
You shouldn’t be here.
Connor sounds slightly surprised.
He struggles against the blinding light.
The next time he is forced to speak again, he can’t. There are too many voices trying to gain control. It starts out as a slight buzzing and swells too an uproar. Female, male. A hundred different tongues. These voices, these memories are all that’s left of them in the world. They’re all him, each a tiny part of him.
They’re all Desmond. They all want to get away from the light.
When Desmond opened his eyes, there was darkness.
-
It took him a while to turn around on his stomach and even longer to persuade his body to move. He was underground, he guessed. The few noises he heard were hollow and the darkness above him too uniform to be the sky. Desmond had no idea how long he’d been lying in this cave or where this cave was or why he was here or, beyond the names, Altair, Ezio, Connor, Desmond, that successive line of names that had to go in this order and no other, who he was.
He knew nothing but he could feel his throat dry as sandpaper. The far away trickling sound of water eventually drove him on, forcing himself along the flat surface of a walkway, shaking fingers searching for tiny cracks to hold on to, to pull himself forward.
Desmond could see. By the time he fully realised why, he had already crawled between two huge towering shadows, like pillars of a door. Onwards, there was light coming from somewhere in the ceiling, yes, very faint and far above. But the stones in front of Desmond were illuminated by the faint glow of his own hands. Each finger was adorned with a straight turquoise line and they ran together like rivulets into a greater current at the back of his hand and then trailed up his wrist. The light vanished behind his sleeve.
Desmond reached a small stream running down the cracked rocks by following the guiding light of his own grip. Greedily pressing his lips against the stone, he drank and drank, until his parched throat hurt.
His right hand laid in the stream. The water shimmered as it passed, leaping over his fingers, the spray catching the green-blue light. A spark.
After drinking, it was a bit easier to move, but his body was still as uncooperative as it got. He could recall doing this before, fleeing wounded from a town being reduced to rubble behind him, stumbling more dead than alive after a man that he needed to kill more than he himself needed to live, but he was neither fleeing nor pursuing now. His head was empty, he existed in a void. As far as he could say, he had spent centuries in this dark hollow room.
Eventually the empty hole in him reminded him that he should get something to eat. That took another long while. As he stumbled through the ruins, he eventually found a rectangular block that was a bit different from most other rectangular blocks here. The flat crystal panel in its side must have glowed orange at some point. He just knew that somehow. There were other memories gnawing at the back of his mind, but they vanished when he tried to focus on them, like some simple word you knew for sure, but that somehow, temporarily, dropped out of your brain just as you needed it.
There was something grey and mushy on top of the rectangle, spilling out of a tube. He touched it. The texture was somewhere between pudding and glue.
Desmond picked it up and stuffed it in his mouth.
It tasted like...
“It really does taste like cardboard,” Desmond said after he’d swallowed.
To the sound of his own voice, Desmond’s life came rushing back to him.
-