To Understand Why

[madimpossibledreamer]

Lots of rephrasing.
I was thinking about why he wasn’t teaching any of his students fighting through sparring and suddenly realized he’s still freaking out about nearly killing Shaun and doesn’t want to do that again.
Some of the ak’ab sounds are very cat-like, which is why the cats are confused.

Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World

Summary: Desmond visits the haunted mansion while he's nearby.
Word Count: 2752
Rating: Teen

        The mansion has a CDC van parked haphazardly out in the front, so Desmond half expects the old widow to not be alone, if she’d even actually alive. The doors are wide open, but the only thing waiting in the entrance is cats, staring wide-eyed, hissing or twitching their tails and less than welcoming at the intrusion. Rukh just stares back, and Bob decides that the best way to deal with everything is a playful charge that the cats don’t seem to appreciate, though they do seem a little confused at his chirps.
        Something about the whole mansion feels hostile. Desmond would think it’s his imagination, given that the only person that should be here is the widow, even if she hadn’t been represented too flatteringly by the book (no matter the author’s intent). He would, except for the assertion that the house really is haunted combined with the fact that he’s absolutely fought ghosts before. And he’s seen the Park and the Black House. It’s not exactly like those two. It’s absolutely more like he’s walked into somewhere with security, or maybe that wannabe hitman that kept trying to kill him. Like there’s something, someone who wants him dead, but it’s not the entire house. If this is from the house and not just impressions from the ghosts haunting the place, it’s...conflicted. If that’s even the right word for this.
        Switching into Eagle Vision automatically doesn’t show him much of anything too important, though—well, there is someone probably living in here, but that pretty much just gets confirmed by the very human voice that calls out to greet them. “I figured my husband was conjuring specters outta the fog—he’s prone to do that, you know—but what do you know, he was right? If you’re looking for the CDC folks, they went to go take readings from the swamp out past the gates all of a few days ago. Come in, come in. No parties these days, and not much in the way of hospitality either, but what I have’s yours. Mind the ghosts, though.”
        She sounds a whole lot more friendly than she had in the book, though that might have to do with editing and the way Allen steered the conversation. Everything Desmond thought he’d known about cats suggested that they’d at least come over to claim visitors for their own territory, or maybe hiss or run away. Oddly, they all keep their distance and just stare or go about their business, entirely uninterested by visitors. Lydia’s the one who actually feels the need to ask about the woman’s greeting. “Isn’t...isn’t your husband dead?” she asks cautiously. Rude, sure, but being straightforward isn’t always a bad thing and she’s being a lot more thoughtful about when she uses her bluntness.
        Eleanor Franklin laughs, waving that off, cigarette in hand. “Dead doesn’t mean gone. Figured if you’d been around on this island long, you would’ve worked that out by now. He’s hardly the conversationalist he was before everything went wrong, but that’s hardly his fault, poor dear. Not just being dead. Ed was all torn up about the self-defense.” She goes to the open door to the patio, stares out into the fog. “It wasn’t just that, mind. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, between wellness checks. Locals generous as ever, the Sheriff making sure I didn’t croak in the night, and the Reverend all concerned about my immortal soul. Church-going didn’t seem too important, after finding him in the attic. Very little does.”
        She takes a deep drag from the cigarette, as if trying to organize her thoughts in the smoke. “It wasn’t the house. It’s a crooked house, sure, but that’s not what changed him. He was a good man to the end, mind you,” she points at Desmond like she’d known he was skeptical about a lot of things, but that point in particular. “I’d thought it was the Indians’ curse, at first. Like they were blaming us for whatever happened with the Devores ages and ages ago. Or even that their medicine man had actually attacked him, brought it on himself.”
        Her gaze into the distance is lost, like she’s somehow trying to peer back through the mists of time. “Ed doesn’t seem too convinced. I used to think that’s the guilt talking, but now, I’m not so sure. The house is what it is, but something’s wrong with Blue Ridge, and that’s where everything started to break. Maybe he was seeing things that weren’t there, like the nightmares, and it was nobody’s fault—nobody’s but whatever’s wrong with the mine. The ghosts here don’t give me much trouble, but I reckon that just makes me lucky, because the mine and the Black House are restless. Sometimes you can hear the miners—our friends—on the wind, if you listen just right. He really was scared for his own life, I know that, even when he didn’t. He stopped sleeping, started writing on everything instead. I’m starting to wonder if the nightmares were more of the mine working on him. If they didn’t just keep taking and taking from him. If they don’t have unfinished business, still hungry. And I know now that the Indians were trying to help, trying to keep the mine asleep, only they didn’t know the right words to make us listen.”
        She’s quiet for long enough, now, that Desmond’s fairly sure she’s done with her story. If this is how the interview went, it had to have taken a lot of editing to get rid of the fact that she talks about ghosts about every other sentence. “Do you know where he left those writings? Can he tell us anything useful? We’ve been trying to track down an old associate of the man who built this mansion.”
        She glances at a corner of the room like there’s a ghost there they can’t see and then shakes her head. “I’ve asked before, but that’s one of the things he lost. You’re welcome to look. Sorry about the clutter. I didn’t have the heart to throw out any of the ghost’s things, them still living here and all.”
        That’s...strange to think about. Not that Desmond doesn’t have stuff he cares about—his hoodie, for one—but he’d basically gotten used to not having possessions of his own. “Though I suppose they don’t all deserve their place. Did you know old Frank Devore was given the rope for murdering his child bride?”
        Desmond blinks, even as Rukh clacks his beak in harsh disapproval. “I...didn’t, no,” he responds, because that’s another pretty important omission on the part of the guy who wrote the book. And then, last minute, he remembers his manners. “Thank you.”
        “Oh, don’t mention it, dearie.” She’s interrupted from any further attempts at hospitality by the cats, who have gotten tired of boring human conversations and seem to have decided, rather strongly, that it’s time for them to be fed, because one has now begun clawing at her ankles and isn’t being particularly gentle about it. It’s actually a little good to know that it’s not just Rukh capable of being a brat, though the raven does his best to look completely innocent when Desmond just turns his head to try to look at him.
        Finding the secret room is a whole lot easier for someone with Eagle Vision, thankfully. He just has to walk out from the living room she’s in to the hallway outside and glance to the right. The wall right outside the living room she’s in is glowing, and so is the painting between the two. Typical church-type stuff Desmond—or rather, Ezio—had seen over and over again, though not all of them have writing painted on, too: in inferno nulla est redemptio. That sounds familiar, but it’s Nate who confirms after a moment, glancing back down at his phone, “...that’s one of the Liturgies, I think? ‘There is no redemption in Hell.’”
        Chelsea probably would have figured it out faster, but they all have their specialties. It’s not like knowing what it means is even probably necessary, but it’s interesting, and...honestly, more than a little morbid. Not that Desmond really had the chance to decorate all that much, but it’s not the kind of painting he’d choose even if he did. Still, if saying the words didn’t make a difference, it’s not the inscription that’s important. It probably doesn’t even offer an insight into Frank Devore, since it’s probably something about Devore’s own enemies, rather than the man actually feeling any kind of guilt over being a piece of shit to his workers, his wife, or the native tribe. If he has to, Desmond will try imitating the pose in the painting, but at the moment he’s going to try something else—the place on the frame where the figure is pointing. Fortunately, that works. The wall swings inward.
        It is unfortunately familiar, and Desmond freezes very briefly before Rukh nuzzles his ear. Because she hadn’t been kidding about writing on everything. He’d started with pens and pencils and Sharpies, but somewhere along the line Edmund Franklin had turned to blood, just like Clay, though he’d also plastered pages on the walls. It’s seemingly the same kind of nonsense, too. Desmond pulls out his phone and starts recording everything, because it feels important, and maybe not just for this.
        His head’s feeling a little funny, but he can keep going, because there’s phrases there—dead suns, the scream of life, dreaming ones, old gods, the hungry dark—but he feels the others move into the room. And while FB could stand for a lot of things, he has the feeling that it’s actually a sign he’s on the right track for learning what Beaumont’s been up to. Lydia moves to the bookshelf and starts looking at all the books. It suddenly occurs to Desmond that it’s maybe not safe for her to be reading some of the books, especially if they’re curse booby-trapped, but he’s mostly still trying to stay standing and conscious and functional. At least he’s doing better than after the first time seeing Beaumont.
        Alice moves past him, going straight to the strongbox. From a glance, it looks like the same symbols from the one on the ship, and she knows the ‘usual combination’ Shaun had referred to, between the eye and the triangle. “The deep shaft is the source,” she announces, letting Nate look over her shoulder with only the slightest hesitation.
        “Honeyed ancestors, interesting. I’d usually think that would refer to Bees, but ancestors? Bees weren’t really empowered until recently,” Nate muses, and Desmond shakes his head.
        It’s not like he knows, obviously, but if his experiences in the other world map at all onto this one, and they seem to, so far, then nothing about this is exactly new. This kind of stuff tends to be more cyclical. He could see it being less of a mass thing, though. “Maybe there weren’t so many, in the past,” he suggests, ignoring the weird look Nate’s giving him. He finishes up taking video of everything when his phone rings. It’s Madame Rogêt again, which is...good, in some ways, because it feels like she hasn’t called in forever and it’s good to know she’s still okay. (It’s wrong, of course; they’d talked about the soldier, but out here in the fog especially without the rhythm of Shaun or Rebecca checking in every now and then it’s easy to lose track of time. It’s stopped feeling real, in some ways, like it had in the Animus.)
        “Hey, holding up okay?” he asks.
        She sounds tired, but a smile creeps into her voice anyway. “Better for you asking, handsome. I’ve got an urgent one for you this time. You’re looking into a shattered mirror, and there’s a different man looking back, a man with black eyes. He’s close by.”
        “I’ll take a look, thanks,” he tells her. “Try to get some sleep.” Hopefully everyone’s getting some sleep, Shaun included, but that’s probably just wishful thinking.
        “If the visions would stop,” she grumbles, which Desmond gets. Unfortunately. Still, she sounds a little better for even a little conversation, so that’s something. That had been one of the nice things about being a bartender, helping brighten people’s days.
        “You found the secret room. I thought there might have been one.” Desmond takes a deep breath and tries to calm down when the voice from the doorway makes him startle slightly, Alice frowning up at him.
        He has a moment where his first instinct is to tell the widow not to come in, because she’s already torn up enough about her husband’s death. Seeing him having written on the walls in blood probably won’t help there, and something about the room is just unsettling beyond the obvious, like the man’s ghost is sitting there whispering in his ear. But while understandable, that’s the wrong thing to do. Because it’s up to her.
        “Yeah. You...might not want to see, though,” he warns her, and she spares a slightly vacant smile for him. Like something in her had died with her husband.
        “Thank you, but it’s not like I didn’t get some idea of everything going wrong from his ghost—he tried to protect me from seeing or hearing any of it, but he doesn’t always remember.” She shrugs, still hovering on the edge of the room like she’s waiting for them all to come out before she heads in herself.
        Hopefully she doesn’t forget that the cats need her. “If I asked where I’d find a broken mirror in here…”
        She actually looks at him directly. It’s not the first time, but it’s the first time he’d gotten the idea she was fully present, rather than caught up in trying to pass along the knowledge of what had happened. “I’d answer the attic. Joanna Devore’s. I don’t think it always shows the present. If I could predict it at all, I’d spend all my time upstairs, looking in—I saw Ed once, as he used to be.”
        He nods and they file past. Lydia at least puts the book she’d been reading down, though she definitely looked a little tempted to just keep it. It’s...weird going upstairs. It does feel like he’s going back in time, somehow, that he should be seeing one of the Animus loading screens any second, and also like he’s walking into modern-day Monteriggioni, because there’s sheets and dusts over what little furniture is left. And it’s not just him feeling it, either. Lydia shivers. “I mean, I know it’s a haunted house, but...it feels like we shouldn’t be here.”
        “It is for the best you did not accompany us into the Park, then,” Alice tells her. It might be meant as reassurance, somehow. It’s hard to tell. She also glares one of the paintings into going still again, which Desmond understands completely, because it’s not like he likes being on the receiving end of that, either.
        “It’s not as actively hostile as the Black House, but…” Nate seems just as lost. He finally puts it together with a shiver from a wind that seemingly comes out of nowhere. “It feels more...patient. Insidious. Like it’s just biding its time.”
        Like the lure of the Apple a little, yeah. Which almost certainly means Desmond’s hunch was right: Devore brought something back from the mine. An Artifact, capitalized, or something to do with the Filth. Something worse actually at the mine, probably, but that means the widow’s wrong—or, ugh, maybe she’s not a good target. Like, she’s heavily depressed, she probably hasn’t left the house in years, so if it’s looking to corrupt further, to expand its reach, she’s just not useful when it comes to those kind of goals, so maybe she’s being left alone. Or, another alternative—maybe some of the ghosts are friendly and trying to block away some of this, but just don’t have the capacity to protect everyone.
        It’s an odd choice putting a calendar up here when it’s pretty obvious she barely comes up here. Like she’s trying to make sure the ghosts have amenities too. But then, she’s an odd lady.
        His phone rings, knocking him out of his thoughts, only this time when he tries to answer he stumbles over what he thinks is a loose floorboard. Which wouldn’t generally be a problem, except he feels his head impact something but as he reaches out instinctively to stop himself—