Complicated Legacy
Jan. 29th, 2026 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madimpossibledreamerThe loading leaving the Fog was actually the slowest I’ve ever seen it. Like it didn’t want to let Desmond leave.
“Maybe she’ll figure out love doesn’t have to be earned at some point? Desmond hopes.” you first des you goof
So I attempted to look up the names of multiple of the Wabanaki here, and—well, one is probably “somewhere down the line they took on an English surname” (Gamelin), another two I can’t find period (Madahândo and Cajiais) and I’m not remembering any other Wabanaki you can talk directly to. I’m not finding a direct list of Wabanaki/Abenaki names in Maine. However, my research did find that a lot of Abenaki went to Quebec, so I found that list, looked for ones that didn’t specifically look French, and did a search on that to try to find at least one name that is probably accurate. Based on that list (https://acanadianfamily.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/wabanaki-confederacy-surnames-abenaki-maliseet-mikmaq/), which takes marriage and census data, Freeborn is probably the closest to accurate name they have in TSW though there it’s listed as Freeman. (Most have taken on American first names, and some might have even sought out a name change, again, to be more palatable to tourists who can’t pronounce or remember “difficult” names. And some probably were forced into one of the Native American Boarding Schools. Though that would’ve been a little earlier than the first mine incident, roughly 1860s, so that’s definitely not a recent thing.)
The cemetery on the other hand is actually vaguely accurate, it seems like—while the crosses and headstones are definitely more Western, I found several references to burials and burial grounds with the Wabanaki.
I think I cut the report entirely about the Private getting busted for gambling with the Madahândo brothers so Desmond was wholly unprepared for them being...themselves. (They’re charming 90% of the time until they start off into something really messed up.)
I was looking forward to getting to the Wabanaki trailer park and...did not remember how dysfunctional it is. Oof.
Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Desmond seeks out the Wabanaki trailer park to bring news about Tyler.
Word Count: 2856
Rating: Teen
Desmond wakes up coughing up seawater. His lungs hurt now. The combination means he is breathing, so he’s probably back in the real world. The rest of it feels real enough, but so had the Animus and John’s dream-world, so that’s less definitive. Water laps around his legs, but it feels like he’s at least partly lying on the sand. His hands definitely feel the gritty feel of sand underneath them. His jeans and shoes feel waterlogged and gross. Not that he hates nature, or anything, but this definitely doesn’t happen (as often, anyway) when you’re just running around the city.
He hears what sounds like footsteps off to his left and glances over to find that—yeah, Katherine actually is here, drenched—interestingly, not like she’d been in Tyler’s dream-space, dragging Alice up next to him from the water. Before he can panic too much, she starts coughing too.
“Good job, Katherine,” he tells her, voice a little hoarse. The wagging splashes water all over. Which...he had to have been lying here for a bit. It feels like the sun had actually managed to dry his back a little. He just has to laugh at the sudden cold, though. Signs that he’s alive are more than welcome.
Rukh’s croak doesn’t sound quite as amused, but then, when Desmond glances in the direction of the noise, he finds that Rukh has been meticulously trying to clean the seawater out of his feathers and isn’t particularly amused to have to at least partially start over. At least he doesn’t scold the dog too much, and Katherine herself doesn’t do more than briefly shrink back. It’s a good sign that Rukh is still taking a careful touch with her, rather than being his usual abrasive self.
It’s when Desmond sits up that he gets a wake-up call. That’s Tyler’s body lying not a few feet away. He gets up quickly, jogging over, and he tries to heal, tries to save him like he’d saved the janitor. Nothing. Damn it. But—
But Tyler’s smiling. Just slightly. And there’s a light blinking from his hand. Desmond turns the hand over and pries it open. He finds that what Tyler had been holding is actually a camera, probably the same one that he’d used with the other SD cards, and the necklace that had definitely been around his neck when he’d walked out into the sea, like he’s asking Desmond to take it. Like he had, at the end. The recording at least. It’s hard to listen to, but Desmond makes himself, because someone has to play witness to Tyler’s last moments (or as close as anyone was gonna get—and yeah, okay, so he hadn’t ended Tyler’s life by his own hand, but he’d still been too slow to save the blogger so maybe the blood still is on his hands, in the end). He’s more scared of his dreams becoming real than the monsters. And he’s calling whatever lay in the deep that Desmond had briefly sensed ‘demons’, suggesting they’d been manifesting in the dreams of the people on Solomon Island for a while now, controlling the dreams, feeding on them maybe. Desmond takes both, putting them in a pocket and zipping them up.
“I didn’t wish to fail him.” Alice didn’t exactly need to say that out loud, given that Desmond had already worked that out, but it’s good that she’s actually talking about it now rather than just hoping no one would actually point it out.
“I...don’t know that we did.” It’s just a feeling, and maybe it’s just Desmond’s mind trying to reassure him after everything, but Desmond hadn’t seen the guy smile before this point. “I think...this is what he wanted. Someone to know what happened to him, to see his entire journey, carry on his work maybe. He wanted to matter, to make a difference, and with everything we just learned...I can’t say that he failed there.”
Alice nods, but it’s clear she’s at least partly confused. “Legacy...is a powerful force.”
“As long as it’s willingly chosen, yeah.” Desmond considers, then adds, “...There’s a whole different feeling if you want to inherit the family shop rather than it being an expectation or a burden, you know? You choosing to be an Assassin means a lot more than if you’d been told all your life that that’s what you are.”
“Like you were.” It looks like that cleared up her confusion a little, though the insightful and piercing gaze is a little too accurate. It makes Desmond feel a little uneasy.
He shifts a little, but she deserves an answer to that one. “I mean, yeah, but...I ran away. Me actually choosing to come back meant more.”
“You only chose the Assassins when you came here, finally claiming them as your own. To you, a choice to save lives is no choice at all.” That…doesn’t seem right. And she’s not infallible, like he’d thought at first. But she seems really sure of herself. It seems like she senses his skepticism, because she adds, “That...is part of why I didn’t believe you at first, about free will. I saw you falling back into habits ingrained from tradition and belief, and thought you too merely had the illusion of choice.”
“Sorry to confuse you.” He has absolutely no other idea of what to say.
“It is all right. Confusion appears to be a part of Enlightenment.” He can’t tell if that’s meant to be a joke, and has the feeling that if he asks and she was being serious she’ll be pissed, so he’ll just leave it at that.
Glancing around the beach...Desmond frowns. This isn’t where they’d entered the sea. He’s still pretty sure they’re still on Solomon Island, just because it looks like it, but they hadn’t washed back on shore (or been hauled up by Katherine) near the Orochi and CDC camps again, either. He catches a glimpse of what looks like the kind of swirling golden glow and welcoming growth that signal an Agartha portal, not just an Anima Well, but—huh. If they’re here, that means they’ve washed up all the way west, pretty much. He brings out the map from his bag, the one the soldiers had drawn, and—yeah. He’s not misremembering that. Though that means that the trailer park is only a short hike away. If they get out from behind the rocks, they’ll probably see what construction has been completed on the casino.
He calls Nate, who picks up instantly. “You’re alive, right? How’s Alice?”
So much for calm. In this case, though, that’s absolutely a good thing. “Yeah, we’re both fine. We ended up over near the trailer park, though.”
There’s a pause that signals Nate has absolutely no idea how to respond to that before he answers, “I can get us to the Anima Well, though if it’ll take you a bit to get there we could swing up from there and activate another one of the rune-stones.”
“It won’t take us that long, probably, but...that wouldn’t hurt.” He probably could teleport there directly himself, now that it’s been demonstrated, but he has the feeling it’ll never be as easy for him as it is for Nate.
“Good to hear from you again, Boss,” Nate adds, nonchalance returning now that he knows they’re both okay, and hangs up.
“We can at least bring his body to the portal, and see if the Wabanaki wish to retrieve his body,” Alice suggests.
“That’s probably a good idea. He deserves something,” Desmond agrees, and Alice attempts to just hoist up the body herself. He ends up helping her—it’s more a problem of height than her strength, or she could easily just lift Tyler’s body on her own. Thankfully there’s nothing between them and the portal. Getting attacked while carrying the body would suck. They lay the body down gently a little out of sight, to at least limit anything spotting him, and then continue on.
It’s not too bad. Fighting zombies along the way pretty much is just this island’s version of a nice stroll, at this point, and it’s helping them all recover at least a little from having been in there. Katherine still doesn’t seem like a fan of the fighting, but she gets a little less scared every time they emerge victorious. She’d been watching them fight for a while now, though, when she’d still been making her mind up about them, and at this point it seems more like being scared something will happen to them than the actual violence. And maybe, like Alice, the fact that she’s not able to actually overcome her own issues and help out is bugging her, but she doesn’t seem to understand when Desmond tries to explain to her that she’s still a good dog even if she doesn’t. She does seem to understand the pets and food, even if she does seem a little confused as to why he’s giving them to her. Which kind of hurts, but. Maybe she’ll figure out love doesn’t have to be earned at some point? Desmond hopes.
She does seem a lot happier when they sneak, though, so they try that a little more often. Alice really is a good student, and it seems like her wounded pride is healing a little bit because she looks smug every time Desmond lets himself look even moderately impressed at her efforts. She’s still figuring out spatial awareness, a little, but it’s still a lot better than Desmond at the same age. Well, the same visual age. Then again, she’s much more motivated.
Them sneaking around comes in handy at the skeleton of the casino, towering above everything (though, uh, why it looks like a glass pyramid is anyone’s guess, really; that doesn’t match any of Connor’s memories), which is absolutely infested with zombies, including some nasty Filth-infected ones Desmond doesn’t really want to tangle with. Not with this entourage. But there’s some supplies they can grab as long as they stick to the scaffolding around the sides, weapons and what actually looks like uninfected food and water. They even get in a bit of climbing, because Desmond’s Eagle Vision suggests the easiest way to the trailer park is up the scaffolding and out the other side. (Rukh shows Katherine the way up involving all the temporary ramps. It looks like a tight squeeze at times, but it’s better than letting Alice go with her first instinct of trying to climb up carrying a dog.) Soon enough, they’re approaching the actual trailer park when one of the guards posted on the trail in yells at him. He’s still wearing a hard hat like he’d just come off working on the construction site. “You don’t show you’re human soon, you’re getting a bullet in you.”
“Desmond Miles. I’m bringing supplies and news?” He ends up sounding a little less confident than he means to, but it’s always a pain to deal with jumpy guys with guns when you don’t actually want to kill them. Rukh is simply defiant. Katherine looks like she wants to bark but is a little too scared.
“He’s cool; he saved me from the ak’ab.” The other guy gestures for his friend to put down his gun, and then continues, addressing Desmond directly. “Good to see you in one piece.”
“Same. Glad you made it.” The man looks familiar, but then, Desmond had been a little distracted by some of the remaining hostile ak’ab at the time, and he definitely didn’t have time to catch the guy’s name.
“James Inawolet, but everybody calls me Jim. Well, it’s weird but you were right. We walked right past some of the ak’ab, and they watched us, but they didn’t attack. I’ve actually seen a couple appear over there,” he points, “...like they’re keeping an eye on us and then they just leave again. I’ve never seen them act like that.”
“Hopefully you’ll keep seeing it. The less opponents trying to kill you, the better.” Alice is blunt as usual.
“Unless they’re scoutin’ us,” the other guard—who Desmond notices hasn’t introduced himself yet—grumbles.
Jim elbows his fellow guard, probably expecting that. “You’ve got survival instincts, little girl.” That definitely makes Alice happy to hear. “You said you had supplies?”
At least he’s practical. “Yeah, food, water, and weapons. A sledgehammer’s probably not as good as ammo, but it’s better than nothing.”
“We’ll take anything we can get. Thanks for all your help.” It’s a little too effusive when Desmond’s still feeling a little guilty.
Desmond swallows and shakes his head. “I wasn’t able to save Tyler Freeborn.”
Jim groans. “What’d he do, get himself shot by the army? We told him getting noticed by the United States government would be nothing but trouble.”
It’s not...like that guess is based on nothing, but Desmond finds his sorrow becoming anger anyway, because it’s so dismissive of what happened. “Actually, he died trying to find a way to stop all this.”
Jim doesn’t directly apologize or look ashamed, but he does elbow his fellow guard again before the man can say something rude. “Where’s the body?”
Desmond suddenly realizes that he’s not sure if they can actually see the Agartha portal. Nobody’s tried to use it to leave, for one thing. But he can give vague directions just in case. “We carried it off the beach to a little hidden area in the rocks, uh.” That’s right. He has a map. He pulls that out and points roughly in the spot he thinks it was. “...Just a little bit down from the road leading up to the casino.”
“I don’t know what you’re tryin’ to blame us for, but the casino didn’t curse you, Mr. Lost Tourist. You don’t know jack shit, but we can introduce you.” The man who walks up is talking and moving just carefully enough that the bartender in Desmond diagnoses him as completely drunk, but used to the sensation enough to be practiced at attempting to hide it.
At least the second guard is prone to equal-opportunity annoyance. That makes Desmond feel a little better. “Knock it off, brother. He was just tellin’ us where Freeborn’s body is.”
Frank’s demeanor turns suddenly friendly. “Oh, that so? Did he leave behind a last will and testament? Some kinda inheritance?”
Desmond does not like the sound of that. Fortunately, it’s not like Freeborn had a lot on him. “His necklace and one last recording.”
“I wouldn’t mind that camera. He took that thing everywhere, so it has to be worth something.” The absolute shock must show on their faces, because he turns surly. “Tyler was a pain enough to us when he was alive. About time he’s useful.”
Desmond finds himself yelling before he can stop himself. “He’s dead!”
Fortunately, he’s not the only one; the guard with the hard hat actually speaks up. “Look, Joe, you do this, I don’t know you. We’re already standing knee-deep in shit as it is, and it smells.”
Frank gets in the guard’s face. “Oh, you want to lecture me about the high ground now? Pawning stuff from the living is so much worse. He’s dead, so he doesn’t need it, and no one here has a use for a camera that ain’t those one-offs for tourists like your fine selves.”
“Last time we went fishing you nearly snapped the rod in half and said ‘I’m done fishin’ forever’. The one time I actually listen to you and you wanna lesson me?” Desmond actually wants to go back to Red’s now. Not that it was great being there, but this is definitely worse.
And then Jim decides to step in. “You think the pawn shop is still open? You want to steal from the dead, go raid the place. No one’s going to care. And it’s not like money matters now.”
“It will.” That’s...oddly optimistic.
“Jim’s right. I figure, the money don’t matter, we don’t get cuffed and it’s just special paper. We get outta this, the money matters in all the worst ways.” The guard shoves Frank, who stumbles.
Jim ignores them, turning to Desmond. “When Joe and Frank get arguing, it’ll be a while. No bad blood like between brothers. Look, get out of here; go talk to the Gamelins at the tourist trap.” He waves to the wooden building in the middle, with the same design as Red’s store but much, much bigger. “At least they’ll want to know, even if none of us is close. They’ll probably have to arrange the party to retrieve his body, too. He can finally be one of us if just at the cemetery. We could send these two, but the last time they went off they came back saying they saw laughing wisps.”
Desmond could tell them that might actually be Jack the Lad, but at this point he’s pretty sure it wouldn’t help. Frank is the kind of drunk that goes looking for a fight. Jim’s right; it’s better just to leave them to it. And at least they’ll have Jim keeping an eye on them and making sure no one gets too hurt.
“Maybe she’ll figure out love doesn’t have to be earned at some point? Desmond hopes.” you first des you goof
So I attempted to look up the names of multiple of the Wabanaki here, and—well, one is probably “somewhere down the line they took on an English surname” (Gamelin), another two I can’t find period (Madahândo and Cajiais) and I’m not remembering any other Wabanaki you can talk directly to. I’m not finding a direct list of Wabanaki/Abenaki names in Maine. However, my research did find that a lot of Abenaki went to Quebec, so I found that list, looked for ones that didn’t specifically look French, and did a search on that to try to find at least one name that is probably accurate. Based on that list (https://acanadianfamily.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/wabanaki-confederacy-surnames-abenaki-maliseet-mikmaq/), which takes marriage and census data, Freeborn is probably the closest to accurate name they have in TSW though there it’s listed as Freeman. (Most have taken on American first names, and some might have even sought out a name change, again, to be more palatable to tourists who can’t pronounce or remember “difficult” names. And some probably were forced into one of the Native American Boarding Schools. Though that would’ve been a little earlier than the first mine incident, roughly 1860s, so that’s definitely not a recent thing.)
The cemetery on the other hand is actually vaguely accurate, it seems like—while the crosses and headstones are definitely more Western, I found several references to burials and burial grounds with the Wabanaki.
I think I cut the report entirely about the Private getting busted for gambling with the Madahândo brothers so Desmond was wholly unprepared for them being...themselves. (They’re charming 90% of the time until they start off into something really messed up.)
I was looking forward to getting to the Wabanaki trailer park and...did not remember how dysfunctional it is. Oof.
Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Desmond seeks out the Wabanaki trailer park to bring news about Tyler.
Word Count: 2856
Rating: Teen
Desmond wakes up coughing up seawater. His lungs hurt now. The combination means he is breathing, so he’s probably back in the real world. The rest of it feels real enough, but so had the Animus and John’s dream-world, so that’s less definitive. Water laps around his legs, but it feels like he’s at least partly lying on the sand. His hands definitely feel the gritty feel of sand underneath them. His jeans and shoes feel waterlogged and gross. Not that he hates nature, or anything, but this definitely doesn’t happen (as often, anyway) when you’re just running around the city.
He hears what sounds like footsteps off to his left and glances over to find that—yeah, Katherine actually is here, drenched—interestingly, not like she’d been in Tyler’s dream-space, dragging Alice up next to him from the water. Before he can panic too much, she starts coughing too.
“Good job, Katherine,” he tells her, voice a little hoarse. The wagging splashes water all over. Which...he had to have been lying here for a bit. It feels like the sun had actually managed to dry his back a little. He just has to laugh at the sudden cold, though. Signs that he’s alive are more than welcome.
Rukh’s croak doesn’t sound quite as amused, but then, when Desmond glances in the direction of the noise, he finds that Rukh has been meticulously trying to clean the seawater out of his feathers and isn’t particularly amused to have to at least partially start over. At least he doesn’t scold the dog too much, and Katherine herself doesn’t do more than briefly shrink back. It’s a good sign that Rukh is still taking a careful touch with her, rather than being his usual abrasive self.
It’s when Desmond sits up that he gets a wake-up call. That’s Tyler’s body lying not a few feet away. He gets up quickly, jogging over, and he tries to heal, tries to save him like he’d saved the janitor. Nothing. Damn it. But—
But Tyler’s smiling. Just slightly. And there’s a light blinking from his hand. Desmond turns the hand over and pries it open. He finds that what Tyler had been holding is actually a camera, probably the same one that he’d used with the other SD cards, and the necklace that had definitely been around his neck when he’d walked out into the sea, like he’s asking Desmond to take it. Like he had, at the end. The recording at least. It’s hard to listen to, but Desmond makes himself, because someone has to play witness to Tyler’s last moments (or as close as anyone was gonna get—and yeah, okay, so he hadn’t ended Tyler’s life by his own hand, but he’d still been too slow to save the blogger so maybe the blood still is on his hands, in the end). He’s more scared of his dreams becoming real than the monsters. And he’s calling whatever lay in the deep that Desmond had briefly sensed ‘demons’, suggesting they’d been manifesting in the dreams of the people on Solomon Island for a while now, controlling the dreams, feeding on them maybe. Desmond takes both, putting them in a pocket and zipping them up.
“I didn’t wish to fail him.” Alice didn’t exactly need to say that out loud, given that Desmond had already worked that out, but it’s good that she’s actually talking about it now rather than just hoping no one would actually point it out.
“I...don’t know that we did.” It’s just a feeling, and maybe it’s just Desmond’s mind trying to reassure him after everything, but Desmond hadn’t seen the guy smile before this point. “I think...this is what he wanted. Someone to know what happened to him, to see his entire journey, carry on his work maybe. He wanted to matter, to make a difference, and with everything we just learned...I can’t say that he failed there.”
Alice nods, but it’s clear she’s at least partly confused. “Legacy...is a powerful force.”
“As long as it’s willingly chosen, yeah.” Desmond considers, then adds, “...There’s a whole different feeling if you want to inherit the family shop rather than it being an expectation or a burden, you know? You choosing to be an Assassin means a lot more than if you’d been told all your life that that’s what you are.”
“Like you were.” It looks like that cleared up her confusion a little, though the insightful and piercing gaze is a little too accurate. It makes Desmond feel a little uneasy.
He shifts a little, but she deserves an answer to that one. “I mean, yeah, but...I ran away. Me actually choosing to come back meant more.”
“You only chose the Assassins when you came here, finally claiming them as your own. To you, a choice to save lives is no choice at all.” That…doesn’t seem right. And she’s not infallible, like he’d thought at first. But she seems really sure of herself. It seems like she senses his skepticism, because she adds, “That...is part of why I didn’t believe you at first, about free will. I saw you falling back into habits ingrained from tradition and belief, and thought you too merely had the illusion of choice.”
“Sorry to confuse you.” He has absolutely no other idea of what to say.
“It is all right. Confusion appears to be a part of Enlightenment.” He can’t tell if that’s meant to be a joke, and has the feeling that if he asks and she was being serious she’ll be pissed, so he’ll just leave it at that.
Glancing around the beach...Desmond frowns. This isn’t where they’d entered the sea. He’s still pretty sure they’re still on Solomon Island, just because it looks like it, but they hadn’t washed back on shore (or been hauled up by Katherine) near the Orochi and CDC camps again, either. He catches a glimpse of what looks like the kind of swirling golden glow and welcoming growth that signal an Agartha portal, not just an Anima Well, but—huh. If they’re here, that means they’ve washed up all the way west, pretty much. He brings out the map from his bag, the one the soldiers had drawn, and—yeah. He’s not misremembering that. Though that means that the trailer park is only a short hike away. If they get out from behind the rocks, they’ll probably see what construction has been completed on the casino.
He calls Nate, who picks up instantly. “You’re alive, right? How’s Alice?”
So much for calm. In this case, though, that’s absolutely a good thing. “Yeah, we’re both fine. We ended up over near the trailer park, though.”
There’s a pause that signals Nate has absolutely no idea how to respond to that before he answers, “I can get us to the Anima Well, though if it’ll take you a bit to get there we could swing up from there and activate another one of the rune-stones.”
“It won’t take us that long, probably, but...that wouldn’t hurt.” He probably could teleport there directly himself, now that it’s been demonstrated, but he has the feeling it’ll never be as easy for him as it is for Nate.
“Good to hear from you again, Boss,” Nate adds, nonchalance returning now that he knows they’re both okay, and hangs up.
“We can at least bring his body to the portal, and see if the Wabanaki wish to retrieve his body,” Alice suggests.
“That’s probably a good idea. He deserves something,” Desmond agrees, and Alice attempts to just hoist up the body herself. He ends up helping her—it’s more a problem of height than her strength, or she could easily just lift Tyler’s body on her own. Thankfully there’s nothing between them and the portal. Getting attacked while carrying the body would suck. They lay the body down gently a little out of sight, to at least limit anything spotting him, and then continue on.
It’s not too bad. Fighting zombies along the way pretty much is just this island’s version of a nice stroll, at this point, and it’s helping them all recover at least a little from having been in there. Katherine still doesn’t seem like a fan of the fighting, but she gets a little less scared every time they emerge victorious. She’d been watching them fight for a while now, though, when she’d still been making her mind up about them, and at this point it seems more like being scared something will happen to them than the actual violence. And maybe, like Alice, the fact that she’s not able to actually overcome her own issues and help out is bugging her, but she doesn’t seem to understand when Desmond tries to explain to her that she’s still a good dog even if she doesn’t. She does seem to understand the pets and food, even if she does seem a little confused as to why he’s giving them to her. Which kind of hurts, but. Maybe she’ll figure out love doesn’t have to be earned at some point? Desmond hopes.
She does seem a lot happier when they sneak, though, so they try that a little more often. Alice really is a good student, and it seems like her wounded pride is healing a little bit because she looks smug every time Desmond lets himself look even moderately impressed at her efforts. She’s still figuring out spatial awareness, a little, but it’s still a lot better than Desmond at the same age. Well, the same visual age. Then again, she’s much more motivated.
Them sneaking around comes in handy at the skeleton of the casino, towering above everything (though, uh, why it looks like a glass pyramid is anyone’s guess, really; that doesn’t match any of Connor’s memories), which is absolutely infested with zombies, including some nasty Filth-infected ones Desmond doesn’t really want to tangle with. Not with this entourage. But there’s some supplies they can grab as long as they stick to the scaffolding around the sides, weapons and what actually looks like uninfected food and water. They even get in a bit of climbing, because Desmond’s Eagle Vision suggests the easiest way to the trailer park is up the scaffolding and out the other side. (Rukh shows Katherine the way up involving all the temporary ramps. It looks like a tight squeeze at times, but it’s better than letting Alice go with her first instinct of trying to climb up carrying a dog.) Soon enough, they’re approaching the actual trailer park when one of the guards posted on the trail in yells at him. He’s still wearing a hard hat like he’d just come off working on the construction site. “You don’t show you’re human soon, you’re getting a bullet in you.”
“Desmond Miles. I’m bringing supplies and news?” He ends up sounding a little less confident than he means to, but it’s always a pain to deal with jumpy guys with guns when you don’t actually want to kill them. Rukh is simply defiant. Katherine looks like she wants to bark but is a little too scared.
“He’s cool; he saved me from the ak’ab.” The other guy gestures for his friend to put down his gun, and then continues, addressing Desmond directly. “Good to see you in one piece.”
“Same. Glad you made it.” The man looks familiar, but then, Desmond had been a little distracted by some of the remaining hostile ak’ab at the time, and he definitely didn’t have time to catch the guy’s name.
“James Inawolet, but everybody calls me Jim. Well, it’s weird but you were right. We walked right past some of the ak’ab, and they watched us, but they didn’t attack. I’ve actually seen a couple appear over there,” he points, “...like they’re keeping an eye on us and then they just leave again. I’ve never seen them act like that.”
“Hopefully you’ll keep seeing it. The less opponents trying to kill you, the better.” Alice is blunt as usual.
“Unless they’re scoutin’ us,” the other guard—who Desmond notices hasn’t introduced himself yet—grumbles.
Jim elbows his fellow guard, probably expecting that. “You’ve got survival instincts, little girl.” That definitely makes Alice happy to hear. “You said you had supplies?”
At least he’s practical. “Yeah, food, water, and weapons. A sledgehammer’s probably not as good as ammo, but it’s better than nothing.”
“We’ll take anything we can get. Thanks for all your help.” It’s a little too effusive when Desmond’s still feeling a little guilty.
Desmond swallows and shakes his head. “I wasn’t able to save Tyler Freeborn.”
Jim groans. “What’d he do, get himself shot by the army? We told him getting noticed by the United States government would be nothing but trouble.”
It’s not...like that guess is based on nothing, but Desmond finds his sorrow becoming anger anyway, because it’s so dismissive of what happened. “Actually, he died trying to find a way to stop all this.”
Jim doesn’t directly apologize or look ashamed, but he does elbow his fellow guard again before the man can say something rude. “Where’s the body?”
Desmond suddenly realizes that he’s not sure if they can actually see the Agartha portal. Nobody’s tried to use it to leave, for one thing. But he can give vague directions just in case. “We carried it off the beach to a little hidden area in the rocks, uh.” That’s right. He has a map. He pulls that out and points roughly in the spot he thinks it was. “...Just a little bit down from the road leading up to the casino.”
“I don’t know what you’re tryin’ to blame us for, but the casino didn’t curse you, Mr. Lost Tourist. You don’t know jack shit, but we can introduce you.” The man who walks up is talking and moving just carefully enough that the bartender in Desmond diagnoses him as completely drunk, but used to the sensation enough to be practiced at attempting to hide it.
At least the second guard is prone to equal-opportunity annoyance. That makes Desmond feel a little better. “Knock it off, brother. He was just tellin’ us where Freeborn’s body is.”
Frank’s demeanor turns suddenly friendly. “Oh, that so? Did he leave behind a last will and testament? Some kinda inheritance?”
Desmond does not like the sound of that. Fortunately, it’s not like Freeborn had a lot on him. “His necklace and one last recording.”
“I wouldn’t mind that camera. He took that thing everywhere, so it has to be worth something.” The absolute shock must show on their faces, because he turns surly. “Tyler was a pain enough to us when he was alive. About time he’s useful.”
Desmond finds himself yelling before he can stop himself. “He’s dead!”
Fortunately, he’s not the only one; the guard with the hard hat actually speaks up. “Look, Joe, you do this, I don’t know you. We’re already standing knee-deep in shit as it is, and it smells.”
Frank gets in the guard’s face. “Oh, you want to lecture me about the high ground now? Pawning stuff from the living is so much worse. He’s dead, so he doesn’t need it, and no one here has a use for a camera that ain’t those one-offs for tourists like your fine selves.”
“Last time we went fishing you nearly snapped the rod in half and said ‘I’m done fishin’ forever’. The one time I actually listen to you and you wanna lesson me?” Desmond actually wants to go back to Red’s now. Not that it was great being there, but this is definitely worse.
And then Jim decides to step in. “You think the pawn shop is still open? You want to steal from the dead, go raid the place. No one’s going to care. And it’s not like money matters now.”
“It will.” That’s...oddly optimistic.
“Jim’s right. I figure, the money don’t matter, we don’t get cuffed and it’s just special paper. We get outta this, the money matters in all the worst ways.” The guard shoves Frank, who stumbles.
Jim ignores them, turning to Desmond. “When Joe and Frank get arguing, it’ll be a while. No bad blood like between brothers. Look, get out of here; go talk to the Gamelins at the tourist trap.” He waves to the wooden building in the middle, with the same design as Red’s store but much, much bigger. “At least they’ll want to know, even if none of us is close. They’ll probably have to arrange the party to retrieve his body, too. He can finally be one of us if just at the cemetery. We could send these two, but the last time they went off they came back saying they saw laughing wisps.”
Desmond could tell them that might actually be Jack the Lad, but at this point he’s pretty sure it wouldn’t help. Frank is the kind of drunk that goes looking for a fight. Jim’s right; it’s better just to leave them to it. And at least they’ll have Jim keeping an eye on them and making sure no one gets too hurt.
