The Queen Brotherhood

[madimpossibledreamer]

...okay, do I tag someone when they're just bleeding effect though??

Main Points:
Arrow/Assassin's Creed; First Person used (Desmond POV)
Summary: Desmond starts adapting to the world he's now a part of.
Word Count: 1,540
Rating: Teen

           It’s like sneaking out when you’re eight to watch the stars.  It’s like running away.  Bartending again is this secret, terrifying thrill and I love it—and best of all, I’m not bleeding.  At least, not while I’m bartending.  It’s enough of absolutely just Desmond that it apparently keeps me in the present.  Pretty much as soon as I gets off that’s a different story.  It’s more difficult to get Altaïr to listen, partly because he’s less likely to listen in the first place and partly because the most Arabic most of them speak is the Creed (though at least they’ve got the pronunciation down).  Other than Ollie.  Ollie speaks a little, and he’s generally strong and wily enough to keep Altaïr contained until the bleed ends, so I tend to hope he’s around whenever I get thrown back to the Crusades.  The entire Queen family (or brotherhood) speaks at least some Italian, plus Ezio is the type to bide his time, so it’s fairly easy when I wind up as Ezio.  And Connor?  For all his anger, Connor’s also fairly…calm isn’t the word.  He’s regularly angry.  It’s just that he contains and directs his anger better than anyone I’ve ever seen (except maybe me?).
           It helps that Ollie, Thea, or Digg is always present for the first couple weeks, as a kind of insurance to prove that Abstergo isn’t just going to kidnap me the moment I turn my back on a customer.  I appreciate that.
           And honestly, I thought it’d be weird.  This is Oliver Queen, for goodness sake.  Also, honestly, I’ve never had a ‘real’ family; I’m not sure what it’s like, other than through Ezio’s eyes.
           Maybe it’s a good thing I’ve seen through Ezio’s eyes, because the Queen family?  Yeah, they’re as mad as the Auditores.
           Oliver, like Ezio, collects people.  If there’s someone in need, he tends to collect them.  Honestly, soon he needs to start training all of them or he’s going to slowly drive himself more insane than he already is.
           Ollie wasn’t kidding when he said there were similarities.  Ollie’s reckless and crazy and driven.  There’s also something of the angry old man Ezio about him, battle-hardened and pessimistic and under the impression that he’s only ever allowed to be the Assassin.  He’s also got a giant heart and cares way too much, and he’d shut that part away because it hurt too much.  Slowly, his chosen family is pulling that back out of him, making him a better person.  Honestly, probably a better Assassin.  It’s honestly part of why I didn’t want to stay at the Farm.  Having compassion is a liability to an Assassin, which is probably why William was the way he was and the reason I’d escaped the Farm. 
           He’s protective.  It’s overboard with Thea (though less so once she’s actually beat him up a couple times), but it’s just…weird, with me.  I’m not actually related, but Ollie really is ridiculously overprotective with everyone (even Diggle, on occasion, which is also kind of weird).  He’s getting slightly less ridiculous, although having heard the gossip in the bar before I’d been kidnapped and Ollie had been lost on the island, a certain amount of ridiculous might just be natural for Ollie.
           Thea treats me like a big brother, too, teasing me, asking me questions about my nonexistent love life (and teasing me when she thinks I find someone interesting).  She bullies me into eating at restaurants with her, taking her shopping, and getting stuff for myself.  (Given how she gets Ollie to eat, I finally realized this is her way of making me take care of myself, only all of the people in her life are ridiculously stubborn, so instead of being able to ask them to look after themselves more she has to bully people into it in a roundabout way.)  She insists I watch movies with her and forces me to eat her movie snacks with her (so she doesn’t feel selfish or fat, she insists) and makes me learn how to play videogames with her and Tommy.
           Tommy treats me like a brother.  It’d been a surprise when it turned out that Ollie doesn’t have the Eagle Vision and Tommy does, although I suppose Haytham did, too, and Tommy’s more of, well, maybe not an Assassin, but one of the helpers.  Some weird mix between thief and courtesan, maybe, considering he really doesn’t like to fight, even if he’s good at it?  I really don’t know.  Tommy’s only ever been relaxed with me, he says, because I’ve always been blue, and I can say the same about him—never a color but reassuring blue.  He’ll come in and start rambling about Ollie and the latest ridiculous thing he’s done, or about the business (it’s me, him, Thea, and Felicity running the business, pretty much), or about the latest movie, and it’s easy enough to talk to him because he’s not expecting anything from me.
           Felicity is so much like Rebecca it hurts, so sometimes it’s hard to talk to her or even interact with her.  It makes me feel guilty.  I’ve let them all think I’m dead, which sucks, but I don’t feel ready to talk to anyone from my past, and if there’s any clue that they act like a family, it’s this: they don’t force me to do anything I don’t want to, anything I’m not ready for.  I’m pretty sure Ollie’s ready to take on the whole Brotherhood on my behalf, and it’s entirely nuts but that’s Oliver for you.
           Even John, the one who resurrected me (I think with the help of a Piece of Eden and something about an ankh, though everyone’s conveniently overlooking that part) gets treated like a trusted member of the family, and he’s as confused about it as I am.
           And I’ve actually had a talk with Ollie, a real talk.  Turns out they knew where to find me because he’d been in my head, before I died, and had Rebecca—sorry, Felicity—look me up after that.  Of course, that talk about feelings happened when I climbed one of Starling’s tallest skyscrapers, because apparently that’s what Assassins do when they need to think or figure something out, and Ollie found me.
           “She meant well,” he begins with no preamble, and clarifies at my startled look.  “Lucy. She meant well, I think, but in the end sometimes the hardest people to convince are the ones who think they’re doing the right thing.”  He’s trying to comfort me, I realize numbly, in his own, clumsy way.  And for the longest time, we just crouch there silently, there at the top of the skyscraper.
           It’s sudden, the instant in which I feel something give.  Her death was necessary, painful, but necessary, just as mine was.  I feel a little better.  “Am I going to bleed as you at some point?”
           Ollie snorts and looks at me fondly.  “If you do, at least you’ll be decently easy to talk to.”  He pauses, and amends that to, “For the most part.”  Great, but I’m not entirely surprised.  Assassin reflexes are problematic, sometimes.
           Then a thought occurs to me.  “Have you ever bled as me?”  The thought is confusing, but it shouldn’t be.  Maybe someday some Assassin related to me will be kidnapped and forced to live through my memories.  I’d never considered the idea, and I feel slightly nauseous at the thought.
           Oliver glances at me, and one look at his eyes tells me he knows exactly what I’d been thinking.  “How do you think we tracked your body down?”
           “John,” I suggest weakly, because, well, I’d stopped trying to explain John in my own head.
           Ollie grins at that.  “If you ever dream of our meeting on the island, you might understand a little more.”  He shivers a little.  “I remember our death.  Dreamed it, which, unfortunately.”  He makes a face.  “It means that Abstergo wasn’t completely insane in kidnapping me—not that they know that, but it’s not a good sign.  Someone of a related Assassin bloodline can be used to track living Assassins from the same bloodline.”
           I blanch.  That’s terrifying.  We have to hope that they don’t know that, but prepare for the worst.  “Fortunately, I only got bits and pieces, and it didn’t come easily, so I think you have to be heavily Bleeding—enough to go completely insane—for it to happen, and they have to actively be trying to get a Bleed from the present.”
           That’s something.  Still, the rest of the Brotherhood should probably be warned.
           “From there, I had Felicity try to find where they would’ve taken your body.  They weren’t hiding their tracks very well, at least, not from Felicity’s point of view—she and Tommy found Altair, Ezio’s, and Connor’s memories in Abstergo’s latest entertainment system, so she looked at Abstergo Entertainment HQ and found something called the ‘Sample 17 Project’.  Kind of obvious.”
           I have to laugh at that.  Rather ridiculous, from an Assassin’s point of view.  “The subtlety of the Templars.”
           Ollie shares my amused grin.  There’s a moment before I find myself enveloped in a hug.  And for the first time in ages, I feel safe.