Intelligence Gathering

[madimpossibledreamer]

Add Desmond to the list of people who—okay, he probably could pull off undercover with the right intel, which he doesn’t have, so. So he’s not automatically bad at it. But even with the zen he is bad at just...fitting in.
Note: the chapter in two weeks might be a bit later, depending.  I may or may not be really busy that day and won't find out until shortly before.  If it's really bad, it'll impact the next few days of uploads as well, but let's cross our fingers and hope.

Main Points:
Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Desmond follows the feeling of gold to some very familiar faces.
Word Count: 2823
Rating: Teen

         Desmond soon learns where the little girl went. Well, he’s pretty sure, anyway, because that looks awfully like a portal or something glowing gold in Eagle Vision. It’s kind of guarded, so he has to sneak in, but it’s easy with his new sneaking power. Not that these guys—who aren’t all red, but even the friendly ones he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t get caught by, if they’re working for the Illuminati, because Lucy had taught him it’s fully possible for someone to mean you no harm and even be doing things for your own good and still sell you out—are particularly good at their guard duty thing, but still.
         He makes the mistake of going in with Eagle Vision on, though, because the new area is blindingly gold. Even when he blinks it away, it’s still a really bright gold. Which is just weird, but then, he’s getting kind of used to that by now, which is why he listens to the train conductor guy give a speech about Agartha, “the hollow Earth”, and doesn’t really interrupt.
         He could keep going, take the tour like the guy suggests, but no matter how friendly the guy is the whole look of this place and the guardians is bothering him, what with the similarities to the Isu, even if their décor was a little more blue, and as he glances back he realizes that while he’d come in the ‘New York’ portal, city visible as through a pool of water, there’s a London portal, too, that catches his eye. It...feels gold.
         It becomes clear, quickly, once he exits the underground station because this is London so of course he does, that this is the home of the Templars. Which would make him panic more, except they weren’t red, even though they wore a lot of it. Not all of them, anyway, any more than the Illuminati were all red. (The team that they’d sent after him, though? Those guys were definitely hostile.) Most of them are white, which means they wouldn’t lift a finger to help him if he got attacked, some of them are red, but even more of them, confusingly, are blue. Including one that was joking about “what news from the Crusades”, which...yeah, Desmond made an excuse and all but bolted, because as zen as he’d been getting about how weird this world is, he was not prepared for that one. At all.
         Most of the Templars who would be allies are concentrated in a location that feels gold, so he heads that way—a pub, The Horned God, awesome. He feels right at home.
         “All I’m saying is that something’s going on. We go this long without a word, not a bloody peep from Venice, and suddenly they’re forming a council again and telling us all to ‘play fair, children’…” The familiar grumbling makes Desmond smile, but he makes sure to double check with Eagle Vision before going and standing by the wooden entrance to the little alcove they’ve hidden themselves in.
         “Oh, would you look at that, speak of the bloody serpent and he shall appear. What do you want, Dragon?” the historian hisses at him, and Rebecca elbows her colleague. He feels himself relaxing already.
         “My name’s not ‘Dragon’. It’s Desmond,” he responds.
         “Thank you for that absolutely unnecessary introduction. We absolutely needed to know that information,” the Brit snarks after a moment, and if he hadn’t gotten to know them as well as he had over the last few months, he might take offense, or wouldn’t have realized that was Shaun covering up his moment of surprise.
         “I’m Rebecca. This jerk is Shaun,” Rebecca tells him, holding out a hand for him to shake, which he does, and then slides into the booth on the other side of Shaun—mostly because he gets the feeling if he doesn’t that Shaun might try to run for it.
         “Some answers might be nice. I got dropped in the middle of this war and I still have no idea what’s going on,” he admits, and Shaun rolls his eyes.
         “Oh, what, so it’s our fault you didn’t listen to the briefing? Do you have the attention span of a tiny child? I’ll give you this one for free—we’re not exactly playmates, the Templar and the Dragon,” he snarls.
         Desmond doesn’t flinch now, either, which makes both stare at him, a little in shock. “Actually, I think the ‘tiny child’ knew more than I did, but I get the feeling they might’ve just thrown me in the deep end because they thought it’d be funny,” he admits with a shrug.
         “You have to admit, that sounds exactly like them,” Rebecca points out, poking Shaun again with her elbow.
         “You’ll make me spill my drink, woman. Those elbows are bony enough they should be banned by the Geneva Convention.” Shaun sighs, but he’s leaning toward helping out.
         It’s hard to decide how much to say, and it’s obvious that they’ll work out he’s not telling them everything, even if they probably can’t guess exactly what. Mostly he wants to make sure that he wants to tell them the truth, what he can of it without looking too suspicious, and maybe just a little more to make them seem a little less suspicious. “That I have powers, which, thanks, knew that. That I’m a great source of chaos—didn’t think I was that bad of a bartender. I know there’s three factions, which I’m guessing includes you guys and the Illuminati. And then I was kind of pointed in the direction of the portal to Agartha.” By his own eyes, he doesn’t say, because he’s pretty sure Eagle Vision just...isn’t a thing here. And also because he’s more of a loose cannon than anyone would have any right to suspect, probably.
         “Wait, they didn’t take you to Seoul?” Rebecca interrupts, eyebrows up to her hairline, and Shaun immediately stops slouching.
         Desmond glances between the two of them. “I’m guessing that’s not standard.” He’s already screwed up. Whoops.
         Though maybe that’s the point. Rebecca had said it sounded in character, so...maybe this is all just a, what, practical joke they’re playing on absolutely everyone else? Aside from the ‘he saved the world shit’ and the Isu inheritance and who knows what else. Maybe they don’t even know what he can do.
         “The way I hear it, their recruitment tactics are straight up kidnapping, drugging, and seduction in exactly that order. You’re saying none of that happened to you?” Shaun’s intrigued. Good. Potentially bad, depending on how much they found out, but good in that he’s more likely to help out, complaining all the while, if he’s intrigued.
         “Nah, they just kind of left me on the New York subway where they found me.” Their eyes grow wider, and they look at each other like they’re confirming he did in fact say that.
         “You were in New York?” Rebecca clarifies, with her best ‘I’m not shocked’ voice, and then—
         Oh. They’re confused why the Illuminati didn’t get to him first.
         “Yeah, I ran the first chance I got after everything started getting weird. Figured the subway would be crowded and I could think.” It’s a risk, but… “I panicked a little. Thought my family was coming for me. It was a little...well, I thought we were a cult when I ran away, and maybe they were, but maybe they weren’t completely wrong, either, because a lot of the things—like, one group controlling most of the products on market—maybe were actually true. At least according to a ranting guy in a laundromat and some digging I did online.” Given the way the historian suddenly looks a little smug when he mentions ‘online’, he wasn’t wrong when he was guessing Shaun had posted a few things about them.
         It’s not...a huge leap to think that part of his life might not have actually changed all that much. He didn’t find much on himself on the internet in between frantically trying to figure out what happened to the Assassins, Abstergo, the Isu, the end of the world… He had the motorcycle license, but no other ID, a burner phone, and other than the absolute weirdness that was him failing to use a pseudonym for his latest bartending job maybe it’s a story that might hold up.
         Maybe.
         He’s under no illusions that Shaun and especially Rebecca are a whole lot better at this internet thing than he is.
         Shaun actually looks at him and even leans forward, eyes glittering with excitement. “Was it the Morninglight?” he suggests, and when he’s met with Desmond just blinking at him, because he’s not even trying to hide his enthusiasm like it’s a dirty secret, adds, “Have you heard the name Philip Marquard?”
         “They’re basically New Age hippies, Shaun. They’re not a cult,” Rebecca insists with a tone that suggests she’s said a variation on this sentence multiple times before.
         “If you’ve seen the things I’ve seen…” the historian mutters darkly, taking a bit more than a sip of the beer in front of him—huh, Desmond hadn’t taken him for a beer guy—before continuing, placing the glass primly back on the table. “Sometimes, history’s written in the margins, yeah? It’s gaps in the knowledge that make you question. No one’s going to just announce they’re a cult when they’re trying to recruit you, as we’ve seen time and time again. Don’t you want to know for a moment what they aren’t telling you?”
         Desmond clears his throat, and they both look at him, a little startled, like they’d forgotten he was here. “I, uh. I’ve never heard of either of those, but that might not mean much?” he offers, a little at a loss and hating it. “My dad was the leader, but I always got the feeling there were other branches, but we weren’t allowed to travel to them until we’d gone through basic training and been approved. We definitely weren’t hippies, though.” He points at his lip. “Training accident.”
         Rebecca leans over Shaun’s lap, grabbing his head to turn it to look at the scar, and states solemnly, “I guess that isn’t the usual b.s.”
         “Ignore Rebecca; she’s being a nerd,” Shaun advises, looking a little uncomfortable at the proximity, though he’s probably a little used to Rebecca being touchy-feely, noticing Desmond’s attempt to hide his confused expression. “I can look into it, if you’ll give me some information,” he suggests.
         Holy shit.
         Shaun has never, not once, offered to do anything for him without prompting or grumbling. He’d make them all coffee in the mornings, grumbling about the heathens they were. He’d do the Animus entries, but they were more for himself, since he seems shocked every time Desmond refers to something he’d learned in them or asks for more information. Most of the time he prefers to just shoo Desmond away, when he’s one of the only people to talk to and it’s getting lonely and probably less than safe to just live in his own head, given, y’know, Bleeding Effect.
         It’s just as out of character for this Shaun, too, apparently, because Rebecca is just as stunned speechless. Shaun blushes and scowls, drinking more of his beer.
         “It’s a gift to myself, really. I enjoy researching this kind of thing, unlike some of our lazy colleagues. Cults, conspiracies, and the like. And given the world we live in, it’s not as if knowing about these groups is worthless. Everything is true, after all.”
         Desmond tries not to react to that, he really does, but it’s so close to the Creed and so far away. Rebecca’s the only one who catches his reaction, he’s pretty sure. Shaun is too busy sulking at the thought that him actually being helpful of his own volition would ruin his reputation to actually pay attention.
         “Knowledge is always useful; I just...I don’t want to put either of you in danger,” he admits, because it occurs to him all of a sudden that maybe they’re right and in this world the Assassins are a dangerous cult. It’s not like they’re actually opposing the Templars in this world or there wouldn’t be so many Templars glowing the blue of an ally. And he...he does define himself as an Assassin, now, even if he didn’t less than a year ago. It feels like yeah, it should have an effect, and they’re not enemies.
         Shaun swallows and looks at a loss of what to say. Rebecca grins and coos at him and practically lunges over Shaun, again, to pull him into a hug, Shaun protesting, this time, and pulling his drink out of the way, and Desmond realizes he’s grinning and it’s weird, but he really has missed them. There’s a short list of people he trusts to touch him (by which he means he can actually dodge his reflexive need to stab them when they do) and these two are definitely on that list. It’s not like he hasn’t seen them for too long—just a couple weeks, after his “death”—but it feels like it’s been a while. It’s a side effect of living in each other’s back pockets for months, maybe.
         “We are Templars,” Shaun points out once he can figure out a reply. “We can take care of ourselves, you know. Probably better than you.”
         “Little baby Bee,” Rebecca agrees cheerfully, still half-smothering him. “Doesn’t even know how to fly yet.”
         “I know how to fight,” he protests slightly muffled. Shaun raises his eyebrows, skeptical and haughty, from what little he can see around Rebecca. What, just ‘cause he’s not pushing her away?
         Rebecca finally lets go, but she’s grinning ear-to-ear.
         “I,” Shaun announces with a careful pronunciation and dignity that has the bartender in Desmond suddenly fairly sure the man might actually be drunk, “...will be the judge of that.”
         It’s only the fact that the historian’s hands are shaking slightly that lets the Assassin realize he’s being pickpocketed, and Rebecca exclaims, “That’s your phone? That’s an actual dinosaur.” She actually looks half horrified, half fascinated.
         “We might have to run this past our superiors, but I think we can compile something that can help you,” the Brit continues, poking at the phone and then, with hesitation that says he’s probably embarrassed, handing it back.
         “Your phone number, right? Here.” He signs in, not bothering to hide his password from them. Mostly because he knows if he leaves it unattended for any real length of time around Rebecca it probably won’t remain locked for long, and also it’s not like there’s too much on there he’s worried about them seeing. It’s a new burner phone, mostly because he wasn’t sure if the old one was being traced and also because he, shockingly, actually didn’t know his previous password. Which is an uncomfortable reminder of the Thing He’s Still Not Thinking About. And then hands it back.
         The historian blinks, looking oddly vulnerable, but continues to add his name (under Hastings) and phone number. “My surname,” he explains awkwardly, and then adds Rebecca’s (under Rebecca) for good measure before handing it back, just as awkward.
         Something’s going on there, but Desmond’s crash course in learning social cues at the school of the bar didn’t quite cover whatever’s going on with Shaun, so he decides to ignore that for now.
         “I’d appreciate anything you can do to help, really,” he tells them both truthfully, before standing up and stretching.
         “Aww, you’re going already?” Rebecca is actually pouting. But as much as he wants to bask in the presence of his—yeah, they had a really weird relationship, thinking about it, but he’s absolutely going to call them his friends—he knows he can’t just jump in like nothing’s happened. Particularly since, well, for them, nothing has happened, other than the fact that he’s showed up and acted a little strange and caught both their attention that way. From their point of view, they’ve only just met.
         “I meant it when I said I don’t want to get you two in trouble. I’ll find another way if I have to,” he promises and gets the feeling Shaun is itching to correct his grammar or something—only he doesn’t. Huh.
         Maybe he should’ve tried to get Shaun drunk more often to loosen up. Then again, he probably would’ve refused, said something about ‘staying professional’.
         He gets up, waves with a smile, and walks away. Time to get some food—somewhere else, today at least, so they feel like they can talk freely and maybe not so suspicious of him—and then crash. Maybe on a roof somewhere, unless he can find a hotel, and even then his money supply is dwindling and he’s reluctant to just spend that when the police haven’t been too eager to look on rooftops when he avoids the ones with obvious golden security systems.