An Uneasy Peace, Part III

[madimpossibledreamer]

Also not all of the shops are open in game but a guy that has passively absorbed Ezio would notice all the little shops and for the purposes of the fic they’re actually mostly open, except when plot says no.
If you want, you can look up the cutscene with The Fallen King on youtube. I wasn’t quite expecting this reaction (something weird, sure, but it’s been a while since I’ve done the tutorial) until he got to the line about the sun and then—yeah. Warning for flashbacks/panic attacks.

Main Points:
Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Part of Desmond really wants to just buy every store they see.  Turns out it's not all fun and games, though, as Desmond manages to find one of the weird aspects of magic in London.
Word Count: 1655
Rating: Teen

         One day he decides to go check out all the little shops in the area. It’s kind of neat, seeing all of them around. Maybe it’s the Ezio in him, looking for ways to increase his influence in an environment he’s not entirely sure about. And maybe it’s that kind of echoed pride that has him enjoying them so much, but he doesn’t think so. Little shops always had something neat in them, and didn’t tend to get too suspicious about his use of cash. Sure, the worker might be more likely to remember him, but he’d perfected blending in and being forgettable, even before all the Animus training. ‘Course, he’d done that to keep his maybe-cult he’d escaped from off his back, but still. It’d been handy. Although apparently that’s the norm here, and that feels familiar, too. Puts him at ease.
         There’s a record shop. Not that he actually has a record player to be able to use anything, but still. A little alcohol store. Their selection is also good, but then, almost everywhere has been like that, here. And a little electronic repair shop, not that he needs any of that right now; the only thing he has is his phone. A bakery, which might be called ‘Burnt Offerings’ but the bread is delicious. An import/export business with really weird hours and lists ‘items magical & mundane’, which for all he knows in this world is actually real. Of course, because he doesn’t actually know how to spot magical items, he could be sold fakes and wouldn’t even know. Maybe that’s something he should ask Shaun about later.
         A butcher’s shop, and since he doesn’t plan on opening a restaurant and isn’t renting an apartment (even though with the money the Dragon’s been giving him he probably could at this point) he doesn’t have anywhere to cook it, so he doesn’t even bother with that. Yet, anyway.
         A tiny flower shop. There are probably uses to those beyond just freshening up the look of a place and giving them to people you like, but he still doesn’t know about magic, much less if he can use it, so he gives it a pass and is going to return later.
         A couple more restaurants, but they’re closed when he gets to them, and he’s not sure what kind of food they might be selling just from the outside. A tearoom, another charm seller, which, again, might be useful if he can figure out the real from the fake. The Discriminating Thaumaturgist, whatever that means.
         There’s a sketchy barber shop. He wanders in and immediately feels unsafe, so he apologizes and immediately leaves. He’s not sure what’s giving him that feeling; the triplets working there seem perfectly fine and glow white under Eagle Vision. But he also hasn’t survived this long without listening to his instincts and he’s not going to start ignoring them now.
         Part of that is still, well. Not that he’s experiencing the Bleeding Effect, like, at all, which is incredibly weird, but he’ll still get moments where he feels like reality is just a game and so there’s just a disconnect between consequences and reality. He’s got to have something that tethers him to this world and lets him not get too caught up in thinking as opposed to acting.
         There’s a laundromat, which he takes note of although it won’t matter too much until he gets a change of clothes. He’ll do that soon, just...he’s not sure what he wants to go for, because unlike with the food he doesn’t see much point in switching it up too much. A tabloid, although given that it’s talking about the Templars and Bees on its front page, he’s pretty sure they know more than people think. He notes the other things they mention: black magic cults, vampires, lizard-men, mummies. He’s also had some normal-looking pedestrian walk straight through him, so he’s pretty sure ghosts exist, too. And it calls Templars ‘grail-obsessed freaks’, which, well. On one hand, it’s encouraging that they’re not just immediately wiped out of existence, living so close to the Templars and insulting them like this. In his world, they’d have been quietly disappeared ages ago. On the other, well. He likes Shaun and Rebecca still, but he’s still a bit wary, and that doesn’t help.
         He’s tempted to grab something at the Carefully Not Starbucks no sir we’re a tiny artsy little coffee shop, but spots a little sandwich shop just past it. That’s also pretty good, but then, he’s not picky. It’s in a little square next to a strange guy doing a puppet show, going on and on about environmentalism something something the world is doomed. He’s a little colorful, and not just in his words, because those are bright oranges and greens and blues in his outfit. There’s a decent crowd. He can eat while watching, probably, because while he’d ignore that if he was in his own world, it doesn’t hurt to have a clue about how it compares to what he knew.
         He settles in and half-zones out, because for once, everything seems about the same. He’d heard variations on this particular rant before, a couple of times, back from when he was a bartender. Why was he so focused on this particular spot, besides the fact that a couple of the people had mentioned the Fallen King and a puppet with reverent tones—
         It feels gold, he works out, just as the guy says, “This is a warning from the Sun. It says it’s old and tired and scared of death. It says you’ve lived as young gods for too long! Spoilt children who only need to wish for something and it’ll come true!”
         The sandwich falls out of his hands before he realizes it. Distantly, he’s a little upset about that. It’d been a nice sandwich. Tasty. They’d been mostly eating canned goods and other easy things to pack for so long there, when he was in the Animus, not that he always tasted everything after he’d finished a session anyway. Waste of money, waste of food, and he’d been homeless just like this guy (how does he know that, why does he know that), he knows how important it is not to just let something happen to his food like that, but it’s okay, he can still eat it—
         He’s died once, he can’t do it again, he can’t, but that’s the pain of it, isn’t it, Juno, because if he needs to do it, if he has to die so everybody can live he’d do it again, no matter how much—
         “Easy there, Desmond,” a familiar voice tells him, gentler than he remembers. “I’ve got you, yeah? Let’s go sit down.”
         “’m wasting food,” he mumbles, suddenly cold all of a sudden but it hadn’t been as he burned—
         “I’ll buy you another. Come on, now, that’s right, easy does it,” the voice tells him even as hands gently—gently—grab his shoulders and start maneuvering him in a direction, and he doesn’t even have the presence of mind to shrug it off or wonder where they’re going.
         “We’ll get behind,” he protests, just a little, even though he knows he can’t go back into the Animus, he’s got a headache and his synch rate’ll be all off and someone—lucy shaun dad—is gonna yell at him for it, but what can they do, they have a deadline and he can’t even become not himself properly—
         “Damn schedules and all of that rot. You are not some cog in a machine, Desmond Miles,” he’s told, and suddenly he’s a little warmer. “Breathe, there’s a good lad.”
         He gasps in, but the tears are threatening to fall, and he knows it’ll be reported—well, maybe not, Shaun had been strangely sympathetic at the end—and Dad’s going to be disappointed (like that’s anything new), but he’s scared. It’s nearing the end and he’s scared.
         “I don’t want to die,” he breathes, even as he reflexively sits—it’s a stool.
         “Then don’t,” the voice—Shaun—states firmly, and it’d be dismissive if not for the firm ‘I’ve got your back’ tone to it. “You listen to me, Desmond Miles, and this is important: I don’t care what your cult, what the people who called themselves your family told you. You don’t have to die. I’m the data man, and I’ve done a lot of studying of prophecies and whatnot, and even if they knew a little of the truth, they didn’t know what I know. Prophecies aren’t absolute. There’s always an alternative or three. So keep breathing, keep living, and we’ll see about the rest.”
         He’d thought that, maybe, when reading about it on the internet. That the solar flare hadn’t happened, that he wouldn’t have to die, but part of it, he realizes, hadn’t believed it. It hadn’t quite sunk in yet, and then that guy—the Fallen King—started talking about the Sun, and he lost it, because part of him was still convinced that there was no other way out, for the little rat in the maze.
         He shouldn’t believe this, for the same reason Shaun’s trying to reassure him: he doesn’t know what Desmond knows. But Shaun’s words feel gold, and for the split second he’d been viewing the Calculations he knows that Eagle Vision is just a small fragment of that glimpse into the underpinnings of reality, so—it’s true. He’s safe, for the moment anyway, although—huh.
         Doesn’t mean the Fallen King puppet guy’s wrong, either. Could be that an apocalypse is lurking on the horizon, again. Just means he doesn’t have to sacrifice himself this time, to stop it. So he relaxes a little and opens his eyes—no, wait, they’d been open, he just hadn’t been processing what he’d been seeing—and starts describing what he’s seeing like Shaun is asking.