Darkens the Horizon

[madimpossibledreamer]

Going back through to see if they talked about it and no, it was Shaun and Rebecca that discussed it and Shaun absolutely called Desmond’s reaction. Well, half right anyway. He didn’t think Desmond had actually thought about it.
Hey a wild reference to Bloodlines would you look at that
also yes desmond but you might remember you did have a big fight about the past once already so shaun had a good reason to think that might be a touchy subject
only the bit at the end was planned, but then I remembered oh hey Rebecca has the surveillance stuff and she absolutely wouldn’t let this slide now that she’s back and then suddenly I was at over 3000 words how does this happen I ask of you

Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Shaun and Rebecca panic a bit.
Word Count: 3199
Rating: Teen

 

        Well, that’s the plan anyway, only it doesn’t quite go to, well, plan. He doesn’t even make it back to his kinda Novices when his phone rings, and he’s startled but luckily doesn’t fall out of the tree. He glances around as it continues to ring and eventually finds someplace safe to sit and actually answer.
        “Are you all right?” Shaun barks, and it—intellectually he knows it’s because Shaun’s worried sick and knows somehow about what happened (probably he’d been correct about Rebecca installing something in his phone, or maybe Shaun was using some kind of magic?), but he just—in that moment, Shaun sounds like his dad, and he knows for at least a bit they got along and he freezes.
        “Shaun, don’t yell at him,” Rebecca scolds, and as he starts to be able to breathe again and glances at his phone, he’s treated to the sight of Shaun incredibly passive-aggressively pretty much inhaling the tea. It’s kind of funny. He can breathe again.
        If he’s drinking it that fast, it probably has to hurt, unless he’s forgotten it on the desk long enough for it to go cold. That would happen sometimes, if he was too into whatever research he’d been doing, and when that was going on he wouldn’t even notice when Desmond got up to stretch his legs. Sometimes despite all the lectures about only savages microwaving tea, Desmond could pull it off, return the cup, and Shaun wouldn’t even notice. Or refill it, depending. Rebecca would actually notice the coffee refills and thank him every time, and it was a toss-up if Lucy—maybe he shouldn’t think about that right now. It wasn’t like he was doing nothing; by some metrics he had the most important job of all of them, just lying there in the Animus, but it’d be lying to say it didn’t get to him sometimes, and he wanted to be useful, to be helpful.
        And, uh, huh, is that a new vest? He’d say it’s just that they’re not Assassins living off the grid and Shaun and Rebecca can actually change clothes more often, but he hadn’t seen it in the months he’d been in London, either, which probably means it’s something new he picked up from the one clothing store, uh. Pangaea, right. Looks nice on him. And, also weirdly, sounds like this time someone’s distantly playing some opera music, which he knows based on very enthusiastic debates in both worlds is neither Shaun nor Rebecca’s taste nor is something that’s different here. Maybe it’s just that it looks like they didn’t fully close that door in the back, this time, because he’d bet Rebecca spends some decent cash on soundproofing.
        “Sorry, I just, uh.” He pauses, but. Yeah, huh, he can actually talk about that. “My dad.”
        This probably does confirm his suspicion that alongside the handler app (or maybe that app itself) lets Rebecca monitor him somehow. Because otherwise she shouldn’t have a clue that he was in trouble and it’s already happened twice.
        Shaun sets down the teacup with the kind of care that suggests, from an Assassin at least, that he is trying very hard not to stab something and/or absolutely murder an inanimate object he kind of wants to keep intact. “Not the time,” he murmurs to himself, fiddling with a pen; Desmond probably wasn’t meant to hear that. Then he continues, louder, as a thought occurs to him, “You don’t think he’s behind the attempted murders, do you?”
        Rebecca hisses at Shaun and attempts to start an elbow fight again, but that’s not exactly necessary. This time. Because it’s not as big a deal as she thinks, and for a very good reason.
        Because, unfortunately, that’s a possibility Desmond had considered. While it’s obvious there were some differences in how he’d been raised compared to the Desmond in this world, that weirdly missing Desmond still had Hidden Blades. Unless he’d brought those with him somehow, or magicked them into being using the Calculations. Like, at this point he’s pretty sure he replaced this world’s version of himself, somehow, though—huh, he hadn’t thought to check if this was his body, he’s going to have to look for more scars from training and escaping Abstergo. If they’re not there, then yeah, he jumped into Other Desmond’s body with his mind, which would be a whole lot weirder if he hadn’t spent months in simulated versions of his ancestor’s bodies, and his head still kind of hurts thinking about this. Maybe the Assassins here also branched out more into guns than he remembers, given that there haven’t been any attempts up close and personal yet, but there’s one sticking point he keeps coming back to. At this point, he can’t tell if that’s Calculations, or just something he feels deeply in his gut. And sure. The Assassins aren’t what they were, in his world, unless they got absorbed by somebody else along the way (the Phoenicians are seeming pretty likely), but still. “Pretty sure if it was, they’d be a whole lot more successful at it.” Like, if it’s the Phoenicians, they’d definitely seemed more competent than whoever the mysterious ‘they’ keep sending after him.
        Shaun and Rebecca make identical upset faces—it’s kind of funny how sibling-like they are, sometimes—and Rebecca stops trying to use her Geneva convention violating elbows to subdue Shaun.
        “You really shouldn’t be so nonchalant about the possibility, you know,” Shaun mutters. Maybe it worked anyway. He sounds more subdued.
        Desmond can only really shrug. “If it wasn’t so common, maybe I’d freak out more, but as it is everything around here’s trying to kill me.” Never mind other stuff he can’t exactly mention.
        Shaun picks the tea back up and takes a very, very careful sip. He’s clearly fighting with himself, but it turns out the part that actually cares wins out over the need to pretend that he doesn’t, and he points out dryly, “Say that again when your hand’s perfectly steady, and perhaps I’d believe you.”
        ...what, really? He hadn’t even noticed.
        “Rukh could have been shot,” he mentions, feeling suddenly like he’s losing an argument he hadn’t even thought happening, and Rebecca looks confused.
        “Um. I mean, we all know he’s weird for a familiar, but, uh. You are aware that familiars are—okay, not as hard to kill as a Bee, but still pretty damn resilient, right?”
        He glances over at Rukh. Who is trying very hard to make himself look small and inconspicuous, inching away very very slowly sideways along the branch they stopped on as if Desmond’s not going to notice. “It didn’t come up in our conversations.”
        Shaun leans forward, forgetting about the tea entirely for a moment. “He’s actually talking now? I’d had the hypothesis that the dangers of Solomon Island had convinced him the safest move was to stay silent.” Desmond stares. Is that something all familiars can do, too? “You mean to tell me I am the only one Rebecca has been bothering with numerous raven videos? While I am attempting to research for the end of the world, might I add?”
        He’s been complaining to Rebecca about that each and every time, watching them anyway, and has been dying to complain to someone else. Clearly. “...Like parrots?”
        Apparently Rukh hadn’t been too far away to nip Desmond hard. He’s bleeding now. Again. He’s getting better at just healing it though.
        “I suspect he’d be more comfortable with the assertion that parrots behave like ravens and possibly crows.” With the way Shaun’s eyeing the now bloodstained white beak, he’s clearly trying to ensure he doesn’t encounter the same issue if Desmond sends him over again. Rukh bobs his head a couple times. Though it looks a little more like bobbing his entire body. He gets a pet for being cute (although Desmond gets the idea that maybe he shouldn’t say that out loud, either), which he leans into, blinking, beak slightly open. Desmond thinks the fast blinking is a sign that he’s enjoying it, considering he tends to do it with things he’s sought out, like the petting.
        “I’d said that as more of a joke...but yeah, he definitely understands what I’m saying and responds. Just not with words.” And if he’s got the capability, yeah, that does seem like a deliberate choice.
        “Fun as this is, guys, we can goof off later. Des, any new clues?” She absolutely means it, too. Rebecca has no shame. She doesn’t even have the concept of shame.
        He had been planning on keeping them in the loop anyway, so sure, now’s as good a time as any. “The shot was a whole lot more difficult, so possibly a new wannabe killer. Somewhere between two to three times the distance. Straight shot, and I could absolutely handle it, but without hitting any of the trees? It feels almost like he took the shot and then...controlled it afterward.”
        Shaun looks...uncomfortable, at best. He probably does have trauma with guns, doesn’t he.  Trauma the Shaun he’d known didn’t have.  Which...honestly could be a problem. For another day, really, and lately Desmond’s been using guns a whole lot more than he’s used to. But it’s not like Desmond can just stop being an Assassin. He’s tried. And it’d probably shock Dad, too, because sometimes he’d say he failed Desmond and more often than not he’d say that it was Desmond who was the failure.
        Being uncomfortable doesn’t stop him from talking, though. Which Desmond would also be pretty surprised by. “Telekinesis is not entirely uncommon, but that kind of minute control is much more difficult to achieve, speaking from personal experience. I’d say a ghost or poltergeist of some kind is far more likely, but they’re typically much more effective even against Bees.”
        That’s an interesting thought. “I wondered about this at the time—maybe this is less about killing me and more about starting a war. And if that’s the case, maybe whoever they hired didn’t actually know about all this ‘Secret World’ stuff until all this. And if he’s got a ghost partner following him around…”
        “Ohh, so you’re saying our perp conjured up a ghost and then hired somebody on the outside to cover their tracks. Sure, that’d work great if you’re going for maximum mayhem, and that might explain why I’m coming up empty. If I’m looking in the wrong place…” Rebecca turns away and starts typing away at her computer.
        “So your friendly crusader Javier might be doing their work for them,” he suggests, and Shaun takes another aggressive sip.
        Rebecca’s the one that answers. “Nothing we can do about that Des, sorry, our hands are tied. We’re still doing what we can but the higher-ups apparently had one of their top-secret meetings. Technically, we’re supposed to minimize contact with you, too, but Sonnac disagrees. Very politely.” Which also means that they can get away with a bit of this, as long as they’re discreet. Fair enough. Probably also means that he’ll have to keep an eye out for signs they need to die, too. Sonnac seems fine, but it’s not like he’s met any of the other leadership yet, so he doesn’t have too good of an idea on that front. And if Shaun opened his mouth to talk about that, he’d be ranting for hours, probably.
        “Oddly, I distinctly remember having suggested, through Rebecca, that you keep your distance.” Shaun’s halfheartedly flipping through one of his books to try to avoid meeting Desmond’s eyes, but he’s obviously not actually reading a word.
        Desmond sighs and rolls his eyes. “He trapped me in the Council safehouse and was harassing them. I wasn’t going to just hide and pretend nothing was wrong.”
        Shaun finally stops pretending to read and just crosses his arms instead, though he’s still not looking at the camera. “I’m serious, try to avoid him in the future, hmm? If we had those inane American yearbooks, he might be voted ‘most likely to start the next Crusades’ or something along those lines—a choice that his ancestor would have disapproved of highly.”
        And there’s that enthusiasm in his voice. He’s clearly been itching to show off what he’d learned from researching and unlike when Desmond had been in the Animus it’s not like he has a semi-captive audience ready to learn his newest discoveries at any moment. He’s probably not supposed to be sharing any of this anyway, but Shaun really isn’t the kind of guy who shuts up when ordered. And yeah, there’s the ‘lore pieces’, or so the others call them, from the Bees and the Filth, but he’s been missing the database entries, just a little bit. “Gilbert Horal was one of the Grand Masters of the Knights Templar—you know what Grand Masters are—all right, yes, I can see by your expression that you, in fact, do. Well, he succeeded the wildly successful, if you measure success by the bodies in your wake, Grand Master Robert IV de Sablé…” ...Wait, that’s different. Because Desmond—okay, not Desmond, Altaïr—had met de Sablé’s replacement, who was just as much of a douche as his predecessor, and he hadn’t been called Horal in the world he was from, “...only our newly minted Grand Master wanted to make peace with the Muslims and stop the whole bloody Crusades deal. Ramped up tensions with the Hospitaliers—another Crusading faction, because no one can quarrel amongst themselves like Christians—but even with all that got accused of treason because only traitors want peace, prosperity, silly things like that. He only managed to keep in power by his organizational skills and eventually giving in and taking part in the Reconquista in Spain—the word itself a concept of bringing back a ‘better time’ of a Christian nation that did not, in fact, previously exist. Which probably also sounds far too familiar.” Shaun sighs.
        “It’s easy to call a time period ‘the Glory Days’ when you haven’t lived through it,” Desmond agrees, and Shaun...oddly actually relaxes, muscles looking a little looser and less tense. Like he’d been worried about that for some reason? It’s...really not clear why. It’s not like Desmond’s really talked that much about the past or anything.
        “And Des. You mentioned the Filth.” Rebecca’s completely serious again, which yeah, he’s going with ‘that’s a really, really bad sign’. And all that relaxation Shaun had immediately evaporates—he swallows and while the arm-folding thing is pretty common for Shaun, his eyes look a little wider and he doesn’t look like he’s breathing normally, almost...almost like he’s afraid. It’s not that he hadn’t been, in the Temple, but he’d still managed to rationalize it, a bit. “Just to be clear, this is one of those conversations that never happened, and that’s without going into specific incidents, the few notes we have on it anyway. I haven’t been able to dig up too much, on account of the fact that, well, most people exposed to this thing? The walking dead, only not of the zombie variety. Some people seem to be immune or to have fought it off, Bees especially—there’s been a few signs in Egypt, and pretty much everybody but the Council withdrew everyone that wasn’t a Bee. And it’s not just people. It corrupts and decays everything, kinda like entropy on steroids. Computers, records, plants, all toast.” Oh, and she’s sharing that because presumably, he should know, if that’s something all the Council factions were told. And from what he’s seen, all of that feels right. Though he’d definitely feel better if he knew what happened to James the janitor, because then he’d have a better idea if he actually helped and whether he should, just in case, preemptively heal everybody he runs into here on Solomon Island. Maybe he should do that anyway, because other than taking up a bit of his energy, it can’t hurt, and he can always just find the nearest Anima Well to fill right back up (or, to a lesser extent, the golden lore spots).
        Shaun steps in smoothly, almost like it’s something they rehearsed. “As for more metaphorical references, we don’t have to look far to find them—humanity in general has a primal fear of the dark, most creation stories involve some kind of dark void that existed before the world as we know it, and a number of, shall we say, mythological characters were personifications of the dark, chaos, and void. More concretely we have good reason to believe that this might be the force behind at least one of the previous Ages ending, as well as the corruption of some of the old artifacts. In fact, it’s probably even the power behind the decline in artifacts and the remnants of mythology.” He’s still adorably doing everything he can to avoid saying ‘gods’ or ‘deities’, and at some point Desmond really should probably clarify it’s not gods in general that give him a panic attack even though he’d probably happily stab all of them. But it’s kind of funny and adorable and now might not really be the time for that anyway.
        “Uh, Shaun. When Beaumont was talking about the World Tree, did he mean Agartha?” It’s not exactly like any tree Desmond’s ever seen, but there are wooden branches and the central column where they’ve got the bars and shops and stuff. “Because I could’ve been wrong, but I thought I’d seen some of the branches really far down turning black. I thought they were dying, but what if they weren’t?”
        Rebecca and Shaun exchange glances, and yeah, they’re both scared. Which probably should mean Desmond should be scared too, but—eh, maybe he’s overconfident. It’s not like the Calculations are a perfect fix, or he wouldn’t have headaches or pass out if he pushes them too far. But it’s also not like it’s the first apocalypse he’s stared in the face, so...whatever, bring it on.
        “I admit I’m not entirely sure how a sword, even an artifact from an earlier age, could be used to release the Filth from one branch, but…” Shaun thinks, then gets up and grabs several more really big books. He’s not even consciously showing off; he’s in work mode. But it’s nice to have the reminder that he works out anyway. Rebecca, meanwhile, has turned back to her computer and her fingers are flying across the keys. Neither of them even bothered to grab Shaun’s phone from where propped up to face them, probably against yet another book.
        “I’ll let you get back to it,” Desmond tells them, but only gets a distracted wave from Rebecca in response. Guess it’s up to him to hang up, but he’s got a better direction of what he’s looking for, now. John—Wolf-John, not Voice-John—mentioned something about people seeking that power before Beaumont, and their ‘creations’ getting rowdy, so presumably even if they don’t find Beaumont right away, taking those out and maybe even seeing if he can purify more of the Filth can’t hurt. If anything, Beaumont’s causing chaos and ordering his zombie minions to dig more of this up because it powers the ritual somehow.