I Was Never Here

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Desmond checks out John's tip.
Word Count: 2329
Rating: Teen

 

         It’s a little harder, with the way the fence is back. Not for Desmond, obviously. This rocky overhang doesn’t have much in the way of handholds, but he could probably reach the top anyway. It’s even easier when he doesn’t need to, just use the momentum of pulling himself off to vault over the fence. They could go back to try to find another entrance, but he’s getting the feeling that they shouldn’t, which probably means the Park’s planning something to try to stop them again, and maybe if they avoid that where they can, they’ll be better off.
         “Show-off,” Carter calls playfully, and he laughs, turning back to help her over. Alice just kind of waits until neither of them are looking before she joins them. Given that he didn’t hear her scrambling over the fence, his money’s on even odds for flying or teleporting over. Or she’s really getting a hang of this sneaking thing and managed to make her climb over silent. She is kind of an overachiever, so he’s not ruling that out, it’s just...weirdly enough, less likely.
         “Where did your ally say to go again?” Carter asks, but he thinks it’s kind of obvious, given that they’re walking over to the Ferris Wheel right there and it’s not where they have to go for the power of this place. He’s distracted from answering as the radio in the little operator’s booth crackles on with static, though.
         “Here,” he answers vaguely, feeling Alice slip her hand into his again like she’s either a little spooked or trying to protect him.

I love a good roller coaster, but you’ve been taken on one. You think you’ve got me all figured out. You think you finally know everything there is to know.
The Buzzing aren’t the good guys either, if you want to define things in that asinine way. The White Hats versus the Black Hats, all clean and neat and tidy. There’s a reason all the Greek punishments involved suffering for eternity. Just ask Lorraine, Chuck. Or talk to Sarah. You’ve got the answers. All you have to do is look.

         That sounds...a lot like the times the Templars were trying to convince Altaïr he was on the wrong side, actually. At first Desmond thinks that’s a completely random thought, but then second guesses himself. They’d been right about Al Mualim, and he’d be the first to say that he isn’t impressed by the Dragon, or the Templars, or the Illuminati, or the Phoenicians. The Druids of Avalon and the Council seem okay, so far, but he barely knows anything about them and it’s entirely possible that’s why they seem okay. He doesn’t know anything directly about the Bees (is The Buzzing their official name, or is that just what John calls them, just like he keeps trying to call Desmond ‘Chuck’?) but what little he gets from their communications is that they’re trying to be helpful, in their own way. The Isu hadn’t really understood humanity, but the Buzzing feels genuinely more alien than anything he’s ever seen, other than maybe the Filth, so it’s entirely possible their idea of ‘helpful’, while well-meaning, is just as alien and removed from anything that would vaguely make sense for humans.
         And then the woman drifts past again, calling out, probably for her kid again. He says ‘probably’, because he can’t even hear her, just see her calling. She walks past a wispy mirage of one of the Ferris Wheel...cars? What do you call those things? It’s lying in grass that has long since withered and died, starting to rust, fading in and right back out as soon as she’s past it. It’s almost certain his guess is right; she’s trapped in a version of the Park that never existed, but was maybe a little closer to the designs.
         ...Wait, was John trying to be helpful, in his own creepy, angry way? He’s not really trustworthy, is the thing, but if he’s trying to prove himself… “Wait, Lorraine.” It’s a gamble. She could be Sarah.
         She’s not, though, because she turns to look at him again, looking a little more solidly here, with absolutely no recognition. “I’m sorry; I know I shouldn’t be here. The park closed for the night.”
         Carter’s staring at the spot she’s standing, eyes slightly unfocused. “Um, I’m going to leave this part to you,” she tells him. So she might be starting to see her, but can’t quite. Not enough.
         “You’re looking for your kid, right?” he prompts, and she smiles vacantly at him.
         “Oh, yes. The witch killed him.” What.
         She is...eerily calm about that. She’d been so upset about it before, and so far nobody’s mentioned a witch, just the bogeyman. “Can you...tell me about this witch?”
         “Serves him right,” she continues viciously, and Desmond realizes belatedly he’s been fiddling with the Hidden Blades just in case he has to stab her, because she’s so much more threatening this time. She doesn’t even notice, eyes glittering with a cold glee. “Little brat ruined everything. He took everything I had, and for what? He didn’t even bother to thank me.”
         He swallows. Is this...what would’ve happened, if he hadn’t managed to fight his way out? “That’s...this place. It’s trying to mess with your head—”
         “This place is the best thing that happened to either of us!” she screams, coming at him with an icepick she’d gotten from who knows where, and it’s a really, really good thing these are some of the newer reinforced Hidden Blades or he’d be having a whole lot of a harder time trying to deflect her. She’s pretty determined to take out his eyes.
         He’s so preoccupied keeping her at bay he only realizes Alice has done her thing when Lorraine drops to her knees, still glaring murderously. “You will not harm him.” Yikes, her voice is colder than even when he’d messed up, before.
         “You don’t understand,” she spits.
         Desmond crouches to look her in the eyes—after prying the icepick out of her hand. It’s stained with blood up to the handle. So are her hands. Her fingers are clenched tight enough he gets the feeling that if she could move she’d be coming after him with fingernails alone just trying to claw his face up. Nobody had bothered to clean it off after use, which strikes him as disrespectful to the weapon and to the lives that had (probably) been taken with it. “You’re right, I don’t. But I want to know what happened here, and you have answers, so talk.” The world flickers a little grey. This isn’t that after death scene, but...maybe it’s something adjacent.
         He expects her to continue being defiant, or contemptuous, or something. Instead she glances up, tears in her eyes. “You...you want to know my story? No one ever...no one ever cared.” If not for the fact that this is probably the Park, not her, he’d say she’s about as stable as Lucrezia. Playing judge and jury never was his favorite part about being an Assassin, but. It’s not like it’s not necessary, either.
         Her smile at him is equal parts vacant, genuine, and a little twisted. “I met him because of the Park, you know.”
         “Met who?” Interrogating her is gonna be a pain, he can tell.
         She could honestly maybe get with Vidic, being pseudo-dead and all, and trade tips on how to have the most sanctimonious sneer. She’s doing a pretty good job at it. “Don, of course. Callum’s father. He was an actual gentleman. Not like the rest of the pigs working at the site.”
         Right, okay. There goes one of the theories he’d been vaguely wondering about. He’d been half wondering if the Winter guy had been sleeping around, on top of everything else. It would’ve explained why the Park was so focused on her family specifically. Still, if Don had been working on the construction, he’d probably been exposed to whatever was here, never mind if he’d been asked to help put the rest of the plans, the ones that led to weird glowy circuitry on the ground that probably weren’t actually advertised to the public. “And where is he now?” Desmond’s mostly expecting that he’s dead, but when might be important—if he’d died during construction, or after the Park opened, or after Lorraine herself disappeared, one member of a family after another looking for the last to go missing.
         She shakes her head. Probably would bury her face in her hands if she could. “Dead, dead, an accident they said.” Just behind her he catches a glimpse of the, uh, car or whatever, but this time there’s blood spreading from under it, and he’s got a pretty good guess as to how. Particularly since Danny had mentioned other construction accidents already. He just had a name to match to one of them. “He’d been changing, wanted us to get away, but it brought us together. Callum was born on the day it opened. That had to mean something.”
         Or she’d been so desperate to give it meaning, when it was all so senseless. From his own experience, he can pretty much guarantee that it doesn’t introduce anything that’s not already there, but being here… Even if the Park wasn’t ready yet, everyone agreed that after Henderson the land was cursed, so something was there already, preying on fears and insecurities. Probably just not extracting it to fuel something, yet.
         He thinks for a moment about what his next move should be, then decides, you know, what the hell. It might set her off, but he trusts Alice to have this, and he needs to know how aware of anything she is. “Were you changing?”
         She glances up to meet his eyes, utterly miserable rather than furiously angry. “I don’t know,” she answers honestly, and—well, that’s something.
         Okay, the next question is even more cruel, but...he needs to know. “Do you love or hate Callum?”
         She actually smiles through the tears, somehow. But it’s not the smile she’d had earlier, so...that might be a good sign. “I don’t know. He’s the best thing that happened to me, but...Don died. My mother wouldn’t help. Told me I’d run away to be back with my vicious drunk of a father.” She’s got a little bite to those last words, but he doesn’t blame her; he’d seen (and kicked out) that type enough from Bad Weather to get it. “They shoved me into help I couldn’t pay for and then wouldn’t help with the bill. Questioned everything like I wasn’t…” She’s humiliated. “And Atlantic Island Park was ruined. If Callum had been found in pieces like that other child, then people would have cared. They would’ve looked at me with sympathy, not judgment.”
         Don had probably been right. It hadn’t been too long before that that the townsfolk had burned down a woman’s house for witchcraft. Even without Henderson’s influence, they weren’t exactly the most sympathetic or supportive. And of course she’d be compelled to visit over and over again, the work site that had been associated with the love she lost, and. Well, it’s not like he knows exactly how this works, but every visit probably made the grief, the loneliness, everything terrible in her life suck just that little bit more, feeding on and into that spiral. If she hadn’t realized it wasn’t natural, that it was induced…
         “Is he still here?” If he is, Desmond’s guessing he’s trapped like the souls of the other children Danny said disappeared in the Haunted House (which doesn’t even exist on the map, if it ever had, so he’s going to have to figure that part out) and freeing him might be kind of important for stopping this.
         She smiles, beautiful and cold. “It’s his favorite place in the whole world, and he’s never going to leave.”
         Right, okay, not even going to react to that one, particularly since she’s watching him with gleeful eyes hoping for some kind of reaction. That’s a yes. And he hasn’t seen a kid spirit wandering around like her, yet, so...probably not free. “What about Winter? Is he still here too?”
         “He wouldn’t pay,” she hisses, going back to the earlier part. “Don died constructing his stupid park and he didn’t even care.”
         “Yeah, I know, he’s a problem and I want to stop him. Stop him from hurting your family or anyone else ever again. That’s why I’m asking.” He can work with that kind of hate, that desire for vengeance. Ezio did.
         She calms instantly, tilting her head. “Yes, he’s still here. He’s the heart of the Park. And you could cut it out, couldn’t you? Cut it right out and give it to me to eat all up, that dark heart, eat it with a spoon…”
         He’s, uh. He’s just going to ignore her continuing to ramble about that. “And what about the Bogeyman?”
         She glances up quickly, and her eyes are suddenly completely clear. She starts speaking as fast as she can, like she’s worried something’s going to cut her off, and she sounds completely present. “He’s not here, not yet. Neither am I. But if you can kill the Witch, destroy the fragment...maybe there’s hope for me to escape the cottage yet. We might meet later, out in the forest. I’ll wait for you to find me.”
         And then she just...disappears with absolutely no trace. Alice kicks the spot with a snarl, and Carter winces. “I didn’t catch all of that, and I kind of have a headache. Mind filling me in?”
         He definitely doesn’t have to relay it all word-for-word, but the general strokes actually were pretty useful. They’re still going to have to take out the machinery, probably, but after the machine is down, maybe that’s what will summon the Bogeyman. Who might be Winter, not that that’s all that surprising. Maybe that’s what he’d been going for all along.