sixthiterationlogs | Three | My Confidence Shaken

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Three | My Confidence Shaken

WHO: Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad
WHERE: South Village
WHEN: December 3-ish
OPEN TO: One on the path in, anyone afterward.
WARNINGS: Most likely some frank discussion of mental health.

Flickers of Doubt: (Now locked to Shiro.)

His trip to the Bunker had taken a deliberately long time. The device called a 'pod' promised a faster trip - he'd read that in the village codex - but that particular mode of transportation was limited to those who could swim. That excluded him. In the end, though, that mattered little. He'd needed the time as much as he'd wanted to investigate. And even once he'd gotten there, he'd found more reason to take time, more reason to walk slowly, to take the lay of the land, to practice climbing trees and, one night when he'd tried to start a small campfire, learn to control the sudden appearance of an ability that he never could've predicted. He didn't like it, but it wasn't the first thing about this place he hadn't liked.

Altaïr had taken care to spend a shorter amount of time in the Bunker than he'd truly wanted. The arrival of Evie Frye had taken him by surprise, but it had been a second incident the likes of which he couldn't afford to recur. Once, he'd been convinced there would be no afterlife. Now, he was convinced this was no afterlife, but this new youth kept his past on his mind. He could remember with too much clarity, felt heartsore for those he had left behind who hadn't gotten this chance. There were people here he cared for, and while that was a gift he wouldn't overlook, he couldn't help but wonder why he was here but poor Sef, dear Malik, his love Maria... Why had this been denied to them?

And so he had walked. He had thought, he had walked, he had given himself the time to mourn all over again. And he had cemented in his mind that Takashi was not Malik through he could make use of Malik's lessons, and that Miss Frye was not Maria, no matter how strong the resemblance and the accent. He had begun to make plans for instructing Takashi in Malik's methods, and to speak with Evie with the respect she was due rather than the unfortunate familiarity their first meeting had taken.

With his emotions back on a steady footing, he returned to the Village, his pace one that could easily have been sustained for days. At the least, he could say that his stamina had returned and he was confident in his ability to stay on the move as he once did long ago. At the best, he felt like he could have more honesty in his interactions with the people who now counted on him. And that was definitely an improvement.

Regained Confidence:

He knew he owed multiple apologies and they would be words gladly given, but now that he had gone to his home, washed both himself and his clothes, and had a chance to dry both, he stepped back out into the village. There were more arrivals here than he'd expected while he'd been gone - more people to speak with, to check on, and if he wasn't the only one with the ability to call fire to his hands, he didn't doubt there were people to reassure or perhaps even make certain they had a roof over their heads whether they were a new arrival or not.

With Connor in his house, he didn't think offering space would be wise, but he could offer to look around with anyone, to see if any of the other houses would suit them, and to help clear the dust.

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Altaïr sighed. "You are right. It is."

But then... it came slowly, but it came, what Desmond meant with those words, and it twisted his stomach. "...She took your life, hafid?"

Just when he'd thought he'd managed his mourning. Just when he thought he understood Juno's machinations, another facet became visible, reflecting a light he hadn't yet seen.

Desmond was dead. He himself hadn't felt his life leave, but she did promise him it would be painless. It was a fact and one he reminded himself of, but the way Altaïr said it made him actually feel it. The shock was coming off and he thought he'd been ready in the end. He told his dad so, in his last message. He could feel it coming in the pit of his stomach, that there was only one way this could end. He didn't expect grief to hit him so hard he almost felt like swaying with it. He was never going to hit 30, he was never going to see his mother again, he was never going to have a family of his own.

"She ...." He swallowed through a very tight throat, rubbing a hand across his forehead. "There's so much that's happened I don't know where to start. But she manipulated all of us and I fell right into her trap." Desmond was so angry at himself over that, but what could he do to stop it? There was no way around her. She won. "I had a choice to live but let most of humanity die, or die and humanity would live but she'd be free."

"...The true djinn's bargain," he whispered, mouth and throat dry. Oh, the witch. She had started with him. Ended with his hafid of many generations. And would move on to another.

When he spoke again, his voice was low, his words an Arabic growl. Hissed threats, pure anger: he'd done what he'd done for the good of the world, not so some ancient puppeteer could find her way into the open--

Because he knew he would have made the same choice. He would have given his life and hoped those who followed could save them all. But then, wasn't that what he'd done?

"...Would that I could kill her for you, hafid. I would do it without pause."

"Minerva wanted me to let the world burn instead and help pick up the pieces, but I couldn't." That wasn't a choice Desmond could live with. He wasn't strong enough. He would help people, yes, but he'd never forget that all their pain and grief was on him. Every death was by his choice, even if it was manipulated by someone far more powerful. "That cycle was just going to continue because the only way to save the world was the same path. So it'd be another few generations of us and another descendant with the same choice." Over and over. He couldn't do it. Better to save the world and everyone would know enough to maybe stop her.

"I hope someone does kill her. I wish it could've been me." Her cruelty was especially bad to Desmond. He was the creation she helped form through the centuries. He was her toy. He thought it was funny that Altaïr was the angry one now, and he was only bone tired. He was usually the angry one. "Life can be short and cruel to the unlucky. I knew that long before she got her nails into me."

"I would have made the same choice."

At his sides, his hands curled, fighting the instinct - but why, he wasn't sure, until he took a moment to think. There was nothing in Desmond, nothing in how he stood, how he acted, that indicated he would welcome the embrace that Altaïr wanted to give him. As was his right. They had never known one another. Only now by name - and Desmond knew more of him than he knew of Desmond. His grandson had many years on his side and all of Altaïr's writings, all of history.

But Desmond was family. It didn't matter if all he carried of Altaïr was less than one drop of blood, Desmond was his. And that Juno had killed him..!

His jaw flexed and he looked away. Anger had always been a weakness of his. His temper a fuse, short and easily lit. And he knew that if he held an Apple in his hand or if Juno stood before him, it would be a fury answered with blood.

What he had instead was impotent rage with no good outlet, pain with nowhere to go but in. How dare she, after all he had done for her. After the sacrifices of his mother, his father, of the man Rashid should have been. Of Sef, Malik, Maria--

Was their blood not enough?!

"I tried to melt it," he said, voice rough through gritted teeth. "I tried to crush it, to wrench it, I tried to smelt it. But the damned Apple refused to die. And in the end, I couldn't even rid myself of it, with how it called. You saved the world. There should have been a way to save you."

The one time his father seemed to care about him was when he was making the ultimate sacrifice. William said that they could save him, but Desmond knew it was lip service. He appreciated the effort, but William would never let him forget that he failed in the job he was born for. Altaïr's instincts were good; Desmond wouldn't know how to react to physical affection. His mother was good to him, and he and Lucy had a few moments, but he didn't have a lot of connections with others. He wasn't like his ancestors, who managed to find people to surround them and had years together to grow trust and love. It was just him.

"I know you tried, but you couldn't have done it. The technology they had is far past our own, even in my time." He shook his head. "It's fine. I did what I had to. I didn't really have much of a life anyway." Pessimistic outlook, sure, but other people stood to lose more. Like Lucy. Desmond's eyes darkened with grief at that thought. "I thought I could, maybe, with someone, but that got fucked up too." By Juno, by himself, by the stupid war between Templars and Assassins, when maybe if they actually worked together they would've stood a better chance.

Desmond shook it off, literally rolled his shoulders and straightened his spine, as if that would make the emotional weight fall from where it crushed him. "There's something you deserve to know, if we --uh. If we hang out." He wasn't sure how to put it. "There was this tech in the future that let me live through my ancestors. That happened with you. I saw your life, that's how we found the things you left behind."

It was not fine - and he would tell Desmond that in time. He would make certain he knew that no, it was not fine that Juno had done this to him, that he had never had the chance to build a life of his own. But then Desmond spoke and he... had to wonder.

He pushed down his anger over Juno's machinations, allowing curiosity to grow in its stead, and asked, "Was it you, then? The Prophet she told me of? Her words were very vague - and I knew I left clues and keys for the Prophet and the World. But I knew nothing more specific than that."

Had she been hinting all along? Should he have seen through it somehow that it would cost a life?

He bit back a curse, saying instead, "She should not have killed you. Not so young. Not at all."

Desmond wasn't surprised by the questions, and he also doesn't mind, because that was his ancestor. Curious, brilliant, always looking for answers. He can only try and figure out the best way to respond, since frankly it was all confusing as shit. No one really understood it completely, outside of Minerva, Juno, and Jupiter. His brain felt so full, but he really owed some answers to the guy who in a lot of ways started it.

He shook his head. "Ezio is the Prophet, and everything you researched and put together, it's why any of it made sense later on. You laid the ground work, exactly as you planned, Altaïr." Ezio was specifically called that title, so it's who he was. The fact his existence led Desmond to the information they wanted was just a part of it. "He's another of my ancestors. They kept putting clues and information spread through the lives all of you led. We tried to add it up, but I'm sure we made mistakes or missed things." That he made mistakes. He wasn't the brains of the operation.

He couldn't take back his death, but it was nice to think someone cared about it. "Thanks. It wasn't my first choice either, but we all served different purposes. You helped create things, and in some ways, I ended them."

The name was alien to him. Ezio. He shook his head slightly at hearing it, but the rest... The rest was heartening and slightly soothed his raised hackles. Slightly.

Still, Altaïr bowed his head, exhaling a few mournful curses before looking up at Desmond once more. "I would have taken your place in the blink of an eye, hafid. I knew Those who Came Before were greedy. I did not know how far that greed would run."

One life, though. One life to save how many. One life to save the world? He didn't regret, really, that it had to be done. But that it had to be someone so young? That ached. That it was someone who should have had a life to live...

"All of this anger," he exhaled, fingertips pressing against his forehead. "All of this anger at something that cannot now be influenced. So much that was put in motion." Altaïr sighed. "I am proud of your choice. Even as I wish it was a choice you never had to make."

Oh boy, if he and Connor were here, that could mean Ezio might show up, and he has no idea how those three would even interact. He never had to wonder about if they interacted, and now he was going to think about it. Desmond kind of thought he'd love to see that.

He felt weirdly touched and a little emotional about him caring so much about his life. That was the downfall of having a difficult family background. Any amount of assumed parental kindness and it felt like a punch to the chest. "I really appreciate the thought, but honestly I was pretty sure it was coming. Before we got there, I left my father a message, like I knew it would be my last one." He remembered the moment, when he hit record, and the words just started to come.

He was ready for death, but now he was on the other side of it, and he was alive, but for what purpose? "I was kind of hoping on getting a break." A faint smile, both bitter and sad. "Nothingness was really sounding good. It'd been a long few months."

Altaïr gave him a small smile. "I said similar to Darim in the months before I passed. I had thought that I had finally reached a place in my life where I could put everything behind me. That I had done all I would need to do." But he shook his head, looking around at the village surrounding them. "I do not know, now, if I will ever be finished. But that may be my story. That of a man never satisfied with the world, insisting he knows how to better it whether or not he truly does.

"I told a friend not long ago that I am not built for having fun. For letting things be. When I first came, I thought that I was wrong about there being no afterlife. Now, I don't know what to think, except that I have found people to care about here, and I would do for them what I can."

"That's pretty self-aware, Altaïr, you've come a long way from the first time I saw you ...." Desmond paused and then furrowed his eyebrows. "Wait you're obviously from when you were an old man, all wise and talking about Darim, but you look young. What's up with that?" Okay, he should have picked up on that sooner, but it'd been a long few days. Desmond was really convinced now this was the afterlife. It'd have to be. No one would want to be old in the afterlife, so they'd just look like they were in their prime. Well, that was fine. Things could be much worse than talking with his ancestors.

"Eh," Desmond waved a hand. "Maybe your definition of fun is different. I know people who like to play video games for fun, or go drinking for fun, or you know, kill bad guys for fun. So it's really an eye of the beholder type of thing." Desmond liked bartending. That was fun for him. He liked the job, he liked the normalcy, and while he was solitary even then, it was a healthy way to get out into the world. Now he had no idea what to do.

Looking down at himself, Altaïr shook his head. It was a question that had been asked many times, not least by him. "I do not know," he answered on an exhale. "Since I arrived in the fountain, nearly dying as I reached the surface, I have been this age once more. I am glad I'm not the age I appear to be. When I was this young, I was not a man worth knowing."

The look he gave Desmond said clearly that he knew that was the age he referred to.

"Much of my learning came too late. But had it come sooner, there is no way to know what would have happened. What Rashid would have placed in motion."

Desmond looked back at him and then shook his head. "I think you're being too hard on yourself. You wouldn't have gotten to where you were if you didn't have that past." He shrugged but then reluctantly continued. "I may be relating a little. I lost my way for awhile. I was angry too. Uh, still am, mostly." He wasn't so sure if lost his way was the correct way of putting it, but in his last message to his dad, he said that, and it sort of felt right too. In the start he was reluctant to help anyone other than himself. "I really wanted to be normal. I left the Order for awhile. I paid for it though."

Not with his life, that was when he actually got his shit together. "The Templars kidnapped me to use my DNA to spy on you. If I was still with the Assassins, that would've never happened." Or they would've attacked the assassins until they found him, because they knew by then he was the key to some answers. But if they got rid of him after his memories that first time, the world would be destroyed now. He felt a wave of weariness. "That's behind us now, though. No more war here."

Altaïr watched him and, though it was brief, he reached out to squeeze his grandson's shoulder. "You are more like me than you could know. I almost left the Order myself. I was ready to walk away and leave it all behind; the weapons, the teachers, Al Mualim... I do not think I would have regretted it, but such things are impossible to know in any way but supposition." He sighed. "The life is not an easy one. None can blame you for wanting a different way. We wish one another safety and peace, but rarely acknowledge that seldom do we Assassins truly find either."

"It's different in the future. The Templars have all the power now, the Assassins are barely holding on. I didn't really believe in any of it. I'm still not sure if I do." That last part was hard to admit when he's talking to Altaïr himself, but Desmond also wanted to be honest with him. He wasn't sure if being a part of a new Order here, if that was something that would ever happen, was what he was up for anyway. "No offense, it's just that in the end, the fight wasn't even about us or them. It was about saving the world and then fighting Juno, which is something everyone will have to do, not just us. Or rather, everyone alive will still have to do, since I'm not there." It might sound crazy, to implicate the enemies would have to work together, but seriously, Juno was no joke. Big picture.

"I mean, the Templars would've fucked it up, don't get me wrong. They had a spy infiltrate the group that 'rescued' me," quote marks around the rescue, "and planned on taking the Apple. Which would've caused the thing they wanted to stop, because I'm the only one who could do it." Lucy. That was a reckoning on like ten different levels, but he's definitely not going to mention that name now. "I guess I'm really tired of fighting, is what I'm saying. I don't think I was made for it the way you were."

Altaïr's hand was at his shoulder, remaining there lightly as he spoke - but then, as he finished, it moved, shifting from his shoulder to over his heart. He looked at Desmond with utmost sincerity and said, "Then do not fight, Hafid. The work of Assassins is important. Necessary, when freedom is deeply threatened. But never would I force someone unwilling to take up the burden. I never had a choice. But here? Now? You do."

His first two fingers tapped over Desmond's heart before his hand withdrew. "Find what it is that soothes your heart, and do that. Aid as you can, but do not force yourself to do what you have no wish to do. Be you." A small smile came over his lips. "You have already done more than anyone had a right to ask."

Desmond really and truly didn't know what to do with this level of acceptance and support. It was so alien to him. It showed in his mix of confusion and gratitude. Why would he think that Altaïr would be as harsh as his father? Maybe when he was young, but as an old man, he was different. Desmond lived it himself. There were a lot of things he would never get, closure with his parents was one of them. He felt so much emotion well up in him from that kind of simple kindness, to being told that it was alright for him to not fight. To think finding peace within himself was an option.

He blinked away tears and was embarrassed by them, rubbing at his eyes to get rid of them. "Uh, thanks, sorry. It's just been an intense few months." His father would tell him Desmond, there's always more work to do. He wasn't so sure dying would be enough. Altaïr told him it was okay, and he knew better than William Miles. "I mean, you can always count on me, Altaïr. We're, I don't know, family, I guess." Desmond looked away as if trying to claim that family line with him was asking for too much.

"You are my hafid," Altaïr agreed, giving his arm a squeeze before letting his hand drop. "And one I am proud to have. My door will always be open to you, and my kitchen table. I suppose I am kitchen mother enough to want to see you fed."

And it would give him a reason to cook more, all told. He did enjoy it well enough, even missing a few vital ingredients as he was. But he would have rice in time - he was determined. Starting this next growing season, if there was any measure of luck.

Desmond smiled uncertainly but he was going to accept this bond and accept their connection, if that's what he wanted. They both wanted. "Alright, alright. And I am living off the inn alone, so I can do that." It was weird, meeting both him and Connor, but good too. He was happy with both of them living up to his expectations.

[ooc: we can wrap here as we are doing the newer one! yay!]

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Three | My Confidence Shaken

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