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By the time Rosaleen reached the warehouse, with the evening sun pulling shadows up from the ground like weeds as its grip on the horizon failed, her clothes were sticking to her body with sweat, and her head throbbed with pain every time she stopped moving forward. She hadn’t eaten in ten hours, and hadn’t slept in thirty, and hadn’t seen her brother in nine years. She wasn’t looking forward to it.
It was a secluded place they’d picked to operate out of. If it fell to her, she’d always preferred being hidden in plain sight. This was Dad’s style, his handiwork all over the whole operation. He liked to be out of the way, where no one would come looking. Seemed to work, until it didn’t. Rosaleen played by his rules when he was in charge. He knew more than she felt like she ever would, or he wouldn’t still be leading them all. He probably wouldn’t even be alive. As of twenty-seven hours ago, he was, and that was when he had told her about Desmond.
Not a few days ago, when good people died for no reason on her brother’s behalf. Not a week ago, when Abstergo had locked Desmond up. Not a month back, when Lucy probably contacted him about who Abstergo had lined up as the next subject. Twenty-seven hours ago, and he remembered to tell her that her brother was around. After all, someone had to protect him, or maybe someone had to keep him from running off and screwing them all over. I trust you to keep everything under control, were the exact words used.
Dad knew more than she did, so who was she to argue? He’d been lucky she was in Warsaw and not in Khartoum like she’d wanted to be next week. She’d prefer it there; her Italian was poor, people’s gazes lingered too long on her in the street, and the Autumn heat was too wet for her taste. Abstergo had eyes everywhere. She’d been good about keeping her face away from them, but it was better to assume they knew more than she thought than to ever believe she was safe.
She took the stairs at a heavy gait. They groaned discomfitingly beneath her. Assassin-owned or not, she’d guess this place hadn’t seen maintenance, or regular use, in more than five years. Not a good base of operations for more than a few days. She made notes in her head as the climbed—entrances, exits, chokepoints and dead ends. They were like sitting ducks compared to the apartments the cell she’d been with had commandeered in Warsaw, windows kept open and door in the roof for if the lower floors were overrun. She missed Bogna and wondered if she’d care enough to miss Rosaleen in return. High hopes for a three (Four? Sleep deprivation made it hard to keep track.) night stand.
Rosaleen reached the top of the stairs. She had to go in there. She had to see him.
She turned away and leaned on the railing instead. Definitely an Assassin hideout. Teach a group of people how to scale a wall, and pretty soon, every building they inhabited was full of ladders and unstable-looking rafters, anything people could scramble up and out of the way on to get a moment to themselves. Home was like that, before- And Rosaleen had thought of it as a jungle gym built specifically for her, up until she’d realized she had to look at the whole world that way, a puzzle of handholds and worn-down edges, every leap she made without being sure she wouldn’t end up paste on the ground. She itched for it now. Maybe she should take a tour of the premises before meeting Desmond, not like he was going any-
The door opened behind her. Rosaleen froze, expecting the worst.
It was only marginally better.
“Lucy,” escaped her mouth before she could stop it. Her heart skipped several beats like it was going for a world record. Lucy looked surprised before the tension on her face melted away for one perfect moment, and she smiled, and she was as beautiful as Rosaleen remembered.
“Rosaleen?” She moved forward, and Rosaleen wanted to be hugged so badly that she turned to welcome it. It never happened. Lucy stopped still feet away, looking her up and down. “Did Bill send you?” Rosaleen hadn’t seen Lucy since she was seventeen. Still, she could hear her holding something back.
“He didn’t tell you?” It wasn’t her, was it? Seeing Lucy was like a piece of her life had fallen back into place after years of Rosaleen refusing to linger on its absence. Everything she wished she had said and was far too late for now was uselessly in her mouth and threatening to spill out. Did she think Rosaleen was someone to dread? Assassins—the ones raised and trained in the American cells, at least—treated her like she was the harbinger of her father’s disapproval. Always the Mentor’s kid, no-not-that-one.
(She told Dad she preferred operating under other Brotherhoods because she needed as wide a range of experience to draw upon as possible. He’d called her clever, twice an Assassin as most Masters, “When I need you, I’ll call.” He let her go. She’d been around the world both ways.
When he called, she came running.
When she had to prove herself in the eyes of another Brotherhood, it was because she was an outsider. When she had to prove herself to her own, it was because she would always be her father’s only c- Only daughter.)
“I-“ Lucy faltered. Rosaleen tilted her head, studying her, but that seemed to make Lucy even more uncomfortable. Rosaleen turned her gaze off elsewhere, like the walls interested her just as much as Lucy did. “Maybe he did,” she said. “It’s been a long week. I’m sure he did. It slipped my mind.”
“Just a precaution,” Rosaleen reassured. “You’re out of practice, Desmond’s not an Assassin-“
“We’re using the Animus to train him. He’ll be one soon.” Rosaleen snorted.
“I’ll believe that when I see it. Who else is on your team?”
“Rebecca Crane and Shaun Hastings.” Rebecca, she knew. Shaun… sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t recall his face.
“Rebecca’s here to keep that machine going, not to fight. Shaun’s-“
“Our historian,” Lucy told her. “Making sure what we see is accurate or making sure that our own information is updated to be more in line with what Desmond’s DNA tells us.”
“Not a fighter.”
“We all are,” Lucy said.
“You know what I mean, Lucy.” Rosaleen shrugged. “I’m your muscle. I’ll keep you guys safe.” She smirked. “Abstergo won’t know what hit them.” She was hoping a little bragging would put Lucy at ease, but worry flickered in her eyes like candlelight quickly extinguished for fear of drawing attention to it.
She must have been through hell, Rosaleen thought.
One day—she’d always known this—she was going to be the one to burn Abstergo to the ground. Maybe the Templars went with it, maybe not, but she’d do it, and now, she’d do it for Lucy, too. Not a soul was ever going back into Abstergo’s hands if Rosaleen could help it. They’d lost too many already.
Even Desmond, she added, begrudgingly.
“Where did you come from?” Lucy asked as she took a place at Rosaleen’s side, peering out at the warehouse as Rosaleen couldn’t resist looking at her any longer. The Lucy in her head kept her hair short, wore gloves everywhere, and always felt so close that Rosaleen had been scared she’d forget she wasn’t supposed to kiss her. Meeting her now was being introduced to a stranger; she looked older than she was and worse than Rosaleen felt.
“Poland,” she said. “Should’ve been heading down to Sudan, but…” She trailed off.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Lucy said, quietly. Rosaleen didn’t know if she could say anything close to as honest without cutting herself open to get it out, so she said nothing at all and bottled the guilt up to never look at again.
After a minute, Lucy added, “Desmond asked about you.” Rosaleen crossed her arms.
“Why?”
“Because of the Farm. He wanted to know you were safe.” Lucy looked down. “Not directly. He still thought I was on Abstergo’s side at the time. But he pressed me about any other bodies after I told him your mother and Bill were alive.” Rosaleen squeezed herself until her stomach unwound the knot it was tying itself into.
“Miracle we didn’t lose more people,” she mumbled. What did Desmond even know about the three of them? He hadn’t cared for years; why would it change if they had died? He wasn’t the one in the chaotic aftermath unable to get in contact with their parents, facing down Assassins without a leader, and realizing she couldn’t- But Dad had been fine, took back over, set everything straight. Mom was safe, last Rosaleen had heard, though still not on speaking terms with Dad after their last big fight.
Rosaleen could have laughed. Desmond probably didn’t even know their parents were divorced. One more bullet he’d dodged that she’d taken for him.
“I can’t avoid him forever, can I?” Rosaleen gazed at Lucy, who did not look back, and wanted her to give her permission for Rosaleen to do so for as long as she wanted. Maybe they could just stay here, at the threshold, until Rosaleen found a way to speak to her that didn’t hurt and Lucy could share what was bothering her.
“You’re not even a little happy to see him again?” Lucy sounded genuinely taken aback.
“No.”
Rosaleen learned a while back that the trick to lying was to believe it, every time, no matter what false identity she wore or what blatant excise she gave. Once she believed it herself, everyone else had no choice but to accept it, too. (Once she realized how easy it was, it got hard to believe anyone else ever again.)
That had never been the part of the Creed that gave her trouble.
Lucy pushed herself away from the railing. Rosaleen watched her rub at her eyes.
She didn’t want to make things harder for Lucy. That could keep her civil.
Rosaleen knew it would be the easiest thing in the world to pull Lucy close enough to hug. One of them had kept a desk job, and one of them had been shot at twice in the past month.
She let Lucy go and only followed her at a safe distance. That wasn’t the life they were allowed to live. Rosaleen knew that when she was younger, ands she’d only had the lesson driven deeper under her skin in the past few years.
It was terrible that the end of the world was taking its time. She didn’t have an excuse to do something stupid. Lucy smiled back at her, weakly. A sinking feeling rooted in Rosaleen’s chest, and it would refuse to leave her for a very long time.
She followed Lucy down the hall, staring at her shoes. She abandoned each thing she should have said with the mud she tracked in on the floor. I missed you. I tried to keep track of you, but Abstergo and my dad and this war and- Do you remember that time we got drunk before you left, and before my dad found us and yelled at us for being idiots, you told me you were scared to be alone in the world, and I said I’d come save you if you ever called me. Did you? It keeps me up at night that I never thought about what we’d do if I couldn’t hear you. I thought, I thought, and Lucy opened the door, and Rosaleen saw her brother, and she couldn’t think of anything at all.
“Rosaleen?” Lucy prompted, quietly, and she realized she’d frozen on the wrong side of the doorway. Rebecca looked up and opened her mouth to say something. Whatever she saw in Rosaleen’s face silenced her, and she pretended like she hadn’t even noticed Rosaleen come in.
Rosaleen had worked with Rebecca before. She trusted her. Rebecca was reliable, sharp, more dangerous than she looked and sometimes, Rosaleen thought, than she wished she was. On the other hand, Shaun was a complete wild card to her, with only Dad’s recommendation and Lucy’s words to go off of. And that left…
She always thought Desmond would look like Dad when he grew up. It made sense. Rosaleen looked like their mom, or she did a busted lip, a boxed ear, and a broken nose ago. Desmond at sixteen had had their Dad’s brow and his scowl down like a mirror.
But Desmond looked like Mom now, too. Desmond looked like her. He had the same square face, the same nose, down to the same-sized shoulders, even if his seemed to actually fit his frame where Rosaleen had always been left awkwardly looking like she had football padding on.
His eyes flickered beneath his lids. His fingers twitched. They even had nearly the same haircut, and Rosaleen had the worst urge to chew him out for copying her.
“Can we wake him up?” Lucy asked. She and Rebecca know how the tech side of this worked. Shaun had made his mess in the corner of the room.
She was there to keep Desmond in line. Because Dad trusted her. Dad could never trust Desmond again.
That was what he deserved. She stared hard at the man who her brother had become, but she’d spent so long hating what she remembered of him that she had a hard time recognizing him as Desmond at all, like he didn’t share the guilt of the boy who’d ruined all their lives even when she knew he did. Betrayal was a lattice; someone couldn’t grow out of it, only grew around it. They became what it made them, and what it made Desmond was a fucking coward who’d made her find his empty bed.
Oh, there was the anger. Right on time. She didn’t know how she could have faced him without it.
“Yeah, this sequence is stable,” Rebecca said. “Desmond?” There was no reaction that Rosaleen could see, but Rebecca must have gotten some sort of reading in response. Rosaleen wondered if he would hear her, if she spoke, but her words lodged sharply in her throat. “Desmond, I’m pulling you out. Brace yourself, okay?”
“You worry too much,” Shaun told her from his side of the room. “Abstergo was much rougher with him, I imagine, and nothing went wrong there.”
“That’s a miracle,” Rebecca muttered. “I keep thinking he’s going to get a seizure when he desyncs.”
“What?” Rosaleen couldn’t help saying. Lucy looked at her, her lip worried under her teeth.
“It’s not-“ She never finished her sentence, as Desmond suddenly tensed and shuddered and lurched forward in the Animus. He squeezed his eyes shut like he was in pain, sucking in heavy breaths. Rosaleen took a step back.
“Shit,” Rebecca said, “I think I distracted him.”
“I’m fine,” Desmond rasped. “Just- Jesus, my throat’s dry, how long was I-?” He had one arm tucked tight against his belly like he was trying to cover something. His hand ran across his shirt, clenched in the fabric, pressed harder, and then fell away weakly. Finally, he dragged his head up, and spotting Rosaleen, jerked it to meet her gaze faster. His eyes locked onto hers sharply, and Rosaleen froze.
In that instant, she saw him as more and less than he was—as more: every slight movement, every vibration of breath, even the mild scent of sweat from sitting in the Animus for hours; as less: blurred in her vision, undecided, not intending her harm or aligned with her, valuable, necessary. His eyes swept over her as she did the same, both of them gleaming information in silence as the narrow world of only the two of them swayed with sounds they disregarded. Recognition ran down into Rosaleen’s bones. Something had taught Desmond how to see the world like an Assassin, never a skill he’d had before he disappeared from her life. It had taken Rosaleen years of her life to develop this skill, and Desmond just had it. She clenched her fists.
With a rush like burning air leaving an oven, they both drew back from each other. She could tell what she was hearing that wasn’t Desmond’s exhales: Lucy’s voice, measured to hide an anxious thrum underneath, as she said, “Desmond? Can you two hear me?”
“Yeah,” Desmond said, dropping Rosaleen’s gaze and rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Sorry.” Rosaleen wasn’t sure who he was addressing that to and didn’t care.
How did he- Why- Lucy’s theories, Dad had said, the Animus, training, and things that went over Rosaleen’s head because she’d stopped being able to hear anything at all the moment he’d said her brother’s name.
A terrible thought crossed her mind. What if Desmond was worth the effort Dad wanted them to throw behind him? She buried it and stomped on the dirt until it was packed too tightly to be unearthed.
Desmond looked up again, and this time, there was no penetrating force behind his gaze. “Hey,” he said after a few awkward moments of silence. Rosaleen glared at him. He blinked a few times, then looked over at Rebecca and Lucy, then followed their gazes back to Rosaleen as if them seeing her made her more real.
“Desmond.” She had too much to say to him, and nothing he should get to hear.
“Great. You’ve got something against me, too?” From his corner of the room, Shaun snorted. She decided she liked Shaun, if for the sole reason that he wasn’t on Desmond’s side, like no one should have been.
“If you didn’t want that, maybe you shouldn’t have fucked us over.” Dad always said that was why Desmond did it—irresponsible, unable to handle this life, couldn’t put others before himself, couldn’t follow the simplest orders without getting into it with him. Desmond leaned forward out of the Animus. He brushed his hand across his stomach again as if he thought he would find something there this time, then grimaced and put it down again.
“I don’t even know you,” he grumbled.
There was a difference between an awkward silence and an unbearable one.
Rosaleen wanted to hit him.
“I’m trying to help,” Desmond continued. “I went back in this machine to get the Assassins what they need. We’re on the same side.” He fixed his gaze on her, defensive. “Could you get to know me before you write me off?”
“Are you going to tell him,” Shaun said, sounding amused but only like the other option—uncomfortable—seemed too unappealing, “or are you waiting for him to figure it out? Because the sun will burn us all to death first in that case.” Desmond rolled his eyes.
Then stoped. Heard what Shaun actually said.
“What do you-”
And the beauty of it, Rosaleen thought, was that it might finally click because she was scowling just like Dad did.
Desmond inhaled noisily. His mouth worked, no sound came out. Then, “Leens?” Then, “You look-“ Then, “You were just a kid when I-“ Recognition. Guilt. Excuse.
He was still her brother. She kept discovering that in ways that made it worse.
“Don’t call me that,” Rosaleen snapped at him.
“I missed you,” Desmond said, the words falling out of him as his mouth hung open.
“So?”
“Rosaleen’s here for protection,” Lucy interrupted. They both swung their heads towards her. Desmond stood.
“Mine?” he asked, disbelieving.
“Yes,” Lucy answered.
“I’m here because Dad told me to come,” Rosaleen answered. She knew which one of them Desmond believed.
Rosaleen straightened her back. He was still an inch or two taller than her.
“Maybe he wanted a family reunion?” Rebecca asked, looking nervous.
“He’d have to show his face for that,” Desmond said.
“You’d have to be worth his time.” She wouldn’t be satisfied until he aimed to cut her back.
“Didn’t you hear anything I just said about the Animus? You have someone else who can do this?” That got close, thrown at her in frustration, before his mind caught up to his mouth. He went a little ashen when he stepped back from her. “He sent you to replace me.”
She could say Dad did. Even if just to frighten Desmond into compliance.
The reason she didn’t was that she hadn’t even thought about that possibility. Dad’s call had been detailed and long, told her everything she needed to know about this situation, and not once did he float it by her, imply it, order her to get there and supplant Desmond with her shared genes and get the job done right.
Rosaleen’s guts twisted, and she blamed her brother for tying the knots.
“You’re going to finish what you started this time,” she told him.
“I didn’t start anything. I was kidnapped.”
“That’s your fault for being dumb enough to kidnap.”
“I was drugged- Lucy, tell her.” He looked over to Lucy for assistance. Rosaleen tossed her head towards Lucy, hoping she’d understand Desmond didn’t have a leg to stand on.
Lucy glanced between them. Her mouth wound tight.
“Abstergo gets what they want, Rosaleen. If the first attempt hadn’t worked, they would have escalated things.” Lucy crossed her arms and didn’t meet her gaze again. Rosaleen swallowed hard.
“Thank you!” Desmond said, and she hated how genuine he sounded, like he could know Lucy better than she did.
“Not that you tried very hard to escape,” Shaun added under his breath.
Rosaleen really liked Shaun.
“People died for you. Good people,” Rosaleen accused. Assassins. Her allies. Her friends. Dad was supposed to keep them safe, and Desmond got them killed. Rosaleen saw Lucy flinch out of the corner of her eye.
“I know,” Desmond said, quietly, and opened his mouth to say something else before Rosaleen cut him off.
“Which is why I’m here to make sure you don’t waste their lives-“
“Fuck you,” but he should have been angrier, she needed him to be angrier, because there was nothing he could ever do to make any of this right so he might as well-
And she didn’t care what she looked like. Didn’t care that Shaun and Rebecca and Lucy were all staring at her. She just needed Desmond to hurt. He deserved it, because it had just been her for years, doing everything he was supposed to.
“So sit back on your ass and-“ She spit.
“I’m not sitting on my ass, Leens!” She bristled. It wasn’t for him to say, so it wasn’t for anyone in the world to say ever again. “You have no idea what I’ve had to see today! I watched my broth-“ The breath went out of him just as he got going.
Rosaleen waited. Desmond’s expression broke under a wave of grief she didn’t understand. Shaun was no longer looking at the two of them. Neither was Rebecca, her hand over her mouth as she stared too intently at a computer screen to be looking at it. Lucy watched them, though. Lucy watched, and Rosaleen felt further away from her than when she’d been behind Abstergo’s walls. She and Desmond, on the other side of a chasm, while Rosaleen tried to scream a bridge into existence.
“I haven’t seen you in years,” Desmond said, gathering enough strength into his voice to speak and no more. “I couldn’t stop Ezio’s brothers from being murdered. Please, Leens.”
She was ten, and her brother had a bloody lip that she was trying to get to stop before Mom saw, before Dad came back and found out Rosaleen had been watching, before her brother started crying because Rosaleen didn’t know how to fix that. Please, Leens, and she didn’t know how to fix it. She put the alcohol wipe against his lip, and he winced. She didn’t know how, and she had to.
Ezio. She fixated on that. Ezio.
“Ezio Auditore,” she said. Desmond nodded. “He’s who you’re in the head of.”
“In a way,” Lucy said, though Rosaleen could barely hear her again. She just stared at Desmond. Her heart beat fast and violent in her chest.
“You get to be Ezio.” The world was a profoundly unfair place. Rosaleen knew that. It still sometimes found ways to surprise her
You never read his letters, she thought. You never studied how he laid the groundwork for the modern structure of so many European Brotherhoods. What did you do to earn this that I didn’t? But they had the same blood, and that was that.
“How do I do it?” Rosaleen asked.
“No,” Desmond said, immediately, looking horrified because he was an inconsiderate, selfish bastard.
“We’d hook you up the way he is. You’d probably manage similar synchronization levels,” Lucy answered, her eyes brightly curious for a moment before she seemed to retreat. “Desmond’s training is the priority right now.” She didn’t apologize, but Rosaleen wanted to believe she meant it as one anyway.
“Fine,” Rosaleen said, not at all fine with that. “Then, get him done, so I can have a turn.” Shaun made a mocking noise from his end of the room.
“Yes, let’s all have a joyride in the Animus. Not like there’s a deadline or anything.”
“Didn’t you ask me yesterday if we could try to find one of your ancestors to-“ Rebecca started.
“That’s different.” He didn’t seem confident enough to back that declaration, Rosaleen observed.
“You’re not ever doing this,” Desmond told her.
“Shut up,” she said, maturely. He was well within range for her to hit him now.
It felt… different when it was an option she could consider rather than an impulse that rattled its way up into her skull from her furious hands. Rosaleen knew exactly where and how to hit him to make it hurt without making it last. She could do it.
Rosaleen took a step to the side, away from Desmond, and tried to stop thinking about it. She didn’t succeed, but she also couldn’t reach him now without him probably being able to tell exactly what she was about to do. Maybe he’d hit her back.
“I’m going to patrol the perimeter. Make sure we don’t have any eyes on us from the outside,” she told Lucy and Rebecca.
“Leens?” Desmond said. He sounded very lost, and the idea of being in the same room for him for however long this lasted scared her more than anything ever has. She didn’t want to get to know her brother again.
“Do you want comms?” Rebecca offered. Rosaleen would have smirked if she had asked at any other time.
“It’s a warehouse. Something’s wrong, I’ll scream. Or I’ll shoot. You’ll hear me,” she said.
“Rosaleen?” Desmond pleaded. Rebecca looked nervously behind Rosaleen at him and then up at her, quietly asking her to turn around and answer him. The only person in this room who wasn’t on Desmond’s side was Shaun. Rosaleen thought very hard about how she liked Shaun and not about anything else as she made her way to the door.
She didn’t hesitate at the doorway. Desmond was right about one thing in his life: it was always easier to leave than it was to come back.