Lightbringer • OT4

[igrab]

Assassin's Creed • Desmond/Lucy/Shaun/Becca • Sedoretu AU • 2555 words • ao3

Desmond had grown up with only a morning father and evening mother, but he still knew how things were supposed to work. Fucking off to New York was a learning experience - and he got it, he understood why the sedoretu was an Assassin thing and not part of the wider world experience. He got that having all the secrecy and danger and trust issues made it easier, safer, to do things in fours, and that laypeople didn't really need it.

It was just weird, that was all. Weird to see people in pairs, and then breaking up over jealousy and petty bullshit and how could you ever find one person, one single person that was supposed to fit you in every way? It didn't make sense.

He'd walked out on the life of an Assassin, but a huge part of him knew that he'd never be able to leave everything behind.

•
The way he understood it, Shaun and Becca and Lucy and his predecessor, Clay, had been sort of a thing. But Lucy had never liked Clay, and Shaun and Becca had been the ones to fight about it, because Becca liked him a little too much and Shaun was jealous and knew that Lucy was so far out of their league and he was scared of losing her. Or something like that. No one wanted to talk about it, but there was tension, along all their lines.

Desmond kind of knew where this was going, but for a long time he just let it simmer.

He'd liked Lucy from the start, and they both knew it. That wasn't a problem. Becca was easy to get along with, and she was evening, too, so they had that in common. It had been a long time since anyone cared about moieties in terms of who slept with who, but he still felt more like a brother than a potential lover, which was fine.

Shaun, though. Shaun, he wanted in his bones.

He found out, one night over drinks as they sat side by side with back against the statue of Altaïr, that Shaun's family had been pretty strict about the morning thing, actually. That when he'd met Lucy and known, that she was the other half of his dawn partnership, he'd hated himself for how much he wanted her. It still frightened him. It still felt wrong, but somehow that just added to it, made it better for him. He didn't have to explain, but Desmond let him get it all out before he said, "I'm an evening guy. You know as well as I do where this is going."

Shaun dropped his head onto Desmond's shoulder and sighed. "Of course I do. I'm not stupid, and neither are the girls. We all know. We're waiting for you to make the first move."

And still, Desmond waited.

•
For Ezio, his morning man was Leonardo, and it was the only stable leg on the table of his relationships. The women came and went and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Another reason that the sedoretu made life easier - he didn't have to sacrifice the good thing he had, the relationship that kept him steady, even as he fumbled with the others. The point of it was that no Assassin should ever be alone.

For Altaïr, there was Malik, his evening man, and Maria, his evening woman, and he had never found a morning woman, at least - not in the memories that Desmond had. He could feel the ache of the missing part, though. Malik and Maria were wary compatriots and they didn't mind sharing Altaïr, but it always left one of them alone. They had both gotten used to being alone.

Desmond didn't know what he was waiting for. They fit, the four of them - this, what they had, it was what this tradition had been made for. They should just go ahead and do it, get rings for the three fingers on their left hands (discounting the ring finger, the one the Assassins used to cut off), one band each for each of their lovers. Desmond was thinking gunmetal, for his, and Shaun would probably go gold, since he was actually kind of a sappy traditionalist. Becca would want silver. But he couldn't quite figure out what kind of rings Lucy's would be. Rose gold? Copper? Bronze? He loved Lucy, he was head over heels for her, but she was in so many ways still a mystery to him.

Talking to Clay through his bullshit in the Animus... it was weird, knowing. Knowing he was pretty much Clay's replacement, but without the history, without the cryptic messages about how he couldn't trust Lucy when Desmond knew exactly how broken up she was about his death - it was strange. It was so strange.

But he wondered, sometimes, if any of what Lucy did to him was on purpose. He wondered a lot of things about Lucy Stillman.

•
And then he found out that the sedoretu was actually from the First Civilization, and he didn't know how he felt about that. All Minerva would tell him was that Juno was our evening star, and something about the evening moeity - it meant something, to the Precursors.

And then Juno made him stab Lucy.

•
Desmond jerked awake, his face imprinted with the creases of hospital blankets. Lucy's hand was still in his, but he instantly knew what had woken him - she was conscious, she was lucid, her fingers in his hand were curling.

"Good morning," she whispered, and he laughed, though it sounded like sandpaper.

"That's my line, morning star," he murmured. Then memories surged, and the smile faded, leaving him looking stricken. "Are you - "

"I'm fine, Desmond. And I know it wasn't you."

He blinked, startled. "How did you...?"

Lucy's brown eyes crinkled, the morning light hitting them just so, making them come alive. She always looked so beautiful in the sunlight. "If it had been you, I would be dead. Also, you probably would have picked a better time."

He laughed. He couldn't help laughing, even though it sounded more like a sob, like a hacksaw, like something jagged ripping out of him. "Shit, Lucy. I'm - "

"If you say sorry, I swear to god - "

The door opened before the argument could escalate, and Becca and Shaun spilled in, both looking haggard but happy, now, to see them awake. "Lucy!" Becca cried out, and she ran to the other side of the bed, grabbed for her free hand, and it was only Shaun's pointed glare that kept her from squeezing it too tightly in sheer joy.

"We thought we'd lost you," Shaun said, quiet and lost. Lucy swallowed.

"You'll never lose me," she whispered. "I'm your morning wife, aren't I?"

"Not officially," Desmond muttered.

"Well, and who's fault is that?"

He flushed, because three-quarters of his soul were all staring back at him with identical looks of teasing, affectionate blame. "Why were you all waiting for me, anyway?"

They glanced at each other - and away, anywhere but the truth they saw in their eyes. Lucy, growing tired already, was the one to finally say it.

"Because we've been through this. We knew each other, knew how it would be. But we didn't know... we weren't sure. That you would want us."

Gobsmacked, shattered, Desmond stared at them all in disbelief and only sincere concern over Lucy's health kept him from yelling. That was the reason?? They didn't... oh, for.

He screwed up his face and let it drop back to the bedside, counting in his head, trying to get his thoughts in order. Those fuckers. Those absolute fuckers. They could have lost Lucy, they could have... fuck.

"For the record, you're all idiots," he said, his voice muffled and strained. "And I love you. All of you. Goddamnit."

Lucy yawned, settling her hand on top of his head. "Well, obviously," she murmured. "We know that now."

The last thing she would see before she fell asleep was Desmond making a very rude gesture up at her.

•
They got married in the spring, in between Animus jaunts and running from the Templars and other various insanities. Lucy admitted, late at night in the bed they all shared, that she had played both sides for a long time, unable to choose. That Clay had plenty of reason to doubt her, that the tapes and correspondences he found were real. But in her heart, it had been part of the game. She'd been unable to let go, to choose a side.

"And now?" Desmond asked, stroking down to rest his palm over the angry red scar on her belly.

"Well, I have you now," she whispered. "All of you. I have a family."

The ring on Desmond's pinky was gold, from Shaun. The middle one was platinum, not silver, and it had a microchip inside, containing a bundle of data from their past missions together - Becca's handiwork, obviously. And on his forefinger, the ring from Lucy. Electrum, as it turned out. Hand-forged and set with tiny diamonds.

"I've spent my life pulled by two opposing forces," she said, as she slipped one on each of their fingers but her own. "I think it's time to acknowledge that alloys are naturally occurring, and I can have them both and still make the right choice." She had her hair down, still so rare as to be breathtaking, and little white flowers tucked between the strands. "This is the right choice."

Desmond kissed her, and then Becca, and then Shaun stepped up and glared at anyone who would dare question his right to go ahead with this, for two mornings to come together. No one did. No one cared. He kissed Lucy like she was made of gold.

•
They stood in a room with a pedestal and a choice.

Let the sun burn up the world, or let Juno free.

"Okay," Lucy said, cutting through the silence. "I've got an idea."

It wasn't a terrible idea. It wasn't wonderful, either, but Desmond wasn't a genius neurophysicist, and Lucy was, so he trusted her. If she said this would work, it would work.

"She's done it before," she said. "There just has to be enough of a gateway. Enough of - oh, for." She flapped a hand irritably at the projection of Minerva, still telling them what an awful, bad thing it would be to release Juno upon the world. "Shut up. She's had, what, seventy thousand years to contemplate existence? Maybe she doesn't want to destroy us anymore. We've changed. She could have, too. And anyway, I'm not letting Desmond die."

He had been ready to do it. He would have, for certain, if Lucy had died back then, on his blade. As much as he would've wanted to save civilization, some part of him would've wanted to be with her, too. But she wasn't dead, she was here, and she wasn't taking no for an answer. "Okay, okay. But how do we do this gateway thing?"

Lucy frowned, taking in their surroundings. "...Honestly? Last time she was in contact with us, she wanted to kill me. Maybe she'll try to do it again."

Desmond's eyes shot wide open. "No. Hell no."

"It's the only way!"

It's not, he thought, with not a small amount of desperation, you could leave me here and I could die saving you and you could live.

But he couldn't do that, not really. That was selfishness speaking. He knew his death would break them, the three of them, just as Lucy's would've broken them, and he wouldn't wish that on anyone.

"Okay," he muttered weakly, heart pounding in his chest. "Okay. We do it your way."

Lucy held his free hand, and he touched the pedestal.

•
He came to in a hospital bed, the same one that Lucy had been in, if he was remembering correctly. So he was in an Assassin hospital, and both his wives and his husband would be allowed to see him. A small pleasure, but an important one.

Becca was seething. "I could smack you both, if you weren't still barely almost not dead! Do you have any idea, any idea how close you came..."

"Becca, love, do shut it," Shaun drawled, though Desmond could hear a tightness in his voice, knew that he was just as angry, but better able to keep a lid on it. Store it for later. Let it fester. "Are you feeling any better?"

"...Better than almost dying, yeah. Otherwise, hard to tell." He blinked the room into slightly better focus. Becca and Shaun were both on one side of his bed, and Lucy... Lucy was in a bed on the other side. His throat tightened. "Is she - "

"She's fine," Shaun interrupted, "just tired. You both took an awful lot of direct energy, but splitting it between the two of you helped."

Huh. He hadn't even thought of that. Too busy worried about... "And Juno?"

Becca was the one to respond to that, frowning. "You know, that's the funny part - we can't really tell what happened. She's just sort of... gone."

Desmond could remember, when he forced himself to, that Juno had, in fact, hijacked his body again. She'd turned him toward Lucy, his face had contorted in anger, and -

And that was it. He couldn't remember anything more.

Except a weird sort of shimmering on the inside of his head, a flicker in the broken mess that he called memory. Closing his eyes, he cautiously prodded at it.

His mind's eye flickered, and he was suddenly standing on a weird, rocky plain, with sharp black ends of matter jutting out at odd angles, and there - glowing, like all of Clay's little messages - was a parting gift.

No more riddles. I've dealt with Juno, but you'd better stay away from any Animus system. In fact, stay out of your DNA entirely. Just to be on the safe side. You saved the world, you deserve a break. You deserve happiness. You know what I mean.

And from evening man to evening man - we do what we have to do, and I've got no regrets. You're a lucky bastard, Desmond Miles.

--16

•
"So that's it?" Desmond had never really understood how William Miles could be a morning man, until now. Until that message from Clay. "You're just going to leave?"

"I'm retiring," Desmond said, flat out. "We all are. We're going to go rent a house in Canada and pretty much forget all this shit."

Becca hiked her backpack up on one shoulder. "I'm gonna code video games."

"I have a dissertation on Renaissance Italy to finish up," Shaun put in.

"And I'm going to med school," added Lucy. "And staying far, far away from neurology. We did our duty, okay? We saved the world, just like the First Civilization wanted us to, and honestly? The Assassins and the Templars have always looked the same to me. I have literally stopped caring."

"Same," said Desmond, with feeling.

His morning father gave him a narrow-eyed Look. "And what will you be doing?" he asked, like it mattered.

"You know what? I do not even fucking know," he answered, and the thought filled him with light. For once in his life, it wasn't about a mission, about the what. It was about the who.