Breaking Your Fast
Breaking Your Fast
Assassin's Creed Fanfic
Summary - Tiny Fill for the AC kinkmeme. Desmond has always seen dead people. Some are more annoying than others.
---
Desmond is busy slicing bananas into bite sized chunks when he senses the presence and responds before it can even start, “No.”
There is a disappointed huff, a slight chill he can feel on the tip of his nose but not through the thick material of his hoodie, and he doesn't even have to look up from his paring knife to know the figure in weather beaten cowl and robes will have his arms crossed with an equally weather beaten hand resting comfortably on a spectral blade. “I didn't say anything, mubtadi.”
“You were thinking it, dai.” Desmond answers back, putting the bananas to the side and starting on the few strawberries that hadn't turned to mush in the freezer. He still hasn't decided if he's going to put the fruit in yogurt or oatmeal. Probably the yogurt. He ate so much damn oatmeal at the Farm, not because he had too, but because the alternative...
Plants rarely left ghosts behind. Plants had their shit together like that.
“It is an act of devotion. There is no shame to it, and what is one finger?” The old man in dark robes waved his own spectral appendage, ring finger flicking into and out of existence. “If it is the bone that concerns you-”
“Leave him be, Hagar.” A specter in comparable clothes, but a mix of white and gray denoting someone who isn't a novice but not quite a master, climbs in through Desmond's open window causing the dangling cords to drift in the absent breeze. “Altaïr abolished the practice, anyway.”
Hagar scowls, and Desmond is reminded not so much of a wizened leader of men but a toddler who has just been handed apples instead of cookies for his snack. “And look where that got him! Sacrifice is needed to weed out the faithful from the faithless. As soon as he looked away there was nothing but plotting and betrayal from young upstarts that wouldn't know the word brotherhood if it walked up and stabbed them in the front.”
The words are a spear, thrust with intent, and Kadar flinches. Desmond sets the knife down with finality, the heavy wooden handle clacking loudly against the cutting board. “Hagar. Drop it. I don't even have a hidden blade. I'm not an Assassin.”
Desmond can feel the barely-there pressure of the echo of a hand on his shoulder. Blue eyes shine out of a determined face. “Being Asasyun isn't about killing.” Too-pale lips quirk into a smile. “Well, not just about killing. I wish more remembered that.”
“We are warrior-scholars, mubtadi, not mindless murderers.” Hagar grunts, form flickering, before he turns on his heel and vanishes with a thought. Putting aside their dead status, Desmond always found it odd how the Assassin's of old looked at their modern day equivalents with utter confusion if not disgust. “Or mercenaries.”
Desmond opens his tiny fridge and pulls out the tub of yogurt. Kadar, as usual, watches with rapt attention as the living man places the red and yellow slices of fruit artfully atop his breakfast. Idly, Desmond wonders where Haytham is. The man is usually there to have breakfast with him, and as a consequence his presence usually keeps the more eccentric souls away. Thinking about it, Desmond probably owes a lot to Haytham.
He was the first spirit that actually took his complaints to heart, that suggested and then helped him plan his escape. Despite their general disapproval of how his William ran things, for the others, even Kadar, running away had been anathema. Third tenet, and all that. The dead had a really hard time shifting their paradigms. So even if he was a bit stiff -more so than usual for a dead person- and constantly called Desmond child, boy, and son like they were related or something Haytham was one of his favorites.
Sometimes, he wondered why the old colonial refused to crossover.
What could he be afraid of?
None of my business.
“You seem pleased.” Kadar commented, watching as Desmond sat in the chair he'd scavenged from a dumpster. He spooned fruit and yogurt into his mouth. Savored, then swallowed.
“Had a job interview yesterday. Start tonight - apparently Assassin training makes me an awesome bartender. Though, thank god for the hacker the girls found because I had to pretend I had more experience than I do. Flipping bottles isn't quite the same as tossing knives, but, close enough? Gonna have to practice with the cups.”
Desmond sighed contentedly and propped his feet up on the windowsill. His apartment was tiny, his bed was more a pile of scavenged pillows than a proper mattress, everyday was a toss-up on whether the plumbing worked, and his best friends were all dead, but he was free to live his own life. To make his own choices.
And that, that is pretty damn awesome.
Suck it, Dad.