#fic: how we survive

[little-pondhead]

Danny moved to Gotham.

Freakshow is touring in Gotham.

Freakshow knows Danny is in Gotham.

Danny knows Freakshow is still after him.

Danny's faith in heroes has been shattered.

Danny turns to the only person powerful enough to run Freakshow out of town, hopefully for good.

Danny turns to the Joker for help.

The Joker is looking for a new punching bag sidekick after Harley Quinn left him.

Danny is just the perfect person to be shaped by the Joker's hands.

Danny becomes the new Joker Junior.

[eveningrainstorm]

People often talk about Rio Ranger as if he's the doll version of Sei but what I find super fascinating is that he isn't, not in the same way Fake Reko or the Dummies are replications of their human counterparts.

Ranger resembles Sei on a surface level — same physical appearance, just an unclear amount older; same way of speaking. But he is unmistakably different. Ranger is an incomplete being, missing his positive emotions, but even the true Ranger is Rio Laizer rather than Sei, because there's still something different.

Rio Ranger is, fundamentally, inhuman and yet desperate to be human. He was created to be jealous of humanity and despite his hatred for them, humanity is what he is always striving for. But it is something that he doesn't possess, and is forced to steal instead. He takes clothes from the dead and uses drawings on cards to feign emotion; he is the Dress-Up Doll, Rearranger, not possessor of anything of his own.

While the other dolls based on humans in the game have identity issues based on their personhood being defined by someone else, being merely a copy of another person, Ranger is not even allowed Sei's identity to base himself on — it's very likely he doesn't even know who Sei was. He does not have Sei's clothes — nondescript and tied to Asunaro as they are — and he does not have the capacity for expressing emotion that Sei had.

When comparing Ranger and Sei in terms of personality, differences are obvious. There are similarities, naturally — besides the abrasive way of speaking, there's the jealousy and desire for validation. But in Ranger, these are present to an extreme — they're all he has. (And, ironically, this is what Gashu claims to believe makes him so human, even when Ranger's inhumanity comes through most clearly in this lack of anything else.)

In Sei, on the other hand, these traits are tempered by logic, to put things in YTTD's beloved logic vs. emotion dichotomy. Despite his outwardly emotional nature, from what we see of him he appears realistic and focused on survival in a way that Kai isn't. He's aggressive and overly casual about killing people, but he doesn't express the glee at violence that Ranger does, only a fierce desire to prove himself and survive. Sei is jealous of Kai and desires Gashu's affection, but also has an understanding of the situation he's in that both Kai and Ranger lack — he can tell that Gashu doesn't care about him as much as he does Kai, and recognizes that the way Gashu treats both of them is wrong. Ranger believes Gashu truly loves him, a fact proven blatantly false by his eventual demise at Gashu's hands. Ironically, this blindness is more similar to Kai as we see him in his minisode, rather than Sei.

Of course, this understanding isn't simply a part of Sei's basic nature, but rather the fact that unlike Kai and Ranger, he has past experience to go on. Sei wasn't born into the Satou family — though his exact origins are unclear, based on his grief for his birth father and how he talks about Asunaro ("all this shady organization crap"), it's possible he wasn't even born into Asunaro at all. Before being sent to Gashu, he had his own father, one who we don't know anything about but whom he apparently loved. He doesn't accept Gashu's treatment of him and Kai the way Kai does because he has known a different father and a different way of life. This doesn't free him from Asunaro's influence — he still accepts the role of assassin they give him and resigns himself to becoming a killer. What choice does he have, after all? But he carries no illusions about Asunaro or his role in it. He knows that the training is cruel, that he is viewed only as a tool, that Asunaro is wrong even if they are also not worth resisting.

This is a major part of why Ranger isn't Sei, why he cannot be; because Asunaro is all Ranger knows. They are his creators, who he was literally built to serve. In Ranger's mind, he is not only Gashu's son and heir, but his creation, his masterpiece. And of course he wouldn't have been created with Sei's memories — why take that risk? Why give him any sort of knowledge of a life outside Asunaro or reason to be disloyal to them?

Ranger is not Sei — so why model Ranger after him? Because Ranger is the idea of Sei, what Sei was meant to be: a counterpart to Kai, a rival, a second choice. Gashu preferred Kai, once; Kai won out over Sei. But Kai has proven himself a failure and betrayed Asunaro, leaving Gashu with no choice but turn once more to Kai's long-dead competition. Ranger is, like Sei, the opposite of Kai, temperamental and vulgar while Kai is stoic and polite, and perhaps more importantly, capable of murder while Kai steadfastly is not.

And yet Ranger isn't Sei. Sei was jealous of those — specifically Kai — he saw as superior or at least as being treated as such; Ranger is this idea taken to its natural conclusion. Sei had lost everything he had outside of Asunaro; Ranger never had anything else to begin with. Sei was a human; Ranger will never be, doomed to forever long otherwise. Ranger is Sei only in the ways Sei was useful — desperate for recognition, willing to kill, a perfect rival to Kai — but something entirely different, an inhuman machine, in all the ways Sei was a liability.

Sei was human, and he knew that he deserved to have that fact respected. Ranger isn't human and gets only the wanting, desperate to be as good as a human even humanity itself is unattainable. Of course, it isn't being a doll that is actually Ranger's problem — it's Asunaro, who view humans and dolls alike as disposable. Sei's humanity didn't make him any less of a tool as far as Asunaro was concerned, it only made him more difficult to control. All Sei wanted was to be seen as an equal to Kai, a person worthy of respect — and this is what he gets, in the end: his face and voice used as a base for one of Asunaro's weapons, while his true identity and personhood remains forgotten.

Ranger has nothing to hold him back from doing his duty for Asunaro, nor does he have anything to hold onto outside of it. In that sense, Ranger is an ideal asset for Asunaro — at least until the very jealousy and hatred Gashu programmed into him goes too far, and he is, once again, deemed a failure. Ironically, Gashu shoots Ranger for attempting to kill a participant, when willingness to kill was perhaps the one true advantage Sei had over Kai.

In the end, Ranger is offered no more humanity in his death than Sei is — they are both merely pawns of Asunaro, set to die at its whims. But while Sei dies in the arms of his brother, receiving one final act of kindness as Kai refuses to kill him, Ranger has no one in either of his deaths but his creators: in his death as Rio Laizer the dubious kindness of Tia Safalin, making his final moments full of agonizing guilt, and of course in his first death, as Rio Ranger, nothing but Gashu's coldness, the bullet in his head a sort of culmination to the favoritism Sei found weighed against him, and a demonstration of just how far Gashu has come from the father who once genuinely cared for Sei. Sei was human, Ranger was not, but as far as Asunaro is concerned, they are exactly the same: tools, easily thrown away as soon as they stop being useful.

[treasureplcnet]

also quite obsessed with karl being as detached from the story as he is. there's nothing that makes him have to be the detective that has to be involved, but he unknowingly dooms himself by agreeing to work with the KYAL cult. every other detective basically deals with elias head on except weissman, who only meets him right before he kills him. like he's right when he says "by my choices" because everything that leads him to being mixed up with the mannix cult is himself. it's the gambling debts and the choice to do the dirty work for an organisation he knows nothing about. he's the only one that doesn't encounter that body doing police work and it's specifically because he's told to cover it up. he gets himself into the mess and eventually fixes it but the fact that esther always dies in the doomed timelines and he's always too late even if he starts wanting to change things ("till this child. esther.") it just makes me very ill

[burningthegallows]

Inspired by this post by @shanastoryteller

[pluralsword]

Sorry everybody, had to do it. XD the joke is in the comic panel text if the meaning is unclear due to this being a variant of the meme format. Arcee sure has long days sometimes huh, glad she has determination, wisdom, trust, and love to get through it. If you're stumped check under the cut:

This is a variant of the Loss meme, the loss also being her and her family's long days

[thatonebirdwrites]

Sneak peak on a Lena Luthor, Sam Arias, and Kara Danvers fic that has grabbed me by the throat and won't let go till I finish it

(Once I finish it, I'll throw it up on AO3.) Finished so will post weekly/bi-weekly until it's all up. Here's the link.

THE EVENT

Lena realizes something is very, very wrong when she feels the heft of a gun in her hand. The fog in her mind lifts slowly as she wrestles back her consciousness. She blinks and realizes she’s in a concrete room with a desk to one side.

But far more disturbing is her brother, Lex, who has pushed himself half-up with one arm, the other hugging his abdomen. The gun she holds points at him. Blood dribbles from his mouth. He laughs, and his words swim through the fog in her brain.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it? The very people you fight to protect. Do you know their truth?” He reaches up to grab a remote and turns on the televisions that make up a wall of the bunker.

Lena breathes in sharply. Bunker?

No, no, she can’t be alone with Lex. Bad things always happen.

Panic rises like bile in her throat. Her brother is speaking again, but his words can’t penetrate the growing haze in her head. She blinks at the televisions, but it blurs into a mosaic of color and faint soundscapes.

Her thoughts spark and sizzle like a broken circuit. She hyperventilates, lightheaded, as tears sting her eyes. The gun’s weight pulls her arms down. The fact her brother is bleeding out in front of her, while laughing, alarms her.

He believes this is checkmate. It’s not. Please, let me handle this.

The thought laces through her alarm and comforts her. The confidence in her other self dismantles her rising panic. Just like the last time in Kasnia during the self-destruct sequence. Time had warped for her, the fog saturated all awareness, until she woke in the cool air, the sky studded with stars. In her hands was an air duct grate, her clothes rumpled, one heel broken, and streaks of dirt on her legs and arms.

Oh.

Her other self must have fronted like in Kaznia. What is the last things she remembers? She briefly closes her eyes.

She had been escorted by armed guards to where her brother and Lillian waited in the Presidential room at the White House. Listened in horror at her brother’s rant of his victory over aliens. Saw evidence of Supergirl’s death. The terror that grabbed her by the throat had the fog boiling through her mind. No matter how hard she tried, she could not escape the Luthors.

Then nothing. Time evaporated until she wrestled her way out of the suffocating fog.

And here she wakes in a bunker, a gun in her hand, and her brother bleeding out in front of her.

“Do you see the lies they’ve woven? How they’ve abused your trusting nature? Your broken mind?” he continues with another irritating laugh.

He seeks to manipulate us again. Trust us. Lean into our anger.

Lena takes a steadying breath. That��s right. Her anger and horror at his brutal experiments and murder of aliens. The prison couldn’t hold him, cutting off his assets also failed — all facts she has factored into her calculations.

But this exact scenario is supposed to be the last resort. Her stomach curdles, bile on her tongue. Kieran, wait, what of the other plans?

We had to end the cycle, Lena. Otherwise, he’ll never stop coming.

Stop being cryptic. What the hell happened? She needs to reassess. There must be a better solution. She can still repair this somehow. Seek the Truth. Focus.

Fine. I confronted him and injected Harun-el as we agreed. He demanded we join his genocidal crusade. We are not his tool anymore. The solidity of the decision warms her from head to toe, even as her heart shatters at the sight in front of her.

Lena clears her throat and summons what strength she has left. “You’ve abused me, Lex. You have no ground to stand on.” She tries to avoid looking at the wall of televisions, for what is surely a cleverly crafted way to destroy her yet again. Like he always does. Her lip quivers, and she blinks back the urge to cry.

“Me? Your trusting brother?” Lex laughs then coughs blood into his hand. “I’ve given you the world, Ace. Only ever been truthful. Honed your skills. Do you still not see the truth? I’ve laid it out for you this time, you stubborn fool!”

Colors leech into grey in her periphery. Her limbs feel puppeted by her other self still. A rare moment of synergy but it leaves her nauseous and her head aching in a growing migraine.

“They’ve all been lying to you,” Lex continues as he laughs and spits up more blood. “Preying on your weaknesses.”

That’s you, Lena thinks. You’ve preyed on us.

But her curiosity overwhelms her, and she can’t ignore the televisions any longer. The scenes capture her gaze, and her ears roar with the orchestra Lex has woven into the security footage he’s stolen. Half the screens are footage from when Mercy attacked L-corp.

<<.....>>

Lena turns to Kara desperately. “No, Kara, you’re safer with me.” She can feel the grey fog pulling her toward the dark maw of her psyche. She reaches out to grasp Kara’s arm, the fabric of her cashmere sweater soft and comforting. As the emergency light goes off again, she slips deeper into her mind’s tumultuous seas.

Kieran rises forward, and her body transforms. Her shoulders straighten, her limbs more agile, her stance that of a fighter. Commands issue from her voice, but Lena can no longer discern meaning.

She wraps herself in the cold of shadows.

Time hiccups and coughs. Shots echo like thunder, safety doors drop like quakes, and the clatter of heels click against metal.

Is Kara okay? She needs to know. She swims through grey fog, until she pushes into consciousness again.

An uncomfortable weight hangs on her arm. Kara stands behind her, but Mercy holds the bigger gun of the Lexosuit. Fear curdles her stomach. Of course Mercy would hack through security to reach her experimental prototypes. Lena had built a lighter suit to be used for good. Not like this.

Lena, don’t. Let me handle this. Kieran’s smug confidence scratches into her thoughts.

Kara is still here!

Lena, we don’t have time to argue. Kieran surges to the front, and Lena watches as her body moves to block Mercy’s shot. “You did not see the upgrade. The arms hold more goods now.” A hint of excitement sweeps through her voice, the onset of a fight a thrill for Kieran, while Lena nears a panic.

Please, get Kara out of here. Lena struggles to keep them moving backward. Kara is behind her still, the door to the lab just a few feet away.

I said let me handle this. Anger filters through Kieran and burns against Lena’s presence.

Lena throws open the door. “Go, Kara.” Kara stumbles backward into the hallway, and she slams the door shut. The fog sears through her mind, Kieran’s anger pushing her back.

A blast tears through the air, but Kieran blocks the shot with their shield.

Except, Lena can’t let go fully. Kieran blocks and shoots, but Lena fumbles with the footwork. Kieran’s the fencer, not her. Mercy spars not only with the gloves but with caustic words. Kieran fights Lena for control, their dodging clumsy, their shots missing.

The fight warps and fizzles in her mind; the fog screeches through Lena’s consciousness.

She fumbles. Slams against metal.

“You aren’t deserving of the Luthor name,” Mercy says, her poison like barbs that sink into Lena’s insecurities.

Heat beams destroy the door, and Supergirl blasts into the room. Mercy is slammed against the wall, Supergirl’s arm against her throat. “No, you got that backwards,” Supergirl hisses, “the Luthor name isn’t deserving of Lena.”

Warmth floods through Lena at the strength and resolve in Supergirl’s words. A massive turnaround from the worldkiller crisis.

Stay focused. Don’t let your guard down until Mercy’s off the property. Kieran releases her hold, and Lena stumbles, back in full control. Already her mind shifts into overdrive to plan the exact route to verify the security of her building and her people.

<<....>>

This is a repeat of the Mercy incident. Where Lena couldn’t let go, and both of them co-fronted. It sparks a migraine, the grey in her periphery darkening, and her nausea worsening. She hates moments like this.

Let me handle this. We have him in a checkmate. The confidence in Kieran’s analysis softens the panic that has started to freeze her limbs. We know the Truth.

If there is one thing that unites Lena’s fractured psyche, it is an overwhelming need to protect those she loves. And her own brother has nearly killed her and her friends a dozen times over.

She’s exhausted, terrified, and wants this endless game of his to stop.

Lena raises her gun and shoots the televisions one at a time. The shards explode outward and rain down on her brother.

For once, Lex shuts the fuck up. His eyes widen.

The fog burns away the rest of her awareness.

She stumbles across wet grass, her clothes wet and clinging to her body, as the heavens pour down upon her. She’s outside the bunker in a stand of aspens. The sky sparks with lightning, the greyness suffocating.

You’re safe now. We all are. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.

Lena shouldn’t dig deeper. She knows it’s not healthy. Kieran has always protected her, held the worst of the horror. It’s how they’ve survived this far.

But this was her brother. And those screens showed Kara as not human. It makes no sense with what Kara claims. How does she reconcile it all?

Kieran, what did you do?!

What was necessary. Kieran’s confidence holds a trickle of grief and pain. We must seek help now, Lena. Focus.

She feels strange, unreal, like a pantomime of herself. The urge to lie in the mud, to let the rain wash her away, nearly overwhelms her. She pushes off a trunk and stumbles forward. Her hair falls in front of her eyes, sticking to her forehead and cheeks.

The images from the televisions ripple through her thoughts. Is that the Truth?

Yes. Now focus, Lena. We must call her.

Has Kara been deceiving her this whole time? She doesn’t want to believe it.

She’s given Kara her heart, far more than she ever meant to do, and yet, those videos sync with the disjointed mess of her memories. Bits and pieces that Kieran has held for her, scattered shards unlocked like the showers above.

Wait, did you know? Shock starts to shiver through her body.

That’s not important now. Call her.

Lena stumbles and falls. Her hands push into the mud and the world crackles with thunder. It’s too loud. Too bright.

It's all so wrong; she gags and spits out bile.

She wishes Kieran would take over again, to call for her, but her protective self has faded from awareness. Fatigue throttles all of her.

Her brother is likely dead in the bunker. By her own hand. Tears mix with the rain and her fingers dig into the mud. Her senses crackle with pain. She feels herself shrinking. The hairs on her arm raise, goosebumps from the cold, her body vibrating into oblivion.

She wants to go home.

Call her now. The thought is weaker, laced with grief.

“I know. I know,” Lena says it out loud to ground herself. To stop the shrinking, to avoid the inevitable pull of a switch. She shudders and leans against the trunk of a tree.

Focus on the goal. Break it into smaller steps.

She hugs her legs to her chest with one arm. Her other hand fumbles through pockets of her suit. Too many. Suit so wet. She feels slimy, gross, slipping toward the warmth of shadows.

Her fingers grasp he phone in her inner suit jacket. There’s two numbers on speed dial: Sam and Kara.

Her fingers hesitate over the two. She bites her lip, closes her eyes, and hits the button for Sam.

(To be continued on AO3, will edit in the link or drop in comments once up.) Note, this playlist was on repeat as I wrote this piece: Shattered Playlist

Edited.

[mengyan]

watching ajtl is like being told that you will be kicked down the stairs of a 500 story building, accepting that you will be kicked down the stairs of a 500 story building, then getting kicked down the stairs of a 500 story building, screaming crying and throwing up while tumbling all the way down, and finally arriving at the bottom to get a pat on the shoulder and a bandaid that says "congratulations for surviving" 😊

[shesmore-shoebill]

amangela fans have already been in like. turbo mode for the last few weeks and i dont know why i thought it might SLOW DOWN rather than speed up once the month ended. bc now we are in pride month and its just KEPT GOING. and i think its gonna keep accelerating. like im thrilled but also. oh my god.

[puddingcatbeans]

love how the batfam longfics really are just "the love was there. it didn't save anyone, but it was there." and now i am sitting here staring blankly at the wall, feeling some type of way

[jaredwalkersam]

Walker Independence 1.12 | hurt

[manofmanymons]

Kaito trying really really hard to put his protectiveness aside giving miu some growing room by distracting himself with dating and hanging out with people he barely is able to tolerate due to his experience in the other world, wince dating and making friends is what normal highschoolers do.

Miu developing very /very/ messy feelings regarding Kaito seemingly having no more time for her, while at the same time pushing him away when he does since that's just how their dynamic has always been as siblings and she wants him to feel like everything is fine with her, get really mad at girls he brings to the house, her even worse ability to relate to other people her age. . Also gender stuff unrelated to the main plot.

Takuma and Ryo being the only still decently well adjusted ones.

Shuuji developing a bad rebellious streak due to his father treating lopmon like a stray animal at the best of times.

Saki having anxiety since, now that she's improving in her physical self she has to prepare for rhe future.

Aoi being a mess with the fact their group is starting to drift apart due to their own issues and worrying she won't have anyone that really /gets/ her if they do stop talking together.

The concept of Kaito trying too hard to be a "normal" kid as a distraction from Miu even though he's clearly bad at it and doesn't like doing it is honestly really interesting. It's almost funny in a fish out of water way, but also really sad thinking about him being stuck with nothing but fake friends after having spent time with real friends.

Pretty much everything you said about Miu is like,,,exactly how I imagined she'd act post game? Like yeah Kaito being clingy annoyed her, but that doesn't mean she wants him to never be with her. Not having friends her age AND having this new distance between her and someone she's used to having around a lot would be really isolating and tough. I actually talked a little about this one before. Lowkey love that pretty much everyone seems to agree that this kid has gender stuff going on.

I actually imagine Ryo would have a similar problem to Aoi. He went to camp to make friends because people at his school already didn't like him, so drifting apart from the friends he DID make would be hard for him since they're all he has. Well, other than Kunemon.

Takuma probably would be the most relatively well-adjusted person here but he is still a kid trying to pretend life is normal after having to save the world so ladfkjakj idk maybe as former team leader he'd be a little adverse to taking responsibility for things for a while. Y'know like having trouble finding ordinary things in his life important compared to saving the universe. I think I accidentally just described ant man quantumania never mind ignore me.

Shuuji WOULD have a rebellious phase. He didn't go through an entire self-acceptance arc to watch the other half of his soul be mistreated ToT It'd probably be a bit awkward tbh tho like sunk cost fallacy is real and I don't think he'd want to throw away everything he's worked for academically when he's this close? Local rebellious bad boy still top of his class? But then again what better way would there be to spite his dad than failing aldkfa idk

I actually. Really really love that idea for Saki. Her being someone who didn't plan about the future before because she didn't know if she'd even have one now realizing that Life is Happening and she doesn't know what she's doing. Obviously she's still young but tbh can confirm that at any age it's extremely stressful when everyone seems to know what they want and where they're going but you.

What is a squad mom without her squad ToT It probably would be jarring for Aoi going back to school with classmates that just take advantage of her after having friends who truly appreciated her. Being unable to feel the same way about her old "friends" anymore.

Honestly I think they would all be afraid of drifting apart. In a lot of ways, most of them are each other's first true friends who care about them and not just for the masks they wear or the help they can give. None of them WANT to move on from each other, they just don't have the time, and most of them don't go to school together. ...Digimon Tri Joe moment. Joement.

[essential-randomness]

TFW you realize there's a typo in the title of the post of your very important content hours after posting it

In my defense, it took me 2 and a half hours to write the copy and post it across 4 different socials (and this is in addition to the time that took me to write the blog post) so by the time I got to Tumblr I was literally dying. You have no idea how grueling every single piece of this work is going to be.

I don't really know why I'm saying this, but I guess if the spirit of 2024 is (also) to help people understand the reality of what we're fighting against, then I should let people know that every single piece of content I'm going to put out is hours and hours of work I wish I was spending on actually making the incredibly important progress that is right in front of me.

[caterpillarinacave]

sometime's I sit and think about how interesting an AU where the curious cat was after Roman instead could be, but then I remember that Roman would just. not.

[silverydragonheart-blog]

yknow technically cloning works alot like artificial insemination or like fertilization treatments from what ive seen/been told by my mom so by that logic timkon clone baby absolutely couldve been more than one and has a higher chance of being say twins or triplets than not which means in a dcxdp crossover you can absolutely have dan dani and danny and it haunts me that no one else noticed this

Edit please note that I am not a doctor or anything I just had a slight fixation and tried my best to learn what I could which resulted in me knowing more about surrogates, adoption, and fertility treatments than anything else except I was very much a kid and didn't like knowing the full reasons of things so I'd learn enough and then guess the rest so on one hand I absolutely know how one thing works however I have absolutely no fucking idea how it happens its essentially like how we all treat the Talk I took one look at learning the ins and outs of these treatments and went "I know enough" and dropped it so if anythings wrong yeah that's why

[inthewychelm]

wait, has anyone done eddie leaving hawkins after the events of season4, be it government pressure or just hightails it bc fuck hawkins, but like instead of going to the city(chicago or indianapolis) or out west to make it big, no he goes south, back to tennessee, he ends up making the right connections with producers and such and eventually makes it big as a musician/songwriter except the party never finds out because he's working under a pseudonym And in a totally different genre (im learning towards folk/bluegrass)

anyway this specific blorbo thought was brought to you by "who will sing for me" by the stanley brothers playing at work a lot recently

[teecupangel]

So i had these ideas while at work. what if Altair and Ezio were aware of Desmond and they’ve been trying to get to him either going forward in time or pulling Desmond back to their’s. pulling him back would be easier and they’ve been trying but none of the ‘calls’ stick. That’s because Desmond needs to be ‘vulnerable’ in order to be pulled back. Not necessarily physically or mentally vulnerable but like his soul? Same feeling as when your in a good book or your ‘in the zone’ of a craft or sport. Desmond hasn’t been able to get that feeling in ages because *gestures at assassin/templar/isu BS*

I saw “Altaïr and Ezio trying to pull Desmond back in their time but none of the ‘calls’ stick” and thought “Well, yeah, it won’t stick. Both of you are trying to call the same number at the same time so, of course, you’ll both get a busy signal.”

But we can make this work a bit by making their ‘calls’ actually visible to Desmond alone. But he doesn’t realize it because he thinks he’s just Bleeding.

That the fact that, even for a few seconds, he could feel their touch or could hear them as if they were talking to him, only mean that his Bleeding Effect was getting more severe.

And, of course, he was the only person who could see them so everyone believes him when he says his Bleeding Effect is getting worse.

And when his soul is finally vulnerable, it is during the time when he finally accepts his fate to die for the world.

But then both Altaïr and Ezio try to pull him to their time periods and, instead, gets pulled to his because he’s in a prime state for such an event, yes, but he is also in one of the most guarded locations in any given time: the singularity of which the Isus’ calculations have been moving future and past events along for it to come to fruition.

And Desmond is too surprised by what has happened that he missed his chance, that moment of confusion meant that he was too late to activate the device.

And the world burns.