Archive of Our Own

Desmond - The Butterfly

If it wasn't for the fact that he had met Juno, Desmond would have said that the Isu were more disciplined than humans. Instead, he would say that the Isu brains were wired so that the conscious and subconscious were better integrated. It was why humans had a bitch of a time using leftover Isu artifacts: stray subconscious thoughts screwed up their control and that was before Juno got her grubby hands all over everything. Desmond, despite being engineered to have a high concentration of Isu DNA, wasn't an exception.

So, being human, when Desmond used the Eye, he had some stray thoughts. Understandable, considering, you know, he thought he was going to die. So while he was mostly thinking that he wanted to stop the world from roasting, there was a part of his brain thinking that Juno was a fucking liar for saying there would be no pain, and underneath that there was the thought that he really wished that he knew what it was like being born in a family where the family business wasn't assassination, but something productive like medicine or something. Barring that he wanted a goddamn vacation - you know, somewhere without Templars or Assassins. Of course, that was a bit of a tall order. Assassins might be a little uncommon, but the Templars were everywhere. He might as well wish for a pony or a dragon to ride.

Then everything was light.

Desmond woke up in a cave. This, by itself, was rather depressingly normal. Between the antics of his ancestors and the camping trip from hell in his own life, Desmond was intimately familiar with waking up underground. The thing is he wasn't expecting to wake up at all, because of that whole dying to save the world bit.

However, it wasn't the Grand Temple. No, this was a seemingly natural cave complete with a lumpy, uneven floor that made his back ache when he got up. Definitely not somewhere the Isu had done anything. You could tell by the lack of narrow walkways over seemingly bottomless pits that lacked railings. Desmond had the feeling that Those Who Came Before thought that evolution began at the workplace.

Thinking that he must have been knocked out - again - and that his dad, Shaun and Rebecca had stuck him here while they handled something like throwing the Templars off their trail, he explored the cave. That turned out to be fairly boring.

The only thing that stood out about the cave was a particularly round rock that glowed gold to his Eagle Vision. It was a rather nice rock, large enough to need two hands to get a grip on it, but it seemed like just a rock. It looked like someone who had been particularly bored carved scales into it and polished it up some, but it didn't feel like an artifact. Between his own life and that of his ancestors, he had a pretty good feel for when something Isu showed up and this wasn't raising any flags for him. None of his ancestors had any particular appreciation for rock carving so it was entirely possible that this was an art form that he had just never heard of.

Still it glowed the gold of something important, so he slipped it in his bag.

That done, he finally decided to poke his head out of the hole in the ground he was in, and his first thought was that the trees were wrong. Ratonhnhaké:ton's memories included a fuck ton of trees and apparently the Bleeding Effect was enough to pass that information onto Desmond. He should have been able to recognize any of the trees near the Grand Temple, and probably through most of the American Northeast. Nope. These trees, while definitely evergreens, had something wrong with them. They looked most like white pines, but the bark pattern was wrong.

Desmond felt his face and decided he couldn't have been out for too long. There wasn't enough facial hair for that. (He kind of hated the fact that this was something he had first hand experience to compare to rather than working it out logically.) It also helped that he didn't wake up strapped into the Animus. He also didn't feel short of energy exploring the cave. Either way, getting a better look at things probably wouldn't hurt. That tree over there looked like the tallest around.

After climbing the damn tree, he realized he was wrong about that, but he was able to get to a decent height with a good view, but… once he did, he realized that he couldn't see any sign of civilization - not a single road, city, building, power line, cell phone tower, nothing. He didn't even see any contrails. It was then he remembered his idle thought about getting away from both Assassins and Templars and realized that he might have flung himself somewhere remote, like really remote. Desmond was severely tempted to take that vacation, but he owed it to Shaun and Rebecca to let them know he was alive.

Thankfully, he had some ancestors that could navigate by the stars, hunt and move smoothly through a forest. Man, living through Ratonhnhaké:ton's life sucked, for multiple reasons, but it was sure coming in handy now.

Desmond ended up marking out the actual tallest tree and climbing that. Viewpoints in the real world were a rush. It wasn't like in the Animus where it gave him a mental minimap. Instead it was like he had lived in these woods for the last decade. He knew where the game trails were, the nearest creek with clean water, and so on. He also knew that there was an important bush about a half a mile away. He had no clue why that bush was important, just that it was.

He was getting ready to climb down the tree when he noticed a spot glowing the comforting white of hay piles or spice carts or flowers, and without thinking about it he took a leap of faith. It was only after he landed that he remembered that he wasn't in the Animus and that was a monumentally stupid thing to do in real life.

This was emphasized by the fact that his fall wasn't cushioned by a nice soft pile of hay, but a particularly springy bush that caused him to bounce off to the side into a softish spot of ground.

"How the actual fuck did I just survive that?"

The crazy part? He didn't even feel hurt. He always thought that getting up after a fall like that was just an Animus simplification. Sure this wasn't the first leap of faith he'd ever done, but this was at least four times as high as the one he did in Monteriggioni, and this can't bear enough repeating, not into a nice soft pile of hay. He poked at the bush he landed on. Yeah, that was really soft wood, but it should have dug into something somewhere. Hell, at that speed, some of the needles should have dug into his clothes at least. He'd complain about Isu bullshit, because this reeked of it, but he was actually benefiting from it for once.

He shook his head. "Just how did the Isu die out and us hairless apes survive?" The Pieces of Eden he could sort of justify as sufficiently advanced technology, but this was just fucking magic, and Desmond only had like one percent Isu DNA - 0.952%.

Desmond blinked. How did he know that? Maybe Vidic mentioned it? It sounds like something that asshole would say, you know, if he thought of Desmond as someone worth actually talking to. Even so, that didn't explain how he remembered it. Of course, considering how messed up his head was, it was a surprise he remembered anything.

Right. Well, for a lack of anything better to do until the stars showed up, Desmond set off to find that gold spot, keeping an eye out for food. Huh, that bush had some berries in it…, which was very, very wrong.

Desmond took another look around. Last he checked it was December, you know, winter. These looked like something close to blackberries, which were an early fall kind of berry. He supposed that he could be in the southern hemisphere and these were early growth berries, but it didn't feel like summer. He popped one in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. They tasted like blackberries and weren't sour at all, so that meant they were fully ripe, which was another point to it being fall. Where the hell was he?

He kept meandering towards the gold spot, keeping an eye out on the plants. They seemed to be all evergreens, which meant that their appearance didn't really help him figure out what season it was without being familiar with their exact species. He didn't see much in the way of leafy ground plants either, but that was a pretty natural consequence of these huge trees being around, so may or may not have anything to do with the seasons.

Wait! There was a squirrel. It was out and about, so it couldn't be winter, but it looked furry enough that it was probably fall.

Yeah, now he had to worry about time travel too. What was his life?

Actually, he should get a hold of himself. After all, if time travel was a thing, instead of just shielding the world from the flare, the Isu would have set things up so Desmond could save their civilization by going back in time, right? Well, unless he got sent into the future, which he supposed messed with the laws of physics a lot less. With his luck, this was going to be a Planet of the Apes situation.

He was telling himself that when he reached the bush that glowed gold in his Eagle Vision. The dead body underneath it was a pretty good indication of why this was a point of interest. He didn't want to think about the signs that the scavengers had gotten to it - which were pretty damn prominent - but aside from that, the degree of skeletonization indicated that the body was between three weeks and maybe six months old. From the traces of insect husks, he'd guess closer to three weeks. The clothes were badly torn and decomposed as well, but the guy was wearing furs of some sort, and Desmond wasn't going to check if he was wearing modern fabrics underneath that.

"When did I start using words like skeletonization? Dammit, this doesn't even feel like one of my ancestors living in my head either." Desmond shook his head. "Well, requiescat in pace, poor bastard."

At least he didn't send himself so far away that there were no humans. Then Desmond noticed a couple of things that made it obvious why his Eagle Vision thought a dead body was important. There was a banged up old ax and a money pouch nearby. Now Desmond had lived through enough history to know that the ax fundamentally hadn't changed in the past thousand years or so. It was an iron ax that could have been found anywhere from Altair's time to Connor's. It was sufficiently worn that it might even have been a modern ax. A bit too rusty to be stainless steel, but he knew some chefs on TV who swore by traditional carbon steel, so maybe there were hipster camping fanatics who didn't like stainless steel axes.

The money pouch was much more troubling. Inside there was a gold coin, a handful of silver coins and a bunch of copper coins. None of them were recognizable to Desmond. The chances of him being back in the past had just gone back up dramatically. Did anywhere in the modern world still use gold coins? And this was soft enough that it was real gold not the fake gold that the US was using for its dollar coins. He also wasn't familiar with anywhere that used a three headed dragon for the tails side of a coin. He held up the head side of the gold coin to catch the light. "Aerys II Targaryen? Is that what this says?" Was that the name of the guy? The country? Some sort of motto?

It was the copper coins that bothered him the most though. There were enough of them that it said that people actually used them. It wasn't like pennies in the US where they were just sort of there. That meant copper was still valuable, which was more evidence for being in the past, or far in the future.

"Man, I wish Shaun was here." He might be able to recognize where these coins came from.

Still, as disturbing as the implications of the coins were, the ax was the prize here. Thanks to Ratonhnhaké:ton, you could drop Desmond naked in a forest and he'd be fine as long as he had an ax.

"Thanks, man," Desmond said to the corpse. He wished he had something to give the guy a proper burial or even a shallow grave, but one thing Assassin's training was good for was telling you how hard it was to properly hide a body, and Desmond didn't have anything with him that would actually help do anything that was better than a spot under a bush. Like a grave? In the forest you needed a lot more than just a shovel to break through the roots just below the surface and he didn't even have the shovel.

Achieving a new level of awkwardness for not knowing how to end a conversation with a corpse, Desmond set out to get a supply of water. This didn't seem to be the kind of land where gourds or bamboo grew, but Eagle Vision proved to be another source of pure bullshit by letting him find some nicely bowl shaped rocks, and then he killed some time by burning some logs into containers. With water and shelter taken care of, he was doing pretty good on the survival part of things.

Then it got dark and Desmond got a chance to see the starry sky. Sure the canopy was thick enough that he needed to climb another tree to do it, but at least then he'd know what damn hemisphere he was in.

"What the everlasting fuck?"

The sky was completely unfamiliar. For a moment he thought he was in the southern hemisphere, since all of his ancestors' memories of the sky that he experienced came from Europe or North America, but unless he was on the south pole or something, he should still be able to recognize some of the constellations. He had a brief moment of panic when he thought he might be on another planet before remembering the dead guy. The skeleton looked human and coins were a human thing, so he was probably still on Earth, but that left time travel either to the far future or far past. It looked like getting in touch with Shaun and Rebecca became a lot less likely.

Desmond kind of wished that Eagle Vision had a montage setting. Unfortunately, fast travel and the like were definitely Animus features and not part of the Isu bullshit package. He spent a week getting ready to travel. This included hunting and preparing hides in a definitely primitive manner. This wasn't a knock on how the Mohawk did things because even they would have called what he was doing kind of crude. He just didn't have the supplies to do anything more sophisticated. The fact that he managed to make a bone needle was more accident than skill.

It wasn't helped that another ancestor decided to poke his head into Desmond's head. Edward Kenway was Ratonhnhaké:ton's grandfather and an actual pirate. He seemed to want to dump everything he knew about navigation into Desmond's brain. It was kind of funny, because Desmond could almost feel Edward's frustration at how little sense the stars made. Only kind of funny, because that meant that the bleeding effect was getting worse. But, hey, it was a good way to avoid loneliness at least.

Yeah, Desmond was kind of terrible at looking at the bright side of life.

In any case, after a week, Desmond was ready to find other people. He had made some warmer clothes, smoked some meat and had fashioned a crude leather water pouch. None of it was particularly good quality. What he really needed was some salt and then he'd be cooking - literally in the case of the smoked venison, but even the barely adequate leather he dried out would be so much better. Technically what he had wasn't even leather, it was just cured hide, but despite growing up in a place literally called The Farm, Desmond was enough of a city boy that he thought of it as leather. It was good enough to last until he could either find civilization or set up a more permanent camp, but he'd be replacing it all soon.

He ended up following a creek downstream until it joined with a river and following that for a week before he found human habitation. At least there was something to the theory that settlements formed on waterways. In any case, the village here looked sort of like someone took half the poor district of Acre, dumped it next to a river and put a wall around it. The wall was somewhat worrisome, not because it would be any trouble getting past, but because walled villages meant there was a need for walls - either lots of conflict between humans or really unfriendly wildlife, or both. Considering Desmond wasn't attacked by bears or anything on the way here, it looked like another case of humans being bastards, which meant he probably couldn't just waltz in like he belonged.

He spent a day just observing the outside of the town. It didn't get what he considered to be a tremendous amount of traffic, but it got enough that he was sure that if he ditched his hoodie and backpack that he'd fit in in terms of appearance. Dammit, he liked his hoodie. Stupid tenets making it so that he can't wear his favorite threads. Desmond would bet that the Templar didn't have any tenets that would make him ditch his hoodie. Actually, did the Templar even have anything equivalent to the Assassin tenets?

Then Desmond heard that asshole Haythem whisper "Uphold the principles of our order and all that for which we stand. Never share our secrets nor divulge in the true nature of our work. Do until death, whatever the cost."

Wow. Cheery. No wonder Templar faces were so punchable.

That night Desmond snuck in the village and creepily listened in on conversations. For more evidence that something had been messing with his brain, Desmond understood the language they were speaking but couldn't recognize it. How does that even work? To make things more annoying, he had the nagging feeling that the word for the language was in his brain somewhere, but he just didn't know how to look it up, which was annoying because if he knew how to look it up, he wouldn't need to look it up.

His snooping didn't reveal much of anything useful. Being a city boy at heart, he thought of talking about the weather as something bland, boring and unimportant, basically something inoffensive you could bring up when silence was too awkward. People from the past? The weather was damn important. The people in this village would kill for an accurate ten day forecast and that wasn't a figure of speech. There was an honest to goodness brawl over whether or not it would be raining in three days.

Desmond kind of wondered if this stuff was as important for farmers in his time and he just didn't notice because The Farm was a front rather than an actual agricultural community.

So, yeah, other than discovering that he could understand the language, Desmond learned nothing really useful about anything. Well, if he was going to stick around, he picked up some useful blackmail, but otherwise people having an affair wasn't his business at all. He did find a tanner, but honestly, the leathers he saw there weren't much better than the cured hide he was using, which was just sad. Maybe Eagle Vision gave him an advantage hunting, but it couldn't be that much of a difference, right?

Desmond spent a few days hunting in the area and then walked into the village with the new hides. This close to the village there wasn't a lot of large game. It was probably more the terrain than the presence of humans, but he was sure that didn't help.

He didn't have any problems selling his goods, which at least let him know that there weren't any laws against poaching in the area. He was pretty sure that he got a really raw deal on the sale though. He didn't know the going rates on anything and he hated haggling.

"That's it?" the tough old lady asked him suspiciously after she handed him the coins.

Shit. He definitely didn't try hard enough if she was reacting like this. "I don't suppose you can tell me if you've seen my cousin come through here?" The woman's eyes shifted as he said that. Looks like that was a good enough excuse. Now to sell it. "Looks like me except uglier? Bartender up the road said he might have been headed in this direction. No? Well, if you see a stupid looking stranger selling furs, mind telling him that his ma said to come home?"

The lady looked Desmond right in the eye. "Your ma said to come home."

Desmond rolled his eyes. "Funny."

The old lady hesitated for a moment then asked, "Which way you come from?"

"Been working my way up the river," Desmond lied.

"Old Cal might have lied to you," the woman said with visible hesitation, leading Demond to believe that she had really screwed him over with that price if she felt guilty enough to volunteer this. "Other way goes towards the Dreadfort." She dropped her voice. "And you know what they say about the Boltons."

Of course Desmond didn't, but tall tales were tall tales everywhere. "Those are just stories, right?"

"Their coat of arms is a flayed man," she hissed. Then in a more normal voice she said, "So just how stupid is your cousin?"

Desmond sighed to play along. "Stupid enough."

Well that gave him a direction to go for a larger city, and coincidentally somewhere that it might be a good place to visit in the capacity of an assassin.

The less said about Desmond's visit to Dreadfort the better, especially since there were a few more bodies there than there were when he arrived. At least he found some maps and determined that he wasn't on Earth. At least, if he was, it was so far in the future or the past that the continents had shifted unrecognizably. Oh, and he had no moral problems with stealing from evil bastards, especially after they were conveniently dead, so he got some new clothes and a horse (and a few weapons).

He also found out a bit more about geography and such. He was in the Seven Kingdoms, in the former kingdom simply called The North. He was also a bit reluctant to stay here, however. Roose Bolton was, like, obviously a villain. The only way it could be worse if you added mustache twirling. Seriously, his flag had a guy without his skin on it, and everyone just put up with it. People were people, so the common guy was probably alright, but, man, the people in charge around here must be up there with the Borgias in terms of assholery.

Normally, Desmond would be fine saying that no one in charge noticed the dickhead in charge having a torture room because of incompetence, but, again, Bolton flew it on his damn flag. You'd have to be literally blind not to notice. Desmond tried to think of a better way to say "people tortured here" in a time before literacy was common and couldn't. This was coming from a guy who lived the lives of multiple master assassins.

Well, unless you put the Abstergo logo on a flag. That was a pretty good indication that people were being tortured inside - not that Desmond was bitter or anything.

I'm bitter, Seventeen.

"Shut up, Clay. You're not even one of my ancestors. You don't get to haunt me."

Desmond wondered if in addition to the bleeding effect, he was experiencing garden variety hallucinations, or if this was a side effect of what Clay did.

He couldn't really see how, but he didn't really see how Clay managed to put a copy of himself in Rebecca's animus either. Vidic's animus would have made sense, but Baby?

Anyway, Desmond's increasing mental problems aside, he figured he should at least pop into The North's capital and see just how bad it was. Best case was probably some sort of pragmatic villain who kept the Boltons around as attack dogs like some sort of Viking Machiavelli. (Yes, Machiavelli was one of the good guys, but there was a reason why even his allies had trouble believing it themselves sometimes.)

After spending some time in Winterfell Desmond could only see two possibilities: either Eddard Stark was a stupidly noble idiot - to the point where it doesn't occur to him that his vassals could be monstrous torturers - or the guy was the next Rodrigo Borgia except competent enough to keep his reputation as a good guy intact. Desmond really wanted to believe the first one, but when was his luck ever that good?

Really, the biggest argument against the first one was the fact that the man had a bastard. Now Desmond didn't have anything against bastards. Some of the best people he knew had questionable parentage. He didn't even really have anything against people that couldn't keep it in their pants (*cough* Ezio *cough*). Stark also deserved some props for at least taking care of his spawn, which was a lot better than most men. (Like Ezio. Dude didn't even pay enough attention to know that he had spawn running around.)

On the other hand, Stark also didn't do anything about the fact that his wife was making the life of his illegitimate son hell, and, well, acting as the only person on your side when all of society is against you is a classic Templar tactic for securing the loyalty of a minion. To be fair, it was an Assassin tactic as well, but the Assassins were a lot less likely to engineer the situation that the prospective minion was suffering in.

Of course, this was all hearsay. It could be that Stark's wife was actually a really nice lady who maybe said one mean word to the kid and the telling got blown out of proportion. She was from the south (Desmond was pretty sure that wasn't capitalized around here but wouldn't bet money on it) and it sounded like the people he was talking to were prejudiced against foreigners. That was unfortunately universal, but at least it was better than in Italy during Ezio's time when a foreigner meant someone from another city.

Well, maybe. Desmond still wasn't clear on a lot of things that happened in the Renaissance, like anything involving Bartolomeo and his wife. He'd worry that there was a translation bug or something except Ezio seemed just as confused as Desmond felt. Sure it was clear that they really did love each other, but Desmond had no clue why.

Hopefully the relationship between the Starks would be easier to understand. It'd almost have to be, right? Now, Desmond was kind of, maybe a bit scared to check.

Dammit.

Desmond ran up to a handhold on the wall before he could change his mind.

It didn't take long to come to the conclusion that Stark was the stupidly noble type that simply couldn't perceive deception. In fact, in a case of leading by example gone horribly right, he'd basically corrupted his entire staff to the same way of thinking or not thinking. Quite frankly, someone should have questioned Desmond wandering around the castle spying on people. Either Desmond was doing a lot better at this hiding in plain sight thing than he thought, or these people had no survival instincts. He was really hoping it was the three master assassins who lived in his head, but he honestly was barely trying.

Desmond even caught an exchange between Lady Stark and the bastard. It wasn't even cold. It wasn't loving by any means, but it was mostly just awkward. Desmond wouldn't have said anything, but the kid glowed gold. Hopefully, he didn't have an assassination for Desmond to do, but something about his senses said that they should talk.

"Huh. I heard Lady Stark hated you."

Jon jumped at Desmond's comment, and turned to face him.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Desmond. Desmond Miles."

Jon mouthed the name.

"Yeah, I'm from pretty far away. Nice to meet you."

Jon twitched slightly. "Jon Snow. Pleased to meet you."

"Yeah, rumors were that Lady Stark hated you." Desmond gestured in the direction that the woman had gone off to a few minutes ago.

Jon exhaled sharply. "I used to think that, but I was young."

Desmond suppressed the urge to raise an eyebrow at that. When he was that age he wouldn't have appreciated it. Rather than comment on the kid's age, he instead said, "It's almost worse than if she did hate you because you've still got that hope that maybe you could somehow earn some love." The kid's facade cracked a little at that, but he recovered worryingly quickly. "It was the same with me and my dad." Desmond had a better idea now why that was the case. Unlike a lot of shitty dads, his dad had a reason to believe that the best thing he could do for his kid was to raise Desmond to be a good soldier. So acting like an uncaring drill sergeant was his way of caring. He just completely missed that part of being a good soldier was having a reason to fight.

Still a better dad than Haytham, though.

"Look, I'll try to be straight with you. Lord knows that not enough adults were honest with me when I was your age. Bottom line is that you're a kid and when enough people are saying you're being abused, well, that's something a good person should check in on."

"And you consider yourself to be a good person?" the boy asked. Desmond couldn't tell if that was simply curiosity, an accusation or something else.

"Not really, but I'm trying."

Jon gave him a look that spoke eloquently of a belief that Desmond lacked anything between his ears. "You admit it?"

"I don't know about you, but I get very suspicious about people who say they're good people."

"Because they might be lying?"

"No, because they might think that what they do is good because they're good people." Desmond shook his head and thought of the Templars who sincerely believed in the New World Order, which was really far too many of them. Hell, even Vidic thought he was working for the greater good. Vidic. "People convinced of their own righteousness are the scariest people of them all."

"But I'm… just me."

"You were going to say you're just a bastard, right? Well, that doesn't matter to me. What matters is that you're a kid."

Jon scoffed. "You'd be the first one."

"My family has a saying: nothing is true. Everything is permitted."

Jon looked at Desmond like he was a crazy person, which was totally fair because Desmond was pretty sure that seeing the ghosts of his ancestors counted as being crazy.

"That sounds plain wrong? Maybe a bit evil?"

"The first," Jon admitted with far more tact and solemnity than should have been possible for a kid his age. It was frankly adorable and Desmond was severely tempted to pinch his cheeks. He wondered if that was a thing here.

Instead he fished one of the gold coins out of his pouch. "What's this?"

"A gold dragon."

"I could use this to buy a horse, right?"

Jon looked at Desmond dubiously. "Maybe an old one."

Desmond rolled his eyes. "Okay, with a couple of these I could buy a horse. Why?"

Jon went back to looking at Desmond like he was a crazy person. "What do you mean why?"

"If I go to a farm and give a guy two gold dragons for a horse, what could he do with them?"

"Buy some pigs?" Jon sounded doubtful about that, but it was more the doubt of someone who didn't know what a pig cost than someone doubting the validity of currency.

"Okay, why?"

"Because pigs are useful on farms?"

"No, why would the pig farmer take the coins for some pigs?"

"Because it's gold!"

"So? Gold is pretty useless on a farm. You can't eat it. It's too soft to make tools or fasteners out of. You could make a cup out of it, but why bother when it'd be so much heavier than regular cups?" Desmond ignored the fact that his mind was filled with modern uses of gold like in electronics, mostly because he didn't know how he knew that.

"You can make jewelry out of it?"

Desmond arched a brow. "When was the last time you saw a farmer wearing heavy jewelry while working? How would that help?"

"But…."

"Yet, in some places a handful of these are enough to kill a man over, despite being pretty useless for making anything you can kill someone with. Get enough of these in one place and armies will fight wars for you. Despite the fact that you can't eat gold, if every gold coin disappeared, I bet people would starve inside a year. In the end, gold is like a shared lie. We tell each other that this is worth half a horse and it becomes worth half a horse. We tell each other it's worth a couple pigs and it becomes worth a couple pigs. If tomorrow everyone woke up and decided that a gold dragon was worth four pigs then it would be worth four pigs."

"That can't be right," Jon protested.

Desmond tilted his head slightly. "Why not? If everyone woke up tomorrow and decided gold was worth twice as much or half as much, what would stop it from being true? That basically happens all the time. Gold doesn't buy as much as it did before." That was a familiar tavern complaint. The only difference from hearing it in Italy or New York was that Desmond had a voice whispering how a small amount of inflation made for a healthy economy. Ugh. Assassins were one thing, but did he have an economist as an ancestor somewhere? He wasn't sure he could handle that. (He ignored the offended feeling he got from Ezio at that thought.)

Jon scowled. "Because the Lannisters keep pulling it out of the ground."

"So they say."

Jon blinked at that. "So they say?"

Desmond shrugged. "I've never been to the Lannister mines. For all I know they have a chicken that lays golden eggs and just say they have mines. On the other hand, the mines are old, right? And gold doesn't grow; once a mine is empty, it's empty. For all I know they stopped finding gold and are just pretending to still have money."

Jon shook his head. "People would notice."

Desmond shrugged again. "Depends on how much ore they have stockpiled. Anyway, we were talking about bastards, right? Well, where I'm from, that's not something people care about."

"Not something people care about?" Jon parroted disbelievingly.

Desmond nodded. "Yeah. Something like three out of ten kids are born out of wedlock and most of the time it doesn't matter. Really, no one cares."

"What about the gods?"

Desmond looked up. "Well, if they disapprove they haven't been very loud saying it."

"And that's it? There's just no difference?"

"Yes and no."

"I thought you were going to be straight with me," Jon accused.

Desmond held up a hand. "It's a complicated subject. No one cares if your parents are married, but people with two parents tend to do better than people with just one parent. If you only have a mom and who's going to teach you guy stuff? If you only have a dad and he's spending all his time working, who's going to watch out for you when you're growing up? A bastard's life can be difficult for lots of other reasons that have nothing to do with social acceptance."

"Oh."

"They do about as well as kids with only one parent because one of them died, though." This was more information that Desmond didn't know where it was coming from. It didn't even feel like it came from the bleeding effect either. He even had some vague memory like he read it in a… medical journal? How was that possible? Desmond had never read a medical journal in his life.

Then Desmond remembered his half formed thought about being born in a family of doctors. This wasn't quite what he had in mind. Was every stray thought he had back then going to come back and haunt him?

Knowing his luck, probably.

Oh god, that weird rock was going to turn out to be a dragon egg, wasn't it?

Wait. Didn't he ask for a pony too? Where was his damn pony?

Thankfully Jon seemed to be going through his own existential crisis so he didn't notice Desmond going through his.

"Why did you leave?" Jon finally asked.

"Give me a moment to figure out how to explain it without getting into a lot of stupid history." It was weird how this instant translation thing made him sound more formal than he intended. Like here he wanted to say 'gimme a sec' but the words for that didn't really work in this language, which he still didn't know the name for.

"Stupid history?" Jon repeated.

"People are people."

"That doesn't explain anything."

"You never see a couple of guys get in a fight over a girl who wasn't interested in either of them?"

Jon grimaced. "You mean people don't grow out of that?"

That was honestly adorable.

Jon scowled. "You have that look."

Desmond felt his face. "What look?"

The scowl deepened, which didn't not help the adorable part. It was like a poodle trying to be intimidating. "The one where it looks like you want to pinch my cheeks and call me a sweet summer child."

"Oh, people really do that here. I wondered about that."

Jon actually growled at that. Neat. Desmond had thought the kid had drunk too much stoic juice to still act like a kid.

Hard to be stoic when you're dealing with the most annoying asshole on the planet, Seventeen.

Huh. Desmond squinted at Jon. He didn't think the kid could see Clay.

Case in fucking point, Seventeen.

Desmond suppressed a smirk because Jon would have thought it was directed at him. "Anyway, you know how some people are born for a reason?"

Jon nodded seriously. "My brother was born to be the next lord of Winterfell."

Yeesh. No pressure, right? "Well, I was born to do something, and I did it and now I'm trying to figure out what to do with my life now that it's done." Strangely enough that was one hundred percent honest. It wasn't the full truth, but what he was going to do with his life from now on had very much been on Desmond's mind lately.

"I see," Jon replied and Desmond wanted to call bullshit because he had been about as clear as mud.

Then again, maybe people here were just more serious about the being born for a reason thing, which was kind of freaky if you asked Desmond. It kind of conflicted with the whole Assassin philosophy, which was kind of ironic considering his entire fucking life, though the Isu had a lot of the blame there.

"Have you come to any conclusions?" What was it about some twelve year olds that made them try to talk more adult than actual adults?

"Are you thinking about yourself?"

"...mayhaps."

"Well, the first thing I asked myself was 'What can I do that only I can do?'" If only the answer to that question had been Desmond's Shirley Templar recipe.

Jon frowned. "I don't think that applies to me."

"You're probably thinking about something like being the world's greatest swordsman, right?" Jon nodded slowly. "Yeah, think more personal. Like there was a guy when his father died, his mother stopped talking and he was the only one who could figure out how to get her to talk."

"Oh…. Sometimes when my sister is in a mood…."

"There you go. The next question is to ask yourself what can you do that the world needs more of."

Jon straightened his back. "Like taking the black."

Desmond had no clue what that meant, but from the way the kid said it, it sounded like he'd come off as a madman if he admitted it. "Then I asked myself, 'Is this something I can take back if I start?'" Like it would be very awkward if he founded a new chapter of the Brotherhood and decided it was a bad idea later. Maybe it wouldn't be a question he'd be asking if he hadn't accidentally yeeted himself to another planet, but since he had, the concept of changing his mind if he was wrong suddenly became very important to him.

"You don't think I should take the black," Jon accused.

"I was talking about myself," Desmond said mildly. "Like if I wanted to become a healer. The way things are done back home requires a lot of tools that people don't use here. I'd have to pay to have them made, but I wouldn't be able to sell them if I changed my mind, because, you know, no one uses them here. It's not like I'm made of money, so I need to be careful."

"Oh."

"The thing is, everyone makes bad decisions sometimes. The adults you see around that look like they have perfect lives? It just means that their bad decisions were for things small enough that they learned from them… or that someone is hiding the bodies."

Jon gave him a look that screamed 'Seriously?' to Desmond, but the kid was still too uptight to say it out loud.

"Look, I was only a few years older than you when I left my home and never went back. There are a lot of things I wouldn't change about that decision, but it was nine years before I saw my father again, and it was mostly for business. I'll never see my mother again."

Desmond left the boy quietly contemplating his future while contemplating his own.

So yeah, Desmond stuck around for a few days after figuring out Eddard Stark really was that big of a noble idiot, mostly trying to figure out what to do next. As an Assassin, he could do something about corruption, but simple incompetence wasn't worth killing someone over. Plus if he started killing people over that, he'd never stop. Eventually he decided on going to the capital. He wasn't sure yet if he was going to use his skills as an Assassin or the weird new medical skills that he apparently wished into existence, but it didn't sound like he'd be short of business either way.

"You're saying goodbye?" There was something about how Jon was surprised by that that broke Desmond's heart a little. As in, Jon seemed surprised that Desmond was bothering to say something, not surprised that Desmond was leaving.

"Yeah. Here's some really depressing advice: never pass up an opportunity to say goodbye."

Jon considered that a moment and then nodded. "Yes, that is depressing advice."

"The best advice usually is."

"Have you decided what you're going to do then?"

Desmond nodded. "I've decided to give being a healer a try. I'll be headed to King's Landing."

"Why there?"

"Two reasons: one, it's warmer." Jon rolled his eyes at that answer, probably thinking about how much of a wuss Desmond was. "Two, your dad actually takes pretty good care of his people. If I really want to help people I need to go somewhere else."

Jon looked proud at the compliment to his father. Then he got a worried look. "You aren't afraid of failing?"

What was the phrase the kid used before? "Oh, you sweet summer child, success can be worse than any failure."

Jon visibly bristled at the first part of that sentence before the rest of it registered and he tilted his head in confusion. "What?"

Desmond didn't really think it was appropriate to talk about how Altair's success doing Al Mualim's tasks almost doomed the world, or at least the Holy Land. Maybe he could talk around it. "The thing about people is they don't question things when things are going to plan."

"Why would you question things if things are going to plan?"

"When things are turning to shit around you-" Jon made an adorably disgusted face at Demond's swear. "-you question things like 'Is this really worth doing?' or 'Will this actually get me what I want?'"

Jon blinked. "Why would you do something if it wouldn't get you what you want?"

"A lot of times because you don't think things through." The Borgias were always a good source for object lessons. "A few hundred years ago in my homeland there was a guy who decided to raise his son to be easy to control by raising him to be impulsive and not think things through properly. The kid was taught to do whatever he could to increase the family's power no matter the cost. This worked out… reasonably well for the father until one day the kid decided that the father was holding him back and killed him."

"He became a kinslayer?" Jon whispered, horrified. "Why?"

Desmond shrugged. "These kinds of things happen when you teach your kids it's fine to sleep with their sister."

Jon got a look on his face that was somewhere between disgusted and angry, sort of like Shaun when he was talking about the non-England bits of Europe. It was a bit of a stronger reaction than Desmond was expecting, but he didn't have sisters.

"Yeah, that story probably isn't very relatable, huh? Let me think for a better example. Right. Like what if I become the best damn healer the world has ever seen - don't tell anyone I used that word around you - but I end up saving the life of a mass murderer? Or what if I end up hating the job - sick people smell, by the way - but I end up saving so many people that I feel stuck in a job I hate?"

"It's honorable to do your duty. At least you'll have that."

"Nope, did my duty. Now, it's time to live."

Jon tilted his head. "I don't think it works like that."

"Told you I was born for a reason."

"Oh."

For lack of a better way to fill the resulting awkward silence, Desmond went back to the subject of being careful of success. "Sometimes when things are going well, you don't re-evaluate for new information. Like if someone tried to become a great warrior to impress a girl but doesn't take into account that her father was injured by a knight."

"Oh," Jon said again, in pretty much the same tone.

Desmond wondered what that reaction was about, because that wasn't anywhere near as heavy a subject, before remembering Jon hadn't finished puberty yet. He was probably still confused by the whole girls being interesting thing, but Desmond definitely wasn't interested in talking to him about it. Nope, that was his dad's job and if Desmond ever had kids he'd do his best to try to foist it off on whoever the mom was.

"And sometimes you lose track of your ultimate goal when you're pursuing the steps to achieve that goal. Like wanting to become a great warrior to protect your family and going on a training trip to do so, but leaving your family unprotected while you're gone."

Jon outright flinched at that one.

"Kid, you're father's the lord here, with soldiers and stuff. If he can't protect your family while you're gone, you being around wouldn't have made much of a difference."

"Stuff."

Desmond shrugged. "I have a lot of skills. Fancy words aren't one of them." At least not without borrowing his ancestors' words. "Honestly, the biggest worry I'd have about your family is themselves."

Jon blinked once slowly. "I don't understand."

"I've seen your brother climb. Actually, I don't know if it was your brother, but someone else said it was."

Jon hung his head and groaned. "Bran…."

Desmond thought for a moment. "Has anyone taught him how to fall safely from a high spot?"

Jon shook his head.

"Well, I guess I know what I'm doing with the rest of my day."

Jon - The Hurricane

For a man that Jon had only spoken to a handful of times, Desmond really stuck in Jon's head. For one thing, he never did find out what Desmond had been doing in the castle other than to talk to him. (It was nice knowing that someone thought that he was worth saying goodbye to.)

Jon must have spent almost a full year just thinking about what Desmond said about gold. It turned out that gold wasn't quite as useless as the older man implied, but most of those uses were things only a maester would care about. And, yes, the value of gold as a coin really was a matter of some sort of shared agreement. Just rumors that someone had been debasing gold with silver could cause the value of gold dragons to fluctuate wildly.

Also, quietly, John had looked up what the holy books of the Seven had really said about bastards… and it turned out that it really wasn't that much. Plenty of priests had denounced bastards, but the teachings attributed directly to the Seven-faced God talked about the value of staying faithful and the goodness of matrimony, yet nothing about the goodness or evilness of bastards themselves. And since there was nothing stopping the priests from vilifying bastards, they did.

It made Jon think about what Desmond said about not questioning things when they were going according to plan. For a long time Jon had latched onto the idea of taking the Black as solving all of his problems. It would get him away from Lady Stark. He'd still be showing he cared for his siblings by protecting them, even at a distance. Most importantly, he'd be somewhere where it didn't matter where he came from.

That first point, he didn't see how he could be wrong about that. It wasn't as if Lady Stark would follow him up to the Wall. The second point, he was a little less sure about. He knew that Arya would think that it would be abandoning her. He was now less sure that she'd grow out of it.

That last point? It wasn't until he really listened to Uncle Benjen talk about his time on the Wall that he realized it wasn't true. Oh, he didn't explicitly say that Jon would still be looked down upon because of his parentage, but he did talk about a fight that two guys got into just because one of them was a Lannister. Jon realized that setting aside your past was more of an ideal than a reality on the Wall.

Unfortunately, Jon didn't have any good plans for what to do if he didn't take the Black. At least he didn't until he heard Desmond had set up as a healer in King's Landing. No, Desmond hadn't kept in touch. Jon didn't mind because they didn't know each other past those couple of conversations and it was expensive to send messages that far.

No, he had heard because everyone had heard. Whatever else you can say about Desmond Miles, he didn't do anything halfway. Not only did he become a healer, he set up a teaching hospital right in the middle of the poorest part of King's Landing. The maesters tried to shut him down, both denouncing his practices and accusing him of sharing secrets of their order, but he pointed out how little sense it made to denounce practices you say were stolen from your own order, and beside which, his practices seemed to work far better than the maesters' did.

He hoped Desmond was at least enjoying himself, because it sounded like he really was going to be stuck doing it because of all the lives he was saving, some of it just by making the maesters pay attention to the small folk who normally couldn't afford seeing a maester in an effort to prove they were better than Desmond.

Jon wouldn't have thought it was possible to save lives through weaponized spite, but he apparently was still young and had much to learn about the world. The fact that Desmond thought it was possible (and then went and proved it) made Jon wonder if Desmond was more optimistic than him or more cynical.

The first step Jon took in really deciding what to do with his life began with a letter - or rather, a series of letters. The first informed his father that the Master of Coin had died. That was followed by one stating that Lady Stark's sister was direly wounded and that her nephew had died. That was followed by one stating that Lysa Arryn had passed away.

(In his defense, Desmond really tried to be a doctor without moonlighting as an assassin. Unfortunately, in a place as corrupt as King's Landing, sometimes you needed to shank one of the fine, upstanding gentlemen wearing gold cloaks. And like any good assassin setting up a base in a new City, Desmond made friends with the local prostitutes. Now for the most part he tried not to make waves, since he was finding treating people to be very fulfilling, but forced prostitution was about three steps and a jump past the line. End result? One dead Baelish.)

The children had been told that what happened to Lysa Arryn was an accident, but eavesdropping revealed that they suspected something else. Jon didn't know what, or even who "they" were, because Arya had been the little minx that had tried finding out more. It wasn't that Jon wasn't curious, but if it had been Arya who died under shady circumstances, he wouldn't want anyone poking at him to find out details.

Jon asked his father if there was anything he could do to help, beyond keeping Arya from being a pest about things. His father just said that was enough and that Jon was a good boy for doing that much. (Jon wasn't, but he was trying.)

But if Jon had to pinpoint to one thing as the beginning of the end, it would be getting the letter saying that Jon Arryn died.

It would be a few years in the future when Jon would hear about the concept of stress levels, but if his current self had known about the idea, he would have agreed that his stress levels were through the roof. Being a living blemish on his father's honor was uncomfortable enough under normal circumstances, but it was downright excruciating when the king was visiting.

At least that's what Jon thought in the lead up to the king's visit, but once the king had actually arrived, he found the fact that no one really expected him to talk to the royal party to be quite liberating. Well, Sansa seemed to enjoy it, but Robb looked like he was about half a step away from deliberately getting into a training accident just so he had an excuse to stay in bed until the king left. Arya wasn't stupid enough to do the same, but would certainly take credit for putting holes in Robb's skin in hopes of getting locked in her room (and then complain about boredom when that happened). Rickon was lucky enough to be too young for the king's visit to really affect him, while Bran, well, Bran just wanted to climb.

No, that was a lie. Ever since Desmond taught Bran how to fall properly, Bran also enjoyed jumping from high spots. There were many people who were unsure if they wanted to thank or kill Desmond, Jon included.

Of course, Jon decided on thanking him when that lesson saved Bran's life, especially when the near lethal fall hadn't been an accident but an attempt to kill Jon's brother.

Jon hadn't been present for the fall or the events immediately thereafter. He had been doing some copying for Maester Luwin in repayment for some help earlier (and as an excuse to stay away from the royal delegation), and afterwards had stayed by Bran's side as he got his broken leg treated. No one, however, could miss the aftermath of that. Bran had stayed awake long enough to identify the person who had pushed him from the tower to be the king's good brother… and that he and the queen had been lying together. Jon and his siblings weren't supposed to know that last part, but it was hard to keep from them when the entire castle knew it. It wasn't as if the king was being particularly quiet in his rants.

Then Joffrey went crazy and tried to kill someone, and things got even more chaotic. Apparently the (former?) prince had gotten it in his head that he was a great warrior, but that was only because people would let him win when sparring with him. The destruction of so many of his illusions at the same time left him a bit touched in the head.

It was a giant mess that Jon and his siblings were mostly happy to stay out of. The exception was Sansa, who was incredibly distraught at the revelation that Joffrey was likely a bastard.

Jon might have been a little offended at that, but only a little. Sansa had been imagining herself as the future queen after all. (And just maybe Jon was feeling grateful that he wouldn't have to think of Joffrey as any kind of kin.)

In the end, Jon's father agreed to be the Hand of the King, at least temporarily, and would take Sansa and Arya with him to King's Landing. Jon asked to join them.

"With the… excitement-" Jon's father made a face at the euphemism. It was the kind of southern doublespeak that his father disliked, but at the same time, there was a lot to encompass there. "-I would welcome your sisters having reliable company with us in the capital, but why the interest, Jon?"

"Desmond the healer. He stopped in Winterfell a few years ago. He was the one that taught Bran how to fall properly. I'd like to thank him."

"Is that so? That does deserve some thanks."

"I was also hoping that he might take me as a student."

Jon's father furrowed his brow. "I wasn't aware that you were interested in healing."

"I talked to uncle Benjen. He said that while there are a thousand swords on the Wall, there's only one maester assigned. Even if I'm not any good at it, it might be more useful than another sword."

"Well, normally this would be rather awkward, but the king would welcome your presence to guard the queen on the way to the capital."

Jon furrowed his brow slightly as he tried to figure out why. "Oh. It would be an insult and the king is in a mood to offer insults to his wife."

His father grimaced. "I had hoped that you think it was because she was in no position to object."

Jon gave him a dry look. "I did pay some attention to my lessons."

"Quite."

If there was anyone Jon felt sorry for in this mess, it was Myrcella. Joffrey was the kind of mad dog that gave bastards a bad name to the point Jon had become much more understanding about Lady Stark's prejudices when it came to himself. Tommen frankly didn't understand what was going on. Jon wasn't sure if that was because of his youth or because he wasn't very bright, but either way he didn't understand how badly things could go in the future.

Unfortunately, Jon had no idea how to be comforting in the general case, being very much the dour type, much less this specific case. Yes, he was a bastard and therefore might have something in common here, but as annoying as everyone knowing his situation was, he at least had the comfort of everyone being honest about things. His father never tried to pass Jon off as a legitimate child. Lady Stark never pretended to love him. Jon would never have to deal with the existential issue of everything he knew about himself to be a lie. The truth wasn't exactly ideal, but he never had to worry about it being torn away from him.

So basically, he had no idea what to say to the girl. She wasn't being restrained like her mother or older brother on the trip to the capital, but really no one wanted to talk to her other than her younger brother and her uncle Tyrion, who had canceled his plans to see the Wall in light of the terrible mess that was his family. Tyrion would also be the first to say that he wasn't fit company for an impressionable young girl.

"Do you hate me too?" asked Myrcella after one too many awkward silences.

"No, no. It's just I have no idea what to say to girls who aren't my sisters."

"Oh."

"And honestly, Arya's more like another brother than a sister."

Myrcella giggled at that, which was followed by another silence. It was slightly less awkward, possibly because Ghost came by and decided to rest with them. Myrcella was sheltered enough to think that Ghost was just a big dog rather than a wolf. Jon was of two minds about that. On one hand, that attitude was much more easily dealt with than the typical fear response. On the other hand, did she get passed over when the gods were handing out survival instincts?

"Have they made any decisions about you yet?" Jon asked, which probably wasn't the most delicate way of putting things.

Fortunately Myrcella didn't take any offense and simply shook her head. "No. I think they're waiting to hear how Grandfather will react."

"Ah. Uncertainty."

Myrcella sighed. "You understand. I might have to join the Silent Sisters."

Jon winced. Like going to the Wall, it was an honorable choice, when it was a choice. He wasn't even sure girls her age were allowed to join. "If worst comes to worst, you might be able to join Desmond the Healer instead."

"Truly?"

"I met him a while ago. He wouldn't care if your parents were married or not, just that you're a child that needs help."

"That sounds like Desmond the Holy."

"Desmond the what? That doesn't sound like something he'd call himself." Jon remembered the dark thoughts Desmond shared about people who thought themselves to be good. "Or answer to."

Myrcella giggled again. "No, I think the only title he's claimed is Mentor. I don't remember if he called himself Mentor Desmond or Desmond the Mentor, but it's something like that. Everyone else calls him Desmond the Holy."

Jon frowned. "That's not news that made it North."

They passed the rest of the day, as well as much of the rest of the trip, with Myrcella telling Jon stories from the capital.

There was a certain pageantry involved with a new Hand coming to the capital, and even more involved with accusing a queen of treason. As such, it was a sennight before Jon was able to find time to visit the healer. He spotted the older man in the yard of his hospital, which had apparently originally been a warehouse of some sort. Desmond looked younger than Jon remembered, but when they had first met, Jon had thought anyone old enough to raise a proper beard was unspeakably old. He got a chance to approach as the healer leaned against the wall after shooing a child along.

"Desmond the Holy?" Jon blurted out instead of greeting.

Desmond groaned and pressed his head to the closest wall for a second. Turning back to Jon he said, "Not my idea and barely related to me in the first place. Long time no see. Looking good, Jon."

Jon was mildly surprised that Desmond remembered him. "It's good to see you too. But how could it be barely related to you?"

Desmond rubbed his hand through his hair, which was much longer than when Jon last saw him. "Okay, you've got the Faith and you've got the Maesters, right? They're both in the business of providing guidance to people."

"I don't think the Faith would call it a business."

Desmond rolled his eyes. "Anyway, sometimes they butt heads over things. I was giving the Maesters a headache and the Faith decided it would be convenient to make that headache worse. I tell anyone who asks that I'm not a holy person. I'm not even a good person, even if I'm trying."

"The Faith likes humility," Jon pointed out.

Desmond groaned. "I'd do something spectacularly sinful to get rid of all this attention if it didn't let me heal more people."

Jon decided not to point out that that kind of attitude was exactly what people looked for in a holy person.

"So are you just in the neighborhood and dropping by to say hi?"

"Do you remember teaching my brother how to fall properly?"

"Vaguely? I mean I remember doing it, but don't ask me what we were wearing that day or anything."

"Well, that lesson is the only reason Bran made sure there was something to fall on when he was pushed from the tower. He's alive because of you."

"That's horrible! I mean that he was pushed, not that he's alive. That part's great."

"I understood." Jon paused for a moment. "Father was wondering what you would accept as a thank you gift."

Desmond grimaced. "I don't want to say it was nothing, but I didn't really do very much." He suddenly grinned. "Well, I could use a pony."

"A pony?"

"I always wanted a pony. For… reasons, I went from no experience riding to war horses."

Jon winced. "Oh."

"Yeah, kinda wished I didn't skip that step. Well, I don't really need a pony to learn how to ride, but one could help around here."

"How?"

Desmond sighed. "Let me tell you the dirty secret of healing: nothing any human can do will actually heal another man."

"That makes no sense." This might be only the third time Jon had ever talked to Desmond, but he wasn't an idiot; he knew how this was going to go: Desmond had said something that made no sense and now was going to explain it in a way that would completely ruin Jon's existing view of the world.

"There are a lot of things that look like healing that really aren't. Like I can often get rid of whatever's hurting someone, and I can usually stop someone from getting worse, but actually healing is beyond any mortal man. So sometimes the difference between life and death is simply having something to look forward to like riding a pony or petting a dog." Desmond gave Ghost a look that implied that he knew that the dire wolf very much wasn't a dog, but if he was good Desmond would let him pretend to be one around the hospital.

"What about curing poisons?"

"Getting rid of what's hurting someone."

"Sewing an open wound?"

"That just keeps them from getting worse by keeping the blood inside."

"...I think you have very strict standards about what healing means."

Desmond shrugged. "Someone has to. Have you seen some of the nonsense the Maesters were doing?" He got a somewhat crazed look in his eyes. "Don't even get me started on what they believe about mercury compounds."

"Mercury compounds?"

"Like calomel."

"It's medicine?"

"Medicine? Medicine!? If by medicine you mean poisons that cover up symptoms by killing tissues-" That was the beginning of Jon's first lesson about healing. It turned out that becoming one of Desmond's students was simply a matter of showing up and doing what you could, while surviving his spontaneous lectures about how the human body worked.

Jon's father took a sennight to find a pony that would be good with children. It wouldn't have taken nearly that long in Winterfell, but they were new to the area and his father had to deal with issues as the new Hand of the King. During that time Jon did a lot of cleaning in the hospital. Desmond's insistence on cleanliness probably had a lot to do with his status as Desmond the Holy, what with all the references to washing and bathing in the holy texts.

Jon didn't think that Desmond had really considered what coming to the hospital looked like to the small folk who were treated there. Most of the time treatment involved being ritually cleansed and being told to rest in a ritually cleansed room while being given purified water and simple foods. If you were injured, this may also include wounds being anointed with balms that sounded very much like those described in holy texts. Also, at least as long as Jon had been at the hospital, most of those small folk spent that time in a good deal of prayer.

Those teachings from the gods made a lot more sense when Desmond showed Jon a contraption made of Myrish glass that could make things look tens, maybe hundreds of times larger. Even seemingly clean surfaces could have swarms of small animals living on them. According to Desmond those nearly invisible animals were what were responsible for infections and many forms of sickness.

Jon had a hard time not imagining a tingling feeling from all these creatures crawling on his skin whenever he thought about it. At the same time, however, he very much understood why the small folk believed that the hospital was actually just a place to share a bit of Desmond's holiness. From Desmond's point of view, the cleansing rituals were the best way to kill the so-called microorganisms with his limited funds.

In any case, on the seventh day, Jon led his father to the hospital with the pony. Jon found it vaguely amusing because seven was a holy number, and Desmond was still convinced that all the talk of Desmond the Holy was purely political. Somehow it had completely missed his notice that most of the people who went to the hospital really believed it. (Later Jon would remember that seven was also the number of The Stranger and it would be a lot less funny.)

They saw Desmond in the hospital's yard helping children get exercise. That would normally be a waste of Desmond's talents, but as far as Jon could tell, it was the closest thing that the man did to fun all day, so it was something they all encouraged, especially after he'd had a long night working on the sums for the hospital.

"Jon! Is that what I think it is?"

"Yes, it is. Father, this is Desmond Miles."

"A pleasure to meet you Lord Stark- or is it Lord Hand?" He shrugged sheepishly. "Sorry, I don't know much about etiquette here."

"Either will do," Jon's father replied. "Jon, perhaps you could introduce the pony to the children?" Considering the wide eyed looks the children were giving them, this sounded like a reasonable course of action. Ponies weren't very common in this part of the city.

"Do you want to give her a name first?" he asked Desmond.

"She's a girl? Uh…. How about Applejack?" At Jon's incredulous look, Desmond asked "Isn't that a girl pony name?"

"It's the name of a rather strong drink," Jon pointed out.

"Huh. So it is. I never put that together. You think you know someone…. How about Twilight Sparkle?"

"Twilight Sparkle?" Jon repeated.

Desmond shrugged. "I don't think I've ever met a pony that wasn't named by a six year old girl."

"That does sound like something Sansa would have named a pony when she was that age," Jon's father noted. Considering she named her dire wolf Lady, her tastes haven't changed all that much either.

"Maybe get the kids to give her a name?" Desmond suggested, which was the beginning of Jon's nightmare. The children were very eager to name the pony something just as awful as Twilight Sparkle. He immediately regretted rejecting Applejack, because it was boundlessly more preferable than anything the children came up with. He was positive that Arya would shun him for at least a sennight if she heard that he was a party to any of these names. It was made worse by Desmond occasionally tossing in a suggestion, each one worse than the last. Jon felt less masculine just hearing the names.

They eventually decided on Princess Flurry Heart, even the boys, which was entirely because they saw that this was the name that caused Jon the most pain, the little imps. After that Jon herded the children back in the hospital and then helped lead Princess Flurry Heart to the stall Desmond had built for her when Jon brought up the idea of a pony. He returned to find his father and Desmond in deep discussion.

"-I have no problem with the hospital being treated as a refuge, even a refuge of last resort, but I don't want it to be treated as a dumping ground." Desmond sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "People who don't want to be here could do a lot of damage just from carelessness. Do the kids even want to learn how to be healers?"

"Myrcella liked the idea," Jon offered.

"Tommen not so much?" Desmond sighed. "How does he feel about farming? I have a farm about two hours away. As long as he does his chores we can fit him in there." Desmond looked at the hospital building. "We don't really have anywhere to put Myrcella though…."

"I can make sure that you receive an amount of gold for her upkeep," Father said.

"I'm not saying no, but we need to consider the optics."

"Optics?" Jon's father asked.

"Er, how it will look. Accepting money for taking in children would look like we're a dumping ground." Desmond grimaced and muttered "I hate politics" under his breath. In a more normal voice he said, "But if we were to accept donations for another reason we could set up a dormitory. It might help with some of the other volunteers as well."

"Another reason, for example, in gratitude for saving my son?"

"Princess Fluffy Heart is enough for that."

"Flurry Heart," Jon mumbled.

"Right, Princess Flurry Heart. But I'm willing to look a bit crass if it'll help a kid or two out."

Jon's father did not smirk or otherwise betray any sense of amusement. "Oddly enough, I do have a bit of coin on me that we could say is a token of my appreciation."

Desmond scowled at him. "A friendly reminder than honorable doesn't mean unclever." The healer led them to his office while trying to convince Jon's father that perhaps the money could instead be labeled as a charitable donation in light of the good works being done at the hospital. Jon didn't really see what difference it made, but his father treated it as a reasonable concern.

When Desmond reached the door to his office, he stopped suddenly, peering intently inside.

"Is there a problem?" Jon's father asked.

Desmond turned to look back at Jon and his father. For a moment, Jon would have sworn Desmond's eyes flashed gold. He took a couple of quick steps into the room and then turned back, holding a round, scaled rock. "Hold this for a sec," he said as he shoved it at Jon.

"Is this a dragon egg?"

"Beats me. Hopefully I'm going crazy, but I get the feeling that it belongs with you."

Jon blinked. "What do mean you hope you're going crazy?"

"Because if I'm not going crazy, the gods are talking to me, and that never ends well for anyone."

Jon got the uncomfortable feeling that Desmond was speaking out of personal experience rather than ancient stories. "You're going crazy," Jon said. "There's no reason a dragon egg belongs with me-" He was interrupted by a choking sound next to him. "Father?"

"Oh, there goes my dramatic revelations that are absolutely none of my business sense," Desmond said before jumping out the (thankfully ground floor) window. At the time he thought the healer was being overly dramatic himself, but later he would understand that Desmond either had impressive survival instincts or the gods really were watching over him.

It would be five days before his father even tried to explain what the problem was. They were in his father's room in the castle and were about to start the conversation when they realized they could still hear people nearby. Then they retired to his father's office, before Lord Stark looked around suspiciously and decided that he didn't know if anyone could listen in on them.

That put things off by three more days when the guards his father had search his office discovered a listening hole.

Eventually, Jon's father decided that nowhere in King's Landing was safe to talk about things. So he hit upon the idea of traveling with Jon to Desmond's farm where Myrcella and Tommen would be staying when the two left King's Landing proper. Jon would come along as a familiar face to help them get settled in, and Jon's father would tag along with the excuse of looking at some discrepancies in the tax numbers.

Desmond looked dumbly at Jon's father. "What discrepancies in the tax numbers?"

"For a bee farm of that size, you're paying twice as much as we would expect."

"I'm being audited for paying too much?" Desmond tilted his head. "Isn't that the kind of thing tax people want to ignore because then I might start paying less?"

"I'm mostly looking for an excuse to spend time with my son, but I admit to being somewhat curious."

"Just your son?" Arya pouted. Yeah, she had decided to tag along. Jon had the impression that his sister wanted to help cheer up Myrcella and Tommen, but he had no idea how she planned on doing that, aside from bringing Nymeria along and hoping that application of lots of furry hugs would help. Arya's heart was in the right place, but her plans left a lot to be desired.

Jon's father was spared from having to answer by Desmond snapping his fingers. "The beehives! I almost forgot about those!"

Arya stared at him flatly. "How do you forget about beehives on a bee farm?"

Desmond hopped on the wagon with Myrcella and Tommen and started gesturing while talking about beehives as the procession got on its way. Jon and his father originally had intended to ride ahead, but got sucked into hearing about Desmond's special beehives, where they didn't have to destroy the entire hive to get the honey out. Harvesting a little at a time let them practically double the amount of production per hive.

"Shouldn't you be keeping this a secret?" Jon asked as Desmond talked about the various parts of his hive design like queen excluders and ventilation racks. At least Tommen seemed more enthusiastic knowing that he was going somewhere on the rising edge of honey production.

"Jon, you have some idea of just how much honey we go through for medication and salves. More people using these hives means cheaper prices. I'm not in this to make money."

"And you wonder why people call you Desmond the Holy."

"That does sound like something a holy man would say," Arya agreed.

Desmond scowled. "Didn't you want to have some family bonding time?"

"Quite right," Jon's father agreed, and led Jon ahead of the rest of the pack. "I'm surprised Desmond himself came with us," he said as they pulled slightly away.

"I'm sure it was mostly Sister Jeyne forcing him to get out and get some air," Jon replied.

"Mostly?"

"Well, when the Lord Hand himself wants to investigate your finances…."

Jon's father winced. "Right." Jon had the distinct impression that his father liked pretending he wasn't the second most powerful man in the kingdom. (And honestly, with how irresponsible Robert was, there were times Jon wondered if his father really was only number two.)

Soon enough they were riding far enough ahead that the only ones who could hear them were Ghost and Nymeria, and those two weren't the gossiping types. At least he was pretty sure.

He was suddenly struck by the image of Ghost under a pile of blankets, covering up everything but his snout, complaining to his siblings about the stupidity of what his human had gotten up to that day. He would be offended on the part of imaginary Jon, except they were, at this very moment, riding towards a place where they grew murder insects for honey.

Then his father explained who his mother was and Jon kind of wished that his biggest worry was the murder insects.

Jon needed some time by himself after that talk. Well, by himself if Ghost didn't count, but Ghost very much did count. He honestly didn't know what to do with the notion that he was- No, he wasn't even going to think that thought in the privacy of his own head. Quite frankly, it was easier than he thought to bury most everything of what he had just learned. The important thing is that his father was still his father and his siblings were still his siblings, even if that was less literally true than he thought. It was still true in all the ways that really mattered.

The only thing that changed was that there were three men he really wanted to kill. Actually, Tywin Lannister was watching the slow destruction of everything he worked towards his entire life, so he could wait. Amory Lorch and Gregor Celgane? They were long overdue for a date with The Stranger.

Desmond found Jon in a stand of trees on the farm when the sun was about three quarters along its path in the sky. "Your father's headed back soon."

"Ah." Jon swallowed. "Thank you."

"I don't have any problems if you want to stay the night, and you know, process. Your dad said he finally told you who your mother was."

"Yeah, he did." Jon swallowed again. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure. Not sure how much help I'll be about dealing with- Actually, no, I've actually got a lot of experience with unexpected relatives. Huh." Desmond rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"What would you do if you suddenly felt like a couple of men needed to die?" Though, the part that Jon didn't understand is why he felt this all of the sudden. He had known Lorch and Clegane were foul examples of knights long before this. It's not as if the death of his half-siblings should have meant more than as an explanation of why Jon's father was so willing to go to such lengths to protect the secret of Jon's identity. Only for some reason, perhaps the feeling of that could have been me, their deaths really hit him hard.

"Well, first I'd ask myself if it's for a good reason. Would the world be a better place if they were dead?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Then I'd probably kill them." Desmond raised an eyebrow at Jon's expression. "I don't know why everyone keeps forgetting when I tell people that I'm not actually a good person." He shook his head. "Never trust anyone who's called a holy man for political reasons."

"That sounds like the voice of experience." Like every part of that from false holy people to killing people for the greater good.

"It's not like my father raised me to be a healer." Desmond shook his head. "I've had an interesting life."

"It sounds like it," Jon said dully.

"And from my vast experience, I'd recommend sleeping on it and see if you still want to do something drastic in the morning."

"And if I do?"

"Actually, give it a week." Desmond nodded firmly. "Yeah, a week sounds right."

"A week?" Jon repeated.

"Oh right, you guys call it a sennight. Anyway, if you still feel murderous after a week, come find me."

"And then what?"

For a moment Jon thought Desmond's eyes had started glowing. "And then? And then I teach you how to become an Assassin."