Do you think Desmond has moments where he has to remind himself his ancestors are dead? That the people they cared about are too?
“Leonardo would love this.”
“I should go see if Malik has need of me.”
“I should go back to Davenport and check on everyone.”
He spent years with them, he cared for them. Do you think he ever sees a white feather and thinks about his mom Maria? Does he ever look at a plane and feel joyous laughter bubble up because
“Leonardo, look at what they’ve done! Flying machines just like you built!”
Does he smell a new tea Shaun buys and for a moment go “Malik would like this.”
And everytime it happens he has to remind himself that they’re not there.
Oh the grief he would feel at each moment. They’re dead, they’ve been dead for centuries and yet he feels like he just lost them. And he did, because just a month ago he was sitting on a bench with Leonardo talking about weapons. It wasn’t that long ago that Malik cursed him for drawing too much attention to him. It was even sooner that he watched two of his friends get married.
And oh, doesn’t that grief feel stolen? It’s such a raw feeling. An emotion that burrows in your chest. It makes your head feel too heavy for your shoulders and your throat feel like it’s closing. But it’s not his is it?
He grieves for friends and family who don’t even know he exists. He never met them, and wouldn’t that make it so much worse? The feeling of wrongness makes grief so much more powerful does it not?
They’re not his to mourn. They’re just another thing pushing him closer to insanity.
