Blood and Memory

Summary: A tale of two Assassins, two shinigami. A tale of friendships, and Pieces of Eden, and an Apple that sowed discord in heaven. Shihoin and Altaïr, Hitsugaya and Ezio. References Embers.

He hears the tell-tale flutter of robes, as he stands over the bodies. He knows the figure who has stepped in behind him, even without needing to turn around. There is only one person he knows with that kind of effortless speed. That kind of stealth.

He inclines his head in brief greeting. Blood drips down the groove of his blade.

"Six," she says, voice cool and light, just a little husky.

"Six," Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad says, calmly. The wound in his side stings lightly, but a brief touch shows it is not deep. It will heal. In time.

There was a time when he struggled to take on four attackers. Now, he will not display the effort this skirmish has cost him. But he has emerged victorious. There was a time when he cannot even dream of such a feat.

He should not have taken such a risk, even now. He should know better.

But it is necessary.

"You've changed."

He turns, to regard her with hooded eyes. She has changed too; for all that her skin remains warm and supple with youth and he has harsh lines of care etched around his eyes. She wears a white sleeved coat now, over her black robes.

He lets the flickering blues-reds-golds of his sight wash over him; now he sees her far more clearly, sees the outlines of the dead Templars, chains flopping like severed limbs from their chest. The blood is gone. The dead are always very clean. They do not bleed the way the living do. Not until they have passed on.

That he sees her limned with blue-red light means nothing. That he sees her at all without having to call on his sight says she is really here. Flesh and blood.

"So have you," the Grand Master of the Assassin Order says. He kneels and wipes the blood off his blade with a handful of Templar surcoat. A quick snap of his wrist retracts the mechanism. The hidden blade slips back into the gauntlet, sheathed. He barely hides his smile. "I take it you've come to join the Assassins."

Her lips twitch in a smile. "I'd thought of that, yes," she says, with a wicked grin. "But they've made me a Captain instead." In a careful, deliberate motion, she draws her sword, and then reverses it to stamp the pommel on the foreheads of each of the slain, sending them on. Altaïr has already knelt and said the dying prayers for each of them. They have their own separate duties to discharge, though their paths have continuously intersected for most of their lives. But he has further to go, and he can feel the bite of age in his bones.

He does not flinch as the Gates of Hell appear to claim de Gautier. It is, perhaps, a good thing, to see that only the commander of the Templar forces has sinned sufficiently that he will not proceed to the afterlife. It is a sobering thought, to know he has killed…men. Templars, but men nevertheless. Not innocent. But.

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

He did not see if Hell came for Al Mualim. Perhaps there are some things he is not permitted to know. Strange that he can feel at peace with that, now. With not-knowing what will come for him, when he faces the pommel of that sword on his day, when his time comes.

Young men can dream of immortality. Death bleeds into old bones.

Shihoin sheathes her sword. He relaxes imperceptibly at the rasp of steel gliding on wood, even though he knows that she is far more deadly with her bare hands. Instincts die hard, but he would not have been standing with his back to her if he did not think it wise.

"Congratulations," he says.

Her laugh is light, easy, with a hint of mischief. Ten years and he might remember how to laugh in that way. "Your robes are different."

"Perhaps I felt like changing them."

She tilts her head to regard him. Her eyes are golden in the sunlight, and thoughtful. "No," she answers at last, "I don't think you did." A knowing smirk traces its way onto her lips. "You've never changed them in years."

"It's been years." He slips back the cowl of his concealing hood.

And still, her hair is dark, almost lustrous purple. He can run his fingers through them; he will not find a single grey hair. His hair is growing lighter, with strands of grey. Her sharp eyes will have seen them, these grey threads. He has paid for them with blood and care, and an Order he is bound to build again from the ashes…and woven with skeins of Templar schemes and the secrets the Apple whispers to him, secrets of a world before this…and a world that is yet-to-be.

Fingers trace his jaw lightly. "You're getting older."

"So I am," Altaïr responds. He likes to think age has made him wise. But the Apple whispers…and sometimes, he wonders if age has made him weak. There was a time when six men such as these should not have wounded him. He is slower now, that left leg less willing to respond to his commands.

She still possesses a young, strident sort of beauty. If they spar now…he laughs. She is faster, swifter, more certain. Experience can only count for so much, and no doubt she is older than him. Even though he has grown up in a more savage school, he is slowly losing his edge. "And what brings you here?"

She laughs, hands planted on her hips and asks, "Are you sure this is the best place for such talk, Altaïr?"

"Agreed," he says, taking her point. He kneels down and fumbles in de Gautier's clothing. Sure enough, in a few moments, his fumbling fingers discover the cool, hard surface of the orb. The moment his fingers come into contact with it, the Fourth Apple glows lightly, mysterious surface etchings coming to life at his touch, glowing faint-cracked-silver.

He withdraws it from de Gautier's clothing. It is a thing of dangerous beauty, as most things beautiful are. Unlike the Apple he took from Al Mualim, the polished gleam is the inky black of the sky on a moonless night, run through with star-silver cracks where the markings of…those who came before activate at his touch.

Shihoin stares at it, transfixed. "What is it?" she breathes.

Reflected, he sees the amber-brightness of her eyes, a city aflame. A man in white robes hangs from the white walls, blood dripping from his corpse. Blood and more fire. White liquid gushing into screaming throats, eyes, noses…he sees monsters, their bodies skewed and distorted, twisting into reflections of men. He watches children die, men falling from the sky…

Until the Apple speaks to him, of knowledge. Of promises. It can feel the age creeping in his bones, like a cancer. It can cure it, restore the suppleness of youth to his limbs. It can make him more than he is…if…if…

"A dangerous object," Altaïr says. He has come prepared. Roughly, he stuffs it into a shapeless leather pouch he has prepared for just such an object. The Fourth Apple slips into the pouch, and at once, the gentle illumination cuts off. He loops the leather thongs. One. Twice. Thrice for luck, Malik would say laughing, even though they know it's more for safety. One can never be too paranoid when the Artefacts are concerned.

Shihoin glances up at him, clearly discomfited. "Yes."

"It may yet teach us. Or it may lead us to ruin."

In the reflections on the fluid, polished surface of the Apple, he sees a future yet-to-be, a future that has yet to come. He will give her the Apple, in a time further from this when his hood is pulled up to conceal his hair entirely given to grey.

"This... piece of silver cast out Adam and Eve. It turned staves into snakes. Parted and closed the Red Sea. Eris used it to start the Trojan War; and with it, a poor carpenter turned water into wine." The ghost of Al Mualim whispers, from across the intervening years. This polished black Apple will do far worse. Eris will return the Apple to heaven…and then war will begin.

He will ask her to take it away, one day. He almost thinks he knows why.

The siren song of the Apple…new life, immortality…it will be a burden too hard for a man to bear alone, when he is struck down by the weight of the years.

But, he thinks grimly as he keeps away the Apple and they leave, not today. He breathes in her scent: sandalwood and warm spice. There was a time before he met Maria when…

There is no point thinking about it now.

He has seen them since he was a little boy, before he learned that others did not share his gift for seeing things. He is sixteen when he first meets Shihoin, old enough to receive his first mission, old enough to finally receive his hidden blade, and the severing of his ring finger.

He makes his first kill at sixteen. He sees her when she stamps the pommel of her sword on the forehead of the slain man, as he watches the man dissolve in a flurry of light-particles. There is sadness in her golden eyes, and he asks her why.

They spar the next day. She humiliates him repeatedly, throwing him to the dust.

They spar after he has killed Al Mualim. He is older, and he has learned wisdom. He has fought more and harder battles in the dust of Acre, and this time, he wins.

His prize is a kiss on the cheek. A brief fragrance of sandalwood and warm spice.

He introduces her to the baths at Masyaf, a small corner of paradise as cool water sinks into his weary muscles, and soothes his aches. He dips his head under to wash the dust from his head. This amount of water is a luxury, but Shihoin laughs and splashes in the water as if she's used to it, and tells him just a little about where she comes from.

He can't imagine somewhere like where the Templars must have come from: so much rain that they must surely be drowning in water regularly. "There are no deserts," she says, almost wistfully. "And we've never had this sort of baths."

His kisses taste of sand and dust and the desert sun, she tells him.

She tastes of water and sweet rain in July and Acre dates.

By the time they meet again, he is thirty-four, and Grand Master of the Assassin Order, and he loves Maria. He is at peace in a way he has never been, even as the arrogant Master Assassin Altaïr before Kadar's death in Solomon's Temple. He is at peace now with who he is and what he must do.

He is an Assassin. That is answer enough.

He sees them since he is old enough to remember.

It takes him seven months, a split lip, a broken nose, and several black eyes to learn that Federico truly cannot. It takes him another year to learn that Father can't either. He watches the dead wander through stalls and carts and stone walls without stirring so much as a mote of dust on the street, chains hanging limp from their chests.

In time, their gaze grows blank, more distant, as if they are becoming shades of men. Their chains grow shorter.

He never sees what happens after their chains vanish. Even the dead do not stay. Perhaps they fade away eventually. It is a lonely existence, and it takes Ezio only three months to learn he should not talk to them, especially when others are around.

It takes Vieri a year and plenty of broken bones and ruined knuckles to learn to forget that Ezio Auditore da Firenze ever spoke to things that weren't there.

Over the sum of the years, he is sixteen when he sees the black-robed figures for the first time. A boy, with pale-white hair and sharp green eyes, as biting as the winter frost, carrying a sword almost as long as he is tall. There are less of these spirits on the rooftops of Firenze, or so Ezio has learned. By now, he moves swiftly across the rooftops, graceful and perfectly balanced. It is a combination of natural skill and practice. If the roof archers see him, they shake their heads but let him pass. Giovanni Auditore's boy is well-known for his antics, by now, and Firenze has at heart a certain tolerance for young mischief and troublemakers.

He sees the slip of a boy perched just as comfortably on the cathedral steeple as he is. "Eh!" he calls out. "A bit young for such things, don't you think?"

He freezes when the boy shoots him a patient stare; coiled green ice and grace and something far older than Ezio can speak of. He slips unconsciously into the sight, watches the boy washed in blues-reds until he cannot tell which threads are more numerous, more prominent. Perhaps that in itself says what he should know.

"I'm older than you," the boy says, and leaps from the roof with startling grace and alacrity. Ezio's heart almost stops.

"Hey!" he calls out. "You'll kill—" He remembers vividly the bones he's broken falling off rooftops, and the steeple of a church is far too high—

He peers over the edge, into space. The open air does not frighten him. Sometimes, he feels most at home among heights, glancing down, watching crowds. To his sight, it glows faint azure-scarlet with the strange boy's passage. He catches a flicker of movement; black robes and white hair, threading through a crowd. The crowd opens before him, even as eyes glide, unseeing from the boy's form.

Ezio swears aloud in astonishment, and before he can allow himself to think, he gets to his feet and performs the same, fluid leap.

The air seems to hang, suspended, for a single perfect instant.

And then Ezio plummets downwards, knifing through the air as a single arrow, wind whistling in his ears. He opens his mouth to laugh, grinning. He is falling. He is alive. He hits the cart of rushes at an angle, rolls instinctively to take the impact, and comes up bruised, battered, but most definitely alive, the taste of exhilaration sweet on his tongue.

"You idiot," someone snaps, and hauls him upright as he staggers free of the cart and collapses to the ground. He finds himself staring down into very angry eyes, winter ice cracking open to reveal the pale-green depths of the lake. Unfathomable. And very furious. "How the hell didn't it occur to you that you could wind up killing yourself?"

Ezio blinks. "It worked, did it?" he says, still grinning from ear to ear.

A year later, he is performing such death-defying leaps of faith with startling regularity. He learns how to tuck himself so his fall is cushioned, so he doesn't break limbs or bones. It doesn't occur to him that this is unusual.

He is seventeen when his father and his brothers die. He is in the crowd then, a small figure in a set of white-and-scarlet robes, with a sword he barely knows how to use, and a stomach full of boiling fury, anguish, and denial.

The first sword-blow knocks his weapon from his hand, the second strike from one of the guards scrapes across his ribs and then he starts running, faster than he has in his life. Treason. If they catch him, they will kill him. No question. By the time he gains the rooftops, they are scrambling after him. If he is surefooted and faster, they have an advantage: he can't seem to lose them. He is not well-rested. He has spent a night wandering around Firenze, for fear of getting caught.

The knife takes him through the calf, and he bites out a startled yelp. It burns like fire to a boy who has never truly taken such wounds before. In any case, it is a knife well cast. He staggers, tumbles off the roof, and finds himself plummeting towards the water of the river.

A shock of cold courses through him as water explodes. He can vaguely hear the loud splash, then everything becomes muffled as the water swallows him, engulfs him.

Tries to crush him.

He kicks out with his legs, or at least tries to. His calf threatens to give out on him.

Ezio is a strong swimmer, a good swimmer. But the unfamiliar robes tangle about his legs and the wound weeps fire as he kicks out. He can hear the distant shouts of the guards, and he swears. He is not going to die now. Not with Mother and Claudia still alive.

The water is a leaden weight, pressing against him. It will smother him.

Not like this.

Hands wrench him from the water. Ezio blinks, sucking air into starved lungs, and stares into a pair of sharp green eyes. The boy is standing in the river, which only comes up to his waist. What? A sensible part of Ezio's brain thinks, because it can't be if he's half-drowned.

The water has gone perfectly still, almost—

Almost like a river in the winter—

The boy starts walking, not relinquishing his hold on the lapels of Ezio's robes, and the water parts around him, swirls around in their passing. Ezio is dragged up to the water's edge. "Man," a familiar voice said, "You freakin' got yourself busted up good this time, Auditore."

"Shut up," Ezio gasps. The cold air hits him like a slap in the face. "My family. My father, my brothers—"

There is a flicker of sympathy in frost-green eyes. "I sent them on."

"All of them?"

His hand clamps tightly on Ezio's shoulder. "All of them."

"They're all dead." Ezio echoes. He is surprised that he still has room for anger. A deep, growing fury that clouds his vision with red smoke and thunders in his head. "Uberto lied."

"Uberto. The magistrate."

"Yes," Ezio says. It is a growl, deep in his throat. He finds his hands can clench into fists; the mechanism in the strange gauntlet creaks. Broken. Perhaps it can be fixed.

"You're going to fight, huh." The boy sits himself against the bank, legs tucked up against his chest. Ezio wonders briefly if the sword ever pokes into his back, the way he carries it like that. Long, curving, nothing like any of the blades Ezio has seen before.

Ezio feels the ache scraping across his ribs and thinks about it. He's furious enough to kill Uberto with his bare hands. He'll never get past guards with nothing but his fists. But the anger alone decides him. "Yes," he says curtly. The decision, made several instants in time before he was even aware of it—it calms him. Priorities settle; Claudia. Mother. Where has Annetta taken them? He remembers where they're supposed to meet.

The bodies. He'll have to retrieve them, give them a good burial. Briefly, he thinks of Cristina. It will end. The Auditores are traitors now. A brief glimpse of the future, in the waters of the river and the only thing he can see is blood, more blood, and a water-crossing. They'll have to leave Firenze. Sooner or later. A long time spent in hiding.

And blood cries out for vengeance.

"There are better reasons to kill," the boy states.

Ezio stares at the blood staining the strange white robes that were in his father's chest. "No," he says flatly. "There aren't."

The night is alive with the crack of fireworks, the soft fluting of music, the light-spirited strains of stringed instruments, laughter…

Carnevale has come to Venezia.

The hooded white figure slips through the crowd with the ease of long practice. Carnevale is the time of masks and costumes, a time of fun. He almost—almost—smiles beneath the elegant domino mask.

Cristina.

He pauses by the edge of the canal. Harlequins play pipes, juggle balls, breathe fire out through hoops to the cheering of children. A merry dance is going on in the square, wooden torches blazing on the brackets. Later, there will be mulled wine.

A whirl of skirts, of laughter.

This is the first time he has returned to Venezia, since Roma. Since taking the helm of the Order, since he ran from Firenze to Monteriggioni, and then to Forli, Venezia…back to Firenze…

He is not the young Assassin who came to Venezia with a single list, and a single goal. A memory of a single afternoon, three bodies stark against the blue sky, dangling limp from the wooden frames…betrayal, Uberto…the memory was a wound before, the splinter that drove him through name after name, assassination after assassination. Now, time has leeched most of the hurt, turned the rest into stiff scars.

A flash of black through the crowd, a glimpse of white that is…startlingly familiar. Ezio narrows his eyes. By now, it is second nature to use his vision to see the shifting patterns of movement in the crowd, to glimpse foes and hidden allies and targets.

The movement is like a stone cast into a pond. The crowd spreads out in ripples around the figure, avoiding what their eyes cannot see but some other sense tells them is there.

It is a combination of instinct and experience that tells him when the figure halts behind him. "Come for Carnevale?" Ezio asks, lightly. He slips the domino mask off. No one is looking, and as he watches the distant flares of fireworks from across the open water, he suddenly has a desire to feel the night breeze against his face.

"Auditore." A brief greeting. The voice, the speaker; little has changed. The look in those sea-green eyes is wearier, far more ragged. Over the loose black robes, he wears a sleeveless white coat, now. Ezio has a loose idea of what that is supposed to signify.

Being the Mentore…it has changed the way he sees. There was a weariness to the set of Niccolò's shoulders…a straightness to his back. Responsibility leaves its mark, and these and so many other little signs are reflected in the boy's movements, the brightness of his eyes, the sharpness of his gestures.

His question is ignored. He has expected that.

Another firework goes off in the sky with a loud crack, bright green sparks blossoming in the shape of a brief star-flower before it begins to fade. The evening is still young. They will probably go on for a time.

"Perhaps you were right," Ezio says, at last. He finds himself in a nostalgic mood tonight. It is a conversation they've never really finished, over the years. Perhaps he should not have come, not here during Carnevale.

It stirs too many buried memories.

A long exhale. "About?"

"Killing. There are better reasons to do so."

He knows that now. There are reasons he did not slay Rodrigo Borgia that day. Foolish reasons. Sentimental, Niccolò would have said. But necessary reasons.

Killing you won't bring my family back.

We are Assassins.

Viridian eyes consider. "Perhaps. You killed him, didn't you?"

"For the wrong reasons." The anger, even the raw aching desperate sense of betrayal like an open wound is old now, long past. Time and responsibility have forced him to distance himself. This is the burden and the duty of il Mentore. The Master Assassin.

"Tch. Some people need killing."

"So long as we do not become that which we kill." A summer's day so many summers ago. Mario's voice, sharper than any shout could possibly hope to be, the scarred eye livid white. You are not Vieri. Do not become him.

Hitsugaya folds his arms across his chest. A gesture that carries surprising gravitas. Surprising, Ezio thinks. He is always full of surprises.

"…Yes."

He pads over, cat-quiet and graceful, to stand next to Ezio. Ezio's shoulder still aches from a bullet wound he will never truly recover from. It aches especially in the faint lingering chill. Another of the fireworks burst into a shower of blue sparks, in the open sky. Years ago, on this night, he shot a Templar Doge on this night, with the loud crack of the fireworks to conceal a single gunshot.

"What brings you here?" Ezio asks, again.

Slight twitch of his mouth, describing a languid smirk. "Fireworks," Hitsugaya says, blandly. "They're beautiful, aren't they?"

Ezio chuckles. "Yes," he says. "They are. The Doge has a new artificer. Not as talented as Leonardo, but few are. He's trying to make fireworks in the shape of dragons, great cats…"

"Dragons." A perfectly flat tone of voice, an arched eyebrow that says I'd like to see them try. The air almost vibrates with faint amusement.

Ezio shrugs. "I never said he succeeded."

"Evidently," Hitsugaya murmurs. Most of the fireworks explode outwards in spherical flaming shapes in the sky, in all sorts of colours. There is one that bursts out with vague, undefined wings like an eagle—one of Leonardo's, Ezio recognises.

He remembers gliding on the night breeze, following the spiralling patterns of night-fires. Later, Leonardo made fireworks in the shape of eagles and men-on-flying-machines, sent them up into the night, distracting many of the defenders.

"Auditore." Concern. You're not this distracted.

Ezio shakes himself loose of the memories, like shedding water. They are strangely heavy, here and now. "I am well," he says. As well as he can be. "I was just…remembering things."

Hitsugaya closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they are dark, like the deep reaches of the ocean. And they are just as ancient.

"I know."

They watch the last of the dying fires in complete silence. It is momentary, this incandescence. It flares and then it fades. Carpe diem. Leonardo has told him of a story of a Persian king who asked for a ring that would make him happy when he was sad, and sad when he was happy. It was a simple silver ring, which said: this too, shall pass.

"I leave for Masyaf in a week," Ezio says. He has not made the decision until he has said it aloud. Until he has watched the last of the light die. The darkness always comes, near the end. It always comes in swiftly at the end.

"Masyaf." The boy frowns. "I don't recognise the place."

Ezio smiles grimly. "You shouldn't. Masyaf fortress…the old home of the Syrian Assassins. The birthplace of the Order itself." He pauses. "Some things…I must finish. I will have to finish what Altaïr has begun." And this is the difficult decision. Now he feels a little less lost, a little less like a bird flapping desperately for a tiny gust of wind. He is no longer falling; if he is, it is because he wills it.

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. There is no more enemy for him to combat. His research turns up nothing but questions, and everything points to Altaïr.

If he is growing older and wearier, then he must do this one thing before it all ends.

"Altaïr. The…Grand Master of the Assassins."

Narrowed eyes. "You know that but you don't know Masyaf?"

Grimace. "My predecessor's notes were well-encrypted. I've hardly begun decoding them." He hesitates, and then goes on. "He speaks of Altaïr. I do not know how he knew of him."

"So he could see you," Ezio says, thoughtfully. And yet this is not common among the Assassins, or surely Father or Federico would have spoken of this before.

Use your talent.

"So it would seem." Hitsugaya's voice is a study in neutrality.

The last firework bursts into vivid life. Ezio finds his breath catching in his throat as a flaming lizard stretches its wings, and then a stream of swirling fire bursts from its open jaws. He hears distant cheers and cries of wonder before the dragon fades into a shower of falling sparks, and then the night claims it all.

"Two fireworks," Hitsugaya says, quietly. "Not one." His voice is just as hushed. "The second forms the flames." He pauses and adds archly, "Not that dragons all look like that."

"Oh?"

The water shifts, stretches and coils. It takes form, strangely solid and translucent, and only the visible puff of breath tells Ezio what is happening. The water is freezing, still drifting. A small dragon slowly forms over the water. Like vapour, clear like frosted ice. Each detail is brought through in painstaking clarity. This dragon is more like a serpent, without wings, but moves with a sinuous sort of grace. Vapour condenses where it breathes, spreading out over the water as a light mist.

"Some dragons look more like serpents," Hitsugaya says, with a quiet confidence. He stretches out his hand—almost touches the dragon—before it dissolves in the breeze, turning into pale vapour, indistinct forms.

"Va bene." Mist crawls, coiling around his limbs. For a moment, they both look nothing so much as living as spirits of mist and chilled air. For a moment, Ezio imagines he sees an eagle soaring in the vapour, insubstantial wings flared.

Two girls, one with her hair tied back in a neat bun, her hands running scarlet with droplets of blood. Behind her, a tall figure in billowing sleeves looms, a sword protruding tip-first from her chest. The other…taller, slender and hooded. A strangely-designed sword is sheathed at her back, scarlet-wrapped hilt showing. Ezio recognises the strapped hidden blade. Assassin.

Someone has her by the wrist, and when the figure turns—

It is him. He recognises the scar on the lip where Vieri flung the rock that day so long ago, but there are many weary lines on his face and his hair has gone entirely to a ragged grey. And he looks so desperately furious and haggard at once that Ezio cannot but wonder if this is his future…

Are you my future?

When he reaches out, the figures melt away. Threads of mist slip out of his fingers and then dissipate entirely. A hand rests lightly on his arm, just above the carved design of the hidden blade. "Auditore. There is nothing there."

"And how do you know this?"

"I do not."

The Apple hums, in the rough leather pouch made to fit snugly over the damned device. I have seen the future… Altaïr says calmly. And it is written in blood.

Not Altaïr. A ghost. A memory of the Apple. Tricks and illusions. A ghost to which something is owed, if only by the common nature of the burden they share.

"I will not let it happen, Auditore," he hisses, harshly. His hand closes tightly around Ezio's arm. The lingering chill of his fingers is prominent. "Do you understand?"

He does.

He does not know what the boy saw, or if they've seen the same thing…or if it is a trick of the light, a trick of the Apple that he is carrying with him before he will convey it to its place of concealment in Roma.

A snap of his arm breaks the grip, jerks it free without having to flick the hidden blade from concealment the way he would have against an opponent. "It will not," Ezio agrees, with quiet steel. The almost-silent hiss of the hidden blade as it slips free of the bracer.

Blood drips down between the fingers of the ghost-figure.

He says, for want of a better thought, "Antonio."

Hitsugaya blinks.

"Antonio. Leader of the Thieves Guild in Venezia," Ezio says. A slight smile, at the memory of coffee. "And a man of means." He turns his gaze back towards the svelte figure in black robes and a white sleeveless over-robe. "Gelato."

Another blink. His voice is low and rough. "And this gelato is…?"

"Ruinously expensive," Ezio says. "I've never had gelato back in Firenze. The ice, you see. They must import the snow from the mountains. Have it sent down by boat. But I am told by Antonio that a man has not lived until he has tasted gelato."

A snort, part laughter, part amusement gleaming in those Venetian-teal eyes. "You haven't lived, then."

"Neither have you."

A quick flash of sadness; a fleeting passage of light as the world proceeded to the dark of inevitable winter. "Perhaps."

A gondola glides past. Two lovers, Ezio recognises, sitting out there rather than under the felze. He looks up at the sky. The full moon rides high in the sky. It can mean all sorts of things. Tonight being Carnevale, it is a good night for a young man to take his lady.

Some of these thoughts remind him of a stolen kiss in an alley, a forged letter. Suddenly, he must breathe past the moment of…pain too recent to yet diminish. Or perhaps the weight of these things grows strongest in the dark.

"Well," he says. "Perhaps we should live a little, then. Knowing Antonio, he'll appreciate a few more victims…"

Amused glint. "That bad, huh?" Hitsugaya stretches languidly. The last hints of silver-white vapour trail through his pale hair, almost like fingers, like a touch. "Well, when you put it that way…"

"Va bene," Ezio says. If the night is quiet enough, perhaps he can hear his own heart beating. Can wonder how many days he has left.

"I knew I would not have enough time to do everything. Now I worry I do not have enough time to do anything."

The years come and go and take his strength with them. One day, he looks into the mirror and the figure from the mists on that Carnevale night stares back at him. He counts the unsteady beats of his heart in his chest. He no longer carries any weapons other than a cane-sword and his hidden blades. One night, he tried to leap between two buildings, only to feel his breath catch in his throat and constricting bands wrapping tight around his chest.

He no longer practices so much free-running.

His body is slow to respond now; frustratingly slow. Next to memories of ease and freedom, they are nothing. He has seen old men confined to beds and has determined such an end is not for him. But still, it grates on him. He works in the fields, where the sun bakes his skin and where he fights for breath at times, coughing.

There is a fire in him. When he was younger, it was an inferno, and some days, he fought with the men in Monteriggioni, or it would have burned him up from the inside with the need to fight. Leonardo shuts himself up in his workshop. Ezio runs. He fights. They face their demons in different ways. He remembers how hot and heavy his hands felt when he thrust the killing stroke through Francesco de' Pazzi. On that Carnevale night in Venezia when he felt lost in the fire within that threatened to burn the last of him to ashes.

Anger. Purpose. Duty.

Now, inside, there is nothing but embers.

The longest nights are in winter, Ezio thinks. It is light for most of the year, but then the winter comes, bringing the darkness with it. The darkness comes only near the end, but it comes all at once, and he can see the darkness from the corner of his eyes, feel it in the unsteadiness of his hands, count it in the trembling beats of his heart. He feels impending winter in his bones.

Sometimes he jumps at shadows. Not today. He dozes lightly in the Florentine sun, sitting on a stone bench. Flavia can…

"Auditore."

A cool, rough voice rouses him, just as surely as a gentle touch. And indeed, a hand is resting on his shoulder. Another sign of his old age. His senses grow dull. He is an old man, now. He has fought all his life…he has no idea how to run when he can no longer run. When his body is failing him now, this close to the end. His heart almost shudders, skipping a beat, and then continues. You are going to die soon, old man, he tells himself roughly, forcing himself to breathe, hand pressed lightly to his chest.

He glances to the side, at the figure sitting next to him. "You haven't changed," he says. Of course he hasn't. The eyes are wearier still, the slump of his shoulders different, but little is different. His eyes are still the piercing shade of sea-green. His hair is still pale-white. He is still as slight and young as ever.

Perhaps he understands the words in Altaïr's journal about the Reapers now. For this is what they are named.

"You're older." A flicker of sadness in Hitsugaya's eyes. Ezio wonders if the boy can hear the rhythm of his heartbeats, the occasional falter. He removes his hand from his chest once his breathing steadies.

"Yes. I am." His voice comes out steady. Matter-of-fact. He has—almost—made his peace with this. There are many regrets, old man's regrets. Many moments he would change. But he cannot but look at the sum of all the moments that have brought him here, at Sofia, at their children, and to say: Yes. I am content.

The black robes and white overcoat are gone now. There is no more sword. This time, he is wearing a simple set of robes the colour of the sky in autumn. But Ezio has long set aside his Assassin's robes for something far simpler. They are both not exactly who they used to be.

The people on the street afford them some glances. Some part of Ezio has noted that, and brings it to his attention now. Again, sloppy. "They see you." He is not slipping instinctively into his sight either.

"Yes."

They sit there, in the warm golden sunlight, both of them comfortably silent. Ezio breathes in his scent: the depths of the ocean, cool and unstirred; a light winter breeze, the scent of freshly fallen snow…and a hint of mint. This is the first time he's seemed so alive to Ezio's senses. His fingers are lightly cool, but still warm. Still alive.

"How?" Ezio asks.

Faint smirk. "We do have our tricks," Hitsugaya says vaguely. "For when we need to be…here."

Ezio deliberately closes his eyes and dreams of a younger world. There are children running and playing in the fields outside the Villa Auditore, and the woman is indistinct. Sometimes she looks like Cristina, dark hair and beautiful eyes…and other times she is his Sofia, who saved him long before he knew he was searching not for answers but for salvation…

"This is the end, isn't it?" he says.

Hitsugaya hesitates. He says, "I don't know."

Ezio thinks he would be able to tell a lie if he can hear it. He doesn't know. Cool fingers rest lightly on his chest then. "It's not good," Hitsugaya says softly. "When, I don't know."

As much as any man can hope to know the day or manner of his passing, then.

Is today the day? He asks his heart silently. There is no reply. Ezio does not expect one. He does not ask the Reaper why he comes either. He does not expect a clear answer either. In his experience, he has learned that answers do not come easily. More often than not, they must be earned, won.

"I know," Ezio says. Soon, his heart murmurs.

Soon.

"You will not wander in the darkness alone." The murmur is Hitsugaya's. The look in his eyes is distant, but full of glacial determination. "I swear it."

Though the darkness takes you, you will not wander alone.

Requiescat in pace.

It is not the darkness that comes at the end. It is a severing of chains, a freedom he has not felt, since he was a boy running through the streets of Firenze, climbing the rooftops, watching the eagles soar in the clear blue skies.

It is silver-white, green-winter-ice, white robes flapping in the breeze, tied by a teal-green sash…

Sofia's smile…Flavia's laugh…Marcello tumbling, trying to learn to break his fall…Cristina…Ezio…I wish we had a second chance…

He is fading, melting away into an eternity of light.

When I was a young man, I had liberty, but I did not see it. I had time, but I did not know it. And I had love, but I did not feel it.

I cannot seem to leave my past behind me. And I know that at any moment, someone could come for me or my family. I know the taste of regrets, the weight of memories that I wish I could change. I hold all these moments in the palm of my hand, but no matter how hard I try, I can never change the past.

But I am Ezio Auditore da Firenze. I have a wife, whom I love, and who loves me. I have a daughter, and a son. I am blessed.

I am Ezio Auditore da Firenze. And I am an Assassin.

And I am not alone.