A/N: So this can read as Desmond/Altair and Ezio/Altair- or not. Depends on how you squint and what team you're cheering for I guess. Review appreciated (when aren't they?)

Twice

You know when you see a photograph of someone you know but it's from years before you knew them? It's like they're not quite… finished. They're not done yet.

- Dr River Song (Doctor Who Season 5, Forest of the Dead)

How strange is it to see a man once in his youth and then again, many years later, when he is heavy with the sagacity and weariness of years? Were we to pull one forward or push the other back that they might stand side by side, we might well think them two entirely different people.

And so it was with Altair. The man I knew in memory was young and almost caricature-like in his accompanying brashness. I respected him- but for his physical courage and skill. And for his ability to stand unswervingly sure of what had to be done. Though perhaps such certainty was more due to the folly of youth than any deeper virtue. Certainly he had lost much of that faith in himself in the writings of his maturity. Or perhaps he was merely more forthcoming on paper than through speech and deed.

I never really met Altair that second time. But I came to know the man-as much as it is possible in such things- some two hundred years later. (Or three weeks later, depending on how you look at it.) Through the eyes of another man- this one, too, full of daring and spirit. Though perhaps he was less disciplined and more in love with life than his predecessor had been.

Ezio (and I) met Altair the old, the leader, the wise, through his writings. And I was surprised at the depth and clarity in those words. Too used to the taciturn killer who strode silently through dusty markets and across moonlit rooftops alike. It was almost impossible to believe that somehow he had found the words to not only make sense of what had happened before him but to also lead others to the path he walked.

If I was shocked, Ezio was only awestruck. He had never met the younger version of his ancestor. Never watched him lead one friend to injury and an admirer to death through arrogance and haste. I would watch him, at time when the Animus could not pinpoint memories Lucy or Shaun deemed relevant. These were quiet memories. Memories of long minutes, sometimes hours, spent before the codex wall or in the hidden chamber at one particular statue's feet. Memories of stillness, with Ezio standing, rarely sitting, before the traces left him by a man he knew and could recognize in the street but never meet.

And as I watched, a silent observer, less than a ghostly third party, I never tried to read the expression on the young Italian's face.

But maybe that's because I already know what it is.

And I'm not sure which of us, one with the letters, armor and a statue; and the other with a genetic memory made real through the marvels of modern science, is the more to be pitied.