Chapter Text
Isaiah burned, instead of the world. He had always hoped that after the last beat of his heart, his soul would be sent to the afterlife. It would’ve been a place filled with sunshine, laughter and happiness. He would’ve had the chance to meet his favorite people… Altair, Ezio, Connor, and tell them everything was worth it in the end. But, he didn’t get that. What a shocker.
He woke up with a gasp, eyes shot open, his right arm spasmed with the crushing pain from the burn. Guess now he could tick off ‘burned alive by a futuristic machine but not really’ off his bucket list. Gritting his teeth hard enough to make his jaw ache, he lifted his arm to assess the damage, only to see a perfectly good arm…
“What the hell,” Isaiah murmured, his eyes traced his arm all the way to the shoulder, the hoodie sleeve had been completely burned off, leaving charred strands of threads. He was still wearing the same outfit when he touched The Eye: white hoodie, the black shirt and his jeans. Pushing himself up to stand on unsteady feet, he curled his fingers into fists a couple of times to test his strength. A bit shaky and weak…just like the feeling he got after logging out of the Animus.
He closed his eyes and placed a hand on his rapidly beating heart, big breath in, one, two, three, four, big breath out, one, two, three, four, in, out. He worked through the breathing exercise Mom taught him when he had been five and just woken up from a nightmare. He still remembered the warmth of her hands on his cheeks and the mint flavored mouthwash as she tenderly uttered the steps. One, two, three, four, in, out.
Calmed, Isaiah opened his eyes again and was met with…nothing. He was in this white space with no boarders. It went on and on and on, but there was nothing to be seen. Just empty white space. He frowned, turning his head to see if there was something he was missing.
“Where am I?” His question was unanswered.
Numbly, he put his hand on top of his chest again to feel the thump of his heart. He touched his face…yeah, one mouth, one nose, and two eyes. His mop of curly coal-black hair was still there. He was alive…but how? Why?
He did what he was supposed to do. The choice Minerva and Juno proposed had never really been a choice for him. It was always going to be Isaiah’s fate to die. To sacrifice his life for the continuation of humanity, and to honor the legacy of his three ancestors.
“Minerva! Juno!” He beckoned their names, for the first time hoping they would glitch into existence and start demanding Isaiah find another artifact…but there was nothing. It was as if his voice was sucked into the empty space and snuffed out completely.
“Hey!” He yelled; this time louder. The sound didn’t echo.
“Rebecca! Shaun!” He was panicking. There was a huge weight crushing his chest and he couldn’t breathe in properly. Huffing and puffing, he screamed his friends’ names again. But he only heard ringing inside his ears. A stray thought slipped into his fuzzy mind, there has to be something! He put an unsteady step forward, and another, and another…and soon enough, he was running full speed like the red coats were after him. Stumbling and almost face-planting a few times like a new born fawn because of his still shaky legs, he hollered their names until his voice was hoarse from the abuse. Choking on his own breath, he was forced to slow down his pace and cough, aggravating the pain in his throat. With black spots dancing in his vision, he felt like he was treading water, hardly any resistance against the soles of his trainers. He stopped his jogging abruptly, and it dawned on him that all that running was for nothing. He might as well have not moved at all since why would it have mattered in this endless space of nothingness.
“Dad…are you there…?” Exhausted, he fell to his knees in his desperation. He took in a big breath to stifle the warmth suddenly appearing underneath his eyes, only to choke once again and let out an ugly sob. His hands flied to cover his mouth and nose, a pathetic high-pitched squeak squeezed out, resembling an injured animal’s wail when captured in a snare-trap. Isaiah curled in on himself, his whole body shaking from holding in the pain and hysteria. His mind in disarray, his stomach hurt from the running and breath-holding, he let hot tears stream down his face freely.
“No…no, this isn’t real.” He swallowed audibly, wincing from the stinging in his throat.
“I did everything you asked! I died! So humanity can be spared!” He tilted his head up and snarled, as if up and up ‘the sky’ was Minerva and Juno staring down at him.
“What should I do?! Tell me!”
“Don’t leave me here, please…” His final plea was of course, met with silence.
Isaiah kneeled for a long time－at least he felt like it was long, there was no way of telling－head down, chin on top of his chest. He remembered Minerva’s warning when he told her he’d made up his mind: Then the consequences of this mistake are yours to live with and die with. Was this what she’d been hinting at? This…non-existence?
An eternity in hell probably would be preferable than this, Isaiah mused in his maddening empty mind.
He thought about the past months of being abducted, put in multiple gene-retracing reimagining machines, experiencing his ancestors’ feelings of loss, anger, love and forgiveness as if they’d been his own, and being told he was the savior of mankind, and the grand finale, accepting that he had been born to die this way. His life was full of pain, but there was also love and beauty: Altaïr’s unwavering faith and love for the creed and his family, Ezio’s growth from a vengeful teenager to a symbol of reason and discipline, and Connor hopefulness even in the darkest of times. He laid down on his back and closed his eyes, not even bothered to wipe the tear tracks on his face, and let these heart-breaking memories bleed over his mind. At least he still had this.
“What’s the latest reports from your stations?”
“We’ve intercepted a few Templar communications around the eastern watchtower. The notes they’ve left for each other seems to suggest they are rounding up the remaining manpower in the region to transfer to a different location.”
“Where?”
“My team is still investigating, Mentore.”
“Hmm. Take out the weaker groups first and see how they react. If anything major comes up, send word immediately, we will decide the next course of action then.”
“Understood, Mentore.”
Shooting up to his feet, Isaiah couldn’t stop himself from releasing a gasp of disbelief. He was standing in the study of his Italian ancestor, Ezio Auditore. An assassin stood beside him, legs parted to shoulder’s length and hands folded behind their back. Their voice sounded like it had been passed through an old radio, distant and muddled. Isaiah’s vision seemed to be filter through a smoke screen, everything lost a shade of color.
Huddled over the wooden desk, Ezio had his eyes trained on the map of Rome, observing the red marks he had made on the eastern part of the map to see if there were any clues connecting each of these scattered Templar groups’ locations.
Ezio sighed, “You did well, dismissed.” With a wave, he sent the assassin away and set down on his chair with a soft thump. Scratching his beard, he muttered to no one, “The fight is not yet over.”
Watching this scene silently, Isaiah walked to the front of Ezio’s desk to take a good look at him. Ezio still fashioned a tiny pony tail and his hair and beard had grayed a bit but not to the extent when he would be in Constantinople. His eyes were the only constant thing, still shining bright as ever in their warm bronze color with golden dust sparked within. When he was relaxed like this, the corners of his mouth tilted up slightly. Smiling came easy to him; Isaiah knew this better than anyone. He wore a gray vest with silver embroidery and a white shirt underneath. Ezio looked determined. He looked so handsome. Isaiah reached out, but his finger past through Ezio’s shoulder like the older man was merely a hologram. Or more fittingly, Isaiah was the ghost.
“Ezio,” Isaiah called out, but it felled on deaf ears. He licked his scarred lip in slight disappointment. He could almost pretend he was back in the Animus, just in third person perspective and muted to his ancestor’s thoughts and feelings.
However, he still hasn’t figured out a point to this.
It’s like this space or universe or what-have-you was mocking him. Dangling what he wanted most in front of him to let him give chase, only to never gift it to him.
He took one last look at Ezio and closed his eyes…if thinking of his ancestors made this space transform accordingly, could he…?
He could still smell the bloodshed in the air, the warm steel pommel a grounding token in his hand. Yet, when he stepped foot into Rome and see his people safe and sound, the relief swirled in his chest and washed away all his worries. He had defeated Cesare Borgia and shaken the Templar control over Italy. A ray of sunshine had finally passed through thick layers of dark clouds, and a new era signifying the comeback of the Assassins had dawned.
With a soft sigh, Isaiah opened his eyes and was once again knocked away by the sight before him. The familiar streets of Rome greeted him, bubbling with life, he saw women holding baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables, a group of young men jogging past him laughing amongst themselves－he thought he heard the name Esmeralda, possibly a beautiful maiden they were hoping to catch sight of－and a father holding his son on his shoulders while singing a nursery rhyme together. Even with muddled and dulled visual and audio, Isaiah couldn’t help but smile bitterly at the peaceful scene. He strolled mindlessly, just taking in everything the space could offer after what he thought had been hours of nothingness. Him, a ghost in 16th century Rome.
His body passed through anything he touched. Earlier, a postman raced down the street almost crashing into him until he side-stepped at the last moment, only to realize seconds later that there had been no need. He didn’t exist anyway.
Isaiah swallowed hard, after the white space, he’d thought he could be content with this: seeing, yet never involved. But, no…he’d always been a greedy person, always wanted more than he’d been worth. He longed to walk in the light and have the townsfolk greet him good mornings, longed for the thrill of free running across the rooftops, and more than anything, he wanted Ezio to just look at him and say…
The warmth underneath his eyes was here again, don’t cry, he thought.
He needed to hear Ezio say…maybe all this suffering had been worth it in the end.
Oh, words could not describe the want in his heart, to stand beside Ezio and become one of his. To serve, to fight together for a grand purpose out of his own volition. To have Ezio’s warm eyes gaze into his own and say that he mattered, not to the world, but to Ezio himself. He remembered the time he heard Ezio’s voice from the Apple, how he said his name, and how he lamented he had been merely a conduit to a message that eluded his understanding. But to Isaiah, Ezio was so much more than a prophet.
Sacrilegiously, he wanted to be more than just a name to Ezio too.
“That’s too much to ask for, isn’t it…” He laughed to himself humorlessly.
Beep －
“What the fuck?”
Beep －
Transcending in 59 seconds. Time remaining: 10 minutes.
“Huh? Wait! What does that mean? ‘Transcending?’ 10 minutes of what?”
Beep －
Transcending in 30 seconds. Time remaining: 10 minutes.
“Hey, answer me!”
Beep －
Transcending now. Time remaining: 9 minutes 59 seconds.
“Wait－”