Chapter Text
Ezio can hardly remember how he left the Vatican through his haze of rage. It was slow to come over him, too dumbfounded was he by the conversation with Minerva inside the vault, her failing to answer his questions while generating more, her dismissal of him as though he wasn't even there so she could instead speak to someone who literally was not there. But then the shock wore off and his reason crept back into the space it left behind, and by the time he cleared the gates of Rome, he had a word to describe the feeling. He feels used.
And so now, safely ensconced in the protective embrace of Monteriggioni, he sits on the fucking roof of Uncle Mario's fucking villa and glares at the Apple of Eden in his hand and considers winding up and throwing it over the ramparts. Perhaps it will land on a sharp rock and shatter into a thousand pieces. That would serve it right.
"You must be full of poison," he tells the Apple, watching how the sunset hits its burnished surface. "To destroy you would be to do the world a favour. You people—are you even people?—ruin entire lives and won't even have the decency to explain why. Why am I a messenger? Did my family have to die for this? That can't be true. Do I have to die for this?" He squints at it. "Would you even fucking tell me if I did? Probably not. Apparently my entire lot is to be trapped between Those Who Came Before and Those Who Come After, there to rot in the dark. Thank you for that. Bastards. I remain your humble fucking servant, apparently."
There is a pulse of light from the Apple and he almost drops it off the roof.
"You seem troubled, child," comes the voice of an old man from behind him.
Ezio cranes a look over his shoulder. A flickering image of an old man with a long beard stands near the open window from his attic room. He is wearing the same strange, flowing clothing as Minerva had. Another of Those. "You're very observant. Next you'll be noticing that I'm sitting high up."
The old man casts a look around, silent. He seems rather more… reactive… than Minerva did. "You seem to know what you're about. I trust you can handle the risks of gravity."
"What do you want? Is there another message for someone else that you forgot to relay the first time?"
The old man shakes his head. "I'm here to speak with you. All that probability claptrap is a bit beyond me, anyway. I'm a tinkerer. Well. I was."
"And what are you now?"
"Trapped by my own foolishness inside one of my inventions. Not that one," he clarifies when Ezio looks at the Apple. "But one that sat here on these lands for some years before it was moved away by your compatriots. I remember your uncle," he muses, squinting at Ezio like he's committing his face to memory. "How does he fare?"
"He's fine."
"How about his eye? Was that saved?"
Ezio blinks. "No. Were you there when he lost it?"
"After a fashion. Tried to convince him to use the Shroud to fix it, but he wasn't interested." The old man shrugs.
Not that this isn't fascinating, but Ezio isn't really in the mood for small talk this evening. "Did you need something, old man?"
The old man smooths his beard almost self-consciously. "Prometheus. I have other names, of course, but that one will do."
"Right. Of course. The same Prometheus who they say brought fire to mankind?"
"I've developed something of a reputation as a meddler, I suppose."
"Are there any gods who are actually real?"
"Real people, certainly, although not real as gods in the sense your species has grown to understand them, no." Prometheus looks him over. "You have unanswered questions, I believe you said."
He can't bring himself to believe he's going to get a straight answer, but the man asked. "Who is Desmond? And why are we connected, and why am I important? What was all this in service of?"
Prometheus nods slowly, as if in dawning understanding, and takes a weightless step closer to where Ezio sits, still holding up the Apple like it's going to contribute anything helpful to the conversation at any point. "You are important because you are connected to him. As for the rest, it's somewhat difficult to explain within the context you have."
"And so I sit here, as ignorant as before," Ezio concludes, completely unsurprised.
"Nonsense. You just need more context. And that, I can provide in abundance."
"What are you—" But before Ezio can finish asking what the fuck he thinks he's doing, Prometheus has leaned in and extended one bony finger to touch the surface of the Apple. The world turns white.
***
The pitched roof is now flat grass. The sunset is mid-afternoon. Ezio is sitting alone, holding the godforsaken Apple still, and wearing the half-laced doublet he'd climbed out to the roof in.
He can hear birds, and people chattering away, and more distantly, some strange-sounding music. All of it is overlaid on a dull roar he can't identify. It doesn't have the peaceful, uniform noise of rushing water. It waxes and wanes, it's peppered with squeaks and blares that cut off as suddenly as they start.
He gets up slowly. Young people in strange clothes are scattered all over the lawn, he can see now. There is the plume of a high-spraying fountain off to his left, and when he walks that way, he finds himself standing on the smoothest pavings he's ever seen. But this is a public space. This is a park of some kind. And beyond the trees all around them, he can see looming edifices, rows of shining windows stretching higher than he thought was possible against building walls even smoother than the bricks he's standing on.
He's seen buildings like these exactly once before, in images from Those Who Came Before.
That might also explain everyone's mode of dress. He is starting to draw attention for his own clothes, and he suspects it's not because his doublet is only half-laced.
He follows the circular pathway around the fountain and into one of the spokes branching off from it, past an arch that looks like Greek stonework newly built and into the cool embrace of the trees. He emerges on another cobbled circle ringed by tables, half of them populated by old men playing… chess, as far as he can tell.
He approaches a man in long sleeves, who is eighty if he's a day and is playing by himself, the facing chair empty. "Excuse me," he says, feeling awkward. "Can you, uh. I think I may be lost."
The old man blinks up at him, then looks him up and down. "You speak Italian like my grandpa," he says in a passable Florentine accent, mangling some of his grammar like a foreigner. Strange, Minerva and Prometheus spoke it perfectly.
And fucking rude of someone twice his age to say, but Ezio will let that go out of respect for the elderly. "My name is Ezio," he offers.
"Angelo," the old man replies. "Sit." He nods at the other chair. "My neck's starting to hurt looking up at you. Do you play?" he asks as Ezio obediently sits, already resetting all the pieces on his chessboard.
"I have played," he hedges. "I picked up the Valencian rules while I was in Spain in the '80s, but—" He cuts himself off when he remembers he's definitely travelled through time somehow.
"I don't know if there's any new rules," Angelo shrugs expansively, almost done resetting the board. "I just play chess. The '80s?" he asks then, arching an eyebrow. "What were you, nine?"
More like twenty-nine, but who's counting. He looks down at the board and sees he's been given white. Grandpa Angelo's offering him a handicap. He takes it without remorse.
"So what are you, an actor?" Angelo asks five moves into the game. "Quite a getup you got there."
"Yes," Ezio decides. "I'm an actor. And I'm supposed to be going to the, ah, theatre, for the play tonight, but I've gotten turned around."
"Well, where's the theatre?"
Fuck. "If you can just tell me where I am now, I'm sure I can… figure it out."
Angelo squints up at him like he's hit his head. "We're in the park," he says, gesturing at the trees and plants all around. "West corner." Ezio doesn't know what his face is doing at this point, but Angelo frowns and carries on slowly, "That's MacDougal," pointing a thumb back over his shoulder with that incomprehensible word, "and the cross street is West Fourth." He points off to Ezio's left. "Nothing, huh?" he asks after staring at Ezio for a long, torturous moment.
"I'm very lost," Ezio manages finally.
"What're you, new in town?"
"Yes. Oh, yes."
Angelo sighs and mutters something in a language Ezio doesn't understand. "Look. This is Washington Square Park, alright?"
All three words are incomprehensible. He's pretty sure it was three words, anyway.
Angelo cocks his head. "Do you not speak a word of English, young man? In this day and age? How in the hell are you getting work?"
Ezio shrugs. "My good looks and charm, I suppose."
Angelo snorts. "Better get cracking on the rest of it, then, you're not getting any younger. This place is called," he hesitates a second, like he has to think about it, "Washington Piazza. Okay?"
He repeats that first word back a few times until Angelo nods. "Good enough," he pronounces, then looks down at the board. "Check."
Ezio looks down and sees that his king-side horse is about to be sacrificed, and halfheartedly starts a salvage attempt on the game. Most of his attention is on trying to come up with a question to ask that won't sound insane. "How did you guess I was an actor?" he asks at last.
"Your clothes are ridiculous, that's how. You're dressed like one of those Shakespeare people."
"Who?"
Angelo just shakes his head. "Never mind. The education they're giving kids these days is terrible, I see. My son doesn't even speak a lick of Italian, I don't know why I'm surprised. You just went the other direction." He waves irritably at Ezio. "And you're bad at chess. Check."
Ezio moves his king out of danger. "How old is your son?"
"He's about your age. We had him in 1971."
Ezio's brain almost seizes at that. "So he's…" he licks his lips nervously and pitches his own age, "forty?"
"Forty-one." The look Angelo is giving him now is judging his math skills.
There is nothing wrong with Ezio's math skills, thank you very much. He trained as a banker. He knows now it's the year 2012. What he's going to do with that information, he has no earthly idea.
"Right." His voice sounds a little faint. "Sorry."
"Ezio," says Angelo, looking very serious now. "Are you a drogato?"
"A what?"
Angelo just shakes his head. Whatever… five hundred years in the future word he just used, that was the wrong answer.
Ezio knocks his king over. "I concede. I have to get going and… find the theatre. Thank you for your time, Angelo."
Angelo hums at him, lips twisted. "Get some help, young man."
"I will," he promises, and leaves the park.
Prometheus gave mankind fire, and mankind promptly burned himself with it. Ezio is starting to see the problem.
Especially once he emerges from the trees and understands where all the roaring and squeaking has been coming from.
Self-moving… armoured carriages? He can faintly see people behind the glass panels as they drift by where he stands beside a very tall lamppost. Leonardo would be beside himself if he saw this. Ezio wonders a little if he didn't see a glimpse of it from the Apple. These things could kill a man, easily, that's very clear.
After he's stood still for several minutes and watched the street in fascinated horror, ignoring the steady flow of people around him like he's a rock in a stream, he understands why they do not: these powerful carriages have come hand-in-hand with highly organized traffic control. There is still a little shouting between drivers of these machines, and those short blaring noises coming from them slamming a hand down in the middle of the steering mechanisms, and that's oddly soothing, but there are brightly coloured lights overhead telling everyone when to stop and start. A forbidding orange hand appears on a lower-down lamp facing Ezio's street corner when the carriages are roaring along the very smooth road before him, and when they're made to stop by the red lamp, a white-lit picture of a person walking lights up in front of him.
He gathers his wits and walks across the road the next time that lamp lights up at him.
Ezio is 513 years in the future, as if that will somehow answer any of his questions or give him that fucking 'context' Prometheus was carrying on about. He still has the Apple, tucked in its pouch hanging off his belt where it always is now. He left his coin purse behind in his room, not that it would do him much good now if he had it. He needs money.
He needs to figure out where people keep their money now, because he has a feeling they don't use coin purses.
A young man stops at a street cart just in front of him and starts gesturing, and as Ezio slows to watch, he reaches into the back pocket of the heavy blue trousers he's wearing (everyone is wearing them, at varying and sometimes unbelievably scandalous lengths) and pulls out a flat leather pouch. He flips it open with a practiced motion, pulls out two rectangles of paper, and exchanges them for a blue cup that's now wafting steam into the air. The pouch is stuffed back in his rear pocket without even looking, as he turns and walks away.
Well. Alright then.
In twenty minutes, Ezio has bumped three of those pouches and found a quiet alley to review their contents. They are all full of flat, smooth things that look like an extremely odd playing card. Some have portraits on them of the men he pickpocketed, some are just coloured and stamped with embossed letters and numbers. He passes over those in favour of the paper slips. They are all printed with more-or-less green ink, they are mostly crumpled beyond belief but still in one piece, and they have denominations printed on them along with the word 'dollar', which must be what they're called. He counts fifty-seven dollari in his take, which can't be bad for twenty minutes' efforts. There are also coins, which is a relief, although not many, so he guesses they aren't worth much.
He cleans out the money-pouch he likes the best, puts all his ill-gotten gains inside it, and throws everything else into a metal box that smells like garbage before leaving the alley and rejoining the crowds. At a loss, he loops back toward the park again, to give himself a focal point for more exploring.
He hasn't eaten since lunch, and that was 513 years ago, so finding something to eat sounds like a good idea. And to drink, because it's the height of summer and he's been considering taking off the doublet since he left the park. Clearly it wouldn't be scandalous enough to draw attention, in 2012, as most people are wandering the streets at least half-naked. He's sure he's seen less skin on display in most brothels than he has on this West Fourth road.
No matter where Ezio travels, a tavern is a tavern, and when he turns a corner away from the park, he sees that the same holds true in 2012 as well. He squints up at the sign above the door, concludes that it's a jumble of letters (presumably English), and walks inside.
The tavern is mostly empty, although the sun is still high outside and people may be working. The bartender is young, tan, and has black-looking hair in a close haircut. He looks up at Ezio's entry and smiles, greeting him incomprehensibly. He nods back, feeling awkward again, and slides onto a stool at the bar.
The bartender asks him a question, then looks expectant. Ezio sighs and makes an attempt. "I need dinner, and something to drink, please."
The bartender blinks, his head jerking back a little in surprise, then looks apologetic and gestures along with whatever his response is. Ezio is debating whether to resort to Spanish, his smattering of French, or possibly charades when a man in his thirties sitting off to the left looks up.
"You don't speak English?" he asks in the same slightly strange Italian that Angelo had spoken.
"No. Sorry." He finds himself relaxing into the more casual phrasing he keeps hearing, picturing in the back of his head the face his mother would be making to hear him.
"You said you wanted something to eat?"
"Yes. And, ah, water, maybe. It's very hot today."
"Well, you're not dressed for it." The man turns to the bartender and presumably translates into English for him.
Ezio stops listening, in any event, because the man got the bartender's attention by saying, "Desmond."
What are the odds?
Ezio studies Desmond carefully. He seems like a very ordinary person, for the time. He's pouring drinks for a living. Is this the one his life was dragged over the coals for?
He has to be. The Ones Who Came Before clearly knew where (and when) to find Desmond, even if they couldn't speak to him directly for some reason (his not being alive yet in 1499 might have been the reason). Prometheus promised him 'context'.
This does promise to provide a great deal of context, if Ezio plays this right.
"Thank you," he says as Desmond places a sweating, sparkling clean glass of cold water in front of him. Then he turns to his translator. "How do you say that in English?" And does his best to parrot the response, which earns him a frankly blinding smile from Desmond.
"He said they have basically nothing but nuts to eat here," says his translator apologetically.
"That's fine." Ezio takes a sip of his water. "I'll wait."
Syllables come from behind the bar again, and when Ezio turns his attention back, Desmond puts out a hand to shake. "Desmond," he offers, gesturing vaguely at himself.
Ezio hesitates for one heartbeat. "Federico," he answers, clasping the offered hand and cursing his cowardice a little.
Desmond grins again and then directs a question at the translator. "Nice to meet you," the man answers him, and Desmond turns back to Ezio as he repeats it.
"Nice to meet you too, Desmond."