Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shaun was 300% sure this was going to end terribly.

Call it intuition, call it common sense, call it a predictable outcome based on events so far. But yeah, they were clearly so fucked. It was just something about this temple, about Juno and her flittering, cryptic holographic warnings. About the obvious condescending attitudes of all the Isu and their blatant but as-yet undivulged ulterior motives.

The world was about to end and they – or Desmond at least – were about to save it. But there was just something… niggling at the back of his brain. That still, with all they’d learned, that still nothing would turn out how they were expecting it to.

“Anyone else incredibly uneasy about this entire plan?” he voiced out loud with a grimace as they strode across to the shimmering blue force-field gateway. “Not just me expecting there to be some giant horrific catch?”

“I am steadfastly not thinking about it,” Rebecca huffed with a grimace of her own.

“I shall have to keep my existential dread to myself then,” he snarked back reflexively. “Oh goody.”

Desmond, predictably, was as silent as ever as he pulled the cord holding the circular turquoise “key” from around his neck. Shaun didn’t know if he’d always been a quiet one, or if it was just them and the whole Abstergo kidnapping, animus using, and world ending situation that had made him that way, but he had noticed that his already sparse words had become even fewer and far between since William Miles had joined them.

Lots of uncomfortable history there, between Desmond and his father, that Shaun really didn’t want to poke at too hard. Or like, at all.

Before he could make another sarcastic comment about his laconic attitude though, Desmond raised his hand and gingerly pressed the disc against the shimmering blue force-field gateway. Shaun’s snarky remark died in his throat since he was entirely too busy being blinded by the near-explosion of light as the barrier expanded outwards with a static roar and then broke apart with a wave of ear-popping pressure.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath as he futilely attempted to blink away the after image that felt like it had burned into his retinas.

The bridge-like corridor stretched on beyond the now-open gateway, great slabs of horizontal concrete occasionally framed by grey cubic and rectangular blocks. Linear white-blue lights cut across them at irregular intervals, but they did little more than light up the path itself; the darkness beyond remained as impenetrable as ever.

Desmond glanced quickly at them all, before his expression once more hardened into resolve and he stepped forward again.

Rebecca was the first to follow, with William close behind her. Despite how sure he was becoming that this was all some sort of huge elaborate trap, Shaun didn’t want to be left behind and hurried to catch up, jogging a couple of steps until he was back in position at the tail of the little group.

“No really, this feels like a horrible idea,” he repeated as they quickly strode onwards. “I sense impending doom.”

“If you’ve got another way of preventing the entire planet from being cooked extra crispy, I’m all ears,” Desmond finally spoke up. His tone was one of wry amusement, and though his back was to him, Shaun could sense the slight smirk twisting his lips upwards.

“Stab the sun with a hidden blade,” Shaun offered inanely. “Build a giant forcefield ‘round the planet in the next couple of minutes.”

“Launch this temple into space as a shield,” Rebecca snorted, joining in. “Use the temple to uh, magically enlarge a hidden blade and use that as a shield.”

“As entertaining as this is,” William interrupted (sounding anything but entertained), “I believe we are approaching our goal.”

Squinting into the darkness ahead of them, Shaun realised the older assassin was right. Ahead of them on the bridge stood another abstract cubic structure, this one reaching about waist height. Suspended near the top of it, was a large glowing sphere, its surface partially covered in rectangular patterning.

Shaun thought it looked ominously like someone had stuck a pale blue night light into the Death Star.

“Yes… come…” a voice suddenly echoed from in front of them. “Here at last.”

Desmond marched right up to the glowing “eye” as the ghostly hologram of Juno flickered into view, but Shaun and the others allowed their steps to slow until they were stood in a loose arc at Desmond’s shoulders.

“You know our story now,” Juno continued on. “Of how we tried, of how we failed. All our hopes extinguished. Except one.”

The creepy precursor put one hand on the pseudo-Death Star as she uttered the last two words, which only served to intensify Shaun’s feeling of distrust. He’d said it several times already now, but there really was something off about this whole situation.

And oh – there it was! The catch.

Minerva materialised from behind them and immediately launched into an argument with the other Isu. Apparently Juno had insinuated herself into the very structure of the temple, such that using the Eye would unleash her on the world and humanity. And apparently enslaving the human race was her end goal. Yay.

Juno on the other hand, fervently insisted that she merely wanted to bring about world peace. Largely by force, it sounded like. She even went so far as to show Desmond some sort of vision of the future, one that left him blinking and disorientated.

And then the two wannabe-gods went right back to arguing with each other.

“Enough!” Desmond suddenly yelled, his face a picture of determination. “Minerva, I understand your concerns but I have to stop the world from burning. Your path, what you want, there’s no hope there. So either you find me another way to save the planet right now or my decision is made. We don’t have the time to do anything other than use the Eye.”

Minerva flickered silently in place.

Juno looked smug.

Then Minerva started to smirk.

“No,” she said. “You don’t have the time. Desmond, use the eye.”

“Uh, what?” Shaun blurted, thrown by her sudden U-turn. Minerva’s eyes were glimmering intently, the glee visible despite her being nothing more than a projection.

“Desmond! Use the Eye!” Minerva repeated more urgently. “Quickly now!”

“What have you done?” Juno demanded as she swivelled to face the other precursor again. “What have you planned!”

“Desmond now! Before she realises –!”

Desmond slapped his hand onto the orb and the world exploded in a blaze of all encompassing white.

There was white.

And only white.

Faintly, Shaun became aware that he existed. That he was a person with limbs and thoughts and a sense of self. That he was real and that he could move and think. That he could do things!

Then he became aware that he was underwater. And that it was quite dark actually.

He flailed in panic for a few seconds before his basic assassin training kicked in and he spun in a coil in order to work out which way was most likely upwards. Spotting a lighter patch of murky gloom, he kicked his legs and pushed his arms downwards, forcing himself through the water.

His head breached the surface and he greedily gulped in air.

“Shit,” he swore raggedly as he sluiced water off of his face. “Buggering fuck!”

His vision was blurry and his lungs still burning as he grabbed for what he presumed was the leg of a wooden pier. Hands shaking, arms protesting, Shaun hauled himself upwards onto dry land, silently resolving to do more physical training than the bare minimum demanded from him from now on. He’d probably never be able to free run and fight as well as Desmond or any of his ancestors, but Christ Almighty, at least he’d be fitter. Less likely to drown.

Flopping on his back on the rough wood, Shaun closed his eyes and groaned.

“Fucking hell!”

Sitting up again rapidly at the shout, Shaun twisted to stare at where Rebecca’s head had just appeared above the surface of what looked to be a river. His fellow assassin coughed roughly as she floundered in the brown water, chunks of debris and god knows what floating past her.

And then two more familiar people popped up next to her.

“Hey!” Shaun called towards them. “Guys! Over here!”

Rebecca spotted him first but Desmond was the fastest to shake off his surprise and confusion and scull his way to the wooden jetty. Bill trailed behind them with a grimace, his movements efficient but stiff; clearly Desmond’s father was not fond of swimming.

“Budge over,” Desmond rasped when he reached Shaun, accepting the helping hand and allowing himself to be dragged out of the disgusting water. As soon as he was steady, he turned to offer his own arm and together, the two of them hauled Rebecca and then William out too.

And then, half leaning back against a stack of rough wooden crates, Shaun groaned piteously again.

“Desmond!” he shouted in outrage as he futilely tried to squeeze the disgustingly filthy river water out of his expensive silver cashmere jumper. “What the bloody hell did you do!?”

But Desmond, of course, wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to him. No, Desmond was staring in wide-eyed horror at their surroundings. Their decidedly non twenty-first century surroundings.

“Oh lord,” William Miles swore lowly as he too turned to gape at the structures surrounding them.

There was a high stone wall that stretched upwards to their left, ending at a support strut for a large five arch bridge that spanned the river. It was formed of huge blocks of pale limestone, the same rock that seemed to make up most of the buildings beyond it. These all seemed to be at least three stories high and were topped by vibrant terracotta tiles that shone warmly in what appeared to be late afternoon sun. The front and sides of the buildings were criss-crossed by wooden beams, and balconies protruded from many of them. And the windows - it was difficult to tell for certain from this distance - but a lot of them seemed to lack glass and all of them were framed by brightly painted shutters.

In the other direction, the wall was much lower and curved downwards to meet the gentle swell of a natural river bank. It was primarily covered in low river plants and shrubs, but sandy paths cut through it, and wooden jetties like the one the four of them had collapsed on abutted haphazardly out over the water from it.

And then on the water were boats. Wooden, every one of them. Some with low masts and small white sails, but most little more than skiffs with oars. A handful being propelled along but the majority docked tightly along the river’s edge. Or hauled entirely out of the water and left to dry amongst the sandy grass.

But most noticeable were the people.

Warm olive skin typical of mediterranean areas, mostly covered by all manner of clothing. Historic clothing. Brightly coloured hose and doublets, long flowing silk and lace dresses, poofed out hats adorned with feathers and beads and piping. Boots, from low shoes to ankle high to knee high, but all of dark leather with varying amounts of gilding and buckles. Stockings and capes and elaborate belts.

A group of these strangely dressed people were standing on the low stone walkway that abutted their jetty, staring and pointing at them in amused interest.

“Oh shit,” Rebecca repeated eloquently as they stared back.

“Is this… is this Rome!?” Desmond stuttered out, turning to stare at the opposite bank of the river.

“In the late 1400s at a guess,” Shaun replied faintly as he morosely mourned the loss of his glasses. “Or early 1500s.”

“Oh shit,” Rebecca said yet again.

Chapter Text

“So,” Shaun said when everyone was silent just a little bit too long for his taste. “On the scale of one to the entire planet is about to burn, I reckon we’re at about a seven.”

They were still flopped in various positions on the rough wood of the pier, their sodden clothes dripping and pooling around them. Shaun had returned to leaning against the stack of crates and Bill was sitting near his feet. Desmond was crouched on one knee next to him while Rebecca seemed to have given up entirely; she’d just discovered all her electronics were not only water-logged, but seemed to have been fried by The Eye as well, so she was flopped on her back with one arm thrown up over her eyes in disgust.

“This is actually happening right?” she groaned, blindly shoving her dead phone back into her right trouser pocket. “We’re actually in Renaissance Italy and I’m not just having some weird fever dream?”

“It doesn’t feel like the Animus,” Desmond answered her uneasily.

“The fact that you’re, well, yourself should be enough of a clue there,” Shaun snorted sarcastically. “Or you know, the fact that we’re here too.”

“I’m just saying it doesn’t feel like a simulation,” the younger man scowled back at him. “Or– or a hallucination. And it all feels a lot more real than anything the bleeding effect showed me.”

“Guys it was a rhetorical question, don’t start arguing about it,” Rebecca grumbled.

Desmond huffed, turning to scan their surroundings once more. His eyes darted about as he looked at the nearby rooftops again, as he watched the handful of people still looking at them either in amusement or wary silence.

“We should move before any guards show up,” he then said, gaze still distant.

“Right, because wandering the streets in dripping wet 21st century clothes is such a stellar idea,” Shaun complained.

But Shaun began to pull himself to his feet anyway, knowing that if they were moving they at least wouldn’t be sitting targets. Rebecca groaned loudly and then also began to stand back up, while Bill got himself upright without making a sound.

“It’s been a while since I was here as Ezio, but I think I remember the general layout of Rome,” Desmond said quietly as he turned and looked back over the water. “If we follow the river downstream, we should come across Tiber Island fairly quickly.”

Shaun followed his gaze and suddenly realised that the tall, fuzzy blob beyond the bridge with five arches was probably the Castel Sant'Angelo. Without his glasses, its features were rather indistinct but it looked enough like a towering rotunda to make him fairly certain that he was looking at the famous Papal fortress that had once been a Mausoleum for Roman Emperor Hadrian.

Which meant that Desmond was probably right; following the river south would have them heading towards the Brotherhood’s hideout. Assuming, you know, that they were in Rome post 1500. It was entirely possible that they were earlier than that and Orsini hadn’t gifted the Island buildings to the assassins yet. Lord knows what they’d do in that case.

“How far is it from here?” Bill asked Desmond gruffly while Shaun squeezed some more disgusting water out of his jumper and tried not to fret about the precise year they were in. Or about how terrible his vision was without his glasses.

“Mile, mile and a half maybe?”

Bill grimaced and turned to once again look at the few people at the end of the pier who were still eyeing them curiously.

“That’s thirty minutes of walking in drenched clothes that makes us stand out like a sore thumb,” the older man shook his head. “We need to find something to wear that’ll help us blend in first.”

“Fine,” Desmond sighed tiredly but thankfully without arguing.

They exchanged a final round of silent glances, and then began walking up the short pier onto the rivershore. Desmond took up the lead again, just like he had back in the Isu temple, the rest of them trailing him only a few steps behind in silence.

But Desmond had only just moved onto the muddy sand beyond the wooden walkway when they were all forced to pause again.

“Well I foresee that being a bit of a problem,” Shaun mumbled as a young man dressed in a maroon doublet and a matching feather-adorned beret strutted right up to them and laughingly sneered something. Something in a language that Shaun was unfortunately sure was late-mediaeval Italian.

Because yeah. They weren’t in an animus so there was no translation programme running.

Fuck.

“I don’t speak a word of Italian,” Rebecca groaned as the doublet man jeered something else which caused two other similarly dressed young men to laugh uproariously. “Please tell me I’m not gonna have to learn Italian!?”

“Oh god, we’re stuck in Renaissance Rome and we’re going to have to learn Renaissance Italian,” Shaun lamented, heartfelt.

“What?” Desmond suddenly frowned at them, his head turning so that he was looking at them over his shoulder. “You guys don’t understand him? He’s just being a prick and dicendo che sembriamo un branco di topi annegati.”

“Holy shit!” Rebecca gasped. “Desmond speaks ye olde Italian!”

“I what? No, that was in English!”

“It really wasn’t mate,” Shaun snorted at him. “You said he was being a prick and then devolved into a Godfather roleplay!”

Desmond opened his mouth but hesitated before actually replying.

Which was when maroon-doublet realised they weren’t really paying attention to him and his unintelligible Italian insults anymore. And so reached out to grab Desmond’s shoulder harshly.

Desmond reacted instantly, dropping his shoulder and twisting sinuously as his hands came up and his left foot dropped back. In less than a second, the young assassin had flipped doublet-man onto his front and swept his legs out from under him. He landed on his chest with an audible woomph, one arm conorted upwards behind him as Desmond held him and mercilessly pinned him down.

“Non toccarmi, cazzo!” Desmond barked at him harshly.

Shaun didn’t need to know a single word of Italian to know that meant don’t fucking touch me!

“Desmond!”

Doublet’s arm was released with a slight shove when Bill snapped his son’s name demandingly. Not immediately of course; no, Desmond waited a couple of agonisingly long seconds before he huffed and let the guy go. Just long enough to make it clear to them all that he was releasing him because he wanted to, not because he’d been ordered to.

“Can we maybe not bring even more attention to ourselves by roughing the locals up in broad daylight?” Bill drawled with slightly more sarcasm than even Shaun thought was warranted.

Desmond’s jaw visibly tightened for a second while he watched doublet-man scramble to his feet and scurry away, frightened. For a moment, Shaun suspected he and Bill were going to have yet another bitter father-son argument despite Bill’s words about broad daylight, but then Desmond took in a deep breath and clearly forced his shoulders to relax.

“Come on then,” he muttered, turning his back on them all once more.

They started walking again, quicker now than before.

They hurried up the short slope of the riverbank and then moved past the first row of buildings, turning right onto a street that was mostly paved. It seemed to be lined predominantly with houses, though Shaun suspected that that bigger place behind the small cluster of wooden market stalls was actually a bordello. It was slightly too blurry for him to be sure though.

Desmond angled them towards the opening of the first alleyway on the left and they scurried into it hastily, all of them conscious of the number of people that were once again watching them suspiciously. This was also paved, but the cobbles were wide and uneven, big flat slabs that had probably been placed by the Romans and not particularly well looked after since.

At least the… mud between them – Shaun was definitely choosing to believe that was only mud despite the stench. And the colour. And the–

At least the mud between them had largely dried out except for a few conspicuous spots where someone had clearly upended a bucket or two recently. Still, Shaun was careful to only step on the actual stone slabs where possible, his wet leather shoes creaking as they moved behind a spindly looking tree that had a pile of mouldering straw heaped next to it.

“Okay, now what?” Shaun asked sardonically as the four of them huddled out of sight of the main street as much as possible.

Desmond silently held up three coin purses.

“How the bloody hell did you manage to get those!?” he blurted in surprise. He had barely taken his eyes off the man and he hadn’t spotted even a hint of Desmond acquiring them. For god’s sake, they’d only been off that pier for about five minutes! Spat with maroon doublet man included!

“Altaïr and Ezio were both very good pick-pockets,” Desmond smiled wryly.

He tossed one of the little leather bags to his father and another to Rebecca, leaving Shaun to watch as he began tugging open the drawstrings of the third. When he upended it, a dozen silver coins of various sizes spilled into his hand.

“Uh, these aren’t Florins,” Desmond said blankly.

“That would be because a single Florin is worth about 300 US dollars right now,” Shaun told him with a snort.

“But– What?”

“Currency was one of the things we simplified to save on the animus’ processing power,” Rebecca explained as she poked at the coins from her own purse. The ones she was holding were also mostly silver, though Shaun could see a couple of tiny copper ones too. “I wrote some code that just made all the money look like one type of coin, made everything load and render faster and smoother.”

“Here look,” Shaun sighed, pulling Desmond’s hand slightly closer to himself. “Soldi, Denari, and that one’s a Lira. There’s no fixed values of coins in this time period, but if we assume this is the end of the 15th century, then I reckon there’s about 150 Soldi to a Florin right now. Then a Soldi is then worth less than a Denari, and a Lira is worth more.”

“...Okay then,” Desmond replied, still looking baffled.

Shaun huffed in irritation.

“You’ve got the equivalent of about $65 there, alright? Rebecca’s got about $20 in her hand and Bill’s got… less than a dollar, wow, that was one poor sod you robbed Desmond.”

Desmond shot him a look but didn’t say anything.

“So we’ve got about $85,” Bill then spoke up, adding his meagre handful to Rebecca’s. “That can’t be enough for four sets of clothes in this day and age, right? There isn’t exactly a Walmart equivalent we can sleuth into.”

Shaun shook his head in agreement.

“And even if we… acquired some more money,” he added. “Buying new clothes would mean going to a tailor shop and getting fitted properly, which will be time consuming. Off-the-rack isn’t a concept that really exists yet.”

“Thieving it is then,” Desmond muttered.

“Jesus! Warn a guy!” Shaun exclaimed as Desmond then suddenly took three running steps and launched himself at the opposite wall of the alley. He caught the edge of a wooden cross-beam, his river-stained white hoody slapping wetly against the stonework, and then pulled himself up to a sort of long hanging basket full of dead shrubs.

With two more vertical leaps and one quick sideways shuffle, the man reached the terracotta tiles of the roof and disappeared. Shaun was impressed despite himself.

“Nice moves man!” Rebecca called up to him with a laugh when his head popped back over the edge a moment later. He grinned down at them for a second and then flipped his hood up and shifted to crouch in that weird way all the brotherhood’s field assassins did when they were high up. You know, like a particularly strange gargoyle.

“I can see a couple of balconies just over that way,” he called back, pointing roughly south-west. “There’s at least one–”

“Tu sei lì! Rimani dove sei!”

Shaun startled as two papal guards suddenly appeared in the entrance to the alleyway, accompanied by none other than maroon doublet guy. Doublet-man was pointing at them, and though Shaun couldn’t see his face clearly from this far away, he was betting that he was either scowling fiercely or looking gleeful.

The two guards though, Shaun didn’t need to see their expressions to know they were unhappy. They were both clad head to toe in steel armour, helmets included, and were both armed; one with a broadsword that was thankfully still sheathed at his waist, but the other with a large axe that was being gripped threateningly.

“Oh shit,” Rebecca summarised succinctly. Again.

The guard with the sword shouted something else in Italian and then began to stalk down the alley menacingly. A moment later, the axe-wielder followed him.

“You know, I really regret not strapping on my hidden blade this morning,” Shaun sighed as he made sure his wet jumper and shirt sleeves were rolled up tight enough not to slip below his elbows. He wasn’t much of a fighter – he was very much research-man, not actual-assassinations-man, thanks – but he was just about good enough to meet the minimum standards that the brotherhood demanded of all its active members.

“There’s only two, we can take them,” Bill rumbled quietly as he also made sure his shirt sleeves were out of the way.

“Maybe,” Shaun replied doubtfully. The guards were in full armour. They had one hidden blade between the three of them and nothing else.

Surreptitiously, he eyed the tree they were still standing next to, wondering if they could use it to climb up onto the rooftops to Desmond. Probably not, given that it topped out below the building’s second story; their free-running skills were far short of Desmond’s so it was unlikely they’d manage to scramble the rest of the way up the wall like the other man had. Well, Rebecca would possibly succeed eventually but she was no Desmond either, so it wasn’t a sure thing.

“Wait until the first one is within arms reach and then yank him towards me,” Bill instructed quietly. “I’ll get him in the neck.”

“We could always just leg it?” Shaun tried suggesting. “Other end of the alley looks clear.”

“Too far away, we’ll just end up with arrows in our backs,” Bill shook his head. Shaun wasn’t sure he agreed, but…

“Well here goes nothing,” Rebecca breathed out.

Shaun raised his hands defensively as the first guard bellowed something again and drew his sword. Behind him, he heard the quiet snick of Bill’s hidden blade releasing.

And then Desmond leaped off the rooftop and landed atop the two men with a squelch and a loud crunch of bone.

“Ah,” said Shaun as he eyed the two now very dead guards. “I suppose that works just as well!”

Chapter Text

Shaun was incredibly conscious that there was a bloody hole in the back of the stolen red tabard he was wearing.

It was just off to the left of his spine, a two inch long horizontal split below his shoulder blade. He was doing his best to keep it covered with the cloth sack Desmond had acquired for him to put his own clothes in, but the way he had it slung over one shoulder meant that it swung about a bit as he walked. Which then meant that anyone who happened to look at him at just the right moment would see what was obviously a recent stab wound in his back.

He was really hoping no one looked at him at just the right moment.

“I think we’re almost there,” Desmond suddenly spoke up from the front of their group. “Yeah, look there, that’s the island.”

“Oh thank god, these pants are chafing my thighs something awful,” Rebecca sighed in relief.

Desmond was wearing the other set of clothes they’d stolen from the papal guards he’d killed, except that he’d actually put on some of the armour too. With two bodies, they’d had two sets of armour available to them, but it had quickly become clear that the axe-wielder’s pieces were far too big for any of them. So they’d only taken the sword-guard's set. But even then, the plackart was too wide across the chest for any of them but Bill, so he was wearing that while Desmond had strapped the pauldrons onto his shoulders and the greaves onto his shins.

There’d been a set of vambraces as well but Desmond had passed on those as he would have had to take off his hidden blades to wear them. Instead, Rebecca had buckled them on over an also stolen muddy-green coloured doublet, and with her hair tucked up under a sort of black poofy felt hat, she looked more like a teenage boy than a woman at first glance. Which was as good a disguise as any.

“Does the island look occupied?” Shaun asked as they looked through the gap in the buildings that Desmond had paused in front of. They’d been following a street that ran roughly parallel to the river for a while now, the embankment and its walkways not having been constructed yet.

“Yes,” Desmond grunted back shortly. “And we’re being watched.”

“Oh goody.”

“That’s gotta mean that the Brotherhood has already been re-established here, right?” Rebecca asked, still staring over the murky water towards their destination. “That’s good news, yeah?”

“Sure,” Shaun sighed. “Inasmuch as anything about being unexpectedly stuck in the 1500s can be good news. God, I really hope I don’t die of some horrible grizzly disease or something.”

“You’re a bundle of joy, as ever Shaun,” Desmond grumbled. But the corner of his mouth was curled up, so Shaun supposed that the other man was finally growing used to his perpetual sarcasm and cheery outlook.

“Come on, let’s not linger,” Bill chivvied them along. “We’re attracting enough attention as it is.”

Which was true enough, Shaun thought as they set off walking again. Even with their stolen clothes, they looked out of place. Particularly as even Rebecca was taller than a lot of the people they were moving between; that was 21st century nutrition for you.

“It’s about 500 more yards to the foot of the bridge,” Desmond said quietly as they turned to go around yet another wooden market stall. “And if you wait about another 5 seconds, I reckon you’ll spot a white hood peeking over the edge of that house there.”

“I see them,” Bill rumbled lowly a moment later.

“I see a white blob at least,” Shaun also commented tiredly. “This lack of glasses problem is going to get real old, real fast.”

“There’s another four roof crawlers headed in our direction,” Desmond spoke again, still ignoring Shaun’s complaining. “They’re all showing up white in my eagle vision.”

“White is… good right?” Rebecca asked nervously as they continued surreptitiously watching the rooflines.

“White is neutral. For now.”

It took them another five minutes to reach the foot of the Ponte Fabricio, during which time Desmond spotted two more probable-assassins tailing them. Ezio’s training was proving to be as good as the legends suggested, as none of them would have noticed any of the assassins at all if Desmond hadn’t been eagle tagging them or whatever it was he was doing.

(And it hadn’t escaped Shaun’s notice that he was apparently doing that through walls now. Through multiple walls in fact. It was both impressive and quite creepy to be honest.)

And then Desmond stepped onto the ancient Roman bridge.

Two entirely white clad assassins dropped from the roofs behind them, landing nimbly in the narrow gap between the buildings and effectively cutting off the route back. Another assassin - this one in dark grey with blood red accents - vaulted gracefully over the left wall immediately in front of them, while two more appeared further down the bridge, closer to the island.

“Uh, hello there?” Desmond greeted the grey-clad one faintly. In English, the idiot. “We’re from, um. England I guess? We come in–”

Desmond’s verbal fumbling was cut off when the man – that was definitely a beard Shaun could see under that hood, so he was going to make the obvious assumption – said something sharply in Italian. The handful of words were accompanied by a hand going to his sword hilt, which in turn had Bill gripping the big axe he’d taken from the dead guard just a little tighter.

“Oh! Oh, aspetta, sì!” Desmond thankfully managed next, seeming to get his brain in gear. “Scusa, non volevo…”

The conversation then descended into rapid Italian and Shaun quickly gave up trying to work out what was being said from intonation alone. He just prayed that Desmond wasn’t making them sound like either total liars or total nutjobs. Or worse, both.

Thankfully, it did look like he was getting somewhere though, as the hooded assassin’s posture slowly relaxed and his hand moved off his sword.

Then Desmond nodded rapidly and pointed at himself.

“Desmond Miles,” he said in a weirdly strong Italian accent. And then turning to point behind him, he continued with, “Shaun Hastings, Rebecca Crane, e mio padre, William Miles. Nulla è vero, tutto è permesso.”

“Nulla è vero, tutto è permesso,” the assassin echoed him. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. Shaun didn’t need a translator for that phrase.

Shaun didn’t need a translator to understand the next thing the assassin said either, but that was mostly because the gestures for follow me were pretty universal rather than because he understood the words the man had used. So they set off across the bridge, the two white-clad assassin’s still following them and the two further ahead still watching them warily.

The island, when they reached it, turned out to be quite a bustling hive of activity. A road ran directly across the middle of it, stretching from one bridge to the other, and off to the left was a busy open square framed on three sides by tall limestone buildings. The one at the back of the square was a church if Shaun was recalling his research correctly, but instead of seeing any monks or priests or cardinals, he could only see a handful of people dressed in assassin’s robes mixed in with a whole bunch of others wearing this century’s version of everyday wear.

Their grey robed assassin led them away from this however, instead turning right off the road down a sort of alleyway that ran between yet more pale limestone buildings. At the end of it was a much smaller square with a circular fountain in the centre, clear water bubbling slowly from a centre spout. An archway through to another alleyway stood in the back left corner, while in the centre back wall was a recess in which was set an iron banded wooden door.

The entrance to the Tiber Island hideout. It looked exactly like it had in the Animus.

Shaun only stared at it for a couple of seconds though before his attention was dragged back over to that left arch. It was partly framed by a wooden trellis over which a leafy green plant with thin vines and vibrant purple flowers about the size of a palm of a hand was growing, but it was what was under the archway that caught his eye.

“Holy shit,” Rebecca breathed quietly next to him. “That’s him, isn’t it?”

“Looks like,” Shaun agreed tightly.

Because leaning on the inner wall of the tunnel, his arms crossed over his chest, was an assassin dressed in robes made from the whitest material Shaun had seen in this century. Even without the vibrant red sash and the frankly ostentatious creed-sigil belt buckle, it would have been obvious who the man was. Hell, Shaun would have recognised him on sight even if his hood had been pulled up.

“Ezio,” Desmond near-whispered as they all stared reverently.

Chapter Text

“Nope, sorry,” Shaun commented glibly. “I’m gonna have to say it. Ezio Auditore is a short arse.”

From next to him, Rebecca choked off a laugh. There was a reason she was his favourite.

Shaun had mostly said it to break the tension and shake everyone out of their gormless staring, but it was actually true. The legendary Italian assassin topped out at about 5-foot-6 if he had to guess — and that was an upper estimate. It was quite startling despite the fact it made perfect sense in the historical context.

Or mostly made sense, Shaun mused silently to himself as the man in question slowly pushed himself away from the wall under the arch and began to stalk gracefully towards them. The average height of a nation in any given era did depend on its general nutritional and sanitation standards but despite his later hardships, Ezio had spent his first 17 years as the pampered son of well-off nobility. Which meant that only part of his height (or lack thereof) could be attributed to what he ate and drank; the rest was all genetics.

Short arse genetics apparently.

“No really,” Shaun repeated as the Italian stopped in front of them, secure in the knowledge that there was no way he understood their 21st century English. “He’s really bloody short! Look at him, he’s like a kitten! A deadly killer assassin kitten I grant you, but come on, the top of his head is barely level with Desmond’s shoulder!”

“Hastings,” Bill sighed. “Shut the fuck up.”

Thankfully, it didn’t look like Ezio was overly bothered by Shaun’s ramblings or the fact that he couldn’t have understood a word of them. Instead, the legendary assassin simply quirked an eyebrow and then smirked salaciously at them all. His eyes flicked over them all, a hint of wariness present but mostly hidden by the stronger amusement. In fact, he more seemed to be—

Was he actually—?

Yep. He was. The Renaissance era assassin was definitely eyeing them all up more than he was assessing them as a threat. Good lord, it was even more blatant in person that it had been through the animus output screens!

“Desmond,” the man finally spoke, accent thick and his smirk still in place. “Desmond Miles.”

“Ezio Auditore da Firenze,” Desmond murmured back.

They stared at each other in silence for a few moments. And then—

And then Ezio’s smirk turned into a full blown grin. An eyes wide, gleeful, all round delighted sort of grin. One accompanied by him grabbing Desmond’s right forearm in both hands and starting to babble away in Italian at a mile a minute.

Shaun couldn’t see Desmond’s face from where he was standing, but he suspected from his posture that his expression was probably best described as overwhelmed and confused. Whatever it was that Ezio was saying, he was saying it with great enthusiasm and excitement. So much so that Desmond could barely get a word in edgeways, and most of what he did manage to say consisted of uh and um and the occasional sì…? (which even Shaun knew was Italian for yes…?)

“I really miss baby’s translation codex,” Rebecca lamented quietly after they’d spent at least a full minute watching Ezio’s excited flailing. He’d even let go of Desmond’s arm now in order to gesticulate wildly.

“Oh look!” Shaun quipped with light sarcasm when the torrent of words finally paused. “Your dulcet tones have managed to finally get him to remember we exist! Say something else Rebecca so that we might finally get to go inside; I am dying to get out of the sodden remains of my shoes. Why did Desmond get the dead guard’s boots and not me?”

Still standing on his left, Bill sighed with deep exasperation again.

(Shaun had zero regrets.)

(Or actually, maybe he had one regret, because Ezio was now staring at him like he was trying to strip him with his eyes alone. And while Shaun had spent some of his misspent youth in seedy gay bars— yeah, he wasn’t finishing that sentence thanks)

Fortunately, Desmond recaptured Ezio’s attention by saying something else in lilting Italian. Ezio nodded in response, and then made a follow me sort of gesture and turned towards the wood and iron door.

And then the door was hauled open and they were heading inside what was perhaps the most famous headquarters of the brotherhood of all time.

“...Okay,” Shaun muttered in shock about ten minutes later. “I admit to being surprised. Not what I was expecting.”

His first impression of the inside of the Tiber Island Hideout was a slightly baffled Huh. This place is massive! Perhaps it could partly be blamed on the way he’d predominantly watched Desmond’s animus feed via a small window open in the bottom of his already small computer screen. Perhaps it could even more be blamed on whatever compressional animus wizardry Rebecca had conducted to save on processing power. But even still… The entrance hall and all the rooms beyond it were big.

And also there were a lot more of them than Shaun had expected. A lot.

“Makes sense really,” he mused quietly to Rebecca as they all followed Ezio up a set of narrow wooden stairs at the back of the building. At the front of their little entourage, the master assassin was once again enthusiastically chatting away to Desmond in mediaeval Italian, gesticulating just as wildly as he was talking. “The only living space we saw in the animus was Machiavelli’s study. Yet there are dozens of people living here so of course there’s also a kitchen and a dining hall and a laundrette room and loads of bedrooms.”

Rebecca nodded in agreement and hummed thoughtfully as they emerged into another narrow hallway, this one bright with sunlight filtering in through small windows with actual glass in them. Bubbled and hazy glass in tessellated diamond panes that were each barely three inches wide, but actual glass all the same.

“I wonder what the bathroom situation is like?” she then pondered aloud.

“No,” Shaun shook his head in response. “No, I am refusing to think about that. I am not confronting the lack of indoor plumbing until I absolutely have to.”

“I suspect that you’ll have to start about now actually. Do those look like towels to you?”

Indeed, the stack of sheets that Ezio was now pulling out of an aged wooden cabinet did look like towels to Shaun. Unbleached cream linen woven with blue patterns, they resembled the ones he’d occasionally seen in paintings from this era. And towels meant baths. Or at the very least, hand basins they could use to splash the worst of the unthinkable river grime off of themselves.

“Dovrebbe esserci dell'acqua calda sul fuoco,” Ezio told them, gesturing at the closed door adjacent to the cabinet. “Forse non è molto, ma chiederò ad alcuni novizi di portarne di più.”

Shaun couldn’t even begin to guess what that meant, but Desmond made a general noise of agreement and muttered a thank you in Italian. Ducking his head, their laconic companion then pushed open the indicated door and scurried inside.

Bill hesitated only a moment before sighing loudly and following him. Rebecca was quick to go next, leaving just Shaun in the corridor with an amused Ezio.

“You really are bloody short,” Shaun told him, still safe in the knowledge he wouldn’t be understood. Ezio licked his lips and then grinned.

“Davvero non mi capisci?”

“I’m fairly sure you just asked if I can understand you, but I really do know sod all Italian, so…”

“In questo caso, vai prima tu, così posso guardarti il culo,” the assassin leered at him, eyeing him up and down again. “Mi piacciono gli uomini alti!”

Shaun echoed Bill’s sigh and decided it was the better part of valour to not question the man’s intentions too closely.

Inside, the room was not the horrific unsanitary pseudo-bathroom that Shaun had been fearing, but actually a reasonably sized dormitory. The walls were panelled with warm wood and then whitewashed up to the ceiling, with five narrow wooden bed frames pushed up against the two longest— three on one side and two more opposite, all currently without mattresses or sheets. A wash stand stood in the near corner with two glazed bowls atop it, a chest of drawers with a floral motif carved into the front was next to that, and then the far end of the room was taken up by a moderately sized fireplace. Over the well stoked fire, a large soot-stained metal pot was suspended from an iron frame, looking nothing so much like a witch’s cauldron.

Ezio pushed the stack of towels he was still holding at Bill and then turned to Desmond again.

“Dirò ai novizi di cercare abiti migliori anche per voi. Avete tutti un aspetto molto strano, vestiti come siete!”

“Grazie, Ezio,” Desmond replied with a tired smile.

And then with a final smirk, the man was backing out of the room.

“He said he’s gone to fetch more water and better clothes for us,” Desmond translated for them once the door had been pulled shut again. “I don’t know how long he’ll be, but I guess we have at least five minutes of peace?”

Shuan, eager to strip before the Italian ponce returned and leered at him for it, immediately sat on the edge of the nearest bed frame and started undoing his shoelaces. His oxfords might be real leather and worth a pretty penny, but being drowned in the filth of the River Tiber had not done them any favours; he wanted them off, and he wanted them off now.

Having moved to another bed, Rebecca also started stripping, removing the black felt hat first before starting to tug at the clunky buckles of the vambraces Desmond had given her. Meanwhile, Desmond’s hands had gone straight for the straps of his stolen pauldrons, already undoing them as he walked further into the room.

“Are we alone?” Bill asked sternly, crossing his arms over his chest rather than following suit and beginning to remove his armour and clothes.

“There’s one person lurking in the hall outside, leaning on the wall next to the door,” Desmond told him wryly as he continued tugging at his shoulder plates. “There’s another with their ear pressed against the wall behind the basins, and a third lying on the floor above us peering through a small hole in the boards.”

“A resounding no then,” Rebecca snorted.

“We’re foreign strangers with weird mannerisms that are dressed oddly in an assassin headquarters,” Desmond shrugged awkwardly.

“Indeed,” Bill rumbled, eying the right wall warily. “Are we certain they don’t understand us?”

“Ezio definitely doesn't, but they probably do have someone here who speaks English,” Shaun informed him testily as he finally pulled his sodden shoes off and kicked them out of the way with prejudice. “Middle English is close enough to contemporary English that they’ll be able to get the gist of what we’re saying, provided they can parse our accents. Think Shakespeare, but with much rounder vowels and fewer glottal stops than we use now.”

“Dost thou ree-kon thee can grasp-eh oo-er words?” Rebecca mangled.

Shaun paused in undoing the ties of his ill-fitting tabard to shoot her a disgusted look.

“No,” he told her shortly. “Just… do not.”

“If you two are done fooling around,” Bill interrupted with a scowl. “I ask because we’ll need to avoid… Certain topics if that’s the case. It wouldn’t do to disrupt the course of history too much.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s the entire point,” Desmond bit out, dropping one greave atop his pauldrons with a clatter. “We needed more time to come up with an alternative to using that damned Eye, so Minerva gave it to us.”

“So, what?” Shaun asked, his eyebrows raised. “Are we supposed to just, I don’t know, kick start the industrial revolution two and a half centuries early? Pray it’s enough to advance tech enough that by 2012, humanity can save itself?”

“Pretty much,” Desmond shrugged.

“Great,” Shaun breathed out, fully sarcastic. “I’m sure that will go swimmingly.”

The four of them versus the might of the catholic church. The four of them — two stubborn Yank halfwits who hated each other and two hackers with no computers or tech — versus the entire globe’s religious powers…

Yeah, they were going to be hanged for witchcraft almost immediately. Or burned at the stake. He could visualise it already; fire and smoke and brimstone, 16th century style.

Christ alive, Shaun thought morosely as he pulled the tabard off over his head. We’re all so doomed.

Abso-bloody-lutely doomed.