Chapter Text
Today, when Connor arrives in Monteriggioni, he finds a young Ezio—late teens or early twenties—balancing cross legged on a narrow, rickety chair, leaning forward slightly in glum contemplation. He does not acknowledge Connor when he arrives, and so Connor takes a moment to look around the room, trying to figure out what has the usually upbeat Ezio so down.
They're in a bedroom, large but austerely decorated. In the center of the room is a bed, neatly made, and Connor frowns at the woman kneeling against it. She is whispering something under her breathe, and although Connor can't quite hear the words, he recognizes from her posture that she is deeply absorbed in prayer.
And Ezio is fully absorbed in studying her.
Connor shuffles a little, trying to make enough noise to attract Ezio's attention. Normally, Connor does not mind silence, but there is a sort of deadness to the quiet in this room, something unnatural, and he would not mind leaving. But Ezio only glances at Connor and then away, as if he just doesn't have room in his head to think about him right now.
Connor waits, discomfort growing. This is an Ezio that obviously knows about visiting already, judging by his complete lack of any reaction whatsoever, but Connor thinks he might not have been visiting long. Ezio is skinny and stretched out in the way some people get when they're not quite done growing, and there's almost no muscle on him anywhere yet. Still a child, if only just.
The room starts to darken around them, and Ezio stands to light candles. The room looks even grimmer in their flickering half-light. When he is finished, Ezio cautiously kneels beside the woman. He reaches for her hand, but she twitches away without looking at him, without pausing in her ongoing prayer. "Mother," Ezio says, in a hushed voice that seems to fit the room perfectly. "Mother, it's late. But it's—well, it's Claudia's birthday. I know she would really like to see you come down and eat supper with the rest of us tonight."
He pauses, hope clearly visible on his face, as if waiting for his mother to answer. But she doesn't, she just continues with her whispering. Ezio waits a long while, several minutes at least, then gets up. "Tomorrow, maybe," he says without looking at her, and walks with heavy feet toward the door. Connor, of course, follows, but he hesitates a moment before doing so. When Ezio has turned away, heading for the door, Connor sees his mother squeeze her eyes shut, sees the tears that slip down her face. But she doesn't move, doesn't stop in her ongoing prayer, and Connor leaves quickly.
He finds Ezio in the hallway, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. When Connor comes out, Ezio glances up at him without even an attempt at a smile. "You're… Connor, right?" he says.
Connor nods.
"Sorry about…" Ezio waves an arm vaguely at the room, but gives Connor a suddenly fierce look, that strongly implies that if Connor dares to take offense at what he's just seen, Ezio will have something to say about it.
"She's your mother?" Connor asks.
"Yes," Ezio says.
"Is she ill?"
"Not really," Ezio says. "I don't know, I don't—ever since my father and brothers died, it's just like she's far away somewhere. And she doesn't want to come back, so no matter how hard we try, she won't…"
Connor glances back through the door. He keeps trying to imagine how he would feel if he was in Connor's shoes, if his mother was still alive but somehow unreachable. It might almost be worse than the reality, because at least Connor doesn't have to live with the terrible hope that his mother might come back someday, the way Ezio does. "I'm sorry," Connor says at last.
"She just prays," Ezio says. "And I don't understand—she was never all that religious before, but now everyone's gone…"
"You're not," Connor says. "Your sister isn't." He struggles, looking for the words that will… fit this situation. Not the ones that will make everything better, because Connor is fully aware that those words do not exist. Even if they did, it would not be his place to say them. He is only a visitor here. "She will see you again someday," he says at last. "She will come back from wherever she's gone, and she will see you."
"I hope so," Ezio says. "I hope so." He uncrosses his arms, and sticks a hand into his pocket. When he pulls it out again, there's a white feather in his open hand. "I've been collecting these for her," he says. "My little brother, he always wanted them. And I thought… maybe they would help her remember something good for once, instead of something bad."
He looks up at Connor, a complicated mess of emotions tangled together on his face. Hope and shame and sorrow and fear, but none of the stubborn, almost ridiculous good cheer that Connor is used to seeing.
"I think that's a good idea," Connor says, and some of the confusion on Ezio's face seems to collapse a little into relief.
"Thanks," he says, and then Connor's visit ends abruptly.
-//-
Even before that, Connor had always had a thing for feathers. Never taken from live birds of course, never, because he knows how much the loss of a single feather can hurt a bird when it's trying to fly. But he likes climbing trees to reach the tallest branches, finding feathers hidden in nests, bringing them back to remember that feeling of almost-flying.
But after his visit with Ezio, he starts sorting through them to find the white ones, the ones Ezio would want. And it's not like he'll ever be able to give them to Ezio, they'll never join the growing collection Ezio keeps in a little box in his mother's room. But Connor keeps them anyway, stowed away in a little box of his own. They serve no purpose, they do absolutely nothing to help Ezio or his mother. Connor never even tells Ezio what he's doing—but he keeps on doing it anyway, for years and years after that visit.
Somewhere along the way, the thought of those feathers and Ezio's hope that his mother will get better and come home again just gets mixed up with Connor's loneliness for his own mother. She's gone, she's definitely gone, not like Ezio's mother who might come back someday. But they're helping Connor. Not to forget, not to move on--he can't do those things. But they help him to do what should be impossible without her, which is to have hope.